Wang Jingwei
Wang Zhaoming, widely known by his pen name Wang Jingwei, was a Chinese politician and poet 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, 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 was a close associate of Sun Yat-sen for the last twenty years of Sun's life. After Sun's death in 1925, Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the right wing faction of Kuomintang, gradually became dominant among the party. 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. 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.
Despite his controversial political legacy among historians, Wang was admired for his literary works such as poetry and calligraphy, which are still respected and studied today. Wang was also a prominent member of various literature and poetry organizations like the South Society.
Early life and education
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 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 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.
File:Wang Ching-wei addressing the students before the parade.jpg|thumb|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
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 an interview with The New York Times, Wang stated: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.In early 1927, shortly before Chiang captured the Chinese sections of 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".
Chiang Kai-shek occupied the Chinese sections of 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.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 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". 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 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 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. 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.