ABSTRACT
More than a hundred CCP cadres had worked in Xinjiang between 1938 and 1942 and, whether or not they were conscious of the fact at the time, they were laying the groundwork for the transformation that the CCPwished to bring about in Xinjiang after 1949. Xinjiang was far from an unknown quantity to senior Communist cadres, although by 1942 many in Xinjiang could reasonably assume that the Communists working in Sheng Shicai’s government had been removed for good. Although some of the key leadership had been executed, including Mao Zemin, many were released in the amnesty of 1946 and returned to Yan’an where they were able to pass on their knowledge and understanding of Xinjiang’s economy and society within the party. The application of this knowledge and understanding to the transformation of Xinjiang remained a purely theoretical proposition as long as the civil war between the Communists and Nationalists raged. Once the decisive battles had been won by the Communists in north-eastern and eastern China, the invasion of Xinjiang by the PLA and its incorporation into the People’s Republic of China finally became a practical proposition. In March 1949, a high level meeting of the Chinese Communist Party was
convened in the small mountain village of Xibaipo, a remote settlement in Hebei province, 186 miles to the southwest of Beijing, and fifty miles northwest of Shijiazhuang. Xibaipo was the location that the CCP leaders had chosen for their forward command post after they were forced out of their legendary headquarters in Yan’an during the closing phase of the civil war with the Nationalist Guomindang. Shortly after the March 1949 meeting the CCP felt in a strong enough position to conclude that at last its overall victory was certain and the party leadership moved out of Xibaipo and relocated to Beiping, as Beijing was known at the time.1
