The region is strategically important because the trade-routes
converge there from the growing marts of the Taonanfu
administration, which is the extreme westernly limit of Chinese
authority in the Mongolian borderland. A rich exchange in hides,
furs, skins, cattle and foodstuffs has given this frontier-town
from year to year an increasing importance in the eyes of the
Chinese who are fully aware of the dangers of a laissez aller
policy and are determined to protect the rights they have acquired
by pre-emption. The fact that notorious Mongol brigand-chiefs,
such as the famous Babachapu who was allied to the Manchu
Restoration Party and who was said to have been subsidized by the
Japanese Military Party, had been making Chengchiatun one of their
objectives, brought concern early in 1916 to the Moukden Governor,
the energetic General Chang Tso-lin, who in order to cope with the
danger promptly established a military cordon round the district,
with a relatively large reserve based on Chengchiatun, drawn from
the 28th Army Division. A certain amount of desultory fighting
months before any one had heard of the town had given Chengchiatun
the odour of the camp; and when in the summer the Japanese began
military manoeuvres in the district with various scattered
detachments, on the excuse that the South Manchuria railway zone
where they alone had the right under the Portsmouth Peace Treaty
to be, was too cramped for field exercises, it became apparent
that dangerous developments might be expected--particularly as a
body of Japanese infantry was billeted right in the centre of the
town.
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