[3] Born in Sanshui, Guangdong, but of Zhejiang origin, Wang went to Japan as an international student sponsored by the Qing Dynasty government in 1903, and joined the Tongmenghui in 1905.

[4]: 2 As a young man, Wang came to blame the Qing dynasty for holding China back, and making it too weak to fight off exploitation by Western imperialist powers.

[5] Japan's victory in the Russo-Japanese War impressed Wang, and influenced his view of nationalism as an ideology that could unite a country around the idea of self-strengthening.

[4]: 41  Finally, Tongmenghui leaders threatened reprisals if Wang were executed, and these threats may have had an intimidating effect on government officials.

[4]: 41 He remained in jail from 1910 until the Wuchang Uprising the next year, when he was freed as part of a general amnesty for political prisoners,[4]: 41  and became something of a national hero upon his release.

[4]: 51 Wang attended the post-World War I Paris Peace Conference as an observer, having declined to take a formal role with one of the competing Chinese delegations to avoid compromising his impartiality.

He was considered one of the main contenders to replace Sun as leader of the KMT, but eventually lost control of the party and army to Chiang Kai-shek.

[7] At this time, Wang's view was that the KMT should be the lead party in a democratic coalition based on constitutionalism and that it should guide mass movements to change China's social structure.

[8] During the Northern Expedition, Wang was the leading figure in the left-leaning faction of the KMT that called for continued cooperation with the Chinese Communist Party.

Although Wang collaborated closely with Chinese communists in Wuhan, he was philosophically opposed to communism and regarded the KMT's Comintern advisors with suspicion.

While attempting to direct the government from Wuhan, Wang was notable for his close collaboration with leading communist figures, including Mao Zedong, Chen Duxiu, and Borodin, and for his faction's provocative land reform policies.

Wang's regime was opposed by Chiang Kai-shek, who was in the midst of a bloody purge of communists in Shanghai and was calling for a push farther north.

KMT troops occupying territories formerly controlled by Wang conducted massacres of suspected Communists in many areas: around Changsha alone, over ten thousand people were killed in a single twenty-day period.

Wang's attempts to aid Yan's government ended when Chiang defeated the alliance in the Central Plains War.

As the leader of the Kuomintang's left-wing faction and a man who had been closely associated with Dr. Sun, Chiang wanted Wang as premier both to protect the "progressive" reputation of his government which was waging a civil war with the Communists and a shield for protecting his government from widespread public criticism of Chiang's policy of "first internal pacification, then external resistance" (i.e. first defeat the Communists, then confront Japan).

In an ironic role reversal, the left-wing "progressive" Wang argued for accepting the German-Japanese offer of having China sign the Anti-Comintern Pact while the right-wing "reactionary" Chiang wanted a rapprochement with the Soviet Union.

[17] He often voiced defeatist opinions in KMT staff meetings, and continued to express his view that Western imperialism was the greater danger to China, much to the chagrin of his associates.

In late 1938, Wang left Chongqing for Hanoi, French Indochina, where he stayed for three months and announced his support for a negotiated settlement with the Japanese.

In November 1940, Wang's government signed the "Sino-Japanese Treaty" with the Japanese, a document that has been compared with Japan's Twenty-one Demands for its broad political, military, and economic concessions.

[19] The Government of National Salvation of the collaborationist "Republic of China", which Wang headed, was established on the Three Principles of Pan-Asianism, anti-communism, and opposition to Chiang Kai-shek.

In Japan-occupied Chinese territories, the prices of basic necessities rose substantially, as Japan's war effort expanded.

Daily life was often difficult in the Nanjing Nationalist government-controlled Republic of China, and grew more so as the war turned against Japan (c. 1943).

The strategy of the local education system was to create a workforce suited for employment in factories and mines, and for manual labor in general.

[25] Soon after Japan's defeat, the Kuomintang government under Chiang Kai-shek moved its capital back to Nanjing, destroyed Wang's tomb, and burned the body.

Both sides chose to minimize his earlier association with Sun Yat-sen.[27]: 59 [need quotation to verify] Wang was married to Chen Bijun.

After serving his sentence, Wang Wenti settled in Hong Kong where he was involved in numerous education projects with the mainland starting in the 1980s.