5000 Customs Gold Units

The Customs Gold Unit was a specialized accounting currency introduced in 1930 to stabilize tariff collection against silver's chronic volatility — by 1947, when this note was issued, the CGU had long since lost that stabilizing function as inflation consumed the Nationalist financial system entirely. The Central Bank of China Printing Works had been pushed to produce denominations at scales that would have been inconceivable a decade earlier; 5,000 CGU represented a desperate attempt to keep paper values nominally tethered to a gold-based customs unit that no longer corresponded to any real exchange anchor.

The CGU series was formally abolished the following year when the ill-fated Gold Yuan reform swept away the accumulated debris of wartime emissions.