When Mao and the Chinese Communists came to power in 1949, they promised "reunification of the Motherland," which included bringing Xinjiang (the Muslim desert regions of the West), Tibet, Mongolia, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan back under central government control. It became a matter of national pride for a country that had been guafen , "cut up like a melon," by predatory colonial powers, to end national feelings of humiliation by restoring itself to wholeness.