evidence: A major scandal has broken out between China, on the one hand, and Tajikistan and Russia, on the other, regarding alleged Chinese claims on the Pamir region. This past month, official outlets of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) repeatedly republished an article by Chinese historian Cho Yao Lu, who says that the entire Pamir region belonged to China at one time and consequently, he implies, Tajikistan should now or in the future return it to Beijing. Of course, such a territorial concession would dramatically change the geopolitical balance in this corner of Eurasia, affecting not only the position of the Central Asian countries but also those of neighboring Afghanistan and Western powers like the United States, whose military forces are deployed there. [...] In an article with the provocative title "Tajikistan Initiated the Transfer to China of Its Land and the Lost Mountains of the Pamir Were Returned to Their True Master," Cho Yao Lu writes that, under pressure from Russia and the United Kingdom, China lost these territories in the 19th century but was able to reclaim a portion in 2010. That year, Dushanbe and Beijing agreed on a new border that required Tajikistan to hand over to China 1,158 square kilometers of territory in the mountainous Pamir region (see EDM, January 24, 2011; see China Brief, July 29, 2011)