Övör Mongol Atlas

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Mongolian Autonomous Government (Alashan)

state · 1949

Short-lived Mongol autonomous government proclaimed at Dingyuanying in Alashan in August 1949, Demchugdongrub's final government, dissolved within two months as Communist forces advanced.

The Mongolian Autonomous Government was Demchugdongrub’s last attempt at Mongol self-rule, proclaimed at Dingyuanying (present-day Bayanhot) in the Alashan Banner in August 1949, four years after the collapse of Mengjiang and his subsequent house arrest in Beijing until 1949, when the Nationalist government’s weakening position led it to court Mongol leaders again (Dudin). It is also referred to in later scholarship as the Alashan Republic or, after a September 1949 rename by the faction that stayed behind, the Western Mongolian Autonomous Government (Jagchid; Dudin).

Founding

Demchugdongrub arrived in the northwest in early 1949 with Nationalist government approval, meeting Chinese military and political leaders in Xi’an and Lanzhou before being welcomed to Dingyuanying by Damzana, the jasag prince of Alashan. Damzana is the “Prince Ta of Alashan” of the contemporaneous US intelligence field reports drawn on below, and is also transliterated Darijaya, Dali Zhai, or Dalizhaya, all the same man (Jagchid; Dudin; Source A). Those CIA reports are unevaluated informant reporting, anti-Communist in orientation and thin on verification, with troop and delegate figures that are estimates rather than counts; they are weighed here below the atlas’s scholarly and memoir sources. One of them profiles Damzana as wealthy, intermarried with Manchu aristocracy, raised in Beijing, and reportedly not fluent in Mongolian, a background that, the report implies, set him apart from the village Mongols and shaped his cautious, Nationalist-leaning politics (Source A).

The CIA reporting also records an earlier step than the memoir accounts do. On April 4–5, 1949 Demchugdongrub convened a conference in the Alashan Banner of some twenty-one league and banner heads, Damzana and a leader named Dagwasüren among them, which resolved to call a General Assembly of Northwest Mongol leaders around the end of April, to establish an “Inner Mongolian Autonomy Preparatory Committee,” to meet at Sanxinggong, to send representatives to Nanjing to request autonomy, and to raise funds locally (Source B). An Inner Mongolian League and Banner Delegate conference on April 13, 1949 established that Preparatory Committee for Inner Mongolian Autonomy, with Bayankhan (Ba Wenjun) as chairman. Sechin Jagchid, who took part directly as a drafter and delegate, records that Demchugdongrub deliberately avoided the committee’s chairmanship to avoid the appearance that he personally instigated every autonomy movement (Jagchid).

Demchugdongrub then traveled to Guangzhou, where the Nationalist government under Li Zongren was based, seeking formal recognition and material support. The trip yielded little beyond nominal approval of the Preparatory Committee and a token 10,000 silver dollars and some handguns and rifles; Jagchid describes the central government’s assistance as “limited to what could be stuffed into his small airplane” (Jagchid).

A Mongolian People’s Delegate Conference convened at Dingyuanying on August 5, 1949, passing a Law of Mongolian Autonomy and a Declaration of Mongolian Autonomy modeled on Sun Yat-sen’s teachings on minority self-determination. On August 8, delegates elected Demchugdongrub chairman by secret ballot (160 of 175 votes) and Damzana vice chairman (174 votes). Wu Heling was elected speaker of a 31-member Mongolian Congress, with Chen Nasanbatu (Cheng Nasunbat) as vice speaker, a detail corroborated independently by both Jagchid’s account and Dudin’s (Jagchid; Dudin). The government was formally inaugurated on August 10, 1949.

The assembly in the CIA field reporting

A Secret field report of October 1949 (Source Y) describes the Dingyuanying assembly in more detail than the memoir accounts, and with a sharper eye on its factional arithmetic. It counts more than 175 delegates from nearly all the tribes and banners and splits them into three blocs: Demchugdongrub’s young “Racial-Movement” Mongols, who wanted a near-complete break with the Nationalists and rapid independence; a small faction under He Zhaolin of the CC Clique, greatly strengthened by Damzana, who, the report notes, “has more economic and military resources than any other of the Mongol leaders,” favouring continued attachment to the Nationalists; and a large, leaderless remainder that mostly voted with Damzana (Source Y). Demchugdongrub held a majority of delegates, but the report frames the outcome as a set of compromises “in which the superior power of Prince Ta was at least tacitly recognized” (Source Y).

The report’s roster of offices largely matches the memoir account while adding names below the top. Demchugdongrub was Chairman and Damzana Vice-Chairman; the secretaryship, roughly a prime-ministership, went to Bayankhan (whom the report renders Pa Wenchun) of the Tumet Special Banner, with Jirgalang (Chi Chih-hsiang) as vice-secretary (Source Y). The report lists a governing Presidium that it calls eight-member but then enumerates as nine: Demchugdongrub, Damzana, Wu Heling, Li Shouxin, Wu Guting (Mongol name Ogodei; the report’s “Ukudui”), Bai Haifeng, two different men both rendered “Jirgalang,” and Bayankhan. That count is left here as the source’s own, with the two Jirgalangs kept distinct since the sources warn the name is easily confused (Source Y). An Advisory Council of thirty-one, twenty-one of them young Racial-Movement Mongols, was chaired by Wu Heling; the report gives its vice-chairman as Erdenipatu of Alashan, where Jagchid and Dudin instead name Chen Nasanbatu. This is evidently the same thirty-one-member body the memoir sources call the Mongolian Congress, the vice-chair the one point of disagreement (Source Y; Jagchid; Dudin). Four ministries were filled: Interior under He Zhaolin, Education under Rinchinsengge (Prince Lin), Economics under Uljiboyan, and Finance under Shongnodongdob (Prince Hsiung), with a Political Affairs Committee of nine to eleven, the four ministers sitting concurrently, chaired by the head of government (Source Y). Damzana, wanting more posts for his own advisors, was reported still negotiating with Demchugdongrub in mid-August (Source Y).

On one point the field report simply corroborates the memoir account: the Peace Preservation Committee was chaired by Damzana, with Li Shouxin and Bai Haifeng among its members, the CIA report adding the commander Wu Guting to that list, agreement rather than conflict (Source Y; Jagchid). The report also records that a CC-Clique bid to have the Central Government formally approve the new government was defeated, and that on August 10, 1949, with Communist forces nearing Dingyuanying, the capital was shifted to Bayanchagan, in the northern Alashan range, some twelve days by camel from Dingyuanying (Source Y).

Structure and collapse

The government’s cabinet included Bayankhan as secretary-general, He Zhaolin heading the Bureau of Internal Affairs, Bai Haifeng heading the Bureau of Industry, and a Peace Preservation Committee under Damzana with Li Shouxin and Bai Haifeng as deputies (Jagchid). Dudin’s account, drawing on Mongolian-language sources not used here directly, gives a fuller cabinet list and notes the new government’s flag largely reproduced the 1937–1939 Mengjiang flag (Dudin).

Within weeks the government’s position collapsed alongside the wider Nationalist retreat. Xi’an and then Lanzhou fell to Communist forces in August 1949, and the Alashan leadership split over how to respond. Demchugdongrub wanted to move into the desert and, if necessary, on to Tibet and India to form a government in exile; Damzana’s faction, backed by Bai Haifeng and He Zhaolin, argued for staying and negotiating a surrender (Jagchid). On September 20, 1949, Demchugdongrub left Dingyuanying with the government’s official seal and name plate, moving west with a body of troops under Li Shouxin. The faction left behind, Damzana, Bai Haifeng, He Zhaolin, and Bayankhan, renamed their rump administration the Western Mongolian Autonomous Government and surrendered to Communist forces at Ningxia city on October 5, 1949 (Jagchid). Dudin’s account gives the same date for the surrender and notes that presidential authority formally passed to Damzana (as vice president) on October 1, 1949 (Dudin).

Demchugdongrub continued moving west with his remaining followers; see the Demchugdongrub entry for the contested accounts of what followed. Zorigt’s archival dating has him arrested in the Mongolian People’s Republic in early 1950, against a run of CIA field reports that instead place him free and militarily active in these same borderlands into 1951–52, a conflict this atlas records without resolving. Most of his followers who had moved west with him surrendered to Communist forces in early 1950 under terms brokered by Ulanhu, the chairman of the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region (Jagchid).

Sources