This week, Carl Zha came on to discuss Ang Lee’s 2007 film Lust, Caution, based on a novella of the same name by Eileen Chang. The film tells the story of a student theater troupe-turned-resistance cell which takes the initiative to assassinate an official of the Japanese collaborationist regime, the monstrous Mr. Yi. The novella was based on Eileen Chang’s own life, as well as a real-life plot involving Zheng Pingru, but Ang Lee took a number of liberties to flesh out the story, turning Yi into a more sympathetic personality.

In this episode we start at the very beginning of Sino-Japanese relations (1st century CE) and cover the key events to explain how and why Japan invaded China. Additionally, we go into the life of Wang Jingwei, an early Chinese revolutionary hero-turned-figurehead of the collaborationist regime set up by the Japanese. Rather unusually for Japanese collaborators, the Wang Jingwei regime continued to base its legitimacy on the legacy of the KMT, the party founded by Sun Yat-Sen with whom Wang Jingwei had been very close.

Per the propaganda of the collaborationist regime, it was the pro-peace party in China, seeking to create a strong and unified China under Japanese tutelage to protect itself from Western imperialism. In reality, the military of this regime primarily concerned itself with “rural pacification” campaigns, violently pillaging the countryside to solidify Japanese rule under the pretext of rooting out partisans. Its violence conduct thoroughly discredited this regime, and even within the cities where it had some legitimacy the population grew increasingly disenchanted. Today both the governments of mainland China and Taiwan view Wang as an irredeemable traitor, the Quisling of China. But there is today in China a small number of provocateurs called “jingri” (meaning spiritually Japanese) who idolize the Japanese and their puppet regime and even cosplay in the military uniforms of the Japanese. So what is their deal exactly? How did the Wang Jingwei regime meet its end? Find out this on this week’s episode of Gladio Free Europe!

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