Dushiqiao

Saturday, 30 December

I woke up in the morning. When I was thinking of sending Yukun to discuss the matter of Gong Weizhang with Zeng Qiwei, it happened that Qiwei came to my home. He said he interrogated the sixteen workers who participated in the meeting. Two of them said they were asked by Li Yong (李榮) to go, and the others were by Gong Weizhang. It was also heard that Gong Weizhang used coercive means to threaten them. Before the meeting there were only three or four attendants, Gong Weizhang then immediately lay on the floor and cried, saying that they were not in unity. Therefore people supported him. Later when there were almost enough attendants to have the meeting, he was elected to be the Chair. All of them only asked for an increase in salary but did not want to go on strike. Zeng Qiwei asked my opinion. I said asking for an increase in salary was not a crime, but having a meeting in Gong’s home and coercing others to join was ridiculous. This was damaging to expand the matter and we could dismiss Gong Weizhang to settle the matter. Zeng Qiwei said that he would do so accordingly. But he asked me to dismiss him as well as an act of grace-saving to him. I said certainly because after this incident Gong Weizhang would be unable to stay in the Legislative Yuan. Therefore I asked Yukun to go to the guard room to get him out on bail. I blamed Gong Weizhang for his ridiculous behaviour last night. He recounted how bad the treatment was and how wrong Zeng Qiwei was. I said no matter how Zeng Qiwei handled the matter his behavior was unforgivable. He also said that he could no longer stay in the Legislative Yuan. The job here was nothing to him, what he regretted and was very sad about was that he had followed me for so long and now we had to part. After saying all these words he burst into tears. I was quite moved by him as he had followed me for eight years. Except for dire circumstances I did not want to dismiss him. Therefore I told him frankly that I originally did not want to dismiss him, but the fact was that he had to leave this place. For his immediate living I gave him 200 Guobi. Initially he did not want to accept it, only after Yukun forced him to accept did he do so. I also wrote reference letters for him to Wu Zexiang, Zhou Qiguang and Wei Daoming. He was quite touched by me and left after crying. I was almost moved to tears.

At 10.00 we had a general meeting of the Legislative Yuan. Sun Fo changed the agenda ad hoc, and raised the bill of the Sino-Soviet Commercial Treaty. I reported its examination in great details. (around one and a half hours). Afterwards there were a few enquiries and I replied in detail one by one. Furthermore Sun Fo made several additional explanations. Therefore the attendants raised their hands in unison to pass its approval. But as for secrecy, the majority advocated to make it public so as to avoid outside suspicion. Today we also passed the general budget for the next fiscal year. The shortfall should be around some 2,000,000,000 dollars. Ma Yinchu (馬寅初)[1] asked for remedial methods. Chen Changheng (陳長蘅)[2] said it would be handled by the Ministry of Finance, and the methods should be no other than internal debt, external debt and inflation.

All the committees invited President Sun to have luncheon. We had a good time. The united spirit and the comparative unselfishness of the Legislative Yuan found no counterpart in other organs. Deputy President Ye Chucang, Ling Jidong and Feng Zhaoyi (馮兆異) were all drunk. People wanted Sun Fo to report the international situation. After Sun Fo told them what happened about his liaison in the Soviet Union and Britain in detail, he quoted what Lloyd George said that Chinese culture was the “ultimate civilisation”. That was because the progress of European culture and ethics could not keep pace with the speed of those in material things, therefore ethics was overshadowed by material. So after the European war, there were incessant wars. There was no such thing as a bright path. As for China, it took ethics as the most important, so it stressed peace, justice, li, yi, lian, chi and others. Sun Fo said his personal experience could be divided in three stages. 1) At the time, he was around twenty years old when he had just returned to China from foreign countries, he praised foreign civilisations and felt that he just did not feel at home with China. 2) He stayed in China for some ten years and felt that the life was fine. 3) Recently he felt even more that Chinese morality and culture were higher than those of Europe and the West. He also pointed out the mistake of fearing the CCP. It was because the KMT was originally a revolutionary party and it wanted to reform the current society. If we worked according to the Three Principles of the People, we should absolutely not fear the CCP. If we did not do so, we would not feel satisfied. We would fall even if there was no CCP. Therefore the problem was only with the efforts of the KMT itself. Sun Fo’s speech today lasted for more than an hour. It was really well-spoken and its meaning was extremely well received. People were extremely satisfied with the speech.

He Sui said to me that Ye Jianying told him that General Chiang had issued written instructions to stop the advance of armies. Therefore the matter on the Shaanxi-Gansu border might not lead to warfare. This was really a great fortune for our country.

[1] Ma Yinchu (1882-1982) was a native from Zhejiang. He was a leading economist in modern China. He had studied at Yale and Columbia Universities.

[2] Chen Changheng (1888-1987) was a native of Sichuan. He was an economist who received his education at Harvard University.