Miao Pin (1899-1946), Kuomintang official who served in the Japanese-sponsored government at Nanking in the early 1940's. Although he allegedly served as a Nationalist agent during the Second World War, he was executed by the Nationalists in 1946.

Wusih, Kiangsu, was the birthplace of Miao Pin. He was the son of Miao Chien-chang, a Taoist priest. Miao Pin received his early education in the Chinese classics at the local primary school, where he showed great promise. About 1918 he enrolled at Nanyang University (later Chiaotung University) in Shanghai, where he studied electrical engineering. After graduation in 1923, he went to work for the railway administration. Early in 1924 he went to Canton, where he joined the Kuomintang and became a radio instructor at the Whampoa Military Academy. He later served as a political instructor.

By the time the Northern Expedition was launched in 1926, Miao Pin had become an alternate member of the Kuomintang's Central Executive Committee. He participated in the first stage of the Northern Expedition as party representative to the division commanded by Wang Po-ling in the First Army, and he soon became friendly with Ho Ying-ch'in (q.v.), who had succeeded Chiang Kai-shek as commander of the First Army. When Chiang Kai-shek undertook a purge of Communists in the spring of 1927, Miao Pin was arrested as an alleged member of the Chinese Communist party. The intervention of Wu Chih-hui (q.v.) and Ho Ying-ch'in saved him from the executioner. At Ho Ying-ch'in's behest, he was appointed director of the Nanking government's commissariat of army headquarters in April 1927. Later that year, he served on the Central Special Committee of the Kuomintang, which worked to settle the differences that had split the Kuomintang into factions based at Wuhan, Nanking, and Shanghai. Miao became a member of the newly organized Executive Yuan in the autumn of 1928.

When Niu Yung-chien (q.v.) became governor of Kiangsu in 1928, Miao Pin was appointed civil affairs commissioner, with control of the hsien magistrates and police chiefs throughout the province. However, Miao soon became known as a corrupt administrator, and early in 1930 he was impeached. He then returned to Wusih, where he became associated with local industralists. About this time, his wife (about whom little is known) fell from the upper floor of their home and died. Soon afterwards, Miao married the niece of the industrialist Jung Tsung-ching, who operated the Sing Sung chain of textile and flour mills. Jung then appointed Miao Pin chief engineer of his group of mills. Miao still hoped to return to political life, however, and he began to advocate Sino- Japanese cooperation, thus winning the approval of a few Kuomintang leaders and retired Peiyang politicians. However, his suggestions won him the enmity of many Kuomintang leaders, some of whom questioned his patriotism. After the Sino-Japanese war began in 1937 and a puppet regime was established at Peiping, Miao Pin went to the old capital, where he was given funds for the organization of the Hsin-min-hui [new people's society]. Miao became the vice president of this pro-Japanese propaganda group. However, some of the leaders of the puppet regime came to consider him a threat to their authority. In 1940 Miao learned that his life would be in jeopardy if he remained in Peiping, and he fled to Nanking, where Wang Ching-wei (q.v.) headed another puppet regime. Wang appointed Miao vice president of the examination yuan and a member of the central political council at Nanking. A year or so later, Miao also became vice director of the cultural committee of the East Asia League, a Japanese-sponsored organization formed to promote the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere." In the early 1940's, as it became evident that Japan would eventually lose the War in the Pacific, many members of the Nanking government, from Chou Fo-hai (q.v.) down to functionaries at the lowest levels, established contact with National Government authorities at Chungking, and offered their services to Tai Li (q.v.), the head of intelligence operations, as underground agents. Miao Pin gave information and funds to Nationalist agents in Shanghai; he also sent his two sons to Free China, where they sought the assistance of Ho Ying-ch'in and eventually joined the Nationalist forces. Early in 1945 it was rumored that Japan would seek to conclude a separate peace with China. Miao Pin promptly offered his services to the National Government as an emissary to Japan to initiate preliminary peace talks. He went to Tokyo, representing himself as a Nationalist agent, in March 1945 for talks with Premier Koiso Kuniaki, but it is not clear whether or not the National Government authorized this trip. He and Premier Koiso met twice in March. However, the Japanese Supreme War Council opposed Koiso's efforts at diplomacy and suspected that Miao was a fake, and this affair contributed to Koiso's overthrow in April 1945. Miao returned to China and reported on the failure of his mission to the Nationalist authorities at Chungking. At war's end, many officials of the puppet regimes were placed under arrest, but Miao Pin was not among them. When he entered a Shanghai prison camp early in 1946, it was as a person in protective custody, not a prisoner. Three days later, he was transferred to a camp at Nanking, where he lived in the commandant's office. Suddenly, everything changed. For unexplained reasons, Miao Pin was moved to Soochow, where the top-ranking officials of the Nanking puppet regime were being held. He was rushed to trial, sentenced to death, and executed in the early summer of 1946.