The Commission on Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs (_Mêng Tsang Wei-yüan-hui_) is the supreme agency for the dependencies. It has a record of considerable success in fostering a good-neighbor policy toward the half-autonomous dominions of Chinese Turkestan (Sinkiang, also called Chinese Central Asia),[16] Tibet, and Inner Mongolia. Outer Mongolia is under indirect Soviet control, and Eastern Inner Mongolia under the Japanese. The Chinese have utilized every device of courtesy and diplomacy in retaining their precarious grip on these areas. The Commission includes dominion members. [Footnote 16: Among the recent books on Sinkiang, one, unusual because it is by a Chinese author, stands out: Wu, Aitchen K., _Turkistan Tumult_, London, 1940. The travel books of Sven Hedin, Ella Maillart, Peter Fleming, and Sir Eric Teichman also contain material of political interest.] THE ECONOMIC MINISTRIES The Ministries dealing in economic matters bear the ultimate burden of resistance. Upon their success depend China's tools of war. If artillery, aircraft, machine-guns, munitions, food, clothing and other necessities are not available to the central armies, the opportunity for counter-attack may come and go, and China be lost--not through the power of her enemy, but through her own weakness. Unless economic mobilization succeeds, the guerrilla warfare in the occupied area will be frustrated, since its purpose is merely to prepare for a _révanche_ from Free China; history affords few examples of guerrillas defeating mass armies, fighting positionally, without the intervention of other mass armies. The Ministry of Finance (_Ts'ai-chêng Pu_) is the leader of the Economic Ministries. Headed by H. H. K'ung, successor to the celebrated T. V. Soong, it has performed fiscal miracles in maintaining the credit of the National Government. Chief among its accomplishments has been the institution, within the past decade, of a managed currency on the gold-exchange standard. Specie had been the immemorial medium of exchange, and Chinese experience with paper money--from the earliest times to the present--had been unfortunate. Starting with the 1860's, China had undergone one paper-money inflation after another. Governmental currency was frequently a receipt for silver on deposit, in which case it amounted to no more than a commodity warehouse certificate, thereby subject to discount for transportation charges, and fluctuating meanwhile with the world price of silver; otherwise it was fiat money, guaranteed by stranglers' cords and long knives. Fractional coins passed by metallic weight; the shifts in the price of copper in New York and London determined the number of pennies which farmers received for their silver dollars, even on the threshold of Tibet.