The Reorganized National Government of the Republic of China (RNG), commonly known as the Wang Jingwei regime, was a collaborationist government with the Empire of Japan that administered Japanese-occupied China during the Second Sino-Japanese War.
In late 1938, Wang Jingwei, then second in the leadership of the Republic of China (ROC) after Chiang Kai-shek, departed the wartime capital Chongqing for Hanoi to call for a negotiated peace with Japan. Following his expulsion from the Kuomintang and a failed assassination attempt ordered by Chiang, Wang established the RNG in occupied Nanjing in 1940, with a collaborationist Kuomintang as its ruling party. A deliberate carbon copy of the ROC government, the RNG claimed sovereignty over all of China except the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo, presenting itself as the legitimate Chinese government in opposition to Chiang's administration in Chongqing. Its diplomatic recognition was limited to fellow signatories of the Anti-Comintern Pact.
The RNG absorbed the Reformed Government (1938–1940) and the Provisional Government (1937–1940) that had administered occupied central and northern China respectively. Unlike the RNG, these predecessors functioned largely as instruments of the Japanese military and received no recognition from Japan or its allies. The former territory of the Provisional Government nevertheless retained semi-autonomous status as the North China Political Council, while the region of Mengjiang remained only nominally under RNG authority. Following Wang's death in November 1944, Chen Gongbo succeeded him as head of government. After Japan's surrender in August 1945, the RNG dissolved; many of its leading members were tried and executed for treason.
Names As both the Republic of China and the People's Republic of China regard the RNG as illegitimate, the regime is commonly qualified with the modifier Wei () in Chinese, such as Wang Wei Zhengquan () or Wei Guomin Zhengfu ().
Background and establishment While Wang Jingwei was widely regarded as a favorite to inherit Sun Yat-sen's position as leader of the Nationalist Party, especially given his unique position as the drafter of Sun's political testament, he was rapidly overtaken by Chiang Kai-shek in the Canton Coup. After a series of power struggles, they reconciled following the Mukden Incident, with Wang taking the position of Premier and then also Foreign Minister for the Nationalist Government under Chiang Kai-shek. This put him in control over the deteriorating Sino-Japanese relationship.
While initially advocating resistance alongside negotiations, Wang increasingly favored the peace movement following China's defeat at the First Battle of Hopei, citing Japan's overwhelming military superiority. After the Trautmann mediation collapsed, Wang conducted secret negotiations with Japan in 1938. Japan conditionally agreed to withdraw its troops within two years and support Wang in establishing a rival government to Chiang's. Wang's original plan was to base this government in the unoccupied southwest, relying on anti-Chiang warlords such as Long Yun and Zhang Fakui.
In December 1938, Wang, then the second-ranking KMT leader after Chiang, left China's wartime capital Chongqing for Hanoi, where he publicly called for a peace settlement with Japan and was subsequently expelled from the KMT. The warlords on whom Wang had counted to rally behind his peace movement failed to respond, and after Chiang dispatched assassins who killed Wang's secretary Zeng Zhongming in Hanoi instead, Wang was escorted by the Japanese to Shanghai.
In June 1939, Wang and his supporters began negotiating with the Japanese for the creation of a new Nationalist Government. To this end, Wang sought to discredit the Nationalists in Chongqing on the basis that they represented not the republican government envisioned by Sun, but rather a "one-party dictatorship". In August, Wang secretly convened the 6th National Congress of the KMT in Shanghai, effectively creating a new collaborationist Kuomintang with Wang as its leaders.
Wang and his allies suffered an early setback in January 1940 when diplomat Gao Zongwu, who had played a key role in Wang's negotiations with the Japanese, defected to Chongqing. Disillusioned with Japan, Gao took with him documents relating to the treaty between Japan and the Wang regime and leaked them to the press. The revelations proved a major propaganda victory for Chiang Kai-shek, reinforcing public perceptions that Wang's government was a Japanese puppet.
On 30 March 1940, the RNG was established in Nanjing.
History Shanghai as de facto capital, 1939–1941 With Nanjing still rebuilding itself after the devastating assault and occupation by the Japanese Imperial Army, the fledgling Reorganized Nationalist Government turned to Shanghai as its primary focal point. With its key role as both an economic and media center for all China, close affiliation to Western Imperial powers even despite the Japanese invasion, and relatively sheltered position from attacks by KMT and Communist forces alike, Shanghai offered both sanctuary and opportunity for Wang and his allies' ambitions. Once in Shanghai, the new regime quickly moved to take control over those publications already supportive of Wang and his peace platform, while also engaging in violent, gang-style attacks against rival news outlets. By November 1940, the Reorganized Nationalist Party had secured enough local support to begin hostile takeovers of both Chinese courts and banks still under nominal control by the KMT in Chongqing or Western powers. Buoyed by this rapid influx of seized collateral, the Reorganized Government under its recently appointed Finance Minister, Zhou Fohai, was able to issue a new currency for circulation. Ultimately however, the already limited economic influence garnered by the new banknotes was further diminished by Japanese efforts to contain the influence of the new regime, at least for a time, to territories firmly under Japanese control like Shanghai and other isolated regions of the Yangtze Valley.
Efforts to expand Japanese recognition
While Wang had been successful in securing from Japan a "basic treaty" recognizing the foundation of his new party in November 1940, the produced document granted the Reorganized Nationalist Government almost no powers whatsoever. This initial treaty precluded any possibility for Wang to act as intermediary with Chiang Kai-shek and his forces in securing a peace agreement in China. Likewise, the regime was afforded no extra administrative powers in occupied China, save those few previously carved out in Shanghai. Indeed, official Japanese correspondence regarded the RNG as trivially important, and urged any and all token representatives stationed with Wang and his allies to dismiss all diplomatic efforts by the new government which could not directly contribute to a total military victory over Chiang and his forces. Hoping to expand the treaty in such a way as to be useful, Wang formally traveled to Tokyo in June 1941 in order to meet with prime minister Fumimaro Konoe and his cabinet to discuss new terms and agreements. Unfortunately for Wang, his visit coincided with the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, a move which further emboldened officials in Tokyo to pursue total victory in China, rather than accept a peace deal. In the end, Konoe eventually agreed to provide a substantial loan to the RNG as well as increased sovereignty; neither of which came to fruition, and indeed, neither of which were even mentioned to military commanders stationed in China. As a slight conciliation, Wang was successful in persuading the Japanese to secure official recognition for the RNG from the other Axis Powers.
Breakthrough, 1943
As the Japanese offensive stalled around the Pacific, conditions remained generally consistent under Wang Jingwei's government. The regime continued to represent itself as the legitimate government of China, continued to appeal to Chiang Kai-shek to seek a peace deal, and continued to chafe under the extremely limited sovereignty afforded by the Japanese occupiers. Yet by 1943, Japanese leaders including Hideki Tojo, recognizing that the tide of war was turning against them, sought new ways to reinforce the thinly stretched Japanese forces. To this end, Tokyo finally found it expedient to fully recognize Wang Jingwei's government as a full ally, and a replacement Pact of Alliance was drafted for the basic treaty. This new agreement granted the RNG markedly enhanced administrative control over its own territory, as well as increased ability to make limited self-decisions. Despite this windfall, the deal came far too late for the Reorganized government to have sufficient resources to take advantage of its new powers, and Japan was in no condition to offer aid to its new partner.
War on opium As a result of general chaos and wartime various profiteering efforts of the conquering Japanese armies, already considerable illegal opium smuggling operations expanded greatly in the Reorganized Nation Government's territory. Indeed, Japanese forces themselves became arguably the largest and most widespread traffickers within the territory under the auspices of semi-official narcotics monopolies. While initially too politically weak to make inroads into the Japanese operations, as the war began to turn against them, the Japanese government sought to incorporate some collaborationist governments more actively into the war effort. To this end in October 1943 the Japanese government signed a treaty with the Reorganized Nationalist Government of China offering them a greater degree of control over their own territory. As a result, Wang Jingwei and his government were able to gain some increased control over the opium monopolies. Negotiations by Chen Gongbo were successful in reaching an agreement to cut opium imports from Mongolia in half, as well as an official turnover of state-sponsored monopolies from Japan over to the Reorganized Nationalist Government. Yet, perhaps due to financial concerns, the regime sought only limited reductions in the distribution of opium throughout the remainder of the war.
The northern Chinese areas
The Tongzhou administration (East Ji Anti-Communist Autonomous Administration) was under the commander-in-chief of the Japanese Northern China Area Army until the Yellow River area fell inside the sphere of influence of the Japanese Central China Area Army. During this same period the area from middle Zhejiang to Guangdong was administered by the Japanese North China Area Army. These small, largely independent fiefdoms had local money and local leaders, and frequently squabbled.
Wang Jingwei traveled to Tokyo in 1941 for meetings. In Tokyo the RNG Vice President Zhou Fohai commented to the Asahi Shimbun newspaper that the Japanese establishment was making little progress in the Nanjing area. This quote provoked anger from Kumataro Honda, the Japanese ambassador in Nanjing. Zhou Fohai petitioned for total control of China's central provinces by the RNG. In response, Imperial Japanese Army Lt. Gen. Teiichi Suzuki was ordered to provide military guidance to the RNG, and so became part of the real power that lay behind Wang's rule.
With the permission of the Japanese Army, a monopolistic economic policy was applied, to the benefit of Japanese zaibatsu and local representatives. Though these companies were supposedly treated the same as local Chinese companies by the government, the president of the Yuan legislature in Nanjing, Chen Gongbo, complained that this was untrue to the Kaizō Japanese review. The RNG set up an embassy in Yokohama, Japan (as did Manchukuo).
Anti-Japanese double agents