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A HISTORY OF INNER ASIA

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272 A history of Inner Asia<br />

In 1941, however, Sheng made a mistake that would put an end to his<br />

fairly successful rule: expecting a defeat of Russia by Germany, he<br />

swerved to an anti-Soviet and anti-Communist stance and tried to patch<br />

up his relations with the government of Chiang Kai-shek (which had<br />

meanwhile moved to Chungking).This both deprived him of Soviet<br />

support and ended his independence from the central government.By<br />

1943 Sheng also realized that Russia’s defeat was neither imminent nor<br />

even likely, and he once more reversed his orientation.It did not work,<br />

and in 1944 the once so powerful satrap left Sinkiang for China.<br />

One of the results of Sheng’s 1941 turnabout was a shift from his relatively<br />

liberal policies, especially with respect to the Uighurs and other<br />

non-Chinese ethnic groups, to the far less tolerant attitude of the<br />

Kuomintang government.The change had the effect of spurring on the<br />

Muslims to again strive for self-rule, and in 1944 a group led by<br />

Saifuddin proclaimed autonomy at Kulja – the so-called “Second<br />

Revolution.” The location of this attempt was significant: no longer<br />

limited to the Uighurs of Kashgaria, it also included the Kazakhs of the<br />

Ili region and showed that political ferment had reached the more cosmopolitan<br />

Bei Lu centers.The Kuomintang authorities, now installed at<br />

Urumchi, were unable to crush the secessionists and tried to resolve the<br />

crisis by forming a coalition government of the province that included<br />

also Turkic Muslims, and by promising liberal reforms with greater<br />

rights for the minorities.Its Chinese chairman, General Chang Chihchung,<br />

did not go far enough for the natives, while going too far for the<br />

central government, so that in 1947 he was replaced as chairman by<br />

Masud Sabri, a conservative Uighur landowner.This seemingly viable<br />

compromise did not work either, and in December 1948 yet another<br />

attempt was made by replacing him with Burhan Shahidi, a Muslim of<br />

complex (possibly Tatar) background that included several years as a<br />

citizen of Russian Turkestan and as a member of the Russian<br />

Communist Party.These attempts, however, lost any relevance in the<br />

wake of the victory of the Communist side in China’s civil war.On 17<br />

December 1949 a Provisional People’s Government was established at<br />

Urumchi.<br />

China thus regained full control of her Inner Asian possession, and<br />

the subsequent process contained elements partly analogous to those<br />

present in Russia’s Central Asia of the early 1920s.Recognizing<br />

Sinkiang’s special ethnic physiognomy, Beijing gave it the status of an<br />

“autonomous region,” with the name of the principal group as the<br />

determinant: Sinkiang Uighur Autonomous Region.This happened in

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