Page:The Truth about China and Japan - Weale - 1919.djvu/140

 accepted in its stead, on a given day all accounts throughout China were transferred into taels, which were made the basis for all trade and for all public and private payments. What is now required is that on a given day, say in 1920 or 1921, all accounts in China from one end of the country to the other without exception, private as well as governmental, after a proper six-months notice, be transferred at fixed rates into Chinese Republican dollars, no other currency being legal tender or permitted even as a money of account, and punishment for infringement being rigidly carried out.

To enforce such a vast programme will necessitate foreign state help in the form of the loan of Treasury officials from the four countries who are alone in an independent financial position to-day, namely the United States, Great Britain, France, and Japan. China would receive Treasury officials of standing in a very different way from the appointees of commercial banks, or of the Legation junta. That such a step will finally become imperative is certain from the fact that it is through the medium of the Bank of China—which should be made the sole Bank of Issue in the country—that a standard currency in notes and in token coins can alone be secured. The Bank of China not only