Wang Zhaoming (; Japanese: à  Chà Âmei; 4 May 188310 November 1944), widely known by his pen name Wang Jingwei (; Japanese: à  Seiei), was a Chinese politician and poet who was leader of the reorganized National Government of the Republic of China, a puppet state of the Empire of Japan during World War II.
Wang, a xiucai by the imperial examination, attended Hosei University in Japan on a Qing government scholarship, where he joined the revolutionary Tongmenghui in 1905. He gained prominence in 1910 for a failed attempt to assassinate the Qing prince regent Zaifeng, for which he was sentenced to life imprisonment but was released after the Wuchang Uprising the following year. He took part in negotiations between Yuan ShikaiâÂÂs Beiyang Army and Sun Yat-senâÂÂs revolutionary forces, supporting Yuan's presidency in order to facilitate the abdication of the Qing court.
After the assassination of Song Jiaoren in 1913, Wang initially advocated political compromise before joining the opposition to Yuan Shikai during the Second Revolution. Following its failure, he left for France, returning briefly for the National Protection War. After Yuan's death, Wang became a close associate of Sun Yat-sen, serving as his secretary and drafting his testament. Following Sun's death in 1925, Wang became the first president of the Nationalist government and Chiang Kai-shek's principal rival within the Kuomintang (KMT). Adhering to Sun's policy of collaborating with the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), WangâÂÂs left-leaning politics prompted the KMT right wing to establish a rival government in Shanghai, where the Western Hills Conference declared his expulsion from the party for six months. Sidelined by Chiang in the Canton Coup, Wang resigned and departed for France. Returning in April 1927 to lead the left-wing Wuhan government in opposition to Chiang's in Nanjing, Wang issued a joint declaration with Chen Duxiu reaffirming KMTâÂÂCCP cooperation, before purging the Communists in the July 15 Incident and reunifying with Chiang's government, whereupon the New Guangxi clique forced him to resign. After a long stay in France, Wang returned in October 1929 and joined a series of military revolts against Chiang, culminating in the Central Plains War, after which he fled to British Hong Kong and was again expelled from the KMT. He joined an anti-Chiang government in Guangzhou in 1931, but following the Japanese invasion of Manchuria reached an accommodation with Chiang whereby Wang led the government while Chiang commanded the military for the better part of the following decade.
During the Second Sino-Japanese War, Wang initially advocated resistance while pursuing negotiations. Following China's defeat in the First Battle of Hopei, he increasingly favored the peace movement. In December 1938 he left China's wartime capital Chongqing for Hanoi and called for a peace settlement with Japan, after which he was expelled from the KMT for the third time. In 1940 Wang established a collaborationist government in Nanjing, administering Japanese-occupied China. Both the KMT and the CCP denounced him as a hanjian. Wang died in Nagoya, Japan in 1944.
Born in Sanshui, Guangdong, of Zhejiang origin, Wang obtained a xiucai degree by passing the imperial examination at the county-level in 1902, and went to study at Hosei University in Japan on a Qing government scholarship in 1903. In 1905, Wang first met Sun Yan-sen, the exiled revolutionary leader, and soon joined the Tongmenghui, predecessor of the Kuomintang, in Tokyo. He gained attention as a polemicist for the Tongmenghui organ People's News, notably in his debates with Liang Qichao, who advocated constitutional monarchy. His sobriquet "Wang Jingwei," initially a pen name for the newspaper, was adopted in 1905 and named after the mythical jingwei bird that attempts to fill the ocean with twigs and pebbles.
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. In Japan, he cut off his queue and embraced theories of democracy and liberalism. Wang 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 a 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.
In the years leading up to the Xinhai Revolution in 1911, Wang was active in opposing the Qing government. During this period he emerged 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, an admirer of Wang's revolutionary ambitions, 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. He 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 for a year until the Wuchang Uprising in 1911, when he was freed as part of a general amnesty for political prisoners, and became 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.
Wang subsequently took part in negotiations between the Beiyang Army led by Yuan Shikai, then Prime Minister of the Imperial Cabinet of the Qing government, and the revolutionary forces led by Sun Yat-sen. Wang supported Yuan's presidency in order to facilitate the abdication of the Qing court and a peaceful transfer of power.
After the Xinhai Revolution, despite Yuan's fondness for him and Wang's sworn brotherhood with Yuan's son Yuan Keding, Wang found Yuan's imperial ambitions increasingly difficult to contain. Following the assassination of Song Jiaoren, widely believed to have been orchestrated by Yuan, Wang voiced support for the opposition to Yuan in the Second Revolution led by Sun.
After Yuan suppressed the revolt, Wang left for France with his wife, funded by Yuan's government scholarship and Wang's wealthy father-in-law. He studied sociology at the University of Lyon and befriended his neighbor Cai Yuanpei. He refused Yuan's invitations to return home with promises of political reward, but accepted Yuan's financial gift, which he used to launch Xuefeng magazine with Cai. Wang briefly returned to China with his wife to take part in the National Protection War against Yuan. In 1917, Wang ended his three-year stay in France when Sun Yat-sen summoned him back to China for the Constitutional Protection Movement.
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 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 drafted Sun's political testament before Sun's death in the winter of 1925.
After Sun's death in 1925, Wang, considered Sun's successor as leader of the KMT, became the first president of the Nationalist Government, which at the time controlled only Guangdong province in opposition to the internationally recognized Beiyang Government that held sway over much of the rest of China. 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 also adhered to Sun's policy of collaborating with Soviet Union, such as with advisors Nikolay Kuybyshev and Mikhail Borodin, as well as accommodating Chinese Communist Party. In October 1925, Wang appointed a number of CCP members to prominent positions within the KMT, including Mao Zedong, who assumed Wang's concurrent post as head of the KMT's Publicity Department.
Wang, leader of the KMT left wing, Chiang Kai-shek, the centre, and Hu Hanmin, the right, emerged as the three principal contenders for power within the KMT. Following the Canton Coup, which some historians believe was a false flag incident orchestrated by the Sun Yat-senism Study Society, a radical right-wing faction within the KMT, Wang lost control of the party and military to Chiang. He resigned and left for France with his family.
Following the Northern Expedition, the Nationalist government relocated from Guangzhou to Wuhan, which it declared as its temporary capital. In April 1927, Wang travelled back to China via the Soviet Union, where he met Joseph Stalin. Passing through Shanghai, Wang issued a joint declaration with Chen Duxiu reaffirming his commitment to KMTâÂÂCCP cooperation, before proceeding to lead the left-wing Nationalist government in Wuhan. As soon as Wang arrived in Wuhan, Chiang purged CCP in the Shanghai massacre and then established a rival right-wing government in Nanjing. The separation between the governments of Wang and Chiang is known as the "Nanjing-Wuhan Split" ().
In May 1927, the Comintern issued an urgent directive instructing the CCP to strengthen its position within the Wuhan government by organizing a peasant army and establishing a military tribunal to try Chiang over the Shanghai massacre. Mikhail Borodin and Chen Duxiu considered the directive unrealistic. Comintern agent Manabendra Nath Roy, however, showed the directive to Wang, who reacted with alarm, precipitating the July 15 Incident in which Wang followed Chiang's lead in purging the Communists.
In an interview with The New York Times, Wang stated:<blockquote>Sun Yat-sen, as you know, was greatly influenced by the American radical Henry George, but he was never a Communist. His economic program, which is ours, means three things: Henry George's method of assessing land, definite laws against monopoly under private ownership, and Government ownership of large public utilities. We propose to realize this program without violence and without confiscation.</blockquote>Following the KMT's purge of the Communists, the three rival party centres â Nanjing, Wuhan, and Shanghai â reached a compromise and established the Central Special Committee as the supreme decision-making body for party and political affairs, ending the period of fragmentation that had seen three separate KMT central party organs and two rival central governments coexist since 1926. However, the New Guangxi clique exploited the tensions between the Nanjing and Wuhan factions to seize effective control of the Committee. Both Chiang Kai-shek and Wang were edged out before the formal reunification was completed, and Wang departed for France again at the end of 1927.
In late 1928, when Wang was in France, KMT left-wing figures such as Chen Gongbo and Gu Mengyu founded the Reorganization Group in Shanghai, recognizing Wang as their de facto leader in absentia. In late 1929, following Zhang Fakui's uprising against Chiang and his appeal for Wang's return, Wang came back to China. In 1930, he allied with Feng Yuxiang, Yan Xishan, and Li Zongren in opposition to Chiang, but their coalition was defeated in the Central Plains War. Wang then fled to British Hong Kong, where he dissolved Reorganization Group.
In 1931, Wang joined another anti-Chiang government in Guangzhou. After Mukden Incident, 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 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.
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 Kuomintang government was frequently undermined by leadership rivalries and personal conflicts. Following his premiership, Wang repeatedly urged Zhang Xueliang in July to resist Japanese incursions into Rehe, and in August called in vain on Zhang to resign jointly with him over the general's policy of non-resistance. Wang subsequently left for Europe and did not return until March the following year, when Chiang persuaded Zhang to leave for Europe as well. Soon after Wang resumed office in 1933, his confidence in military resistance was seriously shaken by China's defeat in the First Battle of Hopei, where Japanese equipment and firepower far surpassed that of the Chinese forces.
As part of the New Life Movement, law enforcement police sometimes inspected people's homes for cleanliness. Concerned by these practices, in 1934 Wang sought to persuade Chiang to rely less on coercive measures, contending, "Morality sets the highest standards, but the law should only enforce the minimum standard." Chiang partially accepted this perspective, announcing a modification to the movement's implementation whereby the state would less directly intervene in common people's homes and bodies, and would focus more on government employees, soldiers, and students before expanding to the common people more gradually.
In December 1935, Wang 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 a 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, China's wartime capital. 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.
In late 1938, Wang left Chongqing for Hanoi, French Indochina, where he announced his support for a negotiated settlement with the Japanese. In Hanoi, Wang narrowly survived several assassination attempts by KMT agents, who mistakenly killed his confidant Zeng Zhongming. With British Hong Kong refusing to offer him protection, the Japanese escorted Wang to Shanghai, where he entered into negotiations with Japanese authorities.
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 (). 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" (Ã¥ÂÂå¹³åÂÂ報建åÂÂ).
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's wartime strategy:
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 yearsâÂÂhardly 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.
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. Wang's government was recognized by Nazi Germany and Kingdom of Italy.
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. Contrary to a number of secondary accounts, Wang was not buried near the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum in an elaborately constructed mausoleum. 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. 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.
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 for "traitor" or "treason" in the Chinese world, much like that of Vidkun Quisling in Norway or Benedict Arnold in the United States. Both sides chose to minimize his earlier association with Sun Yat-sen and largely neglected his literary works.
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.