Eastern Gobi Research Articles

The New Map of China

T RADITIONAL China may be said to consist of I8 provinces. These include the area to the south of the Great Wall which is often loosely referred to as China Proper. Even these provinces have had a changing history, for during the nineteenth century several pairs of them were united, as for instance Shensi and Kansu which were known as Shenkan, and Kwangtung and Kwangsi, known as Liangkwang. In addition to the 18 provinces there were also the outer territories of Manchuria, Mongolia, Chinese Turkestan, and Tibet. This traditional alignment no longer holds. The situation in I930 is presented in the map, Figure I. The land of the Manchus has been divided into three provinces since I903, known as Heilungkiang, Kirin, and Fengtien. Fengtien province has also been called Shengking but in I928 was renamed Liaoning by the Nationalist Government in Nanking. Most old maps of Manchuria show a considerable area east of the Khingan Mountains as belonging to Mongolia and labeled the Eastern Gobi. This region is not at all a desert and has almost nothing in common with real Mongolia. For many years it has formed a part of Fengtien. The province of Heilungkiang nominally extends west of the Khingan Mountains into geographical Mongolia, here known as Barga. After the invasion of the Soviet troops at the time of the crisis over the Chinese Eastern Railway in I929, the Mongol inhabitants of Barga attempted to set up an independent government patterned after that of Outer Mongolia. This attempt has partially succeeded, for Chinese jurisdiction is temporarily confined to the railway zone between Hailar and Manchuli.