Changes in China
The changes Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek has made in his Cabinet are in the right direction, and will be welcomed by his Allies. The displacement of the War Minister, General Ho Ying- ching, was long overdue, for the General, of doubtful competence in the technical sphere, took a highly reactionary view politically and was one of the principal obstacles to a working understanding between the Government and the far from negligible Communist armies. His successor, General Chen Cheng, is a much younger man, and is believed to be efficient. But he has yet to prove himself. The supersession of the Minister of Finance, Mr. H. H. Kung, a member bf the influential " Sun dynasty," is more sur- prising, but he too had come in for severe criticism both as a reactionary and as an unsuccessful controller of the national currency. There is too much truth in the common charge that the Kuomintang has been more concerned about fighting Chinese Communists than about fighting the Japanese invader. It is to be hoped that the Cabinet reconstruction means a move in the opposite direction, for the state of a disunited China will be dis- astrous, and the Communists are in fact no Communists in the Marxian sense ; some of the land reforms they have inaugurated in the regions they control have provided, most prudently, for peasant proprietorship. The strengthening of the position of the Foreign Minister, Mr. T. V. Soong, will add to the prestige of one of the ablest and most stable members of the Government. General Chiang Kai-shek is in effect making a new start, and general good wishes will be with him.
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