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China

August 1878

PRC - Offices - and see Chinese Treaty Ports, Chinese Provinces, Regional Issues

Asia 5

China 1
  China #1  

Imperforate, thin paper, no watermark, typography.
Printed by the Customs Statistical Department of Shanghai.

Description Scott SG Mi Y&T Notes
1 candarin green
 1 1, 1a      
1c dark green
 1a 1b      
3c brown red
 2 2      
3c vermilion
 2a 2a      
5c orange
 3 3      
5c bister orange
 3a 3a     SG3a = yellow

Printed between 2½ and 3¼mm apart in the sheet.

Thank you to the China Stamp Society for information on the issue date.

ChiEss
Essays, China #1

The March 2016 edition of Stamp Magazine reports a recent Spink auction at which £359,142 (excluding premium) was paid for this essay for China's #1 from the collection of Meiso Mizuhara. It states, "For a long time, it was thought that the essays were by a foreign designer as pagados would traditionally be built with an odd number of storeys. However, the fine rendering of the Chinese characters has since convinced many researchers that the artist must have been Chinese."

People's Republic of China (PRC)

Description   Scott SG Mi Y&T  
Perf 12½, litho.
30 yuan blue   1 1401      
50y rose red   2 1402      
100y green   3 1403      
200y maroon   4 1404      

PRC1
PRC
8 Oct 1949 Sc1 SG1402

The treatment of China's modern history as expressed in stamps is intertwined by the catalogues with that of Taiwan as that is where the Chinesee government overthrown by the communist forces took refuge. As explained by Tim Balm (FICC #91) in Journal v13n2p7 and also quoted on the Taiwan page,

" Civil war continued on the mainland between the Communist and Nationalist forces until 1949 when the Nationalists fled to Taiwan and established the government of the "Republic of China" there. Scott lists their stamps as a continuation of "China", the first one being #1007 issued on January 1, 1950 under the heading "Republic of China (Taiwan)" in Vol 2. [The communists then controlled the entire mainland and established the government of the People's Republic of China (PRC) with their first stamp as #1 issued on October 8, 1949.]

Offices

France made a general issue plus seven for specific locations (Gibbons notes that these were administered by the French colony of Indo-China), Italy two issues, with one each for Germany, Russia and Britain.

Links: France - Italy - Germany - Russia - Britain

Images from David Olson, Stamp Magazine, colnect.

FI ref: 194, 627 Page credit: JA/NB

Page created 19 Feb 2014 Page updated 02-Aug-2017