Mongolia? Who? What? Where?

Here's some background on this quiet and forgotten country (which I hope to visit sometime). BTW, they use cyrillic alphabet ;-)

http://www.birminghammail.net/lifes...97319-21263799/

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GENGHIS Khan made them the cradle of his empire and even today Mongolian horsemen ride across the great plains of Asia. The vast wilderness of the Gobi desert is one of the most remote places on earth. In a land where annual temperatures range from -40 to +40C and the territory varies from desert to ice-capped 12,000ft mountains living conditions are amongst the harshest on the planet. With a population of around 2.6 million living in a country about three times the size of France, Mongolia is the most sparsely populated independent country in the world. Strategically placed to the south of Russia and next to China, Mongolia gained its independence with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990. The transition from communism to a free market economy was abrupt and although Mongolia has significant mineral wealth it has yet to be exploited. The problems of such rapid social change have been compounded by severe winters which wiped out much of the nomads' livestock forcing thousands of herdsmen to give up their centuries' old way of life and move into Ulan Bator. Vast ger camps and shanty dwellings have grown up around the city and most have no clean water or electricity.

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Mongolia, from a business perspective:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/93b42a1c-...0077b07658.html

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Mongolia builds its trading presence By Kate Burgess in London Published: July 4 2008 03:00 | Last updated: July 4 2008 03:00 For three days last month a delegation from the Mongolian Stock Exchange - one of the world's smallest - was holed up in one of Seoul's top hotels. More than 400 international investors at a conference on corporate governance were debating orderly stock markets, globalisation, state-owned enterprises and sovereign wealth funds, corporate governance and shareholders' relationship with the companies they own. By the last session in the stuffy, badly-lit conference hall, few delegates looked more as if they would rather be riding out across a wide-open space than Rentsen Sodkhuu, the moustachioed chief executive of Mongolia's exchange and a former chairman of the Mongolian parliament. But he listened attentively to Gerelma Sodkhuu, one of his colleagues. The Mongolian delegation was anxious, she explained, to glean what they can from more developed markets about how to make Mongolia a wellfunctioning and attractive market place for international investors. The Mongolian group is one of several invited and sponsored by the Korea Stock Exchange (KRX), which itself is keen to build up strategic alliances with fledgling exchanges from Laos to Cambodia. Mongolia signed a memorandum of understanding with KRX last year on technology and software reform. It has also signed a memorandum of understanding with Singapore's exchanges, "to foster a closer relationship", and with the Hong Kong exchange. For Mongolia, which is about four times the size of France and sandwiched between China and Russia, the need to build overseas alliances to aid the exchange's development is becoming urgent. The $8bn economy (on a purchasing power parity basis) ranks among the world's poorer nations. But it has colossal mining resources and has been a big beneficiary of China's growth and the commodities boom. In 2007 Mongolia's economy grew 10 per cent. Mongolia's markets are set to expand in the next few years, say observers. They reckon that if just a few of the many projects recently set up to extract the country's resources work out, the Mongolian economy could treble within a decade. The result is a stream of interested companies and investors into Mongolia from China and Russia and further abroad. Ms Sodkhuu says trading by foreign owners has increased six or sevenfold in the past two years - all betting on the republic's resources in gold, copper and oil. Some Mongolian companies have sought listings overseas. Last month, Petro Matad, an oil exploration company with a Mongolian-Australian management team, listed on London's Alternative Investment Market - the first Mongolian company to do so. Its market cap was about £35m ($69m). But there are close to 400 Mongolian companies listed back in Ulan Bator, the capital. More than a fifth are involved in mining, including Baranuur, Mongolia's second-biggest company and one of the world's top producers of anthracite. The remaining companies are largely in construction and transport. All of which presents a steep learning curve for the directors of the exchange. Mongolia established the stock exchange in 1991 after sloughing off Russian influence. By 1994 it had privatised 476 companies, handing the shares out in the form of vouchers to all Mongolians. The population is now close to 3m, of whom about half still live in gers (tents) and are largely nomadic and pastoral. The idea was that all Mongolian people would have shares in the country's wealth which they could trade. At first, the MSE was only open for trading for two hours, one day a week. Now it is open from Monday to Friday for one hour a day from 11am to midday, with investors using the internet to lodge their orders. But the chief executive is anxious to put in place more of the checks and balances and shareholder protections for local and overseas investors that older exchanges have developed over centuries. Ms Sodkhuu explains that few of the beneficiaries of privatisation in the early 1990s "understood the meaning of shares" or capital markets and many sold out or gave their shares away. Over the years, share ownership has become concentrated in the hands of a few investors. "There is now 90 per cent concentration," says Ms Sodkhuu. She does not speak of the increasing hold that Russian companies and investors have on key resources but it is clear that the exchange is keen to build out its international investor base.

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That's interesting, especially after the Maoists in Nepal regained power.

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Originally posted by Magnetonium [COLOR=FF7F50] This looks waaaaay too familiar. First, it was Ukraine and its Orange Revolution, via street protests, to bring pro-American government. Then the Georgian Tulip Revolution, which via street protests brought pro-American Saakashvilli. Then the Kyrgystan. Now Mongolia staved off an armed revolution .... Democratic Party of Mongolia attempted using force to seize control from the communists who won the elections, resulting in many injuries, some deaths, and lots of damage. Democratic protests rule!

While i think that all countries have the right to their own autonomy, i find it sad that america needs a vested interest in the place to actually fund grass roots democratic movements. Case in point: Azerbaijan is an oil rich nation with a brutal dictator who is raping the oil rich country to the benefit of the upper class elite while the poor people starve. These impoverished people are trying to foment a movement for democratic change and have gotten close but have been brutally repressed every time. They would be successful if they had US funding like other Colour Revolutions but the authoritarian Azerbaijani government is friendly to the US and sells a lot of its oil to america so that will never happen :/

Well, Magnitorium, it doesn't seem to be anything like the Orange Revolution in Ukraine... and not even the foreign press supports these riots, as far as I have seen:

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With deep rural roots, a strong leadership and an 87-year history, the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party is the most powerful political force in this country. But as of Wednesday, it was homeless. The bulky, Communist-era headquarters of the MPRP was gutted by fire on Tuesday after a day of heavy rioting in the capital. Hour by hour, floor by floor, the flames climbed up into the building until there was nothing left to burn. The incident started in the early afternoon when the Democratic Party, angered at apparently losing an election over the weekend, marched on the MPRP building. Protesters overwhelmed a security force at the building and began smashing windows and destroying property. Police in riot gear could do little to quell the violence. Tear gas and rubber bullets only temporarily dispersed the crowds before they returned in large numbers. Melee The protesters set the building on fire and then looted an alcohol shop on the first floor. Bottles of vodka were drunk and then used as weapons against the police. The riot soon spread to the nearby Cultural Palace, home to a museum and theatre. The museum was looted and the building torched. "This has been building for a long time. People are fed up with this party," said Dorjiin Khurelbaatar, a government worker who was on the streets. "When people are pushed, they will push back. Now we see the result." As the MPRP building burned, another group set on a police station in a failed attempt to steal weapons. The melee left five dead. Over 300 people were injured, a third of them police. Several news channels aired the violence live on television. Many families sat at home watching in horror as their normally peaceful city was consumed by chaos. Camera crews filmed shots being fired, a fire engine being attacked with bricks and people being beaten in the streets. By 0300, the police had regained control of the city and were hauling rioters away in police vans. More than 700 were arrested. Growing gap While demonstrations are common practice in Mongolia, this level of violence is unknown. With just 2.6 million people, Mongolia is a small and largely homogenous country where everyone seems to know each other. But in recent years the gap between rich and poor has grown. While the new rich - made wealthy, in part, by the recent exploitation of the vast landscape for mineral wealth - drive expensive SUVs and dine in swanky foreign-owned restaurants, a third of the population struggles to survive on $2 a day. Politicians and their business associates are assumed by many to be corrupt. It seemed only a matter of time before the frustrations of the disenfranchised boiled over. As for the accusations of vote rigging, such claims are nothing new in Mongolia. Complaints are lodged after every election, with fingers pointed at both parties. International observers have called last weekend's vote "mostly fair" and it appears that the results will stick. Little difference The two major political players have rarely found common ground. The MPRP is the former communist party that ruled Mongolia from 1921 to 1996. The Democrats are the young upstarts whose 1990 peaceful protests ushered in multi-party elections and a free market economy. Control of the government has frequently changed hands as Mongolia's fickle electorate usually side with the opposition. But, in fact, ideological differences between the two parties are few. The MPRP is a little left of centre, while the Democrats veer slightly to the right. Both welcome foreign investment and have worked hard to lure Western mining companies into the country. "The parties are the same," said Oidov Sanjaa, while surveying damage on the morning after the riots. "So doing the election over won't matter. The MPRP won and should do their job so the rest of us can get on with our lives."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/as...fic/7485473.stm

The problem here appears to be merely economical, not political.

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Originally posted by Magnetonium Here's some background on this quiet and forgotten country (which I hope to visit sometime). BTW, they use a slightly hacked version of the cyrillic alphabet ;-)

Fixed

By the way, they only use the Cyrillic alphabet because the pro-Soviet government banned the classical script, which had been used for 700 years before the arrival of Communism. Personally, I find the "Cyrillification" of Mongolian as confusing as the Romanisation of languages such as Chinese or Korean, because the consonants work in a quite different way in these languages (when compared to most European languages, that is).

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Originally posted by Lira Well, Magnitorium, it doesn't seem to be anything like the Orange Revolution in Ukraine... and not even the foreign press supports these riots, as far as I have seen: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/as...fic/7485473.stm

Well, duh, politics since 1990 have shown that the Mongolian communists have more to offer to foreigners than other parties. Greater stability. And thats why the riots took place in Ulan-Baator: some people weren't happy with the communist plans to deal with the country's natural resources. That was a big elections platform agenda for all the participating parties.

Besides, I doubt that anyone in the West with high moral values would be supporting the truly horrendous appproach by the anti-communists, who attacked the communists' headquarters and torched the building, and caused pther serious damage and destruction, injuries to hundreds of police officers before force had to be utilized which resulted in some deaths. Even the overthrowing of Milosevic wasnt as violent and deadly as this, and that was understandable because of elections being rigged.

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The problem here appears to be merely economical, not political.

Indeed. One big fight over how to handle the untapped natural resources of the massive country.

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By the way, they only use the Cyrillic alphabet because the pro-Soviet government banned the classical script, which had been used for 700 years before the arrival of Communism. Personally, I find the "Cyrillification" of Mongolian as confusing as the Romanisation of languages such as Chinese or Korean, because the consonants work in a quite different way in these languages (when compared to most European languages, that is).

Communists were just evil. What they did with Mongolian culture and language was truly despicable. I gotta give credit to the Soviets/communists for giving Mongolia independence and its own country when driving out the Chinese in 1920s, but what followed next was the same dam crap that communists imposed on everyone else. Even my fellow Cossack peoples suffered big time. The damage is so severe, it might never be reversed completely again.

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Whenever you go and buy something, you are affecting someone somewhere, be it environment, a person, or a community - you're making a statement with what you buy. So make it a smart choice ... Its a big picture

Interesting!

Off-topic but one of the places I want to visit before I die is Ulan Bator and the steppe. Can't wait for the movie.

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Originally posted by DJ Shibby Interesting! Off-topic but one of the places I want to visit before I die is Ulan Bator and the steppe. Can't wait for the movie.

Wait your turn! I am going to visit Mongolia first ... its a truly beautiful and relatively environmentally sound country. It figures - only 2.6 million people living in an area 5 times the size of California state.

___________________
Whenever you go and buy something, you are affecting someone somewhere, be it environment, a person, or a community - you're making a statement with what you buy. So make it a smart choice ... Its a big picture