View source for Wang Jingwei

==Early life and education==
[[File:Wang Jingwei.png|thumb|left|upright|Wang Jingwei in his twenties]]
[[File:Former Residence of Wang Jingwei 01 2011-11.JPG|thumb|Former residence of Wang Jingwei in [[Nanjing]].]]
Born in [[Sanshui]], Guangdong, of [[Zhejiang]] origin, Wang obtained a ''[[Imperial examination|xiucai]]'' degree by passing the imperial examination at the county-level in 1902, and went to study at Hosei University in Japan on a Qing government scholarship in 1903. In 1905, Wang first met Sun Yan-sen, the exiled revolutionary leader, and soon joined the [[Tongmenghui]], predecessor of the Kuomintang, in Tokyo. He gained attention as a polemicist for the Tongmenghui organ ''People's News'', notably in his debates with [[Liang Qichao]], who advocated constitutional monarchy. His sobriquet "Wang Jingwei," initially a pen name for the newspaper, was adopted in 1905 and named after the mythical [[jingwei]] bird that attempts to fill the ocean with twigs and pebbles.<ref name=":0" />{{Rp|page=2}}

As a young man, Wang came to blame the Qing dynasty for holding China back, and making it too weak to fight off exploitation by Western imperialist powers. In Japan, he cut off his [[Queue (hairstyle)|queue]] and embraced theories of democracy and [[liberalism]].<ref name=":0" />{{Rp|page=29}} Wang was among the Chinese nationalists in Japan who were influenced by [[Anarchism in Russia|Russian anarchism]], and published a number of articles in journals edited by [[Zhang Renjie]], [[Wu Zhihui]], and a group of [[Anarchism in China|Chinese anarchists]] in Paris.<ref>''Biographical Dictionary of Republican China.'' Eds. Howard L. Boorman and Richard C. Howard,(New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), pp. 369–370.</ref>

Japan's victory in the [[Russo-Japanese War]] impressed Wang, and influenced his view of [[nationalism]] as an ideology that could unite a country around the idea of self-strengthening.<ref name=":0" />{{Rp|page=30}}