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Until recently, the study of collaboration in China has been relatively neglected, and it has taken more than twenty years for historians to follow up the pioneering studies of John H. Boyle and Gerald E. Bunker.1 This situation stands in marked contrast to the plethora of studies of collaboration in Wartime Europe over the same period, especially the case of Vichy France. A major reason for this tardiness is that the relative dearth of documentary materials on this period is only now being addressed as Chinese archives progressively open their holdings to scholarly enquiry.
If there are few studies of China's collaborationist regimes, there are almost none of individual leading collaborators. Although there are numerous works on the Vichy leaders, Philippe Pétain (1856-1951) and Pierre Laval (1883-1945), there is not yet any detailed monographic study of the career of the leading Chinese collaborator Wang Jingwei (汪精衛 1883-1944), let alone of important secondary figures such as Zhou Fohai (周佛海 1897-1948). The only study of Zhou's collaboration is now almost thirty years old.2 The present article analyzes Zhou's cooperation with Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石 1887-1975)'s Chongqing Government as it developed between 1943 and 1945. After a brief discussion of Zhou's pre-war political career and his role as a collaborator in the Wang Jingwei Nanjing Government, the article focuses on his decision to return to his allegiance to Chongqing, his relations with Dai Li (戴笠 1895-1946), the head of Chiang's military intelligence (軍統 Juntong), and his provision of political and military intelligence for Chongqing in the latter part of the war. It discusses Zhou's part in the assassination of Li Shiqun (李士群 1905-1943), the head of Wang's security service-an event that was a turning point in the political history of the Wang regime. The article also discusses the role that the Chongqing Government assigned to Zhou in the preparations for its proposed counteroffensive in East China in 1944 to 1945, and the important role Zhou played in helping to stabilize a highly volatile situation in the weeks immediately following Japan's unconditional surrender.
The most important sources for the present study are the documents relating to Zhou Fohai's trial in September 1946. These were compiled, together with those relating to the trials of other prominent collaborators, by the...