Ascendency of High Asia: Asian Borderlands in China’s Transition from Empire to Nation, 1900–60

China’s transition first from empire to republic – and later from republic into the People’s Republic – is often accepted as a series of seamless political steps in which its territory and peoples remained more or less intact. Yet, this conversion was far more than a simple evolution of political ideologies. Seen from the perspective of High Asia (Tibet, Xinjiang and Mongolia) China’s political shifts is revealed to be far more tenuous, contested and uneven. Few residents of High Asia viewed the fall of the Qing as one in which they were seamlessly converted from being subjects of the Qing empire into citizens of a new Chinese nation-state. Through a mix of biographical accounts of warlords, travelers, and religious leaders, this paper invites a re-evaluation of Republican China’s place in the world. Adopting a High Asian perspective, it foregrounds the manner in which ethnic, religious and political differences can help us reshape outdated narratives of Asia’s past and exposes a legacy of events that, while perhaps inconvenient for the present, still remain relevant for our understanding of the past. In this manner, the strategies of state, both those of High Asia and of China, reveal legacies that offer new insights into how China adapted to and engaged with the new political forces of the early 20th century, the Second World War and the Cold War.