China Today
In 1937, Ji, Jaffe and their group decided that "China Today" lacked the academic stature to be convincing to influential Americans. Instead, Jaffe, with the financial support of Frederick Vanderbilt Field, an open member of the CPUSA and secretary of the American Council of the Institute of Pacific Relations, founded a new journal, "Amerasia". Ji served on the editorial board along with many scholars of less radical politics, as well as Chen Hansheng, another underground communist. Ji wrote a regular column, "Far Eastern Economic Notes," which used materials supplied from Party sources in China. In 1937 the IPR appointed Ji to its research staff, and in 1938 he traveled to China financed by a $90,000 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to gather material for a study of China's wartime economic situation.