Viewing page 46 of 131

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

-10-

"The Chinese Industrial Co-operatives are now making over sixty different kinds of everyday goods needed by the people in the districts where they are made and using as much as possible the local raw materials. Thus the raw materials of the country are developed and a basis for a peacetime program that will raise the standard of living of the people is being laid. BUILDING FOR PEACE IN TIME OF WAR is one of its slogans. It is productive relief."

Agricultural and Banking Developments

Agriculturally, the Chinese reconstruction program has accomplished a good deal in improving the method of cultivation, in land reclamation and in the development of irrigation. Great success has also been attained by the extension of financial assistance to farmers through the activities of the Agricultural Credit Administration and by the regulation of production and marketing of farm products in counteracting the dislocation of normal supply and demand brought about by war conditions.
[[cross]] The part played by finance and banking in the work of reconstruction has been a very conspicuous one. We are not concerned with the various measures which have been adopted to meet the financial requirements of the war. But, in addition to providing for war demands, the Government has taken successive steps to unify the system of taxation in the interior, to strengthen the National Currency and to facilitate the development of banking as an integral and indispensable part of the broad program of reconstruction. According to latest reports, Chinese modern banks established during 1939 alone a total of sixty branches in the interior; more, of course, had been established in 1938 and before. The main activities of these banks,