But it also couldn’t have happened without the aid of the Soviet Union. The invasion was military cunning combined with political skill and, frankly, dumb luck. And it may have benefited from the suspicious-but-apparently-accidental deaths of several important local leaders from the East Turkestan Republic, a de facto independent state aligned with the Soviet Union in what is now northern Xinjiang. It was accelerated by the CCP’s co-opting of former political and military rivals in Xinjiang, including 100,000 Nationalist troops.
It depended on the PLA’s rapid successes in the civil war in Gansu Province and elsewhere in Northwest China. To be sure, the successful invasion of Xinjiang in autumn 1949 was the result of a complicated, delicate dance that could have easily gone any other way. Mao Zedong and the Northwest Army Field Commander, Peng Dehuai, spoke often of the practical challenges of executing a ground invasion of Xinjiang any sooner: PLA troops were still fighting in Shaanxi, Gansu, and Qinghai provinces, Xinjiang was too distant, there was no reliable means of transportation, the weather was turning cold, and troop morale was low. The talk within the Chinese Communist Party during the spring and summer of 1949 was of invasion in 1950, or even later, in 1951. Stalin stoked Mao’s fears, warning that countries antagonistic to the CCP, such as Great Britain, could “activate the Muslims” in Xinjiang in order to “continue the civil war.” And of course, taking hold of the oil and other strategic resources present in Xinjiang motivated Mao.īut no one expected the PLA to move quickly. He worried that his rivals, the Nationalist Party, would hang onto Xinjiang and use it as a base for continued operations against the CCP. Mao Zedong’s eyes had been on Xinjiang for a while. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army invasion in October 1949 of Xinjiang, the vast “province” bordering the Mongolian People’s Republic and Soviet Central Asia, was a stunning development.
Records just added to show that Soviet aid (along with military cunning, political skill and some luck) enabled the 1949 PLA invasion
The Middle East and North Africa Workforce Development Initiative.Kissinger Institute on China and the United States.Nuclear Proliferation International History Project.North Korea International Documentation Project.Environmental Change and Security Program.Hyundai Motor-Korea Foundation Center for Korean History and Public Policy.
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