American-Oriental Bank of Fukien Currency & Banknote Values

The American-Oriental Bank of Fukien series of China Foreign Banks in the World Currency contains 13 distinct entries.

Part of the American-Oriental Banking Corporation, the American-Oriental Bank of Fukien (AOBF) was established in 1922 and had a capitalization of one million gold dollars. It was jointly owned, with 52% under the ownership American. It is believed that the American-Oriental Bank of Fukien did a large remittance business with Chinese-Americans who had immigrated to America from the southern China from 1850 onwards. These immigrants provided cheap labor for the building of railroads in the western United States, as well as labor for the gold fields, after gold was discovered in California in 1849. Fearing the Chinese wave of immigration posed a threat to western civilization—a crisis known contemporaneously as the “yellow peril”—the US Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 halting further immigration. Those already in the US, however, continued to send a part of their wages from the railroads, gold fields, and other businesses back to Chinese relatives via the American-Oriental Bank of Fukien branches. The bank closed in 1935 as a result of the failure of their foreign exchange business, brought about by China’s abandonment of the silver standard.