Wang Yaqiao
For example, in the early 1930s, readers of "Mosquito Tabloid" became more and more familiar with the name of Wang Yaqiao, who was later designated as "Public Enemy Number One" by the "Shanghai Times": he was a mysterious figure, "a famous assassin, one of some A murderer in a political assassination".
"Mosquito Tabloid"
In 1929, the famous American journalist Agnes Smedley wrote a newsletter "The Guerrilla Warfare of the "Mosquito Tabloid"", which was a record of the "Tabloid" in Shanghai at that time - the western press used to call it "Mosquito Tabloid" Newspaper) status.
Smedley wrote: "Because the mosquitoes don't believe in God, and some don't even believe in Chiang Kai-shek, the commander-in-chief of all the petty warlords. With this exception, when the government exerts heavy pressure on Chinese-language newspapers, only Shanghai Hundreds of illegal tabloids were born in the local area.” “This kind of tabloid with only four pages has no guarantee of survival like the coolies on the Bund... Some newspapers only exist for a few days, some exist for a week, and some are longer. A few months. It depends on what they publish, and their ability to adapt—to be unpredictable, to be born, to be incomplete, to die.”
Wang Yaqiao is the head of Jiang Kanghu's Anhui branch of the Chinese Socialist Party. His father is a village doctor who sells coffins while practicing medicine. In 1913, Wang Yaqiao came to Shanghai to escape the local warlords.With a "death squad" armed with a sharp axe, he controlled some trade union organizations and became the leader of the Anhui Gang. The "Death Squad" later followed him to the warlord Lu Yongxiang. After being appointed as the "Commander of the Zhejiang Column" in 1923, Wang Yaqiao accepted Dai Li as one of his disciples and invited him to his home.According to several subsequent interviews in Taiwan, Dai Li believed that Wang had very rare political prestige.Because this "assassination king" can treat his subordinates with warmth and care, he is supported.It is said that Dai Li specially learned from Wang, thus alleviating his stern and blunt leadership style.
In the Shanghai police files, Wang Yaqiao first appeared as a mercenary leader in the spring and autumn of 1923 during the armed struggle to occupy the Yangtze River Delta.But soon, he seemed to have another "extreme" change: first he was a sympathizer of the Bolshevik revolution, and then combined with the social-democratic "Chinese National Revolutionary Alliance", and he was also the leader of the Secret Service Department of the 19th Route Army.
In November of that year, the Shanghai municipal police, who had always been highly alert to the danger of the Bolsheviks, became alert to the activities of Wang Yaqiao and some Chinese trade union organizations with pro-Russian tendencies. On November 7, 1923, the China Labor Federation (office located near Fenglin Bridge in Shanghai) sent a congratulatory message to the Soviet representative in Beijing, expressing congratulations on the sixth anniversary of the founding of the Soviet Republic and seeking an alliance with Russia on behalf of the Southwest Warlords :
As the organizer and chairman of the Federation of Trade Unions, Wang Yaqiao personally presided over the meeting that drafted this telegram.However noble and patriotic Wang Yaqiao's motives may be as a union leader, he is also deeply involved in the Shanghai area's intrigue over the illegal drug monopoly.Three days after the meeting to draw up the telegram to the Russian representatives, the head of the Chinese Police Department in charge of Shanghai Municipality China and the Songhu jurisdiction was assassinated. The murder of Director Xu Guoliang on November 10, 1923 was carried out by a man named Li Dasheng.Li's pseudonym is Zheng Yiming, and he is Wang Yaqiao's subordinate. It is said that he acted under the orders of his master.Therefore, Wang is considered to be the one who ordered the assassination, because the murder can not only solve a legal dispute, but also remove Xu Guoliang, a police official who has no mercy on the huge drug trafficking network in the Shanghai area.
The legal dispute refers to the fight between General Qi Xieyuan, the governor of Jiangsu (and the military director of Nanjing) at the time, and General He Fenglin, the warlord of Zhejiang.According to the official account released by General Qi's spokesperson 15 days after the assassination, He Fenglin was jealous of Xu Guoliang's appointment by Governor Qi as Chief of Police, but Qi Xieyuan himself quickly admitted that the main reason for assassinating Xu Guoliang had to do with drug trafficking.In an interview with the North China Daily News on January 8, 1924, Governor Qi stated:
The two reasons are clearly connected: if one of the two warring parties can monopolize the drug market in Shanghai, the windfall profits can be spent on armaments, thereby ensuring eventual success in wresting control of the city's ongoing drug trade right.Since Qi's intention was to ensure that this source of funding did not fall into enemy hands, previous anti-opium campaigns were only part of a comprehensive policy to prevent the Zhejiang warlords Lu Yongxiang and He Fenglin from obtaining additional funds.
Therefore, as soon as Governor Qi's government announced the establishment of a police agency in Shanghai to stop the smuggling of opium and arms led by Xu Guoliang, He Fenglin immediately established his own office in the Songhu area under the jurisdiction of his army to nominally control smuggling. to contend with.In fact, this office not only did not prevent smuggling, but condoned it.The head of the office was nominated by Lu Yongxiang's chief of staff, who himself was a smuggler, and his accomplices were the leaders of the three major gangs in Shanghai: Du Yuesheng, Huang Jinrong, and Zhang Xiaolin.
Together with the Zhejiang warlords, these gang leaders set up a company, bought some steamboats and motor boats, and organized a small fleet to smuggle drugs and sell them to wholesalers.Protected by warlord soldiers, drug dealers earn more than 1 million yuan a year, which they share with their military patrons.Among them, 40% of the profits, that is, about 1,000 yuan of daily income, fell into the hands of the warlord’s yamen, and 40% went to the gang members in the French Concession, and the remaining 20% went to the Hangzhou authorities.
Director Xu Guoliang refused to share the stolen goods.When he learned of the secret bribery channeled by the Songhu Police Command, he reprimanded the person in charge of the operation and threatened to expose him.This incident, coupled with Director Xu's pride in his incorruptibility ("It is well known that Director Xu did not receive a cent from the opium smuggling"), should be the reason for his killing.According to one version, someone contacted Wang Yaqiao to arrange the assassination.So he contacted the two gendarmes and promised to pay them 40,000 yuan each for the assassination.Then they found a third person, who was related to the Shanghai Armory's detective team.In the end, it was the third person who stabbed Xu Guoliang to death.Wang Yaqiao's involvement in the case seemed to be confirmed quickly: he left Shanghai abruptly to appear with an army officer in Hangzhou, which some said was a reward for an assassination planned for him.
The rewards didn't last. In September 1924, Lu Yongxiang, Wang's backer and Zhejiang warlord, was defeated and fled to Japan.Therefore, Wang Yaqiao led more than 200 subordinates to Shanghai again, and became the leader of the Anhui Gang again to carry out fraudulent activities.Dai Li soon lost all illusions about Wang.Obviously, Wang was not the kind of strategic foresighted person Dai Li thought he was, but at most he was just a leader of the green forest.So the future head of the secret service bid farewell to Wang and embarked on the road that would soon lead him to the Whampoa Military Academy.
After that, Wang Yaqiao appeared in famous assassinations one after another. On July 24, 1930, Zhao Tieqiao, former business manager of the China Commercial Steamboat Navigation Company, was assassinated.According to the police report, the assassin was one of Wang Yaqiao's subordinates.Wang Yaqiao's brother, Wang Shuqiao, was a lawyer in Shanghai and was arrested by the Shanghai municipal police and eventually handed over to the Chinese authorities.A year later, in July 1931, several gunmen attempted to assassinate Song Ziwen at the Shanghai North Railway Station, but killed his secretary by mistake during the assassination. Wang Yaqiao was also accused of being the mastermind behind the assassination. Wang Yaqiao, known as a freelancer, is believed to have planned the murder of members of the League of Nations who came to investigate the "September 18th Incident" in 1931.But the murder plan failed due to the strict surveillance and protection of the Shanghai municipal police.
Obviously, Wang Yaqiao has many backgrounds, and he may have asked for help from these people after the central government offered a reward of 100,000 yuan to Dayang for his capture. In 1932, Wang asked for protection from General Chen Mingshu, chairman of the Fujian People's Government, and since then he has become a follower of General Chen and the head of his secret service. After the "Fujian Incident" in 1933, after Li Jishen and Chen Mingshu established an independent government in the province, Wang Yaqiao expressed that he would do it for Chiang Kai-shek and asked Chiang's secret agent Fan Hanjie to arrange for him to surrender to the commander-in-chief.But when Jiang referred the matter to Dai Li, the secret agreement fell through because Wang publicly expressed contempt for Dai Li.So the assassination king sought support from Chiang Kai-shek's enemies, the Guangxi Clan.
In fact, the relationship between patron and patron is only nominal.Just like the "Carlos" Wang Yaqiao in the later era of terrorism, he always went his own way, made his own decisions, and acted independently with his own capital.This makes him in a sense a romantic assassin in the 1930s and 1940s.As we will see, later the puppet government and the Japanese colonists also started political murders.
