Nanjing Puppet State

On December, 1937, when the Japanese took Nanjing, Wang Jingwei fled with the Nationalist government. The following year, he began secret contacts with the Japanese and in December, 1938, left Chongquing for Hanoi where he issued a now famous telegram supporting the Japanese proposal for an armistice in China (Dec. 29, 1938) for which he was expelled from the Chongquing government on January 1, 1939. Meeting both publicly and privately with the Japanese government and various puppet governments in China, Wang organized his own Nationalist government which was formally established in Nanjing on March 30, 1940.

Wang attempted to establish the legitimacy of his government as the successor of Sun Yat-sen. As a confidant to Sun, he transcribed Sun's will, or the Zongli's Testament and was a high level official in the Nationalist government.

After getting the approval of the Japanese to establish a Nationalist government in Nanjing with himself as leader, Wang called a Sixth Guomindang Representative Congress to establish the government, the conference hall flanked by the "blue-sky white-sun red-earth" national flag as well as the "blue-sky white-sun" Nationalist Party flag, which flanked a large portrait of Sun Yat-Sen. And on March 19, 1940, just before the session of the Central Political Conference which finalized the government preparation process, he visited Sun's tomb in Nanjing's Purple Mountain.

In order to discredit the legitimacy of the Chongquing government, Wang needed to adopt the flag of the Nationalist government of China. This would, he hoped, establish Wang as the rightful successor to Sun, bringing the government back home to Nanjing. This point he stressed with the Japanese in the early stages of setting up the government. When it was reported to him that his two aids had agreed with the Japanese to use both the "blue-sky white-sun" flag with the "five-bar" flag, he asserted his case to use the national flag, feeling that by changing the flag he would be seen as an illegitimate ruler.

The next proposal from the Japanese was to use the national flag with a triangular yellow pennant with the slogan "Heping, fangong, jianguo" attached to the flag. Wang refused this compromise as he again felt that it raise issues that could undermine his government. Additionally, he had consulted the Italian ambassador in Nanjing who advised him that the pennant would discredit any claim to be the Ku