The Reorganized National Government of Wang Ch'ing-wei
In contrast to Chiang, who receives the obloquy which goes with power, Wang Ch'ing-wei has spent the greater part of his life as a political Out. He began brilliantly. While in his twenties, he became a revolutionary hero by a bold attempt to assassinate the Prince Regent, and after the establishment of the Republic followed the unhappy meanders of the Nationalist movement. His association with Sun in the years before Sun's death was very close, and he has as good a title as anyone to the apostolic succession. (His title is not necessarily much better than that of various other Kuomintang leaders; a score or so of elder statesmen of the Party could claim a longer service of Party leadership and equality or seniority to Wang in Party rank.)
In 1927 Chiang and Wang had different regimes for the first time, and Wang went into exile; he tried again in 1930, and went into exile; and he is trying now. His cooperation with the Japanese must not be regarded as the sudden prostitution of a worthy figure, nor as the culminating criminality of an utter rogue. As in a Greek tragedy, Wang, blinded by self-esteem and goaded by political frustration, has chosen his unsavory course from understandable motives. Several lines of continuity lead up to his establishment of the Reorganized National Government at Nanking, and condition the nature of this government.
Primarily, Wang has been an in-and-out schismatic in Kuomintang ranks. It is quite possible that in terms of a head count, he may have had the immediate support of a greater portion of the membership than did Chiang in the first break in 1927, but his proportion has fairly steadily declined ever since. There have been a large number of men who accepted him as leader, just as in the preceding decade there were men Wu mi ("infatuated with Wu [Pei-fu]"). In 1930-31 his organization paralleled the Government-supported Kuomintang in all parts of the world. Today he has some followers who follow even to Nanking. These men are bound to him by ties of long, habitual obedience, by blood kinship, and by generously offered loyalty: the distinguished and vigorous Ch'en Kung-po, now Mayor of Shanghai; by Chou Fu-hai, who—before his proscription—was the most popular commentator on the San Min Chu I; Lin Pai-sheng, who had served Wang well as spokesman; and the entertaining T'ang Leang-li, a Javanese-Chinese writer of international fame, who has probably written more books on China in English than any other Chinese.
On the other hand, he has lost office-holding followers by the scores, many of whom hold positions ranging up to Vice-Ministerships in Chungking, and he seems to have lost almost all of his rank and file followers. The chief defection was that of Messrs. Tao Hsi-shêng and Kao Tsung-wu, who fled from Chungking to Shanghai and Nanking, and then fled back again, bringing with them sensational copies of Wang's secret preliminary agreements with the Japanese. Dr. Tao, a historian, served Wang temporarily as Party-Minister of Publicity; Dr. Kao had been in the foreign office while Wang still collaborated with Chiang.[7] His following consisted almost entirely of politicians, ranging from the rank of scholar-bureaucrat down to hooligans. The masses which he led in 1927 have dwindled to hundreds, and the replacements are of distinct unworthiness—persons, already cooperating with the Japanese, whom he must lead for lack of better. He has lost followers with almost every move he has made, whether rebelling, going into exile, accepting government post under Chiang, or working with Japan. The Wang clique may be represented by a consistently declining curve.
In the face of this, it is unexpected to find that Wang has been reasonably honest and consistent, as were Trotsky and Röhm. His consistency may be described as a perfectly regular spiral, which maintains unchanging direction but never goes in a straight line. Wang has always favored not-fighting, peace, civilian and constitutional government, and making friends with any nation which professes friendship for China. The loftiness of his motives might be impugned by pointing out that each is the antithesis of one of Chiang's characteristics; but the ultimate test of Wang's sincerity lies with the psychiatrists rather than with political scientists. Assuming sincerity, how did these consistent standards lead him to Nanking?
In 1927 Chiang broke with the Communists quite a while before Wang did. Wang was willing to yield a doubtful point here, to credit the other side with good motives there, and to keep the Wuhan government going as long as he could. His difficulties were the difficulties of a constitutionalist willing to maintain the constitution at the cost of some appeasement. In the following years of exile, he upbraided Chiang's machine-boss tactics within the Kuomintang; the name "Reorganized Kuomintang" which he selected for his schismatics, is indicative of his desire to promote regularity in party elections and free democratic discussion in party congresses.
A striking instance of repetition may be seen in contrasting the Nanking of 1940 with the Peking of 1930. In 1930 Chiang K'ai-shek had been threatened by military attack and had found a great part of China wrested from him by superior forces, those of the tuchün Feng Yü-hsiang and Yen Hsi-shan; but the National Government maintained its position in the capital. In 1940, the capital had moved to Chungking and the armed enemies were Japanese; Hu Han-min (the great Rightist leader) was dead, a new Communist alliance was in effect, and the outside world was in a turmoil more profound than China's. Despite the supervening changes, Wang Ch'ing-wei was found in 1940 in precisely the role of 1930. Again he was the front for a military regime. In 1930 he had been a Left-liberal front for native militarism; in 1940, he was the appeasing, conservative front for the Imperial Japanese army. In 1930 he had his own "Reorganized" Kuomintang; he had his "Orthodox" again in 1940. In 1930 he usurped the National Government offices, titles, and regalia; he did this again in 1940. In 1930 his career ended with military defeat and he went into exile, later bargaining his position back into Chinese politics.
Wang appears to have become the victim of an idée fixe: he believes that if he impersonates government devotedly enough, and with careful enough detail, he will become government. Brilliant, sincere, adroit, he is burdened by a pathological self-esteem and is so much the victim of his own past rationalizations that he is no longer inventive. Obviously such a character, in the face of recurrent failure, cannot assume the blame for it. Wang's demon is the Generalissimo.
Another characteristic of Wang appears clearly at this point: the belief of the appeaser that he can outsmart the appeased; he no doubt thought that his tuchün colleagues would become victims of the government which they let him create. On his way out of China after Chiang's armies and Chang Hsüeh-liang's intervention had settled this affair, he stopped over in Canton to take part in an even more transitory and less successful rebellion.
The next round of Wang-Chiang rivalry displays the consummate political strategy of the Generalissimo and the ruin of Wang by his own virtues. For three full years, 1932 through 1935, Wang was President of the Executive Yüan and second only to Chiang. After a little more than a year out of office—owing in part to a gunshot wound—he returned in the crucial months of 1937 just before the outbreak of general hostilities, and stayed with the National Government through the first year and a half of the war—until December 1938. In fifteen more months he reached terms with the Japanese; eight months after he set up a government with their consent and sponsorship, they recognized that government. Throughout this period Wang advocated peace, non-aggression to the point of non-defense and surrender, and universal conciliation. These attitudes made him very useful to Chiang when Chiang needed him, and made him dispose of himself when he was no longer helpful to Chiang.
Wang was ruined by the long, agonizing appeasement of which Chiang was the leader, in the six years between the Japanese invasion of China's Manchurian provinces and the outbreak of undeclared war in July 1937. Throughout this period the forces of Leftist reform, of Communist pressure (both military and political), of student sentiment, of overseas-Chinese patriotism, and finally of national self-respect itself, fed the opposition to Chiang, who knew that, whatever the cost, China was not militarily or politically ready to fight Japan. Wang Ch'ing-wei, who when out of office had espoused some of the most genuinely popular and necessary reforms, found himself civilian leader of a government following an intensely unpopular policy, and unable to profit by the rise of opposition. The Generalissimo needed someone to replace Hu Han-min, with whom he disagreed and whom he temporarily incarcerated. Wang provided a counter-balance to the Hu Han-min group, undermined his own popularity, and helped shield Chiang from anti-appeasement criticism.
Wang Ch'ing-wei, in this period, feared war and grasped at the conciliation which the Japanese offered between successive invasions. In 1937, Wang worked for the localization of the war at the cost of North China, on the theory that the Japanese could take what they wished. He reiterated his old point that the Chinese could not possibly whip the Japanese on the fields of battle, but that they might outmaneuver them over the tables of diplomacy. The advent of war was a disappointment and source of worry to him.
In the course of the celebrated retreat from Nanking to Hankow, and from Hankow to Chungking, Wang lost no opportunity to work for peace. When the Germans offered themselves as intermediaries in the Hankow period, Wang sought the opening of negotiations. There was a violent uproar in the People's Political Council, not then reported in the press. When the government moved to Chungking, Wang was even more despondent: victory seemed remote, the Communists worried him as much as did the Japanese, and the Generalissimo swept opposition aside with the slogans of resistance. Like other peoples in war time, the Chinese began to confuse peace and treason. Wang and his closest supporters felt that they were being deprived of freedom of speech; their known inclination to surrender and negotiate had supplied Chiang with a weapon which might even prove personally dangerous to them. The death by firing-squad of General Han Fu-ch'u showed that treason, or the charge of it, had become serious. Wang and his followers rationalized their own fearfulness concerning the war into the belief that they were expressing the will of the peace-loving masses. In December 1938 he got out of China by a surprise flight to Indo-China. His followers had previously been filtering down to Hong Kong. The Konoye statement,[8] just issued, gave him an opening to treat with the Japanese.
Throughout the negotiations, Wang behaved as though he were himself the legitimate Chinese government. He did not accept the minimum Japanese conditions, but held out for an agreement which would preserve the fictions of Chinese independence, allow him to fly the national flag, establish his version of the Kuomintang, and attempt every kind of linkage with the past. One of his followers asked the author in Nanking, "Do you think we were traitors when we spent more than a year getting a fair peace agreement from the Japanese?" This agreement, released by Messrs. Tao and Kao, consisted of the cession of broad military, foreign-relations, and economic rights over China to Japan. The Chinese were to lose no territory pro forma, and were to keep a minimum of 35 per cent interest in major economic enterprises.
The regime is sufficiently well known so that there is no need to detail its history: the long dickering with the two Japanophile "governments" already established in Peking and Nanking, since they were the third parties to the Japan-Wang negotiations, the installation of the government in March 1940, and its recognition the following November. The more significant problem is—what part can this Nanking establishment play in the actual contest for power in East Asia?
In the first place, the Reorganized National Government (Chung-hua Min-kuo Ts'an-chêng Kuo-min Chêng-fu) of China is not a puppet government in the sense that the Manchoukuoan government is. The Japanese have a very loose surveillance of the officers of state. Interviews with officials indicate pretty conclusively the absence of dictaphones or of Japanese Special Service agents. The leaders in the government at Nanking are not watched or hounded in any intimate way. One of them said: "Why should the Japanese watch us? They know that we cannot do anything to them, and they know that their only chance of success lies in our becoming a real government."
Secondly, the personnel of the Nanking regime is not sufficient to cope with the problems which face it. The Nanking regime has no diplomatic officer who has regularly represented any other Chinese government; only a few consuls, in Japanese territory, joined it.[9] In no single instance can a Nanking officeholder, compared with his Chungking counterpart, be regarded (patriotism apart) as better-qualified or more able than his rival. In an enterprise of this sort, it would seem likely that Nanking should have the better man in some few positions. Diligent and disinterested inquiry fails to reveal a single one. Finally, the personnel is a mixture of Wang cliquists, politically obsolete conservatives, careerist Japanophiles, colorless opportunists, and actual criminals.
A Western newspaper man, well acquainted with the Nanking situation, told the author that he estimated the regime as 5 per cent Japanophiles, 5 per cent upright men who worked with the enemy because of a sense of public duty toward the Chinese people in the occupied areas, 20 per cent opportunists, and 70 per cent low characters interested in thievery. Nanking officials, to whom these estimates were communicated without revelation of the source, felt the latter categories to be much too high. Several of the more intelligent men in Nanking offered the argument that if they did not share in the regime, unscrupulous elements would deceive the Japanese and oppress the people; or they stated that the Reorganized Government had brought back the flag, the constitution, the titles, the law codes, and the political doctrines of the National Government, so that occupied and unoccupied China had the same polity. They disregarded the point that this abetted the enemy.
Thirdly, the government has nothing to do. The power of the Nanking regime in no instance reaches beyond the Japanese patrols. No counties are under Nanking control which are not also under Japanese control. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has no foreign affairs. The Ministry of Finance collects some excises and disburses many salaries, as well as limited amounts for the upkeep of some schools, law courts, minimal public services, and state property, insofar as the Japanese have returned any. (It is interesting to note that the officials at Nanking, deploring the "Communist" tendencies of Chiang, live in commandeered houses, and use the commandeering of private property as a form of patronage for their supporters.) The Central Political Council has so little to do that it draws up a budget and solemnly debates items of less than U. S. $100.[10] The officials cannot ride far from the city limits of Nanking, because of the guerrillas who operate all about. The railroad runs only by daylight. The Nanking police are mostly unarmed, except for clubs—an unprecedented condition for modern China!—and many who carry rifles or pistols seem to have no cartridges.
Fourthly, the Nanking government is an encouraging indication that the modern Chinese have finally come to the point where five-power republicanism is the norm. It is significant that the Nanking regime practices an extreme purism of organization and nomenclature, conforming precisely to antebellum practice.[11] The regime has changed the theoretical structure of the National Government very little, but added the Party ministries to the government cabinet. One further change has consisted in the logically desirable transference of the Ministry of Justice to the Executive Yüan from the Judicial, thus eliminating the anomaly of having both prosecuting and adjudicatory agencies under the same control.[12] The minister, Li Shêng-wu, is a well-known scholar in international law and an educational editor.[13]
Since the Japanese may be expected to foster the kind of Japanophile government which would help them most, it is interesting that their crusade against Sunyatsenism has turned to a quasi-Kuomintang structure for aid. The attempt does not, as yet, seem to be working, but the technique of the deception reveals the depth to which Kuomintang principles and practices have penetrated in the past generation. The Nanking incumbents make every effort to confuse their regime with the National Government at Chungking, even to the extent of copying the names of all minor offices, the forms of the stationery, and the organization of semi-public cultural associations. Chinese fashion, they confuse correct form and legitimacy. Given a long enough period, this technique may succeed. Meanwhile, the failure of the earlier traitor Governments, non-Nationalist in form, is a real indicium of the value of the Sunyatsenist pattern.
Along with the bewildering Doppelgänger effect which prevails in all other matters, there are two Kuomintangs. The major, recognized Kuomintang continues from Chungking. At Nanking Wang and his friends have organized the "Orthodox Kuomintang." This can scarcely be thought of as a Party fraction, so much has it dwindled. The overseas branches have been lost, and the populace in its own cities is savagely contemptuous. Wang Ch'ing-wei held a "Sixth Plenary Session of the C.E.C. of the Kuomintang" on August 29, 1939, and the affair seems to have been an uproarious farce, with all of Wang's friends bringing in random acquaintances in order to make up a quorum.[14] Since then, the vestigial party has been equipped with appropriate party organs, and is preparing to share its hypothetical power with an equally ad hoc Nanking People's Political Council. The Kuomintang leaders in Nanking, as a part of their application to the Chungking pattern, have even listed a considerable number of minor parties which are on their side of the Japanese army. Persistent, specific inquiry in Nanking failed to elicit the name of a single bona fide minor party representative, other than representatives of the Hsin Min Hui (ex-Provisional), the Ta Min Hui (ex-Reformed), the Republicans (Kung-ho Tang; Hankow; merged with the Orthodox Kuomintang), and the Chinese Socialist Party, which consists of the venerable Dr. Kiang Kang-hu. It is perhaps fair to conclude that the Nanking regime is not a Kuomintang regime because a sizable portion of the Kuomintang membership were weary of war, but because some few Kuomintang leaders found no other way to power, and because the Japanese had reluctantly decided that the simulacrum of the Kuomintang was the minimum requirement of any Chinese government.
Lastly, the lack of success of Wang Ch'ing-wei and his government is proof of the emergence of a state in China. This is not the first time that Wang has set up his own government. It is not even the first time that Chinese have accepted foreign aid in such enterprises. Wang thought, and presumably thinks, that he is playing the accepted game of Chinese politics; he is likely to find that he has committed a treason which is disastrously real to him. The non-support of his government is a clear proof of the rising race-national awareness among China's common millions.
Stripped of the confusion and distortion which have surrounded the Wang Ch'ing-wei secession, the rivalry between Wang and Chiang is not so very different from Benedict Arnold's departure from the then dubious American revolution. In this century we have revised our opinion of Benedict Arnold upward—in part—and Wang Ch'ing-wei may, perhaps, justly fit the same category. A gifted but maladroit and unhappy political leader had brought his misfortunes to the Japanese. They, faute de mieux, have accepted his aid. So far this has been ineffectual. Most probably, only a very long lapse of time or the truly catastrophic ruin of their opponents could place Wang and his group in a position of autonomous importance and power. On the world scene Wang stands halfway between Quisling and Pétain. A traitor to the emergent Chinese state, he demonstrates the ancient Chinese capacity to surrender, appease, and survive. Had he antagonists less formidable than Chiang and the infuriated masses, his Reorganized Government might secure actual power.
The Japanese finally recognized the Reorganized National Government of Wang Ch'ing-wei on November 30, 1940, after many months of delay. Art. I provided for mutual recognition, but added the provision that the two countries should "... at the same time take mutually helpful and friendly measures, political, economic, cultural, and otherwise ..." and in the future prohibit "... such measures and causes as are destructive to the amity between the two countries in politics, diplomacy, education, propaganda, trade and commerce, and other spheres." Art. II was an anti-Communist agreement leaving Japanese forces in North China indefinitely. Art. IV left the problem of Japanese evacuation to separate annexes. Art. VI provides "Economic cooperation," with the inescapable implications. By Art. VII Japan relinquishes extraterritoriality (in the future), but obtains the opening of all China to Japan.[15] These terms, which not only involve admission of Chinese defeat, but preclude any possible attempt of China to restore military, economic, or political independence, are the best that Japan has to offer. When one considers that even these are merely legal, whittled back to realism by protocols and annexes, and that they are made with Japan's Chinese friends, Japan appears incapable of ending the China incident. The Japanese do not know when to stop. Gauche in power politics, they are undone by greediness and inexperience.
The recognition is important only in that it assists Japan in escaping responsibility for action taken by or through the Chinese affiliates, while at the same time pinning Japan to the Chinese earth and committing the Empire to indefinite continuation of hostilities. If the Japanese achieved complete success in international power politics, there is a possibility that the Reorganized Government might remain as the functioning half-autonomous affiliate of Japan. Otherwise, Nanking can be nothing more than an ornamental, occasionally useful auxiliary to the Imperial Japanese Army, itself an uncomfortable Chinese government pro tem. Having ultimate authority, the Army cannot yet escape or delegate final responsibility.