Their
Rule Has Been Described By A Mussulman As Being Both Very Fair And Very
Just.
Having conquered Eastern Turkestan, the Chinese next took steps for the
recovery of Ili.
Without the metropolitan province the undertaking of Tso
Tsung Tang would lack completeness, while indeed many political and
military dangers would attend the situation in Central Asia. But this was
evidently a matter to be effected in the first place by negotiation, and
not by violence and force of arms. Russia had always been a friendly and
indeed a sympathetic neighbor. In this very matter of Ili she had
originally acted with the most considerate attention for China's rights,
when it seemed that they had permanently lost all definite meaning, for
she had declared that she would surrender it on China sending a sufficient
force to take possession, and now this had been done. It was, therefore,
by diplomatic representations on the part of the Tsungli Yamen to the
Russian Minister at Pekin that the recovery of Ili was expected in the
first place to be achieved. At about the same time the Russian authorities
at Tashkent came to the conclusion that the matter must rest with the
Czar, and the Chinese official world perceived that they would have to
depute a Minister Plenipotentiary to St. Petersburg.
The official selected for the difficult and, as it proved, dangerous task
of negotiating at St. Petersburg, was that same Chung How who had been
sent to Paris after the Tientsin massacre. He arrived at Pekin in August,
1878, and was received in several audiences by the empresses while waiting
for his full instructions from the Tsungli Yamen.
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