March 20.
The Shanghai Municipal Council's Budget for 1936 bears the marks of the heavy depression under which the community is labouring. The Ordinary Income just clears the Ordinary Expenditure, but when ithe Education Budget requirements of over $2 million are included there is a shortage which it is proposed to adjust by drawing §2 million from General Reserve. That course of action will be commended for, after all, it puts the reserve to the use for which it is designed and enables the Council to cover the deficit without recourse to additional taxation. The Council two, years ago laid it down that educational expenditure should not exceed the equivalent of a 2 per cent. General Municipal Rate. The current Education Budget brings the figure up to 1.00 per cent, as the [result of additional votes of $11.000 jand $19,000 to Japanese and Chinese schools respectively, So while' carrying out a programme of rigid retrenchment, the Council has not been niggardly in dealing with the demands of Japanese and Chinese schools. It has but a scanty margin. left for meeting new claims on its educational programme—a point which will be ruefully noted by some foreign institutions and by foreign parents who, by reason of] the depression, are more dependent than in the past on local forms of education for their children. In view of the severity of the pres-lent financial crisis, the Council's Finance Department must __be adjudged to have successfully dealt; with the twin problems of dimin-{shed revenue and retrenchment. It has been able to secure the cooperation of the Council's depart
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.