¹ Plamper, Jan, The Stalin Cult: A Study in the Alchemy of Power (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 14–15Google Scholar.

² Duggan, Christopher, “The Propagation of the Cult of the Duce, 1925–26,” in Gundle, Stephen, Duggan, Christopher, and Pieri, Giuliana, eds., The Cult of the Duce: Mussolini and the Italians (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), 27–40Google Scholar.

³ Leese, Daniel, Mao Cult: Rhetoric and Ritual in China's Cultural Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 11Google Scholar; Wylie, Raymond F., The Emergence of Maoism: Mao Tse-tung, Ch'en Po-ta, and the Search for Chinese Theory, 1935–1945 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1980)Google Scholar, esp. 126–27.

⁴ This earlier scholarship is well summarized in Ke-wen, Wang, “Irreversible Verdict? Historical Assessments of Wang Jingwei in the People's Republic and Taiwan,” Twentieth-Century China 28, 1 (2002): 57–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵ Barrett, David P., “The Wang Jingwei Regime, 1940–1945: Continuities and Disjunctures with Nationalist China,” in Barrett, D. and Shyu, Larry N., eds., Chinese Collaboration with Japan, 1932–1945: The Limits of Accommodation (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 105Google Scholar.

⁶ One example is Wenyi, Tian, Yu gui wei ling: Jiang Jieshi yu Wang Jingwei de banian shengsi zhan (The devil next door: the eight-year life and death war between Chiang Kai-shek and Wang Jingwei) (Beijing: Taiwan chubanshe, 2010)Google Scholar.

⁷ Taylor, Jeremy E., “The Production of the Chiang Kai-shek Personality Cult, 1929–1975,” China Quarterly 185 (2006): 96–110CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸ I borrow the term “cult products” from Plamper, Stalin Cult.

⁹ Chiang took on a number of mantles in this period, but was not officially China's head of state. From 1931, the Republic of China's head of state, or “chairman,” was Lin Sen, who retained the position until his death in 1943.

¹⁰ Coble, Parks M., “The Legacy of China's Wartime Reporting, 1937–1945: Can the Past Serve the Present?” Modern China 36, 4 (2010): 435–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 440.

¹¹ Shaoyun, Fang, “Yu” (Foreword), in Zuigao lingxiu kangzhan yanlunji (A collection of the supreme leader's speeches on the War of Resistance) (Guangzhou: Guangzhou Tebie Shidangbu, 1938), 1Google Scholar.

¹² MacKinnon, Stephen R., Wuhan, 1938: War, Refugees, and the Making of Modern China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 78–79Google Scholar.

¹³ Beifa shishi di shi er zhou nian jinian xuanchuan da wang (Twelfth anniversary of the pledge to the Northern Expedition) (n.p.: PDMAC, 1938).

¹⁴ Jiang Zongsiling Beifa wengao (Essays by commander-in-chief Chiang on the Northern Expedition) (Nanjing: n.p., 1928); National Institute of Defense Studies (NIDS) (Tokyo): Shina jihen zenpan (Full files on the China Incident), 171: Shina jihen senden shiryō (China Incident propaganda material).

¹⁵ “Manhuajia Jiuwang Xiehui Xuanchuandui zai Nanjing” (The propaganda corps of the Salvationist Cartoonists Association in Nanjing), KangRi huabao (Sino-Japanese War extra), 26 Sept. 1937: 17–18.

¹⁶ Van Slyke, Lyman P., Enemies and Friends: The United Front in Chinese Communist History (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967), 94Google Scholar.

¹⁷ “Yan'an minzhong yonghu Jiang Weiyuanzhang dahui” (The masses in Yan'an hold a rally to protect Chairman Chiang), Wenxian (Documents), Dec. 1938, B2–4, Modern Documents Reading Room, Shanghai Library.

¹⁸ Lai, Delin, “Searching for a Modern Chinese Monument: The Design of the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum in Nanjing,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 64, 1 (2005): 22–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 22–24.

¹⁹ On this, see Fitzgerald, John, Awakening China: Politics, Culture, and Class in the Nationalist Revolution (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996)Google Scholar, esp. 24–33. See also Harrison, Henrietta, The Making of the Republican Citizen: Political Ceremonies and Symbols in China, 1911–1929 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)Google Scholar, esp. 151–60.

²⁰ This included new and hastily edited collections of Chiang's wartime admonitions, but also republications of much earlier works by or about Chiang. In 1939, for instance, forty thousand copies of Lingxiu zuijin yanlunji (A collection of speeches by the leader) were produced by the PDMAC, along with other booklets with didactic titles such as Fucong lingxiu (Follow the leader). Details are in PDMAC, Yinian lai yiban xuanchuanpin suokan (Collection of ordinary propaganda publications produced over the last year) (n.p.: PDMAC, ca. 1939), 10.

²¹ Jowett, Philip, Soldiers of the White Sun: The Chinese Army at War, 1931–1949 (Atglen, Pa: Schiffer, 2011), 203Google Scholar.

²² “Guanyu Zongcai xiaoxiang xian'guafang wei” (On the placement of portraits of the president), Sifa xingzhengbu, Academia Historica, Taipei, 022000000189A/151/189.

²³ Robert Payne, Chungking Diary (London: Heinemann, 1945), 113.

²⁴ Harrison, Making of the Republican Citizen, 136–37.

²⁵ Hao, Jiang, “The KMT Reorganization Faction and Its Activities in Shanghai,” Chinese Studies in History 27, 1–2 (1993): 123–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁶ Boorman, Howard L., “Wang Ching-wei: China's Romantic Radical,” Political Science Quarterly 79, 4 (1964): 504–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 505.

²⁷ Larsen, Sven Ugelvik, “Charisma from Below? The Quisling Case in Norway,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 7, 2 (2006): 235–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁸ Boyle, John Hunter, China and Japan at War, 1937–1945: The Politics of Collaboration (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972), 277–305Google Scholar.

²⁹ One of the first examples of a quasi “collected works” was Wang Jingwei Xiansheng Zhongyao Jianyi (Important suggestions by Mr. Wang Jingwei) (Hong Kong: Nanhua Ribao, 1939), a collection of essays by Wang, and by others praising his decision to leave Chongqing.

³⁰ Se yanjing (Colored spectacles) (Beijing: Xinminhui, 1939). Hoover Institution Archives, David Nelson Rowe Papers, 78064, box 10.

³¹ Wu guo de jiushi maiguonu. Minzhong tongku kewang heping: Cushi dang fu fanxing, (Those who harm the nation are the traitorous slaves. The people are suffering and thirst after peace: [we] urge the party to seriously reflect [on the matter]) (n.p., ca. 1939), propaganda leaflet, British Museum, 2006, 0117, 23.

³² Chiu, Ming-wah, “Resistance, Peace and War: The Central China Daily News, the South China Daily News and the Wang Jingwei Clique during the Sino-Japanese War, 1937–1945,” MA thesis, Department of History, University of Hong Kong, 2005, 111.

³³ On this, see Boyle, China and Japan at War, 286–87.

³⁴ Andrew Cheung, “Slogans, Symbols, and Legitimacy: The Case of Wang Jingwei's Nanjing Regime,” Indiana East Asia Working Paper Series 6 (1995).

³⁵ Nyman, Lars-Erik, “Sinkiang 1934–1943: Dark Decade for a Pivotal Puppet,” Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique 32, 1 (1991): 97–105CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 99.

³⁶ Some of these survive among the David Nelson Rowe papers at the Hoover Institution Archives at Stanford University. See also Rowe, D. N., “Japanese Propaganda in North China, 1937–1938,” Public Opinion Quarterly 3, 4 (1939): 564–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 570.

³⁷ Boyle, China and Japan at War, 200.

³⁸ American Information Committee, Japan's Cultural Aggression in Asia: A General Study of Methods and Results (Shanghai: American Information Committee, 1939), 13Google Scholar.

³⁹ On the day the RNG was proclaimed, Lin Bosheng's Zhonghua Ribao carried advertisements for a brand of eye drops which featured a lithograph image of Wang and read, “The eye drops of the great and famous” (weiren yu mingshi yanyao).

⁴⁰ Barrett, “Wang Jingwei Regime.”

⁴¹ Zanasi, Margherita, Saving the Nation: Economic Modernity in Republican China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 209CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴² Boyle, China and Japan at War, 26.

⁴³ For an example of such lists published in Chongqing, see Di'erqi kangzhan biaoyu (Slogans for the second phase of the War of Resistance) (Chongqing: Zhongguo guomindang zhixing weiyuanhui xuanchuanbu, 1939).

⁴⁴ “Wang zhuxi yuzhao zeng yu Chaoxian ge qiaoxiao” (Portraits of Chairman Wang given to overseas Chinese schools in Korea), Xing Ya yuebao (Revive Asia monthly) 1, 1 (1942): 34.

⁴⁵ Chinese in the occupied Philippines, for instance, were asked by the Japanese to stomp on portraits of Chiang Kai-shek while shouting, “Wang Jingwei wan sui” (Long live Wang Jingwei). George Henry Weightman, “The Philippine Chinese: A Cultural History of a Marginal Trading Community,” PhD diss., Department of Sociology, Cornell University, 1960, 99.

⁴⁶ Jie, Li, “Phantasmagoric Manchukuo: Documentaries Produced by the South Manchurian Railway Company, 1932–1940,” Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 22, 2 (2014): 329–69Google Scholar, 346.

⁴⁷ Dubois, Thomas David. “Rule of Law in a Brave New Empire: Legal Rhetoric and Practice in Manchukuo,” Law and History Review 26, 2 (2008): 285–371CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 293–95.

⁴⁸ Bosheng, Lin, “Kaimu ci” (Opening remarks), in Xuanchuanbu diyijie quanguo xuanchuan huiyi shilü (Record of the Ministry of Propaganda's First National Propaganda Meeting) (Nanjing: Xuanchuanbu, 1941), 25Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ Lloyd, Christopher, Collaboration and Resistance in Occupied France: Representing Treason and Sacrifice (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁰ Bosheng, Lin, “Wang Xiansheng zhi zhongyao jianyi” (The important suggestions of Mr. Wang), in Wang Jingwei Xiansheng Zhongyao Jianyi (Important suggestions by Mr. Jingwei, Wang) (Hong Kong: Nanhua Ribao, 1939), 11Google Scholar.

⁵¹ “Xuanchuan yaodian, di sanshisan hao” (Main points on propaganda, Number 33), May 10, 1941, Shanghai Municipal Archives, R18-1-54.

⁵² This is based on my examination of the extensive photographic record produced by the RNG state, held by Academia Historica in Taipei, which is cited throughout this paper. These images provide valuable insight into ways in which the RNG pictorially represented itself. Unfortunately, reproduction of them is not allowed.

⁵³ Bunker, Gerald E., The Peace Conspiracy: Wang Ch'ing-wei and the China War, 1937–1941 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), 9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁴ The much-publicized meeting between Wang and other collaborationist leaders in Qingdao at the end of January 1940 was indicative of this. Dōmei newsreels showed a charismatic Wang dressed in a Western lounge suit, jovially discussing the structure of this new government. “New China's Big Three Meet in Tsingtao,” 5 June 1940, UCLA Film and Television Archive, VA17323.

⁵⁵ On this, see Li, Laura Tyson, Madame Chiang Kai-shek: China's Eternal First Lady (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006), 140–41Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ Yunqian, Chen, “Minguo Zhongshan Lu yu yishi xingtai richanghua” (Zhongshan roads in Republican China, and the regularization of ideology), Shixue yuekan (Historical studies) 12 (2007): 108–17Google Scholar, 113.

⁵⁷ “Wang Zhaoming jieshou qingxiang gongzuo renyuan zhuzeng tongxiang” (Wang Jingwei accepts a bronze bust made by a rural pacification worker), undated photo, Wang Zhaoming shiliao, Academia Historica, Taipei, 118-030400-0001-013.

⁵⁸ Note from Wang Jingwei to Li Shiqun, 1 Mar. 1943, Wang Zhaoming shiliao, Academia Historica, Taipei, 118-010100-0047-070.

⁵⁹ “Wang ni Jingwei ye pa yi chou” (Turncoat Wang fears his own stinking legacy), Su xun (Suzhou news) 478 (1943): 9.

⁶⁰ Bunker, Peace Conspiracy, 231.

⁶¹ Ibid.

⁶² Nicholas Atkin, Pétain (London: Longman, 1998), 110.

⁶³ Jiang Hao, “KMT Reorganization.”

⁶⁴ von der Goltz, Anna and Gildea, Robert, “Flawed Saviours: The Myths of Hindenburg and Pétain,” European History Quarterly 39, 3 (2009): 439–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 440.

⁶⁵ American reports from the summer of 1939 suggest that even at this early stage the figure of Sun was central to the promotion of Wang. See Doris Rubens, “Japanese Propaganda Efforts in Shanghai,” China Weekly Review, 12 Aug. 1939.

⁶⁶ “Xuanchuan yaodian di liushi'er hao” (Main points on propaganda, number 62), 28 Mar. 1942, Shanghai Municipal Archives, R18-1-54.

⁶⁷ It appears that the figure of Sun was so sacred that even when such comparisons were made they were distanced. In this instance, the author suggests “in the eyes of most Japanese people.” Chen Ming, “Wang zhuxi fendou shi” (A history of Chairman Wang's struggle), Zhongguo manhua (Chinese cartoons) 1 (1942): 29.

⁶⁸ Andrew Cheung is one of the few scholars who has examined the importance of Sun in this cult in detail; “Slogans, Symbols, and Legitimacy.”

⁶⁹ “Wang Xiansheng wei guofu zhuxi” (Mr. Wang is the chairman of the National Government), Xin Dongfang zazhi 2 (Apr. 1940): 7–8.

⁷⁰ This theme is explored in some depth in Zanasi, Margherita, “Globalizing Hanjian: The Suzhou Trials and the Post-World War II Discourse on Collaboration,” American Historical Review 113, 3 (2008): 731–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷¹ Pearson, Chris, Scarred Landscapes: War and Nature in Vichy France (London: Palgrave, 2008), 58–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷² On the reconfiguring of Nanjing as a monument to Sun Yat-sen, see Harrison, Making of the Republican Citizen, 208–14.

⁷³ Wagner, Rudolf G., “Ritual, Architecture, Politics, and Publicity during the Republic: Enshrining Sun Yat-sen,” in Cody, Jeffrey, Steinhardt, Nancy S., and Atkin, Tony, eds., Chinese Architecture and the Beaux-Arts (Honolulu: University of Hawai`i Press, 2011), 223–78Google Scholar, at 264–65.

⁷⁴ Boyle, China and Japan at War, 306–7.

⁷⁵ “Guangdong sheng zhengfu chengli zhounian jinian yuebing dianli” (Military parade celebrating the first anniversary of the founding of the Guangdong Provincial Government), photo, Apr. 1941, Wang Zhaoming shiliao, Academia Historica, Taipei, 118-030400-0001-014.

⁷⁶ Guofu huandu di'er nian guomin zhengfu shizheng gaikuang (The current state of affairs in the second year following the return of the National Government) (Nanjing: Xuanchuanbu, 1942).

⁷⁷ An example is Rana Mitter, “Contention and Redemption: Ideologies of National Salvation in Republican China,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 3, 3 (2002): 44–74Google Scholar.

⁷⁸ Barrett, “Wang Jingwei Regime,” 105.

⁷⁹ “Wang zhengfu zhuxi Wang Zhaoming canguan Beiping kongmiao” (Chairman of the RNG, Wang Jingwei, visits the Confucius Temple in Beijing), photo, 20 Oct. 1942, Wang Zhaoming shiliao, Academia Historica, Taipei, 118-030200-0002-007.

⁸⁰ Leese, Mao Cult, 11.

⁸¹ Mu, Ling, “Wang Jingwei zhuyi yu xin guomin yundong” (Wang Jingwei-ism and the New Citizens Movement), in Jinyuan, Zhu, ed., Wang Jingwei guomin zhengfu qingxiang yundong (The rural pacification movement of the Wang Jingwei National Government) (Shanghai: Xinhua shudian, 1985), 381–83Google Scholar. The article first appeared in April 1942.

⁸² Wang Jingwei has been absent from the academic literature on Mao badges in 1960s–1970s China. That the RNG used such “cult products” in the mid-1940s may indicate that debates over the origins of the Mao badge should be revisited.

⁸³ “In many of the advanced countries around the world,” read instructions from the ministry, “almost every single person wears an image of their leader out of respect. Why is it that even in this minor issue we are unable to keep up?” 6 June 1943, Shanghai Municipal Archives, R48-H112.

⁸⁴ Wang Kewen, “Wang Jingwei zuihou zhi xinqing” (Wang Jingwei's last sentiments), Dangdai (Contemporary) 155 (July 2000): 50.

⁸⁵ Linebarger, Paul M. A., The China of Chiang Kai-shek (Boston: World Peace Foundation, 1941), 265Google Scholar.

⁸⁶ Taylor, Jay, The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-sek and the Struggle for Modern China (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2009), 259–61Google Scholar.

⁸⁷ Jaffe, Philip, “The Secret of China's Destiny,” in Kai-shek, Chiang, China's Destiny and Chinese Economic Theory (London: Dennis Dobson Ltd., 1947), 19Google Scholar.

⁸⁸ Leese, Mao Cult, 11.

⁸⁹ “Guanyu Zongcai xiaoxiang…” (On the hanging of the president's portrait…), 19 Nov. 1943, Sifa Xingzhengbu, Academia Historica, Taipei, 022000000189A, 151/189.

⁹⁰ “Guofu yixiang ji zhuxi xiaoxiang zhizuo shenqing shencha ban fa” (Regulations on the request for the reproduction of portraits of Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek), 11 Dec. 1943, Nationalist Party Archives, Taipei, 5.3/221.9.

⁹¹ Rees, E. A., “Leader Cults: Varieties, Preconditions and Functions,” in Aporm, Balázs, Behrends, J. C., Jones, P., and Rees, E. A., eds., The Leader Cult in Communist Dictatorships: Stalin and the Eastern Bloc (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 4–5Google Scholar.

⁹² Tikhomirov, Alexey, “Symbols of Power in Rituals of Violence: The Personality Cult and Iconoclasm on the Soviet Empire's Periphery (East Germany, 1945–61),” Friedlander, Jacqueline, trans., Kritika 13 1 (2012): 47–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹³ Ironically, and as Wang Ke-wen has pointed out, contradistinction was also at play in this process, for “destroying Wang's place in history was necessary to the establishment of Jiang [Chiang Kai-shek] as the legitimate, and only, heir to Sun Yat-sen….” Wang Ke-wen, “Irreversible Verdict?,” 59.