Trading freedom for progress
Ou Hongjun is counting the days until his eight-year assignment in the Mongolian capital of Ulan Bator, as manager of a joint-venture hotel, is over.
'If you are strict, the absenteeism of the Mongolian staff is below 20 per cent. If you are not, it is more than 20 per cent. They are lazy, drink a lot and run after women. When we set this up, it had to be a joint venture. If I could do it again, I would run it all myself.' He is co-manager of the 30-room Undruul Hotel, which includes an up-market Chinese restaurant, one of three in Ulan Bator. It is one of the 280 Chinese projects in Mongolia, which account for one-third of the total and make China the country's biggest foreign investor.
On the other side of town, in the Gandan monastery, the heart of Mongolian Buddhism, Bator, a 33-year-old monk, articulates what many of his countrymen think of this inflow of money but which government officials do not like to say publicly.
'We should restrict investment from China. It has a powerful economy and a big population. This is the lesson we learn from history. We should consider the national security of Mongolia. Our allies cannot guarantee Mongolian independence, so we should be responsible for it.' In selling off its state companies, should the government not accept the best bid, regardless of which country it comes from? 'No,' said Bator, his face deadly serious. 'I would prefer a bid with a lower price from a non-Chinese firm.' That is the dilemma facing Mongolia, free and independent after 70 years as a Soviet satellite and at last master of its economic destiny.
It has chosen to be a free market economy, with no import tariffs and no price controls, and treats foreign companies as local ones - a strategy that wins high praise from the World Bank and Western governments but opens the door to the country becoming an economic colony of China.
From 1755 until 1911, Mongolia was ruled by the Qing dynasty. The worry that history will repeat itself makes Mongolians regard China with the same fear and distrust the Chinese feel for Japan.