CHINESE “QUISLING” OUSTS CHIANG KAI-SHEK REGIME

Nanjing (Nanking), China • March 30, 1940

By 1940 Japan had close to a decade’s worth of expe­ri­ence in admin­is­tering con­quered Chi­nese terri­tory, having installed a pup­pet govern­ment in 1932 in Man­churia, which the Japa­nese called Man­chu­kuo. On this date, March 30, 1940, in Nan­jing (Nan­king), China, the Japa­nese installed Wang Jingwei (Ching-wei) as head of state of the Japa­nese collab­o­ra­tionist govern­ment of the Republic of China. Wang had once headed a faction within the Chinese Nation­alist Party, which the leaders in Tokyo hoped would prevail and accept peace terms that were advan­ta­geous to Japan (for instance, recog­nizing Man­chu­kuo and accepting pro­posed demil­i­tarized zones in dis­pute in North­ern China) and bring the Sino-Japanese con­flict to a nego­ti­ated end. When Wang lost his poli­tical struggle with Nation­alist leader Chiang Kai-shek, Japan’s prime minister Fumi­maro Konoe publicly declared his govern­ment’s inten­tion to treat Chiang’s regime as illegitimate and annihilate it.

Nanjing had formerly been the capital of Chiang Kai-shek’s Nation­alist govern­ment, which had moved the nation’s capi­tal from Bei­jing (Peking). But following the Battle of Shang­hai (August 13 to Novem­ber 28, 1937), during which the Nation­alist (Kuomin­tang) army unsuc­cess­fully tried pushing Japa­nese sol­diers out of China’s second largest city, Japan’s mili­tary leaders fixed their sights on revenge for the costly 4‑month-long battle in which roughly 320,000 com­bat­ants on both sides died. Plunder, destruc­tion, sadism, rape, and mur­der were the names of the undis­ciplined Japa­nese foot soldiers who advanced on Nan­jing. For 6 weeks following the city’s capit­u­la­tion on Decem­ber 13, 1937, thou­sands of civil­ians and dis­armed sol­diers were mur­dered and 20,000–80,000 men, women, and chil­dren were raped in what became known as the “Rape of Nanking.”

Wang headed a pro-Japanese regime that was strongly anti-Com­mu­nist. In Novem­ber 1941 he joined with the leaders of Japan, Italy, and Nazi Germany in the Anti-Comin­tern Pact, a 13‑nation alli­ance against the Soviet Union. Wang’s regime also stood in direct oppo­si­tion to the Amer­i­can-supported govern­ment of Chiang Kai-shek, whose agents tried to assas­si­nate Wang 2‑years ear­lier. (Chiang moved his govern­ment from Nan­jing to Wuhan and later to Chong­qing, or Chung­king.) Wang’s govern­ment only held autho­rity over Chi­nese terri­tories under Japa­nese mili­tary occu­pa­tion. It was deeply unpop­u­lar with the Chi­nese pop­u­lace, and it was con­stantly under­mined by resis­tance and sabo­tage from within and from Nationalist and Communist Chinese from without.

The 61-year-old Wang died in Japan, less than a year before that coun­try’s sur­ren­der to the Allies in Septem­ber 1945, thus avoiding a trial for trea­son and war crimes. Many of Wang’s fol­lowers who lived to see the end of the war were exe­cuted by his Nationalist and Communist opponents.

China and Wang Jingwei, Head of the Japanese Puppet Regime at Nanjing (Nanking)

Above: Rose-colored shading marks the extent of Japanese-held China in 1940. Japanese occu­pa­tion, characterized by brutality, forced labor, and eco­nomic exploi­ta­tion, spanned roughly 25 per­cent of mainland China but over a third of the population. Japan held cities and major manu­fac­turing, indus­trial, com­mer­cial, and trans­­por­tation hubs but struggled to control the rural countryside, where both Chinese Communist and Nationalist forces engaged in sabotage and guerrilla actions against the Japanese occupiers and their Chinese collaborators.

Left: Wang Jingwei’s adversaries: Nationalist Chinese leader Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, U.S. President Franklin D. Roose­velt, and British Prime Minister Winston Chur­chill at the Cairo (Egypt) Conference, November 25, 1943. Chiang Kai-shek’s Nation­alist govern­ment as well as his Com­mun­ist Party rivals denounced Wang for being a Japa­nese collab­o­ra­tor (Nation­alist view­point) and being anti-communist (Communist viewpoint).

Right: Wang Jingwei (1883–1944) toasts the German am­bas­sador to Nan­jing, Hein­rich Georg Stah­mer, 1941 or 1942. Wang’s regime flew the same flag as Chiang Kai-shek’s Nation­alist Chi­nese. In 1943 Stah­mer moved to Tokyo to head the German embassy there. When Germany capit­u­lated to the Allies in May 1945, the Japa­nese interned Stah­mer. Several months later after Japan had capit­u­lated in Septem­ber 1945, Stah­mer was interned by the Amer­i­cans, who released him in Germany in 1948. At the end of the Sino-Chi­nese war, Chiang Kai-shek moved his Nation­alist capi­tal back to Nanjing, destroyed Wang’s grave, and burned Wang’s body.

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