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Thursday, August 16, 2012

NAME OF NATIONS (Mongols)

NAME OF NATIONS(italics written names are proper names but partly others are proper too)


Mongol: 28 Bonan baoan, 29 Bayad/Bayan, BU 30 Buryat, 31 Daur dagur, 32 Darchad, 33 Darigana, 34 Dongxiang, 35 Dörböd, MO/NM 36 Khalkh, KA 37 Kalmyk khalmag, 38 Khamnigan-mongqol, AF's north: moghol, 39 Tu monguor, 40 Ölöt yikh mianggan, 41 Ili-torgut, 42 Urjanchaj, 57 Altai-Uryangkhai, 26 Soyot mator, 27 Yurat yurak. 43 Üzemkhin/Üzemcin. 49 Solon, 50 Ongkor Solon.73 Nogay noghai, 74 Salar, 75 Shor tadar, T 76 Tatar, 77 Teleut, 78 Tofa/Tofalar tubalar/karagas/kara-kash, 79 Tsaatan duhka, TU Tuvan/Tofa, 81 Tuxa/Khövsgöl Uryangkhai,


 NAME OF NATIONS(italics written names are proper names but partly others are proper too)
ESKIMO-ALEUT: 1 Aleut: 1A unangan, 1B allithuh, 2 Eskimo: 2A yupikhyt, 2B yuhyt.PALEO-SIBERIAN: 3 Alyutor/Aliutor elutel'u/ramkyke, 4 Chukchi lygoravetlyan:   4A ankalyn, 4B chavchu, 5 Chuvan, 6 Kerek, 7 Kamchadal,
8 Ket jugun: 8A pumpokol, 8B yug, 9 Koryak: 9A chavchu, 9B nymylan,10 Nivkh nivh/n'ivhgn-n'igvn, 11 Arin, 12 Yukaghir: 12A buguch, 12B dutkil, 12C omoki, 12D vadul, 13 Itelmen itenme'n-itelmen.
URALIC:
Finno-Ugric:

FINNIC: E Estonian, S Finnish suomi,14 Lapp saam: 14A kildan, 14B ter, 14C skolt, 14D Inari-saam, K Karelian, KO Komi, 15 Komi-Permyak,
16 Izhor, 17 Veps, M Mordvin, MU Mari, MU Udmurt.
UGRIC: 18 Khanty: 18A hantö,18B kantök, 19 Mansi: 19A maan's'i, 19B män's, 20 Hungarian magyar.
Samojed:
21 Enet enet'-enche, 22 Nenets n'enyts/hasaba, 23 Nganasan nganasa, 24 Selkup söl'kup, 25 Kamas kalmazh/kangmadzh,
26 Soyot mator, 27 Yurat yurak.


ALTAIC:
Mongol:
28 Bonan baoan, 29 Bayad/Bayan, BU 30 Buryat, 31 Daur dagur, 32 Darchad, 33 Darigana, 34 Dongxiang, 35 Dörböd, MO/NM 36 Khalkh, KA 37 Kalmyk khalmag, 38 Khamnigan-mongqol, AF's north: moghol, 39 Tu monguor, 40 Ölöt yikh mianggan, 41 Ili-torgut, 42 Urjanchaj,
43 Üzemkhin/Üzemcin.


Tungus-Manchu:
44 Even orochel/oven/even, 45 Evenk(nations): 45A boje, 45B birach/birar, 45C ile, 45D manjagir/manegir, 45E nakagyr,
45F orochon, 45G ainak, 45H solon, HJ/JI/LO 46 Manchu/Man manch/manju, 47 Nanay nani: 47A Akani, 47 B Hezhen hedzhe/hedje, 47C kili/kile,
48 Negidal ngegida: 48A ilkan beye, 48B amgun beyenin, 49 Solon, 50 Ongkor Solon, 51 Oroch nani/orochisal, 52 Orok ul'ta/ulcha/uil'ta/ula,
53 Udegey uddee/kekar/käkh'ala, 54 Ulch nani, 55 Xibe/Xibo/Sibe shibe.
Turkic:
56 Altay(people) altai-kishi: Northern: 56A Tubalar tuba kishi/dish kishi, 56B Chelkan/Lebedin chalkandu kishi/kuu kishi, 56C Kumandin kumandy kishi, 56D Shor shor kishi; Southern: 56E Telengit chu kishi, 56F Altai Kishi, 56G Maimalar maima kishi, 56H Teles tölös/ulan kishi,
56I Teleut telengut/telenget. A Azerbaijanian, 
58 Balkar, 59 Baraba paraba/shop-ierly-halk, BA Bashkir, 60 Chulym chulym turk, C Chuvash, 61 Dolgan dolghan/toata golar/tagal, 62 Gagauz, 63 Kamas kangmadzhy, 64 Karachay, 65 Karaim, 66 Karakalpak, KS 67 Kazakh,
68 Khakass(people): sagai, khas, peltyr, shor, koybal, hyzyl kishi, KI 69 Kirgiz, 70 Manchu-Kirgis, 71 Kumyk, 72 Meskhetian Turkish, 73 Nogay noghai, 74 Salar, 75 Shor tadar, T 76 Tatar, 77 Teleut, 78 Tofa/Tofalar tubalar/karagas/kara-kash, 79 Tsaatan duhka, 80 Turkish türkce/halk,
TK Turkmen/Trukhmen türpen, TU Tuvan/Tofa, 81 Tuxa/Khövsgöl Uryangkhai, XN 82 Uighur, US 83 Uzbek, SA 84 Yakut sakha, 85 Yugur.
KOREAN: KR 86 Korean (Chaoxian) han-kuk-in.AINU: 87 Ainu.JAPANESE/Nippon: NI Japanese nihonjin/nihongoSINO-TIBETAN:SINITIC: N 88 Hui (Moslem Han), CH Han.TIBETO-BURMAN: 89 Drung, 90 Lhoba, 91 Monba, YN 92 Nu, XZ 93 Tibetan,    SI 94 Yi.Major Peoples are those which belong to the R: Slavic, Indo-European, Caucasus, Arabic and Sino-Tibetan Groups; all those include minorities too.

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Wednesday, August 15, 2012

CODA: ACROSS THE MONGOLIAN STEPPES

CODA: ACROSS THE MONGOLIAN STEPPES


David A. Andelman is Editor of World Policy Journal.
ULAANBAATAR, Mongolia—“Before we begin, I’d like to decline two questions,” Batchimeg, the National Security Adviser to Mongolia’s president warns me. “One is railroads, the other is Chinese workers.” With those caveats,  touches on the two third-rail issues that define her nation’s precarious place in the world.
Sandwiched between Russia and China—both superpowers that, ironically, it once conquered—this tiny nation of almost 2.8 million people sprawls across a territory more than twice the size of France. And it is trying desperately to find some autonomy in a world that often seems intent only in snagging a slice of its natural resource windfall, which it has only begun to unearth. Mongolia, like a handful of other smaller nations in similar geo-political circumstances, is doing its best to survive, even prosper, against enormous odds. But Mongolia has something else going for it—a patrimony of a scope that all but defies definition.

I’ve been fascinated for years by the plight of small countries trapped between large powers. Two years ago, I chronicled in this space the challenges Bhutan faces, nestled between China and India—struggling, as do a handful of similar nations, to maintain some semblance of national identity and union. In Europe, Africa, and Latin America, there are similar cases of nations searching desperately to develop their own, unique identity. Dominated or overshadowed by powerful neighbors, some of these states date back centuries, others are more recently minted products of a colonial past, but most are saddled with boundaries that bear little resemblance to the realities of tribes, cultures, religions, or ethnicities.

For Mongolia, the challenges are even more profound and pressing. In this era of post-Cold War détente, its actual sovereignty may no longer be in question. Still, there are even larger stakes that bear directly on what remains a latent competition of epic proportions between its larger neighbors. Since the moment of Mongolia’s independence from the Soviet bloc less than a quarter century ago, vast reserves of coal (including the world’s single largest deposit of vital coking coal), oil and gas, copper, gold, uranium, and a host of other valuable minerals have been uncovered. Explorers and prospectors flock to Ulaanbaatar’s handful of western-style hotels. Over lavish buffet breakfasts in the glass-and-steel restaurant of the Ramada, they swap tales of distant strikes and pots of riches just over the horizon, then fan out across the country, hoping to find still more wealth buried beneath the trackless steppes and the endless blue sky.
Down in the street, vast snarls of traffic back up along the capital’s one main thoroughfare—Peace Avenue as it was dubbed by the nation’s Soviet overlords, who also re-named the capital when they took over in 1923. Ulaanbaatar (“Red Hero” in Mongolian) is only one legacy among many that it has not managed to shed from the three quarters of a century of Russian rule.

RUSSIANS FIRST
The Russians did a lot more to Mongolia than simply re-name geography. When the first Bolshevik troops crossed the border from Siberia, they found a primitive people who were an easy conquest.
They quickly began to bend this nation of largely nomadic herders to their own will. First to go was the ancient “vertical script”—a language of runes that the Red Army invaders swapped out for their own Cyrillic alphabet (with a couple of extra letters to facilitate transliteration of a tongue that has little to do with Russian).
When the rail system arrived, it was the wider Russian gauge of 4 feet 11 5/8 inches, designed to make certain that invaders from the west or east, where rails are spaced the standard international width of 4 feet 8 1/2 inches, would be unable simply to roll their troop transports to the battlefields. But until 1947, after World War II, there was no railway at all in Mongolia. At first, the Russians liked it that way—it would give them more warning of any approach of Japanese forces. But with the post-war push for self-sufficiency and a desire to use all its satellites to build a Soviet industrial empire, Mongolia was pressed into service, so the railroad arrived.
And pressed is the right word. The Russian occupiers made certain that Mongolia’s leaders would match, even outdo, Joseph Stalin in barbarity and repressiveness. They found willing partners in the early rulers of the Mongolian People’s Republic. First Khorloogiin Choibalsan embarked on a series of vicious purges, destroying any political opposition, then turned to the nation’s passive Buddhist monks, torching monasteries across the country, executing 35,000 lamas, exiling tens of thousands more to Siberia. The vicious Choibalsan was succeeded by Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal, who was cut from the same bolt of cloth, and tried repeatedly to bring Mongolia into the Soviet Union as the 16th Republic. He was met with such determined opposition on every side that the Kremlin decided this vast, poor nation wasn’t worth the effort and was content to leave it, as it began, as its first and largest satellite.

Not surprisingly, one of the early initiatives of the  post-Soviet government, when it arrived in 1990, was an effort to return to the vertical script. Indeed, our translator, Hashi, an elementary school student during this abortive experiment, was one of those forced to learn the ancient Mongolian alphabet—until the government recognized the enormous cost of converting an entire nation to a new vernacular and killed the idea. Today Mongolia boasts a literacy rate of 97.3 percent—higher even than China at 95.9 percent.
There were other legacies of the Soviet era, which extended from 1923 to 1990. The first industrial plants were constructed in Ulaanbaatar and the northeastern cities of Darkhan and Choibalsan, which since the departure of the Soviets now has the highest unemployment rate in Mongolia. The first milk processing facility was built in the capital. Soviet military installations began springing up across the countryside, with substantial concentrations along the frontier with China.
But perhaps the greatest and least-known legacy was the decision by the Soviets to map Mongolia, not in terms of roads (there was a single paved avenue in the capital and only a network of dirt tracks across the steppes) but rather for minerals. All but unrecognized, even today, is the existence of a detailed geophysical survey of every square kilometer of Mongolian territory—an analysis of its potential mineral-bearing rock formations, the nature of its land and soil. In part, of course, this was in the interest of determining the most advantageous routes for Soviet military machinery—tanks and personnel transports. But the legacy, buried today in government archives, includes a sense of where the most valuable of the nation’s patrimony exists, uncovered, beneath the land. A handful of savvy western prospectors have stumbled on this treasure trove. But it’s believed that much still remains undiscovered.

FRAUGHT LEGACY
At the same time, powerful emotions were building during the decades of oppression—perhaps Mongolia’s most complex legacy, fraught with implications for the nation’s place in today’s Asia. “As far as Russia, many Mongolians still keep a certain sympathy inherited from the Soviet era,” smiles Batchimeg as she continues most diplomatically.
“Even some of the younger people would cherish the relationship with Russia, too. We believe this is a very important factor for any bilateral relationship. Mongolian national leaders have to understand the importance of this.”
The Russian legacy, and that nation’s very real contemporary presence, straddles the frontier with Siberia, which we cross on the Trans-Mongolian Railway. An unsmiling set of border patrol officers with sniffing German shepherds board on the Russian side in Naushki in the Buryat Republic. Their Mongolian counterparts jump on the train five miles down the line in Sukhbaatar after we cross the barbed-wire frontier. It is a seamless transition, though, because of the common gauge shared by the Russian and Mongolian mainline rail systems. By contrast, at the Chinese border, a complex maneuver called “changing the bogeys” is necessary. The Russian-Mongolian carriages are lifted off the wheel assemblies in a specially designed shed, the new Chinese-standard gauge carriages slipped beneath each car—passenger and freight alike. Not surprisingly it adds time and money for each pound of freight, or even more importantly, coal and ore, that’s shipped to or from China.
So when it came time to consider a new rail link to the vast southern Mongolian coal, copper, and gold mines that are just now opening for business in the South Gobi, far from the nearest approach to the Trans-Mongolian trunk line, selecting the proper gauge was very much on the minds of the Mongolian parliament. The government is divided, almost equally, between two parties, the MPP or Mongolian People’s Party (the socialist successor to the Soviet-era Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party, revolutions now being pretty much a dead letter), and the newly minted Democratic party of the nation’s president. Outside forces are still able to tilt the balance at critical moments.
On this occasion, the Russia weighed in with its heavy thumb on the scale. In a meeting last June with Mongolian President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj, President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin pledged a $1.5 billion investment in new track totaling 2,500 miles for the Mongolian rail network. Then they added a sweetener of $250 million to build a long spur from the Tavan Tolgoi mine to link up with the Trans-Siberian railway and onward to Vladivostok, the nearest Russian seaport to Mongolia. The problem is not the construction, though, it’s the operation. With the Mongolian stretch alone at nearly 600 miles to Choibalsan and then another 900 miles via the Trans-Siberian line to Vladivostok, the World Bank has estimated the transport cost at $75 a ton, compared with $15 a ton via Chinese rail links, barely 100 miles away. If, as the World Bank calculates, the South Gobi mines could be producing 45 million tons of coal a year, much of it for export, the cost of transport to Russia over China suggests a considerable disparity.
Still, in the end, the Mongolian parliament voted to cast its lot with Russia. “The mine operators can always build a little spur into China if they need it eventually,” explains one MPP parliamentarian diplomatically after the vote. “We left that open in the final wording of the legislation.” It was meant to be a Solomonic decision—dividing, or more appropriately parsing, the nation’s loyalties. But the real problem is that not all Mongolians see this as the best way to go.

HATE VS. FEAR
“We hate Russia, but we fear China,” says one young Mongolian who was born in the Soviet era and has visited both nations. He’s speaking in the long, narrow corridor of a Pullman car on the Trans-Mongolian Railway—traveling across the Gobi, one of the world’s largest deserts. Barely 80,000 people live in Mongolia’s forbidding South Gobi province—a territory larger than Bangladesh, which has a population of 170 million—though the World Bank projects South Gobi’s population to double over the next five years with the influx of miners and their families. Indeed, entire new towns are already in place, like the ultra-modern glass and steel dorms and apartments at the Tavan Tolgoi mine that boasts a school run under contract with an elite academy in the nation’s capital 335 miles to the north. First graders in their second week of English classes leap to their feet and, beaming with pride, sing the ABC song to us.
From the train windows, not much changes after crossing the Mongolian-Chinese frontier. It’s the same Gobi landscape—expanding at the rate of 1,400 square miles a year as desertification gobbles up the fertile grasslands that have nourished Mongolian livestock for millennia.

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE CHINESE
China entered into the Mongolian consciousness far earlier than Russia. As early as 180 A.D., warriors of the Xianbei swept into regions of northern China. A millennium later, Chinggis Khan (known in the West as Genghis Khan) turned toward the warmer climates of the south and extended his rule beyond several small valleys in what is now northeastern Mongolia.
His legions of 95,000 trained warriors (out of a total population of just 400,000) swept across the steppes into China in lightning raids that Hitler studied in preparation for his mechanized blitzkriegs. To give a sense of scale, if the United States were to maintain a standing army of this size, relative to its population, it would have armed forces totaling 73.9 million, compared with 2.3 million actually under arms, including national guard and reserves. Today, Mongolia has just 12,000 men in its military, including a special brigade of 2,500 tapped to serve abroad in the international peacekeeping roles it has embraced.
China, however, deploys vast reserves of military forces and armaments throughout its frontier regions, at the ready for any menace, real or imagined, inside and outside the country. As our train rolls into China, we come across the first example—more than 100 flatcars loaded with tanks and personnel carriers all pointed north toward the frontier of a nation with which it boasts nominally friendly relations.

But within the boundaries of Inner Mongolia lie the seeds of enormous potential unrest. In the 2000 census, there were some 4 million Mongols in the region—nearly double the entire population of the Mongolian Republic itself. Dominated by the Han Chinese, who comprise over three-quarters of the province’s population, they feel discriminated against and oppressed. And they are hardly reluctant to demonstrate these feelings. This year alone, at least three Mongolian herders, protesting the heavy mining trucks that have begun crisscrossing their traditional grazing grounds, have been run down and killed—whether by accident or intentionally is not clear. Each incident, however, has touched off widespread protests in the provincial capital of Hohhot, where authorities have cracked down with massive shows of force and widespread arrests, carting hundreds of demonstrators to so-called black prisons where they have disappeared for days, even weeks.
In Hohhot, we happen upon the wife of a foreign businessman who was herself swept up. Driving near the university, seen by authorities as a hotbed of ethnic Mongolian unrest, she describes how she was in her car, accompanied only by her family’s chauffeur, when she used her iPhone to snap a photo of the massive police presence. “They were right on us,” she begins, still clearly shaken by the experience that had taken place four months earlier. “Plainclothes security men dragged both of us from my car and bundled us into an unmarked car.”
Taken to what was described to her as a “black prison,” their cell phones were confiscated and the contraband photo deleted. “No one will know where you are, we can do with you what we want, we can hold you indefinitely, you will never be found, and we will kill your driver,” she recalls the officers telling them. When she and her driver arrived at their destination with the secret police who’d seized them, she saw several thousand students and others crammed inside the building. She was petrified as they unchained the doors and shoved her into the makeshift facility. Fortunately, her driver had secreted a second cell phone and managed a brief call to her husband, a consultant with a powerfully connected local Chinese factory. Company officials quickly began making calls, though it took hours before she was released.
It’s scarcely surprising that Mongolians fear the Chinese. Mongolians are a fiercely independent people, yet ironically the nation has known barely 12 years of real independence until their final liberation from Soviet rule in 1990. On December 29, 1911, the so-called Outer Mongolians took advantage of the Wuchang Uprising that ended the Qing Dynasty’s rule and declared their own nation’s independence from China. It was but a brief flirtation with freedom, lasting through World War I when both Russia and China were preoccupied with a global conflict, their own internal revolutions, and the civil wars that followed. But by 1923, Mongolia had swapped Chinese rule for full Russian domination.

LIVING THE GER LIFE
Throughout, the Mongolian mentality of fiercely independent herders and horsemen preserved an internal compass that has managed somehow to hold at bay their two, often feuding, superpower neighbors. Maintaining their independence from China, they were drawn into the Russian sphere, managing to escape absorption into the Soviet Union itself—the fate of many of their neighbors across Central Asia. Culturally, the Mongolians are like no other Asian peoples, or indeed like few anywhere in the world. Ethnically they bear a closer resemblance to the Buryats of Siberia than the Han Chinese, with whom they share few traits. They eat little or no rice, their primary diet being mutton, preferably laced with fat—a taste developed from centuries of surviving bitter Mongolian winters that are still defined by the fearsome dzug. These violent blizzards sweep down from the Altai mountains that form a stretch of Mongolia’s western frontier with Kazakhstan, burying cattle, sheep, and humans alike. In the ger districts of Ulaanbaatar, thousands of victims of the dzug have drifted, seeking work, but above all sanctuary, from the harsh life that killed their herds, driving them toward poverty, even starvation.
Five years ago, Zaya came to the Mongolian capital from the remote northwest—bringing along her ger, a flat, round, Mongolian felt tent, from the isolated countryside to the heart of a sprawling slum on the outskirts of this increasingly congested urban landscape. Zaya had lost an entire herd of sheep, cows, and cashmere goats—virtually her entire wealth. Six winters ago, herders in Hovsgol province—an immense tract of high mountains, stunning lakes, and brutal winters—
were the victims of a particularly nasty dzug, sending thousands fleeing to what they hoped would be a land of opportunity in Ulaanbaatar, only to be disappointed. “I could not find any jobs in Hovsgol,” she says. “It’s not just the animals, it’s the dzug. No matter how many animals you have, if there is the dzug it is impossible.”
When she arrived, she found no jobs and few prospects. All around her, however, she could see thousands of Chinese migrant workers moving into Ulaanbaatar, fueling an unparalleled building boom, working for minimal wages and raising tensions in a nation where vast numbers of Mongolians remain jobless. Beyond the railway issue, this is the second subject that sends shivers down the spines of senior Mongolian officials. These Chinese workers have found their way to construction sites where they are welcomed by builders seeking to cash in on the explosive development boom. Certainly there is a desperate need for the skills and willing hands represented by the migrants from south of the border, but Mongolians also need jobs. It has become, as Batchimeg’s reluctance to discuss the subject suggests, an issue of enormous sensitivity.
Eventually, Zaya found a part-time job as a cashier, which requires little more skill than the ability to make change and read numbers, and a husband—a fellow refugee of Hovsgol. But today, she has two children, aged two and four, “so I have to stay home now and care for the baby.”
How is her life now, compared with then? A long pause as she looks off into the distance. “There is no difference,” she sighs. She still lives in a ger. Her husband is a carpenter. “My dream is to have a house,” she continues. But right now, all she has is some electricity—and her dreams.
We’ve come across her, dragging a small, rusting luggage cart and two grimy gasoline cans filled with water that she’s hauling up a steep slope to her ger. There’s no running water in the community.
So each day, she has to walk down to a small, brick building that’s the water source. The city has drilled a well there and for a few togrog (a penny or so), villagers can fill their water jugs. We’re not talking potable water—it must still be boiled before it can be used for human consumption.
Each month, Zaya, her husband and their two children receive a stipend of about $20 from the federal government—a handout engineered by the MPP, which holds a majority of 46 seats out of 76 in the State Great Hural, or parliament. For now, it’s all that stands between Zaya and penury. “It’s 30 percent of our income each month,” she says. “With it, I can buy rice, flour. But we’d rather have the government give my husband some carpentry tools, then perhaps we could make a decent living.” And their lot is better than many of her neighbors in Ulaanbaatar. Only about half have jobs of any sort.
The predicament of Zaya and her husband, and that of dozens of others we talk with during our visit, raises a critical question that is dividing the nation and its leadership—handouts versus infrastructure. “I do not believe that distributing cash can be really helpful for the people, for the country,” says Batchimeg, both a senior aide to the president and a member of the opposition Democratic Party. “This populist policy actually hurts the economy by generating inflation and creating an additional burden for the private sector, also lessening the people’s need to work.” Still, the handouts are a potent political force that helps keep the MPP in power.
And indeed there are some who still see some progress being made against poverty, even in the most depressed communities of Ulaanbaatar. The United States Ambassador to Mongolia, Jonathan Addleton, measures progress in the ger camps by “the number of bright tin roofs.” The number of these red or blue roofs marking new houses has been increasing with every visit, he says in an interview—
a suggestion of new economic activity. Still, that’s just the sort of house that Zaya and her husband can only dream about. For every new tin roof, it seems there are still more gers, climbing out of the blighted valley into the hills, stretching ever farther from the bright lights and the big jobs downtown—for many a lifetime away, certainly out of sight and for the moment at least, out of grasp.
Indeed, Mongolia is rapidly becoming three nations—the urban poor, the rural poor, and the privileged. The big question is how the government might manage to bridge these gaps—before it is too late. Will the vast sums being lifted from the mines be able to trickle down, spreading outward from the smartly dressed crowds of young people strolling through Sukhbaatar Square in downtown Ulaanbaatar to the misery of the ger camps beyond the ring road and on to the rural herders of the countryside? The aspirations are real, and not yet an overwhelming problem, since the government’s handouts have been able to buy a degree of tranquility. But if commodity prices turn south, anything is possible.
There are those who see the ger itself and all it represents as one of those possible bridges—a central component of Mongolian society at all levels. Even the wealthiest Mongolians maintain their rural gers for sentimental reasons. At the sprawling window and door factory, just one element of the rapidly growing Max Group conglomerate, a huge intricately carved wooden door, wider than it is tall, is in the final stages of production. It’s destined for the ger of the Max co-founder, Ganbaatar Dagvadorj. Indeed, his Ramada hotel is the most advanced in Ulaanbaatar and where Vice President Biden’s advance party booked 100 rooms just after it opened for business.
In many respects, Biden’s visit, a total of six hours from wheels down to wheels up, which did not go unnoticed here, was nevertheless a defining moment for the country. It was the first for an American vice president since Henry Wallace stopped by for two days (truncated from seven) in 1944. That visit was of enormous importance to Mongolian Buddhists. A leading lama at the central Gandan Monastery explains it was Wallace’s request to see a functioning sanctuary that led the nation’s vicious Stalinist leader Choibalsan to order the rapid re-opening of Gandan and the return of a handful of monks and worshippers.
America is central to Mongolia’s search for a reliable third neighbor. A policy that is seen as a guarantee of the nation’s long-term independence. “The third neighbor, as far as I can tell, is not just one country, it is a number of countries,” says Ambassador Addleton. “At one time, soon after I arrived, I talked about the third neighbor being the rest of the world. And the foreign minister said, ‘no it’s not the rest of the world, it’s our fellow democracies.’ So he talked about Korea, Japan, India, Europe, and the United States. The first overseas visit made by President Elbegdorj was actually to India, in some sense reinforcing that particular third neighbor. We also appreciate and empathize with the Mongolian perspective which is that they want a three-dimensional relationship with the world and we are part of that.”
With such membership, however, comes responsibilities. And the United States and a number of other nations seem to be living up to these responsibilities only in the breach. The United States has its own agenda with respect to Mongolia, which is being increasingly perceived by the nation’s leaders and its people as no less pernicious than its superpower neighbors. The Biden six-hour “stop-by” had its own subtext, conveyed in the moments of private time with President Elbegdorj sandwiched between ceremonial horseback riding, archery demonstrations, and a visit to a ger. The United States is pressing Mongolia for two immediate concessions. First, it wants to turn vast stretches of some more remote areas of the Mongolian steppes into a waste dump for nuclear detritus—effectively rendering it permanently uninhabitable or exploitable, especially should vast mineral reserves be discovered deep beneath that territory. In September, however, President Elbegdorj is said to have put that project in the deep freeze and fired the diplomat negotiating it. “The nuclear waste of other countries is a snake grown up in another body,” he told a Mongolian journalist. “Receiving back the nuclear waste … is pressure from foreign superpowers, and we must throw out this delusion.”
Second, and more immediately, Biden was pressing Mongolia to make certain that an American coal producer, Peabody Coal, be among those foreign companies that are part of the concession to develop the vast Tavan Tolgoi deposits.
At the same time Biden was passing through, however, so was the president of South Korea.  Two items were said to be high on that agenda—the 33,000 Mongolians working in South Korea, the largest population of Mongolians living abroad, and South Korean participation in the Tavan Tolgoi consortium. Mongolian migrant workers, many living in the all-Mongolian village of Junggu in Gwanghui Dong province, are said to be the target of Korea’s crackdown on all varieties of foreign workers. And South Korea is said to be especially anxious to be part of the coal mining consortium since it will also be serving as a significant market for the mine’s output.
In September, Mongolia’s National Security Council sent the entire contract, which did include Peabody, though not South Korea, back to the drawing boards for a complete re-thinking. Two months later, a senior government official emailed “there has [still] not been any substantial progress with the TT coal consortium project.”

Such tortured friendships will only add to the burdens Mongolia is already facing closer to home from Russia and China. Both are also pushing their own agendas, using a host of incentives from political and diplomatic pressure to outright bribery. President Dmitri Medvedev, for instance, is reported to have promised to write off 98 percent of Mongolia’s debt to Russia and provide the country with 375 million rubles ($12.3 million) for livestock vaccination for a substantial stake in a vast uranium mine that the Russians still see as their property. “It is not that logical and fair to link all the benign moves by Russians with their ambitions in uranium,” says he, -clear evidence of Mongolia’s efforts at even-handedness in dealing with its immediate neighbors. China is also said to be lusting after the output of these vast uranium projects said to total 25,000 tons, potentially capable of producing upwards of $300 million a year of high-quality ore.
What Mongolia needs especially is selfless friendships with no strings attached from true democracies to which Mongolia looks for partnership and as an example. In turn, Mongolia may serve as an example to other democratic nations that it correctly sees are so important to its survival. Mongolia has truly been free to find its own way in the world for barely a quarter century without others seeking to force on them their own priorities. While the instinct of independence, indeed mastery of others, has been buried in their souls for a millennium, it is only now being tested again in an entirely new and more complex, even vicious contemporary environment. Certainly there are enough who want something from this nation without the democracies who should know better adding to their burdens.
Indeed, Mongolian officials boast proudly of their nation’s leadership, which it assumed in July, of the 25-nation governing council of the Community of Democracies. “We cherish personal freedoms,” concludes “Our people again feel freedom. It is part of everyday life for every Mongolian. And democracy is a guarantee of our national security.” And, he might add, its place in the world, even in this most fraught neighborhood.

The Mongolian Nobility

The Mongolian Nobility

The Mongolian nobility (Mongolian: язгууртан yazgurtan; Mongolian: сурвалжтан survaljtan) arose in the 10-12th century, became prominent in the 13th century, and essentially governed Mongolia until the 20th century.
The Mongolian word for nobility, Yazgurtan, derives from the Mongol word yazgur, meaning the Root.

Contents


Mongol Empire

Nobility titles

  • Ihe Khaan (Khagan) - Great Khaan, Emperor
  • Guo Wang - State Wang, the second title after the Great Khaan. Muhulai (Muqali) of Jalair was appointed the Guo Wang.
  • Jinong - Prince Royal, nominated to succeed the Great Khaan. During Yuan Dynasty, the Jinong resided in Karakorum and administered Mongolia Proper
  • Taiji - Prince
A Mongol ruler on his way through the country. Illustration of Rashid al-Din's Jami' al-tawarikh.

Military ranks

  • Tumetu-iin Noyan - Lord of 10,000 warriors. There were 9 Tumens in 1206. By 1368 there were 40 Mongol Tumens and 4 Oirat Tumens
  • Minggan-u Noyan - Lord of 1,000 warriors
  • Jagutu-iin Darga - Commander of 100 warriors
  • Arban-u Darga - Commander of 10 warriors
  • Cherbi - Head of the Kheshig

Female titles

  • Hatun - queen and ladies
  • Gongju - princess, daughter of a noble family
  • Behi - lady

Post-Imperial Mongolia

Nobility titles

  • Khaan (Khagan) - ruler of the country.
  • Khan - by the mid-16th century, there would be a number of khans in Mongolia as local feudal lords claimed the title for themselves. Khaan and Khan were 2 different titles: Khaan (long "a") and Khan (short "a"). Khaan was the title of the ruler of the country, while the local feudal lords had the title Khan.
  • Jinong - Prince Royal, nominated to succeed the Great Khaan. Resided in the Right Wings (modern Inner Mongolia). From the 15th century, the title became hereditary and not necessarily preserved to the nominee of the Khaan's heir
  • Hongtaiji - a descendant of Genghis Khaan with a fief or a prince (Huang Taizi)
  • Taiji - a descendant of Genghis Khaan or a prince
  • Wang - a descendant of Khasar and other brothers of Genghis Khaan with a fief
  • Taishi - a noble of a non-Borjigin clan with a fief such as descendants of the Tumetu-iin Noyans or a non-Borjigin chieftain

Female titles

  • Hatun - queen and ladies
  • Gongju - princess, daughter of a noble family
  • Behichi (Beiji) - lady, spouse of a prince

Non-gentry estates

  • Sain humun - lit. good man, a rich person
  • Dund humun - lit. middle man
  • Magu humun - lit. bad man, a poor person
  • Hitad humun - lit. Chinese man, a slave

Manchu period and Boghda Khaan Mongolia

A Khalkha Mongolian noblewoman (c.1908).

Nobility titles

  • Khan (not Khaan or Khagan) - Lord of a hoshun. There were 4 Khans in Khalha: Tushietu Khan, Zasagtu Khan, Secen Khan and Sain Noyan Khan, and 2 Khans in Kobdo Region: Tögs Hülüg Dalai Khan and Ünen Zorigtu Khan. They were khan rather than khaan. Despite the association of the 4 aimags with these titles, their power was restricted to their hoshuns only. They would communicate with the Manchu court just as any other Lord of a hoshun.
  • Chin Wang - Lord of a hoshun. Some Wangs were ranked as Hoshoi Chin Wang - "Chin Wang twice". Annual income 2500 lang silver and 40 silk roll. 60 serfs.
  • Giyün Wang - Lord of a hoshun. Annual income 1200-2000 lang silver and 15-25 silk roll. 50 serfs.
  • Beile - Lord of a hoshun. Annual income 600 lang silver and 13 silk roll. 40 serfs.
  • Beise - Lord of a hoshun. Annual income 500 lang silver and 10 silk roll.
  • Tushiye Gong - Lord of a hoshun. Annual income 300 lang silver and 9 silk roll.
  • Tusalagchi Gong - Lord of a hoshun. Annual income 200 lang silver and 7 silk roll.
The above titles would be decorated with styles.
Infant Baatar wang in 1914.
  • Hohi Taiji - Untitled Gentry. There were 4 ranks:
Terigun Zereg-un Taiji - Gentry of the 1st rank could also be granted a hereditary lordship over a hoshun. Annual income 100 lang silver and 4 silk roll.
Ded Zereg-un Taiji - Gentry of the 2nd rank could also be granted a hereditary lordship over a hoshun. Annual income 90 lang silver and 3 silk roll.
Gutagaar Zereg-un Taiji - Gentry of the 3rd rank. Annual income ... lang silver and ... silk roll.
Dötugeer Zereg-un Taiji - Gentry of the 4th rank. Annual income 40 lang silver only. 4 serfs.
Besides the above ranking, the nobles were also divided into 2 types:
Töröl Taiji (literally, "related nobles") - members of 'Altan Urug', who are descendants of Genghis Khaan.
Khariyatu Taiji (literally, "subject nobles") - descendants of Khasar, Belgutei and other brothers of Genghis Khaan, descendants of Tooril Khan of Kereit, descendants of Tumetu-iin Noyans.
Age - son born to a noble family.
Tabunang - son-in-law of a noble family.

Non-gentry estates

  • Soumon Albatu - state serf
  • Hamjilga - serf of a nobleman
  • Shabi - serf of a Hutuhtu, of an incarnation of a Buddhist deity

MONGOLIAN LAND OF MAP

MONGOLIAN LAND OF MAP
















 



Mongol: 28 Bonan baoan, 29 Bayad/Bayan, BU 30 Buryat, 31 Daur dagur, 32 Darchad, 33 Darigana, 34 Dongxiang, 35 Dörböd, MO/NM 36 Khalkh, KA 37 Kalmyk khalmag, 38 Khamnigan-mongqol, AF's north: moghol, 39 Tu monguor, 40 Ölöt yikh mianggan, 41 Ili-torgut, 42 Urjanchaj, 26 Soyot mator, 27 Yurat yurak,
57 Altai-Uryangkhai, 49 Solon, 50 Ongkor Solon, 51 Oroch nani/orochisal, 52 Orok, 43 Üzemkhin/Üzemcin.


Mongolia: what are the risks for an economy that's growing at 20 percent?

Mongolia: what are the risks for an economy that's growing at 20 percent?


There is good news coming out of Mongolia, the land of the eternal blue skies. The economy racked up a second quarter of high growth: the third quarter came in at 20.8 percent, topping the equally amazing second quarter of 17.3 percent (year-on-year GDP growth), as discussed in the World Bank's report.  And while this growth spurt originated in the mining sector, with Oyu Tolgoi—a mega copper and gold mine—getting ready to start producing in 2012 and a whole battery of other, smaller mines producing at full capacity, the high growth is quite broad-based. Even manufacturing is doing well.
There is more good news: unemployment is going down, and, if the pattern from the previous high growth episode applies, we think that poverty is also being reduced significantly.
However, there are some caveats to the good news. The global risks are mounting. Recall that Mongolia was one of the worst affected countries during the last crisis (2008/9), being a small, open economy, dependent on mining. Any mineral price shock immediately impacts the budget. And since Mongolia will have to borrow large amounts of money to put in place the infrastructure to get the minerals out of the ground and on to the market, rising emerging market bond yields are also not good news. Finally, China is Mongolia’s main export market, and if growth slows down there, it immediately affects Mongolia. Already, mineral prices are trending down.

Domestically, inflation came in at 11.9 percent in September, and 12.6 percent in October. If you take out food inflation, which has been volatile, core inflation has now consistently, and worryingly, risen throughout the year. This is one of the tell-tale signs of an economy which is overheating. Both the private as well as the public sectors seem to be trying to grow faster than the country’s capacity allows.
Further stoking inflation is the cash distribution to all Mongolian citizens. The government is handing out cash to its citizens to fulfill an escalation of political promises about the sharing of the mining wealth made by politicians in the run-up to the last elections in 2008. Senior politicians have now publicly and privately acknowledged that this is not to be repeated, as the transfers fuel inflation. However, there are general elections scheduled for next year. Better make good on the past promises first, say the politicians. After the elections we will stop the handouts. But time will tell.
Already the economic talk on Mongolia’s avalanche of TV stations is all about rising inflation and how it erodes the purchasing power of the middle class. And half of the informal sector workers we regularly survey as a barometer of how the poor are doing tell us that their current wages no longer cover their basic needs.
Fortunately, the 2012 Budget contains a targeted poverty benefit (being prepared with assistance of the ADB and the World Bank). This would put in place the type of social safety net to protect the poor from hardships—a net so sorely missed during the last crisis.
What are the policy-makers doing about the rising inflation? To contain inflation, the central bank and the government need to work in tandem to pull in the reins of Mongolia’s speeding economy.
The Bank of Mongolia has so far done a commendable job: it raised interest rates three times and banks’ reserve requirements twice, which made the governor rather unpopular in certain circles. But without these unpopular interventions, the inflation picture would have been a lot worse. And the Bank of Mongolia’s actions are clearly not enough, since core inflation has kept rising. So more tightening will be needed.
In the meantime, the government seems to be working in the other direction. The original 2011 Budget had already raised spending by 32 percent over the 2010 budget outturn. Then, the recently passed 2011 Budget Amendment added another 20 percent of public spending to this. Now, the 2012 Budget proposed by government and currently being debated in parliament would set an all time record for expenditure growth.
Without going into the details, the 2012 draft budget is based on very optimistic projections for GDP, revenues and expenditures. But will foreign direct investment continue its stellar rise? Will the mining sector continue to grow, even though logistical capacity constraints are already apparent? And can public investment really be raised this fast? Is this really possible? Economic observers are hoping that parliament can set election fever aside, reign in spending growth, and support more prudent fiscal management: the type of fiscal management as already defined by the Fiscal Stability Law of 2010.
The FSL is landmark legislation passed with overwhelming majority in parliament in 2010. It contains three fiscal rules to save windfall mining revenues, avoid over-borrowing and restrain over-spending. The World Bank assisted in creating the consensus around the fiscal rules contained in this law, which was also conditionality in the successfully concluded IMF Stand-By Arrangement. We shuttled as many as three delegations of parliamentarians and top civil servants around the world, including twice to Chile—a very well-managed copper producer.
Under the law, the application of the fiscal rules to the budget is phased in over time, with only one rule—the saving of windfall mining revenues into a stabilization fund— operational this year. However, since the economic growth is so widespread, this year’s “windfall” revenue growth is coming from many sources, not just mining revenues.
Our advice? With global risks continuing to grow, China’s growth slowing down, mineral prices down, and an economy which is overheating, it would be wise to start implementing the spirit of the fiscal rules now. Because one of the key lessons of recent times is that moderation needs to be applied during the good times, and not be postponed to another day. That day could bring clouds to Mongolia’s eternal blue skies.

Монголын 20 хувийн өсөлт бүхий эдийн засгийн эрсдэл нь юу вэ?


Мөнхийн хөх тэнгэртэй Монгол орноос чимэгтэй сайхан мэдээнүүд сонсогдож эхэллээ.  Энэ оны гуравдугаар улиралд эдийн засаг 20.8 хувь өсч, хоёрдугаар улиралын 17.3 хувийн өсөлтийг ч гүйцсэн нь урьд өмнө байгаагүй эдийн засгийн тэсрэлтийг бий болголоо ( өмнөх жилийн мөн үетэй харьцуулсан өсөлт). Энэ өсөлт нь уул уурхайн салбар, ялангуяа 2012 онд үйлдвэрлэлт нь эхлэх алт зэсний дэлхийн хэмжээний орд болох Оюу толгойгоос үүдэлтэй ч бусад олон жижиг уул уурхайнууд бүрэн хүчин чадлаараа ажиллаж байгаа учир хамрах хүрээ нь өргөн байна. Үйлдвэрлэлийн салбар ч сайн байна.
Бусад сайн мэдээнүүдийн хувьд, ажилгүйдлийн түвшин буурч байна. Нөгөөтэйгүүр энэхүү өсөлт үргэлжилбэл ядуурлын түвшин ч нилээд буурахаар байна.

Эдгээр сайн мэдээнүүдийн хажуугаар саар зүйлүүд бас гарч байна. Дэлхийн эдийн засаг эрсдэлтэй байна. Эргэн санахад хамгийн сүүлийн (2008/09) эдийн засгийн хямрал болоход Монгол Улс жижиг, уул уурхайн салбарт тулгуурласан мөн нээлттэй эдийн засагтай улсын хувьд хамгийн хүндээр нэрвэгдсэн орнуудын нэг болж байсан. Эрдэсийн түүхийн эдийн үнэ ихээхэн өөрчлөгдөхөд улсын төсөвт нь шууд нөлөөлдөг. Мөн эрдэсийн баялагаа олборлоход шаардлагатай байгууламжийг барих, олборлосон түүхий эдээ зах зээл дээр гаргахад ихээхэн хэмжээний зээл авах хэрэгтэй байгаа үед санхүүгийн зах зээл дээрх бондын хөрөнгө оруулалтын үнэ ихээхэн өсөж байгаа нь сайн мэдээ биш. Эцэст нь Монгол Улсын экспортын барааны гол хэрэглэгч нь Хятад улс. Хятадын өсөлт саарахад Монголд маш түргэн мэдрэгддэг. Эрдэсийн түүхийн эдийн үнэ бас буураад эхэлчихсэн байдаг.

Инфляцын төвшин 9 сард 11.9 хувь, 10 сарын байдлаар 12.6 хувь байна. Хэрвээ үнийн хувьд хэлбэлзэлтэй байгаа хүнсний бүтээгдэхүүний инфляцыг оруулахгүйгээр суурь инфляцыг авч үзвэл жилийн туршид сэтгэл зовоох хэмжээнд өсч байна. Энэ нь эдийн засаг хэт халж байгааг харуулж байна. Ер нь төрийн болоод хувийн хэвшлүүд улсынхаа эдийн засгийн шингээх чадавхиас илүүтэйгээр хурдтай байна. Мөн хүн бүрт олгож буй бэлэн мөнгө инфляцыг ихээхэн хөөрөгдөж байна. 2008 оны сонгуулиар улс төрийн гол намуудын уул уурхайн ашигаас иргэн бүрт хишиг хүртээнэ гэсэн амлалтыг биелүүлэх зорилгоор засгийн газар ард түмэндээ бэлэн мөнгө тарааж байна. Туршлагатай улс төрчид инфляцыг хөөрөгдөж буй бэлэн мөнгөний амлалт дахин давтагдахгүй гэдгийг өөртөө болон олон түмэнд зарлан хэлж байна. Гэсэн хэдий ч дараа жил сонгууль болно. Улс төрчид, урьдын амлалтаа эхлээд биелүүлэх нь чухал, тэгээд бид сонгуулийн дараа бэлэн мөнгө өгөхөө зогсооно гэж байна. Гэвч, цаг хугацаа бүхнийг харуулна.
Монголын телевизүүдээр инфляци өсч байгаа, дундаж орлоготой иргэдийн амьжиргаанд хэрхэн нөлөөлж байгаа талаар мэдээ, ярилцлагууд өргөнөөр гарч байна.  Бага орлоготой хүмүүсийн амьжиргааг тодорхойлохын тулд бид албан бус ажиллагсадын дунд судалгаа тогтмол хийдэг. Сүүлийн судалгаанаас үзэхэд эдгээр хүмүүсийн олж буй орлого нь тэдний суурь хэрэгцээг нь хангахааргүй хэмжээнд болсон байна.
Харин 2012 оны төсөвт ядууст чиглэсэн халамжийн хөтөлбөрийг (Дэлхийн Банк болон Азийн Хөгжлийн Банкны туслалцаатай боловсруулсан) суулгаж өгсөн нь сайшаалтай.  Ийм халамжийн багц нь хэцүү үед ядуу, орлого багатай иргэдийг хамгаалж , амьжиргааг нь дэмжихэд ихээхэн ач холбогдолтой. Ийм хөтөлбөр эдийн засгийн өмнөх хямралын үед огт байгаагүй болно.
Бодлого боловсруулагчид өсч буй инфляцийн талаар ямар арга хэмжээ авч байна вэ? Хэт хурдацтай өсч буй Монголын эдийн засгийн жолоог татахын тулд Засгийн Газар, Монгол Банк хоорондоо харилцан уялдаатай ажиллах хэрэгтэй.
Монгол Банкны зүгээс энэ жилд мөнгөний бодлогын хүүг 3 удаа нэмж, нөөцийн хэмжээг 2 удаа шинэчилсэн нь зөв бодлого. Харин энэ алхамууд нь төв банкны ерөнхийлөгчийн нэр хүндийг тодорхой хүрээнд унахад нөлөөлсөн.   Гэхдээ эдгээр хязгаарлалтуудыг авч хэрэгжүүлээгүй бол инфляциин түвшин илүү өндөр байх байлаа.  Суурь инфляц ийнхүү байнга өсөж байгаа энэ үед төв банкны бодлого хангалтгүй байгаа нь илэрхий байна. Иймд мөнгөний бодлогыг цаашид илүү чангалах шаардлагатай.
Засгийн Газрын хувьд эсрэг зүг рүү чиглэсэн бодлого барин ажиллаж байгаа нь ажиглагдаж байна. 2011 оны төсвийн зарлага 2010 оны төсвийн гүйцэтгэлтэй харьцуулахад 32 хувиар нэмэгдсэн. Дээр нь саяхан батлагдсан төсвийн тодотголоор 20 хувийн зардал нэмжээ. Харин одоо УИХ-р хэлэлцэгдэж буй 2012 оны төсвийн зарлагын хэмжээ урьд хожид байгаагүй их тоогоор яригдаж байна.
Нарийвчлан тоо дурьдалгүйгээр 2012 оны төсөвийг ерөнхийд нь дүгнэн хэлэхэд энэхүү төсөв нь ДНБ-ийн өсөлт, орлого, зарлагын хувьд хэт өөдрөг төсөөлөл дээр тулгуурлагдан хийгдсэн байна. Гадаадын шууд хөрөнгө оруулалтын хэмжээ нэмэгдсээр байх уу? Чадлынхаа дээд хэмжээгээр ажиллаж байгаа уул уурхайн салбар цаашид өссөөр байж чадах уу? Төсвийн хөрөнгө оруулалт маш хурднаар өсч чадах уу? Энэ үнэхээр боломжтой юу? Эдийн засгийн ажиглагчид 2010 онд баталсан төсвийн тогтвортой байдлын тухай хуулийн гол дүрмүүдийг ашиглан төсвийн зардлыг багасгаж,  төсвийн ухаалаг бодлого явуулж, сонгуультай  хутгахгүй байгаасай хэмээн хүсч байна.
2010 онд төсвийн тогтвортой байдлын тухай хуулийг УИХ-ын гишүүдийн дийлэнх олонхийн саналаар баталсан. Энэ хуульд төсвийн 3 гол дүрэм тусгагдсан. Эдгээр нь уул уурхайгаас орж ирсэн илүү орлогоо хадгалах, хэт зээлэхээс сэргийлэх, хэт бүү үрэх гэсэн энгийн бөгөөд чухал дүрмүүд.  Төсвийн эдгээр дүрмүүдийг хуулинд тусгахад Дэлхийн Банк туслалцаа үзүүлсэн бөгөөд энэ нь ОУВС-гаас хэрэгжүүлсэн стэнд- бай хөтөлбөрийн суурь нөхцөл болж, амжилттай баталсан.  Бидний зүгээс Их хурлын гишүүд, төрийн албан хаагчдыг хэд хэдэн орны туршлагуудтай танилцуулсан. Эдгээр улсуудын нэг болох зэсийн үйлдвэрлэлийг чадварлаг удирдан явуулж буй Чили улс уруу 2 удаа айлчилсан.
Энэхүү хуулийн дагуу төсвийн дүрмүүд нь тодорхой хугацаанд бүрэн хэрэгжиж эхлэхээр байгаа. Харин уул уурхай ашигтай байхад хадгалах хэрэгтэй гэсэн дүрэм нь энэ жилээс үйл ажил болох шаарлагатай байна. Гэлээ ч энэ жилийн эдийн засгийн өсөлт олон салбарыг хамар ч байгаа ба “гэнэтийн орлого “ нь зөвхөн дан ганц уул уурхайн салбараас биш юм.
Эдийн засгийн энэхүү байдалд бид ямар зөвлөгөө өгөх вэ? Дэлхийн эдийн засаг эрсдэлтэй, Хятадын хөгжил суларч , эрдэсийн түүхийн эдийн үнэ буурч байгаа болон эдийн засаг дэндүү халж байгаа өнөөгийн нөхцөлд хуулиар батлагдсан төсвийн дүрмүүдийн үзэл санааг одоо хэрэгжүүлж эхлэх нь зөв. Учир нь саяханы гашуун туршлага, өөрчлөлтийг хойшлуулалгүй сайн цагт хийж эхлэх хэрэгтэйг сануулж байна. Учир нь хойш тавьсан тэр өдөр нь  Монголын мөнхийн хөх тэнгэрт хар үүлс хуралдаж болох юм.

Friday, August 10, 2012

International Investment Law



International Investment Law

Critically appraise the legal nature of state contracts

Introduction

The internationalisation of state contracts raises some difficult questions relating to both public and private international law. The theory posits that regardless of the choice of the parties to such a contract of the proper law of the contract, international law supercedes their choice and becomes automatically applicable prevailing over governing law. Thus where municipal law applies as the sole applicable law either by virtue of the parties' express choice or by the conflict of laws rules, the theory of internationalisation initiates relating to what should be the proper law of a state contract in private international law. Besides theoretical implications, the issue has great practical significance in so far as it relates to foreign investment dispute settlement. In this essay, I attempt to critically analyze the legal nature of state contracts by focusing on the contract itself, the parties to the contract and the practice of international tribunals.

The nature of a state contract: Focusing on the contract

In the context of a state contract, monists give little weight to the proper law or applicable law of the contract especially when the parties' choice happens to be the municipal law of the host state. This is because monists aver that international law is supreme over municipal law. Consequently, although state contracts are designated by the parties to be governed by municipal law, they are no less than an internationalized contract because of the overarching applicability of international law for various considerations. This position creates disagreement in international investment law relating to the choice of law issues in the context of state contracts. This has led Jennings to observe that 'the particular topic of state contracts impinges upon some of the hardest questions of international law'.

The dicta of Judge Lauterpacht in the Norwegian Loans case encapsulates the essence of the monist argument very well:

It may be admitted...that an 'international' contract must be subject to some national law: this was the view of the Permanent Court of International Justice in the case of the Serbian and Brazilian Loans. However, this does not mean that that national law is a matter which is wholly outside the orbit of international law. National legislation...may be contrary, in its intention or efforts, to the international obligations of the State. The question of conformity of national legislation with international law is a matter of international law. The notion that if a matter is governed by national law it is for that reason at the same time outside the sphere of international law is both novel and, if accepted, subversive of international law. It is not enough for a State to bring a matter under the protective umbrella of its legislation, possibly of a predatory character, in order to shelter it effectively from any control by international law.
Thus according to Judge Lauterpacht, international law stands as a superior legal order with municipal law subordinate to it. However, such a doctrine is antagonistic to the legal implications of the attributes of state sovereignty, and reduces municipal law to the status of butler of international law. Lawyers who argue that a state contract will always be subject to international law despite any municipal law being chosen by the contracting parties as the sole proper law of the contract may be doing so without considering the context of the dicta by Judge Lauterpacht. It has to be borne in mind that he made this observation in the context of a decision of the International Court of Justice, a public international organ and especially in relation to a jurisdictional issue. However, the adherents of this view have the tendency to generalize it irrespective of the nature of the international tribunal dealing with the matter concerned. In this regard, the caveat issued by Judge Fitzmaurice is instructive:

[I]n view of his finding on the jurisdictional aspects of the Norwegian Loans case, Lauterpacht was not called upon to go into the substantive question of whether the alleged breach of contract would in fact have involved a violation of international law. Therefore it would be wrong to attribute to him the view that if there is in fact a breach by a State of a contract between itself and a foreign national or corporate entity, a breach of international law is thereby ipso facto constituted, even in the absence of any denial of justice such as would result if, for instance, a right of action were not afforded to the foreigner in the local courts, or if, such a right being afforded, the decision were given against him on manifestly dishonest grounds.
It is noteworthy that even Schwebel, an ardent follower of Judge Lauterpacht's view, had to concede, albeit with certain reluctance, the correctness of Judge Fitzmaurice's caveat. He wrote:
While still other States and scholars have not accepted the position which [Judge Fitzmaurice] sets forth, and while State practice is unquestionably uneven, it is believed that the weight of such international judgments as have been brought to bear on the question supports his view.
Thus Judge Lauterpacht's opinion in the Norwegian Loans case cannot be the authority for internationalisation of a state contract since such a contract on its own does not create an international obligation even though international law is designated by the contracting parties to be the governing law of the contract. This is especially true in the context of any international commercial arbitration which is almost without doubt of private international character or rather 'quasi-international'. The view expressed by Judge Fitzmaurice's caveat reflects the international practice and the relationship between municipal law and international law in reality.

A somewhat different approach is suggested by Professor Jennings. His emphasis is first on the connection that may be established between the contract itself and the international law. He stated his argument as follows:
The first step then...is to establish a legal bridge between the contract and international law. An effective link must be forged between the principles of international law and the relevant municipal law, so that these two systems interact. We may find ourselves, for example, wishing to say that, even in the cases in which the contract is governed by the local municipal law as its proper law, certain overriding principles of international law impinge upon the contractual relationship itself. We can imagine a situation in which the principles of pacta sunt servanda or the notion of acquired rights or something of that sort operates so as to invalidate an apparent dissolution of the contract by municipal law. The relationship between international law and municipal law must be regarded as a monist system and no longer can be explained on the basis of a dualist theory that international law and municipal law operate on different planes and never the twain shall meet.
Jennings' view is based upon the monist concept of law comprising both municipal and international law and in which international law assumes primacy over municipal law. In his approach he seemed to have elevated the individual to becoming a subject of international law. It appears clear from Jennings' view that, whether the contract is governed by municipal or international law, any simple breach of contract would be a breach of international law and would thereby engage state responsibility vis-a-vis the alien. In this regard, he argued that: 'there is at any rate nothing inherent in the structure of international law, and in the relationship between international law and municipal law, that inhibits the sanctioning of contractual obligations by international law.' However, this opinion begs the question about the sanctioning of contractual obligations by international law since this body of law contains no rules relevant to a breach of contract as such. Despite this unexplained loophole, Professor Jennings also maintained that 'if there is any point of direct contact between international law and the state contract, the theory that the only remedy for the alien contractor is for a distinct tort entirely independent of the contract is no longer tenable.'
In order to establish a link between the contract and international law, Jennings suggested different contractual elements by virtue of which the parties' intention to internationalize the contract may be presumed. These elements include the nature and the terms of the contract, a provision for arbitration, a stabilization clause, and a choice-of-law clause. Irrespective of the proper law of the contract, these contractual elements are said to forge a point of direct contact between international law and the contract. It is doubtful, however, whether the parties' true intention to internationalize the contract can be presumed by such elements. Furthermore, whatever weight was once attributed to these principles as the protective shields for foreign investors' interests in the host state seems to have lost their appeal to some extent in the face of the well-recognized principle of permanent sovereignty of states over natural resources. In addition, it is doubtful whether a breach by a State of its contractual obligations with aliens constitutes per se a breach of an international obligation, unless there is some such additional element as denial of justice, or expropriation, or breach of treaty, in which case it is that additional element which will constitute the basis for the State's international responsibility.
It is clear, therefore, that focusing on the contract to determine the legal nature of a state contract leads to somewhat unsatisfactory results. Perhaps the focus should be on the status of the parties in the eyes of international law.

The nature of a state contract: Focusing on the parties

It cannot be denied that one of the parties to a state contract, the state, is a subject of international law, and that that law governs its conduct by providing certain international minimum standards with respect to the treatment of aliens. And no matter what the choice of law of the contract is, whether municipal or otherwise, since one of the parties to such a contract is a sovereign state the international minimum standards of state conduct must apply to it. If the host state's law is the only designated proper law of the contract, it must conform to the requirements laid down by international law governing the conduct of states. From this perspective, international law is to that extent supreme over municipal law as an objective standard. Most legal systems do in fact conform to such international law requirements of a lawful exercise of a state's prerogative rights vis-a-vis aliens. In this regard, Professor Bowett has observed that:

the argument that the State's conduct is governed by international law adds very little to the substantive requirements except in the extreme situation of a State claiming, by virtue of its own municipal law, prerogatives not generally recognized to the State under most systems of law, such as the right to discriminate against aliens or the right to refuse all compensation.
By saying that the specific municipal law as the sole proper law of the contract must conform to the requirements laid down by international law governing the conduct of states is not to suggest that international law supplants the proper law as the system in which the contract has its being. Thus, international law is relevant only to the extent that it constitutes the international minimum standard and not principal law of the state contract. It is expected that an international arbitral tribunal will have a sympathetic ear to the pleading of international law by a foreign investor, but it cannot be guaranteed except in the limited sense when the municipal law of the host country is the sole and exclusive choice of law. Professor Higgins also holds this opinion and suggests that:
Of course, the best way to avoid sole reliance on domestic law is, one has to say, by having a governing law clause that introduces international law. If, in the bargaining process, the private party has been unable to accomplish this, it seems doubtful that international arbitrators should remedy that which one of the negotiating parties was unable to achieve.
The above analysis still begs the question, what do tribunals do when they are faced with these questions. In the next section we survey the practice of some tribunals.

The nature of a state contract: Focusing on the activities of tribunals

The jurisprudence of tribunals that have dealt with state contracts provide a lot of insight into the nature of state contracts because their decisions are very much connected to the status of international and domestic law with regards to the obligations between the parties. In this regard, it is worth noting that in the Pyramids case, the ICC tribunal accepted that Egyptian law was the proper law of the contract. However, the tribunal took the view that international law could be deemed as part of Egyptian law and therefore concluded that:
We find that reference to Egyptian law must be construed so as to include such principles of international law as may be applicable and that national laws of Egypt can be relied upon only in as much as they do not contravene said principles.
The tribunal's conclusion, that principles of international law override internal legislation in the event of inconsistency attributes supremacy to international law over municipal law, is generally an expression of the monist doctrine. However, the authoritative value, in view of the position of the applicable law, of such a formulation is in doubt because it is contrary to the practice of most states. Moreover, such a proposition would negate the parties' right to chose the proper law of the contract and relegate municipal law, clearly chosen to be the applicable law, to the status of second hand rules.
Another instructive case is the Aminoil case wherein the tribunal applied primarily the law of Kuwait which had, in the tribunal's view, international law as an integral part of it. However, the tribunal was not faced with a conflict between a principle of international law which it considered applicable and a rule of Kuwait law. As the tribunal said: 'the different legal elements do not always and everywhere blend as successfully as in the present case.' Since no conflict arose between the two laws, the issue of the primacy of the one over the other did not need to be dealt with in practice. Had there been any conflict as such, it might be that the tribunal would have attached supremacy to international law or perhaps it might have shown deference to the municipal law.
A monist rendering of state contracts, as was the case with the ICC tribunal in the Pyramids case, would uphold the supremacy of international law. However, such a position is challenged by a dualist account of the relationship between international law and municipal law in so far as state contracts are concerned. In this regard, dualist theory posits that though the two systems are distinct, the application of international law by way of incorporation or transformation in the municipal law is only possible because the municipal law conditions its validity and operation within the municipal sphere, and thus the municipal law assumes primacy over international law. Perhaps this would be the case in most municipal courts where priority will be given to an inconsistent rule of municipal law over international law in case any conflict arises between the two. As to whether an international arbitration tribunal in an arbitration between a state and a foreign private party would do follow this course in similar circumstances, the opinion of some distinguished scholars is negative. A great number of jurists tend to entrust any kind of international arbitral tribunal, irrespective of its standing or status in international law, with the authority to rule on the relationship between international law and municipal law. As Judge Schwebel observed: 'it appears to be assumed that international arbitral tribunals, including those sitting between states and aliens, are "monist" rather than "dualist" in the place they accord to international law.'
Judge Schwebel's remarks are borne out by the arbitral award in the Texaco/Calasiatic case, rendered by Professor Rene-Jean Dupuy. The arbitration concerned the nationalization by Libya of several petroleum concessions held by two American companies. The arbitral panel held that international law governs the arbitration's procedure, and that the deeds of concession involved are contracts 'within the domain of international law.' It was further held that the entire contractual relationship is 'internationalized' and further that the nationalization was a breach of the contracts. This holding by the tribunal was supported by its findings that the contracts were not administrative contracts and that the nationalization measures, notwithstanding the fact that they were sovereign acts, could not nullify contracts whose operative law was international law.
Thus, it is clear that a good number of international tribunals ascribe primacy status to international law even when the contract in question determined that the proper law of the contract should be the municipal law. However, it seems correct to argue that the freedom of choice of the parties should be respected. According to Bowett in a commentary on the Pyramids case:
Whenever there is a contractual choice of a specific municipal legal system as the proper law, the choice is to that legal system per se. There is no renvoi to international law and thereby to other municipal systems generally, via the concept of 'general principles of law' as a part of international law.
In other words an express choice of municipal law should not be subverted by the insertion of public international law through crafty legal engineering since, in my view; this undermines the whole purpose of agreeing on the proper law of the contract.

Conclusion

It is obvious from the preceding analysis that characterizing the legal nature of a state contract is no easy matter. It seems that it is more appropriate to argue that the legal nature of a state contract is informed by a combination of municipal law and international law with international law only introducing standards which delimit the application of the municipal laws selected by the parties, but which cannot prevail over specific references to a particular legal system. This kind of proposition would result in more fairness between parties to a state contract rather than the wholesale introduction of a body of law that was not agreed.

Bibliography

Cases

American Independent Oil Company v Kuwait 21 ILM 976; 66 ILR 518.
Case of Certain Norwegian Loans ICJ Reports (1957) 9.
SPP (Middle East) Ltd and Southern Pacific Projects v. Egypt and EGOTH [1988] LAR 309.
Texaco Overseas Petroleum Company and California Asiatic Oil Company v The Government of the Libyan Arab Republic 17 ILM 1978.

Books

E Lauterpacht (ed) International Law, Being the Collected Papers of Hersch Lauterpacht, vol. 1 (Cambridge University Press London 1970), chapter 2, 216-230.
Higgins, R Problems and Process: International Law and How We Use It (Oxford University Press New York 1994).
Hossain, K and. Chowdhury, SR (eds) Permanent Sovereignty Over Natural Resources in International Law: Principle and Practice (St Martin's Press London 1984).
Jennings, RY Rules Governing Contracts Between States and Foreign Nationals (Cambridge University Press London 1965)
Jennings, Sir R and Watts, Sir A Oppenheim's International Law 9th ed vol. 1 (Longman London 1992).
Mayer, P (1986) 'La neutralisation du pouvoir normatif de l'Etat en matire de contrats d'Etat', 113 Journal du Droit International.
Schwebel, SM International Arbitration: Three Salient Problems (Grotius Publications Cambridge 1987).
Schwebel, SM Justice in International Law (Grotius Publications Cambridge New York 1994)
Sornarajah, M The International Law on Foreign Investment (Cambridge University Press Cambridge 1994).

Articles and book chapters

Bowett, D (1986) 'Claims Between States and Private Entities: The Twilight Zone of International Law', 35 Catholic University Law Review 929.
Fitzmaurice, Sir G (1961) 'Hersch Lauterpacht - The Scholar as Judge: Part I' 37 BYIL 1.
Gaja, G 'Positivism and Dualism in Dionisio Anzilotti' 3 EJIL (1992) 123.
Jennings, RY (1961) 'State Contracts in International Law' 37 BYIL 156.
Lalive, F 'Contracts Between a State or a State Agency and a Foreign Company, Theory and Practice: Choice of Law in a New Arbitration Case' 13 ICLQ (1964) 987.
Lillich, R 'The Law Governing Disputes under Economic Development Agreements: Re-examining the Concept of Internationalisation' in R Lillich and C Brower (eds) International Arbitration in the Twenty-First Century: Towards Judicialisation and Uniformity (Transnational Publishers Irvington New York 1993) 92.
Lipstein, K 'International Arbitration Between Individuals and Governments and the Conflict of Laws', in B Cheng and E Brown Contemporary Problems in International Law: Essays in Honour of Schwarzenberger (Stevens London 1988) 177.