The Manchukuo Temporary Government is an organisation established in 2004 in Hong Kong. On its website, it claims to be the government in exile of Manchukuo, a Japanese puppet state with limited recognition which controlled Manchuria from 1932 to 1945; it seeks to revive the state and to separate it from the People's Republic of China, which controls its claimed territory. Journalists and internet users have expressed doubts about its authenticity and aims.
Structure and symbols
Media summaries of its website state that the Manchukuo Temporary Government includes an emperor, a royal family, a prime minister, and a cabinet. It continues to use the old National Anthem of Manchukuo and Flag of Manchukuo. The website also has accounts of the history of the region and its people, including a claim that the Manchu people are one of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel; James Leipold of the China Policy Institute described it as "thick on anti-communist vitriol" while failing to address Japanese hegemony in Manchukuo. The Manchukuo Temporary Government is a member of the International Monarchist League. It also seeks to join the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization. It claims to have overseas branches in Brazil, Italy, Japan, Taiwan, and the United States. The leadership of the Manchukuo Temporary Government is formed by electing an emperor and a prime minister. In the 2008 elections, the emperorship was won by "Aisin Gioro Xiaojie", stated to be a student in the University of Hong Kong's history department; his actual relation to the Aisin Gioro clan is suspect, as his generation name "Xiao" does not fit with the actual clan genealogy. However, that emperor dropped out of contact with the Manchukuo Temporary Government, so in April 2010, it held another election, won by "Aisin Gioro Chongji". Jason Adam-Tonis was elected as Prime Minister in May 2011. At the time, Adam-Tonis was a New York University student and also a chairman of the Songun Politics Study Group, a North Korean front group based in the United States.
The Manchukuo Temporary Government received occasional media attention in the context of the politics of Taiwan around the time of the 2009 elections, as its members may be distant relatives of Kuomintang general-secretary and ethnic ManchuKing Pu-tsung, and it was jokingly suggested that King himself might be one of its secret agents. Some internet users suspected the entire website of being a scam set up for the purpose of raising money. Hong Kong political scientistSimon Shen, an expert on Chinese nationalism and the internet, also expressed suspicion of the website and its attempt to portray the revival of Manchukuo as a movement undertaken on behalf of Manchu people; he pointed out that the people who ever felt genuine identification with the state of Manchukuo were mostly not Chinese or Manchu but rather Japanese. Another news commentator similarly suggested that Japanese nationalists were behind the site. On the other hand, Shen also suggested that the whole website might simply be a spoof designed by internet trolls. The Manchukuo Temporary Government also provoked angry reactions from some quarters. A NOWnews guest columnist in May 2011, in the midst of other arguments against Taiwan independence, called the Manchukuo Temporary Government "the shame of the people of Northeast China". Its stated political positions, such as support for the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan independence movement, as well as its calls to disrupt the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, earned it the ire of internet users in mainland China. At one point, rumours were spreading in mainland Chinese internet forums that one "Toshiaki Kawashima", whom they alleged to be the nephew of Yoshiko Kawashima and prime minister of the Manchukuo Temporary Government, was working as a secret agent for Chen Shui-bian in Papua New Guinea with the aim of fomenting violence against Chinese people there.
