Down with Traitors

Justice and Nationalism in Wartime China

Yun Xia

• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780295742878
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia cinese

Throughout the War of Resistance against Japan (1931–1945), the Chinese Nationalist government punished collaborators with harsh measures, labeling the enemies from within hanjian (literally, "traitors to the Han Chinese"). Trials of hanjian gained momentum during the postwar years, escalating the power struggle between Nationalists and Communists. Yun Xia examines the leaders of collaborationist regimes, who were perceived as threats to national security and public order, and other subgroups of hanjian —including economic, cultural, female, and Taiwanese hanjian. Built on previously unexamined code, edicts, and government correspondence, as well as accusation letters, petitions, newspapers, and popular literature, Down with Traitors reveals how the hanjian were punished in both legal and extralegal ways and how the anti- hanjian campaigns captured the national crisis, political struggle, roaring nationalism, and social tension of China's eventful decades from the 1930s through the 1950s.

CHAPTER 1

FROM EPITHET TO CRIME

Neither the tradition nor the immediate wartime need to legalize the punishment of traitors was unique to China. The inclusion of treason in common law can be traced back to the Treason Act of 1351 in England, which defined it as acts against the reputation or the safety of the throne.1 The US Constitution states: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”2 Most treason convictions in recent history date to the two world wars. With the unprecedented scope of the Second World War and the extended periods of occupation, spies emerged from all sides, and numerous individuals gave in to the demands of the occupiers. Extralegal punishment of traitors and collaborators was a widespread wartime phenomenon. Most nations that had endured occupation by the Axis powers passed laws in 1944 and 1945 to guide the trials of collaborators, and decisions by postwar courts bolstered the legitimacy of the resistance governments.3

In China, this legislative process started years earlier. Having entered a full-fledged war with Japan in 1937, China faced the problem of treason from the early 1930s onward and became the first state to sanction extralegal punishment of perceived traitors. Moreover, the Chinese state adopted the word hanjian from the popular vocabulary and established it as a new crime, in addition to the existing crimes of treason, “internal rebellion” (neiluan), and “external aggression” (waihuan). The Regulations on Punishing Hanjian of 1937 marked the consummation of the tightening of laws for state control and national security. From a legislative perspective, the stipulation of laws in response to the needs of total war brought an end to the overall progressive legal reform in China and set the nation on one of the most chaotic periods in its legal history.

As hanjian evolved from an epithet into a crime, Nationalist laws against hanjian tightened in response to the changing war situation and political winds. The war created fatal divisions among judicial institutions and personnel along political and ideological lines. A significant portion of China’s best-trained legal professionals and clerks were later purged for choosing the wrong side. The authority of the law and the legal system, which had never been fully established before the war, was undermined by the interference of different branches of the government, the military, intelligence, and civilians. The regulations against hanjian did not go unchallenged. The combined forces of the state machine, war propaganda, and grassroots patriotism, however, drowned the voices of legal professionals in an emotional outcry.

HANJIAN PRIOR TO THE WAR OF RESISTANCE

Hanjian is an evolving concept rich in ethnic and political implications, which have all added to its weight as a criminal label. An etymological analysis of the word hanjian requires review of important moments in the construction of ethnicity, race and nation in modern China. Contemporary Chinese people use this word as if its meaning is self-evident, yet even the most authoritative modern Chinese dictionary fails to grasp all the changing connotations of the word. According to the dictionary Cihai, hanjian originally meant “traitor to the Han people,” and it can be “widely applied to the wretches who pander to foreign aggressors and betray the interests of their home nation.”4 What this definition fails to convey is that hanjian is a historical construct. The term, if properly unpacked, shows the dynamics of ethnic relations as well as the Chinese-foreign relations that had been constantly conceptualized since the late imperial period.

From its first and only appearance in a document from the Yuan dynasty (1279–1368) to its frequent use in the official records of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), the term hanjian was used in a variety of contexts, mostly reflecting the perspective of the ruling elite. Hanjian always appeared in conjunction with yi, “foreign peoples” or “barbarians.”5 Yi first referred to ethnic minorities inhabiting the borderlands, which were of great strategic significance to the central rule yet difficult to control. The concept then extended to include peoples who lived on the edge or beyond the cultural influence of Chinese civilization. Following this logic, the Qing rulers also applied it to those Westerners demanding trade with China, initially treating them as another “tributary state” of China, such as Annam.6

Since the Yuan dynasty, we know of only one instance of the word hanjian appearing in a context that does not involve outsiders. Hu Zhen, a Yuan scholar, mentioned hanjian in his interpretation of the Book of Change (Yijing), using the term to refer to “officials treacherous to the Han court.”7 The Chinese took such pride in their first powerful and lasting empire, the Han dynasty (202 BCE–220 CE), that they used the term Han to differentiate themselves from the barbarians who lived beyond China proper. Much later, during the War of Resistance, anecdotes and idioms associated with the Han dynasty were often deployed in anti-hanjian rhetoric. When Li Ze, an influential businessman, was put on trial in 1946, his wife claimed that “Li’s heart was always true to the Han rule” (xincun hanshi), evoking a comparison of Li to the Han general Guan Yu, who personified loyalty and righteousness.8 In this and other incidents, the concept of Han seemingly transcended a single dynasty or ethnic category and came to symbolize the nation of China as a historically and culturally continuous community. This usage particularly resonated with people at a time when much of China was occupied by the Japanese and run by puppet regimes.

Emperors and officials of the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing dynasties used the term hanjian to refer to “guileful Han people” who stirred up unrest among aboriginals and caused trouble for the “central dynasty.”9 Rulers of late imperial China tried to subdue their ethnic borderlands with an elaborate system of ruling tactics, agencies, and segregation policies.10 The Manchus who established the Qing rule, themselves an ethnic minority, were particularly cautious about ethnic mingling in their expansive and ethnically diverse empire because a vast majority of the population were Han, who held a condescending attitude toward other peoples.11 The Manchus thus inherited the rationale and discourse of ethnic hierarchy constructed by Chinese statesmen in the past, yet they placed themselves above the Han. When Han and non-Han subjects colluded to rebel against Manchu rule, the Manchus implemented an ethnic quarantine between the two groups. Qing records mention numerous incidents of this nature, condemning the roles of hanjian in provoking internal troubles.12

In late imperial China, therefore, hanjian connoted the ruling elites’ frustration with people who overstepped their designated ethnic boundaries. Starting in the mid-Qing, however, the court sometimes used hanjian to refer to those who helped foreigners in military and commercial endeavors at the expense of the empire. During the Sino-Burmese War (1765–69), for instance, Qing troops caught four hanjian who had spied for the enemy. Increasingly, the term hanjian was applied to Han people who violated the Qing bans on trade and interactions with foreigners. Chinese who crossed the border to trade or travel in Vietnam or marry the local people were also considered hanjian.13

The number of hanjian mentioned in Qing official documents increased exponentially during the first Opium War (1839–42). A new and superior group of “barbarians” threatened Chinese civilization, which the emperor and his subjects still considered supreme under heaven. In his daring solution to the problem of opium smuggling, Commissioner Lin Zexu denounced and arrested hanjian before taking action against British opium smugglers. Such measures were considered justified and necessary by most Chinese at that time, and Lin had been celebrated as a national hero. The Qing restricted trade with the British in Canton and confined their activities to designated areas of the city. Locals who acted as their translators, language tutors, guides, and middlemen in business dealings were all considered hanjian. When Qi Ying, a Manchu official, saw foreigners who held a pencil and wrote Chinese characters, he immediately thought that “this must be a hanjian’s work.”14 Here Hanjian was similarly used to label those who breached the division between Han and yi, nei (the indigenous) and wai (the exogenous).

When the Qing faced increasing crises precipitated by internal unrest and foreign imperialism, hanjian developed new connotations, including that of betrayal. Some Chinese facilitated foreign military operations and pillages in China. To Han and Manchu officials alike, these individuals betrayed the economic interest and security of the multiethnic community under Manchu rule. Lin Zexu, among others, made a priority of catching and eliminating hanjian, enemies from within, in response to incidents of foreign aggression.15 This was exactly the same mentality as that behind the anti-hanjian campaigns during the War of Resistance.

At a moment of unprecedented crisis, the connotation of hanjian as traitors to the empire was even endorsed by the Manchu emperor. In 1900, the Guangxu emperor declared war against eight nations—Britain, Japan, Germany, Italy, Russia, France, the United States, and Austria-Hungary—which had decided to join forces and punish the Qing court in the aftermath of the Boxer Rebellion. Guangxu mobilized his subjects with the following words: “Those who fight the enemies bravely or donate to the cause will be handsomely promoted or rewarded; those who show cowardice or even reduce themselves to hanjian will face immediate execution.”16 The emperor thus drew a clear line between loyal subjects and hanjian. In this context, the term referred broadly to any subject of the Qing who surrendered to or worked for foreigners, regardless of ethnicity. One did not have to be Han to be hanjian.17 This edict excluded hanjian from “all the people under heaven” in much the same way that later anti-hanjian laws excluded hanjian from the Chinese national community.

The meaning and usage of hanjian changed fundamentally during the fall of the Qing and the conception of a Han-based Chinese nation-state. Chinese literati were possessed by a Han ethnocentric feeling: the more radical called for a revolution to end the Manchu rule, which they blamed for China’s loss of sovereign rights and dignity. In his widely circulated Revolutionary Army (Gemingjun), the young and hot-blooded martyr Zou Rong (1885–1905) proclaimed, “China is the China of the Chinese. Countrymen, you must all recognize the China of the Chinese of the Han race.”18 The longstanding feuds between the Chinese and the Manchus were now articulated in a new vocabulary of race, nation, and social Darwinism.19

Zhang Shizhao’s reinterpretation of hanjian in 1903 fit well into a new national history that centered on the development of the Han and projected ethnic awareness back into the past. Zhang praised the original hanjian, those denounced by the Qing rulers as Han rebels, as “heroes of the Han race fighting for the independence of the Chinese nation.”20 The real hanjian, argued Zhang, were those who betrayed the interest of the Han, including Han officials serving the Qing rulers and ordinary people who helped foreigners profit from trade with China.21 To reinforce this new definition of hanjian, Zhang anachronistically identified a number of hanjian in history and created a genealogy of Chinese race traitors:

The real hanjian are those who betray their own race by collud...