HANJIAN!
Final Paper for HIST 31178-S Japanese-Chinese Relations
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Emerging from the Song dynasty’s first known use of the word “Hanjian,” the term has transcended to the present carrying each time with it, a sense of derogative implications. Although the term has adaptive qualities to the period in which it is used, all definitions remain common, Hanjian translates to traitor of the Chinese nation. Wakeman Jr Frederic’s “Hanjian!” and Liu Jie’s “Wang Jingwei and the Nanjing Nationalist Government” explore the prominent dichotomy and historical context of what it means to be a Hanjian and its antithesis during Sino-Japanese wartime. Whereas Fredric perceives Hanjian in a very broad historical analysis to demonstrate its present socio-cultural relevance in China, Jie focuses on the individual significance of the controversial Wang Jingwei regime and its impact on what it means to be a Hanjian.
Wakeman Jr Fredric’s article “Hanjian! (Traitor!) Collaboration and Retribution in Wartime Shanghai,” examines the resurgence of the Chinese term “Hanjian” during the 1930s and 1940s. He begins with an analysis of the etymology of the word and its application to certain “traitors” given the political scene at a certain time. Most notably, the Qing dynasty and the Manchus. Fredric then considers the range in which a Hanjian can exist and stresses its cultural transgression against the Chinese nation as a whole. Additionally, he provides examples of infamous traitors at the time, and the extreme police and terrorist forces that aimed to expose and target said collaborators. In short, his approach explores a large variety of historical cases, a method that aims to express that being loyal and being a traitor isn’t as clear cut by definition.
On the other hand, Liu Jie’s “Wang Jingwei and the Nanjing Nationalist Government” focuses on the ever-present controversial regime of the infamous Chinese politician and KMT member, Wang Jingwei. Although he is still considered one of China’s prominent Hanjian, Jie claims that with more modern approaches to history, one can interpret that Jingwei’s collaboration is not one of pure conformity and contains some positivity. Through an analysis of Jingwei’s interests as a politician against Chiang Kai-Shek, the author also takes into consideration the views of him in Japan as a patriot to those contrasting in China who considered him a traitor. Jie’s alternative approach to collaboration doesn’t necessarily condemn, but questions whether his entire legacy should be pinned under the narrow status of a traitor.
Wakeman Jr Fredric argues that the definition of being a traitor in China is not so coherent and partisan as being loyal or disloyal. In general, a Hanjian can fall under three types of disloyalty, “…betraying one’s primal “natural” identity… betraying one’s vocation…and betraying one’s cause…” (Wakeman Jr Fredric, 25). Therefore, given the political and social climate, the present regime at the time will define the traitor as whoever betrays them and use the term to forward political goals. For example, the Ming-Qing Chinese who physically transgressed over the Manchu boundaries were given the name. However, the more recent use of the word is distant from its original meaning and has become the umbrella term for all those who have left their primary ethnocultural allegiance for a rival outsider. It remerges when the Chinese feel a lack of confidence as being inferior such as wartime.
Lei Jie presents an alternative approach to collaboration by examining the infamous Chinese Hanjian of the Nanjing puppet regime, Wang Jingwei. After rejecting Chiang Kai-Shek’s policy of total resistance and establishing a rival new nationalist government in Northern China, most Chinese regarded his whole administration as false. Although this is technically true since the government was under Japanese occupied land and support, Jie argues that scholars are currently interpreting both sides of the equation and questioning Jingwei’s actions as a political figure and historical actor. In this way, we can make way for an unbiased insight. For example, “When looking at the relationship between the Japanese occupier and the puppet regimes, people have placed too much emphasis on their unity and neglected the contradictions and conflict that existed between them.” (Liu Jie, 231). Jie goes on to explain that the conception of Jingwei as a Hanjian has suppressed any of his other efforts that would prove him otherwise. Still, the fact that he collaborated with the enemy outweighs his chance for redemption and therefore makes his legacy as a traitor inevitable and a crucial component to Chinese history.
Considering the topics in which both authors argue in their respective articles, their tackle on the Hanjian definition contrast greatly. As previously stated, most of Fredric’s article focuses on the development of the word over time and uses most of the beginning of his article to explain its origin. Hanjian is a compound of the words Han and Jian, and thus its original meaning applied to those who were traitors to the Han Dynasty. The suffix Jian can be synonymous with transgression or illegally crossing over. Therefore, when Fredric refers to its more common twentieth century usage “treachery (or being Hanjian) was also an alienation, or act of madness, that could be cut off from other Chinese people” (Fredric, 4), it’s one adapted for timeless application. In contrast, Liu Jie summarizes the Hanjian definition with its current Chinese common understanding as “‘a traitor to the Han people; one who collaborates with an invader and sells the interests of the motherland to the enemy.’” (Jie, 214). Additionally, he importantly acknowledges how deeply rooted the Hanjian narrative remains in China and mainly to Wang Jingwei’s story.
Wakeman Jr. Fredric’s article was more persuasive because his all-embracing analysis of the Hanjian history also includes its complexity that was quickly recounted in Liu Jie’s article. If one really wanted to understand Hanjian’s past, present, and future, “Hanjian!” provides the necessary information with examples of regimes and figures such as Wang Jingwei, as well as those who fought to suppress them. Although it is to support the complicated variety of traitors, Fredric discussed a redundant amount of Hanjian cases. The article began to feel monotonous and lost from its original intent. In addition, the conclusion didn’t recapitulate the thesis, making the article feel unfulfilled. On that note, what made Jie’s “Wang Jingwei and the Nanjing Nationalist Government” less effective were the reasons of grasping the dynamic Hanjian culture was its exclusive centering on Wang Jingwei. One could argue that to understand collaboration during Sino-Japanese wartime, it is important to know it’s most notorious traitor, but this article doesn’t efficiently home in on the term like Fredric. It is essentially an alternative biography of Wang Jingwei that contains a mention of Hanjian to support the argument more than a dissertation of Hanjian on its own.
One thing that was left vague in both articles was the future of Hanjian in a more global and modern world. For Liu Jie, he reiterates the ongoing study of Jingwei as more than a traitor but a collaborator without pure surrender. For Wakeman, he as well repeats the current centrality of Hanjian as a socio-cultural phenomenon. However, for both there is little mention of how collaboration and its derogative accessory will reappear in such a powerful way again. How much does China currently hold the once egocentric values that placed such emphasis on “us and them” that initially allowed the word to develop? The world is more global than ever with the still developing internet that allows the influx of ideas and cultures to intermingle more than ever. Thus, it should be expected that one views collaboration with a more open mind as suggested by Liu Jie that doesn’t imply compliance with the opposing nation.
Whereas Fredric perceives Hanjian in a very broad historical analysis to demonstrate its present socio-cultural relevance in China, Jie focuses on the individual significance of the controversial Wang Jingwei and his impact on what it means to be a Hanjian. To understand past and present-day China and their foreign relations, it is crucial to be familiar with the history of collaboration and Hanjian. As both authors have tried to explain, Hanjian can’t be simply defined as being a traitor. They essentially exist on a line between their own country of China and the outsiders. The word itself encompasses not only the attitudes felt by the Chinese, but the variety of situations that can’t fall under either the practice of collaboration or resistance.