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Nanjing Nationalist Government”: Between Collaboration and Resistance

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Nanjing Nationalist Government”: Between Collaboration and Resistance 7 Wang Jingwei and the “Nanjing Nationalist Government”: Between Collaboration and Resistance Liu Jie Translated by Konrad Lawson Introduction On March 30, 1940, in the midst of the Sino-Japanese War, the “Na- tionalist government of the Republic of China” (Zhonghua minguo guomin zhengfu) was established in Japanese-occupied Nanjing, headed by Wang Jingwei (also known as Wang Zhaoming). Nanjing, which is located in the southwest of Jiangsu Province, is counted among the seven ancient capitals of China and is located fairly close to China’s leading economic city Shanghai. Over a decade earlier, the Northern Expedition of 1926– 1928—a civil war aimed at subduing the warlords throughout China and imposing unified control over Chinese territory—had established the Republic of China. This amounted to a central government in Nan- jing also going by the name of the “Nationalist government” ( guomin zhengfu). In 1927 this Nanjing-based Nationalist government had set out to build a modern state. However, by 1940, when the Sino-Japanese War was in its third year, the governmental institutions of the Republic 206 LIU JIE of China had been transferred to Chongqing in the interior, and Nanjing was under the occupation of the Japanese military. The full outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War came with the Marco Polo Bridge Incident and had by August 1937 spread to central China, with Shanghai at its center. After fierce fighting between Japan’s Shanghai Expeditionary Army and the military of China’s Nationalist government, the international city of Shanghai was occupied by the Japanese military. In December, Japan’s Central China Army, under the command of General Matsui Iwane, built on its momentum and pursued the enemy in a battle to capture Nanjing, in the aftermath of which the infamous Nanjing Atrocity, discussed in the previous chapter, took place. Not only in Nanjing, but more generally, China suffered enor- mous losses in the war with Japan. Given the country’s situation, Chiang Kai-shek tried to avoid committing the entire nation to a head-on battle with the Japanese military. Already in November he had decided to move the capital to Wuhan and then to Chongqing in the interior. The Japanese government concluded that, having lost its capital, the Nationalist government of China had also lost the ability to control the country. It quickly moved to release a statement on January 16, 1938: “Henceforth, we will not negotiate with the Nationalist government” and thereafter shifted its policy toward the goal of negotiating a full re- adjustment of Sino-Japanese relations with a “new Chinese central re- gime.” Around July Japan decided on a new policy. When China’s “cur- rent central government” capitulated to Japan, Japan would “recognize it as a friendly regime, and it would be merged under the umbrella of the existing newly created central government, or, together with the various existing regimes friendly to Japan, establish another new central gov- ernment.” In order to recognize the existing Nationalist government within the framework of a “new Chinese central government” Japan stipulated that it must, among other demands, “merge or participate in the new Chinese central regime,” “rename and reorganize the old Na- tionalist government,” “abandon policies of resistance to Japan and tol- erance for Communism,” and “adopt a pro-Japanese anti-Communist policy”; they also insisted that Chiang must relinquish power.”1 In short, ————— 1. “Shina gen chūō seifu kuppuku no baai no taisaku (1938-nen 7-gatsu 8-ka)” [Policy in the Event of the Surrender of the Current Central Government of China] (Decision of the Conference of Five Ministers on July 8, 1938), Inaba Masao et al., eds. Taiheiyō sensō e .
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