Mr. Joe's Job

A Chinese named Chou Fu-hai last week made himself the most important personage--if a straw man can ever be more than an effigy of importance--in the Japanese-controlled Nanking regime of Puppet Wang Ching-wei. He is Nanking's Minister of Finance. His importance was not due to his talents or virtues; it was due to the simple fact that the war in China, having reached a stalemate militarily, had become primarily an economic war. If the Nanking Government can pay for itself and for the Japanese Army of Occupation as well, Japan will have won her biggest victory. Last week Chou Fu-hai made that responsibility exclusively his own.

Patriotic Chinese say that Mr. Chou (pronounced Joe) has few talents and no virtues. He was educated in Japan. He looks like an old-fashioned Chinese scholar, but has the exaggerated manners of a Japanese corporal. He has turned his political coat so often that it looks threadbare even in Nanking. He started out a Communist. In 1927 he was converted to the following of Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek. In 1928 he wrote a book on China's Hero Sun Yatsen, which Chinese now sneer at as his "knocking brick'' (Chinese used to knock on doors with a small brick; in this case, Mr. Chou was knocking at the door of politics). By 1938, he had swung over to the opposition camp of Wang Ching-wei. By last week, though still working for Wang, he was leader of a new faction of disgruntled Nanking politicians.

Last week the Wang Ching-wei puppetry faced a crisis. Mr. Chou gathered in Shanghai a conference of Chinese financiers who had agreed to back Wang's Japanese-sponsored regime. They announced that they would not continue to support Wang unless he were "relegated to a minor capacity in all financial decisions." By week's end their pressure had been felt. Nanking announced formation of the Central Reserve Bank, to have entire charge of putting Nanking currency on its feet throughout occupied China. Named as Governor of the Bank: Chou Fu-hai.

Mr. Chou's job was not to be envied. His currency had almost no gold, little silver, no foreign exchange behind it. Chungking currency, with which he will have to compete, is specifically backed by half of the recent $100,000,000 loan from the U. S. Government. One interesting solution Mr. Chou had already devised. He put into circulation bank notes which were exact counterfeits of Chungking currency except for the signatures.

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