Honest & Able

If the constitutional democracy being shaped in Nanking this week by China's National Assembly is to work at all, it will need many able administrators--honest & able men whom the people can trust. China does not have enough trained officials who fit these specifications, but it has more than most Americans realize. Among them are:

Chang Chun. Virtually unknown outside of the country (he has just returned from his first visit to America), Governor Chang Chun of rugged Szechwan Province (best known city: Chungking) is China's closest approach to a universally popular political figure. A stocky 58-year-old who looks like an American Indian and who loves bright neckties and ice cream, Chang heads the "Political Science Group," which wants a modernized, industrialized China on a broad, democratic base. Chang has been a Kuomintang executive since 1928, is no left-winger but is equally opposed to the Confucian conservatism of Chen Li-fu. This week the newspaper Ta Rung Pao reported that Chiang Kai-shek may succeed T. V. Soong as Premier, bring in Chang Chun as his deputy and administrator.

Yu Ta-wei (David Yu). During the Japanese war a compact, precise little Harvard Ph.D. ran Free China's small-arms factories, made them the best-administered of all Government agencies. Dr. Yu's reward was Nanking's toughest job: restoration of railroads wrecked by eight years of invasion and civil war. Given the rank of general, Dr. Yu runs his Communications Ministry like a military chief of staff, keeps detailed "phase charts" of his repair offensives. A scholar and administrator rather than a politician, he is generally respected (even by the Reds whose saboteurs persistently blow up his rails). Handicapped by continuing warfare and overwhelming shortages, Yu gets more credit for intelligent and sustained effort than for tangible results. One realistic objective: to get all the railroads in, the Yangtze Valley and South China up to prewar levels next year.

Tsuyee Pel. Recalled last fall from a Government mission to New York, where his doctor had discovered a tuberculous spot on one lung, energetic Tsuyee Pei refused to be invalided, instead became a capable governor of the Central Bank of China. Scrupulously honest and immensely clever, Pei has brought 30 years of experience to bear on his nearly hopeless task, has failed to stabilize China's currency but at least has put brakes on it.

K. C. Wu. Bright-eyed, pint-sized K. C. Wu has not made Shanghai into a model city, but as its tireless mayor he has quashed the rice black market, raised coolie living standards and, by a combination of cajoling, arguing and policing, kept labor troubles at a minimum. His Confucius-like warning to labor and capital: "When hen is dead, no eggs will come." Called "The Mandarin Mayor" by some resentful employers and union men, K. C. Wu has won the support of foreigners, one of whom recently said: "If China had more K. C. Wus, I'd know the Chinese could run China." He has had to grapple with such problems as the disposal of 97,000 bodies which accumulated in Shanghai funeral parlors during the war, when relatives lacked a means of sending them to ancestral burial grounds. His health bureau is limiting current corpses to 30 days above ground.

General Fu Tso-yi. Big, balding, with benevolent eyes and a curious tic of the lower jaw which makes him seem to smile continuously, Fu Tso-yi directed the Government armies that raised the siege of Tatung, broke the main Communist force at Tsining, and captured Kalgan. General George C. Marshall has said: "Fu's a real soldier . . . when he says he can do something, I believe him." A man of sense and sentiment, Fu proved an honest and capable administrator of Suiyuan, encouraged letters from the people. They responded with stacks of homely messages asking him for help in everything from finding lost children to stopping neighbors' lawsuits. In the field, he and his officers scorn all insignia, eat and march with their men (in the Kalgan drive, Fu's army slogged 150 miles in seven days through rough mountain terrain).

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