Wang Jingwei

or Wang Ching-wei

born May 4, 1883, Sanshui, Guangdong province, China

died Nov. 10, 1944, Nagoya, Japan

Chinese leader, head of the regime established by the Japanese in 1940 to govern their conquests in China.

A leading polemicist for Sun Yat-sen's revolutionary party, in 1910 he tried to assassinate the imperial regent and was caught; his courage in the face of execution resulted in his sentence being reduced. He was released the following year, after the republican revolution. In the 1920s he served as a major official in the Nationalist Party. After Sun's death, he chaired the party while Chiang Kai-shek led the Northern Expedition against China's warlords. Chiang and Wang vied for party control; in a compromise in 1932, Wang became president and Chiang headed the military. After war erupted with Japan, Wang flew to Hanoi, Viet., and issued a statement calling on the Chinese to work out a peaceful settlement. In 1940, in cooperation with the Japanese, he became head of a regime that governed the Japanese-occupied areas centred on Nanjing. Though Wang had hoped to be granted virtual autonomy, the Japanese continued to exercise military and economic dominance. He died while undergoing medical treatment in Japan.

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