A HISTORY OF INNER ASIA

Sinkiang as part of China 269
consulate at Kashgar staffed by the isolated though remarkable George
Macartney, Russia had large missions both at Kashgar and Kulja; a
Russo-Asiatic Bank was founded in Kashgar, and a cart road was built
between Irkeshtam at the Turkestan Governorate-General border and
Kashgar; the Russian border post of Tashkurgan on the Sinkiang side
of the Sarikol range, in the sensitive Pamir part of the Fergana oblast,
controlled access to Chinese territory from that side.Indeed, Russia
seemed poised to do in Eastern Turkestan what she had recently done
in Western Turkestan – to conquer it and transform it into yet another
Governorate-General of the Tsar’s empire.Among the factors that
deterred her from doing so may have been the complications that this
would have caused with China, and, perhaps most importantly, the
mutually felt need to improve relations with Britain, for both powers
were becoming alarmed at the growing military might of Germany.The
energy and ability of the first governor of the republican era, Yang
Tseng-hsin, may also have had a share in keeping Sinkiang Chinese.
Thus began a new phase in the history of Sinkiang, its existence as a
province of the Republic of China, which lasted from 1912 to 1943 –
or, in theory, until 1949.It was characterized by the long tenure of the
first three governors at Urumchi: Yang Tseng-hsin (1912–28), Chin Shujen
(1928–33), and Sheng Shih-ts’ai (1933–43), and by the subsequent
turmoil of national rebellions and short-lived regional governments
until the People’s Liberation Army re-established Beijing’s rule in 1949,
this time Communist rule.
The first of the three governors, Yang Tseng-hsin, was faced with formidable
challenges: Chinese military garrisons, infected by rebellious
secret societies that had infiltrated here from China proper, showed signs
of mutiny; the awakening Muslim separatism made its first attempts at
self-rule in the Ili province, while erupting in revolt around the eastern
Nan Lu city of Hami (Qomul).Yang Tseng-hsin originally hailed from
the largely Muslim province of Yunnan in south-west China, and this
background must have helped him regain control of a province increasingly
disturbed by these Muslim currents.He subsequently steered the
province along a course designed to develop it economically while consolidating
its Chinese orientation.Chinese was the only language permitted
to be used in newspapers, at the expense of Turki and other
native tongues.
It was during Yang’s tenure of office that Russia experienced historic
upheavals.In 1916, the First World War sent one of its distant echoes to
Sinkiang in the form of the wave of mainly Kyrgyz and Kazakh refu-