"Us vs. Them": the World in the Eyes of Chinese Collaborators, 1937-1945

In Chinese, the word hanjian (meaning traitor to the Han people/nation) is an extremely derogatory term with strong moral connotations. The most notorious group of hanjian in modern Chinese history, according to Chinese... [ view full abstract ]

In Chinese, the word hanjian (meaning traitor to the Han people/nation) is an extremely derogatory term with strong moral connotations. The most notorious group of hanjian in modern Chinese history, according to Chinese textbooks, was that of Wang Jingwei and his followers, who created the Reorganized Nanjing Government (RNG) in the Japanese occupied areas in 1940. Since the end of the World War II, historiography on the collaborators had been highly politicized with a classic hero/villain dichotomy. Even though contemporary historians generally complicate the problem of collaboration, most research still focuses on problems of motivation and justification, and analyzes collaborators without taking into account how they understood their own actions. In this presentation, I analyze how the collaborators defined themselves in relation to three other groups of people: their fellow Nationalists (KMT), the Communists, and the Japanese. The collaborators' stark idea of "Us vs. Them" ultimately contributed to their own downfall, as their identity became ambiguous and confusing toward the end of the war. It moreover haunted the collaborators when the victors of the WWII applied the same narrative in postwar trials and branded the collaborators hanjian.