SOVIET IN CENTRAL ASIA

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23486, 25 October 1939, Page 8

SOVIET IN CENTRAL ASIA

How much reliance can be placed on reports of Russian military activity in China's western provinces is by no means certain. It is well established, however, that Russia has in recent years pursued a policy of peaceful penetration in this remote and little-known region of Central Asia. No doubt the policy has been forwarded by the construction of the Turkestan - Siberian ("Turk - Sib") railway, although which followed from the other is difficult to determine. At any rate Russian influence has for some years been paramount in the vast Chinese province of Sinkiang, sometimes called East Turkestan. In Turkestan proper, Russia has for long been established. Her firm' foothold in Sinkiang was noted by Mr. Peter Fleming, who recorded the corresponding decline of British influence. As the southern frontier of Sinkiang runs with the northern frontier of India for 500 miles and of Tibet, — an undoubted sphere of British influence—for another 1000 miles, the Imperial Government caiinot disinterest itself from the fact of Soviet penetration. Hoav far the latter has already gone may be gathered from the words used by Mr. Gregory Bienstock, writing in the Nineteenth Century six months ago. He speiiks of "the actual incorporation of Chinese East Turkestan and Outer Mongolia" (together nearly 1,500,000 square miles or ]5 times the area of New Zealand) in Soviet Russia. These Russian inroads upon China have ( received remarkably little attention, probably because Japanese military aggression in Manchuria and on the Chinese coastal provinces has monopolised attention. Yet the concern of Britain in the future of Sinkiang, a border land of India and Tibet, is" close and undeniable.