The new Prime Minister of Mongolia has put the "border legacy issues" between China and Mongolia on the agenda as soon as he took office, in order to show goodwill towards China. China and Mongolia have also reached three basic consensuses. It can be said that compared with the past, Mongolia's attitude towards the China-Mongolia issue has undergone a major turnaround. So, what are the border legacy issues between China and Mongolia? Why does Mongolia raise these issues at this time?
What Are the Legacy Issues on the China-Mongolia Border?
The China-Mongolia border runs from the 646.7 highland northwest of Manzhouli in Inner Mongolia to the Kuitun Mountains north of Altay in Xinjiang, spanning a total length of 4,710 kilometers. It crosses three major geographic regions of Northeast, North China, and Northwest China, bordering three provinces of China: Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Gansu. The China-Mongolia border accounts for 57% of Mongolia's total border length. In fact, as early as 1962, China and Mongolia officially signed a boundary treaty, clearly defining the national borders and resolving all territorial disputes. However, there are still some problems along the border in recent years.
At the latest round of the China-Mongolia Joint Boundary Committee meeting, the two countries reached three basic consensuses.
Firstly, Mongolia is willing to cooperate with China to strengthen forest construction in border areas and jointly establish a prevention mechanism for forest and pasture fires along the border. It should be noted that for many years, Mongolian sandstorms have been a very troubling problem. Mongolia covers an area of 1,566,500 square kilometers, with 400,000 square kilometers being desert, accounting for one-fourth of its total land area, and most of these deserts are located in the south.
Due to overgrazing, Mongolia faces severe desertification. Seventy-six percent of the country's land has become desertified. Coupled with insufficient attention to environmental governance, extreme sandstorms occur every spring and summer, affecting not only our Inner Mongolia, Gansu, Ningxia, and the North China region including Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, but even breaking through geographical barriers such as the Qinling and Nanling mountains this year, expanding into the Sichuan Basin, and even affecting Guangdong and Hainan provinces.
Besides sandstorms, fire issues are also serious. Due to inadequate border management in Mongolia and a severe lack of early warning mechanisms, the grassland fire in Eastern Province of Mongolia in 2020 once spread to the China-Hulunbuir border due to the northwest wind. China mobilized more than 3,000 firefighters and hundreds of pieces of equipment, battling for two days to control the fire. However, this fire directly destroyed 120 square kilometers of vegetation, further exacerbating sandstorms.
Unlike previous attempts to avoid problems, this meeting saw Mongolia proactively focusing on border environmental governance. This actually indicates that Mongolia was previously aware of its shortcomings in environmental governance. As long as it can cooperate with China to establish air defense mechanisms through scientific and reasonable means, sandstorms will no longer frequently enter Chinese territory, and the fire warning time can be reduced to 30 minutes. This is beneficial to both China and Mongolia.
Secondly, Mongolia agrees to conduct joint customs inspections and law enforcement supervision with China. Mongolia's geographical situation determines that its foreign trade depends heavily on Russia and China, especially on the Mongolian-Chinese border ports. However, Mongolia's customs inspections have long faced problems such as outdated equipment, low efficiency of personnel, insufficient system connectivity, and difficulty in detecting contraband items. This results in frequent delays in cargo due to insufficient customs capabilities, which not only affects Mongolia's own foreign trade but also severely constrains the construction of the China-Mongolia-Russia economic corridor as a frontier of China's Belt and Road Initiative to the north. However, if assistance is provided by China, through four modules - unattended operation, intelligent recognition, blockchain tracking, and cross-border data sharing - and solid promotion of the construction of "smart ports," it is expected that the customs clearance time could be compressed from the original two hours to ten minutes in the future.
Finally, Mongolia also proposes the hope to introduce China's advanced cross-border equipment such as 5G logistics systems and AGV unmanned transport vehicle systems, to update and upgrade its border logistics system. By then, Mongolia's cross-border transportation human cost is expected to save sixty percent, making trade between China and Mongolia smoother. This will not only help Mongolia increase exports to China but also assist Mongolia in entering international markets.
Why Does Mongolia Actively Propose to Resolve the Legacy Issues on the China-Mongolia Border?
For landlocked Mongolia, which has only two neighboring countries, establishing good relations with Russia and China is its top priority in diplomacy. However, previously, Mongolia pursued the so-called "Third Neighbor" strategy, attempting to bypass Russia and China to establish ties with countries like the United States. However, recent plans such as signing rare earth cooperation agreements with the U.S., preparing to open direct flights, strengthening coal cooperation with India, and planning to bypass Chinese ports to access the sea via Russia's Far East have all failed. Now, the newly appointed prime minister of Mongolia has overturned the previous strategy and begun actively engaging with China.
The key topics discussed at this meeting, including border governance, logistics transportation, customs inspections, and the second cross-border railway under construction, highlight Mongolia's reevaluation of its economic lifelines and its urgent need for resource exports. At the same time, Mongolia is very clear about what China values. After recognizing the situation, Mongolia placing the border issues between China and Mongolia on the table and shifting toward "strategic synergy" demonstrates its sincerity. Next, as long as Mongolia remains resolute, cooperation between the two countries in other fields will also accelerate.
Original article: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7517127814731022902/
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