Ethnic unrest in prosperous Mongolia worries Beijing
CALLS for justice by Mongols have shattered the calm in the resource-rich, prosperous borderland of northern China to which the leadership in Beijing has grown accustomed.
Clashes that left two Mongols dead earlier this month triggered protests in several cities and towns last week that have become the largest demonstrations in the Inner Mongolia region in 20 years.
The government has responded with a broad clampdown, pouring police into the streets, disrupting internet services and confining school and university students to campus.
China's leaders have long battled ethnic unrest by Tibetans and Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang, but have seen Inner Mongolia as a model, its economy booming and its people integrated into the mainstream.
Yesterday, president Hu Jintao gathered the Communist Party's powerful Politburo to discuss reducing social tensions and promoting fairness.
The stress on economic success that made Chinese leaders complacent and many Mongols satisfied - and a lack of interest in pushing minority rights - is fuelling the problem.
Yang Jianxin, an expert on ethnic relations at Lanzhou University in western China, said: "It should not happen that we only focus on the economic development, but care less about the interests of the minority people."
A mining boom has enriched some but pushed further to the margins an already dwindling number of herders - their lives roaming the grasslands with their herds of cattle, goats and sheep lies at the core of Mongol identity. Meanwhile, a new generation is coming of age wired to the internet in a time of relative affluence and are questioning what it means to be Mongol.
Inner Mongolia, with its grasslands and deserts, separates China from the independent country of Mongolia. For decades members of China's Han majority trickled into Inner Mongolia, often fleeing famine and poverty. The flow increased after the founding of the communist state in 1949, and has turned into a flood recently on the back of a boom in mining, especially coal.
Now Mongols make up less than 20 per cent of the region's population and many speak little or no Mongolian as a result of being educated in Chinese.
Unlike Tibet and Xinjiang, which have exploded in violent anti-government protests in recent years, Inner Mongolia had been generally quiet.
That is partly due to the perception among Mongols that they were better off under Chinese rule than their ethnic brethren in impoverished Mongolia. But more ethnic Mongols now seem to be questioning the system under which they live,
Inner Mongolians who have sought to organise politically have been ruthlessly suppressed.
One of the region's best-known ethnic nationalists, Hada, has just completed a 15-year prison sentence for spying and separatism but remains detained in an undisclosed location.
Government policies in some cases meant to help have further alienated many Mongolians. Limits on the size of herds intended to preserve grazing land are deeply unpopular because they reduce rural incomes; meanwhile, mining concessions are given to Chinese.
The flashpoints for the latest unrest are mining-related. On 10 May, herders angry at coal hauliers for driving over their grazing lands blocked a road. A truck driver struck and killed a herder. A few days later, a group of Mongols went to a mine to complain and got into a fight in which a Chinese miner rammed a forklift into one a Mongol, killing him.
At yesterday's meeting, the Politburo said easing social tensions and promoting fairness is critical. "Solving these problems is both urgent and demands long-term effort," it said.
Clashes that left two Mongols dead earlier this month triggered protests in several cities and towns last week that have become the largest demonstrations in the Inner Mongolia region in 20 years.
The government has responded with a broad clampdown, pouring police into the streets, disrupting internet services and confining school and university students to campus.
China's leaders have long battled ethnic unrest by Tibetans and Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang, but have seen Inner Mongolia as a model, its economy booming and its people integrated into the mainstream.
Yesterday, president Hu Jintao gathered the Communist Party's powerful Politburo to discuss reducing social tensions and promoting fairness.
The stress on economic success that made Chinese leaders complacent and many Mongols satisfied - and a lack of interest in pushing minority rights - is fuelling the problem.
Yang Jianxin, an expert on ethnic relations at Lanzhou University in western China, said: "It should not happen that we only focus on the economic development, but care less about the interests of the minority people."
A mining boom has enriched some but pushed further to the margins an already dwindling number of herders - their lives roaming the grasslands with their herds of cattle, goats and sheep lies at the core of Mongol identity. Meanwhile, a new generation is coming of age wired to the internet in a time of relative affluence and are questioning what it means to be Mongol.
Inner Mongolia, with its grasslands and deserts, separates China from the independent country of Mongolia. For decades members of China's Han majority trickled into Inner Mongolia, often fleeing famine and poverty. The flow increased after the founding of the communist state in 1949, and has turned into a flood recently on the back of a boom in mining, especially coal.
Now Mongols make up less than 20 per cent of the region's population and many speak little or no Mongolian as a result of being educated in Chinese.
Unlike Tibet and Xinjiang, which have exploded in violent anti-government protests in recent years, Inner Mongolia had been generally quiet.
That is partly due to the perception among Mongols that they were better off under Chinese rule than their ethnic brethren in impoverished Mongolia. But more ethnic Mongols now seem to be questioning the system under which they live,
Inner Mongolians who have sought to organise politically have been ruthlessly suppressed.
One of the region's best-known ethnic nationalists, Hada, has just completed a 15-year prison sentence for spying and separatism but remains detained in an undisclosed location.
Government policies in some cases meant to help have further alienated many Mongolians. Limits on the size of herds intended to preserve grazing land are deeply unpopular because they reduce rural incomes; meanwhile, mining concessions are given to Chinese.
The flashpoints for the latest unrest are mining-related. On 10 May, herders angry at coal hauliers for driving over their grazing lands blocked a road. A truck driver struck and killed a herder. A few days later, a group of Mongols went to a mine to complain and got into a fight in which a Chinese miner rammed a forklift into one a Mongol, killing him.
At yesterday's meeting, the Politburo said easing social tensions and promoting fairness is critical. "Solving these problems is both urgent and demands long-term effort," it said.
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