This book sheds important new light on Sino-Soviet relations and the politics of the Xinjiang region, publishing for the first time the complete diaries of Liu Zerong, who served as diplomat and foreign ministry envoy from 1940-49. In doing so it provides a chronicle of the downfall of Nationalist Party rule in the crucial frontier region of Xinjiang and its incorporation into the People’s Republic of China. The diaries are introduced with a biographical study of Liu, and a discussion of China’s international position during World War II and the post-war situation in Xinjiang, which at the time was divided between a sphere of GMD control and the Soviet-aligned East Turkistan Republic. Both in the Moscow embassy, and in the Xinjiang provincial administration in Ürümchi, Liu Zerong was Republican China’s most senior Russian-speaking representative, whose task it was to engage on a daily basis with his Soviet counterparts. His extensive diaries therefore offer a unique insight into this tense decade of Sino-Soviet diplomacy, and will be of interest to a wide range of scholars in fields of Chinese and international history.
