Chen Gongbo

This is a Chinese name; the family name is Chen.

Chen Gongbo 陳公博
President of Nanjing Nationalist Republic
In office September 1944 – August 1945
Preceded by	Wang Jingwei
Succeeded by	Office Abolished
Mayor of Shanghai
In office November 1940 – December 1944
Succeeded by	Zhou Fohai
Born	19 October 1891(1891-10-19) Nanhai, Guangdong, Empire of China
Died	12 April 1946 (aged 54) Suzhou, Jiangsu, Republic of China
Alma mater	Beijing University Columbia University

Chen Gongbo (simplified Chinese: 陈公博; traditional Chinese: 陳公博; pinyin: Chén Gōngbó; Wade-Giles: Ch'en Kung-po, October 19, 1892 - April 12, 1946) was a Chinese politician, noted for his role as third (and final President) of the collaborationist pro-Japanese Nanjing Nationalist Government during World War II.

Biography

Chen Gongbo was born in Nanhai, Guangdong, Empire of China in 1892, where his father was an official in the Qing Dynasty administration. As a student at Beijing University, he participated in the May Fourth Movement and studied Marxism under Chen Duxiu. Chen Gongbo was one of the founders of the Chinese Communist Party and a member of its First Congress in Shanghai in July 1921, but left the party the following year. He then moved to the United States, where he obtained a master’s degree at Columbia University in 1925. On his return to China, he joined the Kuomintang (KMT) and was named head of the Department of Peasants under Liao Zhongkai. As a member of the KMT leftist clique together with Wang Jingwei, he strongly opposed Chiang Kai-shek’s Northern Expedition. However, in 1927, he was named Minister of Enterprises by the Kuomintang government in 1932. As director of the Kuomintang Sichuan branch, he helped organize the evacuation of the Kuomintang government to Chongqing after the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War.

However, Chen remained politically opposed to Chiang Kai-shek and after Wang Jingwei broke ranks with the Kuomintang and established the collaborationist Nanjing Nationalist Government, Chen soon followed. Within the new government, Chen became the speaker of the Legislative Yuan. After nominal rule over Shanghai was turned over to the Nanjing Nationalist Government by Japan in November 1940, Chen was appointed mayor. In mid-1944, when Wang travelled to Japan for medical treatment, Chen was left in charge as acting president of the Executive Yuan, becoming president of the Nanjing Nationalist government on Wang’s death in November 1944.

At the end of World War II, Chen fled to Japan and, immediately following Japan’s formal surrender on September 9, 1945, China’s representative General He Yingqin asked Japan’s representative, General Okamura Yasuji, to extradite Chen Gongbo to China for trial for treason. The request was granted by the American occupation forces, and Chen was escorted back to China on October 3. At his trial, he defended himself vigorously. As President, he had refused to cooperate with the Japanese in several significant matters and had acted only because of his loyalty to his friend, Wang Jingwei. As he was sentenced to death as a traitor, he took his fate calmly saying that "Soon, I will be reunited with Wang Jingwei in the next world". Chen was executed by a firing squad at Suzhou, Jiangsu in 1946.

References

• David P. Barrett and Larry N. Shyu, eds.; Chinese Collaboration with Japan, 1932-1945: The Limits of Accommodation Stanford University Press 2001
• John H. Boyle, China and Japan at War, 1937–1945: The Politics of Collaboration (Harvard University Press, 1972).
• James C. Hsiung and Steven I. Levine, eds., China's Bitter Victory: The War with Japan, 1937–1945 (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1992)
• Ch'i Hsi-sheng, Nationalist China at War: Military Defeats and Political Collapse, 1937–1945 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1982).
• Frederick W. Mote, Japanese-Sponsored Governments in China, 1937–1945 (Stanford University Press, 1954).

External links

• Rulers:Chen Gongbo