Mongolia Looks to Japan

Today, major news outlets such as NHK and the BBC have reported on the plight of the Mongols in both the Chinese-ruled Inner Mongolia and the independent Outer Mongolia (the Republic of). In Inner Mongolia an economic boom is underway because of the exploitation of minerals, such as coal, but this is mostly going to benefit the Chinese and not the native Mongols of the region. Elder Mongols are deeply disturbed by the destruction of their traditional way of life, the growing distance of their children from the Mongol culture and the huge surge in the Han Chinese population. A quarter of all domestic coal production in the People's Republic of China comes from Inner Mongolia and the haphazard way these resources are being exploited is having a devastating impact on the local environment with air pollution becoming an increasing problem. There is also the fact of Han migration which has reached a point so that Mongols find themselves a minority even within Inner Mongolia with Mongols now being only 20% of the population, the majority is now Han Chinese. As one university student told the BBC, "Maybe in the future we won't have a place to live like traditional Mongolians. Our nation will vanish - the Mongolians will vanish." It has already happened to the Manchus and is currently happening in Tibet and Xinjiang.

Likewise, in Outer Mongolia, China dominates their coal export market while Russia also maintains a close watch on any developments in the country. China buys most of the Mongolian coal but pays only 40% of market price for it. There has also been a huge upsurge in pollution in Outer Mongolia because of this. For help, they are looking to Japan, both to help with combating air pollution using state-of-the-art Japanese methods and technology and by building a new railway network to get Mongolian coal to Japanese markets. This, of course, is not the first time that Mongols have looked to Japan as an alternative to being dominated by either Russia or China. In the past the Empire of Japan, specifically the Kwantung Army, aided in establishing the autonomous military government of Inner Mongolia under Prince Demchukdongrub with the goal of one day reuniting all of the Mongol people into one country under one monarch. After the defeat of Japan in 1945 he was forced to flee to Outer Mongolia where he was arrested by the communists, deported back to China and spent 13 years in prison for "treason" at the ruling of the Communist Chinese government that had taken power by that time. However, in spite of being labeled as a "traitor" and "collaborator" he remained very popular with the Mongolian people who recognized him as a patriot who was fighting to free his country and unite his people with the support of Japan. Perhaps, with these modern-day movements, some of these past injustices will be corrected.