Wang Jingwei

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.^[1]: 2

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.^[1]: 29 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.^[2]

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.^[1]: 30

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.^{[1]: 40–41} Wang and Chen Bijun were betrothed and informally married shortly before the assassination attempt.^[1]: 44 The bomb that Wang and his cell planted was discovered, and Wang and two others who planned the assassination were arrested two weeks later.^{[1]: 40–41} Wang readily admitted his guilt at trial and was not repentant.^[1]: 41 Wang was sentenced to life imprisonment.^[1]: 41

A number of factors may have contributed to Wang's receiving a life sentence instead of being executed.^[1]: 41 Shanqi (Prince Su) was believed to have been moved by Wang's confession.^[1]: 41 In his view, leniency would show the government's magnanimity and its commitment to reform.^[1]: 41 Additionally, Shanqi's advisor Cheng Jiacheng was an undercover Tongmenghui agent and there were other sympathetic officials.^[1]: 41 Finally, Tongmenghui leaders threatened reprisals if Wang were executed, and these threats may have had an intimidating effect on government officials.^[1]: 41

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,^[1]: 41 and became something of a national hero upon his release.^[3] A book of poems written by Wang during his incarceration was published after his release and became widely popular.^{[1]: 41–42}

During and after the Xinhai Revolution, Wang's political life was defined by his opposition to Western imperialism.^{[citation needed]}

Wang was a part of the Diligent Work-Frugal Study Movement.^{[1]: 47–48}

While Wang was living in France in 1913, the Kuomintang's (KMT) parliamentary leader Song Jiaoren was shot and died two days later.^[1]: 51 Yuan Shikai was alleged to have been responsible for the assassination.^[1]: 51 Sun Yat-Sen summoned Wang back to China shortly thereafter.^[1]: 51

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.^[1]: 56 He was outraged by the diplomatic fiasco that unfolded at the conference and the European powers' treatment of China.^[1]: 57

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.

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.^[4] 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.^{[1]: 21–22}

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.^[5]

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.^[18] 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. The regime deliberately mirrored the institutional structure of the Chongqing government in order to claim legitimacy as the rightful Nationalist government, with Wang serving as President of the Executive Yuan and Chairman of the National Government (行政院長兼國民政府主席). The regime adopted the blue sky and white sun flag, though Japan imposed its use alongside the slogan of "peace, anti-communism, and national reconstruction" (和平反共建國).

On 15 June 1940, Wang published an article entitled "Chiang Kai-shek's 'Magnet War'", in which he articulated his justification for the Peace Movement. Wang summarized his position in three propositions, followed by an extended critique of Chiang Kai-shek's wartime strategy:

1. China and Japan ought properly to be friends, not enemies.
2. If, through temporary misfortune, China and Japan have become enemies, one must at all times strive to recover the path to friendship; once attained, it must never again be abandoned.
3. The Konoe Statements had already provided a path by which enemies could be transformed into friends. Yet at this very moment Chiang Kai-shek continued to advocate his so-called "Magnet War", which held that China, vast in territory and numerous in population, could preserve its main forces, make use of its broad lands and masses, and entangle the Japanese army in a prolonged struggle. Hence the strategy of protracted war, scorched-earth warfare, and guerrilla warfare—Japan could occupy points and lines, but never the whole.

Wang argued that such a strategy could never lead to final victory, as it depended only on two uncertain expectations: international assistance, and Japan's economic collapse. With the outcome of the European war still unknown and international assistance no longer reliable, prolonged war would inevitably exhaust China. While Japan might suffer injury from a long conflict, China, Wang asserted, would face only destruction.

Drawing on historical analogy, Wang noted that the Qing armies entered the Shanghai Pass into China proper and the Ming dynasty perished sixteen years later; the Southern Song maintained a precarious existence for one hundred and fifteen years before its fall. By contrast, the War of Resistance had lasted only three years—hardly a long duration by historical standards. He further argued that the higher an organism stands in the scale of life, the more concentrated its nervous system: a frog, when cut into pieces, may still leap, but such movement is without function. The slower the death, the more difficult and protracted the recovery.

According to Wang, modern China was no longer comparable to the Song or the Ming. If it did not perish, all would be well; but once it perished, its economy, culture, and social foundations would perish with it, with no definite prospect of recovery. Although China proclaimed itself an agrarian nation, its annual grain output could not meet domestic needs. Only under conditions of stability, with coordinated political, scientific, and technical efforts, might recovery be possible. Scorched-earth and guerrilla warfare, by contrast, would destroy the countryside at its very roots.

Wang concluded by likening such strategies to "swallowing arsenic in order to poison a tiger." The person who swallowed arsenic would certainly die, while the tiger that consumed the poisoned body might merely vomit and survive. If no path existed by which enemies could be transformed into friends, Wang argued, then all Chinese would have no choice but to swallow arsenic. Since such a path did exist, he maintained that even if personal sacrifice were unavoidable, the survival of the nation had to be sought first. Wang closed by stating that he spoke in accordance with his conscience and was prepared to bear responsibility for his words.^[19][20]

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.^[18] 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.^[21] 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.^[22] Wang's government was recognized by Nazi Germany and Kingdom of Italy.^[23][24]

Japanese under the regime had greater access to coveted wartime luxuries, enjoying 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.^[25] 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.

In March 1944, Wang left for Japan to undergo medical treatment for the wound left by an assassination attempt in 1939.^[23][26][24] 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. Contrary to a number of secondary accounts, Wang was not buried near the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum in an elaborately constructed mausoleum.^[27] Instead, he was buried on Plum Flower Mountain, near the mausoleums of the Ming dynasty, in a small, temporary tomb consisting of only a circular grass topped mound eight metres wide and four metres high, a makeshift wooden structure and a sign reading "Wang Jingwei's tomb". Wang was to be moved to Canton (modern Guangzhou) for final burial below Pakwan Mountain upon the reunification of the country under the Nanking government.^[28] 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.^[29]

During the New National Movement, Wang Jingwei Thought (汪精衛主義) became the core ideological framework promoted by the Wang Jingwei regime. Propaganda personnel actively constructed a cult of personality around Wang Jingwei, distributing badges bearing his image and encouraging citizens under the Nanjing National Government to wear them. The movement's propaganda integrated elements of Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles of the People with pan-Asianism, pacifism, and pragmatic governance. At one point, Yuan Shu [zh], a Chinese Communist agent assisted the Nanjing propaganda department in interpreting Wang Jingwei Thought for wider dissemination. On 21 December 1941, Yuan Shu published an article on Wang Jingwei Thought in the Xin Zhongguo Bao, which was subsequently circulated across major government-controlled newspapers in 1942 in line with standard propaganda practices.^[30][31]

The central tenets of Wang Jingwei Thought can be summarized as four principles: correctly understanding the Three Principles of the People while rejecting the unorthodox interpretations of pro-imperialist and revolutionary factions within the Chongqing Nationalist Government and the Chinese Communist Party; recognizing Sun Yat-sen's Greater Asianism and the notion that Sino-Japanese cooperation constituted the core solution to East Asian issues; resolving conflicts through peaceful means; and prioritizing action over empty rhetoric. Wang's personal cult, the emphasis on pan-Asianism, and the New National Movement's propaganda were closely integrated, with the timing of the movement aligning strategically with the Japanese-led East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

Scholars such as Tetsuo Shibata have observed that the slogans and timing of the New National Movement were coordinated with Japanese initiatives to promote regional Asianist ideology. The East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere represented the most successful implementation of political Asianism in East Asia, surpassing earlier attempts by both China and Japan to create similar alliances. Chinese propagandists portrayed the East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere as a replacement for the League of Nations and the Comintern in resisting both White and Red imperialist encroachment, echoing language previously employed by Kuomintang officials when describing the League of Nations.^[32]

The propaganda department of the Wang regime synthesized existing discourses with contemporary political realities, framing Wang's pan-Asianist policies as a continuation of Sun Yat-sen's ideological evolution. This intellectual construction was meticulously planned by professional propagandists as early as 1938.^[33] Wang himself insisted that the government adhere to the Three Principles of the People as its guiding ideology and retain the Kuomintang flag as a symbol of continuity.^[34] Although regime officials recognized that Wang's rule relied primarily on military control rather than ideological legitimacy, maintaining the appearance of Kuomintang orthodoxy was deemed both reasonable and effective. Consequently, the propaganda department, established in 1940, became one of the most influential agencies within the Nanjing National Government, shaping both domestic opinion and international perception.^[35]

For his role in the Pacific War, Wang has been denounced as a hanjian by both the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party. His name has become a byword for "traitor" or "treason" in the Chinese world, much like that of Vidkun Quisling in Norway or Benedict Arnold in the United States. The CCP emphasized his anti-communism while the KMT downplayed it, instead focusing on his personal betrayal of Chiang Kai-shek. Both sides chose to minimize his earlier association with Sun Yat-sen and largely neglected his literary works.^{[36]: 59 [need quotation to verify]}

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.^{[1]: 44, 47} The couple had six children,^[1]: 22 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.^{[1]: 50–51} 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.^[37] 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.^[38]

• Reorganization Group
• Collaboration with the Axis powers