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Reconstituting the Occupation State: The Wang Jingwei Regime’s Civil Service System (1940–43)

Sun, March 19, 10:45am to 12:45pm, Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel, Floor: 2nd Floor, Simcoe

Abstract

Contributing to recent scholarship on state-building that challenges previous studies of pro-Japanese governments in occupied China (1937–45), this presentation focuses on administrative personnel during the formation of the Nanjing collaboration government headed by former Nationalist leader, Wang Jingwei. Although it pretended to be the “legitimate” successor of the 1930s Nationalist government, this regime was unable to recruit Nationalist officials besides Wang’s entourage and had to mainly rely on the personnel of pro-Japanese governments previously established.

This failure has kept historians from studying its personnel administration. This presentation argues that the Wang government made efforts to rebuild its civil service system in order to (1) enhance its control over the pre-existing Chinese bureaucracy; and (2) raise its legitimacy as the rightful Nationalist state. This process revealed similarities with 1930s Nationalist state-building policies, although occupation also produced distinct power relations. Facing even greater challenges than those of the 1930s, the Wang government did not succeed in imposing a strong executive control over state agents and dismantled its civil service administration in January 1943. Nevertheless, this issue deserves to be investigated in order to reassess the intentions and the accomplishments of the collaborators.
Using administrative sources recently made available, this presentation sheds light on previously little-known aspects of state-formation under Japanese occupation. It helps us rethink collaboration in Central China as an important chapter of post-imperial China’s state-building and improve our understanding of the Japanese empire’s adaptations to local administrative contexts.

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