The End Of The Qing Frontier Governance And National Integration,

State issues have always been a central theme in political science. From a perspective of political geography, the state is composed of three elements, the people, territory and sovereignty. The lack of any factor is difficult to form a complete sense of the state. In addition to the three factors, the common feelings and the national identity of the people living on this territory for a long time are of great signification to a state's stability and unity, even for the national security. Border due to its special geographical position has always been related to national sovereignty and territorial integrity. However, in ancient China, the border governance is negative until the late Qing Dynasty. With the Western colonialist aggression and expansion, land and sea border erosion and the unprecedented national crisis, border issues were referred to the agenda.At the beginning of the 20th century, based on their own borders or their occupied territory borders with China, Czarist Russia, Japan and the United Kingdom began a new round of division and aggression. Although the war didn't break out in Mongolia and the Xingjiang region, Tsarist Russia had been engaged in separatist activities in the two regions, the United Kingdom in infiltration in Xinjiang.Obviously, the main crisis of the late Qing Dynasty broke out in the northeast frontier, Mongolia, Xinjiang and Tibet regions, which is China's border regions with mainly minority residents, and the central government control is weak. Foreign aggressive and separated forces can easily penetrate through borders. Therefore, enhancing border control, to promoting social and economic development in the border areas is of great significance to the territorial integrity, sovereignty and the reduction of the centrifugal force.Aggression of Western powers not only exacerbated the border crisis and brought great disaster to the Chinese society in the late Qing Dynasty, but also shocked obsolete and backward social and economic system objectively and disseminated the capitalist production methods and ideas. Aggression again and again, humiliating treaty one by one, to a certain extent, facilitated the continued awakening of the Chinese nation and the national salvation movement rising. Officials, nobles and intellectuals unanimously paid unprecedented attention to border governance issues. The border control policies of the Qing government began to make some adjustments. These ideas, advice and practice with traditional values have changed significantly. Thus, feudal system gradually disintegrated, while the modern nation state was gradually built, ideas, institutions and policies concerning the new nation-state were sprouting.Based on the theories of governance and political geography, this paper analyzes the situation, the frontier crisis frequently, mutual efforts of the court and the commonalty to cope with the crisis, reveals the profile of frontier governance in this period, and summarizes the general border area governance lessons. This paper relies on the late Qing press to sort out the thinking of the nationalism and national unity thinking, suggestions inspired by the late Qing Dynasty border crisis, to discuss the backgrounds, content and significance of the government's redefining the relationship between the central and the border areas, the significance of powerful governance and consolidation measures to the state integration.We can see that the border policy and practice proved the economic and social development of border areas guaranteed the stability in border areas and consolidating frontier defense, strengthening national solidarity. The border policies and ethnic policies are fully discussed and carried out. The thoughts and the practice of border governance in the late Qing Dynasty shows the following characteristics:it is always regarded as the first place to resolve the border crisis and manage border affairs in completing the transformation of the national form; the border crises and the commissioning and creation of the systems led to the completion of the state transition from the traditional to the modern state, also led to radical changes in border control mode; nationalism ran through the thinking and practice of the border governing in the late Qing Dynasty.