RARE CHINA 1937 $5 + $10 LIBERTY BONDS @ $99.95 w PASS-CO REPORTS (A $400 VALUE)


RARE CHINA 1937 $5 + $10 LIBERTY BONDS @ $99.95 w PASS-CO REPORTS (A $400 VALUE)

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RARE CHINA 1937 $5 + $10 LIBERTY BONDS @ $99.95 w PASS-CO REPORTS (A $400 VALUE):
$599.95


2 Pass-Co Reports and Certifications - a $400+ value! - are included in the B.I.N. Price!!! That means the Price for each bond is only may vary from bonds or Pass-Co pages in scans (serial numbers may vary).
LEGENDARY 1937 CHINA $5 and $10 LIBERTY BONDS!
The bonds offered here are part of the most coveted, most historic and most likely to be redeemable of all Republic of China bond issues - the 1937 Liberty Bond Series!!
The reason they are the most likely to be redeemed is that they are denominated in DOLLARS (as opposed to yuan, francs, pounds sterling or other currencies) and it was issued by the Central Chinese Government itself not by a railway (i.e. Lung Tsing U Hai bonds), a municipality or province (i.e. Petchili bonds) or a bank (i.e. Farmer\'s Bank bonds).
Interest and principle were guaranteed by the Chinese Minister of Finance, whose signature appears on the bonds and on all coupons, with \"appropriations from the National Treasury\" at any office of the Central Bank of China or its designated agencies.
The bonds have the embossed \"Sun\" seal of the Government of the Republic of China.
These rare \"speculative\" Chinese bonds are both extremely historic and extremely attractive. The bonds are beautifully engraved in different shades of blue with a large red chop at the center. The Border is dark blue with light orange background, red stamp left, and brown reverse.
The coupons have the same color combinations as the main sections of the bonds.
Bonds may have light folds and/or minor wear (mainly along the outside edge of the wide margin)
These bonds were issued in 1937 during the Japan-China War which started that year and lasted until the end of WW2 in 1945. They were issued to raise money for the defense of China against the Japanese and the attempt to free territories occupied by Japan. This why they are called \"Liberty Bonds\"!
Since the Republic of China was established in Taiwan upon the Communist Takeover of the Mainland in 1949, China has so far withheld redemption of these bonds. However, at the same time, China maintains that Taiwan remains a part of China. Meanwhile, there has been a steady trend of reconciliation between China and Taiwan.
Finally, international treaties such as Basel 5 require that China retire its foreign debt and there is mounting pressure on China from other Governments including the U.S. to do so. See first article below.
Shipping includes insurance and tracking.
Bonds have the full Pass-Co Report certifying their authenticity (included in the B.I.N. price!). These cost $200 each (plus roundtrip shipping to/from Pass-Co). That means the Buy Now price is less than $100 per very rare bond!!
If you are looking for a unique investment in history, rarity, beauty, and a potential \"speculative\" windfall when China redeems its foreign debt, look no further. This is the real deal.
China’s secret? It owes Americans nearly $1 trillionByRICHARD PARKER

China has a secret: It owes American investors hundreds of billions of dollars.

The Chinese government doesn’t like to talk about it and the U.S. government doesn’t want to raise it. But decades ago, Beijing defaulted on debt owed to Americans, as well as investors and governments around the world. In one case, it was paid. In the rest it was not. More than 20,000 American investors own this debt. The U.S. government may also own Chinese war debt, unpaid since World War II.

With the simple stroke of an executive proclamation, President Barack Obama can begin the process of addressing this issue. A 1930s-era law has established a quasi-public agency within the Securities and Exchange Commission, known as the Corporation of Foreign Securities Holders, which can arbitrate this dispute, much as a predecessor agency did for decades. China can both afford and benefit from this solution; it will afford goodwill at a time when relations between the world’s two superpowers are strained.

The story begins nearly 100 years ago, in 1913, when the government of China began issuing bonds to foreign investors and governments for infrastructure work to modernize the country. As the country fell into civil war in 1927, paying these debts became increasingly difficult and the government fell into default. Even so, in April 1937, the Nationalist government of China began to issue U.S.-dollar denominated bonds to finance the war against Japan’s brutal invasion.

Locked in a pitched battle for survival, the government issued these bonds into 1940. As part of its wartime financial aid, the U.S. government further provided a $500 million credit to China in March 1942, shipping gold there and helping to stabilize the currency. In return, it appears that the U.S. government redeemed some of these dollar-denominated bonds. But China doesn’t appear to have repaid this debt either, according to State Department records, and the declaration of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 ended decades of political, military and financial cooperation.

While successor governments are usually bound by the debts of predecessor governments, the new Communist government refused to pay any of these claims. The issue lay dormant for decades, just as the bilateral relationship did. Then, in 1979, as part of normalizing relations, Washington released government financial claims regarding the expropriation of American property and appears to have dropped the matter of the war debt entirely.

However, individual citizens remain with claims to press. Some U.S. investors tried to sue the Chinese government in the 1980s and 1990s. However, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act makes it very hard for any U.S. citizen to sue a foreign government in U.S. courts because the law generally says that U.S. courts do not have jurisdiction.

Today, the Chinese bonds held by U.S. investors may be worth as much as $750 billion.

In general, governments do inherit the debt of their predecessors just as they inherit the assets of the nation. Governments have defaulted on debts since at least the 4th century B.C., when 10 of 13 Greek cities could not pay their bills; ironic, yes. And there is a long history of settlements, too. In the last 200 years, more than 70 governments, from Austria to Vietnam, have defaulted and eventually settled for far lesser amounts, allowing them to borrow once more.

Examples abound. An international arbitration panel found that post-revolutionary Iran needed to pay the United States for military aid in 1948. Post-apartheid South Africa has not repudiated debt incurred under the previous regime. In 2006, Great Britain paid the final installment on a World War II-era loan from the United States and Canada, and even sent a thank-you note. Russia has paid debt incurred under the tzars. One exception argued by governments is that in some cases a previous regime’s debt is “odious.” That is, the debt was incurred to enrich the regime or oppress the people.

Neither seems the case in China, which may be why it has never submitted to international adjudication. China, for its part, has not exactly disavowed the debt; it simply has selectively refused to pay it.

Technically, this calls into question China’s stellar credit ratings and those of its government-owned enterprises. But specifically, the U.S. government has a legal obligation to its citizens. The 1933 Securities Act established both the Foreign Bondholders Protective Council, under State and Treasury, and the Corporation of Foreign Security Holders, under the SEC, to get foreign governments to address debts owed to private U.S. investors. Housed in a Virginia suburb, the council in 47 instances settled the debts of foreign governments, including communist ones, to U.S. citizens. In 1975, the Polish government paid U.S. investors one-third the face value, or $8.5 million, of nine different series of bonds, all inherited from previous governments.

Indeed, President George W. Bush’s counsel directed the bondholders to the council in 2001 but the council did nothing, most likely to keep from rocking the bilateral U.S.-China boat. Now, the council is shuttering its doors, as it has completed dozens of cases and no administration wanted to refer the Chinese case for fear of upsetting Beijing again. However, the Corporation of Foreign Security Holders is still on the books and represents the only chance for U.S. investors to be paid.

All that has to happen is that Obama issue a proclamation to stand up the corporation, and a staff, at the SEC. The bondholders would bring their bonds in for examination and verification of the certificates and serial numbers. Then the corporation could get about settling the issue through payment, reissue of bonds, restructuring or even settling the debt. The reality is that a settlement could benefit everyone. Yes, it will be politically distasteful in Beijing. But in all likelihood, a settlement would likely be struck for a fraction of the face value of the bonds. Unlike 1949, China today has the ability to pay. It would be seen as good faith by Americans. And that, in turn, would help reassure us about China’s increasingly important place in the world. There are simply too many other questions about about China’s peculiar brand of state capitalism.

The Japan-China War

The Japan-China War started in July 1937 when the Japanese claimed that they were fired on by Chinese troops at the Marco Polo Bridge near Beijing. Using this as an excuse, the Japanese launched a full-scale invasion ofChinausing the conquered Manchuria as a launching base for their troops.

The Japanese came up against little organised resistance. The Guomintang put up little resistance though they were up against a formidable enemy. In November 1937, China’s most important port, Shanghai, fell and Nanjing (Nanking), Chiang Kai-shek’s capital, fell in December 1937.

The so-called \"Rape of Nanking\" has gone into the annals of history as one of the most shocking incidents in modern history. Its senior officers allowed the Japanese army to ransack Nanking murdering tens of thousands as they went. The final death toll for Nanjing has been put as high as 250,000. The Guomintang leader, Chiang, had to establish a new capital in Chongqing.

The onslaught of the Japanese was relentless. Within 5 months, 1 million Chinese people were under Japanese control. All of the major cities in China were captured by the Japanese by the end of 1937 – so were the major communication systems of the nation.

After this initial success, the Japanese did not advance much further into China. In many senses there was no reason for her to do so as most of China’s hinterland contained nothing of strategic importance. Secondly, even the Japanese army could not hope to stretch its reserves to cover such a vast nation as China. By 1941, there were 2 million Japanese soldiers in China but even those areas captured by the Japanese were not totally controlled by them and this allowed the Chinese to gradually undermine the authority of the Japanese in this occupied zone.

The Japanese concentrated their efforts on the enemy they could see – the Guomintang. However, they also had to fight an enemy they could not see – communist guerrillas trained by Mao.

After Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the Japanese found that their army was even more stretched. The Americans sent supplies to the Chinese via the \"Burma Road\". The enmity that existed between China and the west after 1949, was not apparent during the war. The American bombers that launched the first raid on Tokyo were scheduled to land in China. Airstrips were built in China to allow American planes to bomb Japanese shipping. In 1944, the Japanese started an all out attempt to occupy those parts of China that harbored American airbases. Though successful in that the Japanese captured Chiang’s capital, Chongquig, it did not alter the outcome of the war.

The war against China had lead to 4 million Chinese casualties with 60 million made homeless.

The Japanese had spread out their forces too far and even the fanaticism of their approach to war could not stop the inevitable. The surrender of the Japanese in August 1945, left 1 million Japanese troops in China.

The Guomintang had borne the brunt of conventional fighting against the Japanese. This inevitably lead to casualties. Mao’s fighters had perfected hit-and-run tactics against the Japanese which was to serve them well in the civil war that was to break out between the Guomintang and the Communists almost as soon as the war ended. The only thing that linked the Guomintang and Communists during the war was a common enemy. After the Japanese surrendered, each had to fight the other for supremacy in China.

By August 1945, the communists controlled far more of China than they had done in 1937. There were several reasons for this. The Japanese concentrated on an enemy they could ‘see’ and the Guomintang were the obvious enemy for the Japanese. Secondly, the communists continued with a policy of their soldiers helping the peasant population where they could, thus spreading the word of communism. In 1941, the Japanese started a campaign called the \"Three All Campaign\" which was designed to turn the peasants against the communists. It was a total failure.

The end of the war could only herald a full-scale clash between the Guomintang and the communists. It could only be a war to the end as neither was willing to tolerate the existence of the other.


RARE CHINA 1937 $5 + $10 LIBERTY BONDS @ $99.95 w PASS-CO REPORTS (A $400 VALUE):
$599.95

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