North Shansi Autonomous Government

state · 1937–1939

Japanese-sponsored Chinese puppet government established at Tatung (Datong) in October 1937, the second of the two non-Mongol regimes folded together with Demchugdongrub's government under the United Committee of Mengchiang that November.

The North Shansi Autonomous Government (晋北自治政府) was established at Tatung (present-day Datong, Shanxi) on October 15, 1937, weeks after the South Chahar Autonomous Government and in the same wave of Japanese military expansion that took Hohhot that same month (Boyle). Like its South Chahar counterpart, it was a Chinese puppet administration, not a Mongol one, distinct from Demchugdongrub’s own Mongol government.

This atlas’s master chronology independently corroborates the October 15, 1937 date and the Tatung seat via Hirokawa 2024. The United Committee of Mengchiang, established November 22, 1937, unified this government with the South Chahar Autonomous Government and Demchugdongrub’s Mongol government under a single Japanese-controlled coordinating body; see that entry for the fuller genealogy. Its head, per Jagchid’s already-established account of the September 1, 1939 merger (recorded in the Mongolian Allied Autonomous Government entry), was Xia Gong, who became a deputy chairman of the merged government at that later date. That same entry records that at the start of 1943 the North Shanxi and South Chahar governments, by then long since demoted to political bureaus rather than independent regimes, were abolished outright and converted into ordinary provinces (per the Mengjiang entry, citing Lückenhaus).

This atlas holds no further detail on this government’s internal administration, its personnel beyond Xia Gong, or its territorial extent within North Shanxi. A fuller entry would need dedicated sourcing this atlas does not currently have.

Sources

John Hunter Boyle, China and Japan at War, 1937–1945: The Politics of Collaboration (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972), Chapter 7, “Inner Mongolia,” pp. 124–133, cited above as “Boyle.” See this atlas’s project notes for this source’s tier and single-source caveats, which apply to different material than what is cited here.
Hirokawa, Ajia Keizai 65, no. 4 (2024), cited above as “Hirokawa 2024.” T1 scholarly (Japanese, IDE-JETRO). This atlas holds only the material relayed via the master chronology, not the original article; see this atlas’s project notes for the citation-completeness flag.
Sechin Jagchid, The Last Mongol Prince: The Life and Times of Demchugdongrob, 1902–1966 (Center for East Asian Studies, Western Washington University, 1999), cited above as “Jagchid,” for the Xia Gong detail and the 1943 abolition (via the Mongolian Allied Autonomous Government and Mengjiang entries). See the Sechin Jagchid entry for his biography and this atlas’s standing caveat on weighing his participant-partisan perspective.