China · Notaphily From jiaozi to polymer

China invented paper money. In the late tenth century, Sichuan merchants — weighed down by iron coin — issued jiaozi, private promissory notes. The Song state took them over in 1023 and, in 1024, placed the world’s first official banknote in circulation from the Paper Notes Office at Yizhou, today’s Chengdu. The Hoover Institution marks that step from a merchant title to a state currency. The Southern Song followed with the huizi; the Yuan, with the Zhongtong Chao of 1260, took paper to imperial scale — and over-issue to its first great crisis.

The Ming reopened the experiment with the Da Ming Tongxing Baochao (1375). Inflation emptied it again, and the Qing kept to copper and silver until the Taiping Rebellion. In 1853 the Hubu Guanpiao and Da-Qing Baochao returned. The modern note arrived with banking: the Imperial Bank of China (1897) and the Da-Qing Bank (1905–1908), succeeded in 1912 by the Bank of China. In November 1935 the Nationalist government imposed the fabi, a fiat currency off silver. On 19 August 1948 the Gold Yuan redeemed it at 1 to 3 million; hyperinflation did not stop.

On 1 December 1948, in Shijiazhuang, the People’s Bank of China — a merger of the North China Bank, the Beihai Bank, and the Northwest Farmers Bank — issued the renminbi. The first series had twelve denominations and 62 designs; it was withdrawn in 1955 when the second appeared, at 1 new yuan to 10,000. Then came the third (1962), the fourth (1987, demonetized 1 May 2019), and the fifth (1999), with Mao Zedong on every circulating paper denomination.

Polymer, in China, is commemorative. On 28 November 2000 the bank issued the millennium 100-yuan (Pick 902) on Guardian substrate: its first plastic note. The 2008 Olympic 10-yuan is paper. The second polymer note arrived on 21 December 2021, the Winter Olympics ice-sports 20-yuan; its snow-sports companion remains paper. Ordinary circulation has not changed substrate.