A HISTORY OF INNER ASIA

Sinkiang as part of China 271
what was so special about Sinkiang – its distance from China proper in
contrast to the proximity of Siberian and Central Asian Russia, with the
relative – and at times nearly full – independence of its governors from
the Chinese government, but with a seemingly inexorable growth of
Russian influence.
During Yang’s less capable successor Chin Shu-jen’s governorate
(1928–33), the problems that had until then been held in check reemerged.Hami
stirred again, and in 1933 at Kashgar Khoja Niyaz and
his partisans proclaimed an Uighur Republic, demanding independence
or at least autonomy; this attempt is usually referred to as the “First
Revolution.” Disorders multiplied in the east, where Dungans (Chinese
Muslims) were making inroads from Kansu, and finally a mutiny of
Russian mercenaries at Urumchi brought about Chin’s downfall and his
replacement by Sheng Shih-ts’ai, a professional soldier from Manchuria.
Sheng proved a remarkably able and relatively honest administrator.
He restored order and, although he quashed the Kashgar experiment,
he reversed Yang’s policy of stifling the native ethnolinguistic renaissance
and allowed Uighur to flourish.In the early years of his tenure his
reforms followed a “numbers” pattern popular in China: in 1933 he proclaimed
an “Eight Points” policy: interethnic equality, religious freedom,
reform in land tenure, finances, administration, education, and the judiciary,
and development of self-government; this was in 1936 modified to
“Six Great Policies” which in fact expanded the earlier scope to include
“anti-imperialism” and “cooperation with the Soviet Union.” The two
last-named clauses revealed his orientation, which became pro-Soviet to
the extent that not Nanjing but Moscow was his sponsor and supporter.
Russia’s help was financial, but even more through technicians, setting
in motion a program of industrialization, improved communications,
and development of the oilfields of Karamai with a refinery near
Urumchi.Following the Soviet line and receiving their help did not
make Sheng a communist, however: his reforms stopped well short of
the radical measures such as collectivization of agriculture and herding
that had created havoc across the border; nor did he launch a dogmatic
and all-pervasive indoctrination of his people, of the kind the Soviets
were inflicting upon their subjects.Characteristically, there was no link
between him and the Communist uprising led by Mao Tse-tung against
the central government.Like several other Chinese warlords whose local
rule replaced the collapsing authority of the center, Sheng was driven by
lust for personal power, but the province that he ruled benefited in the
main from his lucidity and relative honesty.