The creation of the puppet state of Manchukuo out of a huge chunk of China’s northeastern territory in 1932 was a springboard for Japan’s nationalists and militarists to expand territorially deep into China and other parts of Eastern Asia [see preceding blog: http://www.7dayadventurer.com/2019/06/27/manchukuo-an-instrument-of-imperial-expansion-for-the-puppet-masters-of-japan/].
(note how close Mengjiang’s eastern boundary came to China’s principal city Peking)
The Japanese military used Manchukuo as a base to gradually move piece by piece into Chinese Mongolia, Outer Mongolia, Siberia and elsewhere in China. Or as one Western observer of the day put it: “Automatically, by the invasion of Manchuria in 1931, Japan became committed to the invasion of Mongolia”, [Lattimore, Owen. “The Phantom of Mengkukuo.” Pacific Affairs, vol. 10, no. 4, 1937, pp. 420–427. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2750626].
Demchugdongrub and his Japanese advisors ⇣
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Demchugdongrub, Pan-Mongolism to vassal state
In Inner Mongolia, a member of the Royal House of Chahar, Prince Demchugdongrub (Te Wang 德王), was agitating in the 1930s for Mongolian autonomy from Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang Republic of China. Demchugdongrub and other Mongolian nationalists harboured irredentist desires for a Pan-Mongolia (the reuniting of Inner and Outer Mongolia) [‘5. Another Manchu-kuo, the dream of the “Inner Mongolian Independence”‘, TAKESHITA, Yoshirō 1997, http://teikoku-denmo.jp/ cited in Global Security, GlobalSecurity.org)].
Mengjiang flag⇣
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Enforced mergers and shifting nomenclature
The opportunity arose with the aggressive expansion of the Japanese military into the country. Chahar and Suiyuan provinces in Inner Mongolia were taken by Japan’s Kwantung Army and its allies. With the muscle of the occupying Japanese military behind him, Demchugdongrub in 1936 was installed as the leader of a new puppet-state regime✳️, the Mongol Military Government (sometimes also called the “Mongolian Border Land”).
In 1939 South Chahar and North Shanxi provinces (both predominately Han Chinese in population✥) were added to the ‘Mongolian’ regime, now renamed the Mengjiang✼ (or Mongol) United Autonomous Government (蒙疆聯合自治政府) (Měngjiāng Liánhé Zìzhì Zhèngfǔ Mōkyō Rengō Jichi Seifu) with its capital in Kalgan (Zhāngjiākǒu) [ibid.]. On paper Prince Demchugdongrub remained Mengjiang head of state (until 1945), his main function seems to have been to give the territorial entity the countenance of legitimacy. One manifestation of Mengjiang’s Mongolian roots was Demchugdongrub’s adoption of the historic Mongolian calendar…1936, Mengjiang’s creation year, became the year 781 to associate the regime with Genghis Khan (below) and the height of power of the Mongol Empire [John Man, The Mongol Empire: Genghis Khan, His Heirs and the Founding of Modern China, (2015)]✧.
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MUAG becomes MAF
In 1941 Mengjiang was rebranded once more, this time as the Mongolian Autonomous Federation (蒙古自治邦). At the same time the Japanese sponsored the elevation of Wang Zhao-ming. Wang, better known by his pen-name of Wang Jingwei, was put in charge of the Reorganised National Government of the Republic of China (中華民國國民政府) (RNGRC)❦. Wang had previously lost out to Chiang Kai-shek in a leadership struggle for control of both the KMT and the Chinese government.
Wang Jingwei, RNGRC president⇣
Wang’s defection to the Japanese was motivated by this and he envisioned his alternate government, RNGRC, would provide him with the power base within China he was seeking▣. With Wang’s appointment as “Chinese president”, Demchugdongrub’s MAF was subsumed under the Wang regime, but in practical terms the MAF was still autonomous of it, if not of the Japanese [‘Mengjiang’, (Military Wiki), www.military.wikia.org].
Mengjiang one yuan note⇣
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RNGRC a ‘toothless’ regime
The RNGRC under Wang was a one-party totalitarian dictatorship, but the reality of Wang Jingwei’s regime was that it was only afforded very limited powers by it’s Japanese masters. Wang, befitting the function of a pliable puppet, was basically no more than a convenient pawn for the Japanese military to negotiate with Chiang’s government [‘Wang Jianwei regime’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. In 1944 Wang died in Japan…his successor as president mayor of Shanghai Chen Gongbo played an equally subservient role for the Kwantung (Chen in 1946 was tried as a war criminal by the Chiang government and executed).
Mongolian flag 1945⇣
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At the end of WWII, both the Mengjiang regime of Demchugdongrub and the ‘Reorganised’ Republic of China were effortlessly swept away by the invading Soviet and Mongolian armies. The Inner Mongolian territories were returned to China (along with Chinese Manchuria) and the Soviet satellite Outer Mongolia gained independence after a national plebiscite (100% yes vote!) in late 1945 (which the USSR immediately and China later recognised).
PRTT crest⇣
PostScript: Tannu Tuva, a regional curio Mengjiang (or Mengkukuo) and Manchukuo were not the only contemporary puppet states in that region of Northeastern China/Mongolia. Nestled in between Outer Mongolia and Russian Siberia, is the tiny enclave of Tannu Tuva (1944: 170,500 sq km, Pop. 95,400)…historically this land was part of Mongolia and therefore part of a client state of the Chinese Empire. The People’s Republic of Tannu Tuva (Tьʙа Arat Respuʙlik) (1921-44) was recognised only by the USSR and Mongolia. Nominally independent but in reality another satellite state of the Soviets, in late 1944 it was absorbed into the Soviet Union as the Tuvan Autonomous Oblast. Today, it is the Tyva Republic, a constituent member of the post-communist Russian Federation.
(map source: www.globalsecurity.org)
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✳️ Demchugdongrub, despite his vaulting ambitions, was only ever nominally in charge of what was always transparently a Japanese-controlled puppet state
✥ exacerbating pre-existing tensions between the Mongolian and Chinese sections of the state (Lattimore, op.cit.)
✼ Mengjiang 蒙 (literally ‘fierce’ or in compound form ‘dream to act’). The entity is sometimes styled Mengkukuo 蒙古國 because of its parallels with Manchukuo
✧ the Mongolian prince’s supposed autonomy was always surface deep at best…”an autonomy administered by the Japanese for the Japanese”, (ibid.)
❦ colloquially known as the “Wang Jingwei regime“
▣ Wang’s would-be government was based in the former capital Nánjīng, however the de facto capital was Shanghai
.