Chungking WPB

Donald Marr Nelson, U.S. special envoy to China, was back in Washington after a strenuous month's trip around the globe. The ears of the ex-WPBoss still rang with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's encomium: "If it [the Nelson mission] had happened as much as one year ago, I believe the present situation would be far better." To Franklin Roosevelt, Don Nelson brought a heartening report. With the Generalissimo's full cooperation, the Nelson mission had launched at Chungking a Chinese WPB.

On his arrival in Chungking last November with a corps of American steel and alcohol experts, Don Nelson found the Generalissimo impatiently waiting. Chiang had already begun organization of a War Production Board, had chosen as its boss honest, able Dr. Wong Wen-hao, renowned geologist and Minister of Economic Affairs. What he wanted the Americans to do was to buckle down at once to the details of the organization job. Their first chore: drafting an organic law for the Chinese WPB.

Don Nelson's assistant, tall, dapper Edwin Allen Locke, laid in a supply of head towels and midnight oil and set to work. Within four days & nights he produced the document. On the fifth day he and Don Nelson won Dr. Wong's and Generalissimo Chiang's approval.

From Trial & Error. The Chinese WPB takes advantage of the many trials & errors of the American war production system. By every device Nelson & Co. could conceive, the setup eliminates diffuse authority, parallel agencies, snafuing red tape, all other bureaucratic hindrances to efficient administration.

In one package are powers over production, priorities, allocation, exports & imports, transportation. It is a sort of combination WPB-OPA-FEA-ODT-WMC, responsible solely to Chiang Kai-shek as the all-powerful President of the Executive Yuan and chairman of the National Military Council.

In Chungking courtly Businessman Howard Coonley, onetime WPB Conservation Director, is now serving as chief adviser to Dr. Wong. American steel experts are in the field, trying to step up China's tiny steel industry (annual production: 10,000 tons), which operates at less than 20% capacity. Alcohol experts strive to increase the output of the country's main fuel. In Washington Don Nelson's big job was to get more U.S. aid for a great ally's industrial renaissance.

N.E.P. Don Nelson could report on another momentous decision in Chungking. A committee of the Generalissimo's National Defense Council, headed by scholarly Drs. Sun Fo and Wang Chung-hui, had outlined a "New Economic Policy" for postwar China.

In the vast reconstruction which lies ahead--a vision ardently held by every Chinese from the Generalissimo down--the Central Government plans to leave to private enterprise all fields save posts & telegraphs, mints, arsenals, most railways and hydroelectric power. It definitely eschews far-reaching state socialism, promises equal consideration for foreign and domestic private enterprise. Commented the Shanghai Evening Post and Mercury (New York edition):

"This news is probably the biggest out of China in many years. It has import of the greatest consequence. . . . An historic choice of a future road has been made. China has turned in the right direction."

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