In November 2015, a Mongolian union leader set himself on fire during a press conference,
in order to protest the sale of coal mines to China. The union leader said that the Mongolian
“government no longer supports workers and their families”. In fact, Mongolia’s close
relationship with China has some worried about effects on employment, by choosing Chinese
over Mongolian workers. As a unique country with an extraordinarily powerful historical
background, we wanted to know, just how powerful is Mongolia?
Well, Mongolia is one of the largest countries in the world, ranking 19th, or a little smaller
than the US state of Alaska. It is also the second largest landlocked country, after its
neighbor, Kazakhstan. However, despite it’s massive size, the population is less than
3 million. That’s about five residents for every square mile, giving it the second lowest
population density of any major country on earth. By comparison, neighboring China sees
about 365 people per square mile, and in Singapore it is more than 18,000. This low density can
be largely explained by Mongolia’s vast deserts, mountains, and other land unsuitable
for agriculture and development. Nearly half of its entire population lives in the country’s
capital, Ulaanbaatar, and many of the rest are still nomadic.
Part of the reason for Mongolia’s expansive size is that for a century and a half, it
was a fearsome empire, originally founded by the infamous Genghis Khan. By the year
1270, it had become the largest contiguous empire in history, covering nearly 13 million
square miles. That’s more than a fifth of the entire world’s landmass. Eventually,
however, the empire fractured and collapsed due to infighting among Khan’s descendants.
Around the 17th century, the remaining country of Mongolia was absorbed by the predecessor
to modern day China, the Qing dynasty . When they declared independence from China in the
early 20th century, a portion remained as one of China’s autonomous regions, and today
China hosts MORE Ethnic Mongols than in actual Mongolia. On the other side of the country,
Russia established Mongolia as a satellite state soon after their independence. It took
until around the fall of the Soviet Union to achieve some form of democracy. Today more
than half of the country identifies as Buddhist, though in the early 20th century, as much
as a third of the male population was comprised of Buddhist monks.
Despite its varied history, Mongolia is struggling economically. Its GDP is about $12 billion
dollars, and in 2005, a fifth of the country lived on less than a $1.25 a day. Their primary
export industry is mining, as minerals comprise about 80% of their exports. Their military
is also rather unsubstantial. Their armed forces contain barely 150,000 active personnel,
and the Mongolian government only allocates about 70 million dollars towards defense.
That’s a mere half a percent of their GDP. They did, however contribute a small group
of troops to the US’s 2003 invasion of Iraq, prompting President George W. Bush to become
the first ever sitting president to visit the country.
Despite its small military, Mongolia has little to worry about, as they have diplomatic relations
with nearly every country on earth. Plus, they’re smack-dab in between China and Russia,
two of the world’s largest superpowers. Unless they decided to war with each other,
there is little threat hanging over Mongolia.
So with a sparse population, weak economy, tiny military, and the bulk of their ethnic
population living elsewhere, it’s pretty safe to say that the once mighty Mongolian
Empire is not quite as powerful these days.
Mongolia’s neighbor to the south, on the other hand, has a very large influence, politically
and economically. Watch our video to find out about how powerful China really is.
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