ABSTRACT
By June 1916 when Yuan Shih-k’ai died Governor Yang had succeeded in bringing peace and a precarious stability to Sinkiang which he ruled with autocratic powers, despite his nominal allegiance to Peking. The autonomy of the province rested on the preoccupation of the Chinese and Russian governments with the war and their own internal problems and Yang saw to it that neither should be provoked into showing any interest in Sinkiang. But although he had succeeded in repressing Chinese revolutionary and republican elements in his province there were still internal threats to the stability of Yang’s rule. One was the economic weakness of Sinkiang, and the other, though scarcely yet discernible, was a danger that Yang was too intelligent not to recognize.
