Ethnic protests have spread across China's northern Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in the past week, and local security forces and People's Armed Police have been deployed to contain them. The protests currently are limited to Inner Mongolia, but handling the matter has been a challenge for local authorities.
The protests began May 23 in response to the deaths of two ethnic Mongolian herders during disputes with coal workers, mostly Han Chinese; the herders say mining in the region has hurt their livelihood. The first death was reported May 10 in Xiwu Banner, located in Xilin Gol Meng, when a man named Mergen was struck and killed by a coal truck after he and a group of herders attempted to block the trucks from driving on grassland. The second was May 15 during a clash between herders and coal workers. Herders reportedly began demonstrating outside the Xiwu Banner government offices May 23, accusing the government of protecting the ethnic Han Chinese driver who killed Mergen, according to the Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center, a New York-based advocacy group for Inner Mongolians. The human rights center claims hundreds protested, but videos posted on its website show only about 100. Reporting from such remote areas of China is difficult to find, so the advocacy group's reports have not been corroborated. Two thousand students from three high schools reportedly joined the protest May 25, marching to the Xilin Gol Meng government building in the city of Xilinhot to petition for a better handling of the case. A screenshot of a chat room post written in Mongolian on the human rights center's website calls for further protests May 30 in the region's capital, Hohhot. Security forces, including the
People's Armed Police, reportedly began clashing with protesters May 23 in the area of Mergen's death. This security response intensified May 27, with police deployments south of Xiwu Banner in Zheng Lan Banner. According to reports, bus lines have been halted and students are being forced to stay in class to prevent them from joining protests. Simultaneously, local governments and the state press have attempted to calm the situation by pledging to improve law enforcement and industry regulation and ensure safe exploitation of coal resources. According to the human rights center, the local government said it would permit continued reporting of incidents between Han coal miners and Mongolian herders rather than censor it, though this is somewhat dubious. The government also announced that it had arrested the men who allegedly struck the herders, named Li Lindong and Lu Xiangdong, accusing them of drunk driving and promising a fast trial.
Rising Ethnic Tensions
Ethnic Mongolians have increasingly engaged in small skirmishes with Han workers. While mining development in the resource-rich region has recently increased, most Mongolians' livelihoods remain largely based on grassland herding. Mongolians blame the Han workers for these resource extraction efforts, which have had little benefit to the indigenous population. The unrest currently is limited to ethnic Mongolians, but if it persists, it could raise questions about the state's ability to maintain stability among other ethnic communities. Indeed, ethnic tensions have grown in ethnic minority areas across China in the past few years as a result of a rapid influx of ethnic Han — referred to as Hanization — and economic development, exemplified in the
March 2008 Tibet riots,
July 2009 Xinjiang riots and numerous smaller incidents. Protests among ethnic Mongolians were rare, however, in part due to the Mongolians' assimilation into Han culture because of their historical connection to the Han that began the Yuan Dynasty. Nevertheless, resentment has grown among ethnic Mongolians amid the rapid pace of economic and social change, especially with Han companies accelerating resource exploitation projects across the region. There also have recently been
conflicts over resources, potentially ethnic in origin.
Political Implications
Beijing will likely be able to contain the current bout of unrest. The accelerated Hanization process that began in the 1960s has meant that Mongolians make up a minority even in the ethnically oriented Inner Mongolia, and these Mongolians are internally divided in terms of their relative levels of assimilation to broader Han culture. Unlike other minority groups such as the Tibetans, they are not united by a single religion, there is no clear leadership to organize a protest movement and they have little international support. Still, the fact that the unrest has occurred in different locations and is spreading calls attention to difficulties for Beijing, especially if it indicates broader dissatisfaction among the country's other minorities and a failure of ethnic management policies. The timing is highly sensitive for China, coming amid
growing economic problems and social instability. As such, the Inner Mongolian government's handling of the incident will be crucial. There also are national political implications to the unrest: Inner Mongolia's new Party secretary, Hu Chunhua, is a rising star in
China's sixth-generation leadership. He is widely perceived as a close ally to President Hu Jintao through their shared background in the Communist Youth League of China and is being considered as a possible presidential successor for the
generational transition set to take place in 2022. After a stint as governor of Hebei province, he was transferred to Inner Mongolia, likely in part to rehabilitate his career in a relatively calm region after
Hebei's tainted milk scandal. A decisive handling of ethnic troubles in Inner Mongolia could heighten Hu's reputation in the same manner as Hu Jintao's performance as Party secretary in Tibet in the late 1980s, but a failure to contain the problem could mar his chances of promotion.
