Yang Tseng-hsin (1867-7 July 1928), governor of Sinkiang from 1912 until his death by assassination in 1928.
During the Ming dynasty, the ancestors of Yang Tseng-hsin had lived in Kiangsu, but the family later had moved to Mengtze in Yunnan province, and it was there that Yang was born. His father, Yang Ghi-yuan, saw that Yang and his two brothers, Tseng-ling and Tseng-ping, received a thorough education in the Chinese classics. Yang Tseng-hsin passed the examinations for the chü-jen degree in 1889 and became a chin-shih in 1890.
Yang's first official appointment sent him to Kansu, where he served as paymaster in the provincial treasury and as a hsien magistrate. After returning to Yunnan to observe the conventional mourning period when his father died, Yang was again ordered to Kansu to serve as district magistrate at Weiyuan. On his way there, he received a temporary assignment in the Ninghsia area at the time of the Sino- Japanese war of 1894-95.
In 1896 Yang returned to Kansu. Because of the major Muslim rebellion of 1862-77 that had devastated much of northwest China, relations between Chinese and Muslims in the province were poor. As district magistrate at Linhsia (Hochow), Yang devoted himself for four years to planning and supervising reconstruction work, notably the improvement of civil-military relations and rehabilitation of the educational system. He was responsible for the restoration of a number of schools in Linhsia and surrounding districts, and he recruited scholars to teach in the area. In 1900 he was appointed private secretary to Wei Kuang-yin, the governor general of Shensi-Kansu, and in 1901 he was promoted to the rank of circuit commissioner. After a trip to Peking, Tientsin, and the lower Yangtze valley to observe educational developments and to recruit staff, Yang established the Kansu Academy as well as normal schools and other institutions designed to provide training in military, police, and industrial subjects and to prepare specialists for government service.
When a new governor general of Shensi- Kansu was appointed in 1907, Yang's position in Kansu became difficult. The official in charge of the provincial treasury in neighboring Sinkiang at this time was Wang Shu-t'ang, an official who had served in Kansu and who thus was acquainted with Yang's capabilities. At Wang's suggestion, the governor of Sinkiang petitioned Peking to recommend Yang Tsenghsin for appointment as circuit commissioner at Aksu. The transfer was approved, and Yang assumed office in 1908. His years of experience in Kansu, a province with a mixed Chinese- Muslim population, proved to be of great value in Sinkiang. He soon was promoted, becoming circuit intendant and commissioner for judicial affairs at Urumchi, the provincial capital. Sinkiang, or Chinese Turkestan, the largest and western-most administrative region of China, had become a province of the Chinese empire in 1884. Because its populace was ethnically heterogeneous and largely non- Chinese, the republican revolution of 1911 caused new administrative problems there. Yuan Ta-hua, the last governor of Sinkiang under the Ch'ing dynasty, proclaimed the allegiance of the province to the Chinese republic in March 1912, but he soon found himself unable to cope with the discord that prevailed in Sinkiang. He delegated authority to Yang Tseng-hsin and fled from Urumchi. Yang thus found himself the involuntary inheritor of political authority in Sinkiang. He immediately expressed his allegiance to the Chinese republic, and in an official communication to Yuan Shih-k'ai at Peking he emphasized the importance of retaining indigenous Muslim, rather than Chinese, troops to support his regime. In May 1912 the Peking government confirmed Yang as civil and military governor of Sinkiang province, with the concurrent post of military governor of the Hi region, which comprised the districts of Hi, Ashan (Altai), and T'ach'eng (Chuguchak) in the far northwest adjacent to the Russian border.
Yang recognized that preservation of practical power in Sinkiang depended largely on his own resources. He also understood the importance of insulating Sinkiang from the internecine military and political strife then endemic within the Great Wall. The attitudes of officials at Peking were unpredictable; the loyalties of regional militarists with territorial bases of power in China's Muslim northwest were problematical. In attempting to insulate Sinkiang from the vagaries of outside authority, Yang was aided both by the geographical remoteness of Sinkiang and by the underdeveloped transportation and communications systems in northwest China. The new regime of Yang Tseng-hsin also confronted difficult internal problems. Without military forces, Yang had to rule a heterogeneous population overwhelmingly composed of non-Chinese elements, many of which were mutually antagonistic. The Han Chinese comprised less than ten percent of the population. The remainder was a melange of Uighurs, Kazakhs, and Kirghiz, with smaller numbers of Mongols, Tajiks, Uzbeks, Tatars, and other minority groups. Yang's immediate objectives were unification of the province and consolidation of control. To attain these goals, Yang dealt sharply with a separatist revolt in the Hi region; incorporated the three districts of Hi, Altai, and Chuguchak into his realm; suppressed the potentially disruptive activities of the Ko-lao-hui [brothers and elders society] in both northern and southern Sinkiang; and countered Muslim resistance at Hami, Kuche, Khotan, and other places. In addition to political and security problems, Yang had to deal with economic problems created by currency instability and by inflation during the early years of his administration. By imposing new controls, he was able to bring reasonable stability to the provincial finances by 1918. Throughout his rule in Sinkiang, Yang Tseng-hsin was troubled by anti-Chinese sentiment in the province. Using divide-and-rule tactics which Chinese administrators had long employed, Yang strove to sustain a balance among ethnic groups and economic regions within Sinkiang to prevent unrest and rebellion. Traditional patterns of economic-social life in Chinese Turkestan, based on oasis agriculture and nomadic animal husbandry, continued under Yang's rule. If the non-Chinese majority of the populace was to acquiesce to Chinese rule, the provincial administration and its representatives would have to avoid exploitation that would focus discontent on the ruling Chinese minority. Yang retained tight control over the administrative bureaucracy and reinforced his security system with an extensive espionage network. The administration of justice, if harsh, was reasonably effective, and Sinkiang did not lapse into the conditions of banditry and brigandage that prevailed in many provinces of China proper during these years.
Yang Tseng-hsin also attempted to preserve the political and territorial integrity of his domain by isolating Sinkiang from external influence. Provincial borders were carefully guarded, and casual travelers were discouraged from entering the area. Imports and exports were controlled, and strict censorship was maintained over communications. During the early years of his administration, Yang had to deal with problems on the Sinkiang border with Outer Mongolia and with troubles created by movement of nomadic Kazakhs across the Sinkiang border with Russia. During the late nineteenth century, Russia had developed significant economic interests in Central Asia. The growth of trade with geographically adjacent areas of Chinese Turkestan had been aided by the fact that the Muslim peoples on both sides of the Russian-Sinkiang border were related ethnically and linguistically. Before the First World War, trade relations were conducted under the provisions of the Sino- Russian Treaty of St. Petersburg concluded in 1881.
The impact of the war and the Russian Revolution led to the closing of the Russian- Sinkiang border and to suspension of trade and official intercourse in 1918. Lacking effective military or political support from Peking, which did not officially recognize the Soviet government until 1924, Yang Tseng-hsin pursued a general policy of neutrality toward the unrest in Russian Central Asia. However, he did provide asylum to anti-Bolshevik refugees and to remnants of the White Russian armies of Generals Annenkov and Dutov which fled across the border into Sinkiang in 1920-21. In May 1920 Yang negotiated a new trade agreement with the Russian authorities at Tashkent. This so-called Hi agreement provided for the resumption of Sinkiang-Russian trade and for the establishment of two Soviet consulates in Sinkiang and two Chinese (actually Sinkiang) consulates in Soviet Central Asia. The agreement also provided for the abandonment of Russian extraterritorial rights in Sinkiang. White Russian resistance in Central Asia ended in late 1921, and a measure of stability returned to Sinkiang.
In May 1924 the Peking government, to which Yang Tseng-hsin was nominally subordinate, formally recognized the Soviet Union. The specific problems of Sinkiang, however, required separate negotiations between Yang and the Soviets. These negotiations led to a new trade agreement, signed in October 1924, which provided for five Chinese consulates in neighboring Soviet territory (at Semipalitinsk, Tashkent, Alma Ata, Zaisan, and Andijan) and for five Soviet consulates in Sinkiang (at Urumchi, Ining, Chugachak, Sharasume, and Kashgar). After the conclusion of the 1924 agreement, the Soviet Union came to play an increasingly dominant role in the economic life of Sinkiang. This process of commercial and financial penetration was aided by the fact that much of the trading activity of northern Chinese Turkestan tended normally to be oriented toward Russian Turkestan across a political border which, in respect to economic geography, was largely artificial. The development was also aided by Moscow's post- 1925 policy of relaxing controls over trade with technologically underdeveloped areas of the Middle East and Asia judged to be "not dominated by foreign capital." Soviet-Sinkiang political and commercial relations based on the 1924 agreement negotiated by Yang continued even after 1927, when the Kuomintang's break with the Communists led to expulsion of both Russian advisers and consular officials from China proper.
Despite his isolationist policies, Yang Tsenghsin continued to accept Chinese political sovereignty over Sinkiang throughout his tenure as governor. After the completion of the second stage of the Northern Expedition and the Nationalist entry into Peking in June 1928, Yang ordered that the Kuomintang flag be raised in Sinkiang, thereby acknowledging the authority of the new National Government at Nanking. At a ceremony in Urumchi on 1 July 1928, Yang officially assumed the post of chairman of the Sinkiang provincial government under the National Government. Only a week later, on 7 July 1928, Yang was assassinated while attending an official banquet in Urumchi. The planner of the murder allegedly was Fan Yao-nan, then Sinkiang provincial commissioner for foreign affairs. Within a few hours after Yang's death, Fan Yao-nan, his accomplices, and members of their immediate families were put to death on orders from another aspirant to power. Chin Shu-jen (q.v.), who then had himself named governor.
During his 16 years of control over Sinkiang after 1912, Yang Tseng-hsin accomplished the unusual feat of providing the major frontier area of Chinese Central Asia with reasonably consistent and coherent rule. He maintained a relatively high level of political order within Sinkiang despite the rapid changes that took place in the pre- 1928 period not only in China but also in adjacent Russia and Outer Mongolia.
An important source for the study of Yang Tseng-hsin's public career is the Pu-kuo-chai wen-tu, published privately at Nanking in 1921. This work comprises a total of 12 volumes and provides an important collection of Yang's official papers documenting the first decade of his administration of Sinkiang.
