Tale of a Turncoat

WAR IN CHINA Tale of a Turncoat

Better than most things, the Chinese people love to pay homage--to ancestors, to warlords, to sacred mountains, even to traitors. From hundreds of miles around, pilgrims travel to the shores of Hang-chow's West Lake proudly to urinate upon the iron statue of a historic traitor named Chin Kuei. In honor of China's newest traitor, Wang Ching-wei, Chinese coolies call the fat-fried crullers they munch for breakfast yu cha-wei (i.e., "May Wei boil in oil in hell!"). Last week a new honor was bestowed on Traitor Wang. Chinese in Chungking started a chain letter respectfully dedicated to him. Each recipient of the letter was asked to kick back one dollar and pass copies of the letter on to eleven friends. Honorable destination of the kickbacks: "The Kill Wang Ching-wei Fund," to be awarded to any successful assassin. The families of any unsuccessful and apprehended assassins will each receive 1% of the fund.

There was a certain urgency about the chain letter, for this week Wang Ching-wei, 55, sets himself up as President of the Japanese-dominated "National Government of China." By announcing his inauguration last week, Wang Ching-wei brought to a climax the most extraordinary career of apostasy and betrayal known even to China, where over the centuries turncoats have been a penny a dozen.

At various times in his life Wang Ching-wei pretended devotion for the patriarch of Chinese revolution, Dr. Sun Yatsen, deserted him, later worked for him again, watched lovingly over his deathbed; studied in Japan on Imperial Scholarships awarded by the Manchu dynasty, tried to assassinate the Manchu Prince Regent; praised Russian Communism and opposed a young rival named Chiang Kai-shek because Chiang was such a conservative, then abandoned Communism and joined Chiang in condemnation of Japan, finally deserted Chiang to become Japan's best friend in China.

Almost every episode of betrayal sent him scurrying into brief exile in France. In 1911 he visited Paris "for study." In 1926 he went there "for his health." In 1927 he went "to refresh himself." In 1935, after a would-be assassin had winged him, he went "to recuperate."

Today Wang Ching-wei is handsome, poetic, sentimental. He is weak-willed and weak-bodied (diabetic, among other things). His personal magnetism is terrific. He can stand for hours on a speaking platform, his fists clenched, denouncing, weeping, pleading, laughing--and sweeping before him the most hostile listeners. Terrified for his life, he even mistrusts foreign correspondents, who must be frisked before he will see them. He is a lyric poet, and writes with an exquisite hand--a great accomplishment in classical China. Since he is the only really big Chinese to favor their cause, the Japanese prize him like some fragile T'ang Dynasty vase. Despite his record as a shifty recreant, despite the fact that Chinese honor him only in hatred, Wang is a brilliant mystic, not to be lightly dismissed. His establishment as Japan's super-puppet is therefore a major event in the China war. Japan hopes he will be able to bring about peace, but his beginnings last week augured ill for their hopes.

With utter tactlessness, Wang declared his Government the representative of the original and only Kuomintang (Nationalist Party), preempted the flag with a twelve-point star which Chinese soldiers carry in battle, absorbed all existing Japanese puppet regimes, commanded China's civil servants to leave Chungking and join him. He took a trip to Sun Yat-sen's tomb at Purple Mountain, near Nanking, there prayed and wept. By week's end he blandly approved "liquidation of the Chungking regime"--something 1,125,000 Japanese soldiers have spent two-and-one-half years trying to accomplish; and ordered Chinese "men in the field to cease hostilities immediately." He accused the U. S. of a "calculated campaign of slander," and complained that U. S. diplomats (presumably Sumner Welles and aides) were "dodging from capital to capital" organizing international opinion against him.

But he said nothing against France. His health might require a long trip to his favorite country any day.

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