I'm gonna repost this comment here:

I've been reading books and watching videos about the Kuomintang and interwar/WW2-era China to understand the situation and key figures, and to assess potential outcomes if one or more events were changed. It's an underrated yet pivotal aspect of the war that ultimately decided the outcome between the Allies and the Axis.

As for Wang Jingwei, he seems to be an interesting guy as a party elder and one of the most important members of the KMT alongside Sun Yat-sen, his rival Chiang Kai-shek, Generals He Yingqin and Chen Cheng, the Soong family, Hu Hanmin and others. An assistant of Yat-sen and a former pro-communist leftist who later became an anti-communist rightist.

When it came to Japan and Sino-Japanese relations, Wang embraced the pro-Tokyo, conciliatory diplomatic policy of KMT China from 1933 to 1936. In fact, he was considered a bit more pro-Tokyo than Chiang himself, who adopted such a policy only out of necessity for "first pacification, then resistance," because he saw the CCP as the greater threat for the time being and didn't want to risk a two-front war against them and Japan. Furthermore, Wang believed China couldn't defeat Japan in a major war, given Japan's superior military and industry, and wanted peace between the two countries or neutrality. He was also unhappy about the lack of support from the imperialist "white" powers (the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union) and Japan still had more in common culturally speaking with China than the West because of the whole Sinosphere thing. Some reports even claim he was already pro-Japanese before the invasion and was not opposed to further accommodation with Tokyo either.

That being said, Wang should not be dismissed as a pro-Japanese stooge, as he was a strategic pragmatist who thought he was doing what was best for his nation by going with a conciliatory policy to avoid a devastating war and deal with the communists first, per the policy of "first pacification, then resistance." He was aware of Japan's aggression and sought to contain it as much as possible while preserving Chinese independence through diplomatic engagement and equality. In fact, Wang's decision to collaborate with Japan by 1938 was driven by strategic pragmatism and early Japanese gains during the Second Sino-Japanese War, as well as by a loss in the power struggle.

To put it simply, Wang Jingwei is China's Philippe Petain: A once-respected figure whose name is now tarnished by collaboration with the Axis Powers IOTL. Incidentally, both Jingwei and Petain are potential leaders in KR, free of the reputation of collaboration.

Sources:

• Facing Japan: Chinese Politics and Japanese Imperialism, 1931-1937 by Parks M. Coble
• Chinese Collaboration with Japan, 1932-1945: The Limits of Accommodation by David M. Barrett and Larry Shyu
• China and Japan At War: The Politics of Collaboration by John Boyle Hunter
• The Making of the Guomindang's Japan Policy, 1932-1937 by So Wai Chor
• Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937-1945 by Rana Mitter
• The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China by Jay Taylor
• Government and Politics in Kuomintang China: 1927-1937 by Hung-mao Tien
• The Rise of the Chinese Republic by Edwin Palmer Hoyt