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.