Spirit v. Money

Shanghai citizens were tickled last week by a funeral with a live corpse. Riding in a coffin hauled on a cart was a grimacing old man clutching a carton of cigarettes, two cases of laundry soap, some boxes of matches and a roll of cloth. Every block or so the old man climbed out of his coffin to harangue the crowd on the evils of hoarding and speculating. Inscriptions on dancing banners and placards read: "Those who hoard are public enemies," and "Who damages the gold yuan will have his head chopped off."

The organizer of the procession was the man in charge of defending the new gold yuan currency in Shanghai, deputy economic controller Major General Chiang Ching-kuo, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's Russian-educated elder son. A chubby, earnest man who looks much younger than his 39 years, Chiang believes in going to the people. On Tuesday and Thursday afternoons he holds open house in his office in Shanghai's Central Bank of China to hear the public's complaints.

"Please Do Something." One recent Thursday, the suppliants in Chiang Ching-kuo's office included a grey-gowned businessman, a woman soothing a black-diapered baby, and a laborer in loose jacket and black cloth coolie pants. Trim in an open-necked, short-sleeved white shirt, Chiang listened like a good ward boss to his visitors' problems. The businessman had a complaint about taxes; the laborer vehemently reported that though the rubber goods plant where he worked was well stocked with raw materials, the boss had decided to close down rather than sell his products at the new ceiling prices.

The baby chose the moment his mother approached the general's desk to burst into tears. As a secretary fluttered about trying to pacify the child, the woman shouted to Chiang that one of her sons had been killed two years ago by a car, and she had never been compensated. Would he please do something about it?

Operation Giant Bear. When the Generalissimo first appointed him to the economic post last month, Chiang Ching-kuo started out quietly by ordering price ceiling lists displayed at all markets, and setting up post boxes for citizens' complaints. A hundred plainclothes agents were assigned to comb streets and markets for price violators and hoarders.

First they arrested scores of minor profiteers. Then came the crackdown on real big shots. The day China's new currency was announced, all stock exchange transactions were frozen. The day before the announcement, a traders' pool, working on inside information, dumped 30 million shares on the market in what Shanghai papers dubbed "Operation Giant Bear." Promptly arrested as broker for the deal was Tu Vee-pin, son of Tu Yueh-sheng, president of Shanghai's stock exchange and one of the most powerful men in Shanghai. Big merchant hoarders and price riggers were also pulled in.

Pork & Perfume. Chiang Ching-kuo had little sympathy for the jailed moneymen. After graduating from the Moscow Military Academy in 1930, he went to the Soviet Trans-Caucasus for practical engineering work. Speaking of this period he once said: "I had numberless hard days. I did the lowest sort of work. I have spent a night in a rubbish barrel ... I survived, thanks to father's teaching: 'Man's spirit is omnipotent--not money.' "

Chiang returned to China in 1937 with his blonde Russian wife. Of privileged financial big shots he once said: "If you do not scare them, they will scare you." Last week he had Shanghai's fat merchants badly scared. Before a cheering "Youth Army" audience Chiang declared: "It does not matter if pork and perfume disappear from the markets. So long as the people are not starved to death, it does not matter if all the department stores and big restaurants are closed . . . Our new economic policy is a socialistic revolutionary movement."

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