CHAPTER VII

GOVERNING INSTITUTIONS OF THE JAPANESE AND PRO-JAPANESE

Facing the National Armies, and encircling the guerrillas, lie the Imperial Japanese forces. Frank agents of Imperial policy, they--unlike the Hitler-Mussolini contingents in Spain--make no pretense of subordination to their Chinese allies. Publicly and legally instruments of the Japanese state, their function is to destroy the Chinese government, to control and bend Chinese society to the Imperial purposes, and to protect Chinese who come forth as allies. The Japanese Empire is accordingly itself militarily extended to China; occasional, half-hearted attempts to deny the ensuing international complications have been sternly rejected by other great powers. The United States is not alone in insisting on full Japanese responsibility for everything that happens within the zone of Japanese control.

The position of the Japanese army as a governing engine, unacknowledged colonial machinery of a vast unassimilable colony, is not one relished by the Japanese people or by their leaders. Even in the case of Manchoukuo, the Japanese played a half-deception on themselves by pretending that they were extending the area of their influence, not the extent of their responsibilities. In part this distaste for overt control is based on the ease, cheapness and irresponsibility of indirect rule, employed in varying degrees by the British in Malaysia, the French in Indo-China, and the Soviets in Outer Mongolia. The Japanese like to think that they are aiding China, and incidentally themselves, to a New Order in East Asia--autarkic, stable, racially independent of the Whites, militarily secure. They do not like to contemplate the slaughter of innocent people for sheer conquest, or to consider the hopeless immensity of trying to overwhelm China. This complicates their position.[1]

[Footnote 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.]

For if the status of the Japanese army in China is clear, its purposes are not. The war aims of the Japanese are confused. Japan's goal is defined by overtones of the inexpressible--in economic motivation, once valid, no longer meaningful; in rationalizations so long reiterated that they become genuine; in the toss and push of world affairs, tempting Japan's leaders to this opportunism or that; in sheer sentiments of Japanolatry, Emperor-worship, racialism, archaic resentment against China, fellow-feeling for the Chinese orientals, and plain fear. A few Japanese know exactly what they want. The policy as a whole, the policy of the Imperial state, encompasses ill-assorted economic, political, strategic, racial and purely ideological objectives.

Even at the simple level of institutional control, the Japanese aim in China has been ill-defined. The restoration of the Manchu monarchy in Manchoukuo was an appeal to monarchist legitimism, to the Chinese past, and to common Confucianist values. When the Japanese came further into China, it was at first expected that they might install Mr. Chin P'u-yi as Emperor of all China, and rehabilitate him in the Palace-museum he left when a youth. Instead, they apparently attempted to create a chain of linked, reactionary, agricultural Chinese states, mixed in form--a federation of princes in Inner Mongolia, an Empire in Manchoukuo, republics elsewhere. They began by going as far as to create a dozen or more ephemeral pro-Japanese agencies--for a while one might legitimately have expected that a Nanking government follow a Peking government, a Hankow government, a Canton government, _ad infinitum_. But the trend was reversed when the Autonomous East Hopei Anti-Communist Government of Mr. Yin Ju-kêng was merged with the Peking regime, and--as pressure rose in Japan for a settlement of the China affair--a China-wide Japanophile government was first contemplated, and then established. The establishment of these institutions has not meant the abdication of the Imperial Japanese forces from the government of China. The pro-Japanese governments were and are civil auxiliaries of the Japanese army; their influence has in no case extended beyond the immediately effective reach of the Japanese infantry. Even in planning the long-range permanent settlement of Chinese affairs--on her own terms--Japan does not propose to withdraw all her troops from China.

THE JAPANESE ARMY AS A CHINESE GOVERNMENT

The Japanese army is the effective military government of occupied China. The Japanophile Chinese have a few troops, who function in close proximity to Japanese, and are in no sense a military counterweight to the invaders. The Japanese army is a large force, modern by somewhat second-rate standards, which requires the use of an effective communications system, modern economic auxiliaries such as shops, banks, post offices, and a variety of other services including hospitals, shrines, brothels, and crematories. These do not exist in China in forms suited to Japanese needs, nor could Japan afford to trust Chinese with the railways, the air services, the river commerce, the telegraphs, the food warehouses, and other most vital services. Thus, all over occupied China, the Japanese have installed a military government.

This government assumes direct responsibility for administering whatever seems necessary or profitable. Thus, in the city of Nanking, the best buildings are occupied by the Japanese, and the Wang government is profoundly gratified to be allowed to share some of them, obtaining second choice. The Japanese military, through protected corporations, supervises the operation of the railroads and airlines, but it does not even rely on the corporations to provide military transport, which is under direct army control. If a Chinese who has gone over to the Japanese and occupies a high position in their protected governments wishes to ride on a Chinese train between Shanghai and Nanking, he must buy a ticket from a Japanese clerk, show it to a Japanese conductor under the eyes of a Japanese guard, with Japanese detectives standing about, order a Sino-Japanese or pseudo-European meal in a Japanese dining car with Japanese waitresses from a menu printed in Japanese, and must pay, not in his own puppet-bank currency, but in special Japanese currency not acceptable in Japan.

To govern China, the Japanese Army has not developed beyond the usual devices of military rule. There are several reasons for this, primary among them the difficulty of governing Chinese at all. In a pluralistic society, such as China, command is largely superseded by negotiation, and the issuer of a command must be prepared for oblique thwarting. A Japanese who tells a Chinese to do something needs a bayonet with which to gesture; otherwise the Chinese, accustomed to circumventing, avoiding, or mocking authority, will disregard him. The Germans may order the Danes to make a two-way street a one-way street, and the Danes, accustomed to authority, will concur. When the Japanese promulgate a regulation, nothing short of massacre could ensure its absolute, unconditional obedience.

The language difficulty is another obstacle to direct Japanese government. A cultivated Japanese and Chinese may write classical Chinese to one another, and even the barely literate can scribble a few characters, the meanings of which may coincide; but the spoken languages differ from one another almost as much as English differs from either. To govern China directly would involve an enormous feat of language training, or an overnight re-shaping of the Chinese national character. Non-violent resistance, wilful but concealed negligence, lurking impertinence, consistent sloppiness, obsequiousness mingled with hatred--these Chinese tools of resistance, added to the language barrier, prevent any early Japanese hope of direct government. In years to come, if such come, Japanese trained in the Chinese language could supersede every Chinese above the level of foreman. A strong tendency in that direction is observable in Manchoukuo.[2]

[Footnote 2: Bisson, T. A., _Japan In China_, cited, _passim_, for many instances.]

The Japanese have abandoned direct government for the present. They would defeat their own purposes by assuming a task for which they have insufficient personnel, which would be very costly, and for which their army is ill-equipped in morale or technical ability. Difficult though it may be to employ pro-Japanese Chinese associates, it would be even more difficult to find Chinese now ready to profess direct loyalty to Japan. The only Chinese thus far Japanized are a number of Taiwanese (Formosans), whose island was ceded to Japan forty-six years ago. Chinese by blood and language, many of them have been reared in the third generation of Japanese rule. Some are fighting with the Chinese forces, but others, loyal to their lawful superiors, betray their fellow-Chinese. The Formosans are insufficient in number to govern China, or to provide Japan with even the most elementary foothold. The Japanese have hence turned to the peculiar form of indirect rule identified by the popular appellation, _puppet states_.

THE PROBLEM OF PUPPET STATES

Lawful, well-established indirect rule is a familiar feature of colonial practice. Constituting an internationally recognized legal relationship between the paramount power and the encompassed state, it has been applied extensively by the European powers in Africa and Asia. The Indian and Malay states, under Britain; Cambodia and Annam-Tonkin, under France; the East Indian sultanates, under the Netherlands--these offer a rich repository of precedent.

Unacknowledged intervention involving no legal relationship is also a known feature of modern politics. The practices of the United States in the Caribbean and Central America, particularly during the 1920's, are familiar, but the leading case of intervention without responsibility occurred in the relationship between the Soviet Union (first the R.S.F.S.R.) and the Outer Mongol People's Republic. Four features of what has since come to be called political puppetry are here made fully manifest: first, the establishment of the subordinate through the military aid of the superior; second, the continued effective control, unacknowledged in law, of the subordinate by the superior, coupled with economic coordination of the two; third, bilateral insistence upon the formal independence of the subordinate state; fourth, the claim of the superior that it _has not_ intervened, coupled with international non-recognition of the new relationship. The four features--establishment, coordination, fictitious independence and international nonentity--were clearly defined by Soviet political practice in Outer Mongolia and Tannu-Tuva long before Manchoukuo was created.

In addition to this neighborly example, the Japanese had another source, commonly ignored in current Western comment on the Far East, on which to draw: the quasi-familist Confucian international system which prevailed down to the time of men now living. Successive Chinese Empires developed a clear, viable scheme of senior-junior relationships controlling their intercourse with other organized governments. The other, smaller states acknowledged China to be the senior realm, conceding that the Chinese Emperor was lord of the world. They paid formal tribute to China; their envoys were not ambassadors but tributary agents, while Chinese envoys came as high commissioners, superior in rank to the courts to which they were accredited. This relationship (awkwardly termed "dependency," "vassalage," "tributary" status, or subjection to "suzerainty," in Western terms) could not be fitted into the Western state system. Involving the assertion of Chinese power without concurrent admission of Chinese responsibility, it was rejected by the Western states, and lapsed following the French seizure of Indo-China, the British occupation of Burma, and Korean independence under Japanese compulsion. Today, Japan's moral effusions concerning the New Order in East Asia and her digressions from Western patterns of international law in dealing with Manchoukuo and Wang Ch'ing-wei both indicate that the Japanese move freely, sincerely, and unconsciously in a frame of reference which, obvious to them, is invisible to Westerners. The Japan-Manchoukuo or Japan-Wang relationship could be aligned with the relationship which Li Hung-chang wished, sixty years ago, to maintain in Korea, and found significantly similar. The Japanese understood the position of juniority in international relations: to their intense humiliation, they confessed themselves China's junior during the Ashikaga period.[3]

[Footnote 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.]

A third meaningful context for Japanese practice is found in the basic, factual scheme of current international relations. No nation in an interdependent world is independent except by legal fiction; none could maintain its present level of civilization without the existence of the others. In these terms, legal independence fades as time passes, and cross-national power becomes more evident. Western imperialism was described by Sun Yat-sen as reducing China to a hypo-colony. More recently, first the Communists and then the Japanese have accused Chiang K'ai-shek of being the puppet of imperialism,[4] while occasional Leftists regard Chiang as even now a puppet of Japan[5] and a few citizens of imperialist states see him as a Communist puppet. The Germans treat Churchill as the puppet of Roosevelt, and Roosevelt as a puppet for international Jewry, while the present Stalinist line attributes puppetry to the entire catalogue of world political institutions save those made quick by its own infallibility. The fundamental point of such appraisal depends upon the _attribution_ of power relationships. Dependence is indisputable only if one government functions within the military framework of another, or if the personnel of the subordinate is drawn from the superior, or if clear and immediate causal relationships can be proved between the continued fiscal or military action of the sustaining government and the actual existence of the sustained government--although even this last leads to subjective interpretation.

[Footnote 4: Taylor, George, _The Struggle for North China_, cited, p. 66.]

[Footnote 5: Statements to the author, by persons not in Chungking.]

The term _puppet_ is not clear or apt, except in its most concrete sense--that of a person who is almost literally a marionette, whose utterances public and private are not his own, whose actions are supervised, and whose personal choice or opinion is not merely thwarted, but left out of consideration. Not all the Chinese who work with Japan are ventriloquists' dummies. The author talked freely with men who staked their careers on the inescapable success of the Japanese military, and who functioned in absolute conformity to general limits of policy and publicity laid down by the Japanese; these general limits were wide enough to permit a considerable degree of latitude of manners, and to allow variance in power and policy between the various Chinese under Japan. Use of the term _puppet_ in such cases is not clear. It implies a higher degree of effective Japanese control, and a greater pliability of Chinese cooperators, than can be shown to exist.

Since, however, the National Government is recognized, both by the majority of the Chinese people and by _all_ powers (including Germany and Italy) except Japan, to be the legitimate government of China, representing the Chinese nation, action against that government may properly and strictly be denominated treason; a person so acting may be called, formally, a traitor and, less formally but more descriptively, a Japanophile. Juridically the Chinese Soviet leaders were also traitors, but they were never Japanophile. This term gains by specificity what it loses through awkwardness.

THE PROVISIONAL AND REFORMED GOVERNMENTS

The Japanese have determined, assisted and promoted establishment of a number of friendly Chinese governments. Huapeikuo, a North China separatist state, went the way of the Francophile Rhineland Republic; it never got off the drafting board. The East Hopei Autonomous Anti-Communist Government of Mr. Yin Ju-kêng provided, within the North China demilitarized zone, a vast gateway for smuggling; when the National Government withdrew its forces from North China, the Japanese sought more pretentious aids to conquest. The Provisional Government was the first of these, following an Inner Mongol federation (_Mêng-liu Lien-ho Tzŭ-chih Chêng-fu_), affiliated with Manchoukuo; it was soon rivaled by the Reformed Government; and in March 1940, both were incorporated into the Reorganized National Government of Mr. Wang Ch'ing-wei. Other governments, sponsored by various quarreling departments of the Japanese military, or organized by Chinese confidence men, have appeared transiently and then disappeared.

Three points concerning Japanophile governments contribute to assessment of their chances; their origin and structure; their ideological (narrowly, propagandist) position; and their personnel. These points illustrate a significantly ambivalent trend: the Japanese have found their degree of freedom of action less than they had expected in Chinese politics, and to that extent have been defeated; they have also yielded to the demands of the situation, and have won, in part, in that their chances of success appreciate with realism.

The Provisional Government of the Republic of China (_Chung-hua Min-kuo Lin-shih Chêng-fu_) was formed at Peking on December 14, 1937, and ended by merger into the Wang Ch'ing-wei government on March 30, 1940, perpetuating a high degree of separatism under the subgovernmental style, North China Political Council. Like its predecessors and successors, it was created by a self-proclaimed committee organized with the consent and knowledge of the Japanese military, if not by the Japanese directly. The members of the Provisional Government were old, weak men, mostly adherents of the Anfu clique which had been Japanophile during and after the War of 1914-18. A few were even brought forth from more archaic strata, lonely adherents to the abandoned monarchy. The youngest were in their fifties and the leading officers were extreme conservatives--men of some intelligence and reputation, but obsolete.

The structure of the _Lin-shih_ Government was interesting in that it formed a republic of three committees, as follows:[6]

PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT (Committee)

| |---Political Council | |--------Administrative Executive Division (Committee)-----| Ministries and | Boards | |---Secretariat Legislative Division (Committee)---| | Judicial Division (Committee)------|

[Footnote 6: Nyi, P. C., "Plans for Economic and Political Hegemony in China," cited, p. 239. Compare this with the chart in George Taylor, work cited, p. 204. Professor Taylor's study covers the entire history of the Provisional Government, significantly aligned with that of its rival, the guerrilla Border Region.]

Structurally important features are: the absence of any method of election, direct or indirect, or of any ultimate source of "sovereign" personnel--the government having borne itself out of chaos, constitutionally a remarkable feat; the elimination of even nominal party control of government, or cameral legislation, or constituent assembly, these being hated vestiges of the Chinese and Western, but not Japanese, notion that popular sovereignty is to receive genuflections if not credence; and, most startlingly, the absence of a head! There was no President, Protector, Chief of State, Leader, or Dictator; the highest officer was the Shanghai banker, Mr. Wang K'ê-min, Chairman of the Executive Division (literally, _yüan_, but not in the Nationalist sense). The scope, succession and competence of this Provisional Government were as much in doubt as its origin.

Under the Provisional Government there flowered a new political philosophy, the _Hsin Min Chu I_ ("Principles of the Renewed People," "People-Renewing Principles," or "Principles of the New People"). The similarity of this principle to the _San Min Chu I_ is striking, but is no more than verbal. Propaganda under this credo resembled the Japanese-prepared state-philosophy of _Wang Tao_, the _kingly_ (as opposed to tyrannous and unnatural) _way_ of the Confucian canon, which--revered throughout the Far East, even by Sun Yat-sen--had been slanted to suit Manchoukuo through a Concordia Society (_Hsieh-ho-hui_). Each of the Sunyatsenist principles was refuted in detail, Pan-Asian racialism was encouraged, a class-war _between_ the nations was emphasized, and conservatism in thought, manners, and morals recommended. The Peking propaganda machinery was well-financed; the _Hsin-min-hui_ became the only tolerated political group. This _hui_ was headed by Mr. Miao Ping, a Kuomintang Party veteran whose political-bureau experience dated back to the days of Borodin. His renegation, never publicly explained, enabled Japan to issue a careful parody of the _San Min Chu I_. His assistant was a Japanese. Business associations, student groups, and educational administration were fitted into the pattern. The principles were not logically or systematically developed, but the key terms sufficed to coordinate opportunist appeals justifying the invasion, and opposing resistance, guerrillas, modernizations, and democracy. The _Hsin Min Chu I_ received no credence through conversion, faith, or loyalty. Operating on sound advertising principles, however, they served well even if they failed to command obedience but did unsettle allegiance to the other side, and ubiquitous iteration muddied thought.

The personnel of the Provisional Government included no actively important political leader. Many had been important long before; some were conspicuous in fields other than politics, and had even served on the semi-buffer Hopei-Chahar Political Council which was Chiang's last compromise with Japan. Japan's failure to obtain an effective political leader is important, for this lack eventually led to the acceptance of Wang Ch'ing-wei. The old age, past misfortunes, the motley reputations of the Provisional Government leaders attested a national sentiment sufficient to enforce unity beyond the reach of national law.

The Reformed Government of the Republic of China (_Chung-hua Min-kuo Wei-hsin Chêng-fu_) was established March 28, 1938. It lapsed simultaneously with its rival and colleague, the Provisional Government. There were several suggestive points of difference, although the chief difference was the fact that the Provisional Government operated from Peiping and the Reformed from Nanking. Both were national in form, a difficulty which was solved by the creation of a United Council to speak for all occupied China. This Council had only the power to issue news releases, which it did. Despite duplication of capitals and national form, the Nanking government revealed a slipping in the Japanese insistence on conformity to their ideas.

In structure, the Reformed Government was a mutilated copy of the National Government. It possessed five _yüan_, thereby continuing the Sunyatsenist constitutional system which Japan first sought to destroy. In doctrine, it took over the North China-Manchoukuo pattern, under the name _Ta Min Chu I_ (Principles of the Great People), with a party under the name _Ta-min-hui_. The walls of Nanking were covered with the emblem of the party, a red circular shield with a yellow crescent moon enclosing a white star. Quasi-educational work approximated that of the North; but the Japanese found the Yangtze sympathetic to the National Government and Kuomintang, and hence employed devices reminiscent of Chungking.

For Reformed Government personnel, the Japanese found individuals who were in most instances either as old as their Peiping colleagues, but less famous, or much younger, and relatively unknown. With the city of Shanghai only partially under its control, because local opportunists reached the tax offices first, the Reformed Government provided an outlet for persons who had felt themselves unjustly denied office, or slighted by the Kuomintang, or who had wrecked careers, once promising, by some ghastly misstep or crime and now saw a miraculous chance to return.

These new governments could not on principle claim the allegiance of their own clerks. The personnel, disloyal and of poor morale, was often so corrupt that no government services--needed by Japanese civilians and army alike--could be entrusted to them. Multiple taxes blocked Japanese trade in the area Japan had occupied. The Japanese realized that the United Council and the senescent politicians were not enough. Instead of abandoning interventionist governments, they tried a leader of genuine importance, considerable ability, and some following. His treason was Japan's last chance to govern China without assuming the task herself, risking a premature undertaking. To understand the moves and motives of Wang Ch'ing-wei it is necessary to regard his character and political history.

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.

[Footnote 7: _The Japan-Wang Ch'ing-wei Secret Agreements, 1938-1939-1940_, Shanghai, 1910; these also appeared in the _China Weekly Review_, January 27, 1940, p. 318; February 3, 1940, p. 341.]

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.

[Footnote 8: Statement of the Japanese Prime Minister, Prince Fumimaro Konoye, December 22, 1938, Jones and Myers, _Documents on American Foreign Relations, 1939-40_, Boston (World Peace Foundation), p. 299.]

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.

[Footnote 9: Ch'ên Lo died, and the only persons with any diplomatic experience had, in the past, been only casually connected with the Foreign Office.]

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.

[Footnote 10: See _The People's Tribune_ (Shanghai), XXIX, p. 130 _ff._, August 1940. This is the semi-official English organ of the regime; each issue contains a selection of public documents. It is edited by the volatile T'ang Leang-li. The other English-language journal is _The Voice of China_, fortnightly, Nanking, edited by Mr. L. K. Kentwell, a graduate of Oxford and Columbia Universities, Hawaiian-born of British and Cantonese parentage. The journal is spirited, and very anti-British.]

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]

[Footnote 11: Such a chart is found in _The People's Tribune_, XXIX (March 1940), p. 214, together with a list of incumbents on the following pages. The issue is headed by an editorial, "The National Government Returns to Its Capital" and "Peace, Struggle, and Save China" by Wang Ching-wei (_sic_). The official outline of the government is to be found in [Reorganized Government], _K'ao-shih Yüan Kung-pao_ (Public Gazette of the Examination _Yüan_), Nanking. Vol. I, No. 2 (June 1940), following p. 80.]

[Footnote 12: [Reorganized Government], _Ssŭ-fa Hsing-chêng Kung-pao_ (Public Gazette of the Ministry of Justice), Nanking, gives a well-edited résumé of the work of the Ministry and its policy in prosecutions.]

[Footnote 13: [_China Weekly Review_; J. B. Powell, editor], _Who's Who in China, Fifth Edition_, Shanghai, [1937], p. 145. For further information see the supplement on the pro-Japanese leaders in _Who's Who in China, Supplement to Fifth Edition_, Shanghai, [1940]. This presents a hall of notoriety for all the major Chinese leaders affiliated with the enemy. This _Who's Who_ is regarded by the present author as one of the most valuable sources on all Far Eastern politics. It is engrossingly good reading and entertainment, the pictures of the subjects being included in most instances. Behind these simple and short biographies, there lies more drama than Hollywood dare produce.]

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.

[Footnote 14: For an account of this see, "Wang's Farcical C.E.C. Session," _China At War_ (Hong Kong), III, No. 6, p. 57; January 1940.]

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.

[Footnote 15: The full text of the treaty is to be found in China Information Committee, _News Release_, December 2, 1940, together with the Generalissimo's comment. For a brief account, clearly interpreted, see Steiger, G. Nye, "Japan Makes Peace--with Wang," _Events_, Vol. 9, No. 49 (January 1941), p. 60-2. The Generalissimo's comment on the Nanking regime will also be found below, Appendix III (A), No. 7.]

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.