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Hanjian

Nanking residents with armbands of the Japanese flag
Chinese civilians assisting Japanese soldiers

In China, the word hanjian (traditional Chinese: 漢奸; simplified Chinese: 汉奸; pinyin: Hànjiān; Wade–Giles: han-chien) is a pejorative term for those seen as traitors to the Chinese state and, to a lesser extent, Han Chinese ethnicity. The word hanjian is distinct from the general word for traitor, which could be used for any country or ethnicity. As a Chinese term, it is a digraph of the Chinese characters for "Han" and "traitor". Han is the majority ethnic group in China; and Jian, in Chinese legal language, primarily referred to illicit sex. Implied by this term was a Han Chinese carrying on an illicit relationship with the enemy.[1] Hanjian is often worded as "collaborator" in the West.

History

A Chinese propaganda poster titled "Fate of Hanjians", published by the Capital City Resistance War Supporters Association of All Citizens, was posted throughout Nanjing soon after the Battle of Nanking. Clockwise from top right: a hanjian being beaten by a mob; a hanjian who sends a signal to enemy aircraft will die in an air raid; the severed head of a hanjian put on display as a warning to others; a hanjian will be arrested and shot.

The term hanjian is one that emerged from a “conflation of political and ethnic identities, which was often blurred in the expression of Chinese nationalism.”[1] It was/is applied to individuals who are designated collaborators and by which were not all ethnically Han. The modern usage of the term stems from the Second Sino-Japanese War in which circumstances forced political figures in China to choose between resistance and collaboration.[1] Nuance in understanding not just why some Chinese chose to cooperate with Japanese but as well as inquiring why cooperation made sense to people at that time has opened up hanjian into being an ambiguous term in modern history rather than the black and white one that it is so often used as.[2]

There tend to be two types of hanjian, or collaborationists, when observing the era of the Sino-Japanese War: “the educated and intellectuals, who simply wanted to get power and wealth for themselves, and the poor and uneducated, whose poverty drove them to collaborate and whose ignorance saved them from even thinking they had to justify what they were doing.”[3] Due to this notion and the modern ambiguity of the term, each of these two categories had various motives with the majority being different but some overlapping.

Educated and intellectuals

Wang Jingwei

Educated hanjian is often reserved for those who were either scholars or within government. The most infamous hanjian government in mainland China is Reorganized National Government of the Republic of China, often referred to as the Wang Jingwei regime after its president. The Wang Jingwei regime sought to be the dominant governmental force in China and believed it could do so by collaborating and being submissive to Japan in what they deemed their “Peace Movement.”[4] Wang found resistance to his government when he visited cities, such as Shanghai, and “intellectuals who showed sympathy for Wang risked ostracism, if not death.”

During the Second Sino-Japanese War, the National Revolutionary Army was defeated in various battles by the Imperial Japanese Army. Chiang Kai-shek explained that hanjian espionage helped the Japanese and ordered CC Clique commander Chen Lifu to arrest the hanjians.[5] 4,000 were arrested in Shanghai[6] and 2,000 in Nanjing.[7] Because martial law was enforced, formal trials were not necessary, and the condemned were executed swiftly, while thousands of men, women and children watched with evident approval.[8]

Uneducated

Taiwanese soldiers who fought in the Japanese military against Chinese forces and the Allies are also considered to be hanjian.[citation needed] The Republic of China issued an important law in 1937:

The centerpiece of anti hanjian laws, “Regulations on Handling Hanjian Cases (chuli hanjian anjian tiaoli),” promulgated in August 1937, identified collaborators based on their wartime conduct and stipulated punishments regardless of their age, gender, or ethnicity. Popular anti-hanjian discourse, however, paid particular attention to “female collaborators” and deployed a highly gendered vocabulary to attack hanjian suspects of both sexes. Complementing the legal purge of collaborators, such literature brought extreme pressure on individuals targeted as hanjian and influenced how political crimes should be exposed and transposed onto other aspects of social life.[9]

Several Taiwanese were prosecuted by the Nationalist government as hanjian, despite a Judicial Yuan interpretation issued in January 1946 that advised against such action.[10]

After the Sook Ching (Chinese: 肅清; pinyin: Sùqīng) or ethnic cleansing by mass murder of ethnic Chinese opposed to the Japanese occupation of Singapore and Malaya in February–March 1942, Tan Kah Kee, a prominent Chinese industrialist and philanthropist in Southeast Asia, proposed to the provisional Republic of China government to treat all Chinese who attempted to negotiate with the Japanese as hanjians.[citation needed] His proposal was adopted by the Second Legislative Yuan,[citation needed] and was praised by Chinese resistance fighters.

Notable people who are considered hanjians

In popular culture

In Chiang Kai-shek's Anti-Communist and Anti-Russian Aggression Song one part of the lyrics is 殺漢奸 meaning "kill traitors".

Popularly, most hanjian in Chinese films and drama series, skits, Hanjian are mostly the translators. Sometimes they are also called the er guizi (Chinese: 二鬼子, lit. second devils) or jia yang guizi (Chinese: 假洋鬼子, lit. fake foreign devils). For example, Chinese actor Chen Peisi's famous skit Zhujue yu Peijue (主角与配角, lit. the main actor and the supportive actor), Chen is acting as the supportive actor who is in a film that the character is the translator leading the way for Japanese Imperial Army. The translator represents the Army officer to send a message to the Eighth Route Army officer whose actor would be Zhu Shimao that if he surrenders, the Japanese officer will have a great beautiful offer for him.[13]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c Xia, Yun (2013). "Engendering Contempt for Collaborators: Anti-Hanjian Discourse Following the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945". Journal of Women's History. 25 (1): 111–134. doi:10.1353/jowh.2013.0006. ISSN 1527-2036. S2CID 144816452.
  2. ^ Brook, Timothy (2007). Collaboration : Japanese agents and local elites in wartime China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. p. 245. ISBN 9780674023987. OCLC 77012551.
  3. ^ Brook, Timothy (2007). Collaboration : Japanese agents and local elites in wartime China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. p. 231. ISBN 9780674023987. OCLC 77012551.
  4. ^ Fu, Poshek (1993). Passivity, resistance, and collaboration : intellectual choices in occupied Shanghai, 1937–1945. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. p. 112. ISBN 0804721726. OCLC 27814882.
  5. ^ Yomiuri Shimbun, September 14, 1937 page 7
  6. ^ Yomiuri Shimbun, September 15, 1937 second evening issue, page 1
  7. ^ Gahō Yakushin no Nippon, December 1, 1937
  8. ^ The New York Times August 30, 1937 page 3
  9. ^ Xia 2013, p. 111.
  10. ^ Han Cheung (13 January 2019). "Taiwan in Time: The Taiwanese 'hanjian' problem". Taipei Times. Retrieved 13 January 2019.
  11. ^ Zanasi, Margherita (June 2008). "Globalizing Hanjian: The Suzhou Trials and the Post–World War II Discourse on Collaboration". The American Historical Review. 113 (3): 731–751. doi:10.1086/ahr.113.3.731. ISSN 0002-8762.
  12. ^ Zanasi, Margherita (June 2008). "GlobalizingHanjian: The Suzhou Trials and the Post–World War II Discourse on Collaboration". The American Historical Review. 113 (3): 731–751. doi:10.1086/ahr.113.3.731. ISSN 0002-8762.
  13. ^ "陈佩斯 朱时茂经典小品《主角与配角》-我爱小宋网". www.5ixiaosong.com. Archived from the original on 2017-10-14.