Solidifying the Frontier: Chinese Colonization and State Making in Inner Mongolia, 1902–11

In 1901, pressured by Western imperialism and growing social turmoil, the Qing government carried out a series of institutional reforms that aimed at nationalizing and modernizing the empire. As part of the reform, the Qing reversed its time-honored policy of “sealing off” the Mongolian frontier from agricultural settlement, and instead adopted a policy actively promoting Chinese colonization and cultural assimilation in Inner Mongolia, targeting at integrating the decentralized frontier into the Chinese nation. This paper examines the discourses, institutions, and practices associated with the state-sponsored reclamation of Mongolian pasturelands in the first decade of the twentieth century. I explore the changing perceptions of territory, settlement, and sovereignty, with all their embedded ambiguities and contestations, within the broader context of China's adaptation to the new world order of nation-state system and capitalism. I also discuss the social and ecological costs of the colonizing project, as manifested in the popular resistance it aroused among the Mongols and Han Chinese. Ironically, what intended to be a modernizing project of state-making and nation-building in the frontier region also resulted in social disintegration and environmental degradation over the long run.