Mongolian Transliteration

In November 1912, China’s first modern magazine dedicated to frontier issues, North-West Magazine (Xibei zazhi) appeared. Published in Beijing and born at a time of heightened Chinese anger over Russian collusion in Mongolian independence at the dawn of the Republic, this monthly sought to raise awareness among fledgling Chinese republicans of the importance of Mongolia and Tibet within the new China. Although North-West Magazine only lasted for five issues, it reveals much about the discursive context to thinking and worrying about the Inner Asian frontier in the early Republic and also provides details of the initial actions and policies of Yuan Shikai’s government towards this frontier. This article examines this content and the key figures who wrote for the magazine. It considers North-West Magazine both as an example of the burgeoning new political culture of the early Republic and as an early attempt to flesh out the detail of notions of ‘five race republicanism’ (wuzu gonghe) against a background of social Darwinist-inflected categories; geopolitical threats from Russian, British and Japanese imperialism; the rejection of ‘dependent subject status’ (fanshu daiyu) and other inequalities explicit in Qing imperial policies towards Inner Asia; and a general lack of frontier interest and knowledge among Chinese

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