Chen Bijun

Chen Bijun (, 5 November 1891 – 17 June 1959) was a Chinese revolutionary and politician. Born into a prominent merchant family in British Malaya, she followed Wang Jingwei to join the revolution against the Qing dynasty. After marrying Wang, she wielded considerable influence over his political career from his leadership of the Nationalist government to his collaborationist regime during the Second Sino-Japanese War. She was tried for treason after the war and remained imprisoned until her death.

Life Daughter of the Chinese Malaysian millionaire Chen Gengji and his second wife Wei Yuelang , Chen Bijun was raised in Penang, British Malaya. Like her many siblings, she received home schooling in traditional Chinese learning before attending Catholic boarding schools for an English-style education. During the 1936 kidnapping of Chiang Kai-shek, the Xi'an Incident, she unsuccessfully attempted to have her spouse depose Chiang in a coup.

Wartime activities After the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, Chen and Wang fled to Hanoi, Tonkin in December 1938, where they called for a negotiated peace with Japan. In August 1939, Wang convened the Sixth National Congress of the Chinese Nationalist Party in occupied Shanghai, where Chen was elected a standing member of the Central Control Commission of the collaborationist Kuomintang. The Reorganized National Government of the Republic of China (RNG) was formally established in March 1940.

Within the RNG, Chen and her allies formed the so-called "household clique" (公館派), dominating the political apparatus through Chu Minyi, husband of Chen's adopted sister, as a counterweight to Chen Gongbo. In November 1944, she oversaw the repatriation of Wang's remains from Nagoya, Japan, to Nanjing. By this time, with Japanese forces in retreat and the Allied counteroffensive underway, the Wang government's governor of Guangdong, Chen Chunpu, abandoned his post. Chen Bijun returned to Guangdong to take charge.

Post war After the surrender of the Japanese in August 1945, she was offered but rejected an evacuation by the Japanese. She was arrested by the order of Chiang Kai-shek on 25 August and charged with treason. She refused to admit guilt and didn't appeal when she was sentenced for life imprisonment because it was meaningless. She was imprisoned in Suzhou.

In 1949, upon the Communist takeover, she was transferred to a Shanghai prison. A widely circulated but unverified account holds that on the request of He Xiangning and Soong Ching-ling, Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai offered Chen a pardon if she would write a statement of repentance to denounce Wang Jingwei, but she refused. She remained in prison until her death.

In popular culture The 2007 Chinese historical film Road to Dawn features the character "Xu Danrong" based on Chen played by Malaysian-born actress Angelica Lee.