Central bank issues commemorative currency

China's central bank has decided to issue a set of banknotes and coins to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the renminbi, and the 50-yuan special banknote will circulate on the market with face value.

The People's Bank of China said in a notice on its official website Thursday it decided to issue the commemorative banknotes and coins starting Nov 23.

The 50-yuan commemorative banknote will be 150 millimeters long and 70 millimeters wide, the same size as the regular 50-yuan banknote in the country's fifth set of notes.

The special banknote's front will have patterns of tree rings and representative parts of banknotes from the past five sets. Its back will have pictures of the central bank's current and previous building, peonies and the notice of issuance for the first set.

Even though there will be 120 million such banknotes circulating on the market, the special banknote is not part of the country's future sixth set of renminbi banknotes.

The first batch of the special banknotes will be issued nationwide on Dec 28, and the second batch will be issued on Jan 11 in some provinces, including Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang, Jiangsu, Shandong, Hubei and Guangdong.

Along with the banknote, there are three coins, including a 5-gram gold coin in a diameter of 20 millimeters with a face value of 80 yuan, a 1-kilogram silver coin in a diameter of 100 millimeters with a face value of 300 yuan and a 15-gram silver coin in a diameter of 33 millimeters with a face value of 5 yuan.

The central bank will issue 30,000 gold coins, 3,000 large silver coins and 60,000 small silver coins.