Even those 100% skeptics about everything Chinese, the non-Chinese-speaking white correspondents at Shanghai, agreed last week that the Nanking Government of sagacious Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek has now got a firmer hold upon recently rebellious South China than has been held by any Chinese Government since the collapse in 1912 of the Empire of the Manchus.
Into Canton, lately the centre of a tricky revolt against Nanking which cloaked itself in the guise of a Chinese movement to fight Japan, entered last week General Yu Han-mou, newly appointed by Generalissimo Chiang as "Pacification Commissioner." First pacified were the patriotic editors of Canton who were still shrieking for war against Japan. Censors carefully rejected everything which might possibly offend Japan, but did permit the Canton editors to issue their papers with reams and reams of blank columns. These sufficiently suggested to alert Chinese readers the scorching, trenchant and clarion calls to 450,000,000 Chinese to rise against 97,000,000 Japanese which would have appeared if only they had not been left out.
Let out of Canton jails by General Yu were quantities of the "Blue Shirt" strong-arm men who it is Nanking etiquette to say are not the Generalissimo's spies, agents provocateurs and throat-slitters!
A frantic treasure hunt meanwhile was going on for some $30,000,000 ($105,000,000 in Chinese currency) in "small money." This had been "sequestered" by the province's former satrap, General Chen Chi-tang, who had majestically taken "flight" to British Hongkong with his movable treasures. The exciting question was: Could even smart Chen have moved the enormous weight of $30,000,000 in "small money"? He was said to have moved it in chartered British tramp ships which had displayed the Japanese flag as the emblem most likely to insure them against molestation in Cantonese waters before they made good their getaway to Hongkong.
All this was largely rumor, only General Chen knowing in what shape he had actually left Cantonese finances. To straighten these out Generalissimo Chiang did not call for the financial commission of white experts which might have been sent for a decade or more ago. Honesty in the sense that Western bankers are "honest" and efficiency in the sense that they are "efficient" is now in China the function of the Generalissimo's in-laws, the Family of Soong. Since famed Mr. T. V. Soong, chairman of the board of the Bank of China, could not be spared to go South, his able brother Mr. T. L. Soong was drafted to whip order out of South China's foamy fiscal chaos.
T. L. Soong, in addition to being General Manager of the China Development Finance Corp., which looms as a nation-wide enterprise under Generalissimo Chiang's powerful protection, is Managing Director of the great Manufacturers Bank of China, one of whose most important branches is in teeming Canton. Thither T. L. Soong arranged to go last week as "Financial Commissioner" with a great retinue of Chinese bankers, including directors of the country's three government banks.