Posted April 20, 2008

As the world’s attention turns to Buddhist protests against Chinese rule and cultural domination in Tibet, another neighbor of China is protesting in a less peaceful manner. In Mongolia, anti-Chinese sentiment has taken a nasty turn. The ultra-nationalist group Blue Mongolia, for example, shaves the heads of women caught sleeping with Chinese men. “It is for their own good,” says Gansuren Damdinsuren, a Blue Mongolia board member.  “A small nation can only survive by keeping its blood pure.”

Mr. Gansuren claims Blue Mongolia has more than 2,000 members, not a small number in a nation of just 2.8 million. Even more alarming, Mr. Gansuren says his group is not adverse to violence. In an interview last summer, he told me his organization is training a fighting force for close combat, and that the group has access to weapons.

Indeed, Blue Mongolia has made public appeals to raise funds for nationalist “training courses.” Their aim is to reclaim the vanished Mongolian cultural heritage; "One Nation” is the group's rallying cry. When I met with Mr. Gansuren, Blue Mongolia’s leader, Khonkhereediin B. Enkhbat, was standing trial for the murder of his 17-year-old-daughter’s boyfriend. Sources say his motive was that the boy had been studying in China.

You don’t have to look hard to find Chinese victims of racism in the capital city of Ulan Bator. Rendo, a taxi driver tells of how he was stopped and beaten by a small mob the day before. The only reason was that he had taken two Chinese businessmen as customers. A Chinese restaurant owner, Ma, who runs a local eatery, testifies to how a mob vandalized his establishment and plundered the belongings of the Chinese customers. “The police don’t care,” he says. “It is all politically controlled. On TV they are allowed to whip-up hatred and talk about killing Chinese.”

Mongolia gained independence from the Chinese in 1921 after a revolution by the Mongolian People's Party and in 1924 adopted the name the Mongolian People's Republic. But it quickly became a satellite state of the new Soviet Union—the Buddhist monks were shot or sent to prison camps in Siberia; the monasteries were torn down and the clan system, which had dominated society, was crushed so efficiently that by the time people were allowed to use their family names again many had forgotten which name was theirs. The Mongolian script has been replaced by Cyrillic. With the Soviets came vodka and cultural dislocation. “Before communism there was no prostitution, no prisons or corruption; we want to revive the old Mongolia,” says Mr. Gansuren.

China is Mongolia’s largest trading partner and the driving force behind an impressive economic growth rate of over 8%. At the same time, Mongolians worry they are being ethnically and economically colonized by their gigantic neighbor. The fear is that they will become “Sino-fied”—the fate of their brethren in Inner Mongolia, which is now a Chinese province where the locals can hardly speak Mongolian.

There is also resentment against what is seen as bullying from the Chinese government. The Mongolians are Buddhists in the same strain as the Tibetans and the Dalai Lama has visited the country, which has caused anger in Beijing. Despite the fact that unemployment is rife, there are now 15,000 Chinese working legally in the country and several thousand more working illegally. Many employers prefer to hire Chinese, who cost less and are believed to work harder.

The Chinese government has not issued an official protest against Blue Mongolia or their activities. The organization could be dismissed as an “extremist bunch of good-for-nothings playing Nazi,” as Boldkhuyag Luvsanvandan, one of Mongolia’s leading industrialists, describes them. Still, the rise of a nationalist group founded on anti-Chinese sentiment does not bode well for the health of Mongolian society.

Mr. Wong is a Swedish correspondent based in Shanghai.