RUSSIA AND CHINA IN OUTER MONGOLIA.

POLITICAL autonomy; GEOGRAPHIC boundaries; LAND settlement

MONGOLIAReport Available; CHINAReport Available; SOVIET Union

The article reports that Soviet Russia and China, have agreed to recognize the independence of outer Mongolia within her existing boundaries, subject to a plebiscite of the population involved. This settlement will remove a point of contention between China and Soviet Russia. As for the Mongolian people themselves, their ordinary way of life will not be much changed. The population, small in proportion to the size of the area and the richness of its natural resources, both agricultural and industrial, have long enjoyed only nominal independence; yet they did possess a real and cherished autonomy. Their paramount concern has always been to avoid colonization by either of their two great neighbors. The Mongolian People's Republic is the last remnant of the huge empire of Jenghiz Khan, which at one time encompassed almost all Asia and a great part of Europe. Its inhabitants, like those of the neighboring Chinese provinces, as well as the nomadic cattle-raisers of Russian and Chinese Turkestan, have changed their citizenship from time to time simply by wandering across boundary lines.