 The National Broadcasting Company and its affiliated stations present the Pacific story. The drama of the millions of people who live around this greatest scene where the United States is now committed to a long-term policy of keeping the peace. This is a documentary account of the situation in the Pacific, of the men and events which are today influencing world affairs for generations to come. Powder keg of Asia. There's enough dynamite in Sinkiang to start another world war. To put it another way, Mr. Wilkie, Sinkiang here is the center of a political volcano which may blow off the top of the world. But even Wendell Wilkie did not realize how close the explosion was. A preview of what is in the wind came like a tornado. Hard-riding tribesmen of Central Asia are sweeping across the Turkestan border region in northwest Sinkiang, in open rebellion against the Chinese. After 10 years under the regime of Governor Cheng Xi, the Muslim Uyghurs and the Kazakhs are laying seeds to the border town of Inning, sometimes called Kulga. The tribesmen are armed with modern weapons and led by mysterious and competent leaders. Extent of the losses has not yet been determined, but it is expected that they will model... Put down the Chinese pirates! In the capital city of Diyuwa, 350 miles east of the defeat town of Inning, the tension was high. It is an outrage. You Chinese did not think it an outrage to suppress us under Governor Cheng for 10 years. You say that because you are a Kazakh. Is this true? You Kazakhs and Uyghurs have always resented us Chinese. Why should we bend our necks to you Chinese? Sinkiang is not Chinese. Sinkiang is Chinese. 200,000 of our population of four and a half million are Chinese. We made Diyuwa here, a modern city. You imposed Governor Shang on us for 10 years. Ask Palo Bai here. That is right. You Kazakhs and Uyghurs said yourself that you liked Governor Shang. When he stood for cultural autonomy for us? Yes. But when he sold us out to the Guomindang and tried to make Chinese of us, he ignored our racial difference from you Chinese, arrested and imprisoned and killed us by the tens of thousands. Then we no longer liked him. After all, 95% of us are Mohammedans. We removed Shang from the governorship, did we not? You removed him two months ago when you could do nothing else. And what did you do to him for his misdeeds? You did nothing. Worse than that, you tried to save his face by making him Minister of Agriculture and Forest in the Chongqing Cabinet. Shang is an able man. He should be brought to trial and punished. But why do you people rebel now after Governor Shang is gone? You have a new leader now. Yes. We have General Shang Chichung. But we still have the situation that Shang last year has been only a matter of weeks. We knew what it said of the uprising in Northwest Xinjiang. Three Uyghur tribesmen who had been imprisoned by the Chinese escaped. And soon the region was appired with rebellion. The Uyghurs, my people, the Kazakhs, the Tatars, the Turkis, and even white Russians wrote together against the Chinese with hand grenades, rifles, pistols, and with a torch they scourged the villages. Attacking with a fury of wild men, the rebelling tribesmen have captured the town of Sui Bing and are moving on the mountain stronghold of Air Dai. The mountain stronghold of Air Dai has fallen to the hard-bitten Muslim raiders. And reports have reached this outpost that more than 2,000 Tungans and Kazakhs are attacking the city of Changi, only 40 kilometers north of Tewa. And the capital city of Tewa, the tension grew. Military guards were everywhere. They watched us Kazakhs and Uyghurs and Turkis. What will they do to us to go by if Tewa is attacked? I can only guess. It is said the Chinese reinforcements are being crossed into Xinjiang. You can be sure that some of them will come here to defend the capital. There will be much more bloodshed before the fighting stops to lob us. Xinjiang is as precious as a jewel. Therefore the Chinese are fighting to hold it. In this great pasture land cut up by mountains, my people, the Kazakhs, have lived as nomads for centuries. When I was a boy, I heard of the sheep and the goats in the grasslands of the high country. My mother and the other women did the chores around our youth. When we moved, we took down our youth and struck them on our animals and carried them with us to our next spot. In our wanderings, we met the other people of Xinjiang. The Kalmukhs, the Kirgiz, the Turkmen. I remember the first time I saw a Chinese. You see, they are different from us to Lubai. My father explained them to me. They come from the land called China, far to the east. Here in Xinjiang, most of them live in the cities like Tiwa and Yaqang and Khazgar and Khotan and Aksu, as you see to Lubai. They are the magistrates and the merchants. Whenever I saw Chinese, I stopped and studied them. Now, that one you see, he is a pure bred Chinese. You see how different he is from me? We have the same blood as the people of Turkey. We are not Turks, but we are Bohamadans. When I was small, I wondered why the Chinese were so few in Xinjiang were the magistrates and the merchants. I used to watch those in charge of the camel caravans. They are carrying merchandise to trade my son. These caravans have been going over the silk roads of this country for thousands of years. As I grew up and became a hunter and a herder, I came to understand the caravans. The camel is carrying up to 600 pounds of freight across the sandy waste through the rushing streams of the mountain gorges, up through the rugged canyons and over the snow-covered passes of the Xinjiang mountains. Those goods they are carrying there my son, they will sell in the lands far, far beyond. In the summer, we rode our horses in the grazing country of the Xinjiang and when we went to the gardens outside Kashgar and to the country of the great Tulfan depression, we saw them using bullocks to draw plows that were made entirely of wood. I remember standing in the Tulfan depression country and listening to my father. Right here, where we stand my son, there's more than 900 feet below the level of the sea. If the sea should run in here, it would flood this entire countryside. But we did not fear, for the sea is nearly 2,000 miles to the east. I thought about that a long time. The Great Pacific Ocean is 2,000 miles to the east of us. I tried to imagine what an ocean was like. I stood there at the Tulfan depression and looked to the east. My father knew what I was thinking of. He said nothing about that but turned me to the south. Almost a thousand miles straight south of where we are standing here my son is the highest mountain in the world. They say it is more than 29,000 feet high and hundreds of miles south of that is another sea. The Bay of Bengal. That was the first time I realized where Sinkyang was, where I had been born and where I had grown up. And a year since then I have come to understand the relationship between Sinkyang and China to the south of us here in India and Tibet. To the north is Outer Mongolia. To the west Russian Turkestan. I remember when I learned that Sinkyang is also sometimes called Chinese Turkestan. That is because of the whole China has a pan-Sinkyang all about. But Sinkyang is not Chinese. It was a long time before I learned to make this distinction. And a long time before I learned why Sinkyang is so important. I'll tell you why it is, Tulubai. This was the American who had spent so much time in Sinkyang. You see, Sinkyang is right up against Russian Turkestan. That is against several of the Soviet republics in Russian Turkestan. That is one reason. In effect the British in India and the Russians in Turkestan are separated only by Sinkyang. Therefore both the Russians and the British are vitally interested in what happens in Sinkyang. The British and the Chinese, for example, would be very much concerned if the Russians had too much influence in Sinkyang. And of course the other way around, too. I learned the Russians had a special reason for concern. You see, the Russians have a great industrial empire in what they call the Urals-Kuznets Karaganda region. Because this region is so well screened from attack by the great distances of Russia, the Soviets are secure here except for one thing. Sinkyang. Should Sinkyang fall into hands unfriendly to Russia, then this entire Soviet industrial empire would be in danger. Conversely, should Sinkyang be lost to China, or to put it another way, fall into hands unfriendly to China, then China proper would be wide open to attack from the west. Poor boy. Yes, yes, what is it? The Chinese troops are pouring into the Oasis south of the Tianshan. How many? No one knows. But General Agrochi Chowoff is moving them in so fast that the rebels will have no chance in South Sinkyang. The fighting is going on in the north and the northwest. But how long can our people succeed in the north if the Chinese hold us out? Soon they will be coming north. Yes. We Muslims must make no false move here in Tiva, or we shall not live. Day by day reports came in of the Chinese troops moving into the Oasis around the Takyomakan Desert. An attackmen of troops has moved into Tartan. More Chinese troops are arriving in Aksu and Kashgar. A strong force of Chinese has arrived at Yankee Tower. The reinforcements are coming into your camp. The Chinese soldiers in great numbers are pouring into Tartan. Another detachment has arrived at Kucha. From the south came words which stir the Uyghurs of Tiva. The government troops have requisitioned the food raised by our people in the Oasis. The Uyghurs are supplying the Chinese troops. The troops have told them there is no other way of getting supplies. There are no trucks and almost no highways. They come to fight us and they requisition our food to see their prudence. My people raised this food to sell on the open market. Now the government takes it at its own price. In Tiva we watched. The Chinese were marching. They were in the mountains. They were moving toward the strategic centers. They were approaching the mountain stungle of Odai which only recently has been taken by our people. Odai has been recaptured by the Chinese. The fighting flares on the Soviet border region 300 miles to the west. The streets of Pihua echoed with the marching of the Chinese. All possible forces are being mobilized. You Chinese may need more troops than you think. It is foolishness for you people to continue to resist. Yes, yes. The number of troops China can send into think Yang is endless. Soon now even our civilians here will be conscripted. Yeah, you two had better get off the streets. Well, what has happened? New battles have been reported between Chinese troops and Turkey tribesmen. The outcome isn't known yet, but it may be bad here for the side that loses. Yes. The streets of Tihua cleared. Our blood brothers were fighting against the blood brothers of the Chinese who were in control of Tihua. Our Chinese guards were everywhere. We stayed undercover. Work filled up in on what was happening out in the border region. Our people have deceived the town of Yinning for nearly three months now. The Chinese guards are still holding out. They cannot hold out long. They are short on supplies. More than 300 miles of wasteland lay between Tihua and the fighting in the border region. To move Chinese troops across this barrier with almost no roads, in time to save the garrison at Yinning was almost impossible. We waited. On the 87th day of siege, Yinning fell. Tihua, Xinjiang, January 30th, 1945. The bloody fighting in the Ili Valley in northwest Xinjiang, Chinese-Turkistan, culminated today in the capture of the city of Yinning by the Turkey tribesmen. With hideous cries, the mounted Muslims of Central Asia rode into the doomed city, set fire to many parts of the town and massacred the Chinese garrison and all the Chinese residents they could lay their hands on. With this disaster, the Chinese had ruled in the outpost city of Yinning and autonomous government was set up. The Eastern Turkestan Republic. This is the first step to lobby. Yes, but that is all it is. Are people of this class the Chinese from the Ili region? There is no reason why we should not have lost them from all of Xinjiang? That is another thing. Xinjiang is large and the Chinese are bringing in more and more troops. There are many of us Kazakhs, many Uyghurs and many Kyrgyz and the other minority people of Xinjiang will help us too. Will they help? After all, they are all Mohammedans. Yes. Why should we not be eternists like Walter Mongolia? We are not Chinese. The fighting went on. It went on until General Chang Qichong got representatives of the three rebellious regions to come to Paris with him here in Tiwa. Our price is independence from China. I present here the 14 demands of the people of the border regions. General Chang won the respect of the delegates with his sincerity and with his earnestness. May you remember well the admonishments of Sun Yat-sen on fair and equal treatment for minority people. It is our wish to abide by the principles laid down by Sun Yat-sen. I therefore say to you that it is to your advantage to have self-government as a part of China rather than independence from China. My people listened. They agreed to the withdrawal of three of their demands and on January 2nd 1946 signed an agreement. The government shall give the people the power to elect local administrators. The government shall give the people freedom of religious beliefs. Both Chinese and local languages shall be official languages. The government shall give the people freedom of publication, assembly and expression. Years later the treaty was formally signed in Tiwa and soon after this more than 300 political prisoners my people who were connected with the inning incident were released. But the trouble was not settled. Important Chinese came to Tiwa became to smooth over the strained relations between the national government and us Muslims. People who knew about industry and about engineering. If we are to develop plans for the industrialization of Xinjiang we must at least have the use of the resources of Xinjiang. Yes, the petroleum of the Wu Hu oil fields and the minerals and the grain and flour and meats of the border region. That is one of the big problems. You refer to the military frontier on the Manfas River, General Chang? Under our agreement we cannot send out troops for civil administrators west of the Manfas River. That is what I mean, General Chang and that is an impossible arrangement. Yes, the Manfas River is only 70 miles west of Tiwa here and everything we need all the resources we need for the development of Xinjiang are beyond that. I know, certainly something can be done. It is ridiculous that there is gasoline only 150 miles west of here and we are almost without it and cannot get it. Let me remind you that we have just had a rebellion on our hands with hundreds of thousands of Muslims against us either actually fighting us or sympathizing with those who fought us. Yes, I know that. And let me remind you further that the Muslims at a well-equipped army trained and ready in the border region around Guinea both cavalry and infantry I will appreciate this, General Chang but if we are to solve this problem we must certainly find ways of access to the use of the resources of Xinjiang. It is not that the Muslims do not wish to use these resources. They are using them. You refer to the rumors of their trade over the border of Soviet Pakistan? Yes, and more information indicates that it is more than rumors, General Chang. So this almost open trading is going on across the border and not only that, but I have information that some of the Soviet goods are being smuggled right into Tiwak here and meantime we are languishing until profess given this report must be regarded as rumors. Yes? A message from General Chang? Message? From whom? From the Muslim? A petition. Bring it in. Excuse me gentlemen. It is from the Muslim author. Yes. Thank you. You're welcome. It is a petition, all right. Yes. Look at it. Yes. What is it about, General Chang? It asked the provincial assembly to try Chang Ji Cai bring him to trial. Yes. For what they say are his wrongs against minority people. They accuse him of confiscation of their properties of wholesale imprisonment and of unwarranted cruelties. Do I understand that they want to try here in Tiwak? Apparently. Yes. They brought in me and some of the other Kazakhs and boys of Tiwak. And asked us about Chang. They had lived for 10 years under his rule. He ruled us like a dust bus. The tax person took the best of all we had. He defied. He's a Chinese and we are not Chinese. But is it not true that Xinjiang has been regarded as a part of China and has been governed by China for centuries? We have always regarded you Chinese only as the ruling great. Yes. And 95% of us here in Xinjiang are Mohammedan. And you Chinese are not Mohammedan. Yes. And Chang closed our schools and opened Chinese schools to try to make us like you. And he permitted many Chinese immigrants to come into Xinjiang and crowd us in our cities and oases. For some years he prohibited immigration. In the beginning, yes. But then he changed. And he not only brought in many Chinese farmers but he also put many of us in prison. But the worst thing is that when it's last you removed Chang you removed him with honor as the what he had done here in Xinjiang was right. It was not right. It was wrong. And if you Chinese are to have peace here in Xinjiang Chang must be brought to justice. I should like to ask you as minority people's a vital question. It is a touchy question. Ask it. We will answer to the best of our knowledge. This dislike of Chang is more than dislike. Well, does this resentment of Chang arise out of your own experience with Chang out of what he did to you or has it been artificially promoted? It comes from people here wronged. What would you say? What do you mean when you say artificially promoted? Well, could someone possibly foreigners have an interest in finding this hate of Chang? That is not necessary. Chang generated enough hate against him in Xinjiang to last a long time. Let me say this to you Chinese. China has escaped the consequences of failing to bring Chang to justice by trying to impute our resentment to him to foreign interest. As long as you take the position that Chang was right you Chinese will have trouble in Xinjiang. When trading with Russia was stopped in 1943 and no more consumer goods were brought in hoarding started at once prices went sky high and Xinjiang by its very nature must have trade with no adequate industries Xinjiang was unable to make for itself the things it needs and even with the commodities it had it was sorely put to get distribution for them without adequate transportation. And to this the resentment of the people of Xinjiang against the immigrant Chinese and their opposition to the Chinese central government. And he gets some idea of the situation in Xinjiang. And there were still other complications even though some machinery for Xinjiang was available in China proper it could not be brought in by air. The Russians hold a commercial aviation monopoly and Chinese commercial planes are not permitted to operate waste of homies which is 325 miles east of Fihong. In fact the Russians have a certain control of the economic development of Xinjiang. So when we see many Russian commercial planes we see no Chinese ones. Likewise we see many representatives of the Russian trading organizations here in Tewa but the greatest Chinese concern is for the three north-west regions which bore the Soviet Turkistan. Then in effect General Kang these three regions are under the dominance of the Russians they are still construed to be part of China. Russia has never questioned Chinese sovereignty in these regions and we have never implied that we would relinquish them. But we have no troops in these border regions we have no civil officials so in effect we have only the slightest theoretical hold on these regions which are more than 300 miles from us here. Everyone who has watched what has gone on in these last few years in Xinjiang knows why Russia wants a friendly provincial government in Xinjiang. Xinjiang is a keystone. Because of its strategic location the political tremors in Xinjiang are felt in every part of the world. What happens in Xinjiang concerns not only China but also Russia and Britain. High ranges of mountains stands as barriers between the British and Russians here at this point in Central Asia which is about as far from any ocean as any spot on the world. But nevertheless here at Xinjiang the British and Russian volunteers meet. The Americans have a consulate here in Tewa Britain has a consulate here with few Russians and French and people of many other nationalities besides the Chinese and we people of these deserts and mountains of Central Asia know why they are here. Yes, the powers will be interested in Xinjiang not only for where it is but for what it is for our minerals and for our petroleum and for all of our other resources but any nation that is to benefit by what we have or where we are must first deal with us 4,500,000 mountains. The shooting has stopped in Xinjiang but the problems have not been solved. We who have roamed these mountains and valleys these deserts and these oases for thousands of years are tied not to the political ways that come and go but to this soil of Central Asia and to the Mohammedism that is closest to our hearts. As my name is Tula Bai there is nothing more certain than what Wendell Wilkie totally said there is enough dynamite in Xinjiang to start another world war. We have been listening to the Pacific story presented by the national broadcasting company and its independent stations to clarify events in the Pacific and to make understandable the cross currents of life in the Pacific basin. The story is written and produced by Arnold Marquess. The music was scored and conducted by Henry Russell. The principal voice was that of George Sorrell. Programs in this series of particular interest to servicemen and women are broadcast overseas through the worldwide facilities of the Armed Forces Radio Service. This program came to you from Hollywood and is heard in Canada through the facilities of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. This is NBC, the national broadcasting company.