For Mongolia, China's too close for comfort
Associated Press
Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.![ext]()
Updated 11:12 p.m., Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Citing national security, the government ordered the rails be laid 1,520 millimeters apart, Mongolia's standard gauge inherited from the Soviets. EDITOR'S NOTE — This story is part of "China's Reach," a project tracking China's influence on its trading partners over three decades and exploring how that is changing business, politics and daily life. Mongolia's one other neighbor, Russia, remains important, supplying fuel and owning half a mammoth copper mine and half the national railway system, legacies of the 70 years Mongolia spent as a Soviet client state. The fledgling democratic government has contributed troops to U.N. peacekeeping missions in Sierra Leone and other countries, and to the American war in Iraq. When NBA star Dwight Howard appeared at an outdoor promotion for leading mobile phone operator Mobicom Corp. in Ulan Bator last November, the popular Mongolian rapper Gee warmed up the crowd with his hit "Hujaa"— a pejorative term for Chinese. The tens of thousands of Chinese workers drawn to Mongolia's mineral boom are rarely seen, living in fenced-off mining camps hidden in the vastness of the Gobi or behind high construction walls at building sites in the capital Ulan Bator. Trucks full of coking coal veer off a company-built paved road to the Chinese border to avoid potholes, crushing tufts of grasses herds of camel and goats feed on. Even in totalitarian, hermetic North Korea, Chinese road-building crews string banners of Chinese characters along the construction sites. Beyond sending troops to Iraq and Afghanistan and offering an air base after September 11 to court the U.S., Mongolia has drawn in Japan as a key investor, the European Union for guidance on development and even faraway NATO as a security partner. Amid the current China-fueled rush for resources, the strategy identifies Mongolia's mineral wealth as a security Achilles heel, citing the risk of "turning into a raw materials appendage to other countries." When the government-run Aluminum Corporation of China Ltd., known as Chalco, tried to take a controlling stake in a South Gobi coal mine near the Chinese border by buying shares from other foreign investors, parliament hurriedly passed a law this summer to stop it. By requiring Mongolia Mining, a private company listed in Hong Kong, to use a different railway gauge than China, the government is adding $2 to $4 in costs to every ton of coal, or about $120 million each year. The city, near where American explorer Roy Chapman Andrews made his much-heralded discovery of dinosaur eggs in the 1920s, is now Mongolia's richest because it's a staging ground for Tavan Tolgoi, a prized deposit estimated to hold 6.4 billion tons of coal, enough to meet Chinese demand for centuries. Like many across Mongolia, he knows that a state-owned mining company is selling China coal at below international market prices — a fact repeated endlessly on the country's independent but highly partisan TV stations. In the pre-boom days of 2002, Beijing blocked freight trains from entering China for two days when the Dalai Lama — the exiled Tibetan leader reviled by the communist government — came to preach to Mongolian Buddhists. EDITOR'S NOTE _ This story is part of "China's Reach," a project tracking China's influence on its trading partners over three decades and exploring how that is changing business, politics and daily life. Reported by SeattlePI.com 20 hours ago.
Associated Press
Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Updated 11:12 p.m., Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Citing national security, the government ordered the rails be laid 1,520 millimeters apart, Mongolia's standard gauge inherited from the Soviets. EDITOR'S NOTE — This story is part of "China's Reach," a project tracking China's influence on its trading partners over three decades and exploring how that is changing business, politics and daily life. Mongolia's one other neighbor, Russia, remains important, supplying fuel and owning half a mammoth copper mine and half the national railway system, legacies of the 70 years Mongolia spent as a Soviet client state. The fledgling democratic government has contributed troops to U.N. peacekeeping missions in Sierra Leone and other countries, and to the American war in Iraq. When NBA star Dwight Howard appeared at an outdoor promotion for leading mobile phone operator Mobicom Corp. in Ulan Bator last November, the popular Mongolian rapper Gee warmed up the crowd with his hit "Hujaa"— a pejorative term for Chinese. The tens of thousands of Chinese workers drawn to Mongolia's mineral boom are rarely seen, living in fenced-off mining camps hidden in the vastness of the Gobi or behind high construction walls at building sites in the capital Ulan Bator. Trucks full of coking coal veer off a company-built paved road to the Chinese border to avoid potholes, crushing tufts of grasses herds of camel and goats feed on. Even in totalitarian, hermetic North Korea, Chinese road-building crews string banners of Chinese characters along the construction sites. Beyond sending troops to Iraq and Afghanistan and offering an air base after September 11 to court the U.S., Mongolia has drawn in Japan as a key investor, the European Union for guidance on development and even faraway NATO as a security partner. Amid the current China-fueled rush for resources, the strategy identifies Mongolia's mineral wealth as a security Achilles heel, citing the risk of "turning into a raw materials appendage to other countries." When the government-run Aluminum Corporation of China Ltd., known as Chalco, tried to take a controlling stake in a South Gobi coal mine near the Chinese border by buying shares from other foreign investors, parliament hurriedly passed a law this summer to stop it. By requiring Mongolia Mining, a private company listed in Hong Kong, to use a different railway gauge than China, the government is adding $2 to $4 in costs to every ton of coal, or about $120 million each year. The city, near where American explorer Roy Chapman Andrews made his much-heralded discovery of dinosaur eggs in the 1920s, is now Mongolia's richest because it's a staging ground for Tavan Tolgoi, a prized deposit estimated to hold 6.4 billion tons of coal, enough to meet Chinese demand for centuries. Like many across Mongolia, he knows that a state-owned mining company is selling China coal at below international market prices — a fact repeated endlessly on the country's independent but highly partisan TV stations. In the pre-boom days of 2002, Beijing blocked freight trains from entering China for two days when the Dalai Lama — the exiled Tibetan leader reviled by the communist government — came to preach to Mongolian Buddhists. EDITOR'S NOTE _ This story is part of "China's Reach," a project tracking China's influence on its trading partners over three decades and exploring how that is changing business, politics and daily life. Reported by SeattlePI.com 20 hours ago.