20 0 THE CHINO-MONGOLIAN BORDER ZONE IN INNER MONGOLIA-KANSU AREA ONE METHOD OF DETERMINING THE AREA OF A BORDER REGION* OAKI SUGIMURA As used here, "Inner Mongolia-Kansu Area" is meant to designate the area extending over the six provinces and one autonomous region as of the end of 1957, under the control of the present Communist Government of China: Heilungkiang, Liaoning, Hopeh, Shansi, Shensi and Kansu provinces, and Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region. It stretches from the Great Wall in the south to the border with Outer Mongolia in the north, flanked on the east by the line connecting the Liao Ho with the Nun Kiang, and on the west by the Nan Shan. It includes, from east toward west, the Great Khingan Mountains (Ta Khingan Shan), the Jehol Mountains, the Mongolian Plateau, the Yinshan Range (Ta Tsin Shan), Suiyuan Plain, the Wu Tai Shan, the Ordos Desert, the Ho Lan Shan (the Alashan Mountains), the Alashan Desert, the Ho Li Shan (Pei Shan), and Etsin Gol. In the period of the Ch'ing or Manchus dynasty (1644-1911) this area, except the Wu Tai Shan district, had been occupied by twenty-six tribes of "Inner Mongols", and the Alashan Eleuts and the Etsin Durbets of Eleut Four Tribes which were commonly called "Western Mongols". The terms "Inner Mongols" and "Outer Mongols" have been used from the early period of the said-dynasty and had their origin from the location of these areas in reference to the Gobi Desert. After the fall of the dynasty, the "Inner Mongolian Four Provinces" of Jehol, Chahar, Suiyuan, and Ningsia were established by the Republican Govern ment in the Inner Mongols' area, excluding the western part of Manchuria, and including the eastern part of Western Mongolia. The Outer Mongols' area, occupied by the Khalkha Four Tribes, i.e. the present Mongolian People's Republic, is of course excluded from this "Innr Mongolia-Kansu Area". The Inner Mongolia-Kansu Area, together with Manchuria and Sinkiang, has constituted the north-eastern and north-western frontiers of China. This area has been the border-land where two forces of culturally heterogeneous peoples, the Chinese agriculturists in the south and the Mongol nomads in the north, have interacted. The oscillation of these two forces has been repeated toward south or north from as early as the pre-Christian era. The Sino-Mongolian border region, therefore, will serve as a good laboratory for specific case study of the conceptions, functions and patterns of frontiers1) or border regions. A number of studies have been made on the interaction of these forces in their border-land2). I have tried to analyse the human activities which have been manifested in this region from the following viewpoints: (1) Conflicts or Disputes of Political and Military Forces; (2) Antagonism and Interaction of Heterogene ous Cultures (3) Transitional and Buffer Characteristics, and Quasi-Neutrality in Their Raison d' Etre; (4) Intensification of Settlements by the Governments, and Their Function as Reservoir of Population; (5) Trade Routes and Merchants' Functions Therein; (6) Forces toward Stability or Instability. The purpose of the present paper is clarify the significant characteristics of the Sino-Mongolian 124 Fig. 1. 1 Fig. 1 ADMINISTRATIVE DIVISIONS OF CHINA UNDER THE INNER MONGOLIA-KANSU AREA REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT ---- The Great Wall Outwork Walls_??_ The Palisade_??_ Constructed by the Ming Dynasty +•++•++ The Palisade Constructed by the Ch'ing Dynasty Fig. 1. 2 NEW ADMINISTRATIVE DIVISIONS OF NORTHERNOUTER CHINA UNDER THE COMMUNIST GOVERNMENT -as of the end of 1957- 20 1 Border Region focusing on the first item of my study, and to suggest some method of determining the area of border regions that might be applicable for any frontier or border region study. 1. DISCREPANCYOF THE IDEA ON BOUNDARIES The Great Wall has subsidiary branches and loops in distances up to 100 miles north and south of the main alignment. The Great Wall Proper can be traced as long as 2,150 miles from Shanhaikwan along the coast of the Gulf of Pohai in the east, and in the west to a point about 300 miles west of Kiayukwan of Kansu province. With its 1,780 miles of branches and loops the Great Wall totals 3,930 miles. It looks like three enormous festoons, the first in the moun tains, the second in the loess, and the third in the desert; In the "Eastern Bifurcation" near Sihai, 40 miles north of Peking, the inner branch diverges from the main alignment of outer wall; At a point about 30 miles east of the Hwang Ho on the former Shansi and Suiyuan provincial boundary, the inner wall, which runs on the Pata Ling and the Wu Tai Shan adjacent to the North Plain of China, meets again with the outer wall which touches on Tushihkow, Chanchiakow (Kalgan) and Fengchen along the crest bounding the Mongolian Plateau and its marginal mountains. Along the left of the Hwang Ho the main line of the Great Wall continues 40 miles southward, crosses the river in the vicinity of Hoku, and passes the southern rim of Ordos Desert; from Ningsia (Yinchuan) on the left bank of Hwang Ho, where the main line of the Wall turns at an angle of almost ninety degrees and passes on southwest, it takes the course of the "Desert Loop", the name given by W. E. Geil to the portion of the Wall from Ningsia to Liangchow (Wuwei),to the "Western Bifurcation" at Tatsing, from where along the "Kansu Loop" it continues to Kiayukwan and further west3). The Frontier Fence was constructed in the beginning of the Ming dynasty, connecting with the Great Wall at Womingkou north of Shanhaikwan, and extending into Manchuria. It acrossed the Liao Ho, and reached to Antung near the mouth of the Yalu Kiang. The Ch'ing dynasty also built the "Frontier Willow Fence" on the border of Manchuria and Chino-Mongolia for a distance of at least 400 miles. These historical recorded Frontier Fences which are considered as the Manchurian extension of the Great Wall and are known as "Palisades" are almost completly destroyed and cannot be observed4). In some places the Great Wall Proper is ruined, and its remnants are hardly recognizable. The Great Wall has lost its primary function of defense against northern nomadic peoples, and survives only to mark the former provincial boundaries between old prov inces such as Hopeh, Shansi, Shensi and Kansu, and new provinces such as Jehol, Chahar, Suiyan and Ningsia. Walls are prominent in North China. Every city, and even some villages, has usually been surrounded by walls or ramparts made of mud, brick or stone. Walls of settlements are pierced by gates which are usually closed at night-fall and opened at dawn; walls usually have watch towers and are often surrounded by moats. Walls have been used in China not only for settlements, but also to enclose temples, palaces and private houses. Their primary purpose has been defense against undesirable intruders. The rulers of ancient states in Northern 125 20 2 China constructed a series of massive stone, brick and earthen walls along their borders for defense against invaders from the northern steppe. About 220 B.C. parts of these separate defense walls were strengthened and extended by Shih Huang Ti, the First Emperor, who established the Ch'in dynasty by uniting into one empire his original territories of present Shensi and eastern Kansu with the feudal states taken by conquest. At this time the extention of the frontier wall was called by the Chinese "Wan Li Chang Ch'eng" which means "Ten Thousand Chinese Miles Long Wall", the Great Wall. Most of the extant struc tures date from the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), especially from the Wan Li period (1573-1620) when the dynasty was staggering toward its fall5). Those defense boundaries of walls in China showed the political unities of bounding space-organisms, in which all peoples are subject to their own regulations and customs. The defensive wall boundaries of ancient feudal states in North China may be well considered as territorial boundaries accepted by all the Chinese. Besides the Great Wall and the Palisade, the Chinese built up the frontier walls or ramparts to the lands farther north of the Great Wall-the Great Khingan Mountains, the Yinshan Range, the interior part of the Mongolian Plateau and the Ordos Desert. These can be seen by the evidence of remains6) of mud walls, or by records shown in the Chinese old books of regional geography of provinces and "hsien"7), or by local traditional folk-lores. The northern limit of these frontier walls is traced along the line from the Kuir-hoto about 50 miles north-west of Tsitsihar through a place about 90 miles north of the wall near the Argul Nor passing through the vicinity of near Pailingmiao about 100 miles north of Kweisui, etc., which line is approximately the present northern limit of the Chinese Agricuture. In the northern border of Shensi province, frontier walls are found more than 30 miles north of the present Wall. In Kansu Panhandle, where "a natural linear-shaped lowland"8) flanked by highlands on both north and south includes a string of oasis settlements at a piedmont, on the north-eastern side, the small fragments of frontier walls out of the main line of the Great Wall are evidently scarce, compared with those of Inner Mongolia, and the system of the Wall becomes almost linear, while in the south western part of the Panhandle the Wall system is extended far and deep in the direction of Tibet.