Sixty-four hours away from Chungking, the big plane circled, set its wheels down on the Washington airport. A few moments later, out stepped China's Vice Premier, Finance Minister, chairman of the board of the Bank of China, president of the boards of Yenching University, Cheeloo University, Oberlin in China, the Chinese Industrial Cooperatives, the Confucius Society, and the Public Finance Association—all in the rotund, meditative person of H. H. ("Daddy") Kung.
East is West. On the head of the fabled Dr. Kung was the most modern of sun helmets, in his hand a folding fan. In these, as in everything else, he reflected China's blend of ricksha and airplane civilizations. Educated in the U.S. (A.B., Oberlin; M.A., Yale), a connoisseur of modernisms, he clings to the chopsticks of his ancestors, entertains New Year's guests with a stamping, lurching, conga-like version of a 14th-Century Ming dynasty dragon dance. His great power in China is built on modern chain stores, banks, cotton mills, and mining, a supermodern political machine, and a skillful playing of the ancient Chinese game of family politics. Himself the direct descendant of Confucius (75th generation), Dr. Kung married the eldest of the three famed Soong sisters. At once he thus became the brother-in-law of China's late, sainted Sun Yatsen, of Chiang Kaishek, and of T. V. Soong.
In the turbulent early years of Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Government, the brilliant, Harvard-educated Soong performed prodigies of finance and foreign policy as Chiang's No. 2 man while brother-in-law Kung was just a well-placed bureaucrat. But by 1933 Dr. Kung emerged as Finance Minister.
The Jap invasion called out Dr. Kung's shrewdest, toughest talents. The Jap blockade of the China coast ended the country's biggest source of revenue—customs receipts—and the Jap conquest of the northern salt mines cut off the second largest source, the salt tax. In his softest mandarin manner, Dr. Kung wheedled governments and bankers from the U.S. to Czechoslovakia for credit. He upped taxes as much as the sweating coolies could stand, winked at the grafters and then squeezed the squeezers. Gradually he was forced to open the floodgates of inflation wider & wider until it has many times seemed that China's skidding dollar would get completely out of control. But somehow U.S. gold, British credit, and Dr. Kung kept economic China going. And the Chinese keep reminding themselves bravely that no nation ever lost a war yet for lack of money.