For example, quoting Maurice Meisner’s Mao’s China and After: A History of the People’s Republic, page 40:
In many cases large landholdings were distributed among land‐hungry peasants, especially in areas where landlords fled with retreating Guomindang armies. Where the gentry‐landlord élite remained, collaboration between Chinese landlords and [Imperial] occupiers was not uncommon; in exchange for political services performed—the traditional gentry function of “social control”—the [Imperialists] allowed the gentry their traditional economic privilege of exploiting the peasantry.
In such cases, the landlord appeared to the peasant not only in his old rôle as economic oppressor but also as national traitor. Traditional hatred of the landlord on socioeconomic grounds was intensified by new nationalist resentments, and the Communists appealed to both simultaneously, promoting class as well as national struggle.
Louise Young’s Japan’s Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism, pages 285 & 299:
In 1932 some Chinese landlords stood with Zhang and some went over to the [Imperialists], becoming collaborators in the puppet state. […] Chinese landlords were the collaborators who manned the puppet régime; without them Manchukuo would collapse.
Peter J. Seybolt’s The War Within a War: A Case Study of a County on the North China Plain in Chinese Collaboration with Japan, 1932–1945, page 219:
In the early years of the war, Sun had served under his brother, Sun Xiangbu, in a Red Spear organization from Hua County. He had participated in the attacks on collaborators in the Neihuang County seat and Dougong market town when the [Imperialists] first arrived (see above).
But later, like other local Red Spear leaders, he capitulated to the [Imperialists], perhaps because he came to regard the Communists as a greater threat to his interests than the foreign aggressor. Most Red Spear associations had been organized by landlords and rich peasants. The Communists threatened not only the Red Spears’ material interests, but also the metaphysical props for their power, calling their incantations and magic charms superstitious nonsense.
(Emphasis added in all cases.)
Click here for events that happened today (July 29).
1883: The scourge of East Africa, the bane of the Eurafrican proletariat, and one of the nicest gifts ever given to the European bourgeoisie, Benito Mussolini, was unleashed on an unsuspecting world.
1913: Erich Priebke, the Axis war criminal who lead the Ardeatine massacre, blighted the Earth with his existence.
1917: Rochus Misch, Adolf Schicklgruber’s bodyguard, courier, and telephone operator, arrived to burden the world with his presence.
1921: Adolf Schicklgruber became head of the NSDAP.
1933: Belgrade and Berlin signed the Exchange of Notes constituting an Agreement regarding the Grant of Most‐favoured‐nation Treatment in the Commercial Relations between the Two Countries as Takashi Hishikari became the commanding officer of the Imperial Kwantung Army in northeastern China.
1937: In Tōngzhōu, China, the GMD’s East Hopei Army assaulted Imperial troops and civilians.
1944: For St. Olav’s Day, a fascist Norwegian party, Nasjonal Samling, celebrated the decennial of its presence at Stiklestad.
Well French bourgeoisie collaborated with the German army to crush the Commune. Less than a century later, they've collaborated with the Nazis. Russian "white movement" collaborated with every foreign invader they could find, from Brits to Nazis.
It should never surprise us. Class interests always trump every other consideration
I never get tired of telling people that America invaded Russia, especially when I get to the part where America teamed up with Imperial Japan in an attempt to crush an independence movement and restore a monarchy.
Wait, which alliance of America with Imperial Japan? That doesn't narrow down at all....