assortment of articles from Pacific Affairs

425 Pages·2012·1.89 MB·English

by  Anonymous

HISTORICAL VARIATIONS OF CHINA’S FRONTIERS
ANONYMOUS
Pacific Affairs, Vol. 18, No. 4 (Dec., 1945), pp. 346-354
China has been described as “the oldest nation that is still
a nation.” The country ruled by the Shang dynasty in the second
mil-lenium B.C. can indeed properly be called "China” (though
the name itself is of later origin), and there does not seem to be
any other modern nation which can trace so much continuity
with an organized society of so remote a period. The
geographical limits of “China,” however, have varied greatly in
different historical periods, and the changes of frontier are
worthy of study, especially in view of the existence at the
present day of territories no longer under Chinese rule, but
claimed by China, including (apart from territories occupied by
the Japanese since 1931) Outer Mongolia, Tannu-Tuva and Tibet.
The country now marked on maps as “China” generally
appeared in maps of half a century ago as “the Chinese
Empire.” It was in fact an empire, both in the sense that it was
ruled by an emperor and also in the sense that it included
territories which were not ethnically Chinese. In addition, though
this was not conveyed by the name, the empire itself was not
wholly Chinese, for although it had its capital in Peking in an
area which had been thoroughly Chinese for three millenia and
though it officially used the Chinese language and traditional
Chinese forms of administration, the reigning dynasty was of
non-Chinese origin and had brought into the inheritance lands
which had not belonged to the previous — purely Chinese —
dynasty, the Ming.
The geographers of fifty years ago also generally divided the
“Chinese Empire” into five parts — China Proper, consisting of
the eighteen provinces south of the Great Wall, and four
“dependencies” or “Outer Lands,” namely Manchuria, Mongolia,
Sinkiang (usually then known as Chinese Turkestan) and Tibet.
The division between China Proper and the Outer Lands
coincided to a great extent, but not entirely, with two other lines
of division — that between the regular Chinese system of
provincial administration and special forms of controls through
Manchu military governors or imperial commissioners, and that
between ethnically Chinese and ethnically non-Chinese territory.
Of the Outer Lands Manchuria, Mongolia and Tibet were
governed separately from the ordinary provincial administrative
system, but Sinkiang, after its recovery from rebels in 1878, was
constituted a regular province, though the Chinese were and
have remained a minority of the population. On the other hand,
Manchuria was preponderantly Chinese in population by the end
of the nineteenth century — its southern extremity had been
ethnically Chinese for over two millenia — but was kept
administratively separate until 1907 because it was the
homeland of the Manchu dynasty, and dynastic policy aimed at
preserving the remnant of the Manchu people there from
absorption by the Chinese.
With the abolition of the special administrative status of
Manchuria in 1907 there ceased to be any formal distinction
between Manchuria and China Proper, and further Chinese
immigration merely strengthened the already Chinese character
of the “Eastern Three Provinces” (San tung sheng), as the
Chinese called them. The Manchus were nearly extinct in the
country of their origin, and except for a fringe of Mongol
population in the west there was no longer any problem of
nationality in the modern sense in Manchuria; had it not been
for the Manchu dynastic policy above mentioned — which was
maintained in form long after it had ceased to correspond to
realities — Manchuria would probably have already been
reckoned a part of China Proper in the nineteenth century. It was
different with the other Outer Lands, where the problem was
one of dealing with non-Chinese peoples. After the Revolution of
1911 the new Republic endeavored to consolidate Chinese
control in these regions both by extending the regular provincial
system and by encouraging Chinese peasant colonization which
would establish Chinese ethnic preponderance. There had
already been a considerable Chinese settlement beyond the
Great Wall in Inner Mongolia, and part of Inner Mongolia had
been included in the provincial jurisdictions of Chihli (now
Hopei) and Shansi. In 1928 all of Inner Mongolia, i.e. Mongolia
south of the main belt of the Gobi desert, was organized as the
four provinces of Ninghsia, Suiyuan, Chahar and Jehol and were
assimilated to the administrative system of China Proper. Two
other new provinces, Chinghai and Sikang, were created in the
mountainous borderland between China Proper and Tibet. Thus
only Outer Mongolia, i.e. Mongolia north of the Gobi, and Tibet
were left outside the provincial system of the Chinese Republic.
But these were big exceptions, for, though thinly inhabited, they
were both geographically of vast size. Both had revolted and
achieved de facto independence during the turmoil of the
Chinese Revolution, and in neither country so far has Chinese
political control been restored, except for a brief interval in
Outer Mongolia in 1919-20. The future political status of Outer
Mongolia (including Tannu-Tuva which has been detached from it
to form a separate unit) and of Tibet remains to be determined
after the present war.
If Chinese history is surveyed in retrospect, it will be found
that the contemporary situation largely corresponds to what has
been normal over the last two thousand years. Of the Outer
Lands it is Manchuria which has had the longest and most
continuous connection with China of the Chinese; Sinkiang has
been held by China intermittently; while Mongolia —or at any
rate Outer Mongolia —and Tibet have only exceptionally come
under Chinese rule. Chinese expansion from the Yellow River
basin — the original “China” of Shang and Chou times — has
been north-east towards the Sungari and the Yalu and north-
west towards the Tien-shan and the Pamirs, leaving aside the
arid steppes of Mongolia and the high mountain plateau of
Tibet. Nor must it be forgotten that there was also a southward
expansion from the Yellow River which only completed the
formation of China Proper in comparatively recent times; for
many centuries after the Yellow Sea littoral of Manchuria had
been closely settled by the Chinese there was very little Chinese
population south of the Yangtse valley.
Both the southward and north-eastward expansions of China
may be regarded as “natural” extensions of the Chinese ethnic
area in that both South China and Manchuria were territories for
the most part suitable for Chinese agricultural settlement, easily
accessible from the original Chinese homeland and only
sparsely inhabited by relatively primitive tribes. If South China
had by the nineteenth century become an integral part of China
(in spite of substantial remnants of non-Chinese population in
Szechwan, Yunnan, Kweichow and Kwangsi), while Manchuria
remained formally separate, it was because Manchuria
produced the warlike Manchu tribal confederacy which gave
China its last imperial dynasty, whereas none of the native
tribes of South China were able to maintain a large-scale
political power after the collapse of the Nan Chao kingdom in
the 13th century A.D.
The Chinese north-westerly expansion to what is now Sinkiang
differed in kind from the colonial advances into South China and
Manchuria. As far as the Kansu “panhandle” it was similar for
there was good agricultural land along the northern edge of the
Nanshan and communications with the main area of the Yellow
River basin were not too bad. But beyond Anhsi a stretch of
waterless desert separated, and still separates, Kansu from the
Hami oasis and the Tarim basin; moreover, these lands beyond
the desert, though comprising tracts of fertile and well-watered
soil round the margins of the desert, were already occupied by
civilized, agricultural communities, whose affinities were not
with China, but with India and Iran. There was, therefore, no
chance for an easy “natural” spread of Chinese colonization into
Sinkiang. Chinese ascendancy there, in so far as it has been
maintained, has always been a matter of high governmental
policy and has only been obtained at the cost of great effort.
The expansion has in the past had a twofold purpose. In the first
place there has been the aim of controlling as far as possible
the important caravan routes —the old “Silk Road”—running
through the Tarim Basin and giving China overland
communication with India, Western Asia and even Europe; the
traffic of these routes was far too profitable to be left to the
monopolies of petty middlemen if China’s power enabled her to
arrange matters otherwise. Secondly there was the strategic-
political motive of checking the nomad tribes of Mongolia and
their menace to China by outflanking them to the west and at
the same time preventing them from increasing their strength
by themselves gaining dominion over the Tarim basin and its
commerce.
In this connection it is to be noticed that present-day Sinkiang
comprises two distinct regions with sharply divergent
characteristics. Kashgaria, the Tarim basin lying to the south of
the Tien-shan mountain barrier is either sheer desert or fertile
cornland; it is intensely arid except where it was watered by
streams from the high mountains, and has hardly any steppe
land of the kind suitable for an economy of nomadic herdsmen.
Dzungaria on the other hand, the region north of the Tien-shan,
contains much land which is too arid for cultivation but yields
good pasture; it has always been nomads* country like Mongolia
from which it is divided by the Great Altai range. In the past
Dzungaria has usually been either held by the nomad power
dominant in Mongolia or else has been the base of a powerful
independent nomad horde. At the present day its remaining
nomadic population consists partly of Kalmuk Mongols and
partly of Kazakhs who are kindred of the more numerous
Kazakhs of the Soviet Union.
During the periods when China controlled the agricultural
oases of Kashgaria it was possible for her to organize a regular
administration there and support it with permanent garrisons,
though she never succeeded in making it ethnically Chinese; in
ancient times the bulk of the population of Kashgaria spoke one
or other of several Indo-European languages and today it is
Turki-speaking. In Mongolia and Dzungaria, however, it was very
difficult for China to have any control of a permanent character.
Sometimes Chinese armies penetrated far into the steppe
country and forced the principal nomad power to acknowledge
Chinese suzerainty; sometimes China supported one tribe
against its rivals in return for a nominal allegiance. But the
Chinese could never finish with the problem presented by the
mobility and elusiveness of the nomads, and it was virtually
impossible for them to achieve any permanent occupation. The
most notable successes over the nomads have been gained by
“Chinese” dynasties which were themselves of nomad origin;
thus the Tobas, Khitans, Nuchens, Mongols and Manchus
combined far-reaching hegemonies over the steppe tribes with
rule over part or all of China and adoption of Chinese imperial
style, language and culture. But in these cases the subjugated
tribes did not regard themselves as conquered by the Chinese;
on the contrary, they had often served their overlords as
auxiliaries in the conquest of China.
The conditions which made nomad tribes so formidable in spite
of their scanty numbers came to an end in the Far East as in
Europe with the introduction of firearms. It was as cavalry, and
especially as horse-archers, that the nomads were effective;
they could no longer compete in war with sedentary nations
when artillery and musketry had superseded the bow and the
sabre as decisive weapons. Thus by the nineteenth century
there was no longer a danger, even for China, of a new cavalry
empire of Chingiz Khan. The final blow to nomad power was the
work of the railway which not only facilitated the operation of
regular military forces in the steppe but also promoted Chinese
peasant colonization in areas where, owing to lack of
communications, it had never hitherto prospered. Thus Inner
Mongolia has become predominantly Chinese in population"
during the last generation — a condition of affairs which has
never really existed before.
A historical survey of China’s political and ethnic expansion
may suitably begin with the fourth century B.C., when the Chou
empire had dissolved into a number of states contending among
themselves for supremacy and those among them which were
located on the periphery were busy extending their borders at
the expense of “barbarian”, i.e. non-Chinese tribes. The “China”
of that day consisted roughly of the modern provinces of Hopei,
Shansi, Shensi, Honan, Shantung, Hupeh and Anhwei. Chinese
population and culture were still concentrated in the lower basin
of the Yellow River; Kansu was still outside China and the
Yangtse valley was still for the most part forest and swamp. By
the end of the century, the state of Ts'in, based on Shensi, had
annexed what is now Szechwan; Ch’u, based on Hupeh, had
acquired the Hwai and Yangtse deltas; and Yen, based on Hopei,
had extended its sway over the Liao basin of southern
Manchuria. The “barbarians” whose territories were overrun in
this expansion were probably in some cases speakers of
languages closely akin to Chinese, though on a lower economic
and cultural level than their cousins who were heirs of the
already ancient Yellow River civilization. In other cases they
were no doubt of the stocks, more distantly related to the
Chinese, which still survive as the Lolos, Miao, Yao and other
non-Chinese peoples of Southwest China. All these aborigines
were fairly easily absorbed by the Chinese, except in certain
mountain tracts where they were able to keep a local
independence; as they thinly inhabited territories suitable for
intensive agriculture on the Chinese model, there was nothing
to stop the advance of the Chinese peasant once a military
conquest had been effected. It was only when, further to the
north and west, the Chinese reached lands better suited to a
pastoral economy than to their own, that they failed to follow up
military expansion with permanent settlement.
The Ts’in dynasty (255-206 B.C.) not only unified all the rival
Chinese states but also extended its control far and wide over
the barbarian tribes. It subdued Kansu to the north-west and
Chekiang to the southeast, while to the south it opened up a
route to the sea on the Canton delta via Hunan. In the north it
had a long frontier with the nomads of the Mongolian steppe
and constructed the original Great Wall as an attempt to fix a
line between the two discordant worlds.
The Han dynasty, which followed the Ts’in, extended the
empire south-westward into Kwangsi, Yunnan and Tongking; it
did not, however, subdue Min Yueh (Fukien), which was only
included in a Chinese state in the period of the Three Kingdoms
(220-280 A.D.). The Ts’in and Han conquests to the south far
outran Chinese land settlement; it was indeed several centuries
before Kwangtung became ethnically Chinese. As long as there
was land to be taken up in the Yangtse basin the Chinese farmer
did not emigrate across the mountains to the south coast
provinces, and the Chinese population there consisted mainly of
officials and traders in the towns. Commerce was indeed the
main motive of the early colonization of the far south, for it was
through ports such as Canton and Haiphong that the products of
the “South Sea” — merchandise of Cambodia and Indonesia,
and even of India and Arabia, reached inland China. But the fact
that the bulk of the population in the southern borderlands
remained non-Chinese rendered Chinese rule precarious,
especially as the non-Chinese local magnates gradually
acquired enough schooling in Chinese culture and social
organization to enable them to form stronger political units than
had hitherto existed in that part of the world. In Yunnan a revolt
of Tai-speaking tribes produced the kingdom of Nan Chao, which
endured for several centuries and was only finally brought to an
end by the Mongols. In Tongking a revolt of the Annamites
finally brought Chinese rule to an end in the tenth century and it
was never restored, though Annam was normally thereafter one
of the tributary kingdoms of China, acknowledging a formal
suzerainty of the Chinese court. Annam thus set a permanent
limit to Chinese southward expansion, but in the southern
provinces of what is now China the Ts'in and Han conquests
were in the end, after many vicissitudes, consolidated by
Chinese mass settlement.
To the north-east the Ts'in and Han dynasties extended the
former territories of Yen not only as far as the Yalu, but also into
northern Korea, where a flourishing Chinese colony was planted.
Southern Manchuria and Korea were easily accessible from
North China both by sea and by land along the coast from the
Hopei plain. Land communications with Manchuria, however,
were always liable to be cut by nomad tribes holding Jehol, the
south-eastern outlier of the Mongolian dry grassland which
reaches close to the sea north of Shanhaikwan. In Korea Chinese
settlement was inadequate to make the country Chinese; it was
soon swallowed up by a native Korean kingdom. But in southern
Manchuria colonization made the country ethnically Chinese
roughly as far north as the modern Changchun; beyond that
Manchuria remained a land of the nomads until recent times,
though, being largely a land of forests and rivers, its nomadism
was of a different type from that characteristic of the bare
steppe of Mongolia.
To the north-west the Han dynasty effected the first Chinese
penetration into Kashgaria. This began with the famous mission
of Chang Ch'ien who was sent by a Han emperor in 138 B.C. to
conclude an alliance with the Yueh-chi tribes against the Hsiung-
nu (Huns) then dominant in Mongolia. After various adventures
Chang Ch’ien found the Yueh-chi west of the Pamirs, where they
had overrun the Hellenistic kingdom of Bactria; they were no
longer interested in fighting against the Hsiung-nu, but, though
Chang was thus unsuccessful as a diplomat, the report of the
‘western regions* which he brought back opened up a new
world to Chinese vision and initiated a period of exploration and
conquest in this direction. The Chinese first carried out a
military invasion of Kashgaria in 108 B.C., and six years later
one of their generals in a remarkable campaign subdued
Ferghana, which now forms part of the Soviet Republic of
Uzbekistan.
From that time onwards Chinese rule in Kashgaria was
intermittent. It was indeed a test of the strength of a Chinese
dynasty at any time whether it could hold Kashgaria. The Han
lost it soon after the first conquest, regained it later and then
lost it again. The T'ang dynasty for a while ruled Kashgaria and
even Ferghana, but lost them long before the end of their
dynasty. The house of Sung never held sway beyond eastern
Kansu. The Mongols dominated Kashgaria, but they had
conquered it before they overran China, and it fell to the Khans
of Chaga-tai, who soon became virtually independent of the
Great Khan in Peking. The Ming empire stopped short at Hami,
which was held as an outpost from 1403 to 1513. It was the
Manchu dynasty which finally won it for China by breaking the
power of the Kalmuk Empire, the last of the great nomad
hegemonies of the northern steppe. In 1757 the Manchu general
Chao Hui completed the downfall of the Kalmuks in Dzungaria
and in the following year he took Kashgar and Yarkand from
local rulers. He also obtained the submission of Ferghana and of
the Middle and Little Hordes of the Kazakhs, which ultimately,