During the past few days there have been" many stories afloat in the capital about a loan of $°,000,000 to the Chinese Government through a very small Sino-French bank in Tientsin, which, according to all accounts, could not have mustered a twentieth of this sum without the help of either the French authorities or of Mr. Wang K'o-min.
Without beating further about the bush, the most responsible authorities in the local Bankers' Association say that if Mr. Wang accepts the Ministry of Finance it will not be in the ~interest of Tsao Kun nor in the interest of the Government, but) in the interest of Wang K'o-min, and the Banque Industrielle de Chine. According to local ac~ counts he proposes to settle the now notorious "gold franc question"? to the satisfaction of French interests and, at the same time to appease Chinese official opinion by producing $2,000,000, without embarrassing strings to it, through a sufficiently obscure French institution to protect the French Legation and the local French banks. The bankers say that Mr.
Wang wants three months' occupancy of the Ministry of Finance to consummate this deal. They say that he is therefore going to Paoting and Loyang to ask for three months' immunity from military claims, in exchange for 32,000,000 in political contribu tions, so that he may have ample time to attend to his own private affairs while occupant of the Ministry.
Mr. Wang K'o-min is coming into office with Chihli backing on the strength of his severa] positions as Governor of the Bank of China and as an_ executive official of the Bankers' Association. He has already been assured that unless he has security to advance against loans he will gert no more considerate treatment from the bankers than any other private individual, but he is going ahead in his negotiations with the Tsao Kun politicians, confident that these persons will not be aware of the warnings from the banks—confident in other words that the bankers will be too loyal to a colleague to warn the politicians that, apart from whatever he may get out of the French, he will get nothing from his old friends but fraternal) sympathy.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.