October 2004, Mid-Atlantic AAS

MONGOLIAN VIEWS OF CHINA
DURING THE “COLD WAR”
Dr. Alicia Campi, U.S.-Mongolia Advisory Group, Burke, Virginia

With the 21st Century upon us, Mongolia and its neighbor and traditional antagonist China are carving out a new multi-faceted strategic relationship. Because Mongolia shares a 4,677 km. border with China, most of which is contiguous with minority regions, border issues are always delicate. Certainly these two countries have very different cultural and economic mindsets, which have negatively impacted on mutual understanding and political relations throughout history. The two states have had rocky historical ties for over 2000 years, pre-dating the establishment of the Mongolian nation. In the beginning of the 20th century, the two countries were part of the dying Manchu Empire, and over the following 50 years both experienced not one but two major political revolutions to restore their national sovereignty and move them into the internationalist socialist camp. Mongolia became a communist republic officially in 1924 and the PRC in 1949. China’s embrace of communism only temporarily improved its relationship with Mongolia, because Mongolia, fully within the orbit of the Soviet Union, usually took the side of its Soviet protector against China in any Sino-Soviet dispute.

Most western analysts and now Mongolian historians in the democratic era believe that “For the greater part of the twentieth century, Mongolian-Chinese relations remained subordinate to, and reflected almost exactly, Soviet-Chinese relations.” Mongolia has been called a pawn between its two giant neighbors, which was held hostage to Sino-Soviet relations. Nevertheless, the history of Mongolia’s relations with PRC China during the Cold War period is more complicated than that, because Mongolia was an important country to both the Soviet Union and to China and played a key role in the dynamics of the rivalry throughout the whole century, and is likely to continue to be a key factor for the 21st Century. We should all remember Chicherin saying that Mongolia had always been the trump card in Sino-Soviet relations.

It is amazing that already this fact seems to be forgotten by researchers examining the history of Chinese-Russian relations. An example of this serious oversight is the new book by Jeanne Wilson of Wheaton College called Strategic Partners, Russian-Chinese Relations in the Post-Soviet Era. Even though her research was conducted at Harvard’s Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, within a university with a long tradition of Mongolian Studies, she completely ignores the role of Mongolia in political and economic relations between the two powers during and after the Cold War. Such an oversight can only lead to partial understanding and faulty conclusions.

Today Mongolian archival materials are being opened to scholars so we have a better understanding of the Mongol point of view about their own foreign relations during the communist era, which ended in 1990. Researchers such as Baabar (B. Batbayar), D. Shurkhuu, Ts. Batbayar, Ms. N. Altantsetseg, and R. Bold, who is now the Mongolian Ambassador to the U.S., are writing in English and revealing significant new information about the thinking of Mongol policymakers during the whole of the 20th Century.

In general, these Cold War materials are not yet open to non-Mongol researchers. However, an international workshop on “Mongolia and the Cold War,” sponsored by Washington, D.C.’s Woodrow Wilson Center’s Cold War International History Project, the George Washington Cold War Group, the National Security Archive, and the Parallel History Project of Zurich was held in Ulaanbaatar in March 2004 to explore and encourage access to the Mongolian archives. Among the papers presented were “Sino-Mongolian relations in the 1960s,” “Lin Biao: dead in the desert,” “Lin Biao affair: Mongolian evidence,” and “Mao Zedong’s efforts to reclaim Mongolia.” One of the foreign scholar organizers of the conference, Sergey Radchenko, has obtained and translated an archival document which is “Record of Conversation between the Mongolian People’s Republic Government Delegation and the Deputy Chairman of the People’s Republic of China State Council [Foreign Minister Chen Yi, 30 September 1964].” None of these have been published to date.

This paper will review the new conceptual analysis in Mongolian research about the country’s relations with China, especially during Mongolia’s communist era, 1921-1990. This period for Mongolia represents the “Cold War.” Recent Mongolian scholarship categorizes Mongolian-Chinese relations throughout the turbulent 20th century in 8 distinct eras:
• 1) The Manchu period until 1911, when the Mongol princes alliance with the Manchus was broken;
• 2) Autonomous period from 1911 to 1921, with nominal Republic of China (ROC) suzerainty over Mongolia’s foreign policy during the reign of the 8th Living Buddha;
• 3) Early Mongolian communist period from 1921 to 1927, through independence in 1921 and the establishment of a People’s Government in 1924 (upon the death of the last theocratic ruler);
• 4) Ending of substantive Chinese trade and political contacts from 1927 to 1949, with Soviet Russian domination of Mongolian internal affairs;
• 5) Period of good relations with communist PRC from 1949-1962;
• 6) Sino-Soviet dispute era from 1962 to 1985, when Mongolian-relations were very strained and Mongolia established a strongly dependent relationship with the Soviet Union;
• 7) Improving economic relations with China from 1986-1995: Russian political and economic influence concurrently decreased, Mongolia abandoned communism for democracy in 1990, and Russian troops were totally withdrawn in 1992;
• 8) Era of balanced strategic partnership with China and Russia since 1995.

Little new analysis in Mongolia has been devoted to the Manchu Period and the Autonomous Era, probably because of nationalistic reasons. Most research has been focused on Mongolian ties to the Soviet Union, and how these then influenced Sino-Mongolian relations during the warlord, nationalist, and PRC governments. From the above categories, it is clear that the Mongols during the communist period and now considered themselves a much older communist nation than the PRC and one that was united far before the PRC appeared in 1949. These categories also reveal that Mongolian researchers looked at the history of relations over time differently from Chinese and westerners. Mongolia saw its modern independence as beginning in July 1921 and confirmed by the bilateral treaty it signed in Moscow on November 4, 1921. In response the ROC Government in Beijing lodged a formal protest with the Soviet envoy in China, Alexander Paikes, demanding clarification re Soviet intentions in Outer Mongolia.

Paikes asserted the Soviets were committed to the 1915 Tripartite Treaty article that granted Outer Mongolia status as “an autonomous part of China under Russia’s influence,” thus conceding Mongolia was Chinese, not independent, at least in name. In the 1990s Mongol scholars, seeing all the available sources, have become convinced that, in these Sino-Soviet negotiations over Mongolia, Paikes revealed that the real purpose behind the Soviets’ recognition of China’s sovereignty over Mongolia was to persuade Republican China to open negotiations with Moscow over mutual recognition. Paikes was replaced by Adolf Joffe in 1922, who was sent to negotiate about Outer Mongolia with ROC Foreign Minister Wellington Koo, as part of the matters to be settled prior to establishing diplomatic relations. It is now understood that Joffe actually wanted to withdraw from the 1915 Tripartite agreement and give Mongolia to China, seeing Mongolia as the most difficult question to resolve: “A withdrawal from Mongolia will help not only the Chinese Revolutionary movement [of Sun Yatsen] but also the world revolution in the future….I don’t think we should sacrifice our Far Eastern revolution for the Buriats and Mongols only because they are close to our hearts.”

Mongolian historian Baabar claims Sun Yatsen and Wu Peifu in late 1922 agreed to let Soviet troops temporarily be stationed in Mongolia as long as Outer Mongolia unconditionally reverted to China after China joined the world revolution. On May 31, 1924 the Soviets and China signed a treaty to regulate outstanding bilateral issues as a precursor to official diplomatic relations. Article Five of the treaty asserted the USSR “recognizes Outer Mongolia as an integral part of the Republic of China, and respects China’s sovereignty therein,” and promised to withdraw Soviet troops after discussions at a future border conference. Baabar claims that Mongolian communist leaders were “thunderstruck at the news,” and Z. Lonjid and O. Batsaihan wrote in the journal Il Tovchoo that Mongolian Foreign Minister Amar “could not believe [his] ears and wished the news was not true.” This analysis is in contrast to Mongolia’s official communist history which for decades did not criticize the treaty, but asserted, “…the signing of the Agreement was equally profitable for the people of Mongolia, China, and Soviet Russia.”

Although China publicly retained sovereignty over Mongolia, the Soviets did not remove their troops as Republican China drifted into civil war. Stalin supported General Feng Yuxiang, supplying him with arms and horses through Mongolian territory in the late 1920s. The communists under Mao Zedong split from Chiang Kaishek’s Nationalists in 1927, which drastically changed Soviet foreign policy towards China. The Mongols were ordered to stop supplying Feng. Then began a terrible decade in Mongolian history, full of purges of intelligentsia, politicians, and lamas, and even open rebellion of the populace. Mongolian leaders were accused of seeking too much independence in their misinterpretation of the course of the gradual transfer by the Soviet Union of Mongolia back to China. Economic ties with China which had continued into the communist period, by the end of the 1920s were broken. In 1925 86% of Mongolia’s wool was exported to China and only 13% to the Soviet Union. One year later, 76% of Mongolian wool went to the USSR and only 22% was sent to China. Thus from the Mongol point of view, its own Cold War period with China began in 1927.

Japan’s attack on Manchurian territory and the establishment of Manchuguo as a Japanese puppet state meant that Mongolia had acquired a new neighbor. Japan’s promotion of the “pan-Mongolist” movement was a serious threat both to Stalin and the Chinese. Because the border between Mongolia and Manchuguo was not clear, skirmishes occurred as early as 1935, until the Japanese finally were repulsed in 1939 at the battle of Khalkin Gol (aka Nomonhan). Stalin wanted to station troops in Mongolia, but there was resistance from some of the Mongolian leadership, particularly Prime Minister Genden. Mongol historian Baabar recently has claimed: “It is probable that Mongolian leaders, trying to circumvent Stalin’s demands, saw an opportunity in the advances made by Japan and Manchuguo to recognize Mongolia’s independence and, consequently, opposed the stationing of the Red Army in their country.” In 1936 Stalin denounced Genden in person saying, “No other country except us recognizes Mongolia. You are still a part of China. We have no obligation to help you at all.” Genden later supposedly got drunk at a reception with Stalin and Molotov, snatched Stalin’s pipe out of his mouth and broke it. Within a few months Genden was arrested and executed as a Japanese spy in Moscow, although the disposition of his body was kept secret for more than 50 years.

The Mongols were sympathetic to the Mongolian autonomous region Japan set up in Manchuria and the assistance Japan provided to Prince Demchigdonrov (De Wang) of Inner Mongolia. His Jehol-based Mongol princes with lamas and military officers met with Pu Yi to request admittance into Manchuguo. This was seen as a great threat by nationalist and communists alike in China. It still is not clear how Mongolia viewed the contending parties in China, and if Mongolia provided any of its own material assistance to Mao Zedong in the 1930s and in World War II.

As the Second World War came to a conclusion, the Allies discussed the question of Outer Mongolia both at Cairo and Yalta, because the Guomindang government was demanding Mongolia be returned to them at the end of the war with Japan. The Soviet Union lobbied for maintaining the status quo, when efforts to persuade the U.S. to accept outright independence failed. Chiang Chingguo on behalf of his father met with Stalin in Moscow in July 1945 and asked him why the USSR so strongly supported independence for the Mongols. Stalin was reported to have replied: “Let me tell you straight away why I want Outer Mongolia: this country is strategically important for defense.” Chiang Chingguo countered that the Chinese people who had fought the Japanese so long to regain their lost territory would never stand behind a government that allowed such a large territory to be taken away. Baabar believes that Mongolia declared war on Japan the day after the Soviet Union did “to show China that Mongolia was an independent country.” Afterwards, Mongolian troops were sent with Soviet soldiers across the Gobi to Jehol to defeat a small Japanese contingent in what is called Janchuugiyn Battle.

At the end of the war, ROC Foreign Minister Song Ziwun went to Chunking with the proposal that Outer Mongolia should be able to decide domestic, foreign, and military affairs, and independently negotiate with the Soviet Union. Chiang Kaishek, as a face-saving measure, offered to recognize Mongolian independence after a plebiscite among the Mongols. He later would explain his position to the party congress: “Given the situation in Outer Mongolia then, it was only appropriate to grant it independence. The purpose of this decision was to win back Northeast China in exchange for the independence of Outer Mongolia. In other words, we swapped Outer Mongolia for Northeast China.” He maintained that it was necessary to recognize Mongolian independence in order to have friendly bilateral relations with the USSR. Some Mongols today believe that this declaration of Chiang is why Stalin promised not to make Mongolia part of the Soviet Union: “Since we recognize the independence of the MPR, there is no need to be suspicious that we shall annex it.”

The Chinese and Soviets agreed to accept the existing border for the past 26 years. A referendum was held on October 20, 1945 with Chinese governmental oversight. It was reported in official Mongolian communist histories that not a single vote was cast against independence. On January 6, 1946 the Executive Yuan of China officially recognized the MPR, and on February 27, a Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation between Mongolia and the Soviet Union, with a validity of 20 years, was concluded. This was the first Soviet official recognition of Mongolian independence.

With the success of the Chinese Communist revolution, Mongolia immediately recognized the new Chinese government on October 6, 1949, and the PRC opened an embassy in Ulaanbaatar. However, it took a trip of Mao Zedong to Moscow in early 1950 for the Chinese to accede to the independent status, de facto and de jure, of Mongolia in a joint Sino-Soviet communiqué.
Dr. Ts. Batbayar, one of Mongolia's leading researchers on strategic and development studies,believes the establishment of the PRC “was the most profound event for Mongolia in the 1950s,” because the MPR became an important bridge in a larger Soviet-Chinese cooperative alliance.

In the 1950s,in general,Sino-Soviet relations were friendly, and so were Sino-Mongolian relations. The Mongol Premier Yu. Tsedenbal concluded an Agreement on Economic and Cultural Cooperation on October 4, 1952 on his first trip to Beijing. The Chinese provided a soft loan of 36 million rubles for construction projects in 1952, a grant of 160 million rubles in 1955 to buy Chinese products, and 3 more soft loans in 1956 (160 million rubles), 1958 (100 million rubles), and 1960 (200 million rubles). Thousands of Chinese workers were sent up by train after 1955 to Ulaanbaatar to provide manpower and expertise for building projects, including the first apartment buildings in the capital city. Their totals reached 17,000 with families. Still,the Mongols knew Mao was not reconciled to an independent Mongolia. For example, he asked Krushchev in 1954 about uniting Mongolia with Inner Mongolia under the control of the PRC. Krushchev told him to raise the idea with Ulaanbaatar. Nevertheless, Mongolia’s confidence in the goodwill of the PRC is indicated by its willingness to permit the removal of all Soviet troops by 1956.

Tsedenbal had visited Beijing in October 1959 for the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the PRC, and an article was published in Moscow under his name entitled, “On the History of the Development and Strengthening of Mongo-Chinese Friendship.” Batbayar reports that during the May 1960 visit of Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai to Mongolia, Zhou tried to persuade Mongolia to be more independent from the USSR—like Albania. During this visit a Treaty of Friendship and Mutual Assistance was signed. Zhou said the PRC felt very indebted to Mongolia and, as a way to repay, the Chinese reportedly offered a steel mill and additional Chinese workers.

Border issues between Mongolia and the PRC were resolved in December 1962 with a treaty that Batbayar labels highly favorable to Mongolia. This took place after both the Cuban missile crisis and the Sino-Indian dispute, which were matters of dispute between the USSR and PRC. Before the treaty signing, Zhou Enlai warned Tsedenbal about negative consequences for bilateral relations if Mongolia continued to one-sidedly support the Soviet positions. Tsedenbal later rejected the advice and publicly supported the Soviets on both matters.

In fact, relations between the two countries already had begun to worsen prior to the treaty agreement. Chinese laborers began to leave Mongolia in May 1962 and they were gone by 1966. The Mongols accused the laborers of sabotage and inciting strikes. The removal seems to have come at PRC initiative, because the Mongolian Government complained the workers left projects unfinished.

The first official strong condemnation of the PRC by name was in December 1963 when the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party (MPRP) issued a statement entitled “The CCP leadership attempt to split the world communist movement and the MPRP policy.” However, this statement was not publicized in the official party newspaper until over six months later. The day before the publication (June 12, 1964), the Central Committee of the MPRP sent a letter to the Central Committee of the CCP which declared its strong loyalty to the Soviets and condemned Chinese pressure on the MPRP. Mao Zedong on July 10, 1964 complained to a Japanese socialist delegation about Soviet “domination” of Mongolia. The Mongolian official press agency (MONTSAME) on September 9 condemned Mao’s interview “as the consequence of great power ambitions inherited from Manchu-Chinese aggressors,” and the Mongol leadership interpreted Mao’s words as confirming Chinese desire to incorporate Mongolia into China (as Mao had told Edgar Snow in the 1930s).

However, it was not until the entire Mongolian Politburo flew to Moscow in April 1965 that Tsedenbal joined Leonid Brezhnev in a statement of agreement to all of Moscow’s positions on international issues. Many Mongol historians now open say that Tsedenbal seized the opportunities presented by the growing Sino-Soviet split to win a new bilateral treaty with the USSR that forced the Soviets to greatly increase economic assistance to Mongolia for 1965-1980, rather than being ordered by his ally to push away from China: “Each twist and turn in Sino-Soviet relations was used as an an additional argument to ask the Soviet government to render more economic assistance. Indeed, Tsedenbal had a very powerful “China card” in his pocket, and he did not hesitate to play it.” Further research on this whole matter must be done before we have a clear picture of Tsedenbal’s role in manipulating the Sino-Soviet dispute for his own ends, and perhaps to modify the western view that Tsedenbal was just a pawn to Soviet interests.

In January 1966, Brezhnev took his first foreign trip as General Secretary to Mongolia to sign a new 20-year Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance, which included unpublished defense-related clauses and was the sparkplug for a massive buildup of Soviet troops and missile bases, particularly along the border. The start of the Cultural Revolution in 1966 drove the Mongols even further into the Soviet camp. The Red Guards accused Tsedenbal of allowing Moscow to maintain Mongolia as a “neocolonial dependency,” and in August 1967 an embassy limousine was set on fire and the chauffeur attacked at the Mongolian Embassy in Beijing. Mongol leaders were very nervous after the Soviet-Chinese clash at Damanskii Island in early 1969. In August of that same year, the Mongols made a very public celebration of the 30th anniversary of the repulsion of the Japanese at Khalkhin Gol, which Batbayar believes was intended to warn Beijing that they would meet the same fate as the Japanese, if the Chinese dared to attack Mongolia.

Even the death of Mao in 1976 did not unfreeze relations between the PRC and Mongolia. When Chinese Premier Hua Guofeng in 1977 called for Soviet troop withdrawal; Tsedenbal protested strongly. Mongolia doubled the size of its own army as requested by Soviet Defense Minister Ustinov. In 1979 Soviet forces in Mongolia reached a peak of 120,000. Batbayar believes the continuing poor atmosphere was intensified by two Chinese actions that year: 1) the establishment of diplomatic relations with the U.S. and the PRC’s counterattack against Vietnam. Tsedenbal, it appears, failed to understand how Deng Xiaoping’s reforms and Brezhnev’s death were having a beneficial effect on Sino-Soviet relations. His continued attacks on the Chinese in hopes of getting more favors out of Moscow backfired, and there were talks in the Soviet Politburo during 1983-1984 about finding a way to ease Tsedenbal out of his position. This goal was realized on August 23, 1984.

Mongolia’s new leader, Batmonkh, responded to the new policies of perestroika and glasnosti declared by the new Soviet leader Gorbachev in 1985. Mongolia’s foreign policy could be reconstructed with China. The second half of the 1980s saw a revival of Mongol-Chinese economic relations, which then had a positive effect on foreign relations. When Gorbachev went to Beijing in 1989 and announced that his Government would withdraw its troops from Mongolia, which was accomplished in 1992, “China began to pursue an active policy in Mongolia and political bilateral relations were restored.”
Mongolia had been watching the economic changes in the PRC during the 1980s. Ulaanbaatar exchanged visits with Beijing on a vice-minister level before Moscow did, and as early as 1987 was talking about creating a mechanism of political dialogue among Northeast Asian countries. Batbayar believes the breakthrough in Mongolia's relations with China was the May 1990 visit of newly elected President P. Ochirbat to Beijing, because this was the first time a Mongol President went first to Beijing not Moscow, and so effectively ended two decades of hostility. In 1992 Chinese President Yang Shangkun paid an official four-day visit to Mongolia and concluded an agreement guaranteeing Mongolian access to the sea via Tianjin. Chinese Premier Li Peng came in April 1994 and signed a new bilateral treaty. In the Treaty's Article 4 the signatories promised not to take part in military-political alliances against each other with third countries. For Mongolia, the ‘Cold War’ era with China was over.

The 1990s brought significant changes to Mongolia domestically and internationally. Its 70 year alliance with the Soviet Union ended peacefully with the adoption of a democratic Constitution and democratic elections in 1992. For most of the century Mongolia had seen and used the Soviets as protectors against their giant Chinese southern neighbor. After all, for Mongols Stalin was and still is the man who preserved the independence of Mongolia at Yalta.

It is true that Mongolian relations with China, Republican and Communist, ebbed and flowed with Sino-Soviet relations, although not exclusively because the Soviets dictated policies to the Mongols. As Batbayar notes, Mongolia's top leadership played its own "China card" with the Soviets during the Sino-Soviet conflict to squeeze out more Soviet economic assistance. During the years between 1970 and 1990 the Soviets spent 600 million rubles to build a huge copper plant called Erdenet in northern Mongolia, making it the largest revenue-generating enterprise in the country. The Soviets gave nearly 6 billion rubles to Mongolia in soft loans for capital investment, 670 million rubles in non-repayable aid, and over 2 billion rubles in loans for balancing trade deficits. In the decade of the 1980s, long after a warming in Sino-Soviet relations, Mongolia was given the majority of this assistance.

Mongolia is in the midst of reassessing its relationship with China in the 21st century. China believes it should be the Asian regional leader, and Mongolia, recognizing this Chinese goal, sees developing closer economic and environmental links to its big neighbor as its best way to integrate into Northeast Asia and assure its access to the Pacific via Tianjin. As part of this process and in response to the declassification and discovery of many documents from its communist era, Mongolia rightly is reviewing its relationship with China throughout the 20th Century, which can only lead to a better understanding of its pivotal role in Sino-Soviet relations during the Cold War.