evidence: "Outer Mongolia," which roughly corresponds to today’s Mongolia plus Russia’s Tuva Republic, fell under Qing Dynasty control in 1691 and remained part of the empire until its demise in 1911. Even though Mongolia declared independence then, the ROC claimed to have inherited the entirety of Qing territory per the Provisional Constitution promulgated in March 1912. [...] Even so, further iterations of the ROC constitution continued to claim Outer Mongolia as an inalienable part of the nation’s territory, wrote Liu Hsueh-tao (劉學銚) of the now defunct Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission in the 1997 article, "Examining the Outer Mongolia problem from a legal and political standpoint" (從法律政治層面看外蒙古問題). [...] In 1945, the ROC signed the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance, where it recognized Mongolian independence in exchange for the Soviets promising not to help the Chinese Communist Party nor interfere with Xinjiang affairs. Official maps printed during this time excluded Outer Mongolia.