Sino-Mongolian relations to be bolstered by mutual visits
- By Bu Yongguang
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E-mail China.org.cn, August 21, 2014
Chinese President Xi Jinping is paying a two-day state visit to Mongolia from Aug. 21 to Aug. 22 at the invitation of Mongolian President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj.
Calling the high-ranking official diplomatic visit "a visit of relatives," a spokesman from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs pointed out that, "It has been increasingly frequent for leaders from both China and Mongolia to exchange visits, which has laid a solid foundation for the friendship between the two countries."
However, it has been 11 years since the last state visit paid to Mongolia by former Chinese president Hu Jintao. The visit of President Xi, who said good diplomacy depends on frequent visits and exchanges, is therefore particularly important.
Mongolia's importance in Asia has always been underestimated because of its neighboring countries. In Northeast Asia, the complicated trilateral relations and trade ties among China, Japan and South Korea dominate the region, behind which the interests of the United States and Russia exert huge influence. Meanwhile, the special internal politics of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) also hog much of the region's limelight.
In the southeast, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is becoming a political body with an increasingly important role in world affairs through their talks and cooperation with China, South Korea and Japan (ASEAN plus three), the East Asia Summit (EAS) and the Free Trade Zone; but Mongolia remains out of ASEAN's reach.
Mongolia also has yet to become a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
With a population of less than 3 million, smaller than many medium-level cities in China, Mongolia can hardly be regarded as a big country which attains considerable attention in the international political field.
But it would be a strategic blunder to neglect Mongolia in view of the historical and geopolitical perspectives of its neighbor country, China. Mongolia's 1.6 million-square-kilometer territory is larger than Britain, France, Germany and Italy combined. And although it is a young country, Mongolia has a great impact on China's national security because of its role as intermediary in relations between China and Russia.
Mongolia was among the few countries to establish diplomatic ties with the People's Republic of China (PRC) at the country's founding in 1949. But relations between China and Mongolia have gone through ups and downs because of Mongolia's affiliation with the former Soviet Union.
Over more than 60 years, the relationship between China and Mongolia has gone from friendship to animosity, from improvement to overall development. Finally, in 2011, the two countries established a strategic partnership which brought bilateral relations into a golden period.
During the confrontation between China and the former Soviet Union, the latter stationed millions of troops at the China-Mongolia border, seriously threatening China's national security. This historical lesson demonstrates Mongolia's significance to China through a negative example.
Today, bilateral relations between China and Russia are at their best. Under such crucial preconditions, President Xi has seen fit to visit Mongolia to enhance bilateral ties.
The participation of Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Shanghai Summit Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) in May of this year ushered in a golden era of China-Russia relations. During the summit, China and Russia signed more than 30 pacts, probably the highest number on record for a state visit by a Russian president.
Among the pacts, the natural gas cooperation agreement has been most frequently highlighted. But the two countries still need to work out a route for the construction of the necessary pipeline, a key factor in the project. Mongolia, which expects to play a part in the natural gas project, is an ideal location for this pipeline. However, the route across Mongolia still presents obstacles, partly because of the complicated historical relations among the three countries and partly because of the countries' competing agendas.
The pipe issue is on the agenda which Xi is expected to put on the negotiating table during his visit to Mongolia. If an agreement can be reached on this front, the subsequent increase in the countries' inter-reliance will raise bilateral relations to a new height.
China is also Mongolia's largest trade partner. Cooperation to use coal to produce gas between the two countries has netted profits that are triple the entire Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Mongolia. Xi's visit is therefore widely expected to enhance Mongolian economic and trade cooperation.
Because of the disappointing performance of its national economy, the Mongolian government hopes Xi's visit can help fulfill officials' commitment to achieving leap-frogging development.
The fact that the 5,000-kilometer-long border between China and Mongolia is longer than China's shared border with any other neighboring country shows Mongolia's importance to China's national and border security. This state visit is also a historic opportunity for the two countries to elevate their relations in view of geopolitical concerns.
In spite of the low proportion of Mongolia's contribution to China's overall levels of foreign trade, the significance of the cooperation between the two countries on strategic concerns far exceeds the importance of economic factors.
Xi's visit to Mongolia is certainly geo-economically important in light of China's complicated economic situation, but geopolitical strategy exerts an even greater influence over relations between the two countries. China and Mongolia should enhance their partnership and friendship to prevent historical hostility from happening again.
The writer is a Ph.D. who is now working in the Teaching and Research Department of Politics of the Party School of the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee.
The article was translated by Wu Jin. Its original version was published in Chinese.
Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.
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