Collaboration within Collaboration: Zhou Fohai's Relations with the Chongqing Government, 1942-1945

Until recently, the study of collaboration in China has been relatively neglected, and it has taken more than twenty years for historians to follow up the pioneering studies of John H. Boyle and Gerald E. Bunker.¹ This situation stands in marked contrast to the plethora of studies of collaboration in Wartime Europe over the same period, especially the case of Vichy France. A major reason for this tardiness is that the relative dearth of documentary materials on this period is only now being addressed as Chinese archives progressively open their holdings to scholarly enquiry.

If there are few studies of China's collaborationist regimes, there are almost none of individual leading collaborators. Although there are numerous works on the Vichy leaders, Philippe Pétain (1856-1951) and Pierre Laval (1883-1945), there is not yet any detailed monographic study of the career of the leading Chinese collaborator Wang Jingwei (汪精衛 1883-1944), let alone of important secondary figures such as Zhou Fohai (周佛海 1897-1948). The only study of Zhou's collaboration is now almost thirty years old.² The present article analyzes Zhou's cooperation with Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石 1887-1975)'s Chongqing Government as it developed between 1943 and 1945. After a brief discussion of Zhou's pre-war political career and his role as a collaborator in the Wang Jingwei Nanjing Government, the article focuses on his decision to return to his allegiance to Chongqing, his relations with Dai Li (戴笠 1895-1946), the head of Chiang's military intelligence (軍統 Juntong), and his provision of political and military intelligence for Chongqing in the latter part of the war. It discusses Zhou's part in the assassination of Li Shiqun (李士群 1905-1943), the head of Wang's security service-an event that was a turning point in the political history of the Wang regime. The article also discusses the role that the Chongqing Government assigned to Zhou in the preparations for its proposed counteroffensive in East China in 1944 to 1945, and the important role Zhou played in helping to stabilize a highly volatile situation in the weeks immediately following Japan's unconditional surrender.

The most important sources for the present study are the documents relating to Zhou Fohai's trial in September 1946. These were compiled, together with those relating to the trials of other prominent collaborators, by the Nanjing Municipal Archives (南京市檔案館 Nanjingshi dang'anguan) and published in 1991. Some of these were designed to show Zhou's actions in the best possible light, such as Zhou's own deposition and the affidavits of Guomindang (國民黨 [GMD]) politicians and military figures that dealt with Zhou and were collected on his behalf by his defense lawyers. Others, however, were more critical or neutral in their approach, notably the interrogations of Zhou by the public prosecutor, the reports by Dai Li's Juntong (some of whose reports Zhou's defense lawyers had difficulty in obtaining), the telegrams between Zhou Fohai, Dai Li, and the commander of the Nationalist Army's Third War Zone, Gu Zhutong (顧祝同 1893-1987), and the report prepared on the occasion of its winding-up by the organization created by Zhou to maintain order in Shanghai and its environs in the wake of Japan's surrender. Other sources used include the memoirs of leading collaborators associated with Zhou and of Juntong agents involved in managing Zhou's case.

Zhou Fohai's Political Background

A secondary figure in the political history of the Republican period, Zhou Fohai's career spanned the political spectrum from left to right. Indeed, his career reflected the fluidity of political alignments in early twentieth-century China.³ The product of an impecunious Hunanese gentry family, Zhou scraped together funds to complete his education in Japan, where he graduated from Kyoto Imperial University. In Japan, Zhou became involved in radical Marxist socialist politics among the Chinese students, whom he represented at the inaugural congress of the Chinese Communist Party (共產黨 [CCP]) in Shanghai and Hangzhou in July and August 1921. Acting as secretary for the meeting, Zhou was elected vice-chairman of the CCP.^4...