After their victory at Hankou, the Japanese concentrated their attention on consolidating gains in occupied China, including strengthening their puppet regimes. In accordance with the statement issued on 16 January 1938, Japan’s new goal in China was to establish their own Chinese government to replace that of Jiang Jieshi. In December 1938, Japan succeeded in recruiting one of the most senior figures of the Guomindang, Wang Jingwei, to serve in their collaborationist government. After a series of negotiations, Wang Jingwei was made head of the Reorganized Government of China on 30 March 1940.
One of the greatest issues that the Japanese government was having in its move to establish a servile puppet government in China was finding an appropriate leader, as almost every significant Chinese political figure was unwilling or unable to lead its client government. Puyi was already serving as Japan’s puppet leader in Manchukuo, Duan Qirui and Cao Kun refused to collaborate with Japan, Tang Shaoyi was assassinated after seen meeting with the Japanese, and Wu Peifu would only cooperate if given full control over military affairs in China, which was unacceptable to everybody.
Wang Jingwei’s defection was a huge boon to Japan, as he was one of the most prominent figures in the Guomindang. Wang Jingwei had been an important and active member of the Tongmenhui and a participant in the 1911 Xinhai Revolution, as well as a close friend of Sun Yatsen. After Sun Yatsen’s death, Wang Jingwei was, along with Jiang Jieshi, the most important figure in the Guomindang. After fighting a civil war against Jiang Jieshi in 1927, in which he led a rival faction of the Guomindang, Wang Jingwei rejoined Jiang Jieshi as one of the most prominent and important members of the Chinese government.
Wang Jingwei had never been friendly with Jiang Jieshi after 1927, but the issues that drove him to defect were of recent origin. Wang Jingwei had been shocked by the scale of killing during the Wuhan Campaign, which resulted in almost 1 million Chinese casualties, and depressed by the relative ease with which Japan had captured the majority of China in only 15 months. Wang Jingwei, and many other senior members of the Guomindang, came to believe that the war against Japan was hopeless and that continued resistance, as advocated by Jiang Jieshi, would not prevent Japanese victory and would only result in millions of additional Chinese deaths. After the fall of Hankou in October 1938, Wang left the Guomindang in protest of Jiang’s pledge to fight forever.
In November 1938, having heard of Wang’s exit from the Guomindang, Japanese agents contacted him in Chongqing. He was convinced that a voice as prominent as his could convince China to stop fighting and bring an end to the war, and its incumbent devastation. After again trying and failing to convince Jiang to seek peace with Japan, in December 1938, Wang flew to Hanoi and publicly declared his support for a peace with Japan, including recognition of Manchukuo and extensive Japanese economic concessions within China.
Wang was then flown to Shanghai, where he met with representatives of the Japanese government, Japanese military commands, and the Provisional and Reformed Governments of China over Spring and Summer 1939. Despite the opposition of Japanese military commands and the existing collaborationist governments, all of whom wanted to preserve their existing power, Wang succeeded in convincing Japan to grant him a fully fledged government. In August and September 1939, Wang chaired a meeting of a rival Guomindang he had established and, upon agreement by both existing collaborationist governments, a new Reorganized Government of China was established on 30 March 1940.
Wang’s leadership of the Reorganized Government was crucial to attracting Chinese support for the project and many senior Guomindang officials, including Chen Gongbo and Zhou Fohai, defected to his government. So did 20 members of the Guomindang Central Committee, 58 generals, and almost 500,000 soldiers. No previous collaborationist government created by Japan had managed to attract significant popular support in the way that Wang’s government had. The creation of the Reorganized Government changed the basic outlines of WWII in Asia, as the conflict shifted from being solely a war between China and Japan to being a war between two rival Chinese governments, one of which was supported by Japan. Not only was the character of the war changed, but Wang’s government performed valuable auxiliary functions for the Japanese, disseminating propaganda, managing basic police functions, and raising an army to fight Communists.
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