Incorporation of Xinjiang into the People's Republic of China | ||||||||
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Part of the Chinese Civil War | ||||||||
PLA in Ürümqi | ||||||||
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Belligerents | ||||||||
Three Districts Economic Commission (former East Turkestan Republic)
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Commanders and leaders | ||||||||
Strength | ||||||||
80,000[1] | 100,000[1] | 40,000 |
History of Xinjiang |
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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]
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