Wang Zhaoming (Chinese: 汪兆銘; Wade–Giles: Wang Chao-ming; Japanese: Ō Chōmei; 4 May 1883 – 10 November 1944), widely known by his pen name Wang Jingwei (Chinese: 汪精衞; Wade–Giles: Wang Ching-wei; Japanese: Ō Seiei), was a Chinese politician and poet who became leader of the Reorganized National Government of the Republic of China (RNG), a collaborationist regime with the Empire of Japan during World War II.
Wang attended Hosei University in Japan on a Qing government scholarship, and joined the revolutionary Tongmenghui in Tokyo in 1905. He gained prominence in 1910 for an attempted assassination of the Qing prince regent Zaifeng, for which he was sentenced to life imprisonment but was released after the Wuchang Uprising the following year. Trusted by both sides, he mediated between Yuan Shikai's Beiyang Army and Sun Yat-sen's revolutionary forces, supporting Yuan's presidency to facilitate a peaceful abdication of the Qing court. In 1912, Wang left for France, where he initiated the Work–Study Movement. Returning to China in 1917, he rejoined Sun's inner circle and in 1925 drafted his political testament. Following Sun's death, Wang became the first president of the Nationalist government and Chiang Kai-shek's principal rival within the Kuomintang (KMT). As Wang adhered to Sun’s policy of cooperation with the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the right-wing Western Hills Group purported to suspend him from the KMT for six months and set up a rival party leadership in Shanghai in 1925. After losing control of the party and military to Chiang in the Canton Coup, Wang departed for France. He returned in April 1927, when he issued a joint declaration with Chen Duxiu reaffirming KMT–CCP cooperation and led the left-wing Wuhan government in opposition to Chiang's in Nanjing. Wang purged the Communists in the July 15 Incident and reconciled with Nanjing, whereupon both he and Chiang were forced to resign as the New Guangxi clique took control of the reunified government. In late 1929, he joined a series of revolts against Chiang, who had since resumed power, but was defeated in the Central Plains War; Wang fled to British Hong Kong and was expelled from the KMT. He joined an anti-Chiang government in Guangzhou in 1931, but following the Japanese invasion of Manchuria reached an accommodation with Chiang whereby Wang led the government while Chiang commanded the military.
During the Second Sino-Japanese War, Wang initially advocated resistance while pursuing negotiations. Following China's defeat in the First Battle of Hopei, he increasingly favored the peace movement. In December 1938, as the second-ranking leader after Chiang, Wang left China's wartime capital Chongqing for Hanoi and called for a peace settlement with Japan, after which he was expelled from the KMT again. In 1940 Wang established a collaborationist government in Nanjing, administering Japanese-occupied China. Both the KMT and the CCP denounced him as hanjian. Wang died in Nagoya, Japan in 1944.
Born in Sanshui, Guangdong, of Zhejiang origin, Wang obtained a xiucai degree by passing the imperial examination at the county-level in 1902, and went to study at Hosei University in Japan on a Qing government scholarship in 1903. In 1905, Wang first met Sun Yat-sen, the exiled revolutionary leader, and soon joined the Tongmenghui, predecessor of the Kuomintang, in Tokyo. He gained attention as a polemicist for the Tongmenghui organ People's News, notably in his debates with Liang Qichao, who advocated constitutional monarchy. His sobriquet "Wang Jingwei," initially a pen name for the newspaper, was adopted in 1905 and named after the mythical jingwei bird that attempts to fill the ocean with twigs and pebbles.
As a young man, Wang came to blame the Qing dynasty for holding China back, and making it too weak to fight off exploitation by Western imperialist powers. In Japan, he cut off his queue and embraced theories of democracy and liberalism. Wang was among the Chinese nationalists in Japan who were influenced by Russian anarchism, and published a number of articles in journals edited by Zhang Renjie, Wu Zhihui, and a group of Chinese anarchists in Paris.
Japan's victory in the Russo-Japanese War impressed Wang, and influenced his view of nationalism as an ideology that could unite a country around the idea of self-strengthening.
In the years leading up to the Xinhai Revolution in 1911, Wang was active in opposing the Qing government. During this period he emerged as an excellent public speaker and a staunch advocate of Chinese nationalism.
Wang was part of a Tongmenghui cell which attempted to assassinate the regent, Prince Chun. Wang and Chen Bijun, an admirer of Wang's revolutionary ambitions, were betrothed and informally married shortly before the assassination attempt. The bomb that Wang and his cell planted was discovered, and Wang and two others who planned the assassination were arrested two weeks later. Wang readily admitted his guilt at trial and was not repentant. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.
A number of factors may have contributed to Wang's receiving a life sentence instead of being executed. Shanqi, Prince Su, who was in charge of the Beijing police and presided over the interrogation of Wang, was believed to have been moved by Wang's confession. In his view, leniency would show the government's magnanimity and its commitment to reform. Additionally, Shanqi's advisor Cheng Jiacheng was an undercover Tongmenghui agent and there were other sympathetic officials. Finally, Tongmenghui leaders threatened reprisals if Wang were executed, and these threats may have had an intimidating effect on government officials.
Wang remained in prison for a year, during which he was well treated by Prince Su, who often engaged him in discussions of politics and poetry, an experience that softened Wang's violently revolutionary ardour. Following the Wuchang Uprising, he was released as a national hero; accounts differ as to whether this was part of a general amnesty the Qing court extended to placate the revolutionaries, or specifically arranged by Yuan Shikai, a capable general newly appointed as imperial premier who sought to use Wang as an intermediary in negotiations with the revolutionary forces. A book of poems written by Wang during his incarceration was published after his release and became widely popular.
Amid the fall of the empire, Wang found himself courted by rival factions. He became the revolutionaries' point man with Yuan, and became a sworn brother of Yuan's son, Keding. Wang co-founded a lobby group with Yang Du, a friend from their shared years at Hosei University, with the two men presenting themselves as representatives of the revolutionary and constitutionalist camps respectively. They called for an immediate ceasefire, the convening of a provisional national assembly, and a peaceful resolution of the monarchy-versus-republic question, but the proposal was rejected by both the Qing court and the revolutionaries. The group was dissolved within a month.
Wang subsequently mediated negotiations between the Beiyang Army led by Yuan Shikai and the much weaker revolutionary forces led by Sun Yat-sen. Reflecting a broad consensus among the revolutionaries, including Sun himself, Wang supported Yuan’s presidency in order to secure the Qing court’s abdication and facilitate a peaceful transfer of power.
After the Xinhai Revolution, Wang pledged to hold no government office as a demonstration of his revolutionary and altruistic ideals, declining Yuan's offers of the vice presidency and secretary-generalship of the presidential office, as well as Sun's offer of the Guangdong governorship. When Wang's Hosei classmate Song Jiaoren was assassinated shortly after leading the KMT to a decisive victory in China's first parliamentary election, the killing was widely attributed to Yuan, and tensions between Yuan and Sun reignited. Wang advocated for political compromise and peaceful settlement to no avail. When Sun's Second Revolution against Yuan broke out, Wang lent his vocal support but felt disillusioned by politics and war.