Vichy France continued to maintain relations with the Republic of China government led by Chiang Kai-shek—exiled to Chongqing in the Chinese interior after the fall of the capital Nanjing to the Japanese in 1937. French diplomats throughout the country were accredited to his Chongqing government. The Vichy regime resisted Japanese pressure to recognize the Japanese puppet Reorganized National Government of China established by Wang Jingwei in 1940 in occupied Nanjing, even though the Axis did.[5]