JAPAN: Death of a Puppet

Ever since he became puppet ruler of Jap-conquered China five years ago, Wang Ching-wei had expected death—at the hands of assassins. For several years he had carried in his body one bullet that failed to kill him. But last fortnight, when death, as it must to all men, came to China’s No.11 traitor (aged 60, in a Japanese hospital), it came not from gunfire but from diabetes.

Wang Ching-wei entered Chinese politics at the age of 27, with a plot to assassinate a Manchu prince. After his release from jail, he studied sociology and political science in France and Japan. Later, as an active Chinese nationalist, he became a devoted disciple of China’s liberator, Dr. Sun Yatsen.

Another disciple was a reserved, willowy young man named Chiang Kaishek. After Dr. Sun’s death (1925), Wang and Chiang were two of a triumvirate* who inherited the direction of China’s revolution. But it was an uneasy partnership. Chiang was a soldier, Wang an intellectual. Chiang inclined to the middle way; Wang was now a leftist, now a rightist. When Chiang drove the Chinese Communists and their Russian advisers out of the Kuomintang and China, Wang again went abroad to rest up and intrigue. Later he made peace with Chiang, returned to China to become president of the Executive Yuan (equivalent to premier) in the Government.

Wang suffered another crisis after Japan began the “China incident” (1937). First an ardent advocate of Chinese resistance, he later changed his mind, plumped for a “peaceful settlement” with Japan. One day, while still chairman of the central political council and second in command to Chiang Kaishek, he slipped away from Chungking to Nanking. Japan, looking fora puppet, grabbed him eagerly, made him premier and president of the Axis-recognized Nanking government. For this crowning act of apostasy the Chinese erected in Chungking a life-size statue of Wang, naked and grovelling, for all to spit upon.

Wang’s last years, in his high-walled, floodlighted Nanking palace, brought him much that he wanted: power, pomp, wealth. But it did not bring him two things that most men cannot live without honor and peace of mind.

The Japs were grateful to Wang. Last week the Japanese Government ordered a state funeral for him. Emperor Hirohito posthumously conferred on Wang the Collar of the Chrysanthemum, Japan’s highest award to the head of a foreign state. Adolf Hitler, or someone acting for him, cabled condolences to Madame Wang.

The Japanese were also ready with a new Nanking puppet: Chen Kung-po, 54, Columbia University alumnus, ex-president of the Nanking Legislative Yuan.

* The third, Hu Han-min.