Question on Japanese occupation of China

On 13 June stamps of China overprinted for Kwangtung in a set of 23 stamps and again in 1942, this is quite an involved area with China stamps issued for Mengkiang starting in 1941 also North China, Nanking and Shanghai.

There are 11 pages for this area in Stanley Gibbons part 17 China 

Hope this is of some help to you.

I posted these pages from my collection a while back:

stampbears.net/thread/1932/china-japan-occupation-north

@craig

Nice pages and a nice collection. Well done!

1941 covers are historically significant as they can show when a particular post office or region began the transition to the overprinted occupation stamps. The post offices could use the existing supplies until they received the overprinted stamps -- then they were supposed to send off the remaining stock of unoverprinted stamps.

Here is a 30Jun1941 cover from Tientsin (Tianjin) to Shanghai to Honolulu to New York:

Thanks, khj, for sharing those covers. Like you, I don't collect covers, but I found these interesting.

Just noticed this thread, as I was doing a write up on Mengjiang.  This should directly answer your question:

According to Sandafayre:

"In 1937 the Japanese began their occupation of Northern China, and initially continued to use the existing stamps of China for postal purposes. By 1941 however, the currency in the unoccupied areas of the south of the country had depreciated. Subsequently, there was widespread smuggling of stamps into the north for re-sale at a profit.



In order to combat this speculation, the Japanese authorities ordered the printing of a series of controls onto the stamps; each of the six districts having its own two-character overprint with subsequent restricted usage. From 1942, as a counter-inflationary measure, it also became common for stamps to receive additional surcharges of half the original value."

This was helpful for me, so I hope it is to you as well.

Michael