Talk:Incorporation of Xinjiang into the People's Republic of China

Explanation of Title Change
The article title was changed from the People's Liberation Army's Invasion of Xinjiang (1949) to The "Peaceful Liberation" of Xinjiang because the latter is a more historically accurate description of the event depicted in the article. Aside from the Osman Batur's Kazaks, none of the other belligerents fought the People's Liberation Army, whose entry into the region was preceded by political accommodations reached among the major parties. In this sense, it was more of a political takeover than an invasion. ContinentalAve (talk) 05:02, 13 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Then why are there scare quotes around the term "peaceful liberation"? And why does it have a definite article? The title does not square with manual of style. 216.8.134.159 (talk) 19:15, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

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Requested move 22 January 2020

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: not moved to the proposed title at this time, per the discussion below. Dekimasu よ! 03:55, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

Incorporation of Xinjiang into the People's Republic of China → Annexation of Xinjiang by the People's Republic of China – As per WP:NPOV and WP:CONSISTENT this article's title should be renamed to reflect the general convention followed in the articles of similar subject as the Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, Annexation of the Jordan Valley and the Annexation of Hyderabad etc. The alternative title could be the Annexation of Xinjiang. Given the military nature of the Chinese campaign in the Xinjiang region, it can't be titled "incorporation" as no referendum or popular vote was ever held in Xinjiang to approve and upheld the military action of People's Liberation Army in this area. There is a cloud over the actions by People's Republic of China even to this date, as no democratic norms and international convention were followed for this action. The ongoing separatist movement in Xinjiang also adds the complexity and dispute over this action by People's Republic of China. Hemant DabralTalk  18:15, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Support per detailed and well-reasoned nomination. Use of the term "annexation" was examined and retained in the recent discussion at Talk:Annexation of Dadra and Nagar Haveli. —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 01:29, 24 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose there was no annexation. Xinjiang was held by the KMT government of the Republic of China, the Communist forces defeated the KMT in the Chinese Civil War, and the KMT in Xinjiang surrendered to the Communists without a fight except for a small splinter force. If we followed the nominator's logic, we'd also need to move Pingjin Campaign to Annexation of Beijing by the People's Republic of China and Shanghai Campaign to Annexation of Shanghai by the People's Republic of China. -Zanhe (talk) 09:34, 24 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Support, should follow site conventions + agree with points raised. Luiysia (talk) 22:16, 29 January 2020 (UTC) — Luiysia (talk&#32;• contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
 * What site conventions are you talking about? As I've already pointed out, Xinjiang became part of the PRC after the KMT leaders of the province surrendered to the Communists during the Chinese Civil War, in the same way that the Communists took over much of the rest of China. -Zanhe (talk) 05:11, 31 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Support - per nomination and WP:SOAP. Shhhhwwww!! (talk) 09:04, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose: Precisely as Zanhe describes, the PRC took control of Xinjiang from the KMT in the Chinese Civil War. It wasn’t independent or part of another country when this happened. Using the word annexation here literally doesn’t make sense and reliable sources don’t refer to it as such. It was part of a civil war, and was done through warfare in that war (e.g. at the Battle of Yiwu). — MarkH21talk 19:31, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose per Zanhe. Xinjiang in the late 1940s / early 1950s is not at all comparable or equivalent to Crimea or the other examples the OP raised. Per Xinjiang under Qing rule, Xinjiang came under Qing control, and there was no international recognition of either the First or Second Islamic breakaway republics during the ROC. With a total of zero scholarly WP:RS provided by the OP to support usage of the word annexation, this move request smacks of WP:POINT, too Caradhras Aiguo ( leave language ) 19:40, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose per policy; as MarkH21 notes, it wasn't an annexation. ——  SN  54129  19:54, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose per above. Elements of the communist revolution are not normally referred to as "annexations". &mdash; Amakuru (talk) 20:15, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose This article has gone through several different titles, namely People's Liberation Army invasion of northern Dzungaria, People's Liberation Army invasion of Xinjiang (1949), The "Peaceful Liberation" of Xinjiang (1949) and People's Liberation Army Invasion/Liberation of Xinjiang (1949). The corresponding Chinese article has the title 新疆和平解放, meaning the Peaceful liberation of Xinjiang. The French article uses Invasion/liberation of East Turkestan by the People's Republic of China. A somewhat analogous discussion was held in 2017 regarding the article Incorporation of Tibet into the People's Republic of China, in which there was no consensus.
 * WP:TITLE demands that article titles balance 5 criteria: recognizability, naturalness, precision, conciseness, and consistency. Recognizability, naturalness, and conciseness are, in my opinion, not at stake here; the topic is rather niche and mostly of interest to those interested in Asian history, who would likely recognize both wordings; both proposed titles are long, and stylistic perfection is basically impossible with long titles. Precision is a problem because there's disagreement over whether "incorporation" or "annexation" is more accurate. Consistency has also been raised in relation to articles not related to China, but given that this move request is concurrent with an analogous one on Incorporation of Tibet into the People's Republic of China, consistency would demand that the two pages on Tibet and Xinjiang use the same naming scheme, therefore making consistency secondary to precision.
 * As it relates to this article, the factor of precision goes hand-in-hand with NPOV. All sides would agree that "Annexation" has a more negative tone than "Incorporation", but the side in favour of the change believes that "Annexation" is more accurate than "Incorporation", and would also most likely argue that letting the article stay as "Incorporation" simply because the term might seem more dispassionate would be a form of WP:false balance.
 * Imprecise and POV titles that are frequently used can sometimes be used per WP:POVNAME; in my opinion, the spirit and underlying justification of the POVNAME policy appears to be that, once a name becomes very commonly used, it becomes a discrete unit whose connotations are now independent of its component words, thereby causing a situation in which proponents, detractors, and neutral writers can all use the same name. As it stands, this article would not be benefitted by a POVNAME. The most common name, liberation of Xinjiang at 39,700 Google Scholar hits, outweighs incorporation of Xinjiang (14,100) and annexation of Xinjiang (5,170). And I think we would all agree that so blatantly displays a pro-CCP point of view that it violates the spirit of WP:POVNAME. Thus, we are left with making a WP:NDESC name.
 * The current wording of incorporation, therefore, appears to be an attempt at a neutral WP:NDESC name that avoids the extremes of (implies unlawful, violent taking of territory) and  (implies bringing liberty to the people, which is obviously not what happened.) Annexation, like incorporation, also falls between the two extremes, with annexation being less strong than.
 * Given the choice between the two WP:NDESC terms, we are called to select the most accurate and neutral term.
 * Both incorporation and annexation accurately indicate the idea of the inclusion of one piece of territory into another. According to Merriam-Webster, to annex means to incorporate (a country or other territory) within the domain of a state, while to incorporate means to to unite or work into something already existent so as to form an indistinguishable whole. From this, it can be seen that incorporation is just as accurate as annexation, as annexation is a subset of incorporation. It is indisputable, however, that out of the two, annexation has the more negative tone; indeed, the nominator links the proposed use of annexation to how "There is a cloud over the actions by People's Republic of China even to this date, as no democratic norms and international convention were followed for this action". Some examples given by the nominator, such as Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, are violent annexations. This is unlike the subject of this article, which states that [t]he only organized resistance the PLA encountered was from Osman Batur's Kazak militia and from Yulbars Khan's White Russian and Hui troops who served the Republic of China. Annexation also sometimes denotes the incorporation of a separate foreign state into one's own country, which is a questionable implication when Xinjiang was also Chinese territory under the KMT and the Qing.
 * Furthermore, there is an possible goal to WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS Furthermore, there's a bit of seeming WP:SOAP that can be sniffed from the tone of the nomination, as seen in the nominator's dramatic wording of cloud over the actions by the People's Republic of China.
 * Given the choice of annexation and incorporation, the policy of NPOV and the facts of the article provided by RS would therefore demand that we choose the latter, incorporation.
 * At this point, the demands of NPOV and the article's factual content must be balanced against the consideration of consistency raised by the nominator. While it is true that there are other articles that do use annexation, the consistency argument should ultimately be secondary to NPOV, as NPOV is a fundamental pillar, and as there already is consistency between this and the analogous article for Tibet. Furthermore, other respondents have convincingly argued that the subject of this article, the peaceful incorporation of a territory that was already part of the PRC's predecessor states, is fundamentally different from the violent annexations of new territory seen in the nominator's examples, thereby rendering consistency irrelevant and even undesirable, since this article's subject is itself different in nature from that of the examples.
 * Thus, after a thorough consideration of policy, I would support keeping the current term of incorporation. Jancarcu (talk) 21:01, 1 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Oppose per Zanhe. The communists won the civil war and took control of Xinjiang. Annexation does not appear to be the correct term. JimRenge (talk) 21:32, 1 February 2020 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Replace the article text!
Here is a way better article on this topic: Second_East_Turkestan_Republic. Can we combine the two somehow?


 * In August 1949, the People's Liberation Army captured Lanzhou, the capital of the Gansu Province. Kuomintang administration in Xinjiang was threatened. The Kuomintang Xinjiang provincial leaders Tao Zhiyue and Burhan Shahidi led the government and army's switch to the Communist Party of China (CPC) side in September 1949. By the end of 1949, some Kuomintang officials fled to Afghanistan, India and Pakistan, but most crossed over or surrendered to the CPC. On 17 August 1949, the Communist Party of China sent Deng Liqun to negotiate with the Three Districts' leadership in Ghulja (Yining in Chinese). Mao Zedong invited the leaders of the Three Districts to take part in the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference later that year. The leaders of the Three Districts traveled to the Soviet Union on August 22 by automobiles through Horgos, accompanied by Soviet vice-consul in Ghulja Vasiliy Borisov, where they were told to cooperate with the Communist Party of China. Negotiations between Three Districts and Soviet representatives in Alma-Ata continued for three days and were difficult because of the unwillingness of Three Districts leader Ehmetjan Qasimi (whose strategy was opposed by two other delegates-Abdulkerim Abbas and Luo Zhi, while Generals Ishaq Beg and Dalelkhan supported Ehmetjan) to agree to incorporate the Three Districts into the future Chinese communist state, supposedly in 1951. The People's Republic of China was proclaimed two years earlier, on 1 October 1949. Ehmetjan regarded the current situation as a historic opportunity for Uyghurs and other people of Xinjiang to gain freedom and independence that shouldn't be lost. So, the Three Districts delegation was offered to continue negotiations in Moscow directly with Stalin before departure to Beijing. On August 25, the eleven delegates, Ehmetjan Qasimi, Abdulkerim Abbas, Ishaq Beg, Luo Zhi, Dalelkhan Sugirbayev and accompanying officers of the Three Districts, boarded  Ilyushin Il-12 plane in Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan, officially heading to Beijing, but flight was diverted for Moscow. On September 3, the Soviet Union informed the Chinese government that the plane had crashed near Lake Baikal en route to Beijing, killing all on board . On the same day Molotov sent a telegram to Ghulja to inform Saifuddin Azizi (interim leader of the Three Districts when Ehmetjan Qasimi was not in Ili, and a member of Communist Party of Soviet Union) about the Tragic death of devoted revolutionaries, including Ehmetjan Qasimi, in airplane crash near Lake Baikal en route to Beijing. In accordance with instructions from Moscow, Saifuddin Azizi kept the news secret from the population of the Three Districts and it was unreported by Beijing for several months until January 1950, when the then-unrecognisable bodies of the Three Districts leaders were delivered from the USSR and when the People's Liberation Army of China had already secured most of the regions of the former Xinjiang Province.


 * After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, some former KGB generals and high officers (among them Pavel Sudoplatov) revealed that the five leaders were killed on Stalin's orders in Moscow on 27 August 1949, after a three-day imprisonment in the former Tsar's stables, having been arrested upon arrival in Moscow by the Head of MGB Colonel General Viktor Abakumov, who personally interrogated the Three Districts leaders, then ordered their execution. This was allegedly done in accordance with a deal between Stalin and Mao Zedong,  but this allegation has never been confirmed. The remaining important figures of the Three Districts, including Saifuddin Azizi (who led the Second delegation of the Three Districts, which participated in Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in September in Beijing, which proclaimed the People's Republic of China on 1 October 1949), agreed to incorporate the Three Districts into the Xinjiang Province and accept important positions within the administration. However, some Kazakhs led by Osman Batur continued their resistance until 1954.  Saifuddin then became the first chairman of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, which replaced Xinjiang Province in 1955. First People's Liberation Army units arrived at Ürümqi airport on 20 October 1949 on Soviet airplanes, provided by Stalin, and quickly established control in northern Xinjiang, then, together with units of the National Army of the Three Districts, entered southern Xinjiang, thus establishing control over all ten districts of Xinjiang Province. Earlier, on a single day, on 26 September 1949, 100,000 Kuomintang Army troops in the province switched their allegiance from Kuomintang to the Communist Party of China together with the Chairman of Xinjiang Provincial Government Burhan Shahidi, who was among the few who knew what actually happened to the First delegation of the Three Districts in August in the USSR. On 20 December 1949 the Ili National Army joined PLA as its 5th Army. The province's final status was instituted in 1955, when it was reorganised into an autonomous region for the 13 nationalities of Xinjiang ( Uyghur, Han Chinese, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Hui, Mongol, Tajik,  Uzbek, Tatar, Russian, Xibe, Daur, Manchu people).

--Saippuakauppias ⇄ 14:48, 7 June 2020 (UTC)