Solomon Adler Solomon Adler ( August 6 , 1909 — August 4 , 1994 ) was an economist who worked in the U . S . Treasury Department , serving as Treasury representative in China during World War II . He was identified by Whittaker Chambers and Elizabeth Bentley as a Soviet intelligence source and resigned from the Treasury Department in 1950 . After several years teaching at Cambridge University in England , he returned to China in the 1950s and was a resident there from the 1960s until his death , working as a translator , economic advisor , and possibly with the Central External Liaison Department , a Chinese intelligence agency . Biography . Solomon Adler was born on 6 August 1909 in Leeds , England . The Adler family was originally from Karelitz , Belarus , moving to Leeds in 1900 . Solomon Adler was the fifth of ten children ; the oldest was Saul Adler , who became a well - known Israeli parasitologist . Adler studied economics at Oxford and University College , London . He came to the United States in 1935 to do research . In 1936 he was hired at the Works Progress Administration ' s National Research Project , but soon moved to the Treasury Department ' s Division of Monetary Research and Statistics , where he worked with Harry Dexter White for the next several years . He became a naturalized United States citizen in 1940 . In 1941 he was posted to China , where he remained as Treasury representative until 1948 . His reports from China to Treasury secretary Henry Morgenthau , Jr . during the war years were widely circulated and played an important role in shaping American wartime economic policy toward China . In 1949 , Adler was the subject of a Loyalty of Government Employees investigation . He resigned before the case was resolved and returned to Britain , where he taught for several years at Cambridge University . When his American passport expired after three years , he was denaturalized and lost his American citizenship . Adler moved to China by 1960 . In addition to his work on economics , Adler was a member of the group translating Mao Zedong ' s works into English . When the United States reestablished diplomatic contacts with China in 1971 , Adler renewed his American citizenship . He died in Beijing on August 4 , 1994 , two days before his 85th birthday . Espionage Allegations . In 1939 , Whittaker Chambers identified Adler to then - Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle as a member of an underground Communist group in Washington , D . C . , the Ware group . Chambers correctly identified Adler as then serving in the General Counsel ' s Office at the Treasury Department , from which , Chambers said , Adler supplied weekly reports to the American Communist party . In 1945 , Elizabeth Bentley identified Adler as a member of the Silvermaster group . A 1948 memo written by Anatoly Gorsky , a former NKVD " rezident " in Washington D . C . , identified Adler as a Soviet agent designated " Sax . " This agent , transliterated " Sachs ( Saks ) " appears in the Venona decrypts supplying information about the Chinese Communist through both Gorsky and American Communist Party head Earl Browder . In addition to his contacts with U . S . espionage groups , while serving as Treasury attache in China in 1944 , Adler shared a house with Chinese Communist secret agent Chi Ch ' ao - ting and State Department officer John Stewart Service , who was arrested the following year in the " Amerasia " case . Together with Harry Dexter White , Assistant Secretary of the Treasury , and V . Frank Coe , Director of the Treasury ' s Division of Monetary Research , Adler strongly opposed a gold loan program of $ 200 million to help the Nationalist Chinese Government control the inflation that took hold in unoccupied China during World War II . Inflation in China between 1943 and 1945 was more than 1 , 000 % per year , weakening the Nationalist government in China . This inflation helped the Communists eventually come to power in China , and in later years White , Coe , and Adler were accused of having deliberately fostered the Chinese inflation by obstructing the stabilization loan . According to a Chinese work published in 1983 , from at least 1963 on Adler worked for China ' s Central External Liaison Department , an agency involved in foreign espionage . Adler ' s apartment in Beijing was also provided to Adler by the Liaison Department , which would indicate that the Department was Adler ' s work unit .