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Wang Jingwei
Wang Jingwei
President of the Republic of China (Nanjing regime) In office 20 March 1940 10 November 1944 Vice President Succeeded by Zhou Fohai Chen Gongbo Premier of the Republic of China In office 29 January 1932 1 December 1935 President Preceded by Succeeded by Lin Sen Sun Fo Chiang Kai-shek
1st Chairman of the National Government of the ROC (Guangdong) Succeeded by Tan Yankai Personal details Born 4 May 1883 Sanshui, Guangdong, Qing Dynasty 10 November 1944 (aged61) Nagoya, Empire of Japan Kuomintang
Died
Political party
Wang Jingwei
Wang Jingwei
Simplified Chinese Traditional Chinese
Wang Jingwei (Wang Ching-wei; 4 May 1883 10 November 1944; born as Wang Zhaoming (Wang Chao-ming), but widely known by his pen name "Jingwei" ("Ching-wei")), was a Chinese politician. He was initially a member of the left wing of the Kuomintang (KMT), but later became increasingly anti-Communist after his efforts to collaborate with the CCP ended in political failure. His political orientation veered sharply to the right later in his career after he joined the Japanese. Wang was a close associate of Sun Yat-sen for the last twenty years of Sun's life. After Sun's death 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 until Japan invaded China in 1937, after which he accepted an invitation from the Japanese Empire to form a Japanese-supported collaborationist government in Nanjing. Wang served as the head of state for this Japanese puppet government until he died, shortly before the end of World War II. His collaboration with the Japanese has often been considered treason against China. His name in both mainland China and Taiwan is now a term used to refer to traitors, similar to "Benedict Arnold" for Americans, "Quisling" for Norwegians and "Joaquim Silvrio dos Reis" for Brazilians.
Rise to prominence
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. 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. 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.[1]
Wang Jingwei
Early career
In the years leading up to the 1911 Revolution, 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. He was jailed for plotting an assassination of the regent, Prince Chun, and readily admitted his guilt at trial. He remained in jail from 1910 until the Wuchang Uprising the next year, and became something of a national hero upon his release.[2] During and after the Xinhai Revolution, Wang's political life was defined by his opposition to Western imperialism.[citation needed] 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 Kuomintang (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.[3] 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.[4]
Chiang Kai-shek occupied Shanghai in April 1927, and began a bloody suppression of suspected communists known as the "White Terror". Within several weeks of Chiang's suppression of communists in Shanghai, Wang's leftist government was attacked by a KMT-aligned warlord and disintegrated, leaving Chiang as the sole legitimate leader
Wang Jingwei of the Republic. KMT troops occupying territories formerly controlled by Wang conducted massacres of suspected Communists in those areas: around Changsha alone, over ten thousand people were killed in a single twenty day period. Fearing retribution as a communist sympathiser, Wang publicly claimed allegiance to Chiang and fled to Europe.[8]
Wang Jingwei Executive Yuan and Chairman of the National Government ( ). 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, affirmed China's submission to it, criticised the Kuomintang government, and pledged to work with the Empire of Japan to resist communism and Western imperialism.[12] 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.[13] 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.
Death
In March 1944, Wang left for Japan to undergo medical treatment for the wound left by an assassination attempt in 1939.[14] He died in Nagoya on 10 November 1944, less than a year before Japan's surrender to the Allies, thus avoiding a trial for treason. Many of his senior followers who lived to see the end of the war were executed. 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.
Wang Jingwei
Family
Wang was married to Chen Bijun and had six children with her, five of whom survived into adulthood. Of those who survived into adulthood, Wang's eldest son, Wenjin, was born in France in 1913. Wang's eldest daughter, Wenxing, was born in France in 1915, and is now living in New York. 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 imprisonment for being a hanjian.
References
[1] The Biographical Dictionary of Republican China. Eds. Howard L. Boorman and Richard C. Howard,(New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), p. 369. [2] The Biographical Dictionary of Republican China. Eds. Howard L. Boorman and Richard C. Howard,(New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), pp. 370371. [3] Spence, Jonathan D. (1999) The Search for Modern China, W.W. Norton and Company. pp. 321322. ISBN 0-393-97351-4. [4] Barnouin, Barbara and Yu Changgen. Zhou Enlai: A Political Life (http:/ / books. google. com/ books?id=NztlWQeXf2IC) Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2006. p.34. ISBN 962-996-280-2. Retrieved 12 March 2011. [5] Dongyoun Hwang. Wang Jingwei, The National Government, and the Problem of Collaboration. PhD Dissertation, Duke University. UMI Dissertation Services, Ann Arbor Michigain. 2000, p. 118. [6] Dongyoun Hwang. Wang Jingwei, The National Government, and the Problem of Collaboration. PhD Dissertation, Duke University. UMI Dissertation Services, Ann Arbor Michigain. 2000, p. 148. [7] Spence, Jonathan D. (1999) The Search for Modern China, W.W. Norton and Company. pp. 338339. ISBN 0-393-97351-4. [8] Barnouin, Barbara and Yu Changgen. Zhou Enlai: A Political Life. Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2006. p.38. Retrieved 12 March 2011. [9] Gillin, Donald G. "Portrait of a Warlord: Yen Hsi-shan in Shansi Province, 19111930" (http:/ / www. jstor. org/ stable/ 2943488) The Journal of Asian Studies. Vol. 19, No. 3, May, 1960. p. 293. Retrieved 23 February 2011. [10] Barnouin, Barbara and Yu Changgen. Zhou Enlai: A Political Life. Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2006. p.66. Retrieved 12 March 2011. [11] Cheng, Pei-Kai, Michael Lestz, and Jonathan D. Spence (Eds.) The Search for Modern China: A Documentary Collection, W.W. Norton and Company. (1999) pp. 330331. ISBN 0-393-97372-7. [12] Wang Jingwei. "Radio Address by Mr. Wang Jingwei, President of the Chinese Executive Yuan Broadcast on 24 June 1941" The Search for Modern China: A Documentary Collection. Cheng, Pei-Kai, Michael Lestz, and Jonathan D. Spence (Eds.). W.W. Norton and Company. (1999) pp. 330331. ISBN 0-393-97372-7. [13] Spence, Jonathan D. (1999) The Search for Modern China, W.W. Norton and Company. p. 449. ISBN 0-393-97351-4. [14] Lifu Chen and Ramon Hawley Myers. The storm clouds clear over China: the memoir of Chen Li-fu, 19001993. p. 141. (1994) [15] Frederic Wakeman, Jr. Hanjian (Traitor) Collaboration and Retribution in Wartime Shanghai. In Wen-hsin Yeh, ed. Becoming Chinese: Passages to Modernity and Beyond. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 322. [16] Wang Ke-Wan, Irreversible Verdict? Historical Assessments of Wang Jingwei in the Peoples Republic and Taiwan. Twentieth Century China. Vol. 28, No. 1. (November 2003), 59.
Wang Jingwei
Further reading
David P. Barrett and Larry N. Shyu, eds.; Chinese Collaboration with Japan, 19321945: The Limits of Accommodation Stanford University Press 2001. Gerald Bunker, The Peace Conspiracy; Wang Ching-wei and the China war, 19371941 Harvard University Press, 1972. James C. Hsiung and Steven I. Levine, eds. China's Bitter Victory: The War with Japan, 19371945 M. E. Sharpe, 1992. Ch'i Hsi-sheng, Nationalist China at War: Military Defeats and Political Collapse, 19371945 University of Michigan Press, 1982. Wen-Hsin Yeh, "Wartime Shanghai",Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
External links
Japan's Asian Axis Allies: Chinese National Government of Nanking (http://members.optusnet.com.au/ ~alevrass/Nanking_China.html)
Party political offices Precededby Hu Hanmin Chairman of Central Executive Committee of Kuomintang (Nanjing) 19311933 Political offices Precededby Sun Fo Premier of the Republic of China 19321935 Succeededby Chiang Kai-shek Succeededby Chiang Kai-shek
License
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 //creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/