The area Suiyuan covered is approximated today by the prefecture-level cities of Hohhot, Baotou, Wuhai, Ordos, Bayan Nur, and parts of Ulanqab, all today part of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

Most of the work and settlement of Suiyuan at this time was done by Shanxi farmer-soldiers under the direction of retired officers from Yan's army.

This promise included the declaration that, "Under no circumstances should other [non-Mongol ethnic groups] be allowed to occupy the land of the Inner Mongolian nation".

However, following the communist victory in 1949, the administrators of the soon-to-be "Mongolian" territories with Han Chinese majorities, the biggest of which was Suiyuan with a population of over 2 million, resisted annexation by the new Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

Uradyn Bulag thus notes that "ironically", the Mongols' territorial ambitions against Suiyuan resulted in their becoming a "small minority within their own [enlarged] autonomous region".