3.194 Fall and Rise of China: Wang Jingwei Regime

Last time we spoke about the Chiang Kai-Shek-Wang Jingwei divide. In the late 1930s, amid the Second Sino-Japanese War, tensions escalated between Chiang Kai-shek and Wang Jingwei. Following the Nomonhan Incident and Soviet-Japanese neutrality pact, Japan intensified its invasion of China. At the 1937 Mount Lu Conference, Chiang delivered a speech committing to resistance against Japanese aggression, though both leaders initially hoped for peace. However, Japan's advances, including the fall of Shanghai and the brutal Rape of Nanjing, displaced millions and relocated the government to Chongqing. Wang, disillusioned by Chiang's scorched-earth tactics—such as the devastating Yellow River flood and Changsha fire, which caused immense civilian suffering, joined a "peace faction" of intellectuals favoring negotiation. In December 1938, Wang defected from Chongqing, fleeing to Hanoi via Kunming to broker peace with Japan. An assassination attempt, likely ordered by Chiang, killed Wang's secretary Zeng Zhongming instead, deepening the rift.

#194 The Wang Jingwei Regime

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The assassination of Zeng Zhongming struck a severe blow to Wang Jingwei. Although Lin Baisheng had been stabbed in Hong Kong in January, Wang apparently did not foresee himself becoming a target. To him, Zeng's death signified that Chiang Kai-shek would no longer tolerate a potential rival to power. In mourning, on April 1, Wang Jingwei published a defiant piece titled "An Example" (Ju yige li) in the South China Daily News. Drawing on Zeng's final words, he argued that a peaceful settlement was not something Wang proposed alone, but a result of a consensus reached at the highest levels of the national government. He referenced the December Hankou minutes in which Trautmann's mediation was discussed. He asserted that the minutes were only one of many covert negotiation instances and, for the sake of national interests, he would reveal no further details. He contended that Konoe's conditions could similarly underpin peace, especially now that a larger portion of China had fallen. He argued that a Sino-Japanese total war would be mutually destructive and must end for both nations to survive. He hoped Zeng's blood would become a bright torch for the "peace movement."

This article proved deeply embarrassing for Chiang Kai-shek. Wu Zhihui quickly wrote a rebuttal, accusing Wang of leaking government secrets and falsifying the minutes. However, the original minutes were not released to support Wu's claim. Henceforth, any pretence of civility or understanding between the two camps was lost. This hostility meant that Chongqing's path to peace through negotiation was closed. If Wang ever sought to broker peace between Chongqing and Tokyo, the publication of this article burned that bridge, making his course of action increasingly irreversible.

On the Japanese side, the Hiramuma Cabinet, previously uncertain about how to handle Wang, now felt compelled to protect their new asset. Two days after the incident, the Five Ministers Conference decided to send Kagesa Sadaaki and Inukai Takeru to Hanoi immediately. Inukai, a congressman and the son of assassinated prime minister Inukai Tsuyoshi, carried with him the grim memory of a frenzied public cheering for his father's killers, serving as a sobering counterweight to militant nationalism.

Zeng's death also inaugurated a bloody cycle of killings and retaliation. Shen Song, Wang Jingwei's nephew, was assassinated in August in Hong Kong. Wang and his followers felt compelled to protect themselves. Lacking military backing, they turned to the secret police, establishing the notorious spy agency known as "No. 76," named after its Shanghai headquarters at 76 Jessfield Road. It recruited the city's worst elements and was led by the defected BIS agent Ding Mocun and Central Bureau of Investigation and Statistics agent Li Shiqun. Both men had defected to the Japanese and were handed over to Wang's faction, which thus wielded limited control over them. Spy violence in Shanghai persisted throughout the war, infamous for its brutality and shifting allegiances.

Wang Jingwei attempted to erect a martyr's cult around Zeng Zhongming within the RNG. Beginning in 1942, the propaganda ministry in Nanjing held annual memorials on the anniversary of Zeng's death. This date sat between Sun Yat-sen's death (March 12) and the RNG's founding (March 30), and it became part of the RNG's foundational narrative that the Wang regime promoted. Yet the Zeng cult seemed to matter most to Wang Jingwei himself. After Wang's death in November 1944, the propaganda ministry quietly discontinued the Zeng anniversary service, though Sun Yat-sen's death continued to be mourned and the RNG's founding was still celebrated in March 1945, five months before the regime fell.

The journey from Hanoi to Nanjing was long and winding, and Wang Jingwei eventually emerged at the far end as both an emblem and an enigma. To his followers and sympathizers, he was a cult figure who single-handedly saved half of China from total subjugation, likened to a bodhisattva who descended into Hell to rescue tortured souls. To others, his name became a byword for treason. The resistance ultimately gained unity through its hatred of traitors. For the Japanese government, Wang's role and value evolved with the war's shifting dynamics, at times seeming to be an asset, a puppet, an enemy, and a partner all at once.

After months of courtship, Kagesa Sadaaki and Inukai Takeru became the first Japanese agents to meet Wang in person. On April 16, they arrived in French Indochina with forged passports aboard a rented civilian vessel, the Hikkōmaru. They found Wang entangled in a fresh scandal. Eleven days earlier, Chongqing's Dagongbao published an alleged secret agreement that Gao Zongwu claimed Wang had brokered in late February. In this plan, Wang proposed forming a GMD collaborationist organization with branches in key Japanese-occupied cities. When the Japanese army moved toward Xi'an, Yichang, and Nanning, Wang would make a statement to "take responsibility for peace," while Long Yun and other local warlords would respond to the call. A new national government under Wang would be established in Nanjing on October 10, 1939, creating a unified government over all of China (excluding Manchukuo) and making Japan its ally in East Asia. All of these activities would be funded by the Japanese government. The plan provoked an uproar, with critics accusing Wang of "selling the nation." Gao Zongwu was suspected of leaking the plan, and Wang denied that the agreement existed. Gao accused the Japanese of leaking a forged plan to sow further division between Chongqing and Wang. Wang's supporters were deeply divided. Gao later claimed he came to prefer the French option, citing Japan's insincerity. Chen Gongbo suggested Wang remain in Hong Kong first to recover from Zeng Zhongming's death before going overseas. Zhou Fohai and Mei Siping favored international concessions in Shanghai. Kagesa and Inukai's mission was to bring Wang into Japan's grasp.

On April 18, through Wang's Japanese-language secretary Zhou Longxiang, the Japanese agents met him for the first time. Wang Jingwei, dressed in a traditional Chinese-style long white robe, impressed them with his characteristic poise and sincerity, as he often did with visitors. It was not the first time his personal charm helped him escape danger. If in 1910 he avoided death as a byproduct of Prince Su's favor, in the following decades he weaponized his intimate charisma. These agents, moved by Wang's apparent altruism and sincerity, eventually played a peculiar role as intermediaries between the Japanese government and Chinese collaborators. The Umē Kikan "Plum Agency" was founded on August 22, 1939, in Shanghai under Kagesa's leadership and was seen as a puppet master guiding the RNG's fate. Yet it often fought on behalf of the collaborators with the Japanese cabinet to secure better terms. Kagesa Sadaaki, initially an advocate of aggressive strategy, especially in Manchuria, was removed from his post as supreme military advisor at Nanjing in May 1942 by the new prime minister, Tojo Hideki, who deemed him "too soft toward China." He was reassigned to Manchuria and eventually to Rabaul. In the shadow of illness and death, he produced a memoir in December 1943 to atone for having failed Wang's trust. In truth, perhaps because of Kagesa's sympathy, Wang remained cautiously optimistic about Japan's intentions, unable to disengage from negotiations even as conditions deteriorated.

Wang Jingwei chose Shanghai as the destination, but he refused to board a Japanese ship or reside in the Hongkou concession, preferring other autonomous international concessions to avoid appearances of patronage. Unfortunately, the 750-ton vessel rented from the Indochina government nearly foundered in a storm. In Hainan, Wang and his entourage were rescued by the 5,000-ton Hikkōmaru. On May 6, they finally arrived in Shanghai aboard a Japanese ship. For security reasons, Wang had to stay in the Hongkou District for three weeks before moving to 1136 Lane Yúyuan Road, a site within the expanded, unofficial French concession. This episode became another public relations setback.

After reaching Shanghai, on May 28 the Wang group presented the Japanese government with a "Concrete Plan to Solve the Current Situation." Key proposals included: convening a GMD national congress to preserve orthodoxy; calling a multiparty central political conference to legitimize a reorganization of the national government and approve personnel choices; founding a national government in Nanjing and dissolving existing collaborationist regimes to signal national unity. Three days later, Wang flew to Japan by navy plane to meet Hiranuma in person, accompanied by eleven followers including Zhou Fohai, Mei Siping, and Gao Zongwu. It was his first visit to Japan in three decades, aside from occasional stopovers. When he left Japan in 1910, many Japanese intellectuals and politicians supported China's modernization and backed its Nationalist revolution morally and financially. Now, with such goodwill scarce, he hoped to appeal to Japan's rational self-interest.

In Tokyo, a June 6 cabinet meeting concluded that the new Chinese government would comprise Wang, the retired strongman Wu Peifu, established collaborationist regimes, and a reformed Chongqing regime; the foundation date would be set by Japan. The plan called for collaboration under a divided governance framework, and the GMD could continue only if it pledged friendship to Japan, recognized Manchukuo, and committed to anti-communism. The document's tone suggested trouble for Wang's visit, and the gap between each side's demands seemed insurmountable. Over the next ten days, Wang held marathon meetings with Hiranuma, cabinet members, and Prince Konoe. He briefed his followers daily, appearing increasingly despondent. He suggested Japan's best option was to strike a peace deal with Chiang Kai-shek; the second option was peace via a new national government under Wang, for which he demanded: an army of about half a million, immediate withdrawal of Japanese forces after his government's foundation, non-interference in China's internal affairs, immediate recognition of his government by Japan, Germany, and Italy, a three-hundred-million-yen loan, and administrative control over North China. Japanese officials listened politely but added numerous conditions. Frustrated, Wang began to walk away. Alarmed, the Japanese cabinet made some concessions on June 16, and the "Concrete Plan" was approved, though it still insisted on divided governance and did not address the crucial issue of a military withdrawal. On June 18, Wang departed Japan for Tianjin.

This negotiation round was only the prelude. Beyond questions of jurisdiction, military occupation, and economic renationalization, Wang insisted on preserving an ostensibly unified "national government," including its official doctrine (the Three Principles) and the nationalist flag, and he pressed for annexation of existing collaborationist regimes in Beiping and Nanjing. This was a daunting task, as each regime had a different patron. After the fall of Nanjing, the North China Area Army instructed Wang Kemin to establish a provisional government in Beiping. Liang Hongzhi was recruited by the Central China Area Army to lead the Reformed Government in Nanjing, founded on March 28, 1938. Both were Beiyang loyalists, and their regimes used the Five-Color Beiyang flag, an anti-GMD symbol. Asking them to subordinate themselves to a "latecomer" and old rival proved difficult. Wang's aim was thus to reassert GMD political authority over occupied territories. However, the idea of creating a client government that would conflict with Chongqing split Wang's followers and even some Japanese sympathizers. Gao Zongwu, Nishi Yoshiaki, and Matsumoto Shigeharu opposed the plan. Given Gao Zongwu's growing pessimism, Japan's eventual negotiating partner leaned more toward the optimistic Zhou Fohai.

Wang sought legitimacy to give his future government the appearance of autonomy, despite Japan's backing. As historian David Serfass observed, aligned with Sun Yat-sen's concept of "political tutelage," a state-formation process must be initiated by the ruling party. Thus, reorganizing an "orthodox" GMD in occupied China became a prerequisite for reconstituting the state's legal framework in Nanjing, enabling the new regime to claim legitimate authority vis-à-vis Chongqing. On August 28, 1939, the Sixth National Congress of the GMD was held in Shanghai. With most Reorganization Clique members declining to join, CC Clique members within Wang's circle recruited locally, and thirty-six CC Clique members in Shanghai endorsed Wang, giving his faction dominance at the congress. This foreshadowed a future RNG split between the Mansion Clique (gongguan pai) around the Wang couple and the CC Clique around Zhou Fohai. The communique did not reject resistance outright but criticized Chiang's methods, arguing that Wang's negotiations had already achieved the goal of national resistance—peace. Among other resolutions, the congress revised the GMD charter, abolished the authoritarian zongcai system, elected Wang as chairman of the Central Executive Committee, and redefined the highest principles as the Three Principles, anticontainment of communism, and friendship with Japan and Manchukuo. Civil liberties, such as freedom of speech and assembly, were protected, though communists were excluded. The congress promised to convene a national assembly and promulgate a constitution once peace was achieved. Importantly, it opened the door for other parties to join the Central Political Committee, signaling Wang's attempt not only to create a rival "peace" government to Chongqing but also to establish a competing, if imperfect, democratic framework. For the next year and a half, constitutionalism became a central objective in the Wang faction's political program.

Wang's communique proposed a remedy for the separatist client regimes. On September 20 in Nanjing, an agreement was announced that nominally ended GMD single-party rule and established a multiparty coalition government. A Central Political Conference (a semi-parliament) would be formed, comprising one-third GMD members, one-third former Beiyang collaborators, and one-third small parties or independents. In practice, this tripartite power sharing was never fully realized in the RNG.

The negotiations with Japan stretched into a lengthy verbal marathon that persisted for months. As Gerald Bunker noted, the Wang peace movement depended on convincing both sides to accept a conciliatory posture from the other, a plan doomed from the start. During the Shanghai negotiations, Wang sought an agreement with Japan that would give real substance to his "Peace Government." But Japan's demands were excessive. To address the chaos Japan's China policy had created, Konoe established the Kōain (Asia Development Board) to coordinate all government activities and economic initiatives in China, reporting directly to the prime minister. Its staff came from across ministries—Foreign Affairs, Finance, Army, and Navy, making it a natural battlefield for power struggles. Following changes at the General Staff Office, Kagesa, then an Army officer, found himself suddenly in charge of the entire "peace movement," a coveted position. When he and Inukai were shown the secret Kōain draft that would form the basis for future talks with Wang, they were stunned by its strict demands. The draft was presented to the Wang camp on November 1 in Shanghai, provoking astonishment and confusion by imposing harsher terms than Gao Zongwu's deal a year earlier, or even than Konoe's latest statement. Kagesa adopted a duplicitous stance: each night, Inukai privately met with Zhou Fohai to seek more lenient terms, and the next morning Kagesa would propose those terms for the next round.

Tao Xisheng warned that Japan planned to slice China into thin rings, each attached to Japan's core interests. According to Tao, Wang broke into tears, declaring, "If Japan can conquer China, let it try. It cannot, so it wants me to sign its plan. This document cannot be an indenture to sell China. China is not something I can sell. At most, my signature would be an indenture to sell myself." The Wang couple considered halting talks and seeking refuge in France. Hearing this, Kagesa hurried to see Wang. Tears stained the page where Wang was taking notes, and his words moved Wang, who privately admitted that Kagesa might be sincere after all. The next day, Kagesa returned to Tokyo to report Wang's discontent, and the France option was again shelved.

Just as Wang weaponized his sincerity, Kagesa's genuine wish to end the war through Wang Jingwei was instrumentalized by the Kōain. The latter appeared torn between reason and greed. Moreover, who claimed the war in China was unwinnable? Like Wang, the Japanese believed in the neo-Confucian ideal of a thoroughly cultivated, invincible self, a conviction echoed in their wartime sacrifices. Similarly, Wang viewed the negotiations as a contest of moral principles. Tao Xisheng described it as "drinking poisoned wine." He took a sip, found it poison, and nearly died; Wang concluded he might as well finish the cup. Kagesa's plea to improve terms was rejected by Tokyo. He returned a changed man, stiff, overbearing, and determined to ram the demands down his counterpart's throat. But just as talks reached another breaking point, Kagesa abruptly altered course, overstepped his authority, and made a few quick concessions on key issues, ending the discussion.

Compared with the original plan, the December 30, 1939 agreement, titled "Principles of Adjusting the New Sino-Japan Relationship," introduced changes on eleven points, spanning from substantive to symbolic matters. The Great Wall line separating the Mongolian Autonomous Zone from North China was placed under the Wang regime's jurisdiction; Chinese administrative rights over Japanese military areas were reaffirmed; a two-year timeline for total troop withdrawal from occupied Chinese territories after peace was achieved was established; and Manchukuo was not listed as a separate entity. The future Wang regime was granted greater latitude in economic policy and personnel appointments, provided it guaranteed Japan's wartime supply.

The dispute over a naval base in Hainan became a focal point of contention. Japan's navy representative, General Sugahiko Jirō, clashed with Chen Gongbo in a contentious exchange. This time, Wang Jingwei compelled Chen to concede. Even Inukai lamented that Wang made concessions too readily, since the Hainan base symbolized a failure of Japan's restraint in venturing into the Southern Pacific. The concession jeopardized not only Wang's cause but also Japan's fate. According to Inukai, even if the conditions needed to reach a credibility threshold of 60 points to avoid rendering Wang a traitor, Kōain's original draft scored at best 30; through coordinated efforts with Kagesa, they improved it to 57 or 58, still short of the credibility gap Gao Zongwu called crucial, between saving the nation and selling it.

Gao Zongwu and Tao Xisheng declined to participate in the signing ceremony. Gao felt alienated from the movement he had helped initiate and his ties with the Japanese had become strained. Thinking he faced mortal danger, he persuaded Tao to flee Shanghai together. In mid-November, Gao secretly copied Kōain's terms in negotiation. The photocopies were published in the Hong Kong Dagongbao on January 22, 1940, fueling the impression that the final signed agreement had been reached and undermining the Wang faction's public narrative of securing genuine peace and national independence. An editorial decried it as "the ultimate fulfillment of the Japanese militarists' pipe-dreams! The greatest betrayal in the history of China and the world!" A national uproar ensued.

The Wang camp, while moving toward Qingdao to build consensus with established collaborators, was blindsided. Zhou Fohai swore to "kill these two animals." For the embryonic Wang regime, appearances mattered as much as substance. But with the leak of this damning document, the illusion of sovereignty was irreparably shattered. Nevertheless, Wang resisted his followers' urge to publish the final secret terms containing the Japanese concessions, a restraint that impressed Imai.

There was a hopeful note amid the media backlash. The Japanese cabinet was forced to approve the limited concessions that Kagesa had secured, particularly regarding troop deployments and railroad rights. Yet Tokyo remained stubborn in insisting that a yellow triangle pennant bearing the words "peace, anticommunism, nation-building" be appended to the flagpole beneath the national flag. The yellow pennant became a powerful emotional flashpoint for the Wang camp. For them, this unsightly symbol embodied the future character of their regime. On March 4, less than three weeks before the RNG's founding, Zhou Fohai threatened to delay the process indefinitely unless the pennant was removed. In the end, they capitulated on that point as well. On March 30, the Blue Sky White Sun flag reappeared over the occupied, ruined city of Nanjing, with a yellow triangle pennant affixed to the pole. Whenever possible, the RNG tried to display the national flag without the pennant, making such images rare in surviving visual records.

Inukai observed that Wang may have faced such harsh terms because many in the cabinet and in Kōain were reluctant to negotiate with him. They regarded the RNG as a temporary fix, reserving the most favorable peace terms for Chiang Kai-shek. Konoe's remark that he would never negotiate with Chiang was an unfortunate misstep that his successors struggled to correct. Wang took that stance to heart, wasting political capital and ultimately his life. Inukai noted that in 1941, when Konoe negotiated with the United States to avert war in the Pacific, the conditions offered regarding China bore a striking similarity to what he had promised Gao Zongwu in 1938. Yet this time, Japan refused to accept them. Konoe resigned again; Tojo Hideki succeeded him, and the Pacific War erupted. Had Konoe kept his promises, the bloodshed of the war might have been avoided.

Wang Jingwei returned to a changed Nanjing, a provincial city never fully modernized, ravaged by war and burdened by occupation. On March 19, 1940, Wang led a future cabinet faction to pay respects at Sun Yat-sen's Mausoleum. It was a desolate spring day. Through cutting wind and rain, a small, solemn group climbed the 392 steps to the hall. Wang stood in the main hall, raised his eyes to the 4.6-meter marble statue, and tears streamed down his cheeks. As he read Sun's testament, the hall echoed with hushed sobs. It was a sorrowful prelude to the Wang regime.

Optimistic Zhou Fohai saw a brighter sign as they exited the mausoleum, noting that the sun appeared. On the same day, however, he learned that the RNG's foundation would be delayed: the Japanese cabinet was eager to push another peace initiative with Chiang, and Imai had gone to Hong Kong to meet a Chongqing representative. Zhou was annoyed, but Wang agreed to proceed. Imai's contact, who presented himself as Song Ziwen's brother turned out to be a BIS agent whose sole aim was to obstruct the Wang faction. The negotiations stalled, and the RNG's founding finally took place on March 30, 1940. An exhilarated Zhou proclaimed the day the happiest of his life, claiming nothing felt more fulfilling than realizing one's ideals. With Wang's growing passivity, Zhou effectively became the RNG's most powerful figure, controlling administration, finances, military, and policing. This fostered resentment within the Wang faction and helped spawn the Mansion Clique around Chen Bijun, Mei Siping, and Lin Baisheng.

The RNG was founded on a veneer of legitimacy. Lin Sen, the GMD elder, was elected president, but since he remained in Chongqing and was unlikely to join the RNG soon, Wang Jingwei served as acting president, in addition to his roles as head of the Executive Yuan and the Military Council. The regime claimed nominal sovereignty over border regions and imagined sovereignty over parts of the interior. Nanjing's influence over North China was minimal, with that area administered by the semiautonomous North China Political Council under Wang Yitang, a Beiyang bureaucrat. Although established as China's rival national regime to Chongqing, the RNG did not receive formal recognition from Japan. Japan did, however, agree to send an ambassador to present credentials to Wang, though the implications remained vague. On this and other issues, Japan neither denied nor endorsed the RNG's sovereignty. The collaborators noticed Japan's duplicity. Rather than appoint a Japanologist as foreign minister, Wang named Chu Minyi, whose foreign language skills were French, a choice France refused to recognize, making the appointment rather provocative.

From late 1940 into 1941, the United States grew more involved as the war intensified. Chongqing stood firm, while Japan found itself bogged down. Eventually, Japan abandoned hopes of peace with Chongqing. Despite his reluctance, Wang formally assumed the RNG presidency on November 29, 1940. The next day, he and the Japanese ambassador Abe Nobuyuki exchanged a "Basic Treaty" that formally recognized the RNG as China's national government. Zhou Fohai regarded this as a fresh start: previously, their aim had been to persuade Chongqing to negotiate for peace; now, he hoped Wang and Chiang would reach a tacit understanding of a dual approach—one regime aligned with the Axis, the other with the Allies—so that China would emerge victorious. Chongqing, however, did not share Zhou's optimism; on the same day, it placed a bounty on Wang's head.

A consistent thread in Wang's political vision was constitutional democracy, pursued both as an ideal and as a pragmatic method to distinguish himself from rivals, chiefly Chiang Kai-shek. In the Return to the Capital Manifesto (March 30, 1940), Wang declared the regime's core aims as peace and constitutionalism. Peace followed Konoe's December 1938 "Adjustment of the Sino-Japanese Relationship" blueprint—neighborliness, joint anti-communism, and economic cooperation. Constitutionalism drew on the RNG's Sixth National Congress in Shanghai (1939). The RNG presented itself as both a peacemaker and a champion of constitutional democracy, opposing dictatorship (Chiang) and opposing the CCP's class warfare doctrine. A Constitutionalism Implementation Committee was founded on June 27, 1940, and by September adopted a plan to convene a national assembly on January 1, 1941. Yet actual liberal democracy would undermine Wang's and the GMD's leadership, and by August 1940 Wang declared that neither direct nor representative democracy suited China's current conditions, advocating instead for "democratic centralism" under a GMD-led coalition with smaller parties. That year, urgent tasks, ratifying the Basic Treaty with Japan, establishing a charter for the East Asian League Movement, and creating a Central Reserve Bank, pushed constitutional reform onto the back burner, delaying the national assembly indefinitely and shelving the constitutional program.

Another source of legitimacy for the RNG was Sun Yat-sen's cult, which it continued to promote as a civil religion. Although Wang recognized Sun's fallibility and disagreed with him at times, Sun's deification aided both Wang and Chiang. The Three Principles of the People were reintroduced in schools; Sun's portrait appeared on office walls and currency; a bronze statue was erected in Nanjing; his testament was read at meetings; and memorial observances were held on Sun's birthday and death. The rivalry between Wang and Chiang over legitimacy through piety was evident in Chongqing's conferment of the title "Father of the Nation" on Sun on March 21, 1940, just before the RNG's founding.

In terms of diplomatic relations, the RNG received recognition from Nazi Germany (reluctantly), fascist Italy (enthusiastically), and Franco's Spain. France, by contrast, declined to follow suit, mainly because of its delicate position balancing interests in China and Indochina, and secondly because its China-diplomatic corps was split between officials loyal to Vichy and supporters of Free France. Among the RNG's foreign relations, Manchukuo proved the most thorny. Despite the RNG's hesitant acknowledgment of Manchukuo's statehood, cautious rhetoric was used to avoid public outrage. On May 4, 1942, Wang left Nanjing for a state visit to Manchukuo, accompanied by Zhou Zuoren. On May 8, he finally met Puyi, who likely did not forget that the man before him once sought to murder his father. Regardless of sentiment, the arrangements had been set in advance with Japanese approval, leaving little to chance.

The Basic Treaty, effective at the end of 1940, limited Japanese military zones to Mongolia and parts of North China, ceding central and southern China largely to the RNG. It agreed to rescind Japanese extraterritorial rights and settlements, effective immediately. The two-year grace period before total Japanese evacuation would begin immediately upon the war's end, rather than after a vaguely defined "recovery of peace." The cap on RNG troop numbers was lifted, granting the RNG more freedom to build its own police and army. Japanese advisers were confined to technical and military roles, with functions defined by the Chinese authorities. Although this fell far short of true independence that Wang Jingwei sought, concessions were made to strengthen the RNG and to help Japan as a wartime partner. The RNG's forces were not deployed in frontline combat against Chongqing or in Japan's Pacific war, but primarily to suppress growing communist influence in occupied areas. Under the RNG, economic activity in the occupied areas appeared to some extent normal, at least until early 1943, when a "command economy" was introduced to monopolize commodities as Japan's Pacific venture grew desperate. Life in occupied China, however, remained noticeably more comfortable than in "free China," fueling resentment when resistance fighters returned.

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Wang established the Reorganized National Government (RNG) in Nanjing in 1940, after grueling talks yielding harsh Japanese terms, including limited sovereignty and a yellow pennant on the national flag. The RNG sought legitimacy through a GMD congress, constitutional promises, and Sun Yat-sen's cult, but gained only Axis recognition and faced Chongqing's hostility, ultimately serving as Japan's wartime puppet.