WAR IN CHINA: Puppet No. 1

Traveling mysteriously about Japanese-conquered China last week was a suave, subtle Oriental named Wang Ching-wei. Seven months ago this Chinese statesman was one of the powers at Chungking, China’s temporary capital; last week he was reported about to become Japan’s No. 1 puppet at Peking, seat of the North China Government. From Chungking to Peking these days is a longer distance ideologically than geographically, and the fact that Mr. Wang, elder revolutionary, onetime collaborator with Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek, one of the old “Big Three” in Chinese affairs,* has made the ideological as well as geographical trip was quite a victory for Japan’s China diplomacy.

To Wang Ching-wei the city of Peking must be filled with memories of a rebellious youth. In 1910, when he was 26, he went there to plot the assassination of Prince Chun, Prince Regent of Imperial China. Coplotter was Miss Chen Pi-chun, his fiancee, later to become his wife. She was entraining for Tokyo, and the youth left his hiding place temporarily to see his bride-to-be off at the station. As the train pulled out he politely tipped his hat, and thus revealed to the Regent’s vigilant police his false queuetating him, but in the meantime the revolution of October 1911, led by Dr. Sun Yatsen, broke out; he was released and his chains were thereafter displayed in the Peking Museum.

Wang Ching-wei was the favorite student of the revered Dr. Sun, wrote many of the Leader’s manifestoes, even took down the famed Will that Dr. Sun Yat-sen delivered on his deathbed. He was a graduate of the Law College at Tokyo. He traveled often in Europe, learned to speak fluent French, several times took diabetes cures in Germany. He was there when the present war started. For more than two years he was China’s Premier.

Wang Ching-wei and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek are temperamentally poles apart, but even after the war began they continued to work together. As deputy leader of the Party, Wang Ching-wei followed the Government on its trek from Nanking to Hankow to Chungking. But last winter he took his sons out of school, sent them out of the country, packed up his own belongings and one night left Chungking secretly for Hanoi, French Indo-China, and Hong Kong. The old Oriental instincts for compromise had got the better of him, and he declared himself for “peace” with Japan. Chiang Kai-shek read him out of the Party, arrested his followers.

From Hong Kong he went on to Shanghai, later to Japanese-conquered Hankow. The Japanese recognized him as a good catch for their puppet regime. With Wang Ching-wei signed up, Japan’s military diplomats hoped that a new Chinese central government could be established this week, second anniversary of the war’s outbreak.

*Other “Big Three” members: Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and the late Hu Han-min, longtime chief secretary to Sun Yat-sen.