[2] Early in his political life, Merse established close ties with the independent state of Mongolia and the Soviet Union.
In 1922, he attended a Pan-Mongolist conference organised by Buryat at Verkhneudinsk (today Ulan-Ude, capital of the Republic of Buryatia).
[7] Thus, in 1928, Merse and his Daur compatriot Fumintai (福明泰 or 敖民泰) led a group of Barga Mongols in an uprising in his hometown Hailar, attempting to establish local autonomy.
[10] The Chinese authorities arrested China Eastern Railway assistant director Mikhail Lashevich in connection with the uprising in August 1928.
[11] His views on religion also seemed to have softened from his earlier communist-influenced hard line against feudalism and Buddhism; during the visit of Thubten Choekyi Nyima, 9th Panchen Lama to Mukden, he began to realise the value of religious figures in drawing support for the nationalist movement.
Owen Lattimore claimed that Zhang Xueliang, fearing that Merse would be used to convince other Mongols to support the Japanese, had him assassinated.
Later authors, though agreeing with the possibility that Zhang held such views, dismiss the assassination claims; they instead state that Merse went to the Soviet consulate in Manzhouli.
According to those records, Merse was arrested due to his nationalistic tendencies, taken to the Soviet Union, charged with spying for Inner Mongolia and attempting to escape imprisonment, and sentenced to death.
[2] In the immediate aftermath of the Hulunbuir Uprising, internal CPC documents gave a rather positive evaluation of Merse, describing him and the other members of the IMPRP's left-wing faction as having gained widespread popular support through their mass work.
[18] The following year, the Daur History and Language Working Group issued a reprint of his 1929 lectures on "the Mongolian problem".