Wang Jingwei

In this Chinese name, the family name is Wang.

Wang Zhaoming (4 May 1883 – 10 November 1944), widely known by his pen name Wang Jingwei, was a Chinese politician who was president of the Reorganized National Government of the Republic of China, a puppet state of the Empire of Japan. He was initially a member of the left wing of the Kuomintang (KMT), leading a government in Wuhan in opposition to the right-wing Nationalist government in Nanjing, but later became increasingly anti-communist after his efforts to collaborate with the Chinese Communist Party ended in political failure.

Wang Jingwei
汪精衞
1st President of the Reorganized National Government of Republic of China
In office 20 March 1940 – 10 November 1944
Preceded by	Office established
Succeeded by	Chen Gongbo
Premier of the Republic of China
In office 28 January 1932 – 1 December 1935
President	Lin Sen
Preceded by	Sun Fo
Succeeded by	Chiang Kai-shek
1st Chairman of Wang Jingwei's Kuomintang
In office 28 November 1939 – 10 November 1944
Preceded by	Office established
Succeeded by	Chen Gongbo
Personal details
Born	(1883-05-04)4 May 1883 Sanshui, Guangdong, Qing dynasty (now Foshan, Guangdong, China)
Died	10 November 1944(1944-11-10) (aged 61) Nagoya, Japan
Political party	Kuomintang Kuomintang-Nanjing
Spouse	Chen Bijun
Children	6
Military service
Branch/service	Peacebuilding National Army
Years of service	1940–1944
Rank	Generalissimo (特級上將)
Battles/wars	Second Sino-Japanese War
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese	汪精衞
Simplified Chinese	汪精卫
Hanyu Pinyin	Wāng Jīngwèi
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Wāng Jīngwèi Wade–Giles Wang1 Ching1-wei4 Yue: Cantonese Yale Romanization Wōng Jīng-waih Jyutping Wong1 Zing1-wai6
Birth name
Traditional Chinese	汪兆銘
Simplified Chinese	汪兆铭
Hanyu Pinyin	Wāng Zhàomíng
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Wāng Zhàomíng Wade–Giles Wang1 Chao4-ming2 Yue: Cantonese Yale Romanization Wōng Siuh-míhng Jyutping Wong1 Siu6-ming5

Wang was a close associate of Sun Yat-sen for the last twenty years of Sun's life. After Sun's death in 1925, Wang engaged in a political struggle with Chiang Kai-shek for control over the Kuomintang, but lost. Wang remained inside the Kuomintang, but continued to have disagreements with Chiang. Following the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, Wang accepted an invitation from the Japanese to form a collaborationist government in Nanjing, of which he served as the head of state until his death shortly before the End of World War II in Asia. His legacy remains controversial among historians. Although he is still regarded as an important contributor in the 1911 Revolution, his collaboration with Imperial Japan is a subject of academic debate, and the typical narratives often regard him as a traitor with his name becoming synonymous with treason.

Early life and education

Wang Jingwei in his twenties.

Former residence of Wang Jingwei in Nanjing.

Born in Sanshui, Guangdong, but of Zhejiang origin, Wang went to Japan as an international student sponsored by the Qing Dynasty government in 1903, and joined the Tongmenghui in 1905. He also adopted the sobriquet "Wang Jingwei" in 1905.

As a young man, Wang came to blame the Qing dynasty for holding China back, and making it too weak to fight off exploitation by Western imperialist powers. Wang studied in Japan, where he cut off his queue and embraced theories of democracy and liberalism. While in Japan, Wang became a close confidant of Sun Yat-sen, and would later go on to become one of the most important members of the early Kuomintang. He was among the Chinese nationalists in Japan who were influenced by Russian anarchism, and published a number of articles in journals edited by Zhang Renjie, Wu Zhihui, and the group of Chinese anarchists in Paris.

Japan's victory in the Russo-Japanese War impressed Wang, and influenced his view of nationalism as an ideology that could unite a country around the idea of self-strengthening.

Early career

In the years leading up to the Xinhai Revolution in 1911, Wang was active in opposing the Qing government. Wang gained prominence during this period as an excellent public speaker and a staunch advocate of Chinese nationalism.

Wang was part of a Tongmenghui cell which attempted to assassinate the regent, Prince Chun. Wang and Chen Bijun were betrothed and informally married shortly before the assassination attempt. The bomb that Wang and his cell planted was discovered, and Wang and two others who planned the assassination were arrested two weeks later. Wang readily admitted his guilt at trial and was not repentant. Wang was sentenced to life imprisonment.

A number of factors may have contributed to Wang's receiving a life sentence instead of being executed. Shanqi (Prince Su) was believed to have been moved by Wang's confession. In his view, leniency would show the government's magnanimity and its commitment to reform. Additionally, Shanqi's advisor Cheng Jiacheng was an undercover Tongmenghui agent and there were other sympathetic officials. Finally, Tongmenghui leaders threatened reprisals if Wang were executed, and these threats may have had an intimidating effect on government officials.

He remained in jail from 1910 until the Wuchang Uprising the next year, when he was freed as part of a general amnesty for political prisoners, and became something of a national hero upon his release. A book of poems written by Wang during his incarceration was published after his release and became widely popular.

During and after the Xinhai Revolution, Wang's political life was defined by his opposition to Western imperialism.

Wang was a part of the Diligent Work-Frugal Study Movement.

While Wang was living in France in 1913, the Kuomintang's (KMT) parliamentary leader Song Jiaoren was shot and died two days later. Yuan Shikai was alleged to have been responsible for the assassination. Sun Yat-Sen summoned Wang back to China shortly thereafter.

Wang attended the post-World War I Paris Peace Conference as an observer, having declined to take a formal role with one of the competing Chinese delegations to avoid compromising his impartiality. He was outraged by the diplomatic fiasco that unfolded at the conference and the European powers' treatment of China.

In the early 1920s, he held several posts in Sun Yat-sen's Revolutionary Government in Guangzhou, and was the only member of Sun's inner circle to accompany him on trips outside of KMT-held territory in the months immediately preceding Sun's death. He is believed by many to have drafted Sun's will during the short period before Sun's death, in the winter of 1925.

Wang Jingwei addressing the students before a demonstration in Shakee in June 1925 in Guangzhou

He was considered one of the main contenders to replace Sun as leader of the KMT, but eventually lost control of the party and army to Chiang Kai-shek. At this time, Wang's view was that the KMT should be the lead party in a democratic coalition based on constitutionalism and that it should guide mass movements to change China's social structure.

Wang had clearly lost control of the KMT by 1926, when, following the Zhongshan Warship Incident, Chiang successfully sent Wang and his family to vacation in Europe. It was important for Chiang to have Wang away from Guangdong while Chiang was in the process of expelling communists from the KMT because Wang was then the leader of the left wing of the KMT, notably sympathetic to communists and communism, and may have opposed Chiang if he had remained in China.

Rivalry with Chiang Kai-shek

Wang Jingwei and Chiang Kai-Shek in 1926

Leader of the Wuhan Government

During the Northern Expedition, Wang was the leading figure in the left-leaning faction of the KMT that called for continued cooperation with the Chinese Communist Party. Although Wang collaborated closely with Chinese communists in Wuhan, he was philosophically opposed to communism and regarded the KMT's Comintern advisors with suspicion. He did not believe that Communists could be true patriots or true Chinese nationalists.

In early 1927, shortly before Chiang captured Shanghai and moved the capital to Nanjing, Wang's faction declared the capital of the Republic to be Wuhan. While attempting to direct the government from Wuhan, Wang was notable for his close collaboration with leading communist figures, including Mao Zedong, Chen Duxiu, and Borodin, and for his faction's provocative land reform policies. Wang later blamed the failure of his Wuhan government on its excessive adoption of communist agendas. Wang's regime was opposed by Chiang Kai-shek, who was in the midst of a bloody purge of communists in Shanghai and was calling for a push farther north. The separation between the governments of Wang and Chiang are known as the "Ninghan Separation" (traditional Chinese: 寧漢分裂; simplified Chinese: 宁汉分裂; pinyin: Nínghàn Fenlìe).

Chiang Kai-shek occupied Shanghai in April 1927, and began a bloody suppression of suspected communists known as the "Shanghai Massacre". Within several weeks of Chiang's suppression of communists in Shanghai, Wang's leftist government was attacked by a KMT-aligned warlord and promptly disintegrated, leaving Chiang as the sole legitimate leader of the Republic. KMT troops occupying territories formerly controlled by Wang conducted massacres of suspected Communists in many areas: around Changsha alone, over ten thousand people were killed in a single twenty-day period. Fearing retribution as a communist sympathizer, Wang publicly claimed allegiance to Chiang before fleeing to Europe.

Political activities in Chiang's government

Between 1929 and 1930, Wang collaborated with Feng Yuxiang and Yan Xishan to form a central government in opposition to the one headed by Chiang. Wang took part in a conference hosted by Yan to draft a new constitution, and was to serve as the Prime Minister under Yan, who would be president. Wang's attempts to aid Yan's government ended when Chiang defeated the alliance in the Central Plains War.

Wang Jingwei (second from left) and Chen Bijun (far left) in British Malaya, 1935.

In 1931, Wang joined another anti-Chiang government in Guangzhou. After Chiang defeated this regime, Wang reconciled with Chiang's Nanjing government and held prominent posts for most of the decade. Wang was appointed premier just as the Battle of Shanghai (1932) began. He had frequent disputes with Chiang and would resign in protest several times only to have his resignation rescinded. As a result of these power struggles within the KMT, Wang was forced to spend much of his time in exile. He traveled to Germany, and maintained some contact with Adolf Hitler. As the leader of the Kuomintang's left-wing faction and a man who had been closely associated with Dr. Sun, Chiang wanted Wang as premier both to protect the "progressive" reputation of his government which was waging a civil war with the Communists and a shield for protecting his government from widespread public criticism of Chiang's policy of "first internal pacification, then external resistance" (i.e. first defeat the Communists, then confront Japan). Despite the fact that Wang and Chiang disliked and distrusted each other, Chiang was prepared to make compromises to keep Wang on as premier. In regards to Japan, Wang and Chiang differed in that Wang was extremely pessimistic about China's ability to win the coming war with Japan (which almost everyone in 1930s China regarded as inevitable) and was opposed to alliances with any foreign powers should the war come.

Wang Jingwei on a 1935 cover of Time magazine

While being opposed to any effort at this time to subordinate China to Japan, Wang also saw the "white powers" like the Soviet Union, Britain and the United States as equal if not greater dangers to China, insisting that China had to defeat Japan solely by its own efforts if the Chinese were to hope to maintain their independence. But at the same time, Wang's belief that China was too economically backward at present to win a war against a Japan which had been aggressively modernizing since the Meiji Restoration of 1867 made him the advocate of avoiding war with Japan at almost any cost and trying to negotiate some sort of an agreement with Japan which would preserve China's independence. Chiang by contrast believed that if his modernization program was given enough time, China would win the coming war and that if the war came before his modernization plans were complete, he was willing to ally with any foreign power to defeat Japan, even including the Soviet Union, which was supporting the Chinese Communists in the civil war. Chiang was much more of a hardline anti-Communist than was Wang, but Chiang was also a self-proclaimed "realist" who was willing if necessary to have an alliance with the Soviet Union. Though in the short-run, Wang and Chiang agreed on the policy of "first internal pacification, then external resistance", in the long-run they differed as Wang was more of an appeaser while Chiang just wanted to buy time to modernize China for the coming war. The effectiveness of the KMT was constantly hindered by leadership and personal struggles, such as that between Wang and Chiang. In December 1935, Wang permanently left the premiership after being seriously wounded during an assassination attempt engineered a month earlier by Wang Yaqiao.

In 1936, Wang clashed with Chiang over foreign policy. In an ironic role reversal, the left-wing "progressive" Wang argued for accepting the German-Japanese offer of having China sign the Anti-Comintern Pact while the right-wing "reactionary" Chiang wanted a rapprochement with the Soviet Union. During the 1936 Xi'an Incident, in which Chiang was taken prisoner by his own general, Zhang Xueliang, Wang favored sending a "punitive expedition" to attack Zhang. He was apparently ready to march on Zhang, but Chiang's wife, Soong Mei-ling, and brother-in-law, T. V. Soong, feared that such an action would lead to Chiang's death and his replacement by Wang, so they successfully opposed this action.

Wang accompanied the government on its retreat to Chongqing during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945). During this time, he organized some right-wing groups along European fascist lines inside the KMT. Wang was originally part of the pro-war group; but, after the Japanese were successful in occupying large areas of coastal China, Wang became known for his pessimistic view on China's chances in the war against Japan. He often voiced defeatist opinions in KMT staff meetings, and continued to express his view that Western imperialism was the greater danger to China, much to the chagrin of his associates. Wang believed that China needed to reach a negotiated settlement with Japan so that Asia could resist Western Powers.

Rival presidency and alliance with the Axis Powers

Wang receiving German diplomats while serving as the head of state in 1941

Hideki Tojo and Wang Jingwei meet in 1942

In late 1938, Wang left Chongqing for Hanoi, French Indochina, where he stayed for three months and announced his support for a negotiated settlement with the Japanese. During this time, he was wounded in an assassination attempt by KMT agents. Wang then flew to Shanghai, where he entered negotiations with Japanese authorities. The Japanese invasion had given him the opportunity he had long sought to establish a new government outside of Chiang Kai-shek's control.

On 30 March 1940, Wang became the head of state of what came to be known as the Wang Jingwei regime (formally "the Reorganized National Government of the Republic of China") based in Nanjing, serving as the President of the Executive Yuan and Chairman of the National Government (行政院長兼國民政府主席). In November 1940, Wang's government signed the "Sino-Japanese Treaty" with the Japanese, a document that has been compared with Japan's Twenty-one Demands for its broad political, military, and economic concessions. In June 1941, Wang gave a public radio address from Tokyo in which he praised Japan and affirmed China's submission to it while criticizing the Kuomintang government, and pledged to work with the Empire of Japan to resist Communism and Western imperialism. Wang continued to orchestrate politics within his regime in concert with Chiang's international relationship with foreign powers, seizing the French Concession and the International Settlement of Shanghai in 1943, after Western nations agreed by consensus to abolish extraterritoriality.

The Government of National Salvation of the collaborationist "Republic of China", which Wang headed, was established on the Three Principles of Pan-Asianism, anti-communism, and opposition to Chiang Kai-shek. Wang continued to maintain his contacts with German Nazis and Italian fascists he had established while in exile.

Administration of the Wang Jingwei regime

Main article: Wang Jingwei regime

Chinese under the regime had greater access to coveted wartime luxuries, and the Japanese enjoyed things like matches, rice, tea, coffee, cigars, foods, and alcoholic drinks, all of which were scarce in Japan proper, but consumer goods became more scarce after Japan entered World War II. In Japan-occupied Chinese territories, the prices of basic necessities rose substantially, as Japan's war effort expanded. In Shanghai in 1941, they increased elevenfold.

Daily life was often difficult in the Nanjing Nationalist government-controlled Republic of China, and grew more so as the war turned against Japan (c. 1943). Local residents resorted to the black market to obtain needed items. The Japanese Kempeitai, Tokko, collaborationist Chinese police, and Chinese citizens in the service of the Japanese all worked to censor information, monitor any opposition, and torture enemies and dissenters. A "native" secret agency, the Tewu, was created with the aid of Japanese Army "advisors". The Japanese also established prisoner-of-war detention centers, concentration camps, and kamikaze training centers to indoctrinate pilots.

Since Wang's government held authority only over territories under Japanese military occupation, there was a limited amount that officials loyal to Wang could do to ease the suffering of Chinese under Japanese occupation. Wang himself became a focal point of anti-Japanese resistance. He was demonized and branded as an "arch-traitor" in both KMT and Communist propaganda. Wang and his government were deeply unpopular with the Chinese populace, who regarded them as traitors to both the Chinese state and Han Chinese identity. Wang's rule was constantly undermined by resistance and sabotage.

The strategy of the local education system was to create a workforce suited for employment in factories and mines, and for manual labor in general. The Japanese also attempted to introduce their culture and dress to the Chinese. Complaints and agitation called for more meaningful Chinese educational development. Shinto temples and similar cultural centers were built in order to instill Japanese culture and values. These activities came to a halt at the end of the war.

Death

In March 1944, Wang left for Japan to undergo medical treatment for the wound left by an assassination attempt in 1939. He died in Nagoya on 10 November 1944, less than a year before Japan's surrender to the Allies. Many of his senior followers who lived to see the end of the war were executed. His death was not reported in occupied China until the afternoon of 12 November, after commemorative events for Sun Yat-sen's birth had concluded. Wang was buried in Nanjing near the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum, in an elaborately constructed tomb. Soon after Japan's defeat, the Kuomintang government under Chiang Kai-shek moved its capital back to Nanjing, destroyed Wang's tomb, and burned the body. Today, the site is commemorated with a small pavilion that notes Wang as a traitor.

Legacy

For his role in the Pacific War, Wang has been considered a traitor by most post-World War II Chinese historians in both Taiwan and mainland China. His name has become a byword for "traitor" or "treason" in mainland China and Taiwan. In their rhetoric, the communist and nationalist governments would both go on to eviscerate Wang for his collaboration with the Japanese. The Communist Party emphasized his anti-communism while the Kuomintang downplayed it—instead focusing on his personal betrayal of Chiang Kai-shek. Moreover, the communists purported that his high rank within the KMT demonstrated a duplicitous, treasonous nature inherent to the nationalist party. Both sides chose to minimize his earlier association with Sun Yat-sen.

Personal life

Wang was married to Chen Bijun. They were betrothed and had an informal wedding shortly before the assassination attempt on Prince Chun and were formally married in 1912. The couple had six children, five of whom survived into adulthood. Of those who survived into adulthood, Wang's eldest son Ying (later changed to Wenying) was born in France in 1913. Wang's eldest daughter, Wenxing, was born in France in 1915, worked as a teacher in Hong Kong after 1948, retired to the US in 1984 and died in 2015. Wang's second daughter, Wang Wenbin, was born in 1920. Wang's third daughter, Wenxun, was born in Guangzhou in 1922 and died in 2002 in Hong Kong. Wang's second son, Wenti, was born in 1928 and was sentenced in 1946 to 18 months' imprisonment for being a hanjian. After serving his sentence, Wang Wenti settled in Hong Kong where he was involved in numerous education projects with the mainland starting in the 1980s.

See also

• Reorganization Group
• Andrey Vlasov, Nazi collaborator whose name is similarly synonymous with treason in Russia.

Further reading

• David P. Barrett and Larry N. Shyu, eds.; Chinese Collaboration with Japan, 1932–1945: The Limits of Accommodation Stanford University Press 2001.
• Gerald Bunker, The Peace Conspiracy; Wang Ching-wei and the China war, 1937–1941 Harvard University Press, 1972.
• James C. Hsiung and Steven I. Levine, eds. China's Bitter Victory: The War with Japan, 1937–1945 M. E. Sharpe, 1992.
• Ch'i Hsi-sheng, Nationalist China at War: Military Defeats and Political Collapse, 1937–1945 University of Michigan Press, 1982.
• Wen-Hsin Yeh, "Wartime Shanghai",Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
• Rana Mitter, "Forgotten Ally: China's World War II. 1937–1945" Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013. ISBN 978-0618894253. Complete re-examination of the Chinese wars with Japan which argues that the memory of 'betrayals' by Britain, America, and Russia continues to influence China's worldview today.
• Peter Kien-hong YU/俞劍鴻, WANG Jingwei: The Unknown Two New Sides/汪精衛：你不知道的真相 (New York: Bouden House/博登書屋, April 2024), and Debunking Social Science (San Francisco: www.Academia.edu., January 2022), (PDF).

External links

• Japan's Asian Axis Allies: Chinese National Government of Nanking Archived 14 May 2006 at the Wayback Machine
• Newspaper clippings about Wang Jingwei in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW