China steps up its restrictions of yet another minority: the Mongols. In the autonomous region of Inner Mongolia, education will henceforth take place in the majority language Mandarin. A betrayal in the collective eye of the minority, who have hitherto—unlike Tibetans and Uighurs—been allowed some linguistic and cultural autonomy. But developments in Inner Mongolia have spread and paved the way for a potential major political conflict with Mongolia—and domestic political conflicts in Mongolia.

By Klas Lundström

The Mongolian population of the autonomous region of Inner Mongolia, stretching along China’s northern frontier, has been forced into the same poorly ventilated chamber that already houses minorities such as the Uighurs of Xinjiang and Tibetan Buddhists in Tibet. The main reason is the reforming of the region’s education system, which will henceforth be in Mandarin, the language of the Han Chinese majority, thus sweeping the Mongolian language even further down the educational ladder.

The decision, announced in September 2020, was met with massive protests and large-scale school boycotts. The Chinese authorities defend the “adaptation” as merely a natural consequence of the rest of country’s education system. An adaptation that will improve the quality of the Mongolian’s education and one that will offer its pupils improved opportunities for jobs and social inclusion. Students and parents, however, deem the reform—along with a large-scale influx of Mandarin-speaking teachers into Inner Mongolia—as a political nail in the coffin not only for the Mongolian language, but also for the minority’s unique culture and ancient lifestyle.

“When the Mongolian language dies, our Mongolian identity will also disappear,” the parent of an eight-year-old pupil in the Xilingol League told CNN.

“A Historic Betrayal”

Beijing’s reform has been labeled a brutal betrayal, due to the fact the Mongol’s in China was the first minority to openly support the Communist-led announcement of the People’s Republic of China. A support that generated in fairly widespread autonomy in terms of its language being taught in classrooms and the acceptance of Mongolian cultural tokens.

Official statistics from 2017, however, testify to the fact that the Mongolian language has already been severely silenced. Merely 30 percent of the minority population attend schools with any form of Mongolian-language-led education—which is a 50 percent drop since 1990.

Christopher Atwood, professor of Mongolian history and language at the University of Pennsylvania, has long foreseen the language’s decreasing status and sense of place in Inner Mongolia.

“Over the long term, Mongolian-medium education has been in decline, its percentage of Mongolian school age children dropping by about half since 1990. Urbanization, accelerated by ‘ecological migration’ and other policies, has diminished residential segregation. The changing labor market makes it more difficult for Mongolian-medium school graduates to find jobs,” Atwood writes in Made in China Journal, in an August 2020 Q&A.

In other words, the long-term prospects for the Mongolian language to eventually survive alongside Mandarin were already in shreds even before the latest radical rewriting of Inner Mongolia’s education system; a reform process draped in clear political motives.

“The rise of Chinese nationalism, and the sense that Uyghur and Tibetan nationalist movements threaten China’s geopolitical interests, and the new ‘Second Generation Ethnic Policy’ movement show that tolerance for open expression of ethnic diversity in public life is waning,” Christopher Atwood summarizes.

A People’s Republic, One Party, One Way Forward

“Unity” has been a key element in the Chinese Communist Party’s political projects and aims ever since Chairman Mao Zedong paved the way for the People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949.

Among China’s 55 officially recognized minorities, Mongols are considered but one in a large crowd—their stride for basic rights, language and unique culture have for decades been overshadowed by other “internal affairs” such as Tibet and Xinjiang.

There are more Mongols living in China (about 6 million)—and especially in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region—than in the whole of Republic of Mongolia (about 3.3 million). But constituting merely a few raindrops in a sea of ​​people (1.4 billion), the Mongolian minority is effectively embedded in a Han Chinese majority society and subjected to a lifestyle, an education system and a written and spoken language that have historically never been truly theirs.

Migration and Mining

Han Chinese migrants began to seek refuge and to look for a better life in Inner Mongolia in the early 20th century, during and after the demise of the Qing Dynasty in 1912 and China’s transition from an empire to a republic. Political changes and opened doors to a new world—and their new technology and introduced industries—in the wake of the Opium Wars not only saw Han Chinese people moving into traditional Mongolian territories; the arrival of the 2oth century also witnessed a split and “Outer Mongolia” sailing away, later proclaiming an independent nation and in 1924, as a People’s Republic, closing ties to the Soviet Union.

Inner Mongolia gained autonomous status in 1947, but by then things had already started to change for the foreseeable future. Gradually, the grasslands and the forests, where the Mongolian nomadic population roamed their livestock, shrank and were replaced by large-scale agriculture and mining interests. Inner Mongolia sits on top of one of China’s largest—and economically most important—coal reserves besides housing rare earth metals, for which the world’s growing renewable industries pay dearly.

In the autonomous region, whose political representatives play the chords dictated by Beijing, changing climate behaviors and shrinking spaces for the soon-eliminated nomadic population’s livestock have turned Inner Mongolia into “a perfect political storm” that underscores China’s both immediate and long-term challenges: ethnic tensions.

“Many Mongols complain that they have been ‘marginalized, sidelined, ignored,’ and that their very identity has been threatened by the disappearance of grasslands removes their livelihood and their homes,” Michael Dillon, founding director of the Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies at Durham University, concludes in “Lesser Dragons: Minority Peoples in China.”

Deadly Desperation

Beijing’s “unity policy” not only embodies domestic linguistical and cultural colonialism; it also prepares the country’s eco-sensitive grasslands for expansive mining ventures and large-scale transmigration projects of urban dwellers to less populated land strips. The ongoing “Capitalist–Communist Development Program” has paved way for intense conflicts between farmers and nomads on the one hand, and Chinese authorities and mining interests on the other. The outcome has many times been bloodstained as mining trucks illegally use pastoral lands as shortcuts driving to and from illegal coal mines, killing nomad shepherds standing in their way.

Other tragic incidents that underline the serious ecological and political situation in Inner Mongolia are young children drowning in illegal mine ditches and public suicides. In 2015, a herdsman hung himself in front of the Hohhot Regional Government Office in protest of his land being taken away from him.

In September 2020, a 33-year-old female civil servant threw herself from a roof and to her death, in protest of the Chinese Communist Party’s restrictions on an already pressured education system for the Mongolian language and the study and exercise of the minority’s cultural heritage and identity. In her suicide note, it is stated that her self-imposed death was the result of many years of Chinese “persecution of the Mongolian language and a stressed people.”

“Please stop scolding us even if we are stupid and cowardly. We use our lives to prove that we have tried hard,” the 33-year-old woman wrote in her last letter.

According to Southern Mongolia Human Rights Information Center, Beijing’s hardened line against the country’s Mongolian minority population is a clear sign of “weakness.” The more the authorities are forced to contribute to its demand for a “unified” and Han Chinese-dominated culture and educational apparatus, the weaker the regime’s inner strength and self-confidence appear, the US-based human rights organization states in a comment.

Current Conflict, Protracted Tensions

The ongoing conflict over the Mandarin education system is but a part of a larger conflict between Beijing and Inner Mongolia; city and country; majority and minority.

In neighboring Mongolia, lots of people have taken to the streets and manifested its support and sympathy for the Mongolian minority south of their Gobi Desert border. From the highest political office, however, not even a whisper is heard, criticizing Beijing’s “internal affairs.” In 2016, Mongolia itself experienced the scorching heat from the ”Dragon in the South,” when the Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama paid a visit to the Buddhist dominated country.

A week of closed borders and lost coal and copper revenues forced the Mongolian government to obligingly promise Beijing to never again “interfere in China’s internal affairs.” The Chinese stand, that claims “Tibet is Chinese territory,” was also emphasized in capital letters.

Tense Relationship

Mongolia’s economy now both stands and falls with China—mainly in the form of coal exports—and for the necessary revenues it brings, it is likely that the government in Ulaanbaatar won’t do anything else but to hope that its silence to China’s long-lasting and internationally condemned treatment of its Mongolian minority will bury the issue sooner rather than later.

The latter will, though, probably not happen for a while. Criticism is raging from Mongolia’s academic corridors, independent media outlets and intellectual quarters. China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi was forced to duck to angry placards and protesters during his visit to the country on September 15 and 16—all the while the official silence of the Mongolian government has metamorphosed into a political headache.

Former Mongolian President Elbegdorj Tsakhia has actively and loudly supported the Mongolian minority’s protests in Inner Mongolia and left an open protest letter to Chinese President Xi Jinping per the Chinese embassy in Ulaanbaatar.

The Chinese embassy, on the other hand, promptly announced that it had no intentions disturbing President Xi Jinping with Elbegdorj Tsakhia’s letter—hence the Mongolian ex-President could drop by and retrieve it. But Elbegdorj Tsakhia has refused to do so, and the letter has remained at the Chinese embassy in Ulaanbaatar, setting the stage of a potential political crisis between Mongolia and China.

Far-Reaching Consequences

At stake, once again, are bilateral relations between the two countries. But it does not end there; on the other side of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, a host of Mongolian students hope to return to their universities in Inner Mongolia and other provinces and cities around China.

The Mongolian tourism industry also cross its fingers that the summer of 2021 will resurrect the landlocked country’s tourism industry back from the dead. A life-saving drama, in which Chinese tourists and their wallets play the starring roles. Not to mention the infrastructure projects—primarily China’s “One Belt, One Road Initiative,” also known as the “Modern Silk Road”—where Mongolian topography is included, in which the Mongolian government hopes to score revenues and create a host of jobs. Now, Inner Mongolia’s ongoing protests and instability, put many things at risk.

A Chinese “hostage situation,” where promised bilateral projects are put on hold, could mean losing voters, increased poverty and lost ministerial portfolios for the ruling—and former Soviet faithful—Mongolian People’s Party.

According to Mendee Jargalsaikhan, intercultural communicator at the Mongolian Institute of Innovative Politics, the current crisis could rapidly turn into flourishing hunting grounds for populist politicians and anti-Chinese sentiments—which is already displayed by ultranationalist movements in present-day Mongolia.

“This could trigger the country’s lingering anti-Chinese sentiments, resulting in incidents against Chinese nationals and businesses like in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Henceforth, Inner Mongolian affairs require careful consideration from both sides,” Mendee Jargalsaikhan writes in an essay for The Asan Forum.