Turkistan Tumult

Book excerpt: This fast-moving narrative, written by a key official of the Kuomintang regime in Republican China, offers an astonishing insider's view of politics and rebellion in Chinese Turkistan in the 1930s. Posted to the western Chinese province of Xinjiang in 1932, Aitchen Wu's challenge there was to impose the authority of the central government upon the recalcitrant region and to negotiate between the warring factions whose power sturggles had brought political chaos to the province. In telling the stormy tale of Chinese officials and White Russian cavalrymen, ambitious Muslim generals and Tungan and Kurghiz tribesman, Turkistan Tumult lays the background for an understanding of subsequent events in Central Asia.