![\"mgla1\"](\"http:\/\/media.chinaworker.info\/2013\/09\/mgla1.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nThe Beijing-based Global Times, a government mouthpiece, encapsulated the \u2018carrot and stick\u2019 approach of the authorities, saying the protests were economic rather than political and that some \u2013 it did not specify \u2013 of the protesters\u2019 demands were \u201creasonable, and should be responded to by the local government\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mongols make up around 4 million of the region\u2019s 20 million population, with a further 2 million Mongols in the independent state of Mongolia across the border.<\/p>\n
The government\u2019s ability to deliver on its promises will now be put to the test. Socialists place no trust in the Chinese dictatorship on this score, or the crocodile tears of journals like Global Times. Past experience shows that notwithstanding the regime\u2019s desire to avoid social conflict, the pull of moneyed interests that criss-cross the party-state\u2019s own internal structures is what determines developments, especially at local level, once an immediate \u2018crisis\u2019 has be defused. In Inner Mongolia the problem is the uncontrolled and rapacious appetite of the coal companies (over 350 companies in total) in what is now the biggest coal-producing region in the world\u2019s biggest coal market.<\/p>\n
Any notion that \u2018Little Hu\u2019 and his party faction represent a less repressive line is dispelled by the massive show of force used to back up the Inner Mongolian government\u2019s \u2018listening\u2019 approach. Thousands of paramilitary police and even regular troops have been deployed on the streets of major cities and students have been forcibly confined to campuses \u2013 effectively imprisoned in school buildings for the duration of the crisis. Social media and micro-blogging services have been unplugged. Therefore it\u2019s a case of \u2018small carrot and big stick\u2019 as far as the regime\u2019s \u2018social management\u2019 is concerned.<\/p>\n
Despite the repression, there were reports of smaller isolated protests at one or two universities and even an attempt to march in the provincial capital Hohhot last Tuesday \u2013 although martial law was already in force. Such defiance is an ominous sign for the one-party dictatorship \u2013 this vast \u2018autonomous\u2019 region (bigger than France, Spain and Portugal combined) has not seen political instability for three decades.<\/p>\n Daring protests<\/b><\/p>\n Considering the dangers inherent in openly challenging the Chinese state, in the midst of its most severe crackdown for 20 years, the audacity and organisational flair of the ethnic Mongolian youth has been impressive. The first street demonstrations took place on May 23 in the city of Xilinhot, subsequently spreading to at least six other cities including the provincial capital Hohhot, with thousands of middle and high school students, students at vocational colleges and universities joining the movement. A local government official admitted facing a \u201cvery large challenge\u201d from the protests, while adding the government would not be \u201ctossed about.\u201d<\/p>\n The trigger for these protests was the killing on May 10 of an ethnic Mongolian herdsman, Mergen, who also seems to have been a leading figure in a group opposing the encroachment of coal mining companies onto traditional pastoral lands. His brutal killing, widely believed to have been deliberate and even racist inspired, under the wheels of a coal truck (his body was dragged for 150 meters), became a symbol of the struggle between the new lords of Inner Mongolia \u2013 the mining interests \u2013 and the traditional nomadic way of life on the Mongolian steppes. The furious expansion of open cast mines is destroying grazing lands and livestock and wiping out the possibilities of ethnic Mongolian farmers to survive economically. May is the lambing season and the thunderous intrusion of the coal trucks across pastoral land can cause sheep to miscarry, with economic losses to herders. Mongolian herder shave banded together in an attempt to stop the coal convoys. Five days after the first killing, a second herdsman was killed in a clash with mining employees.<\/p>\n This became the spark for street demonstrations by herders that were swiftly joined by ethnic Mongolian students and school students. The main slogans of this movement were \u201cdefend our land and defend our rights\u201d. Students and other protesters were angered by official attempts to buy the silence of Mergen\u2019s relatives by offering compensation in exchange for an undertaking not to \u2018make trouble\u2019. This practise \u2013 bribe and threaten \u2013 is set piece for the Public Security Bureau in such situations. Another reported demand of the movement has been for a monument to be built to Mergen, now revered as a martyr.<\/p>\n The Chinese state is always anxious to keep a lid on protests, but this is especially the case in the run up to the sensitive June 4 anniversary (of the 1989 Beijing massacre). On Monday May 30 the ruling Politburo held a special meeting to discuss ways to strengthen \u2018social management\u2019. This year\u2019s budget for the public-security apparatus has reached the astounding sum of 624.4 billion yuan (US$95 billion), a jump of 13.8 percent over last year and more than China\u2019s total military spending of 601.1 billion yuan ($91.5 billion). The outbreak of large-scale youth protests in Inner Mongolia took the Chinese regime \u2013 and most commentators \u2013 by surprise. This is because Inner Mongolia has been held up as a \u201cmodel autonomous region\u201d, due to rapid coal-driven economic growth but also because according to Beijing it represents \u201cethnic harmony\u201d between Mongols and Han Chinese.<\/p>\n But the region suffers from an all-too familiar mixture of out-of-control industrial expansion, shocking environmental degradation, mass land seizures and economic policies that disadvantage ethnic minorities (as wealth is transferred from the poor to the rich, which favours capitalists and officials from the dominant ethnic group).<\/p>\n The province has undergone an unprecedented boom in recent years. Province-level GDP grew by 16.9 percent last year as Inner Mongolia overtook Shaanxi to become China\u2019s biggest coal producing region. But this represents a manic and unplanned industrial expansion that carries a gigantic environmental and social cost. The city at the centre of Inner Mongolia\u2019s coal boom, Ordos, is now wealthier than Beijing in terms of per capita GDP [a government survey published on June 6 shows Ordos has even overtaken Hong Kong in per capita GDP terms]. But it is also world famous for its \u2018ghost town\u2019 construction binge with tens of thousands of empty properties that have been bought up as \u2018investment objects\u2019 to cash in on the coal boom. The neighbouring city of Kambashi, for example, with enough newly-built homes to house 1 million people, is said to have only around 30,000 inhabitants \u2013 barely enough to fill the city\u2019s new stadium!<\/p>\n Meanwhile, ethnic Mongolians but also many Han Chinese farmers and workers feel a growing resentment as they are squeezed out by this development. China\u2019s coal addiction \u2013 it provides over 70 percent of the country\u2019s energy needs \u2013 is ruinous. Socialists advocate democratic planning which would make possible a massive and fairly rapid switch to clean energy. China has already become the world\u2019s major producer of wind power turbines and equipment from almost nothing five years ago. But China\u2019s already considerable wind power capacity is for the most part not connected to the electricity grid and therefore wasted. Likewise, an explosive expansion of solar cell production in recent years has failed to impact on China\u2019s unsustainable energy mode (it has actually worsened coal dependency as most solar cells are exported, leaving production areas in China with considerable levels of environmental waste and an even bigger coal bill).<\/p>\n The economy\u2019s lopsided reliance on coal, which has spawned the current frenzied \u2018Klondike\u2019 rush into Inner Mongolia and other coal regions, also demands a correspondingly huge and costly investment in other fields such as railways (one quarter of all trains in China carry coal), roads, bridges, etc. While some of these projects are warranted and bring positive benefits, many are wasteful and unnecessary if an alternative planned approach was adopted that put people\u2019s needs at the centre.<\/p>\n And the headlong rush by local governments to build more, bigger, faster, in order to attract investments (and the fat bribes that accompany them), raises major issues of quality and safety. Building supplies and construction companies cannot keep up with current demand, leading to substitution with inferior \u2018tofu\u2019 materials and the waiving of legal regulations. The \u2018lubricant\u2019 of unprecedented levels of corruption completes this picture of mayhem, presented as \u2018development\u2019. No wonder many youth, and even some regime-friendly intellectuals, speak of the \u2018tyranny of GDP\u2019.<\/p>\n A socialist government would focus on extensive, safe and \u2018green\u2019 public transport systems and social housing \u2013 for rent not purchase \u2013 in all cities. It would prioritise a reorganisation of the energy industry, based on democratic planning and control. It would scrap vanity projects and give local communities and workers\u2019 organisations a veto right over new projects where serious environmental concerns are raised.<\/p>\n Inner Mongolia suffers from some of the worst desertification of grasslands anywhere in the world, with the Gobi Desert expanding at a rate of 2.4 percent a year. This comes from a confluence of different factors, local and global, such as unsustainable farming methods, over grazing, under-invested and wasteful irrigation systems, deforestation, and not least climate change exacerbated by China\u2019s coal addiction. One of many environmental missteps has been the eradication of the region\u2019s wolves on the grounds of protecting livestock. This is a theme covered in the best-selling book Wolf Totem by Jiang Rong. The demise of the wolves has led to a proliferation of the rabbit population, which in turn has caused widespread destruction oflocal grasslands.<\/p>\n In recent years the provincial government began relocating more than 250,000 nomads from grasslands on the grounds this is necessary to protect the region\u2019s ecosystem. Inevitably, with a top-down undemocratic approach, this policy is unpopular with ethnic Mongolians who fear further marginalisation. Many herding families have been getting poorer and poorer and based on some calculations average per capita income for ethnic Mongols in Inner Mongolia has fallen below the equivalent measure in traditionally much poorer Mongolia. The protest movement in Inner Mongolia provides a valuable insight into how the youth in particular are facing up to the greater repression in China today. It was reported that the protesters organised themselves at the very last minute in an effort to outwit the authorities. Once a protest site was chosen, word was spread by mouth to gather in shops and other buildings nearby, before moving to the march site.<\/p>\n \u201cThey are being very, very secret about it, so that the authorities have no way to know,\u201d one commentator called Wang said. \u201cThey don\u2019t put it on the Internet until the people have pretty much arrived [at the protest site].\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey also change arrangements at the last minute,\u201d he said. \u201cThey will say, today we are going to the government buildings, then they will show up at the television station, and walk to the government buildings.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
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\nRapid growth \u2013 but who gains?<\/b><\/p>\n
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\nEnvironmental destruction \u2013 need for clean energy<\/b><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
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\nOrganising skills<\/b><\/p>\n