China Cracks Down On Causes Of Unrest In Inner Mongolia
After a week of protests by the normally quiet Mongolian people of China’s Inner Mongolia Region, the Chinese Government has announced a crackdown on the lucrative coal mining industry.
Like the Tibetans and the Uyghur people of Xinjiang the Mongolians are an ethnic minority group in China but unlike the former they have been very compliant to date with the policies of the central government.
However it is obvious a cup can only hold so much water.
The Tibetans, the Uyghurs and the Mongolians have seen, since the Communist Party took power, a complete change in their lifestyles, their freedoms and their natural environment.
Given their geographical position on China’s borders these regions are of immense strategic importance. As well, they are very rich in natural resources particularly energy that China is desperate for.
This has resulted in a virtual flood of Han Chinese into the areas weakening the respective cultures considerably and ravishing the land that they regard as being their ancestral home.
In the case of the Mongolians they have seen the lucrative mining industry rip out the wealth of their homeland with little commensurate compensation. They have witnessed the destruction of their vast grazing lands. They have, like the Tibetans and the Uyghurs, become strangers in their own land.
The death of the herdsman that started the Mongolian’s protests was just the straw that broke the camel’s back.
The problems run far deeper and the Chinese Government, with the announcement of this crackdown, realise that.
If this “Crackdown” will appease the Mongolians, other than in the short term, I fear not.
No comments:
Post a Comment