Wang Jing Wei is not his given name. His birth name is Wang Zhao Ming.
This 2023 book , Wang Jing Wei and China in Dark Times, by Zhiyi Yang is the first major biography in English on this famous collaborator.
But is he a collaborator?
Reading this excellent biography one gets the impression Wang is an idealist.
His failure despite being the anointed political heir of Sun Yat Sen lay in being a civilian politician in the age of military strongmen. [p 22].
When he decided to collaborate with the Japanese, one must not forget that the world had abandoned China to the Japanese invaders.
The US was content to remain neutral. China was only assisted by the Russians and civilians from foreign countries.
Wang was tricked by Prince Konoe who promised him a peaceful co-existence. [P18].
Yang posits that Wang was neither a shameless traitor or a resolute martyr. He was merely a pawn tugged and pulled by the men and greater forces surrounding him. [ p 115]
His wife is a Penangite, Chen Bi Jun. She loved him greatly. She believed in his struggle.
After the war she was arrested by Chiang. She was offered freedom if she condemned Wang in court. She refused. She spent the rest of her life in jail and died in jail in 1959. [p 166].
Wang was an accomplished poet. His couplet here contains references to two famous poems on the danger of infighting.
One is a poem from the Tang dynasty. The other is a poem from the Three Kingdoms.