CHINA: Potent Mrs. Chiang

Should President Herbert Hoover appoint Mrs. Hoover to Cabinet office that would be news.

Last week the new President of China, Chiang Kaishek, appointed Mrs. Chiang to sit on the Committee of Yuans, which may be likened to a Cabinet of provincial Governors.

Both Mrs. Hoover and Mrs. Chiang are U. S. college graduates—the former from Leland Stanford, the latter from Wellesley. Mrs. Chiang is younger than Mrs. Hoover, and it is no disparagement to say that her own family, the great House of Soong, is more potent. Mrs. Chiang’s brother is Finance Minister T. V. Soong; one of her brothers-in-law is the 75th lineal descendant of Confucius, H. H. Kung; a second was the late Dr. Sun Yatsen, sainted father of the Nationalist Party which now dominates all China. Since Mrs. Hoover’s father was a prosperous American banker and Mrs. Chiang’s a vastly rich Chinamerchant, neither has ever been in meager circumstances.