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A piece of yellowing paper has been recognized as China's earliest food grain ration coupon issued in the mid-1950s.

The coupon, about the size of a name card, was printed in 1954 by the county government of Tongshan in northeast China's Liaoning province.

Experts from Anshan Museum in the province made the pronouncement after scrutinizing the rare, valuable note under a microscope.

Food grain ration coupons were first introduced in the mid-1950s after the central government decided to stabilize the grain market and balance demand and supply. China adopted a system of planned purchase and supply to monopolize the selling and buying of grain from November 1, 1953.

The food grain ration coupons were distributed according to the number of family members and their ages. And children's grain quota was less than that of adults at that time.

Census figures available show that China's population in 1953 was 601.9 million. The country's total grain output was 183.94 million tons in 1955, with an average per-capital share of 302 kilograms.

The coupons once were treated the same as cash. Their face value varied from as large as 5,000 kilograms (about 11,013 pounds) per note to as small as five grams.

The successful unfolding of rural economic reforms of the 1980s and accompanying, consecutive good harvests led to the demise of the coupons in the early 1990s.

China is currently capable of producing 500 million tons of grain each year, announced Qie Jianwei, deputy director of the State Grain Reserve Administration, at the 2001 World Food Day Conference held in Changchun, capital of northeastern Jilin province.

And China's fast-increasing cereals output over the past two decades, he said, surpassed demand during the same period, thus solving its food shortage problem in the country.

Today only a very few people, except collectors, are interested in such grain ration coupons.

The earliest grain coupon was collected by a man surnamed Wang living in Liaoyang city in Liaoning province. He paid a friend of his only 10 yuan (about 1.2 US dollars) for the note 10 years ago.