Ministers › Statesman / Official
Wang Jingwei
Republican politician who tried to assassinate the Qing regent in 1910, later headed the Executive Yuan, and in 1940 set up a government in Nanjing that collaborated with Japan
In the courtyard of a district government hall, a line of petitioners waits before a raised bench with a long table and document boxes; a blue umbrella stands beside it, a large drum stands at the gate where a few people wait, and a lake with sailboats lies beyond.
Also known as Yuanming Zhaoming · Zi Jixin
- Roles
- Statesman / Official
Wang Jingwei, born Wang Zhaoming with the courtesy name Jixin, took the pen name Jingwei when writing for the *People's Journal* (*Minbao*); his family came from Shanyin in Zhejiang, and he was born at Sanshui in Guangdong. He went to Japan on a government scholarship in 1904 to study law, joined the Tongmenghui the next year and became a lead writer for its journal. In 1910 he and Huang Fusheng plotted to kill the Prince Regent Zaifeng in Beijing; he was caught and sentenced to life imprisonment, gaining release after the Wuchang uprising. He chaired the Nationalist government at Canton in 1925, headed the Executive Yuan from 1932 to 1935, and was wounded by an assassin in Nanjing in November 1935. In December 1938 he left Chongqing for Hanoi and issued a telegram endorsing Prime Minister Konoe's terms, and in March 1940 he formed a government at Nanjing in cooperation with Japan and became its head. He died of illness in Nagoya in November 1944.
Life and times
Dates 1883 CE–1944 CE