The narratives of Chinese nationhood tell us that the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–45) represented both a critical phase in China's suffering under imperialism and a vital step toward national liberation. Set against the diversity and ambivalence that characterized relationships between China and Japan after the mid-nineteenth century, the narrative of war offered renewed moral clarity, constructing—within trauma and chaos—a stark distinction between the good, who resisted occupation, and the bad, who collaborated. The subordination of historical enquiry to nation building (De Ceuster Reference De Ceuster2002), and the presentation of collaboration as an aberration, as the product of collaborators' “moral flaws,” have not encouraged enquiry into the origins of collaboration, which has been used to highlight the immorality and the provisionality of the occupation (Brook Reference Brook, Barrett and Shyu2001, 81–82). Prasenjit Duara has noted (2003, 59) the reductive potential of the victimization–collaboration–resistance triad in our understanding of conflict and occupation: If the term “collaboration” is to retain any utility, we must interrogate it.

This essay aims, therefore, to probe the meanings of collaboration through an examination of one collaborator, Bai Jianwu, and the explanations of his actions recorded in his diary (Bai Reference Bai Jianwu1992). This examination of collaboration is greatly facilitated by recent work highlighting the breadth of Sino-Japanese exchanges, which has been largely neglected in earlier, conflict-centered narratives of nation building (Fogel Reference Fogel1996; Howland Reference Howland1996; Lu Reference Lu2004), casting new light on the multifaceted nature of Japanese influence (Duus, Myers, and Peattie Reference Duus, Myers and Peattie1989; Young Reference Young1998), and offering a more nuanced understanding of collaboration as a political, social, and personal choice (Barrett and Shyu Reference Barrett and Shyu2001; Brook Reference Brook2005; Coble Reference Coble2003; Duara Reference Duara2003; Fu Reference Fu Poshek1993; Mitter Reference Mitter2000). At the same time, the Chinese-language scholarship on collaboration—once dominated by quite rigid orthodoxies—has become more accommodating of variations in focus and approach (Liu Reference Liu Bing1998; Wang Reference Wang Kewen2001; Zhang Reference Zhang Sheng2005).

Bai has been defined by his collaboration with the Japanese armies, and this sets him apart from the great majority of Chinese who lived through the war. However, if we compare Bai to more prominent wartime collaborators such as Liang Hongzhi or Wang Jingwei, who headed Japanese-controlled regimes during the war (Brook Reference Brook, Barrett and Shyu2001; Wang Reference Wang Kewen2001), he appears as a very minor figure. Why, then, should we care about Bai? And what can he tell us about collaboration?

First, while collaboration is often discussed in terms of the actions of prominent collaborators, Timothy Brook's recent work (2001, 2005) has compellingly demonstrated that a collaborative order depends on the participation of many individuals. Just as we would not contemplate reducing our understanding of China's prewar politics to a study of Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek), so we should resist confining our examination of collaboration to the motives and dispositions of collaboration leadership alone, as we risk missing much of the texture of the experience of collaboration and the choices involved therein.

Second, Bai Jianwu's path toward the extraordinary experience of collaboration originated in a largely unremarkable social, educational, and professional background; both his early professional successes and the abrupt ending of his political career in 1925 mirrored the experiences of a generation of aspiring leaders. Bai's choices emphasize that the egregious decision to collaborate was, for some, rooted in mundane experience and common disappointment rather than in the extreme pressures of war and occupation, and this highlights the fragility of the boundaries between resistance and collaboration.

Finally, as Brook has pointed out, it has been “the fate of most collaborators to remain as wooden as the puppets people saw them as being” (2005, 14–15). Brook's subjects left scant personal records, and we see them generally through the eyes of others. In his diary, however, Bai Jianwu chose to create a record that would outlive him. Naturally, the question of the reliability of diaries and other personal sources is a delicate one. In a recent study of Wang Jingwei, Wang Kewen makes extensive use of a memoir produced by Gao Zongwu, noting its value as an insider's account of unfolding collaboration (2001, 263), but also revealing its function in reinventing Gao as a skeptical, reluctant collaborator and prudent advisor (though often ignored) to the impulsive Wang Jingwei (268–69, 279, 283).

Bai Jianwu's diary tells us only what Bai chose to record, and it works in counterpoint to the account of Bai's activities and intentions in official records, the latter limited both by imperfect intelligence and by the moral framework imposed by the emerging master narrative. While we cannot take it as a factual narrative of his relations with the Japanese armies or as an unvarnished account of Bai's motives, it is more fruitful to consider the diary as a “political performance” (Brook Reference Brook2005, 8–9), and to ask what that performance was designed to achieve and how.

The diary reveals the terms on which Bai was prepared to argue that collaboration was an acceptable choice, the limits of that collaboration, and the place that Bai allowed collaboration in the story of his life. It suggests how Bai used the incremental narrative of the diary to negotiate the slippage between his political choices and prevailing currents of opinion that set an absolute value on resistance to Japan. As Brook has argued, historical analysis of collaboration is complicated, as the word itself “superimposes a moral map over the political landscape that it ventures to describe” (2005, 5); through Bai's diary, we see his efforts to reconcile the two.

Before exploring these efforts in detail, let us consider Bai Jianwu in the context of prewar China and against explanations of other collaborations. This examination reveals that, although his early career was not atypical, he resists easy comparison with other collaborators. While Bai justified his collaboration with the Japanese in reference to his distaste for the government of the day (and this was not unusual), his diary discussions of that collaboration were at times deeply ambivalent. Moreover, the narrative of self that runs concurrently with the political discussions suggests a continuing anxiety over his own public activities.

Bai Jianwu and the Chinese Republic

Bai Jianwu's childhood and youth reflected the complexities of life and politics in early twentieth-century China as these affected many Chinese of gentry families. In his twenties and thirties, his attention was focused primarily and (for a time) successfully on the search for personal and professional stability; engagement with Japanese groups came relatively late in his life, and was largely inconclusive. Born in 1886 in North China, Bai was prepared from childhood to take the examinations that had drawn most educated males toward a common goal of public service and a place within a Confucian elite. However, his examination successes in 1901 and 1903 were followed closely by the abolition of the system in 1905. Changing direction, Bai entered the Beiyang College of Law and Political Science in Tianjin in 1908. There, he joined Sun Yat-sen's Revolutionary Alliance (Tongmenghui) and witnessed the Revolution of 1911.

The years after Bai's graduation in 1913 saw the rapid decline of central authority and the disintegration of the new republic, as much of China came under the control of regional military leaders—“warlords”—vying for national control. Political disintegration and the intellectual experimentation of the early republic set Bai and his contemporaries on diverging paths. In the years immediately after his graduation, Bai worked with his classmate Li Dazhao to establish the newspaper Morning Bell (Chenzhong); Bai's diary records regular meetings and correspondence, and Li in his journalism quoted approvingly from Bai's views on the evils of the traditional family and supported his candidacy as director of teaching at his alma mater (Zhu Reference Zhu Wentong1999, 666–67, 710). Within a decade, however, Li had become a founding member of the Chinese Communist Party and mentor to the young Mao Zedong (Meisner Reference Meisner1967, xii–xiii), and Bai—despite early socialist inclinations (Huang Reference Huang Lingjun2003, 396–97)—gravitated toward more conservative circles and employment in the political offices of the influential military leader Wu Peifu.

Bai's fortunes rose with Wu's, and memoir accounts suggest that he expected to serve as prime minister once Wu's bid for national power succeeded (Zhang Reference Zhang Daxiang1983, 191). However, Wu's power collapsed in 1924 with the defection of a key ally, Feng Yuxiang (Waldron Reference Waldron1995, 181, 210–12), and never recovered; the formal reunification of China under Jiang Jieshi and the Guomindang (GMD) in 1927 ended any hope of a return to national politics. Though Bai retired to dabble unsuccessfully in business and read the classics, he did not lose interest in national affairs; indeed, this interest became more acute as formal relations with Japan took a turn for the worse.

Despite continuing peaceful interaction between China and Japan, the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–95) was followed by periodic peaks in diplomatic tension. Relations deteriorated catastrophically after September 1931, as Japanese armies occupied the northeastern provinces of Fengtian, Jilin, and Heilongjiang, establishing the state of Manzhouguo (Manchukuo) in 1932, and incorporating Rehe Province in 1933, extending Manzhouguo to within striking distance of the cities of Beiping (the national capital, Beijing, to 1927) and Tianjin. Blaming the Nanjing government for these reverses, Bai took the steps that set him apart from the great majority of his contemporaries. Despite the political stigma and personal risk that followed close association with the Japanese authorities (Coble Reference Coble1991, 201, 253–54, 278), Bai next appeared in the official record as the instigator of an armed attack on Beiping on June 28, 1935.

The June 1935 episode may appear to have been a relatively trivial disturbance. According to the Chinese press, Bai commanded a force of “several tens” of men that was dispersed by the Chinese armies in Beiping without gaining entry to the city or causing any damage (Li Reference Li Yunhan1982, 561–62), his preparations having been leaked to the Chinese authorities (Zou Reference Zou1989, 69). However, the planned attack clearly alarmed the regional authorities. Throughout the spring of that year, the Japanese army had worked to push “hostile” Chinese officials and army units out of the provinces bordering on Manchuria and to dictate their replacements. When Bai made his move, the central government was still reshuffling the northern administration, and had yet to finalize arrangements for the defense of Beiping (Dryburgh Reference Dryburgh2000, 32–49). Moreover, officials who were approached by Bai's associates reported that his supporters included not only Japanese personnel but also serving Chinese army units, including a force of several thousand waiting within the city for the rebels to gain entry (Zou Reference Zou1989, 67, 72), and the authorities intercepted a “circular telegram” from Bai exhorting all senior Chinese military commanders in the surrounding provinces to rise against the GMD “dictatorship” (Zhongyang Dang'anguan et al. Reference Zhongyang Dang'anguan2000, 409–10).

This episode marked Bai as an ally of the Japanese. A warrant for his arrest was issued, and substantial rewards were offered to anyone who could capture him alive or produce proof of his death (Li Reference Li Yunhan1982, 562). However, Japanese pressure on North China soon produced graver problems for the Chinese authorities, diverting their attention from Bai as agitation for “North China autonomy” threatened to create a substantial Japanese sphere of influence north of the Yellow River. The autonomy movement peaked in November 1935. It produced a small “puppet” regime, the East Hebei Anti-Communist Autonomous Council, chaired by Yin Rugeng, and effectively forced the Chinese central authorities to delegate the domestic affairs of two provinces to another regional organization, the Hebei-Chaha'er Political Council (Dryburgh Reference Dryburgh2000, 32–53, 72–87). While Bai was not formally employed by the Japanese armies or in the East Hebei Council, he remained under suspicion; after war broke out in the summer of 1937, Bai was captured by the Chinese central army and executed as a traitor (Li et al. Reference Li Shengping1989, 167).

Bai Jianwu as Collaborator

Collaboration is a complex problem, and Brook warns that “what looks like collaboration from a distance may … turn out to be something more complicated, even something entirely different” (2005, 13). Bai Jianwu's activities certainly look like collaboration. Bai did not have occupation thrust upon him, but actively sought engagement with Japanese groups that were perceived as a threat to Chinese sovereignty. Although he was not an effective collaborator, the possibility of willing collaboration was central to Japanese military efforts to justify their expanding political influence. Bai's activities arguably facilitated that extension, although he did not survive to confront the question of complicity in the worst atrocities that shape memories of the war and the narratives of nation.

Acts of collaboration have ranged from the pursuit of economic security in the employment of occupying forces, to active support for or advocacy of occupation (Mitter Reference Mitter2000, 17–19). This complexity is rarely reflected in a Chinese discourse of the mid-twentieth century that used both formulaic language and historical comparison to emphasize the moral boundaries between those who collaborated and those who did not. More recent studies of wartime collaboration have addressed this complexity, considering collaboration variously as a path through the inescapable predicament of occupation, as a quest for personal or factional advantage, or as a strategy advocated by reference to a wider agenda of modernization or nationalism. While Bai's location within the Chinese discursive frameworks is well established, he is less easily categorized within these latter frameworks.

Bai's Chinese contemporaries used an extensive conventional vocabulary to describe offenses from episodic failures in resistance to formal alignment with foreign powers. Officials confronting Japanese pressure were warned against “fudging solutions” (fuyan) and “compromise” (tuoxie). More substantial failures attracted the weightier accusation of “selling China” (maiguo), and those openly aligned with the Japanese were “traitors” (hanjian) or “puppets” (kuilei) serving “illegitimate” (wei) regimes. This language—“institutional”rather than “fertile” (McHale Reference McHale2002, 21)—established categories of permitted and prohibited actions, but was not designed to explain these, thus leaving the dynamics of collaboration and the motives of collaborators obscure. Yet it is remarkably durable: As an embodiment of China's vulnerability and a source of moral reassurance to the noncollaborator (Hung Reference Hung1994, 107–10), the hanjian crowded the wartime press (Wakeman Reference Wakeman and Wen-hsin2000, 298), and the term appeared in indictments at postwar collaborators' trials (Nanjing shi Dang'anguan Reference Nanjing Shi Dang'anguan1992, 1203).

In these terms, Bai Jianwu is described in memoirs as “an old-style traitor (hanjian) who … would sell China (maiguo) for his own glory” (Zou Reference Zou1989, 66); similar language is used in the secondary literature (Huang Reference Huang Lingjun2003, 400; Li et al. Reference Li Shengping1989, 167). The moral weight of these terms did not dissuade Bai from dealing with the Japanese; yet we see its influence in his insistence on the centrality of national salvation to his mission, and in his treatment of power relations between himself and his Japanese associates. Moreover, Bai used this vocabulary to condemn the failings of others (Bai Reference Bai Jianwu1992, 194, 1104), and this appears to be an assertion of his own adherence to the core values of loyalty and patriotism.

The moral map of this vocabulary was populated by historical examples as well as contemporary ones. Bai's generation mined earlier experiences of war and occupation for lessons (Dryburgh Reference Dryburgh2000, 14; Wang Reference Wang Kewen2001, 27, 30–31), and, in choosing to deal with the Japanese, Bai invited comparison with those most harshly criticized in standard histories (Wakeman Reference Wakeman1984, 637–39). However, he was far more likely to draw comfort from the example of leaders who had managed external pressure effectively, reserving comparisons with those who had betrayed China for serving officials. And just as the language of the war years survives in Chinese historiography (Brook Reference Brook, Barrett and Shyu2001, 84), so, too, does the moral significance attached to historical collaboration. While some recent work in China has explored the psychological roots and costs of collaboration (Cai and Yang Reference Cai Shuangquan and Yang2000, 100), a more traditional stance finds expression in the arguments that traitors from the tenth century on have “rewritten Chinese history” by pursuing wealth and fame through collaboration, and that “[even] at the point of a Japanese bayonet, every Chinese has a responsibility not to become a traitor” (Zhang et al. Reference Zhang Sheng2003, 8, 3).

These judgments on Bai, and the timing of his collaboration with the Japanese, invite us to consider him as one who collaborated out of self-interest and a sense of alienation from the new order of post-1927 China. The association of collaboration with thwarted political ambition and marginality, with “disaffected, sympathetic, or ambitious elements” (Marrus and Paxton Reference Marrus and Paxton1995, xvi), is well established (Fu Reference Fu2002; He 2004; Wakeman Reference Wakeman1996; Wang Reference Wang Chaoguang1999), and there were many who, like Bai, had seen their hard-crafted political careers disintegrate after 1927. As Wakeman puts it,

This association echoes the wartime experience of fragmented European regions such as the Balkans, where the occupying powers became involved in factional struggles (Tomasevich Reference Tomasevich1994), and highlights the fragility of nation in prewar China, as it was threatened not only by self-seeking, marginal politicians but also by the possibility of alternative communities of interest and competing identities. Other collaborators in East Asia and in Europe invoked shared identity to justify collaboration (Duara Reference Duara2003, 111–16; cf. Bukey Reference Bukey2000; Dahl Reference Dahl and Stanton-Ife1999; Mitter Reference Mitter2000, 94–97), and close contacts with Japan have been cited as a foundation for collaboration in China (Wang Reference Wang Chaoguang1999, 83). This is reflected in the background of Yin Rugeng, chairman of the East Hebei Council: After studying at Waseda, Yin married a Japanese woman and worked officially as a Sino-Japanese liaison (Gaimusho Reference Gaimusho1928, 6–7) before collaborating after 1935. However, the path from contact to collaboration was, in most cases, far more complex (Lu Reference Lu2004; Wang Reference Wang Kewen2001, 296); Bai Jianwu's personal history showed little early contact with Japan, and his declared interest was in China's future, not in Asian federation.

Thus, while Bai fits Wakeman's type in many ways, the message of the diary was that he was fighting a different battle by different means. While the collaboration sketched by Wakeman was an open-ended Sino-Japanese arrangement intended to repel Western encroachments, Bai envisaged a limited engagement with the Japanese to address specifically Chinese problems. Moreover, it is not clear that Bai “saw little harm” in cooperation with Japan. His diary records considerable ambivalence toward collaboration, and a strong concern with the “right” use of power, as well as its acquisition; it represents his claim to be seen as serving China as well as himself.

Given this claim, Brook's formulation of “collaborationist nationalism” appears suggestive. Collaborationist nationalism holds that “collaborative arrangement with another nation serves the higher interests of one's own,” and collaborators framed their programs in the language of nation and presented themselves as the guardians of a Chinese nation that was threatened by Western imperialism and GMD misrule (Brook Reference Brook, Brook and Schmid2000, 162, 170–72), competing energetically with Jiang Jieshi's wartime government over the ownership and interpretation of national and party symbols (Zhang Reference Zhang Sheng2005, 7). We find echoes of these arguments in other cooperative and collaborative relations: Vichy politicians were drawn toward collaboration with Germany, at least in part, by a sense of crisis in domestic prewar politics (Paxton Reference Paxton1972), and the positioning of Japan before the war as an emblem of Asian modernity, and as a crusader against Western imperialism, had informed elite attitudes in Manchuria, India, and Indonesia (Frederick Reference Frederick and Raben1999, 16–17; Mitter Reference Mitter2000, 44–47; Reference Mitter, Narangoa and Cribb2003, 156–60; Sareen Reference Sareen2004, 77–80).

Brook's subjects are vulnerable to the charge of instrumentalism, to the suggestion that their nationalism—“socially conservative, politically restrictive and culturally antique” (Brook Reference Brook, Brook and Schmid2000, 187)—was simply a mask for a political relationship that was dominated by Japan in all but trivial details, yet collaborators energetically defended their use of the language of nation as the salvaging of fragments of right and authenticity for the people of occupied China (Zhang Reference Zhang Sheng2005, 15). A consideration of Bai Jianwu in this light, given his looser relations with the Japanese and his insistence on his own autonomy, may further illuminate some of the possibilities and pitfalls of this approach.

Bai used his diary intensively for a critique of the GMD, though his discussions of an alternative path for China were much sketchier. Nonetheless, in his insistence that his project was one of “national salvation,” and in his reference to the defense of Chinese interests as a measure of right action even as he contemplated collaboration with Japan, we see a sustained effort to frame a form of nationalist collaboration, suggesting that, despite the increasing force of resistance nationalism through the 1930s, the linkage between collaboration and nation was more than just a wartime aberration. That said, Bai's apparent sympathy with Japan was limited, as were his expectations of the benefits of collaboration. Therefore, we should expect to find tensions and contradictions in his presentation of his activities. Before examining that presentation, however, let us consider the diary itself and the use that he made of it.

Diary, Life, and Self, 1915–27

Bai Jianwu was a diarist long before he became a collaborator. Between December 1915 and the summer of 1937, with a three-year gap in the mid-1920s, he wrote almost daily. The original diaries, held by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, run to around 1 million characters (Bai Reference Bai Jianwu1992, 1–2). We must recognize the status and limitations of the diary as a source. The diary of “self-cultivation and self-examination”—a relatively new form in China (Harrison Reference Harrison2004, 10–11; Wu Reference Wu Peiyi1990, 93–94)—occupies an ambiguous territory between private and public. It may be a moral or social audit (Dawson Reference Dawson2000, 430–31; Ko Reference Ko, Hershatter, Honig, Lipman and Stross1996, 69–70); or, like American Puritan diaries and Chinese literati diaries, it may be written to educate others (Autrey Reference Autrey1991, 77; Ko Reference Ko, Hershatter, Honig, Lipman and Stross1996, 66; Schlaeger Reference Schlaeger, Langford and West1999).

The diary form demanded both a self-critical stance on the part of the diarist and a recognition that the diary would probably be read by others; both the honesty demanded by the project of self-cultivation, and the diary's claim to authenticity as a contemporaneous record of personal experience (Agnew Reference Agnew, Langford and West1999, 50–51), exist in tension with its inherent scope for reinterpretation and reinvention. Bai used his diary, above all, to create a persona, and to locate that persona in relation to wider events from the familial to the national. It was primarily a self-portrait, and a reflection on his roles as father, friend, and aide to the powerful.

Bai rarely left center stage, and although he commented on public affairs, the diary is not a detailed eyewitness account of public events. Thus, he recorded what he heard of the May Fourth demonstrations in 1919 (194–201),Footnote ¹ but wrote less about events closer to home. The 1923 Beijing-Hankou Railway Union strike is a case in point. Bai had earlier brokered a loose alliance between Wu Peifu and Communist activists led by his former classmate Li Dazhao, who was responsible for the unionization of the railway workers and, later, for the strike itself. Wu's decision to send in troops against the strikers ended both his own association with the Communists and Bai's friendship with Li (Meisner Reference Meisner1967, 211–12). In his diary, Bai made no reference to the strike until after the troops went in, and then noted only the risks of denying workers' legally protected rights, adding that he had written to Wu criticizing the handling of the strike (406–7), the detail of events here displaced by Bai's record of his own stance.

More often, Bai treated the diary as an expression of the diarist, commenting on the diary of an acquaintance,

Bai recorded this judgment on the diarist without supporting reference to the content of the diary, using the contrast between the two diaries to comment on his own flagging self-discipline while suggesting that he faced weightier problems than the bookish Zhou.

This reflects a recurring theme in the diary of conflicting personal pressures and hardships. Tracing Bai's progress from 1915 onward, we find a narrative of demands borne with fortitude, and a struggle for self-improvement. He recorded early difficulties—loneliness, inadequate teaching, the frustrations of dependence on his grandfather—in more detail than his successes (1–3), and the first, discontented entry suggests a profound dissatisfaction with a life that lacked direction:

The early years of the diary show Bai facing personal and professional frustrations (10, 37), musing on love and revolution (11, 31), and agonizing over his own faults and the public decline he saw around him (134, 173).

In September 1924, the high point in his career, Bai composed an autobiographical sketch for a Western Who's Who in China that shows how far he felt he had come. Rejecting a friend's draft that “didn't show in detail my achievements or my friends,” Bai took on the task “for the sake of accuracy,” describing his early academic successes and later roles in national developments as a keen observer and conscientious advisor, careless of public recognition, who accepted disagreement without rancor (490–92). Okano Masujirō, Japanese biographer of Wu Peifu, saw Bai regularly around this time, and recalled finding him hospitable, considerate, and politically well informed (1939, 147–49).

The daily record of the diary remained ambiguous. In reflective mood, Bai enjoyed sunsets and birdsong but complained that work kept him at his desk (442); he regretted his own declining energy (446), but congratulated himself on his perseverance (449–50). He also considered the process of self-cultivation: “I got angry this morning for some trivial reason; in consequence, everything I did went wrong and I could not finish anything. This shows that we cannot neglect regular time for the cultivation of self” (450) and lamented the pressures holding him back from further progress (483). With Wu Peifu's defeat, Bai stopped writing, explaining later that he had no time for his diary (496). After the upheavals of the autumn of 1924, he faced both professional and personal loss, as the collapse of his political hopes and Wu's withdrawal into retirement was followed by the death of his parents and two of his children (500–501). When Bai resumed the diary in 1927, he had reached the age of forty, and saw that times were changing (615): As he commended himself for intellectual maturity, waning ambition, and rising competence, he suggested only that these equipped him to deal philosophically with failure (587, 647, 787–88).

This narrative of Bai's public and private personae was embedded in a record of his visits to restaurants, walks past the Tianjin airfield “to see the planes land,” his children's school examinations, birthday visits to photographers, his hopes for their futures, and the pain of family bereavements. Most of these reflections show a concerned father or filial son, yet he left some “warts” on his self-portrait:

This was not pure self-criticism: It revealed his underlying sense that he was buffeted and constrained by external conditions—here, in 1936, in his relations with the Japanese—and affirmed his recognition of conventions, and his scrutiny of his own actions against them.

Bai used the diary to measure his own progress against familial and social expectation, to claim or deny influence or approval over national affairs, and to affirm his roots in the everyday. As Amar Singh wrote to “clarify the meaning and consequences” of his liminal status in colonial India (Rudolph and Rudolph Reference Rudoplh, Rudoplh and Kanota2002, 21), so Bai wrote to affirm his position in a changing China, creating a diary persona that mirrored and corrected the everyday self in a moral context set by Bai the diarist.

Contemplating China

Bai's reconsideration of his own position in national context became salient in 1927, as he resumed his diary in retirement. While biographical sketches of Bai tell us that at this time he began to gravitate toward the Japanese (Zhang Reference Zhang Daxiang1983, 192), the diary shows him more often looking inward at China's problems. His interest in political affairs was by no means dispassionate: In considering the state of China, Bai was reviewing his allegiances and locating himself as an outsider in a new China. As he considered Wu Peifu's defeat, followed the struggle of the Nanjing government to subdue domestic rivals, and appraised China against other powers, he also considered his own future.

Thus, the diligent yet critical servant of Wu Peifu reinvented himself as a detached observer. Despite oblique references to the possibility of further political engagement (604, 622), and regrets over the limitations—in loss of status and livelihood (660, 781, 910, 1074)—imposed by retirement, Bai saw benefits to this marginal position, commenting (759) on his improving health and suggesting that one might see current affairs more clearly by virtue of detachment (555, 869).

This clarity of vision revealed to Bai a systemic pathology in Chinese politics, of entrenched particularism, venality, shortsighted pursuit of sectional interests (549, 557, 668–69, 1105), and preference for empty talk over action (808–9, 1175), and allowed him to distance himself from the political order of the early republic. Describing the first generation of republican government as “dead men walking” (615) and lamenting the influence of politically inept military leaders (371, 452, 644, 992), Bai absolved himself of responsibility for the debacle of 1924. He recalled advising against the measures that had overstretched Wu Peifu's resources and undermined his credibility (501–2), and did not consider himself responsible for offering new leadership, commenting only, “If those in authority have no understanding, or principles for managing or delegating their affairs, their supporters cannot fulfil their responsibilities” (510).

Yet the GMD, too, was deeply flawed. Despite his early admiration for Sun Yat-sen (670), Bai thought GMD policy an inadequate answer to China's problems (518–19, 564–65, 671). Moreover, the GMD lacked authority: “if China is to have any hope of stability, we need a policy and central authority—both of these are indispensable … Anyone can see that most of those who call themselves leaders today are ill-prepared on both fronts” (693). A few days later, he commented bitterly, “It's National Day, but when I see what they have done to China, I see no cause for celebration—mourning would be more appropriate” (696); his occasional acknowledgment that the GMD was more capable than its predecessors was grudging and heavily qualified (658, 668, 685, 949–50).

Bai admitted a certain respect for Jiang Jieshi, describing him as the first conscientious leader China had seen since Wu Peifu (827). However, he portrayed Jiang as a lone figure, surrounded by “fanatics and thugs” (1031), whose personal authority alone kept in power a divided and unrepresentative party that lacked quality and leadership in its middle ranks (583, 721, 728, 955, 959), but was determined to bolster its own authority at all costs (959, 571, 710)—a party, in short, that no responsible person could support. Although Mitsuda Tsuyoshi (Reference Mitsuda Tsuyoshi1995) has charted Bai's path toward collaboration as a navigation between domestic allies before he moved toward Japan, Bai's references to domestic alternatives take second place to his discussions of the GMD. He commented periodically on foreign politics (538, 585, 749, 910), but seemed more interested in leadership than in policy, commending Mussolini's self-belief (1172) and asking wistfully, “Who will be China's Gandhi?” (844).

Bai's views on these questions were far from original. His contempt for China's first generation of republican leaders echoed the profound distrust between civilian and military power holders (McCord Reference McCord1993, 309–15), and, setting aside his grudging admiration for Jiang Jieshi, his account of GMD flaws had much in common with views expressed across the political spectrum, from the Japanese-owned press in Manchuria (Mitter Reference Mitter2000, 54) to the liberal left in China proper (Fung Reference Fung2000, 82–95). While Bai's later attempts to align himself with the Japanese authorities were shocking to his contemporaries, many of the arguments he cited in support of that decision would have been entirely familiar to them.

The occupation of three northeastern provinces by Japanese forces in the autumn of 1931 marked a critical point in Bai's thinking. Two themes dominated Chinese discussions of the Manchurian crisis: Japanese expansionism, and the inadequacy of Nanjing's response (Coble Reference Coble1991, 76–80; Mitter Reference Mitter2000, 169–72). Bai focused on the second question: “China spends vast sums every year on an army of over one million, yet when we are attacked, they still talk of nonresistance and of calm—this is the bitterest humiliation” (911–12). He blamed Nanjing for delaying resolution of long-standing Sino-Japanese disputes, and compared Zhang Xueliang to “a mouse fleeing a cat” in the face of Japanese pressure (935–36). Yet he argued that the mere expression of anger was counterproductive (912), and as the Japanese attack on Shanghai in January 1932 provoked further anti-Japanese agitation, he lamented, “if they go on like this they will talk themselves and China to destruction” (957).

As the crisis dragged on, Bai expressed increasing frustration at his own inability to influence developments. In October 1932, he wrote, “I hate talking about national affairs . … you can talk and talk and it is as if you had said nothing. It's all castles in the air: Very pretty but utterly illusory. What use are we, sitting in our rooms in the [foreign] concessions? Better not to say anything” (1044). By the end of the year, he had concluded, “I have come to lose all faith in [the GMD], and it seems there is no leader who can save us. I have borne this long enough: Now I must try again once an opportunity arises” (1068). As Japanese forces advanced into Rehe in 1933, Bai drafted an open telegram on the GMD's “crimes” (1091); by September, he had concluded that “no matter what happens, the GMD cannot save China” (1127).

After 1933, Bai devoted much less diary space to the iniquities of the GMD. By establishing to his own satisfaction that the present authorities were incapable of saving China, he delivered himself from the obligation of observing and evaluating them. Having based his claim to clarity of vision and his denial of responsibility for China's problems on his detachment from mainstream political activity after 1928, now he used these claims to justify further action. The inadequacies of the GMD provided a rationale—“permission”—for his own return to political life; his attention was now fixed on the search for alternative solutions to China's problems, and on his own role in that search.

Engaging Japan

Bai's progress toward collaboration with the Japanese was, as he presented it, neither smooth nor inevitable. Japan was slow to emerge as a presence in the diary, and Bai maintained a degree of distance in his presentation of Japanese groups and individuals. He showed his engagement with the Japanese as essentially reactive, in that new developments tended to follow crises in formal Sino-Japanese relations, Bai resisted the label of collaboration and appeared anxious to play down the importance of Japan in the greater project of overthrowing the GMD and saving China, and his relations with Japanese were shifting and uncertain. While studies of wartime collaboration have noted that even those typically described as unashamed collaborators came to express disillusion with their Japanese partners (Brook Reference Brook, Brook and Schmid2000, 179–80; Wang Reference Wang Kewen2001, 276, 284), Bai Jianwu presented skepticism as his point of departure in dealing with the Japanese authorities.

It has been suggested that Bai developed strong Japanese connections after 1924 (Du Reference Du Chunhe1987, 60; Zhang Reference Zhang Daxiang1983, 192), but there are few diary references to Japanese contacts until the 1930s. Bai could speak and read Japanese (5), and he had some contact with Wu Peifu's Japanese visitors (Okano Reference Okano1939, 147–50). After 1928, Bai lived in the Japanese concession in Tianjin (546), and used Japanese doctors (560, 679). None of this marks the diary persona as one whose relations with Japan were unusually close. Bai was happy to comment on Chinese affairs for Japanese audiences, warning Japanese journalists against excessive intervention in China (514; cf. Fogel Reference Fogel1996, 194–98, 284), and criticizing the GMD to Vice Consul Shiroi Yasushi in 1929 (629–30). However, Bai does not fit the model of a collaborator (Wang Reference Wang Chaoguang1999, 84) who drifted into political cooperation with the Japanese on the basis of earlier, benign contacts, and in this, he was not alone (Brook Reference Brook2005, 3–4).

Nor was Bai overawed by his Japanese associates, bluntly describing more than one Japanese associate as dull witted (668, 1098), and commenting that “the Japanese do not understand China” (1085). When he referred to a Japanese friend's ability to “transcend the barriers of nationality,” he linked this to rare individual qualities and close friendship (1087–88)—this was not part of his political project. Moreover, there was more than a hint of instrumentalism in his shows of amity toward Japanese associates. A rare reference in 1932 to “shared language and culture” underpinned an assertion of Japanese obligation to act with restraint in China (961); though he recorded sending gifts to Japanese associates—a watch to one, and a scroll to another praising his strategic skills (1231–32)—these were made on the eve of his attack on Beiping, when he particularly needed Japanese support.

Instead, he presented his increasing engagement with Japanese groups as the product of domestic crisis. To Bai, “Japan” was not in itself a threat to China, though he shared others' distaste for Sino-Japanese conflict (914, 1075, 1083). Thus, his primary concern after 1931 was not the actions or intentions of the Japanese armies, but the central government's management of the conflict, in their preference for League of Nations mediation over direct negotiation and tolerance of anti-imperialist activism that Bai described as potentially catastrophic (917, 975; cf. Wang Reference Wang Kewen2001, 187, 197).

Whereas Wang Jingwei's collaboration arguably was driven by the conviction that war would destroy China, by “defeatism,” as the consensus among mainland Chinese scholars held (Liu Reference Liu Bing1998, 199; Wang Reference Wang Kewen2001, 270), Bai consoled himself that Japanese occupation, like the cherry blossom (936), could not last. In November 1931, echoing seventeenth-century appraisals of the Manchu invasion (Wakeman Reference Wakeman1984, 645), he wrote,

Like some Chinese foreign ministry officials (Dryburgh Reference Dryburgh2000, 199), Bai further suggested that differences of opinion in Japanese government circles would work to China's advantage, as civil leaders were bound to oppose the actions of the army (961, 1056).

While Bai affirmed that a warmer relationship with Japan was necessary and possible, he continued to resist direct engagement with the Japanese armies. In May 1932, he wrote, “In undertaking any great enterprise”—here, the overthrow of the GMD—“it is better to rely on one's own resources than to look for outside help” (990). He declared himself unconvinced by Manzhouguo as an experiment in Sino-Japanese cooperation: The puppet state was “doomed” (1048), a “second Korea” fettered by Japanese officials (1058), internally divided (1000) and populated by Chinese officials ill adapted to contemporary politics (1064); in its relations with the Japanese authorities, it was, above all, a negative example (1066, 1100, 1105).

Wavering in December 1932—hearing of Japanese army overtures to Wu Peifu and others, he commented that “it's not unthinkable to rely on foreign strength” to achieve one's goals (1066)—Bai took a further step toward active collaboration in January 1933, as Japanese forces attacked Rehe Province. While his first reference to the renewed fighting was soon forgotten in a lament over a wayward employee, within days, Bai was visiting Consul Goto in Tianjin to set out his plans for China's future (1072).

By March, he had resumed contact with Mino Tomokichi, whom he had first met in the mid-1920s, and who was now attached to the Japanese garrison in Tianjin (1073–77). After the end of the Rehe conflict, fearing reprisals for his opposition to the GMD, Bai fled to Manzhouguo. There, he met Itagaki Seishirō, one of the architects of Japanese rule in Manzhouguo (1088, 1095–96), Doihara Kenji (1151), and, later, Sakai Ryū (1231), both closely associated with expansion in Manchuria and North China. Bai had become the collaborator of the master narrative, fixed in his opposition to the Nanjing government, dependent on Japanese protection and support for survival and the realization of his political projects.

However, this is not how Bai chose to understand the process. He accused the central officials who negotiated the May 1933 cease-fire agreement of “selling China” (maiguo) (1104, 1108), and described his own project as “national salvation” (jiuguo) (1109), a term with broad currency commonly identified with resistance to Japan (Coble Reference Coble1991, 289–97; Mitter Reference Mitter2002). He wrote,

To reassure himself that he had avoided this “slavish dependence,” Bai presented his dealings with the Japanese as the measured deployment of an external resource, legitimized by reference to an iconic early emperor: “Tang Taizong [r. 626–49] used foreign troops to establish the state (and a true leader keeps his goals in mind …) All we are doing is using foreign advisers, though we will call in foreign troops if we have to” (1107). Bai sought to retain an appearance of control over the terms of his dealings with the Japanese armies: He recorded telling Mino that China and Japan's common interests could be served only by economic cooperation, not by territorial occupation (1077), and refusing to return to Tianjin to work on a “pan-Asian” agenda, commenting here, “no-one dedicated to national salvation can become involved in dubious enterprises of this kind” (1135).

It was central to Bai's narrative that he was winning support and approval for independent proposals (1191, 1213) rather than following a Japanese lead, and the diary records a fair amount of time and energy spent nagging his Japanese associates to pay more attention to his projects. Thus, we find him, in early 1934, sending out pamphlets to Japanese military leaders urging the establishment of a new order in North China (1158, 1178), lecturing Japanese officers on the support owed by Japan to its Chinese allies (1160), and complaining of the Japanese “short-sightedness” that denied him a proper base for his activities (1156), despite a warning from Itagaki on the need for patience (1161).

Pu Yi's narrative of his experiences as “puppet emperor” of Manzhouguo insisted that Japanese officials made every decision and set the pace of every development (1987, 244–47), and both Brook (Reference Brook, Brook and Schmid2000, 175–76) and Wang (Reference Wang Kewen2001, 277–83) highlight the ease with which collaborators' attempts to impose conditions on their collaboration could be blocked by the Japanese; Bai's experiences suggests that it could be as difficult to speed up Japanese plans as it was to deflect or delay them. Indeed, his cooperation with the Japanese armies was marked by diverging interests and priorities: Bai was furious to discover in April 1933 that he was expected to work with Zhang Jingyao, a former rival from the 1920s (1099), and found his Japanese support abruptly withdrawn as the conflict ended in June. “I discovered that, once the ceasefire was concluded, the Japanese authorities decided to suspend their support for efforts to overthrow the [GMD]” (1109).

The abortive assault on Beiping in June 1935 underlined the fragility of the relationship. The diary offers more evidence of Bai's desire to acquire a territorial base in North China (1215–16, 1218–20), than it does of careful planning or robust Japanese support. Bai's forces were grossly outnumbered (1235–37); the Chinese press treated the attack as a minor disturbance (Zhongyang Dang'anguan et al. Reference Zhongyang Dang'anguan2000, 407–37). Bai's Japanese associates—irritated, according to Chinese intelligence, at Bai's failure to disclose his plans—disowned the attack, denied Bai's involvement, and encouraged the Chinese authorities to pursue the culprits (Zhongyang Dang'anguan et al. Reference Zhongyang Dang'anguan2000, 415, 408). Bai returned to Manzhouguo, still grumbling at Japanese advice to be patient (1239).

In some respects, this episode appears to affirm Bai's political roots in the “warlordism” of the early 1920s, in his reliance on military force and foreign support in domestic political conflict, and in his use of the “circular telegram” to rally support on moral grounds. Yet McCord (Reference McCord1993, 8, 265) reminds us that close examination may reveal more “complicated and … antagonistic” relations between politicians of the warlord era and their foreign associates, and less cynical disjuncture between the principles underlying actions and the interests served by them, than the conventional historiography might suggest.

The turning point in Bai's relations with the Japanese armies came in September 1935, as a statement by the new commanding officer of the Japanese Tianjin garrison, Tada Shun, recast Japan's position in North China. The statement addressed a range of possible audiences, but Tada's advocacy of Sino-Japanese partnership—dedicated to the liberation of the Chinese people from the corrupt and extractive central government, in contrast to the “predatory” approach adopted by European and American governments in East Asia and mimicked by Japan in Korea (Dryburgh Reference Dryburgh2000, 65–66)—was a revelation to Bai.

After reading the full text of the statement in Manshū Nippo (Manchuria Daily), Bai wrote, “it was as if all the obstacles of the past were swept away. When I had read the whole thing, I wrote to Tada, to set out my basic beliefs” (1251). This dramatic conversion was soon followed by disillusion. Hoping to return to Tianjin and resume his work against the GMD, Bai found the Japanese army authorities there reluctant to support him (1256). Despite efforts to put pressure on Sakai and Tada through Itagaki, Bai waited and chafed in Manzhouguo (1256–59), until after the establishment of the Japanese-sponsored East Hebei Anti-Communist Autonomous Council, an event that Bai declined to record in his diary.

Thereafter, while Bai continued to offer his political views to the Japanese authorities, he was increasingly aware of his declining status. Repeatedly denied meetings with Itagaki, he complained, “The Japanese authorities certainly know what they're doing, but I loathe having to go cap-in-hand to them. I never did this with the Chinese authorities, but now for the sake of saving China, I have to bow my head to the Japanese”; the frustration of this latest reverse shows in rueful references to his excessive drinking (1270–72).

From early 1936, Bai recorded fewer contacts with Itagaki and paid more attention to the domestic actors in North China. His approaches to the East Hebei Council proved inconclusive (1298), but overtures to the Hebei-Chaha'er Political Council—an organization under the nominal control of the central government—resulted in the lifting of the arrest warrant issued against him in June 1935 and, later, in his appointment as a council advisor (1297, 1326). He continued sporadically planning a new order for China, seeking inspiration in the policies of Germany's National Socialist Party (1282, 1295), but he seems to have been consciously struggling to find the will to go on, writing in June 1936, “Anyone who believes they have no way out is a fool and a coward; whether we find dead ends and desperation depends on our understanding. Our actions and words are not part of our selves; … my body is simply part of the nation, so I should dedicate it to the nation … fulfil my responsibilities and not worry about anything else” (1300).

Despite a flurry of contacts with Japanese army representatives in the summer (1311–15), Bai failed to find new energy for his mission; despite occasional expressions of determination to push on with the salvation of China (1337, 1340), he was, by mid-year, isolated, exhausted, and despairing (1311, 1333, 1350). He fled to the countryside in the early months of the war and was captured and handed over to central army forces in October 1937. A memoir account of his capture shows him as dependent on tenuous connections with underground societies—and not on the Japanese—for support and security (Wang, Liang, and Li Reference Wang Shibin, Liang Quanjiang and Li Runting1987, 68–70).

Reinventing the Public Self

Throughout the diary, Bai observed himself as closely as he observed China or Japan. As he lamented the state of China and contemplated engagement with Japan, he used his writing on the mission of “national salvation” to reinvent himself. Unlike Wang Jingwei, who appeared to suggest that in collaborating with Japan, he was sacrificing his personal reputation to save China (Wang Reference Wang Kewen2001, 205), and unlike some literary collaborators (Fu Reference Fu Poshek1993, 126–29), Bai presented collaboration as an escape from a predicament, and not as surrender to it. Thus, he rewrote the loyal follower of his 1924 autobiographical sketch as a leader in his own right in pursuit of worthy followers. At the same time, he dissociated himself from others who had also chosen to ally themselves with the Japanese. However, a few comparisons may be instructive.

Any comparison of Bai's national project with the wartime collaborationist nationalism analyzed by Brook (Reference Brook, Brook and Schmid2000) is necessarily tentative, as only a partial view of each survives. Whereas Brook's subjects meticulously set out arrangements and principles such as the separation of powers within the new order, the maintenance of equality in international relations, and the pruning of superfluous government organs (2000, 172–76), Bai showed more interest in content than in framework. He appears to have shared their benevolent authoritarianism, though not their hankering for the past (cf. Brook Reference Brook, Brook and Schmid2000, 173, 187).

Bai was adamant that national salvation was not a matter of “superficial, empty talk” (912, 1074), though there is little evidence that Bai was an innovative thinker, and most objectives sketched in his diary—national reunification, the suppression of rebellion and banditry, popular education, and the modernization of the army (1000, 1050–51, 1104–5, 1123)—were uncontroversial. Bai admired some aspects of the reforms then being planned in Manchuria (despite his distaste for the political arrangements under which they were being implemented), including loan repayment, agricultural reform, and central economic planning (1110, 1238), and he recorded discussing economic cooperation with Mino and others (1073, 1086). That said, the persona of the diary was not oriented toward detailed planning (1147), and Bai typically delegated to others the discussion and development of his outline plans, and their translation into “practical measures, not empty theories” (1144–46, 1243).

Huang Lingjun (2003, 398) argues that Bai, rejecting the political values of the past but failing to find a replacement, lit on “utility” as the test of good in politics; yet Bai appeared to value moral intentions and personal qualities—his own and others'—over practicality. While recognition of his own shortcomings occasionally led Bai to doubt his prospects for success in anything (1049), he nonetheless equated characteristics such as bookishness and disregard for financial questions (1072, 1087, 1228) with moral worth:

And he emphasized the personal costs of his new dedication to national salvation, as it conflicted with personal and familial obligations (1094, 1131, 1239) and affected his health, making him lose weight (1076).

National salvation was not intended to be a solitary crusade: He commented, “none of the affairs of [this world] is difficult to manage; the real hardship is in having no comrades. If you have comrades, everything is within your grasp” (977). Bai hoped to attract support from “lower-ranking soldiers and officials, farmers, artisans, merchants and people of a little learning,” recruited by personal connection. He aimed to divide these followers between two organizations (1117, 1163), each with its own distinct membership and mission. The Justice Association (Zhengyishe) was dedicated to “national salvation through knowledge, benevolence and courage”; the Northern Revival (Xingbeihui), recruiting from among the less well-educated, claimed more specific and less lofty goals, including “Self-determination for northerners, to strengthen China … [and] striking down the GMD … to avenge northerners” (1118). Huang Lingjun (2003, 399–400) places the north–south divide at the heart of Bai's thinking after 1928, yet here, Bai clearly did not consider regional politics the preserve of the elite.

Bai did not find recruitment easy (607). He revealed his frustration in criticisms of his contemporaries as ill educated, incompetent, and shameless (1104–5, 1113, 1234). While he recognized the opposition that his own activities attracted (1272), he explained this in terms of resources—his lack of territorial base, and of formal organizational structure—rather than as a rejection of his anti-GMD agenda or of his dealings with the Japanese armies (1108). On one level, Bai's considerations of the qualities of his followers were an assertion of his autonomy vis-à-vis the Japanese armies: The project of national salvation was his, as was the power to decide who was worthy of inclusion in that project. Yet on another level, it was also an assertion of relationality, a declaration of continuing adherence to authentic and respectable Chinese values.

Having earlier quoted approvingly the nineteenth-century statesman Zeng Guofan's division of people between the “bureaucratic”—careful of status and precedent, prudent and dry—and the “rustic”—flamboyant, yet shortsighted and impetuous (354–55)—Bai seemed happier with bureaucratics. He advocated a balance between study and practice for effective action (851), and favored the solid virtues of responsibility, reliability, and self-knowledge (615, 827, 854, 866, 1097, 1223–24). Occasionally, Bai wavered, conceding that the uncertainty of the times called for different qualities (694). He wrote with apparent relish of the need to get one's hands dirty: “Revolution is not about being an official: as an official you can deal with every little detail … in revolution you have to draw blood, and decide who your friends and enemies are” (1164, 1075, 1096–97). And some of his expressions of irritation over his slower associates (1321) have a ring of sincerity to them—as he said of one Japanese friend, “Ichirō has a head but no brain: you can explain something in detail over and over, and still he won't grasp it” (1129)—though he commented elsewhere that the hapless Ichirō was a sincere friend and a useful source of small loans (1087, 1130).

Bai considered himself a patriot (1231), and condemned others who collaborated with the Japanese armies. He dismissed Pu Yi as a “puppet” (1064), and his comments on the salaries reportedly paid to Manzhouguo officials hinted that money was their primary motive for serving the new regime (1000). Wu Yiting, involved in the disturbances of the autumn of 1935, was described after a first meeting as “impressive up to a point, but not a practical politician” (1298), but then as “careless” (1304), and finally as “essentially a rebel” (1309). Bai recorded little direct contact with the leaders of the “puppet” East Hebei Council. He found council secretary Chi Zongmo “resolute, but hardly scholarly” (1293); he accorded chairman Yin Rugeng an occasional courtesy visit (1313, 1324), but Bai's opinion of his abilities was low (1285).

Finally, while in principle, Bai was adamant that status and the right to act authoritatively were earned only by duty and service, he was acutely aware of his own standing (1119). As he grew older and his isolation increased, he recognized few equals, casting himself on a political stage that was empty apart from two other major actors: the central government and the Japanese authorities. While he was prepared to cite the example of Han or Tang dynasty emperors in support of his own initiatives (990, 1107), he compared those charged with dealing with Japanese pressure to shallow and unworthy imperial officials who would have been harshly disciplined for their failings (913, 921). Even when arrested in a small town in rural Hebei, isolated and willing to offer bribes in return for his freedom, Bai is shown as conscious of his own status, commenting, “I have sailed seas and great rivers—who would have thought I would be shipwrecked in this ditch?” (Wang, Liang, and Li Reference Wang Shibin, Liang Quanjiang and Li Runting1987, 68–70).