Reorganized National Government of China

Reorganized National Government Of China

In March 1940, a puppet government led by Wang Jingwei was established in the Republic of China under the protection of the Empire of Japan. The regime officially called itself the Republic of China (中華民國, Zhōnghuá Mínguó) and its government the Reorganized National Government of China. Informally it was known as the Wang Jingwei regime (Chinese: 汪精衛政權; pinyin: Wāng Jīngwèi Zhèngquán), the Nanjing Nationalist Government (Chinese: 南京國民政府; pinyin: Nánjīng Guó Mín Zhèngfǔ), the Republic of China-Nanjing, the Nanjing regime, or New China.

The Reorganized National Government was one of several puppet states of the Japanese during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), and it was meant to rival the legitimacy of the government of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, which was of the same name and based in Chongqing. Wang Jingwei was originally the leftist leader of a Kuomintang (KMT) faction called the Reorganizationists, who had broken away from Chiang Kai-Shek's government in March 1940 and defected to the Japanese invaders.

Claiming to be the rightful government of the Republic of China, it flew the same flag and displayed the same emblem as Chiang Kai-shek's National Government, with an extra pennant demanded by the Japanese. However, it was widely regarded as a puppet state and enjoyed no diplomatic recognition, except from the states of the Anti-Comintern Pact.

The Nanjing Nationalist Government was nominally a reintegration of several entities that Japan had established in northern and central China, including the Reformed Government of the Republic of China of eastern China, the Provisional Government of the Republic of China of northern China, and the Mengjiang government in Inner Mongolia, though in reality northern China and Inner Mongolia stayed relatively free of its influence.

Officially the Reorganised National Government was founded on 30 March 1940 and Wang Jingwei became head of state with Japanese support. It declared war on the Allies on 9 January 1943.