How does Mongolians feel about Han Chinese?

China’s Information Restriction Policy in Southern Mongolia

The Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region (IMAR) was established in 1947 as the first Autonomous Region in China, with the promise of a high level of autonomous rights, as written in the Chinese Constitution. During the Sino-Japanese War, Mao went so far as to say that the people of Southern Mongolia might become independent after the War of Resistance. Seen through the eyes of history, this promise was only a pretext by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in their drive to exert control over Southern Mongolia. This did in fact happen following World War II, with the collapse of the Kuomintang government. The PLA occupied Southern Mongolia in 1947 and this occupation continues until today. Mao’s promise of independence was never realized and the IMAR never really gained any of the autonomous rights as mentioned in the Chinese Constitution. One particularly egregious example of the control exerted over Southern Mongolia by the CCP during the past 60+ years has been the extremely repressive policy of information control.

But the policy of strict information control was not the only repressive policy rolled out by the CCP in the process of consolidating their control over the IMAR. In 1959, the Inner Mongolian Cavalry was sent to Tibet to quell the Tibetan protests. Following the successful suppression of protests in Tibet, the Mongol troops were quickly disbanded. As a result, Southern Mongolia lost their army. At the same time, the CCP implemented an emigration policy encouraging Han farmers from faraway provinces to enter Southern Mongolia to turn the pasturelands into farmland. It’s beyond the scope of this discussion to point out the environmental disasters and desertification that has ensued as a result of this misguided policy but during the period 1949-1960 especially, and continuing to today, millions of Han Chinese entered Southern Mongolia. As a result, this population shift diluted dramatically the native Mongol population with the proportion of ethnic Mongols decreasing to below 20% today. With these two policies, the Chinese government essentially neutralized any threat of a concerted Mongol military action in the event that a Mongol leadership arose that could exploit the army, and simultaneously turned the Mongols into a minority in their own lands. This of course meant that competition for economic and other resources would be more or less in favor of the Han. There was little consideration paid to Mongol interests. Another equally insidious social policy which also didn’t come down from previous Chinese governments or regimes, was to make concrete the Sun Yat-sen republican slogan of the ‘Five Peoples’ and force the new name “Chinese People” on all the minority groups in China. Refusal to accept this new label meant you were a separatist, which made it easy for the CCP to suspend any of the autonomous rights sections of the Constitution. So the CCP had a built-in mechanism for making minority rights provisions of the Constitution completely null and void merely by labeling someone or some group a separatist. 

So how has the information restriction policy been implemented in the IMAR?  Essentially it has meant a complete blockade of information exchange through any media between the IMAR and the country of Mongolia. The aim of this policy was to remove the influence of Mongolia in the Southern Mongolian region. This particular dynamic started from the earliest days of the IMAR and continues to the present. As a result, most Southern Mongols do not even know who the President of Mongolia is or anything about the situation in Mongolia, or vice versa. One rather benign relaxation of the information control policy was that beginning in the 1980`s, the restriction on Mongol songs and music was relaxed somewhat. But even today, it’s very difficult for Mongols to obtain access to distribution rights and manufacture of musical and artistic media.  

One consequence among many of these government social and information control policies has been the marginalization of the Mongol citizenry from mainstream society. Information control has served to isolate the Southern Mongols psychologically from their brethren in Mongolia, as well as the rest of the outside world. And it has worked both ways, the outside world and Mongolia have little knowledge of the history and events that have affected the Mongols of IMAR. In this way, the policies have achieved their objective, to eliminate any capability of the Mongols to establish a political consciousness and forge a unified body politic. An isolated minority group incapable of rallying around a core political or national consciousness with trivial economic and military options can be easily ruled, and equally important, will be easily assimilated into the ocean of the Han Chinese population. So today, in the IMAR, the Han control the vast proportion of the politics and economy of the IMAR and yet the CCP continues to remain hugely suspicious of their Mongol citizens (referred to in the official press as “Mongolian brothers and sisters”) with their continuing policies of information control, denial of human rights and frequent jailings of ‘separatists’. No imperialist power in history has been as successful as the CCP in manipulating their people.

In 1987, President Reagen made his famous speech in Berlin, asking ‘Mr. Gorbachev, tear this wall down.” It’s regrettable that on his recent visit to Beijing, President Bush did not echo these famous words and demand “Mr. Hu, tear this information blockade wall down.”

Revolution will not solve the problem. Look what happened to Gada Meiren and De Wang .

Reference to Gada Meiren and De Wang is completely irrelevant to the discussion. But the fact of the matter is that Revolution is the solution, but not in the way you understand it.  

The people of Inner Mongolia do not need your tears and sympathy , they are already exceeding their goals, and even helping their Khalkha brothers in the R.M.

No tears or sympathy are being proferred, although I can understand that that’s your perception of what I’m saying. And what goals are you talking about? You mean the Central government’s 5-year economic plans and goals which call for the resettling of hundreds of thousands of Mongol herdsmen to cities, with little compensation or attention to the incredible hardships this is imposing on them. The closing of all Mongol language schools? You demonstrate little respect for human rights in your insistence on economic success as the solution to real human problems being experienced on a national scale.    

They have evolved themselves to a point wherein they now have some strong leverage

vs. the regime in Beijing. Wind Power , natural gas, and dairy products are being exported by companies ran by Inner Mongolians ( genuine mongolians, not Hans) who have

laughed and ridiculed the Han regime in Beijing many times over . They do not love Beijing, but they are much smarter than people like yourself, because they found the correct path to success.

Who has evolved? Do you mean that they were some low species at some point and they’ve somehow developed on the evolutionary ladder and they’re pretty high now, maybe close to where you are? Sounds too Darwinian and exposes your biases. But, it ties in because you believe they’ve evolved and I haven’t because they’re smarter than people such as me. OK, let me accept that you’re right, they are smarter than me. Up till now, none of us writing on this topic have personally been the targets of discussion so let me accept whatever you have to say about me personally so we can move on. On that score though, I am surprised to hear that some of your associates do not love Beijing and that some have laughed and ridiculed the Han regime. My experience has been that such people have not retained their freedom for very long in the repressive environment of China. Could it be that some of your associates in China are closet revolutionaries? It seems that to gain your respect, one has to work within whatever the system allows, accept economic principles as the road to success over human rights and as long as one’s  personal success is assured, the Mongol people’s collective success is of little consequence. And if you can do that, then you are allowed to laugh and ridicule and not love the regime you live under. Kind of a silly scenario but worse, it sounds too hollow. But that is apparently what you would have us all do to make this a better world.  I don’t think so.    

And your comments attesting to the success of Mongol businesses too is not completely grounded in fact.  You had mentioned the Yili and Mengniu milk companies. These two companies are neither owned nor run by Mongols. In their business practices, they have exploited Mongol natural resources, plundered Mongolian herders' dairy products and lied to the world that they are Mongolian businesses. Last year, at the indigenous peoples’ congress in Switzerland, when samples of these two dairy companies' products were presented for comparison with other dairy products from other indigenous groups, representatives from other countries spit out the cheese made by these two companies. It was sugary and completely unnatural. The Mongols themselves rejected their products long ago. Again, you’re kind of giving the message that human values should be irrelevant to a business, just generate revenue and we’ll all be happy. I think not. Life is more than that even in the midst of a bully nation.