Breakaway from Chongqing and Wang Jingwei meet in 1942From 1937 to 1938, Wang conducted a series of secret negotiations with
Konoe Fumimaro, who approached him in an effort to split the Chinese leadership and agreed in principle to a conditional Japanese troop withdrawal within two years, alongside a coordinated schedule of public statements. In December 1938, as the second-ranking leader of the Nationalist government and KMT to Chiang, Wang left Chongqing for Hanoi via Kunming, with the assistance of the Yunnan warlord
Long Yun. On December 22, Konoe issued a public statement on China policy, but under pressure from the hawkish military, the statement omitted the two-year withdrawal commitment. Despite his disappointment, Wang proceeded to issue a responding statement per their secret agreement, declaring his support for a negotiated settlement with Japan. He was subsequently expelled from the KMT and placed on a wanted list by the Chongqing government. Wang had originally planned to establish a rival government in southwestern China, relying on anti-Chiang warlords to provide a territorial base. However, Konoe's cabinet suddenly resigned in January 1939, and the warlords Wang had counted on, including
Long Yun,
Zhang Fakui, and
He Jian, did not respond as expected, leaving him stranded in Hanoi without political or military backing. With his break with Chiang now irreparable and British Hong Kong unwilling to offer protection, the Japanese government proactively sent representatives to Hanoi and offered Wang safe passage. Wang chose to proceed to then Japanese occupied Shanghai, where he entered into negotiations over the formation of a new government.
Wang Jingwei Regime On 30 March 1940, Wang became head of the
Reorganized National Government of the Republic of China (RNG), commonly known as the Wang Jingwei regime. Established at
Nanjing, the capital of the Republic which had fallen to Japan, the RNG nominally governed Japanese-occupied China excluding Manchuria, where Japan had already installed the separate
Manchukuo puppet state. The regime was a deliberate carbon copy of the institutional structure of the ROC government and KMT to assert its claim as the legitimate representative of China. From March 30, 1940 to November 28, 1940, the RNG also nominally recognized Lin Sen, then ROC president in Chongqing, as its own president. Lin refused to acknowledge this and denounced Wang. The RNG adopted the same blue sky and white sun flag of the ROC, though Japan imposed its use alongside a slogan banner reading "peace, anti-communism, and national reconstruction" (和平反共建國) to avoid friendly fire on the battlefield. The banner was removed on February 5, 1943 as part of the RNG's efforts to co-opt the CCP, when the RNG largely stopped anti-communist propaganda. On 15 June 1940, Wang published an article entitled "Chiang Kai-shek's 'Magnet War'", in which he articulated his justification for the peace movement. Wang summarized his position in three propositions, followed by an extended critique of Chiang's wartime strategy: • China and Japan ought properly to be friends, not enemies. • If, through temporary misfortune, China and Japan have become enemies, one must at all times strive to recover the path to friendship; once attained, it must never again be abandoned. • The
Konoe Statements had already provided a path by which enemies could be transformed into friends. Yet at this very moment Chiang Kai-shek continued to advocate his so-called "Magnet War", which held that China, vast in territory and numerous in population, could preserve its main forces, make use of its broad lands and masses, and entangle the Japanese army in a prolonged struggle. Hence the strategy of protracted war, scorched-earth warfare, and guerrilla warfare—Japan could occupy points and lines, but never the whole. Wang argued that such a strategy could never lead to final victory, as it depended only on two uncertain expectations: international assistance, and Japan's economic collapse. With the outcome of the European war still unknown and international assistance no longer reliable, prolonged war would inevitably exhaust China. While Japan might suffer injury from a long conflict, China, Wang asserted, would face only destruction. Drawing on historical analogy, Wang noted that the Qing armies entered the
Shanhai Pass into China proper and the Ming dynasty perished sixteen years later; the Southern Song maintained a precarious existence for one hundred and fifteen years before its fall. By contrast, the War of Resistance had lasted only three years—hardly a long duration by historical standards. He further argued that the higher an organism stands in the scale of life, the more concentrated its nervous system: a frog, when cut into pieces, may still leap, but such movement is without function. The slower the death, the more difficult and protracted the recovery. According to Wang, modern China was no longer comparable to the Song or the Ming. If it did not perish, all would be well; but once it perished, its economy, culture, and social foundations would perish with it, with no definite prospect of recovery. Although China proclaimed itself an agrarian nation, its annual grain output could not meet domestic needs. Only under conditions of stability, with coordinated political, scientific, and technical efforts, might recovery be possible. Scorched-earth and guerrilla warfare, by contrast, would destroy the countryside at its very roots. Wang concluded by likening such strategies to "swallowing arsenic in order to poison a tiger." The person who swallowed arsenic would certainly die, while the tiger that consumed the poisoned body might merely vomit and survive. If no path existed by which enemies could be transformed into friends, Wang argued, then all Chinese would have no choice but to swallow arsenic. Since such a path did exist, he maintained that even if personal sacrifice were unavoidable, the survival of the nation had to be sought first. Wang closed by stating that he spoke in accordance with his conscience and was prepared to bear responsibility for his words. In November 1940, the RNG signed the "Sino-Japanese Treaty", a document that has been compared with Japan's
Twenty-One Demands for its broad political, military, and economic concessions. In June 1941, Wang gave a public radio address from Tokyo in which he praised Japan and affirmed China's submission to it while criticizing the Kuomintang government, and pledged to work with the Empire of Japan to resist Communism and Western imperialism. The RNG took back the
French Concession and the
International Settlement of Shanghai in 1943, after Western nations agreed by consensus to abolish
extraterritoriality. The RNG was recognized by
Nazi Germany and
Kingdom of Italy. On 9 January 1943, following the
Pacific War, the RNG declared war on Britain and the United States, though it never committed any troops. Within the hour, Japan signed an agreement with the RNG transferring back the foreign concessions in Japanese-occupied territories and abolishing extraterritoriality. On 30 March, the RNG took over the Japanese concessions in Hangzhou, Suzhou, Hankou, and Tianjin; on 28 May, the
Kulangsu International Settlement in Xiamen; and on 5 June, the French concessions in Tianjin, Hankou, and Guangzhou. Wang died in Japan on 10 November 1944 and was succeeded by
Chen Gongbo. Following Japan's
surrender on 15 August 1945, the RNG dissolved the following day. == Death ==