New Government

In 1873 arrived the first batch of Chinese government students in the U. S., among them young Tang Shao-yi. In 1912 Tang became First Premier of the Chinese Republic. Last week venerable Tang arrived in Canton, lent by his presence an air of respectability to the successful revolution there (TIME, May 11). Canton vernacular papers told their readers: "Tang Shao-yi is a personal friend of Hoover Herbert,* President of the United States of America. . . . Their friendship began 30 years ago when Hoover Herbert was a young engineer in China.''

At the White House last week Hoover Herbert and Stimson Henry Lewis decided, and the U. S. press was so advised, that they did not wish to recognize Friend Tang Shao-yi and his friends in Canton as the new Government of South China. Such it was, however, in fact. Canton celebrated the fact as New Orleans celebrates Mardi Gras. Flag-decked arches were put up. Cantonese, the southern excitables of China, cheered themselves hoarse & hot while Cantonese soldiers marched through the arches. Finally the new Cantonese Government officially established itself by swearing in a Cabinet: "The Council of Sixteen." In this Cantonese clique venerable Tang Shao-yi is just window dressing. Brains of the new Government is Eugene Chen, 53, born at Trinidad in the West Indies, "qualified London solicitor," onetime editor-publisher of the Peking Gazette, member of the Chinese Delegation to the Paris Peace Conference, and Acting Foreign Minister in the Canton Government of 1926.

The Canton Government of 1926 launched a war to conquer all China, conquered it (TIME, June 11, 1928) and is now the Chinese Government at Nanking known to President Hoover. Mr. Chen is now back in Canton exactly where he started in 1926. He even holds the same office, Foreign Minister. He has broken with the Chinese whom President Hoover knows as President of China and whose Government is at Nanking, wasp- waisted Marshal Chiang Kaishek. Last week Mr. Chen said of Marshal Chiang: "He has a medieval mind. He has begun to think of China as his personal property. He wants to be Emperor of China!''

Mr. Chen is the master propagandist of China. A fearless editor in his own right, he learned propaganda as assistant to the Soviet master of that art, Comrade Michael Borodin, whom Dr. Sun Yat Sen borrowed from Moscow and whom Marshal Chiang cast out after he had prepared Chiang's conquest. Last week Mr. Chen plastered all Canton (fourth largest Chinese city) with propaganda posters of Soviet type ridiculing President Chiang. The wasp-waisted, bandy-legged little President was shown perched ludicrously oh the Manchu Throne, bedight as Emperor of China. This cartoon, it was hoped, would "inflame the people."

Shoulder to shoulder in the new Canton Government with "Brains"' Chen stood a fat-faced younger man named Sun Fo who stands for "Prestige." He is the son of "the Father of the Chinese Republic,'' the late, great Dr. Sun Yatsen. Up to a few weeks ago Sun Fo was Minister of Railways in the Government of wasp-waisted President Chiang, his stepuncle.

That Sun has quit Chiang and gone to Chen is ominous. China is in slow ferment, with Russia helping the brew. So slow is the ferment that last week the American Congregational Mission got tired of waiting for a stable Chinese Government to emerge, ended a work of 50 years, withdrew all their missionaries from the province of Fukien. excepting Foochow, abandoned much property bought with U. S. dollars, abandoned their hospital at Shaowu.

All week munitions were landed at Canton. An Exchange Telegraph despatch said that the new Government "has enough on hand to fight for six months." Contracts have been secured, according to this despatch, by enterprising German and Japanese firms to supply the Canton Government with $1,000,000 worth of munitions. Up to last week President Chiang had talked much at Nanking of sending soldiers by land and warships by sea to crush the "Cantonese rebels" but he had done little. The new Canton Government was getting a good start, may yet have to be recognized by the Washington "friend"' of venerable Tang.

* The surname conies first in Chinese ideographs.

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