Summary: From Ulaanbaatar to Ulaanbeijing

Summary:  From Ulaanbaatar to Ulaanbeijing

• As the scenario name makes clear, Mongolia is now a China-dominated society, at almost every level.  Chinese make up 40% of the population and 90% of the workforce on particular projects.  Chinese investment, state and private, financed most of Mongolia’s economic development and Chinese capital underpins most ventures.
• Chinese domination was achieved primarily by financing the infrastructure which changed Mongolia into a sedentary urban-based society in which over 85% of the people live in major regional cities strung across the “Millennium Road”.  All of these cities, including UB, owe their modern infrastructure to Chinese loans, technical assistance and direct construction, in the framework of a true socialist, and Chinese-developed, “five year plan”.  Chinese firms and investors receive preferential tax advantages.
• Mongolia became, like China, a one-party state; political and religious dissidence is not tolerated.  Political parties and independent media have been quashed. China has successfully pressured Mongolia to limit contact with the Dalai Lama. Many Mongolian intellectuals and artists have emigrated or are in de-facto “exile”.  Western nations, Japan and others have limited influence; Russia almost none.  Most Mongolians accept Chinese political and cultural domination as the price of relative prosperity and stability.
• Gochoo, Burma and the family live in Kharkhorin soum, where he was born.  They are non-nomadic “modern” herders.  Gochoo’s daughter is married to a Chinese manager, as are now well over half of all Mongolian brides. Gochoo’s elder son works for a Chinese car-rental company now established across Mongolia, and his younger son attends a joint Chinese-Mongolian veterinary college in UB.  All the children attended schools in which Chinese language was mandatory.
• Mongolia’s environment continues to degrade, in part from global factors (global warming), in part due to the pressures of a growing population and economy (water scarcity, air pollution) and in part due to poor practices and planning (overgrazing, mining effects).  Mongolia is enlisting Chinese help in addressing these.  Mongolia now has a major nuclear power plant and may soon be importing nuclear waste…