Crossfire War – Ulaanbaatar – Moscow – Shanghai Watch – East Asia Theatre: Ulaanbaatar – Moscow – Tokyo – Geneva – Tehran – Taipei – Shanghai/Beijing; 2,000 Former Soldiers Riot in Three Chinese Cities Including Baotou Inner Mongolia
Night Watch: BAOTOU – Mongolia is about to become a lot larger. Late last year Chinese officials escorted Mongolia’s head of state on a tour of some of China’s provinces. A lot of China’s leadership, in and out of Beijing, realizes that the country is fragmenting once again due to the pandemic corruption, which hits China like a wave throughout so much of China’s history, a history that contains a chronicle of so many civil wars.
One nearly happened again in 1989 as the military units stationed in and around Beijing supported student groups and labor organizations in Tiananmen Square, the pro-democracy movement, before thousands were killed by troops called in by the Central Government.
Demonstrations occur so frequently they are no longer counted. The last year China did so was in 2005 when more than 87,000 “mass incidents” took place, but none have been mentioned as ever occurring in Inner Mongolia until September 3, when in the province’s largest city Baotou, 1,000 newly discharged soldiers, who were to undergo retraining, rioted due to the awful conditions in the railway vocational schools. Equipment was smashed and fires set.
Reuters – Turkish Daily News also reported nearly 1,000 other discharged soldiers rioted in Baoji in the northwestern province of Shaanxi and in Wuhan the capital of Hubei province in central China. [TURKISHDAILYNEWS]
A faxed statement reported, “Food in the schools is bad and expensive. The dormitories have no electrical outlets and the students need to pay to recharge their cell phones.” An official attempted to explain, “It was no big deal and things like that happens on campus a lot. However, some people exaggerated it. I do not want to say anything more about it, because it would not be good for our schools reputation.”
The rioters were part of 6,000 soldiers who were discharged in July and they are no longer guaranteed jobs in the police or government after leaving service as soldiers used to receive years ago. Due to reforms, they are now left on their own with no little or no prospects in the world’s most suspicious and difficult economy. An official actually admitted several years ago that corruption in the country was worse than before 1949 the year of China’s last revolution.
I suspect not only will demonstrations in Inner Mongolia flare up again but also the Mongolian government in Ulaanbaatar will decide to support them, setting the stage for war between Mongolia and some of China’s provinces as what is left of the Central Government’s authority evaporates. Mongolia being a democracy will also add to their appeal to a lot of the Chinese. The international community will make no secret of their support for Mongolia while Beijing becomes a cultural center between dust storms and the provinces of China, not controlled by Ulaanbaatar, rule themselves.
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