Palpitations of the Heartland

For a year, civil war has raged in remote Sinkiang (Chinese Turkestan). News of the conflict has been scanty but persistent. On the surface, it looked like a minor revolt of nomadic Moslem tribesmen against their Chinese overlords.

Last week New York Timesman C. L. Sulzberger, who had investigated the problem in Moscow, reported from London the first coherent account of the Sinkiang situation. He also reported that Sinkiang is the epicenter of a political earthquake which may change the power geography of Asia. For Sinkiang is the keystone of the Eurasian heartland. It has common frontiers with Russian Turkestan, Russian-dominated Outer Mongolia, British-dominated Tibet, China and China's Communist area around Yenan.

Gold and Tungsten. Sinkiang is mostly a vast grazing land, cut up by high mountains, in which are valuable gold and tungsten deposits and narrow, fertile valleys. Its capital, Tihwa (Urumchi), is the crossroads of the age-old silk caravan routes between China and the West.

Political tremors in Sinkiang disturb all the neighboring countries. Behind the current seismic shocks is a history that goes back to 1934, when China, then already started on her life & death struggle with Japan, could only stand by as the Soviet Union virtually set up a condominium over the vast province.

Airfields & Oil Wells. The Russians came ostensibly to establish order in Sinkiang. They built barracks, airfields, factories, oil wells. They created a police force and army. The nominal head of the Sinkiang Government was General Sheng Shih-tsai. now Minister of Agriculture in the Chungking Government.

In 1942, when the Russians were hardpressed by the Germans in Europe, General Sheng cracked down on the Russians and turned to Chungking. Moscow, which headed its armies to fight the Germans, accepted the situation, sold its properties in Sinkiang "for dollars or sheep," withdrew its mission.

But a few weeks after the Battle of Stalingrad, Moslem tribesmen revolted in northern Sinkiang along the Outer Mongolian border. General Sheng sent three Chinese regiments and his tiny air force to put down the rebels.

Bombings & Protests. Suddenly the Outer Mongolian People's Republic protested to the Sinkiang Government that its planes had bombed Mongolian territory.

Said Correspondent Sulzberger:

"It may be interpolated that hardly anything is known by the outside world concerning what goes on within the immense expanse of Outer Mongolia. Urga (the capital of Outer Mongolia) keeps an envoy in Moscow accredited to the Soviet Union. This man, notoriously secretive, refuses to talk with foreigners. Until recently he was accounted a nonentity in the Moscow diplomatic picture. However, there are indications that his status has altered. When Marshal Tito visited Moscow, the Mongolian envoy was invited to greet him at the airport by the protocol department of the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs and was introduced to the Yugoslav leader by Commissar Viacheslav M. Molotov.

"During the first week of March 1944, Mongolian planes marked with red stars bombed Sinkiang troops on the northern border. The Sinkiang Foreign Minister protested, but another raid followed the next day. . . . The bombings lasted twelve days, during which the Chinese forces retreated about 35 miles. Then suddenly both fighting and raiding ceased."

Last April surprisingly wellarmed, competently led Moslem tribesmen swept down from the north, seized the key garrison cities of Tachcheng and Ining. In the midst of the conflict, Chungking recalled General Sheng from Tihwa, installed General Wu Chung-hsin as governor and General Chu Shao-liang as military chief. Both were regarded as more acceptable to the Russians.

British Cordon Sanitaire? Said Sulzberger: "Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek is believed to be doing his best to counteract the anti-Chinese forces . . . but at the same time is seeking to avoid any open crisis." Meanwhile, some Chungking quarters fear that the Chinese Communist Government at Yenan is "quietly seeking to work up a bloc that would include Yenan, Sinkiang, Outer Mongolia, Tibet and possibly at some future date, Manchuria. . . . The great half-moon stretch of Asia starting at the Turkish Straits and running across Iran, India, Tibet, Sinkiang, Mongolia and Manchuria [may be] the primary zone with which the Kremlin's foreign policy is concerned. . . . There are many who think that basically Soviet foreign policy regards Europe as a back door, if an exceedingly important one, and Asia as a front door."

In Asia as in Europe, Moscow seems to be organizing a cordon sanitaire in reverse, an immense chain of pro-Russian buffer states about her heartland. For "the Russians know that some general staffs have always maintained that population masses are the key to the balance of power. Such a mass, nebulous but latent with strength, lies along Central and Eastern Asia." If Correspondent Sulzberger is right, in Sinkiang Moscow's Asiatic policy may be in the process of unfolding.

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