China signed the 1945 Japanese surrender document through General Hsu Yung-chang.
Hsu represented the Republic of China at the ceremony aboard USS Missouri on September 2, 1945. He signed after Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, who represented the United States, and before the representatives of the United Kingdom and the other Allied nations.
China had fought Japan for years before the wider Pacific War began. The Second Sino-Japanese War started in 1937, and China remained one of the principal Allied powers in the conflict against Japan. Its representative's place in the signing ceremony recognized that long war and China's Allied status.
The document was signed by representatives of nine Allied governments or powers: the United States, China, Britain, the Soviet Union, Australia, Canada, France, the Netherlands, and New Zealand. Hsu's name is sometimes confused with the Chinese government's later postwar representatives.