Shanghai Puppet State (China)

From 1937 to 1940, Japan occupied Shanghai.
Nozomi Kariyasu, 26 March 1998

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Today, I incidentally found some mentioning of this flag and puppet government behind this flag in the article "Hanjian! --Collaboration and Retribution in Wartime Shanghai" by Frederic Wakeman Jr., a historian at the University of California Berkeley. This article was published in the book Becoming Chinese: Passages to Modernity and Beyond (edited by Wen-hsin Yeh, University of California Press, 2000):

On December 5 1937, Su Xiwen, a Waseda (Waseda University, Japan)-educated philosopher, inaugurated "the Great Way" (the Dadao) puppet municipal government of Shanghai. Su has taught political theory at the private Chizhi Univeristy in Jiangwan. His Buddhist-Daoist syncretism ("All under heaven one family / Myriad laws revert to one") influenced the Great Way government's choice of flag, which is a taiji (=yin-yang) symbol on a yellow background. […]

In truth, the Dadao puppet government was short-lived, at least in nomenclature. The malodorous characteristics of its leading members, a potpourri of Venerable Mother religious cultists, smugglers, gamblers, narcotics dealers, panderers, and former rickshaw pullers, were liability enough. But just as damaging was the Japanese handlers' contempt for Su Xiwen, whose philosophizing was not taken very seriously after the Special Services brought in a tough north China hanjian (collaborationist) named Wang Zihui to run their Shanghai operations.

[…] Consequently, after the puppet administration in north China was incorporated in January into a single provisional government, in South China a "Reform Government" was set up in March 1938 in Nanjing headed by Liang Hongzhi.

[…] Shanghai sympathizers […] tepidly celebrated the establishment of the Reform Government on March 28, 1938. The puppet Self-Government Committee held one meeting in the Confucian Temple where, under the old five-bar national flag of the Beiyang warlords

[…] Within a month, on April 28, 1938, the Reform Government has commissioned a Supervisionary Yamen to take over the functions of municipal administration formerly wielded by the Dadao puppet regime. Su Xiwen formally recognized the superior legitimacy of the Reform Government by adopting its flag in May 3…"

A brief summary on flags used in Japanese-occupied Japan:

14 August - 5 December 1937: Japanese flag
5 December 1937- 2 May 1938: Flag of the Dadao Government; Yin-yang on yellow
5 May 1938- 29 March 1940: Reform Government, 1912 flag.
30 March 1940 onwards: Nanking Government, PoC-1927 flag with pennant.
John Ma, 27 November 2003