Who Bears the Human Cost?｜May 4, 2025 Seminar with Sang Pu

The third episode of the four-part seminar “Wang Jingwei As A Foreseer Against Communism” held on May 4, 2025 in Taipei features Hong Kong veteran political commentator Sang Pu. By focusing on the 1924 reorganization of the Kuomintang, its alliance with Soviet Russia, the infiltration of the Comintern into the Kuomintang and the Kuomintang’s accommodation with the Chinese Communists, which led to Wang Jingwei’s historic break with the Communists in 1927, Sang Pu revisits a central question: in the context of the Kuomintang’s repeated defeats at the hands of the Communist Party, was Wang Jingwei the “sinner” as he was later portrayed by PRC propagandists? Or was he among the first to recognize the danger of Communism in China? Watch now.

I believe that among the many political figures of Republican China, Wang Jingwei was almost the only one who truly respected human life and dignity.SANG PU

Sang Pu points out that Wang Jingwei’s early support for Sun Yat-sen and his belief in the policy of alliance with Soviet Russia and accommodation with the Communists should not be understood as passive conformity. Rather Wang was operating within the political imagination of anti-imperialism, national salvation, and the unification of China at the time. What deserves closer attention is how, as the Comintern gradually penetrated the Kuomintang’s organization, military apparatus and centers of power, Wang came to recognize an impending crisis and made the pivotal decision to break with the Communists.

Turning to the question of war and peace during the War of Resistance, Sang Pu raises a profoundly realistic question: when war is packaged as the only patriotic answer, who is to bear the cost of human casualties, displacement and exhaustion of a nation’s vitality? Wang Jingwei’s choice remains deeply controversial. But for that reason Wang's actions should be reconsidered in light of the historical circumstances and primary sources of the time.

From the Kuomintang’s entanglement with the Comintern, to the 1927 break with the Communists, to the difficult choice between war and peace, this episode invites viewers to revisit Wang Jingwei with Sang Pu and reflect on the more complex dimensions behind one of the most controversial figures in the history of Republican China.