MONGOLIAN STATE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 October 1941, Page 6

MONGOLIAN STATE

GREAT STRATEGIC VALUE BEARING ON.FAR EASTERN SITUATION. BUFFER BETWEEN SOVIET AND JAPANESE. Sprawling between Japanese-domi-nated North China and Russian-Domi-nated Outer Mongolia, the Federal Autonomous Government of Mongolia comes wide awake on its Asiatic borderlands as tension increases over Japan’s intentions, states the “Christian Science Monitor.” Meng Chiang, as the federation is known, occupies a status midway between that of a Japanese-occupied zone, such as portions of China, and a Japanese-sponsored “State” such as Manchukuo. The hard-riding Mongolian plainsmen have been brought under Japanese influence, but the grant to them of nominal autonomy testifies to their mettle. Bordering Manchukuo on the east, Meng Chiang forms an essential segment in Japan’s strategic buffer regions against the Soviet. Meng Chiang sweeps at its closest point to within 30 miles of Peking along the PekingSuiyuan Railway. Westward, this loose federation of Mongolian leagues fades away into singing sands of the Gobi Desert.

Most of Meng Chiang extends north from the Great Wall. Japan has sought to stake out a defensive zone—or alternatively a base for offensive ac-tion-cushioning even the approaches to China’s traditional barrier against incursions from Central Asia. HISTORY SURVEYED. Through the Wan Shan Pass, only 35 miles outside of Kalgan, Genghis Khan led his Mongol hordes in the thirteenth century, and two generations later his grandson, the great Kublai Khan, breached the Great Wall at the same place to conquer China and found the city of Peking. The current history of this region is surveyed in an article in the Foreign Commerce Weekly, published by the United States Department of Commerce.

Since the Chinese Republic was established in 1911, the article points out, the ancient “Banners” of the Mongols have undergone many vicissitudes. In 1921 the northern Mongols of Outer Mongolia, “core of the Mongol nation,” set up at Urga—since renamed Ulan Bator Khoto, the city of the Red Hero —an Outer Mongolian People’s Republic of pro-Communistic types, under Soviet auspices. In 1931, with the occupation of Manchuria by Japan’s Kwantung Army, the land of the Hsingan Mongols of north-east Manchuria was incorporated into the new “State” of “Manchukuo” —to which were added in 1935 the former Chinese Inner Mongolian Province of Jehol, and in 1936 the six northern “hsien,” or counties, of the Inner Mongolian Province of Chahar. Of the Mongolia that formerly had been claimed by China, these dissections left the control of the Chinese National Government the 10 southern hsien of Chahar Province, the Provinces of Suiyuan and Ninghsia, and a vast arid area of Central Asia that stretches to the Altai region and includes Tibetans, Tungans, and other nomad Mongoloid peoples. SET UP BY JAPANESE. Shortly after the outbreak of the | “China incident” in July, 1937, Japan’s Kwantung Army swept into Inner Mongolia and in rapid succession occupied the area’s four chief cities, located along the strategic Peking-Suiyuan railway —namely, Kalgan, Tatung, Kweisui (renamed Hohohoto), and Paotow, the railway’s western terminus. With the assistance of certain Mongol and Chinese leaders, the Japanese established at Kalgan,. on November 22, 1937, the “Federated Council of the Mongol Border Land”—Meng Chiang—with general supervisory functions, Comprised in the grouping were: 1. The “Federal Autonomous Government of the United Leagues of Mongolia,” with its capital at Hohohoto in Suiyuan Province, and composed of the ancient Mongolian leagues of Ulanchab, Yekhejo, Payentala, Silingol, and Chahar. 2. The “Federal Autonomous Government of Chin-Pei, or North Shansi,” comprising the 13 hsien of Shansi Province, with its capital at Tatung. 3. The “Federal Autonomous Government of Cha-Nan, or Southern Chahar,” comprising the 10 southern hsien of Chahar Province, with its capital at Kalgan. On September 1, 1939, Meng Chiang was reorganised as it is constituted today, and renamed the “Federal Autonomous Government of Mongolia.” With an area roughly 200,000 square miles, Meng Chiang has a population of 5,000,000 to 7,000,000 Chinese and Mongols and 36,000 Japanese civilians, whose numbers have rapidly grown since the autumn of 1937. The American colony which flourished in the heyday of the Kalgan fur trade, less than 20 years ago, has almost entirely disappeared. Yet for centuries Meng Chiang has oeen a great transit area of trade, over which caravans brought in to Kalgan, Kweisui, and Paotow the furs, wool, and opium that made up the principal part of the trade of North China with Turkestan, Tibet and Mongolia. Back across the desert the same camel trains took to the nomad peoples of Central Asia the teas of China and the cotton piece goods, petroleum, tobacco, and miscellaneous manufactured products of Europe.and the United States. CHIEFLY BARTER TRADE. \t was a barter trade, for the most parr, and even in the twentieth century there flourished at Kalgan a con-' siderable colony of American traders

who for more than a decade sent their motor-trucks loaded with Chinese silver dollars over the 800 miles of rocks and sand between Kalgan and Urga to exchange them for Mongolian furs. But the devastating movements of armies over this area, anct finally the severance of trade relations between Outer Mongolia and North China since about 1932, have driven these American merchants and tneir Trade out of the country. Meng Chiang, nevertheless, still is of importance, both in the economic structure of North China and in its political implications. It has served of commerce the extensive coal fields, that lie about Tatung and the Lungyen iron deposits of Chahar, richest known iron-ore field in Chinawhile the most fertile lands of Chahar and Suiyuan lie along either side of the railway, particularly in the fertile Saratsi Basin, where the Chinese. International Famine Relief Committee formerly had an important irrigation project. But since the autumn of 1937 serious deterioration in Meng Chiang’s economic and financial status has occurred as a result of several factors. A once-important caravan trade with Central Asia has almost ceased, and a considerable portion of the 8,000,000 acres that were under agricultural cultivation have been allowed to revert to pasture land, Severo restrictions on trade, travel, and foreign-exchange transactions have driven merchandise away from the railway zone in the efforts of producers to evade forced sales at officially fixed low prices. The larger portion of the wool, furs, and opium that came into Chyia across Meng Chiang before 1937 can no longer be obtained.