TANA GOLDFIELDS News Reviews Mongolia’s economy is soaring, but at what cost?

TANA GOLDFIELDS News
Reviews
Mongolia’s economy is soaring,
but at what cost?

Reviews
“Tradition,” says Javhlan.
He was everywhere in Mongolia: On the
metal light poles in the capital city,
Ulaanbaatar, amid the chockablock traffic,
there were little tourist-friendly posters
bearing the radiant, smiling image of
Mongolia’s premier folk crooner.

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You’d stroll past the Lego store, then past
Hugo Boss, right into the chic, moneyed
core of a nation that is now mining gold,
copper and coal for Chinese consumption,
and there he was again. Javhlan is 33. On
the posters, his cheeks are ruddy, his eyes
aglow with health.

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He seems well fed, and serene and bearish
and strong somehow, and his costume
carries a stately (if affected) grandeur. He is
dressed 13th-century style, in a long flowing
robe and a pointy helmetlike cap, as though
he were just about to hop on a horse and
join the old warlord Genghis Khan in battle
out on the steppes.

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Javhlan’s music matches his getup. It is plaintive
and patriotic, and his deep baritone voice
resonates, manly and sodden with pathos, over
tinkling electronic background beats. In one song,
“Promise,” he apologizes to his ancestors for how
Mongolia has sold out to the Chinese and ensures
the desecration will stop. “The land was given to
us in one piece,” he declares, “so we will protect it.
Even if God asks for a piece of it, we won’t give
any away.”

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In Mongolia, I scarcely ever stepped into a
taxi bereft of Javhlan tunes. When I tried to
bond with one driver by asking if the singer
on the radio was in fact Javhlan, he grew
wistful and glassy-eyed, telling me that, like
Javhlan, he hailed from the western
province of Uvs. “Tiim,” he affirmed,
“Javhlan.”

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When I was in Mongolia, Javhlan was
running for a seat in the Mongolian
Parliament as a dark-horse third-party
candidate. Though he would eventually lose,
he campaigned with celebrity flourish, by
giving away 100 tons of hay to the good
herders of Uvs.

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He was earnest with reporters, stressing
that it was mining — and its savage effects
on the earth — that spurred him into politics.
“Foreigners are digging up our land,” he said
recently, “and ruining our wintering grazing
spots. I had no choice but to run.” He added
that he was old-school about child rearing.
“My wife and I plan to have 15 kids,” he
pronounced. “We are real Mongolians.”

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On two separate occasions, I arranged a
meeting with Javhlan. But then each time he
canceled, last-minute. “Javhlan had to rush
to the countryside,” I was told, through his
handlers. “It was an emergency.”

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It didn’t matter, though, for I already knew
that Javhlan was central to a vast social
experiment. Mongolia was for centuries
made up largely of nomadic herders. Its
economy was almost static; in 2011, it
achieved a 17.3 percent growth in gross
national product. The World Bank has
predicted that Mongolia will have one of the
planet’s fastest-growing economy over
2013, 2014 and 2015.

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The nation’s largest mine, Oyu Tolgoi, which
just began production in June, is believed to
contain 81 billion pounds of copper and 46
million ounces of gold. Nearly all of it will go
to China, and on some Chinese maps now,
Mongolia is simply rendered as an Alaska-
size Chinese province.

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Meanwhile, rural Mongolians, enticed by the
promise of a richer Ulaanbaatar, are now
moving to the capital city, population 1.2
million, at the rate of 50,000 per year, and
planting their round herders’ yerts, called
gers in Mongolia, willy-nilly on the city’s
fringes. The number of cars in UB, as it’s
known in Mongolia, has tripled in the past
decade. And still a nomad vibe prevails: The
city does not have street addresses.

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Locals navigate somewhat as herders do in
the desert, studying the slant of the sun as
they search for tall buildings. There aren’t
even any crosswalks — residents are
obliged to dodge the oncoming cars, even if
they just forked out 2.8 million tugriks, about
$1,700, for a handbag at Louis Vuitton.

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Amid all the newness and chaos, Mongolia
is clinging hard to its past. Genghis Khan is
resurgent here, and universally beloved.
There is a new 131-foot-tall statue of him
just outside UB, and the memory of his
“Nine White Banners” flag, consisting of nine
white horsetail plumes, is newly keen. Nine
is a lucky number in Mongolia now.

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Even the most avant-garde Mongolians are
embracing old traditions. My interpreter, a
heavy metal singer named Uugii, was letting
his tiny son’s black locks grow long, in
anticipation of a lavish hair-cutting ceremony
on the boy’s third birthday. And everywhere
a question looms: What does Mongolia need
now, as it endeavors to step into the global
fray, without losing its integrity and its soul?

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All I really did, wandering about Mongolia,
was ask that one question. I came home
with a picture of a charming and fractious
country, in the form of eight answers
scrawled into my notebooks.

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Source:
http://www.tvinx.com/strategy_and_vision-tana
http://coconutbutterz.edublogs.org/

TANA GOLDFIELDS News Reviews Mongolia’s economy is soaring, but at what cost?

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TANA GOLDFIELDS News Reviews Mongolia’s economy is soaring, but at what cost?