Chen Gongbo

Chen Gongbo (; Japanese: Chin Kōhaku; October 19, 1892 – June 3, 1946) was a Chinese left-wing politician. Due to his role as the second and final president of the Reorganized National Government of the Republic of China, a puppet government of Japan, he was convicted of treason against the Republic of China and executed.

Biography Chen Gongbo was born in Nanhai, Foshan, Guangdong, Qing Empire in 1892 to a Hakka peasant family which had migrated from Shanghang, Fujian to Ruyuan Yao Autonomous County, Guangdong, with his grandfather eventually settling in Nanhai, Foshan. His father was an official in the Qing administration. As a student at Peking University, he participated in the May Fourth Movement and studied Marxism under Chen Duxiu. Chen Gongbo was one of the founders of the Chinese Communist Party and a member of its First Congress in Shanghai in July 1921, but was expelled from the CCP becaused he supported Chen Jiongming during the June 16 Incident in 1922. When he was in the CCP, He was influenced by social democracy in Germany. As director of the Kuomintang Sichuan branch, he helped organize the evacuation of the Kuomintang government to Chongqing after the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War.

However, he remained politically aloof to Chiang Kai-shek and, after Wang Jingwei broke ranks with the Kuomintang and established the collaborationist Wang Jingwei Government, Chen soon followed despite his initial opposition. Within the new government Chen became the speaker of the Legislative Yuan. After nominal rule over Shanghai was turned over to the Nanjing Nationalist Government by Japan in November 1940, Chen was appointed mayor. In mid-1944, when Wang traveled to Japan for medical treatment, Chen was left in charge as acting president of the Executive Yuan, becoming president of the government upon Wang's death in November 1944.

At the end of World War II, Chen fled to Japan and, immediately following Japan's formal surrender, on September 9, 1945, China's representative Gen. He Yingqin asked Japan's representative Gen. Yasuji Okamura to extradite him to China to stand trial for treason. The request was granted by the American occupation forces, and Chen was escorted back to China on October 3. At his trial he defended himself vigorously, insisting that as president he had refused to cooperate with the Japanese in several significant matters and had acted only because of his loyalty to his friend, Wang Jingwei. Nevertheless, he was convicted of treason and sentenced to death. He took his fate calmly, saying that "soon I will be reunited with Wang Jingwei in the next world". Chen was executed by firing squad at Suzhou, Jiangsu, on June 3, 1946.