Seminar Series: Abstract

Collaboration within Collaboration: Zhou Fohai¡¯s Relations with the Chongqing Government, 1942-1945
Dr Brian Martin - Visiting Fellow

Zhou was one of the key figures in the Wang Jingwei collaborationist regime that was set up in March 1940; but unlike many of the other leading collaborators he was not politically close to Wang Jingwei and was never associated with Wang’s Reorganisationist Clique in the 1930s. On the contrary, Zhou was associated with Chiang Kai-shek’s political circles, especially the CC Clique of Chen Guofu and Chen Lifu. His decision to collaborate, therefore, was not the result of ideology or personal relations. It was based on Zhou’s pragmatic, if pessimistic, view that China alone could not win against Japan, and since China in 1937 and 1938 had no hope of gaining powerful allies against Japan, then he believed that the best means to salvage what one could of China’s sovereignty was to reach a political agreement with Japan.

In this realist vein, Zhou believed that the Wang Jingwei ‘Peace Movement’ and the Wang government in its early days could perform the role of ‘honest broker’ in negotiating a peace agreement between the Chongqing Government and the Japanese. So he kept his lines of communication open with Chiang’s government. Even as late as 1942 he still believed, to some degree, in the possibility of a negotiated settlement. But Chiang was never really serious about reaching a political settlement with the Japanese – he knew that his own political position and leadership depended increasingly on maintaining the War of Resistance. And Japan’s recognition of the Wang government as the official national government of China at the end of 1940 effectively deligitimised the Chongqing government in the eyes of the Japanese.

Even before Zhou’s formal submission to the Chongqing Government, Dai Li, the head of Chiang’s military intelligence, had targeted the Zhou group within the Wang government. He arrested Zhou’s elderly mother and other members of his family, using their plight to pressure Zhou. At the same time, he infiltrated military intelligence agents into key positions within Zhou’s group. This relationship with Dai Li was both a source of strength and a cause of ultimate weakness for Zhou. The activities of Dai Li’s agents became an acute embarrassment for Zhou, and for a time endangered his position within the Wang government, when Li Shiqun, the head of Wang’s intelligence service, arrested all of them as a part of a broad operation against Dai Li’s key agents in the Jiangnan in the winter of 1941-1942.

Although Zhou did what he could to ameliorate the conditions under which his mother was detained, this was not the main reason why he submitted to Chongqing. His decision, like his earlier decision to collaborate, was based on realist considerations. By mid-1942 the military and political context of the Sino-Japanese War had changed with the United States involvement after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The war on mainland China had widened into a Pacific War that in turn was part of a global conflict. The Chongqing government was no longer alone, and the industrial and military resources of the United States meant that over time a Japanese victory looked less and less likely.

Zhou, therefore, at the end of 1942 signalled to Chongqing, through Dai Li, that he wanted to offer his submission. Once accepted, Zhou became the principle agent for Chongqing in the Wang Jingwei Government in the last two and a half years of the latter’s existence (1943-1945). One of his first tasks was to plan the assassination of Li Shiqun, whom Dai Li considered his most effective opponent among the puppets. Throughout this period he provided Dai Li with first-class political and military intelligence, especially on Japanese troop deployments. And throughout 1944 Zhou played an important role in winning over the puppet troops to support the Chongqing government’s proposed counter-offensive in East China. But Zhou was careful to ensure that he retained control over his end of the relationship, with Dai Li, resisting the latter’s attempts to insert his own people into key areas of Zhou’s power base.

The sudden and unexpected unconditional surrender of Japan after the dropping of the atomic bombs rendered these plans redundant. But, rather than making Zhou’s role irrelevant, the surrender gave it renewed significance, at least temporarily. The Chongqing government feared that the communist New Fourth Army and its local guerrilla forces would exploit the power vacuum in Shanghai and the Jiangnan to make a bid for power there. To prevent this Dai Li looked to Zhou Fohai. For about six weeks in August and early September 1945, Zhou played a crucial role in ‘holding the ring’, keeping the communists at bay and so allowing time for the Chongqing government to move in its military and party personnel. By mid-September, however, Zhou had become a liability for the Chongqing government, which feared his continuing control of forces in the Shanghai area. So he was removed to comfortable imprisonment in Chongqing. Zhou’s hopes of an amnesty faded quickly after Dai Li, his major protector in Chiang’s system, unexpectedly died in a plane crash in March 1946. Facing rising public outrage about the Guomindang Government’s apparent lack of urgency in bringing the leading collaborators to justice eventually forced Chiang Kai-shek’s hand and Zhou Fohai and others were brought to trial in late 1946.