Engendering Contempt for Collaborators: Anti-Hanjian Discourse Following the Sino-Japanese War

The East Asia Center at the University of Washington presents a talk by Yun Xia the interplay between gender and the crime of collaboration in the context of the Nationalist government's post-war struggles, market forces (public voyeurism) and changing literary trends.

Yun Xia, Professor of History at Seattle University

During the Sino-Japanese War (1937-45), the Chinese Nationalist government launched vigorous anti-collaborator movements. It condemned collaborators as "hanjian" or "traitors to the Han," and organized legal, social, and literary campaigns against them. This lecture examines the interplay between gender and the crime of collaboration in the context of the Nationalist government's post-war struggles, market forces (public voyeurism) and changing literary trends. Anti-hanjian literature targeted "female collaborators" as a particular category, exposing their relationships with male collaborators and fabricating details of their private lives. Tabloids and popular pamphlets deployed hearsay and rumors to confirm the political disloyalty and personal decadence of collaborators, male or female. In this way, issues such as family and sexuality were written into the discourse on war and collaboration. Many anti-hanjian strategies were inherited and taken up during later campaigns organized by the Chinese Communist party.