The idea behind Xikang province was to form a single unified province for the entire Kham region under direct Chinese administration, in effect annexing the western Kham region that was then under Tibetan control. Kham was entirely populated by Tibetan people called Khampas. The then-independent Tibet controlled the portion of Kham west of the Upper Yangtze River.[3]
The nominal Xikang province also included in the south the Assam Himalayan region (Arunachal Pradesh) that Tibet had recognised as a part of British India by the 1914 McMahon Line agreement.[4]
The eastern part of the province was inhabited by a number of different ethnic groups, such as Han Chinese, Yi, Qiang people and Tibetan, then known as Chuanbian (川邊), a special administrative region of the Republic of China. In 1939, it became the new Xikang province with the additional territories belonging to Tibetan and British control added in. After the People's Republic of China invaded and occupied Tibet, the earlier nationalist imagination of Xikang came to fruition.
The provincial capital of Xikang was Kangding from 1939 to 1951 and Ya'an from 1951 to 1955. The province had a population of 3.4 million in 1954.[5]
The Xikang province sketched on a 1950 map by the CIA. Provincial borders are dark green lines.The Chinese control of southeastern Tibet shown along with the proposed Simla Convention frontier of 1914.
In 1910, general Zhao Erfeng occupied Kham region, destroyed a few monasteries and killed over 1000 lamas. Later on, he proclaimed this territory as a new Chinese province subsequently known as Xikang.
Following the Wuchang Uprising in October 1911, which led to the downfall of the Qing dynasty, the region[which?] was established as the Chuanbian Special Administrative District (川邊特別行政區) by the newly founded Republic of China.
In June 1930, eastern Kham (later Xikang) was invaded by the army of Tibet, precipitating the Sino-Tibetan War. With the district locked in internal struggles, no reinforcements were sent to support the Sichuanese troops stationed here. As a result, the Tibetan army captured Garzê and Xinlong Counties without encountering much resistance. When a negotiated ceasefire failed, Tibetan forces expanded the war, attempting to capture parts of southern Qinghai province. In March 1932, their force invaded Qinghai but was defeated by the local Hui warlord Ma Bufang in July, who routed the Tibetan army and drove it back to this district.[which?]
The Hui army captured counties that had fallen into the hands of the Tibetan army since 1919. Their victories threatened the supply lines of the Tibetan forces in Garzê and Xinlong. As a result, part of the Tibetan army was forced to withdraw.
In 1932 Liu Wenhui in cooperation with the Qinghai army, sent out a brigade to attack the Tibetan troops in Garzê and Xinlong, eventually occupying them, Dêgê and other counties east of the Jinshajiang River. The 1934 Khamba Rebellion led by the Pandatsang family broke out against the Tibetan government in Lhasa. The Khampa revolutionary leader Pandatsang Rapga was involved.
In January 1939, the Chuanbian Special Administrative District officially became a province of the Republic, the Hsikang Province. Kesang Tsering was sent by the Chinese to Batang to take control of Sikang, where he formed a local government. He was sent there for the purpose of propagating the Three Principles of the People to the Khampa.[6]
^Lin, Boundary, sovereignty and imagination (2004), p. 30: "Despite its almost entirely illusory nature, the so-called Xikang province was officially sketched out by Chinese map-makers, from whom it came to be known nation-wide.
^Yajun Mo, "The New Frontier: Zhuang Xueben and Xikang Province", in "Chinese History in Geographical Perspective", edited by Yongtao Du and Jeff Kyong-McClain, p. 124, Lexington Books, 2013
^Lin, Boundary, sovereignty and imagination (2004), p. 29: "According to the Kuomintang, the boundary of this new Xikang province encompassed, not only part of the southwestern province of Sichuan that was then dominated by the Han Chinese warlord Liu Wenhui, but also a huge portion of the ethnographic Tibetan area west of the Upper Yangtze River that was then effectively administered by the autonomous Tibetan government."
^Lin, Boundary, sovereignty and imagination (2004), p. 29: "In addition, the newly carved provincial boundary also extended deep into the Tibetan-Assam tribal territory, including areas south of the theoretically existing McMahon Line that had been signed away to British India by Lhasa in 1914."
^Hsiao-ting Lin (2010). Modern China's ethnic frontiers: a journey to the west. Vol. 67 of Routledge studies in the modern history of Asia (illustrated ed.). Taylor & Francis. p. 27. ISBN978-0-415-58264-3. Retrieved 2011-12-27. area and spreading Sun Yat-sen's Three People's Principle among the Tibetan and Khampa minorities, Kesang Tsering set up a field headquarters in Batang (Pa'an). There he appointed his own Xikang provincial government staff and issued an
Bibliography
Lin, Hsiao-ting (2004), "Boundary, sovereignty, and imagination: Reconsidering the frontier disputes between British India and Republican China, 1914–47", The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 32 (3): 25–47, doi:10.1080/0308653042000279650, S2CID159560382
Province of the Republic of China (1939–1950)
Province of the People's Republic of China (1950–1955)
