Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and especially over the last decade, China’s increasing economic clout and its resultant involvement in Mongolian affairs has intensified deep-rooted Mongolian animosity towards the Chinese. Socialist and post-socialist literature — Mongolian, Russian as well as Western — overwhelmingly describes historical relations between the two countries as antagonistic, typically emphasising a fundamental incompatibility between Mongolian pastoral and Chinese agricultural cultures. Yet these differences, depicted as an unbridgeable chasm, do not come into play in discussions of the Russo-Mongolian interface, even though Russians — like the Chinese — also are sedentary agriculturalists. Much is also made of Chinese merchants’ exploitative practices in pre-1921 Mongolia, but the role played by Russian traders at that time does not appear to have been much meeker (Baranov 1919: 4; Barkmann 1999: 181; Tang 1959: 346—48). Indeed, the oft-repeated claim that Mongols were exploited by the Chinese until independence is not wholly supported by historical evidence (Murphy 1966: 35). Sino-Mongolian relations over the twentieth century are multifaceted and complex but they remain undeniably coloured by decades-long Soviet propaganda (Bille, forthcoming).
Thus, if Mongolia’s autonomy was officially recognised by China in 1949, Mongols remain guarded about China’s long-term intentions. Many remain convinced that their southern neighbour has never really accepted Mongolian independence and that, sooner or later, it will try to re-appropriate it. From the early 1990s in particular, rumours pointing to Chinese malfeasance have pervaded the Mongolian social body. Since the Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s which brought China and the Soviet Union close to open warfare, the spectre of an aggressive, bellicose China has dominated Mongolian political imaginations. Under the constant menace of ‘Chinese imperialism’, Mongolia’s survival was routinely depicted, by both Russian and Mongolian officialdom, as heavily reliant on Russian support. Holding up the example of Inner Mongolia, official rhetoric presented Soviet Russian presence as the sole bulwark against ineluctable annihilation.
The disappearance of Russia as protector led to the emergence of a pervasive climate of insecurity and to the proliferation of rumours concerning China. The majority of these narratives focus on threats to bodily integrity, highlighting the intimate melding of the personal and the national. Perhaps the most salient and widely circulated of such threats concerns Chinese food, seen as the physical ingestion of otherness into the Mongolian body. Despite the sharp increase in the number of Chinese restaurants and the availability of novel food items, the Chinese provenance of some foodstuffs has proved anxiogenic for many Mongols. Over the course of my fieldwork in Ulaanbaatar in 2006—7, stories of dangerous Chinese foods abounded in the media. I was regularly warned by my Mongolian friends to steer clear of Chinese fruit and vegetables. They would say things like, ‘I have heard they are poisonous (hortoi), many people have died from eating them’. Ranging from concerns about the quality, provenance and storage of imported foods (Huu 2007; Oyuun 2007; Sarangerel 2007) to food served in (Chinese) restaurants (Amarjargal 2007; Batzorig 2007), these stories singled out Chinese produce as substandard, harmful and dangerous (Rossabi 2005). Unlike the misgivings concerning Chinese products which have also been circulating in Europe and America in recent years, these fears were not linked to unbridled capitalism and an attendant lack of good practices but were predicated on intent. ‘I have heard the Chinese produce poisonous food specifically for the Mongolian market’ explained my friend and research assistant, Otgonhuu. ‘They sell it cheap to Mongols in order to exterminate us’. While not every informant necessarily subscribed to these rumours, most preferred to avoid consuming Chinese food, just in case. These rumours have been supplemented by countless other ones, thereby weaving an extensive narrative fabric gaining authority with each additional story. Thus, rumours of Chinese men carrying syringes filled with blood containing the AIDS virus, or claims that street children are being kidnapped and spirited away to China for the organ trade fit into an overall narrative arc in which China consistently acts as nemesis.
Another rumour which plays a dominant role in Mongolian social and political life concerns reproduction. There is a widespread belief that the Chinese government has a specific policy encouraging and subsidising Chinese men to go to Mongolia and reproduce with Mongolian girls in order to sire Chinese babies and dilute the Mongolian gene pool (Bille 2008). To some extent these suspicions have emerged in response to the demographic changes that have unfolded in Inner Mongolia over the last decades. As mentioned above, in this ethnically Mongolian province of China, Mongols are now vastly outnumbered by Chinese. Interethnic marriages are also common, accelerating even further the cultural and linguistic absorption of Mongols to the Han Chinese majority in the region.
If the last two decades have seen a veritable explosion of anti-Chinese narratives, negative depictions of China’s alleged intentions were common fare during the late Soviet period as well, and Russian advisors and analysts were never hesitant about making explicit connections between China and Mongolian extinction. As an employee of the Russian embassy told me in an interview (8 August 2007), ‘we [Russians] often reminded Mongols that it was thanks to Russia that Mongolia was able to retain its independence. Without Russia, Mongolia would now certainly be part of China’. Russian official policy adhered to the doctrine of ‘the lesser evil’ (men’shee zlo), acknowledging that early Russian and Soviet involvement had not always been positive, but that, overall, it had been preferable to existing alternatives. The benevolent influence of Russia over Mongolia was also painted as having extended beyond the political realm into the corporeal. Soviet historiography consistently described pre-revolutionary Mongolia as a country that was dying out (Maiskii 1959: 80), where the ‘popular masses were condemned to hunger, epidemics, darkness, injustice and ultimately extinction’ (Udval 1975: 40) at the hands of the merciless Chinese. By contrast, Russian policies were directed at increasing Mongolian population through better medical services as well as financial and social incentives for multiple births.
The relentless inculcation of a sense of impending doom, barely avoided extinction and precarious survival undoubtedly goes a long way to explain the current climate of mistrust and anxiety concerning China. Occasionally, Mongolian narratives have also featured other ‘evil forces’ — during the Second World War, the actors portrayed as seeking to possess or destroy Mongolia were the Japanese; in recent years it has been al-Qaeda, allegedly as retribution for Mongolian involvement in Afghanistan — but overwhelmingly it is China that is the epitome of evil in the Mongolian social imaginary. Indeed, as Mongolian writer Erdembileg (2007) has pointed out, the figure of the Chinese in the Mongolian media is akin to that of the ogre in tales, employed to scare children into obedience. These political narratives have also fostered the sentiment that the Mongols, as an endangered group, are a rare resource requiring protection (Bulag 1998: 79). By extension, this has then led to claims by Mongolian nationalists that Mongolian ‘blood’ (tsus) is special or even unique.
The trope ofblood, so central to current Mongolian nationalist discourse, is in some ways a novel addition to the lexicon of identity and belonging. Blood has become particularly significant through the term erliiz, designating mixed-blood individuals, which gained prominence in the late and post-socialist period. The term itself has an old genealogy and has long been used to denote hybridity between two different types or ‘races’ of animals. It was also in currency in the prerevolutionary period, that is, prior to 1924, to refer to ethnically mixed individuals, but the label then was largely descriptive and did not imply exclusion from the community. These erliiz considered themselves Mongols and were considered as such by the rest of the population (Maiskii 1921: 42—43). By contrast, this label is now applied pejoratively and is hardly, if ever, self-ascribed.
An erliiz is theoretically defined as an individual of mixed parentage, but in practice the term only applies to the progeny of a Mongolian woman and a foreign man since, as mentioned above, ethnicity has traditionally been conceptualised as patrilineal. Contemporary identity narratives have become more complex as additional idioms of blood and genetics have been superimposed upon these traditional understandings. Nonetheless, this gendered disparity concerning unions between Mongols and non-Mongols has endured. It remains far more problematic for women to enter into sexual relations with a foreigner than it is for a man to do so.
The erliiz qualifier also gains weight when the union is with a Chinese. Then it is no longer just a matter of physical appearance, but a question of national security. Because it is thought that a child’s ‘bone loyalty’ will always lie with the other national identity (Bulag 1998: 159), a Chinese erliiz becomes a threat to the survival of the nation, always suspected of siding with China to further that country’s political aims. As Chinese and Mongols do not substantially differ in terms of physical features, these erliiz are not immediately identifiable. As a result, any Mongol can potentially be suspected of having Chinese heritage, thereby increasing even further the level of anxiety and suspicion concerning ethnic purity.
In the Mongolian social body rumours consistently paint Mongols as (potential) victims, requiring constant resistance against threatening Others. These narratives are a source of anxiety, but also include a more affirmative dimension. Through rumours and gossip, Mongols reaffirm their identity as distinct from their southern neighbour, while vigilantism can provide a conduit for patriotism and bravery. In a context where the country is believed to be under threat, where all its citizens, but particularly women, are at risk, Mongolian nationalist men are potentially heroes. They are the ones who protect the nation and fight back against the putative assailant. This aspect is fundamental insofar as post-socialist Mongolia has witnessed a feminisation process extending throughout society, with women playing an increasingly important role in the world of politics and business, while more and more young men have become disenfranchised. Thus despite the drop in literacy rates witnessed in recent years, women continue to be disproportionately represented in both the education sector and on the professional market, making up about 70 per cent of the total number of students in tertiary education (Benwell 2006: 116). Unsurprisingly perhaps, it is precisely these disenfranchised young men who have been filling the ranks of extremist nationalist groups.