N017: New Perspectives on the Wang Jingwei "Collaborationist" Regime (1940-1945) and Its Significance: Politics, Culture, Literature, and Education

Organizer(s)

• 

  Jeremy Taylor

  University of Nottingham, United Kingdom

Chair(s)

• 

  Sophia Lee

  Department of History
  California State University, East Bay, United States

Paper Presenter(s)

• 

  David Serfass

  Inalco-IFRAE (Paris), France
• JH

  Jonathan Henshaw

  University of British Columbia, Canada
• 

  Zhiyi Yang

  Goethe University, Germany
• 

  Jeremy Taylor

  University of Nottingham, United Kingdom

Discussant(s)

• 

  Sophia Lee

  Department of History
  California State University, East Bay, United States

Session Abstract: Interest in the wartime regime associated with Wang Jingwei in Japanese-occupied China from 1940 to 1945 has burgeoned in the last decade, as debates about the very nature of Chinese "collaboration" have been explored via a number of key publications and projects. However, scholars working on the political, social, literary, and cultural history of this regime have often approached their study of it from very different angles. One aim of this panel is to bring together scholars working in each of these fields so that a cross-disciplinary dialogue on the Wang regime and its broader significance might be initiated.

The panel brings together scholars from 5 different countries who are working in a diverse range of fields to explore the Wang regime afresh. While Serfass examines constitutional developments under Wang, for example, Taylor and Henshaw examine how cultural and educational policies, respectively, were adopted in an attempt to impart a particular vision of occupied China, and Yang examines how leading literati in the regime (such as Zhou Zuoren) expressed themselves through poetry. However, while each panelist asks very different questions, all share a commitment to putting this regime back into the wider story of modern China's past. Indeed, this panel will show that a closer understanding of the inner workings of Wang's regime might not only help us better understand wartime China more generally, but can also shed light on the politics, culture, literature, and education practiced by the Chinese administrations that preceded, outlived, and emerged from the occupation.

Presentations:

• Democracy through Collaboration? Constitutional Mirage and Party Hegemony in the Wang Jingwei Regime
  

  Paper Presenter: David Serfass – Inalco-IFRAE (Paris)
• Beyond "Enslavement": Education under the Wang Jingwei regime
  

  Paper Presenter: Jonathan Henshaw – University of British Columbia
• An Alternative Lyric Modernity? Modern Classicism and Zhou Zuoren's Wartime Doggerels
  

  Paper Presenter: Zhiyi Yang – Goethe University
• "Cleansing the Countryside": Rural Pacification as Cultural Project in Wang Jingwei's China, 1941-1944
  

  Paper Presenter: Jeremy E. Taylor – University of Nottingham