This paper focuses on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Nationalist Government's information gathering on Japan's activities towards China between 1933 and 1935 when Wang Ching-wei was the Foreign Minister. Since Wang was in charge of Sino-Japanese diplomacy and had made the Foreign Ministry the basis of his political influence inside the government, the study of the Foreign Ministry's policymaking on Japan in this period is helpful to improve our understanding of Wang's diplomacy towards Japan. In accordance with statistics and other sources, the Foreign Ministry had used multiple channels to gather such kind of information. Alongside direct contact with the Japanese side, information was mainly collected from the Chinese authorities on various levels and, in some cases, even from sources outside the Nationalist government. The Nationalist Government's information gathering, in this sense, should be characterized as both multiple and inward-focused. In addition, through the performance of the Foreign Ministry, one can also observe certain aspects of the whole government's activities in terms of gathering information on Japan's operations in China. While coming from different sources, by scrutinizing what had been collected, one could find that most information contained temporary substances without thorough studies. Solid observations on the overall situation in Japan were also missing. In conclusion, there was in fact plenty of room for improvement in the Foreign Ministry's efforts to collect information on Japan's operations in China as well as in the Ministry's substantive understanding of Japan during this period.
