The protests in Inner Mongolia were the result of an unfortunate mixture of economic and ethnic grievances, which spilled into public protests after a Mongol herder was run over while trying to block a convoy of coal trucks coming in from the grasslands.

The fatality galvanized latent discontent over the mining industry’s penetration of the region. Critics see this as resource exploitation that degrades the steppe environment and erodes the ethnic rights of Mongols, long tied to a nomadic and pastoral culture. The combination could not have been worse: a fatal encounter that symbolized relations between a threatened regional ethnicity and a dominant national system.

The facts are hardly as ominous. Inner Mongolia is a part of the same trajectory of economic development that has transformed China’s fortunes vastly over the past three decades, and mostly for the better. But development has come with costs ― notably over the issue of land rights ― in the region as well as in the rest of the country. Resentment has led to rural protests and occasional outbursts of violence.

In Inner Mongolia’s case, however, the ethnic dimension has made a land issue more volatile than it would have been otherwise. Thus, the region belongs to the same category of restive areas as Tibet and Xinjiang, where ethnic dissension escalated to bloodletting in 2008 and 2009, respectively.

The government has moved swiftly to defuse tensions by delinking the herder’s killing from larger issues. Arrests have been made in the case, and a public trial has been promised. This should help calm the public mood.

Concurrently, the regional authorities have promised to carry out a serious probe of mines that damage the environment or affect local residents’ interests. Xinhua reports that local work safety watchdogs have been ordered to supervise coal mines stringently to see to it that they employ safe production practices, do not harm the environment, and do not ignore the welfare of local residents. The regional government is also thinking of introducing compensatory schemes for residents and herders who have to put up with the heavy noise and dust generated by the mining and transportation of coal.

These are good measures. However, they need to be accompanied by more dialogue between the authorities and groups, particularly students, to defang the idea that Inner Mongolia is an economic colony of China. Beijing has to counter the separatist message.

(The Straits Times, June 3)