The Last Eurasian Frontier: Soviet and Chinese Efforts at Domesticating Xinjiang, 1916-1962

Abstract

This thesis chronicles the evolution of the governing structures in the province of Xinjiang in the northwest of China during the period of 1916 to 1962. It is divided into three periods: 1916-1933, 1933-1949 and 1950-1962. Each period details how local provincial authorities exercised control over the province, their interactions with locals, and the involvement of both central Chinese authorities and external Soviet influence. It posits that the Soviet Union and China both desired a stable and secure Xinjiang and thus both contributed to the transition from indirect provincial rule to governing structures that further integrated the province into the centrally-controlled Chinese state, thereby leading to its domestication. This thesis argues that in effect, both the Soviet Union and China were trying to domesticate a shared Eurasian frontier that had historically been out of reach of both Russian and Chinese central authorities. Though at the beginning of the twentieth century neither Beijing nor Moscow exercised effective control over the region, Xinjiang’s local governance model of the negotiated state allowed local leadership to manage the province in the absence of direct central influence. This maintained the territorial integrity of Xinjiang and prevented it from detaching from the Chinese polity. By the early thirties, unrest in the province led to greater Soviet involvement in order to prevent provincial unrest from spilling over into the USSR. At this time, Moscow helped a local warlord, Sheng Shicai, build up the administrative apparatus in exchange for economic access to the region. This continued until the early forties which saw Soviet advisors removed from the region. Over the next few years, the Soviet Union utilized the crisis from the emergent East Turkestan Republic to negotiate with central Chinese authorities, who now had administrative reach into the province, to reach a modus vivendi in Xinjiang favorable to both sides. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China under the rule of the Chinese Communist Party in 1949, Beijing and Moscow were able to work directly with each other to develop and domesticate Xinjiang. In need of further economic and administrative development, Chines authorities invited Soviet advisors and joint stock companies into Xinjiang and even allowed Soviet passport holders to staff local administrative structures while implementing social and ethnic policies to integrate non-Han locals into the Chinese polity. However, these were only temporary measures: if Xinjiang was to be integrated into the Chinese state, Soviet citizenship and the related issue of extraterritorial legality would have to be solved. The Yi-Ta Crisis of 1962 provided an opportunity to resolve this issue, as the Chinese state later encouraged the emigration of Soviet citizens while simultaneously implementing new laws and regulations to eliminate extraterritoriality. Thus the Eurasian frontier of Xinjiang had been domesticated by 1962.