Today, being the mid-year settlement day, is a Chinese bank holiday. Both foreign and native banks Will be closed commencing today for three days. Although the institutions will be closed to customers, interbank.business transactions clearing the accounts of the past six months will keep all bank assistants busy. No Chinese bank failures have been reported and on the contrary all of them have made profits.
In order to facilitate business transactions in the face of the decreased circulation of Chinese bank notes as a result of the recent order from Chungking preventing any depositor from withdrawing more than $500 from his bank weekly, Chinese bankers have ear-marked $50,000,000 for transformation into Wei Wah cheques which can be circulated among themselves. They will begin using such cheques commencing Tuesday.
Chinese banks are reported to be negotiating with foreign banks here for the purpose of persuading them also to accept such Wei Wah cheques which will serve the purpose of settling the bank note shortage problem, on the one hand and of preventing' people from using bank notes on which such cheques are made to buy foreign exchange on the other. The Shing Sheng News Agency states that foreign banks have accepted the Chinese bankers' proposal in principle.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.