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.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] An excellent bibliography, providing further references to the Japanese side of the war, is found in Borton, Hugh, et al., A Selected List of Books and Articles on Japan, Washington, D. C., 1940. An outstanding short discussion is Colegrove, K. W., Militarism in Japan, Boston (World Peace Foundation), 1936.
[2] Bisson, T. A., Japan In China, cited, passim, for many instances.
[3] It is unfortunate that work on the nature of old Far Eastern international relations has no more than just begun. Descriptions from the viewpoint of Western international law often possess the unreal lucidity of dialectical materialism or of theosophy, since it is necessary to read into Chinese and other Far Eastern political institutions the characteristic features of a European invention—the juridical, omnicompetent, secular, territorially limited state. See Djang Chu, The Chinese Suzerainty, unpublished doctoral dissertation, the Johns Hopkins University, 1935; Nelson, Melvin Frederick, The International Status of Korea, 1876-1910 unpublished doctoral dissertation, Duke University, 1939, particularly Part I, "The International Society of Confucian Monarchies" and Part II, "Korea in Conflicting Societies of Nations"; both attempt to reconstruct the working Asiatic theory in terms comprehensible to the West. Clyde, Paul H., United States Policy Toward China, Durham, 1940, Section XXIV, gives a succinct statement and relevant American public documents.
[4] Taylor, George, The Struggle for North China, cited, p. 66.
[5] Statements to the author, by persons not in Chungking.