Green at his job of Finance Minister is plump, owlish Dr. H. H. Kung. Last week he buckled to the task of trying to balance China's budget with a sternness remindful of his great ancestor, China's uncompromising sage Confucius.
With a squiggle of his pen Dr. Kung upped China's cigaret taxes by a staggering 50%. Twelve Shanghai cigaret factories instantly closed in protest, locked out 8,000 cigaret makers who shrilly cursed Dr. Kung.
Unperturbed and backed by his wife, the eldest sister in China's famed "Soong Dynasty" (TIME, Dec. 11), Finance Minister Kung announced with stoical aplomb that he was "considering" a 28% upping of China's most vital and widely detested tax, that on salt. To collect this tax Dr. Kung's brother-in-law and predecessor as Finance Minister, famed T. V. Soong, organized a special army of "salt tax troops" and was believed to have screwed out of the peasantry the last copper cash that they would pay without rebellion.