Incorporation of Xinjiang into the People's Republic of China | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Part of the Chinese Civil War | ||||||||
![]() PLA in Ürümqi | ||||||||
| ||||||||
Belligerents | ||||||||
Contents
| ||||||||
Commanders and leaders | ||||||||
Strength | ||||||||
80,000 [1] | 100,000 [1] | 40,000 |
History of Xinjiang |
---|
![]() |
The incorporation of Xinjiang into the People's Republic of China, known in Chinese historiography as the Peaceful Liberation of Xinjiang, was the takeover of Xinjiang by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its People's Liberation Army (PLA) in the waning days of the Chinese Civil War. At the time, Xinjiang was divided into ten districts. The Republic of China controlled seven districts and governed them as Xinjiang Province, while the other three were governed by the Three Districts Economic Commission which consisted of the former leadership of the Second East Turkestan Republic. [2]
In the summer of 1949, the PLA drove into the Hexi Corridor of Gansu Province and pressed toward Xinjiang. At the time, Xinjiang was ruled by a coalition government based in Dihua (present-day Ürümqi), which consisted of Chinese Nationalists (Kuomintang, KMT) and the leadership of the former Second East Turkestan Republic (ETR), a satellite state of the Soviet Union which controlled the "Three Districts" in northern Xinjiang from 1944 to 1946, during the Ili Rebellion. Under the coalition government which ruled Xinjiang from 1946 to 1949, the KMT controlled most of the province while the leaders of the former ETR retained autonomy in the Three Districts. The People's Republic of China (PRC) was proclaimed on 1 October 1949, and PLA general Wang Zhen was tasked by his superior Peng Dehuai with taking Xinjiang. In the fall of 1949, the CCP reached separate agreements with the political leadership of the KMT and the Three Districts.
The CCP persuaded the KMT provincial and military leadership to surrender. The Soviet Union induced the leaders of the former ETR to accede to the CCP. In August 1949, Ehmetjan Qasim and his delegation of four other top ETR leaders died in a plane crash en route to Beijing [3] [4] [5] to attend the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the CCP's apex united front conference. In December, the PRC government incorporated the Ili National Army (formerly the East Turkestan National Army) into the PLA. Most of the remaining former ETR leadership accepted the absorption of the autonomous Three Districts into the PRC. They subsequently joined the surrendered KMT officials in taking senior positions in the PRC government.
The PRC's takeover of Xinjiang was largely achieved through political means and thus faced little armed resistance. The PLA entered Xinjiang in October 1949 and controlled most of the region by the spring of 1950. Among the major military actors in Xinjiang, only Yulbars Khan, a KMT loyalist, and Osman Batur, a former ETR commander turned KMT supporter, fought against the CCP. They were both defeated by the PLA. [6] [7]
The Second ETR, initially led by Elihan Tore, was founded in November 1944 during the Ili Rebellion with Soviet support and was based in three northwest districts of Xinjiang. [8] Tore disappeared in the Soviet Union in 1946, and another ETR leader, Ehmetjan Qasimi, head of the pro-Soviet Sinkiang Turkic People's National Liberation Committee, reached a political agreement with the Nationalist Chinese leader Zhang Zhizhong to form a coalition provincial government in Dihua (present-day Urumqi). [9] The Second ETR was disbanded in name but the Three Districts retained autonomy. [8] Qasimi became the vice-chairman of the coalition government. [10] In June 1947, the Nationalist Chinese forces clashed with Mongolian and Soviet forces at Beitashan in northeastern Xinjiang. In that conflict, Kazakh leader Osman Batur of the ETR repudiated the ETR and defected to join Nationalist Chinese forces in fighting against Soviet-backed Mongolian forces. [11]
In August 1949, the People's Liberation Army captured Lanzhou, the capital of the Gansu Province. Kuomintang administration in Xinjiang was threatened. The Kuomintang Xinjiang provincial leaders Tao Zhiyue and Burhan Shahidi led the KMT government and army's defection to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) side in September 1949. By the end of 1949, some Kuomintang officials fled to Afghanistan, India and Pakistan, but most crossed over or surrendered to the CCP. On 17 August 1949, the Chinese Communist Party sent Deng Liqun to negotiate with the Three Districts' leadership in Ghulja (Yining in Chinese). Mao Zedong invited the leaders of the Three Districts to take part in the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference later that year. [12] The leaders of the Three Districts traveled to the Soviet Union on 22 August by automobiles through Horgos, accompanied by Soviet vice-consul in Ghulja Vasiliy Borisov, where they were told to cooperate with the Chinese Communist Party. Negotiations between Three Districts and Soviet representatives in Alma-Ata continued for three days and were difficult because of the unwillingness of Three Districts leader Ehmetjan Qasim (whose strategy was opposed by two other delegates-Abdulkerim Abbas and Luo Zhi, while Generals Ishaq Beg and Dalelkhan supported Ehmetjan) to agree to incorporate the Three Districts into the future Chinese communist state, supposedly in 1951. The People's Republic of China was proclaimed two years earlier, on 1 October 1949. Ehmetjan regarded the current situation as a historic opportunity for Uyghurs and other people of Xinjiang to gain freedom and independence that shouldn't be lost. So, the Three Districts delegation was offered to continue negotiations in Moscow directly with Stalin before departure to Beijing. On 25 August, the eleven delegates, Ehmetjan Qasim, Abdulkerim Abbas, Ishaq Beg, Luo Zhi, Dalelkhan Sugirbayev and accompanying officers of the Three Districts, boarded Ilyushin Il-12 plane in Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan, officially heading to Beijing, but flight was diverted for Moscow. [13] On 3 September, the Soviet Union informed the Chinese government that the plane had crashed near Lake Baikal en route to Beijing, killing all on board. [14] [15] On the same day Molotov sent a telegram to Ghulja to inform Saifuddin Azizi (interim leader of the Three Districts when Ehmetjan Qasim was not in Ili, and a member of Communist Party of Soviet Union) about the Tragic death of devoted revolutionaries, including Ehmetjan Qasim, in airplane crash near Lake Baikal en route to Beijing. In accordance with instructions from Moscow, Saifuddin Azizi kept the news secret from the population of the Three Districts and it was unreported by Beijing for several months [16] [17] until December 1949, when Saifuddin Azizi departed to Moscow to join Mao Zedong's delegation to sign Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship with Stalin and to retrieve bodies of The Three Districts leaders (their already unrecognisable bodies were delivered from the USSR in April 1950) and when the People's Liberation Army had already secured most of the regions of the former Xinjiang Province. [18]
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, some former KGB generals and high officers (among them Pavel Sudoplatov) revealed that the five leaders were killed on Stalin's orders in Moscow on 27 August 1949, after a three-day imprisonment in the former Tsar's stables, having been arrested upon arrival in Moscow by the Head of MGB Colonel General Viktor Abakumov, who personally interrogated the Three Districts leaders, then ordered their execution. This was allegedly done in accordance with a deal between Stalin and Mao Zedong. [19] [20] [21] The remaining important figures of the Three Districts, including Saifuddin Azizi (who led the Second delegation of the Three Districts, which participated in Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in September in Beijing, which proclaimed the People's Republic of China on 1 October 1949), agreed to incorporate the Three Districts into the Xinjiang Province and accept important positions within the administration. However, some Kazakhs led by Osman Batur continued their resistance until 1954. [22] [23] Units of the People's Liberation Army first arrived at Ürümqi airport on 20 October 1949 on Soviet airplanes, provided by Stalin, and quickly established control in northern Xinjiang, before moving into southern Xinjiang together with units of the National Army of the Three Districts, thus establishing control over all ten districts of Xinjiang Province. On 20 December 1949 the Ili National Army joined the People's Liberation Army as the Xinjiang 5th Army Corps, which underwent reforms before being eventually disbanded.
This section needs additional citations for verification .(June 2019) |
On 25 September, Tao Zhiyue and Burhan Shahidi, the KMT's military general and political leader in Dihua, respectively, announced the formal surrender of Nationalist forces in Xinjiang to the CCP. The next day, 100,000 Kuomintang troops in the province switched their allegiance from the Kuomintang to the Chinese Communist Party together with the Chairman of Xinjiang Provincial Government Burhan Shahidi, who was among the few cognizant of what had happened to the First delegation of the Three Districts in August in the USSR. On 12 October, the PLA entered Xinjiang. Many other KMT generals in Xinjiang like the Salar Muslim General Han Youwen joined in the defection to the PLA. They continued to serve in the PLA as officers in Xinjiang. Some KMT leaders who refused to submit fled to Taiwan or Turkey. Ma Chengxiang fled via India to Taiwan. Muhammad Amin Bughra and Isa Yusuf Alptekin fled to Turkey. Masud Sabri was arrested by the CCP and died in prison in 1952.
The only organized resistance the PLA encountered was from Osman Batur's Kazak militia and from Yulbars Khan's White Russian and Hui troops who served the Republic of China. Batur pledged his allegiance to the KMT and was killed in 1951. Yulbars Khan battled PLA forces at the Battle of Yiwu, but when he was deserted, he fled through Tibet, evading the Dalai Lama's forces which harassed him, and escaped to Taiwan via India to join the Republic of China regime. The province's final status was instituted in 1955 as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of which Saifuddin Azizi became its first chairman, when it was reorganised into an autonomous region for the 13 nationalities of Xinjiang (Uyghur, Han Chinese, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Hui, Mongol, Tajik, Uzbek, Tatar, Russian, Xibe, Daur, Manchu people), thus replacing the Xinjiang Province (1884–1955).
In the People's Republic of China, the five ETR leaders who perished in the 1949 plane crash are remembered as heroes in the struggle against the Nationalist regime. [24] Their remains were returned to China in April 1950 and later reburied in a heroes' memorial cemetery in Yining. [24] The cemetery has a stele with calligraphy by Mao Zedong, praising the heroes for their contributions to the Chinese people's revolution. [24]
The East Turkistan Government in Exile views Xinjiang's governance by the People's Republic of China as an "illegal military occupation". [25] [26] [27] [28]
East Turkestan or East Turkistan, also called Uyghuristan, is a loosely-defined geographical region in the northwestern part of the People's Republic of China, which varies in meaning by context and usage. The term was coined in the 19th century by Russian Turkologists, including Nikita Bichurin, who intended the name to replace the common Western term for the region, "Chinese Turkestan", which referred to the Tarim Basin in Southern Xinjiang or Xinjiang as a whole during the Qing dynasty. Beginning in the 17th century, Altishahr, which means "Six Cities" in Uyghur, became the Uyghur name for the Tarim Basin. Uyghurs also called the Tarim Basin "Yettishar," which means "Seven Cities," and even "Sekkizshahr", which means "Eight Cities" in Uyghur. Chinese dynasties from the Han dynasty to the Tang dynasty had called an overlapping area the "Western Regions".
Habib Yunich was a Chinese Tatar educator, journalist, and politician. He served as the Second East Turkestan Republic's first education minister, from the state's establishment in 1944 until his sudden death from typhus in 1945. He was succeeded by his deputy Saifuddin Azizi.
Ehmetjan Qasim was a Uyghur revolutionary and statesman who held several important positions in the governments of the Second East Turkestan Republic and the Republic of China's Xinjiang Province. He notably served as the vice chairman of the Coalition Government of Xinjiang Province.
The East Turkestan independence movement is a political movement that seeks the independence of East Turkestan, a large and sparsely-populated region in northwest China, as a nation state for the Uyghur people. The region is currently administered by the People's Republic of China (PRC) in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR). Within the movement, there is widespread support for the region to be renamed, since "Xinjiang" is seen by independence activists as a colonial name. "East Turkestan" is the best-known proposed name as it is the historical geographic name of the region and the name of the two independent states that briefly existed in the region in the first half of the 20th century.
The East Turkestan Republic (ETR) was a short-lived satellite state of the Soviet Union in northern Xinjiang, which existed from 1944 to 1946. It is often described as the Second East Turkestan Republic to differentiate it from the First East Turkestan Republic (1933–1934), but "second" was never a part of its official name.
Muhammad Amin Bughra, sometimes known by his Han name Mao Deming and his Turkish name Mehmet Emin Buğra (1901–1965), was a Uyghur Muslim leader who planned to set up a sovereign state, the First East Turkestan Republic. Muhammad Amin Bughra was a Jadidist.
Isa Yusuf Alptekin was a Uyghur politician who served in the Chinese Nationalist government and opposed both the First East Turkistan Republic and the Second East Turkestan Republic. When Xinjiang came under Chinese communist control in 1949, Alptekin went into exile and became an ultra-nationalist and pan-Turkic separatist.
Elihan Tore was the President of the Second East Turkestan Republic. He was born in Tokmok, formerly known as Balasagun, Kyrgyzstan and in 1920 he escaped from the Soviet Union to Kashgar in East Turkestan. In April 1944, Elihan Tore along with Abdulkerim Abbas, Xabib Yunich and nine others formed a liberation organization in Ghulja (Yining) to free East Turkestan of Chinese Nationalist rule. On 11 November 1944, they launched the Ili Rebellion with the support of the Soviet Union.
The East Turkestan National Army was the armed forces of the Second East Turkestan Republic (ETR). It was active from 1945 to 1949, beyond the dissolution of the ETR in 1946, when it was renamed the Ili National Army per a peace agreement between the ETR leadership and representatives of the Republic of China. It originally consisted of six regiments: the Suidun Infantry Regiment, the Ghulja Regiment, the Kensai Regiment, the Ghulja Reserve Regiment, the Kazakh Cavalry Regiment, the Dungan Regiment, the Artillery Subdivision, the Sibo Subdivision, and the Mongol Subdivision. The last two subdivisions were later reformed to regiments. All regiments were armed with mostly German-made weapons that were provided by the Soviet Union on orders by Joseph Stalin. Its personnel was trained in the Soviet Union. Rebel aviation included 42 airplanes, which were captured in the Ghulja Kuomintang air base and repaired by Soviet military personnel.
Saifuddin Azizi was a Chinese politician who occupied several top positions in the government of the People's Republic of China (PRC). An ethnic Uyghur, he is most well-known for serving as the first chairman of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Before the proclamation of the PRC in 1949, he served in the government of the breakaway Second East Turkestan Republic, as Minister of Education.
The Ili Rebellion was a separatist uprising by the Turkic peoples of northern Xinjiang against the Kuomintang government of the Republic of China, from 1944 to 1946. The Ili Rebellion began with the East Turkestan National Revolution, known in Chinese historiography as the Three Districts Revolution, which saw the establishment of the Second East Turkestan Republic. The leadership was dominated by Uyghurs but the population consisted mostly of Kazakhs.
Yulbars Khan, courtesy name Jingfu (景福), was a Uyghur chieftain and Kuomintang general during the Chinese Civil War. He entered the service in the Kumul Khanate of Muhammad Khan of Kumul and later his son Maksud Shah. He served as an advisor at the court, until when Maksud died in March 1930, governor Jin Shuren abolished the khanate. Yulbars then conspired with Khoja Niyaz and Ma Zhongying to overthrow Jin in the Kumul Rebellion. According to some people, Ma restrained Yulbars from traveling to Nanking to ask the Kuomintang for help, Ma earlier had an agreement with the Kuomintang that if he seized Xinjiang, he would be recognized by the Kuomintang as its leader.
The Kuomintang Islamic insurgency was a continuation of the Chinese Civil War by Chinese Muslim Kuomintang Republic of China Army forces mainly in Northwest China, in the provinces of Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia, and Xinjiang, and another insurgency in Yunnan.
Burhan Shahidi was a Chinese Tatar politician who occupied several high-level positions in Xinjiang, in the governments of the Republic of China and the People's Republic of China.
Masud Sabri, also known as Masʿūd Ṣabrī, was an ethnic Uyghur politician of the Republic of China who served as the governor of Xinjiang during the Ili Rebellion. He received education at Kulja and Istanbul and was a Pan-Turkist. Chiang Kai-shek appointed him the first Uyghur governor of Xinjiang.
Abdulkerim Abbas was a Uyghur revolutionary active in Xinjiang, China, during the 20th century. He was one of the leaders of the Ili Rebellion of 1944, which led to the founding of the Second East Turkestan Republic (ETR) in northern Xinjiang. Abbas, along with Ehmetjan Qasim, headed the Marxist faction within the ETR, which in 1946 set aside the rebellion's declaration of independence and joined the Chinese nationalists in forming a provincial coalition government.
Ishaq Beg Munonov, also Isḥāq Beg, was an ethnic Kyrgyz leader in Xinjiang, China during the first half of the 20th century.
Xinjiang Province or Sinkiang Province is a nominal province of the Republic of China without administrative function. First set up as a province in 1884 by the Qing dynasty, it was replaced in 1955 by the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China. The original provincial government was relocated to Taipei as the Sinkiang Provincial Government Office (新疆省政府辦事處) until its dissolution in 1992.
The East Turkestan Revolutionary Party (ETRP) was a clandestine communist party active from 1946 to 1947, in what is now Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture, in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China. Abdulkerim Abbas, a Uyghur revolutionary who served as the interior minister of the Second East Turkestan Republic (ETR), led the party as chairman of a seven-member central executive committee.
The Coalition Government of Xinjiang Province was the governing body of China's Xinjiang Province from 1946 to 1947. It was formed after a Soviet-brokered peace agreement between the Republic of China (ROC) and the breakaway Second East Turkestan Republic (ETR). The dissolution of the ETR coincided with the establishment of the coalition government; however, the interests of the ETR's former leaders were retained through the subordinate Ili District Council. The coalition government collapsed after the withdrawal of the former ETR side, which opposed the appointment of Masud Sabri, a pro-Kuomintang conservative, as the provincial chairman. Despite himself being a Turkic Uyghur, Sabri undid the pro-Turkic reforms implemented by his predecessor Zhang Zhizhong.