Thesis:Saving The Nation Indirectly Or Betraying:the Collaboration Of Wang Jingwei Regime In An International Version

From the July7Incident of1937to the surrender of Japan in1945, the Second Sino-Japanese War lasted for eight years, and one third country’s territory of China was occupied by Japanese troops. However, there were still billions of people living in the occupied area and they had to try their best to survive during the war, whose lives needed to be protected by a new regime. Though when the nationalism swept across China, lots of collaborating regimes appeared, such as the Wang Jingwei regime.On December19th,1938, Wang Jingwei went to Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. On December29th, Wang Jingwei published "The Uppermost Speech on National Defense Delivered to the Central Standing Committe" and "The Yan Telegram". In1940, supporting by the Japanese invading forces in China, the Reorganized National Government of China was established in Nanjing, whose leaders including Wang Jingwei, the subchairman of the government, and the president of the Executive Yuan, as well as Zhou Fohai, Chen Gongbo, Li Shiqun and Lin Bosheng. This complicated and humiliated occupying history was considered as the toughest and the most paradoxical issue in modern Chinese history. However, the Wang Jingwei Regime was not the only collaborating regime all over the world. There were lots of collaborating regimes in areas occupied by German in Europe, such as the Vichy Regime, whose ideology was familiar with the ideology of Wang Jingwei Regime.Besides the introduction and conclusion, this study consists of three chapters. The Chapter One discussed the term "hanjian" in traditional Chinese culture, then it discussed the "Yellow Racialism" and the "Pan-Asianism", as well as the fears of communist of the main leaders of the Wang Jingwei Regime, to observe the origin of collaborating thoughts of Wang Jingwei and his followers.The Chapter Two mainly talked about the Three Principles of the People. In order to build authority of the new regime, Wang Jingwei tried his best to describe himself as the only orthodox and legitimate successor of Sun Yat-sen’s thoughts.Then the chapter compares the nationalism of Chinese collaborators and French collaborators, which places collaboration in a wider, transregional version. The Chapter Three analyses the communication between Wang Jingwei Regime and the other foreign collaborating regimes, and the collaborators of Wang Jingwei Regime’s appropriation of the other collaborating regimes all over the world, which means that the collaboration of Wang Jingwei regime was not isolated in the Second World War.This study analyses the collaborator’s ideology of Wang Jingwei Regime both from a horizontal version and a portrait version. From the portrait version, the study discussed the origin of "Yellow Racialism" and "Pan-Asianism", as well as the fears of communist party, both of which influenced the collaborator deeply. From the horizontal version, the study makes a comparison of collaborators both in China and in France, which points that Wang’s collaboration was not isolated in the Second World War. Also, the study emphasized the affection of concept of "nation-state"to the two different collaborating regimes. The Wang Jingwei Regime quoted the Vichy Regime in their propaganda strategy to strengthen the authority of Wang Regime. However, because of collaborating with invading enemies and totalitarian domination in the occupied areas, both of the two regimes were denied by the victors in the trials after the war. The Chinese government also appreciated the case of Petain, which not only heightened the international influence of Vichy regime, but also gave new meaning to the term of Hanjian.The defense history of Chinese people emphasized too much "resist and sufferings" for a long time, which was under the black-white dual narrative of nationalism. The collaboration in occupied areas was ignored or was judged by purely morality principles, which lacked of compassion in the historical context. This study tries to put Wang Jingwei Regime in a wilder historical context to re-discuss and re-understand collaborators, to revise the traditional dual historiography of nationalism, to analysis the issue of collaboration dispassionately and objectively, and to give a new multiple historical version to collaboration in a international background.