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  China insists Genghis Khan's grave is in Chinese territory
 

Agence France Presse -- English
November 2, 2004 Tuesday 2:34 PM GMT
BEIJING
 

Chinese media insisted Tuesday that Genghis Khan's grave is in northeast China, refuting a Japanese archaeologist's claim last month that the grave might be near the ruins of his palace in Mongolia.

Quoting Qi Zhongyi, a 34th generation descendant of Khan, Xinhua news agency said the Mongolian conqueror's mausoleum was located in Ejin Horo Banner on the Ordos highlands in China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

"Skeletons were seen when his coffin was opened during a grand momorial ceremony in 1954," said 78-year-old Qi.

The burial site of Genghis Khan, who died in 1227, is disputed.

Last month a joint Japanese and Mongolian research team said it believed a mausoleum found near the ruins of Khan's palace complex, 250 kilometers (155 miles) southeast of the Mongolian capital Ulan Bator, was his.

In 2001 a US-Mongolian expedition also announced it had discovered the burial place, northeast of Ulan Bator on a hillside near where he is believed to have been born in 1162.

Khan is revered in China and depicted by the communist party as the precursor of a great "Chinese" dynasty -- a warrior who united the unruly Mongolian tribes and conquered a large slice of Asia in the 13th century.

Most historians agree he died while fighting in the region of Xixia on the edge of the autonomous Chinese regions of Ningxia and Inner Mongolia.

But Mongolian historians, as well as most foreign experts, reject the Chinese view of events.

They see Khan as a Mongol hero who conquered territory from China to the Caspian Sea before his grandson Kublai Khan installed himself in Beijing and founded the Yuan dynasty which lasted from 1276 to 1368.
 
 
 
 

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