Sino-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact

• 1. Introduction

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  The Sino-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact was signed in Nanjing on the 21st of August 1937, as Japanese forces were pushing deep into Chinese territory. On paper, it bound two nations together in a promise of mutual restraint. In practice, it was breached almost the moment the ink dried. How could a treaty designed to hold back aggression be shattered by the very country that signed it? And how did China's government respond to an invasion it could not publicly admit was happening?

• 2. Aid With Strings

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  Chiang Kai-shek, leading the Kuomintang government, had reason to feel cautiously optimistic after the signing. The Soviets almost immediately launched Operation Zet, a program to send aircraft and economic aid to the Chinese national government. Chiang read this as the opening move toward full Soviet intervention in the war against Japan. That hope faded as months passed. The Soviet Union found itself hemmed in by a more delicate calculation. Any robust assistance to China risked unsettling a tacit arrangement with the United Kingdom, France, and later the United States. Those powers favored China against Japan yet would, if pushed, back Japan over the Soviets. The pact also gave the Soviets a freer hand to watch the west, where Nazi Germany was visibly preparing for conflict. That western focus came at a direct cost to China: it contributed to the deterioration of China's relationship with Germany, which had already pulled back its military assistance.

• 3. The Xinjiang Breach

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  While the Nanjing signing ceremony was still fresh, Soviet forces were already fighting inside Chinese territory. From August to October 1937, the Soviets conducted what became known as the Xinjiang War, backing the puppet Governor Sheng Shicai against Chinese government forces. The Kuomintang Muslim general Ma Hushan led the 36th Division of the National Revolutionary Army to resist the incursion. Ma had communicated directly with Chiang Kai-shek beforehand and also spoke with the British journalist Peter Fleming, mentioning that Chiang had promised to send reinforcements. The Japanese attack in the east changed everything. Ma was left to face the Soviet army without the help he had been promised. His forces killed Soviet soldiers and held on longer than might have been expected, but Soviet mustard gas bombardment eventually broke their resistance. Ma Hushan fled to India, then took a steamer back to China. Sheng Shicai subsequently invited Soviet forces to garrison in Turfan, a position that sat directly adjacent to Gansu Province.

• 4. The Official Silence

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  Beijing's dilemma was stark. The Republic of China government was fully informed of the Soviet invasion of Xinjiang and tracked Soviet troop movements through both Xinjiang and Gansu. Acknowledging any of this publicly would have ended the flow of Soviet military supplies that China desperately needed against Japan. The government's solution was to label reports of the Soviet presence as "Japanese propaganda," actively misleading its own population to preserve the supply relationship. It was a calculated humiliation accepted in silence. Beneath that silence, the Chinese government was moving its own pieces. Muslim general Ma Buqing came to virtually control the Gansu corridor, a strategically vital stretch linking central China to the northwest. In July 1942, Chiang Kai-shek instructed Ma Buqing to move 30,000 troops to the Tsaidam marsh in the Qaidam Basin of Qinghai. Chiang gave Ma the title of Reclamation Commissioner, a designation designed to let those troops menace Sheng Shicai's southern flank in Xinjiang, which bordered the Tsaidam region.

• 5. The Slow Reclamation

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  Ma Buqing's repositioning opened a corridor that China's central government moved quickly to fill. Once Ma's forces vacated their positions in Gansu, Kuomintang troops from central China poured in and began penetrating Soviet-occupied Xinjiang. The pressure was patient and deliberate rather than confrontational. Over time it forced Sheng Shicai to calculate that his Soviet patrons could no longer protect him, and he broke with the Soviets. The final chapter in Xinjiang came with a different flashpoint. In November 1944, a Kuomintang Muslim officer named Liu Bin-Di was killed while fighting Turkic Uyghur rebels, and the Ili Rebellion ignited. The Soviets threw their support behind the Turkic rebels, and Kuomintang forces fought back. The Kuomintang government ordered Ma Bufang to march Muslim Cavalry troops into Xinjiang repeatedly, using their presence to intimidate Sheng Shicai's forces and shield Chinese settlers in the province. In 1945, Ma Bufang was dispatched to Urumqi to guard it against the Uyghur army advancing from Hi, the territory now known as Ili.