Yolbars (1888-), Uighur leader who opposed the oppressive administrations of Chin Shu-jen and Sheng Shih-ts'ai (qq.v.) in Sinkiang. After holding office in the National Government at Nanking and Chungking, he returned to Sinkiang to lead guerrilla forces against the Chinese Communists. The National Government appointed him governor of Sinkiang in April 1950. He retained that title after he moved to Taiwan in 1951.

Yanghissar in the Kashgar district of western Sinkiang was the birthplace of Yolbars, who was a Uighur. His parents died when he was young, and he was reared by an elder sister at Hami, where he received his early education. At the age of 15, Yolbars entered the service of the Muslim prince of Hami. Hami (or Komul), the key point of ingress to Central Asia across the desert road from China's northwestern province of Kansu, had long been a semündependent Uighur (Turki) principality, with local affairs handled by its own ruling house. Yolbars was gradually promoted in the administrative hierarchy at Hami, and in 1911 he became a member of the local assembly there. During the early years of the republican period, Yolbars remained at Hami. In 1922 he gained promotion to a rank which entitled him to the honorific title of khan; and in 1927 he became commissioner of communications. Between 1912 and 1928 the political situation in Sinkiang remained reasonably stable under the firm hand of Yang Tseng-hsin (qv.). But the assassination of Yang in July 1928 introduced a period of turmoil when the province came under the corrupt and inefficient rule of his successor, Chin Shu-jen (q.v.). When Maksud Shah, the reigning Muslim prince of Hami, died in November 1930, Chin laid the groundwork for disequilibrium by attempting to impose his direct rule, on the pretext that hereditary principalities should not be permitted to exist within the territory of the Chinese republic. He ordered Nasir, the young successor prince, to reside at the provincial capital of Urumchi (Tihwa), and plans were made to divide the khanate of Hami into three administrative districts on the Chinese pattern. At the same time, Chin encouraged Chinese famine refugees from his native Kansu to move into Turki farmlands. Local unrest grew, and in March 1931 the abduction of a Muslim woman by a Chinese tax collector sparked an anti-Chinese rebellion in the Hami area. The outbreak assumed significant proportions when Yolbars and his colleague Khoja Niaz, both advisers of the prince of Hami, sought the aid of Muslim co-religionists in Kansu, a move which enlisted the military support of Ma Chung-ying (q.v.) and led to a bloody period of civil conflict within Sinkiang. After being wounded on his first sortie into eastern Sinkiang in the autumn of 1931, Ma Chung-ying temporarily withdrew to Kansu to regroup his forces. Muslim unrest spread in Sinkiang during 1932. In April 1933 a political coup at Urumchi brought the downfall of Chin Shu-jen, who fled the province, and the accession to power of Sheng Shih-ts'ai (q.v.). In May, Yolbars sent a new message to Ma Chung-ying stating that the time was ripe for a full-scale anti-Chinese drive. Ma and his forces at once took the field to attack Urumchi, with Yolbars in command of a reserve column. A large figure of a man, bearded and burly, Yolbars Khan was described by the Swedish explorer Sven Hedin, who was then in Sinkiang, as the Tiger Prince.

Shortly thereafter, Khoja Niaz disassociated himself from Ma Chung-ying's cause and in November 1933 established a so-called East Turkestan Republic in southern Sinkiang. Yolbars remained with Ma Chung-ying, and by the end of the year the rebel forces were threatening the provincial capital. In January 1934, however, the Muslim outbreak confronted a new obstacle when the Soviet Union, for strategic reasons related to Japanese pressure, intervened in Sinkiang to support Sheng Shihts'ai. Ma Chung-ying fled southward and destroyed the weakened political organization of the East Turkestan Republic, then located near Kashgar. By July the rebellion had been quelled. Ma Chung-ying transferred command of his remaining troops to his brother-in-law Ma Hu-shan and disappeared into the Soviet Union. Khoja Niaz by then had decided to work with Sheng Shih-ts'ai, and perhaps on his recommendation, Yolbars was named district magistrate of Hami, with the concurrent post of garrison commander there.

Sheng Shih-ts'ai then proceeded to consolidate political control of Sinkiang. In 1937 he carried out one of the many purges that characterized his rule in that province. The move was nominally directed against an "imperialist Japanese plot," but the actual objective was to extend his authority through southern Sinkiang. Again with Soviet military support, Sheng was able to oust Ma Hu-shan from his base at Khotan. A Soviet regiment was then moved to Hami; and Yolbars, under suspicion of being opposed to the autocratic rule of Sheng Shih-ts'ai, fled from the province. Yolbars then went to Nanking, where he was given the rank of lieutenant general and appointed counselor to the Military Affairs Commission. When the Japanese drive up the Yangtze valley in 1937-38 forced the National Government to evacuate, Yolbars accompanied it to Chungking. There he spent the remaining war years, holding a sinecure position as counselor of the Szechwan-Sikang pacification office. He also became a member of the board of directors of the Islamic National Salvation Society (later China Islamic Association), headed by Pai Ch'ung-hsi (q.v.), an organization designed to mobilize the Muslims of China to support the war effort against Japan. In 1945, when the Sixth National Congress of the Kuomintang met at Chungking, Yolbars was elected to membership in its Central Supervisory Committee.

The year 1944 brought the downfall of Sheng Shih-ts'ai in Sinkiang, and the Kuomintang moved to extend Nationalist authority into China's largest frontier province. That effort was complicated by the eruption in November 1944 of a new anti-Chinese rebellion in the Hi district, which excluded Chinese authority from the northwestern districts of the province. In 1946 Yolbars attended the meetings of the National Assembly at Nanking. He then returned to Sinkiang to serve as adviser to the provincial government at Urumchi. A temporary truce agreement with the Hi rebels had been arranged in January 1946, and in July of that year a coalition government under Chang Chih-chung (q.v.) was organized at Urumchi. At that time Yolbars was named special executive commissioner for the ninth district in eastern Sinkiang.

Civil war between the Nationalists and Communists in China flared up again in the summer of 1946, and that conflict complicated the efforts of Chang Chih-chung to consolidate stability in Sinkiang. In 1947 Yolbars was named executive supervisory commissioner and peace preservation commander at Hami. In 1948 he was given the additional title of strategy adviser to Chiang Kai-shek. In the following year he was made deputy commander of peace preservation forces in Sinkiang. When elements of the Communist First Field Army moved from Kansu into Sinkiang in the autumn of 1949, scattered local forces attempted to mobilize resistance. These resistance forces in Sinkiang were composed chiefly of Kazakhs, Mongols, and Uighurs, but they fought under the Chinese Nationalist flag and under the command of Yolbars. Although Burhan (q.v.) had remained as governor of Sinkiang at the time of the "peaceful surrender" of that province to the Communists, the Chinese National Government in April 1950 named Yolbars governor of Sinkiang and commander in chief of pacification for the province. The vast extent of Sinkiang made it impossible for the Chinese Communists to consolidate control quickly, and Yolbars was able to carry on guerrilla warfare operations for several months. By July 1950, however, the resistance forces confronted shortages of grain, fodder, and ammunition; and they were forced to seek refuge, first in the mountains of Sinkiang, later in the Tunhuang area of Kansu.

Pursued by Chinese Communist units, Yolbars and his troops were forced to retreat deep into Tsinghai province in northeastern Tibet. There they were joined by anti- Communist forces led by Osman (q-v.). Yolbars argued that further resistance against Chinese Communist power was fruitless and counseled retreat into Tibet proper. Osman, however, had some 4,000 Kazakh refugees in his charge, and he refused to abandon his people. In September 1950 the two leaders parted. Osman remained in northern Tsinghai, where he was captured in February 1951. Yolbars led his party, then numbering some 90-odd persons, southward into the K'unlun mountain range and on to the lofty Tibetan plateau. After a two-month trek over difficult terrain in deepening winter weather, they reached the border of Tibet proper, which had still not been occupied by the Chinese Communists. After a three-week wait to permit communication with the Tibetan authorities, Yolbars and the remnants of his band reached Lhasa in January 1951.

In Lhasa the government of the fourteenth Dalai Lama was already negotiating with Peking regarding the future status of Tibet in the People's Republic of China. When the Yolbars group requested permission to leave Tibet, the government of India granted entry permits for only six persons. Yolbars was forced to leave remaining personal troops, as well as several White Russian refugees from Sinkiang, behind in Tibet. With a handful of survivors, he proceeded overland to Calcutta. He then flew to Taiwan, arriving on that island on 1 May 1951.

In Taiwan, Yolbars, in his titular capacity as governor-in-exile of Sinkiang, established a provincial government office for his native province. He also continued to serve as a strategy adviser in the office of President Chiang Kai-shek. In view of his advancing years, the duties assigned were not onerous.

In Taiwan, at the age of 65, Yolbars married a girl of 1 9 to take the place of his former wife, who had died on the arduous march through Tibet. He had two sons by his first wife, Niaz Beg and Yakub Beg. The latter derived his name from the prominent Muslim adventurer from Khokand who had seized power in Sinkiang during the anti-Chinese rebellion in northwest China in the nineteenth century. From 1865 to 1877 Yakub Beg, in defiance of Ch'ing authority, ruled much of the Tarim basin as an independent Muslim state.