Sinkiang Province Is "Pivot Of Asia"

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23289, 26 June 1950, Page 4

Sinkiang Province Is "Pivot Of Asia"

(By an N.Z.P.A. Special Correspondent)

NEW YORK. A man in the news and a slice of the world in the news combine to give topical interest to the recently published “pivot of Asia.” This is the name given to China’s province of Sinkiang by the author. Professor Owen Lattiniorc, one of those who have come under Senator Joseph McCarthy’s lash in his charges of Communist influence in the U.S. State Department.

Professor Lattimore, director of the Walter Hines Page School of international relations at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, is probably the world’s foremost authority on inner Asia.

and the deserts, snow-capped mountains and rich pasture lands in which they live.

He finds another title for the “pivot of Asia” in his final chapter. Instead of being "a partial vacuum being competitively filled from China, India and Russia,” he says, “the Sinkiang of today, teeming with its own nationalism, has become a crossroads of inner Asia.”

He has spent most of his 50 years in China, including the least accessible areas of the West. The U.S, Secretary of State, Mr. Dean Acheson, has publicly accused Russia of “apparently resuming on a grand scale the detachment of Sinkiang Province from China.”

The most important aspect of its position, he says, is that it stands “between a Communist-dominated China and a Communist-controlled Russia.” At this crossroads meet a number of difierent nationalisms and the policies of two great Powers, China and Russia —“two great federative States similar to each other in their Communist orientation, but not identical with each other in their domestic interests.” China’s Power Diminishing . He predicts that China’s new Communist Government will have more authority in Sinkiang, one of its frontier territories, than any Chinese Government for many decades. But. he adds, “the overlord power of China in Sinkiang” is at present diminishing. “The gathering momentum of Soviet prestige is enhanced by the withdrawal of other Powers that were once great in inner Asia,” says Professor Lattimore. Even the Communists, triumphant in China itself, have to handle the inner Asian frontiers of China more by negotiations than by the issuing of decrees. With British power withdrawn from India, neither India nor Pakistan has the kind of power that can project its influence as deeply into Inner Asia as that of Britain once did. British power has also receded in Iran, and has not been fully replaced by American power. The American influence in Iran is that of a country which is strong enough to fight Russia, but not that of a country with the knack—which Britain once had—of simultaneously propping up both a weak Government and a decaying social order.” Many Renounce Sovereignty Professor Lattimore predicted the "probability that the Chinese Communists will, as Chinese, renounce no sovereignty in Sinkiang, but will attempt to apply new policies, modelled on those of the Russians in Soviet Asia. “The Sinkiang of the future," he said, “is likely to follow the Soviet models to a considerable extent—but that it will be impossible to match practice exactly to theory. “Sinkiang, in its pivotal position in the heart of Asia,” concluded Professor Lattimore, “will most rapidly transmit lo India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran the news that passes from mouth to mouth where few people read or hear the radio—news of the meaning in their lives of the great political changes in China. . . . sinkiang has become in fact a pivot around which revolve policies, and powers, and the fates of men." _

Professor Lattimore’s book on Sinkiang opens in a way illuminating Mr. Acheson’s charge. It begins: “A new centre of gravity is forming in the world. In terms of power politics it has two outstanding characteristics: accessibility from Russia, for the kinds of power which are at Russia’s disposal, and inaccessibility from America for the kinds of power that are at America’s disposal. In terms of ideology, it is a whirlnool in which meet political currents flowing from China, Russia, India and the Moslem Middle East.” New Centre of Gravity Sinkiang, the author says, occupies the major part of the focal area within which lies this new centre of gravity. Ninety per cent of its people are not Chinese; they feel themselves to be subjects, rather than citizens of China. They are divided by many differences of language and religion. It has many frontiers besides the geographical frontiers with India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Mongolia and China. There are linguistic, cultural, religious, political and economic frontiers of an amazing number and variety. But,, Professor Lattimore says, there is in this welter of frontiers not one State providing a strong foothold for ‘‘free capitalist enterprise organised politically around the kind of democratic institutions familiar in Western Europe or Northern America.” ‘‘lt stands,” says Professor Lattimore. “at the back door of the old empire of India, in which the new ; political, economic and social forces of I the Dominions of India and Pakistan j are now at work. It stands at one of I the front doors of the Soviet Union— I the front door most inaccessible to ! those forms of power, prestige, and I influence which are at the disposal of j the foreign policy of the United States, i Back Door to China I “It stands, finally, at an angle of the hinterland frontier which for centuries has been regarded as the backdoor of China, but which two thousand years ago was China’s front door to the heart of Asia and is now becoming once again the most important front door of the landward side of China.” Professor Lattimore’s brilliant book is paced with intriguing information of the history, geography, economic development, and social structure of Sinkiang. He presents the politics and power affecting it today against a background of little known peoples