Mr. Putin, welcome to Mongolia! Even if your visit only lasts half a day. Soon after becoming the President of Russia in 2000, you visited Mongolia and established the Ulaanbaatar Declaration with N.Bagabandi, who served as the president of our country at the time. Six years later, our then-president N.Enkhbayar paid a visit to Moscow and signed approximately ten documents to liberalize the trade between the two countries and for other purposes. In 2009, you visited Mongolia again and established a joint venture company named Infrastructure Development with N.Enkhbayar. You have recently held several talks and agreed on numerous items with President Elbegdorj and with N.Altankhuyag, Prime Minister from the Democratic Party, which has the ruling power.
If those agreements and negotiations that were established by your and our authorities had been implemented, the long, highly bureaucratic, and expensive process of acquiring visas would at least have been abolished by now. Although the annual trade turnover between our countries, who are close neighbors to each other, has reached 1.7 billion USD, only five percent is made up by shirts, socks, and other products from Mongolia while the remaining 95 percent is accounted for by petrol from Russia. The bilateral trade would have been much more balanced and fair if the agreements had been implemented. Also, the execution of those numerous negotiations would have added an additional track to the co-owned single-track Trans-Mongolian railway while replacing the museum-worthy old cars with new ones. If Russia had abolished its embargo and lifted the 50-60 percent tax, Mongolia’s meat exports that supplied Siberia for hundreds of years would have risen again. Did you really have to transport meat from the far-away New Zealand?
You must be concerned and frustrated about the fact that the outcomes of dozens of meetings and negotiations held over many years have been rather negative than positive. The feeling is mutual. We, the ordinary citizens of Mongolia, are worried about what is stifling the relations between our two nations. It can be partly explained by the lack of capacity of Mongolia’s government institutions and the deficiency in their management capabilities. There seems to be a glass wall between our two countries that share many cultural similarities and have plenty of opportunities. The glass wall allows us to see what is happening but not understand it. How long will it last? No real outcomes have been produced even though there were many high-level visits, meetings, and negotiations. It resembles a mute person and a deaf person trying to have a conversation. There is a great need to understand the reason why there is such lack of understanding between the two countries and fix the situation.
AT GOVERNMENT LEVEL
Mongolia has completely changed its political, economic, and social development model for the last 20 years. Politically, we have a parliamentary system with direct elections while having a free market economy led by the private sector. Socially, we have chosen a democratic path for development that affirms human right and freedom.
Mongolia is undertaking a double transition from a centrally planned economy to a market economy and from a single-party system to a multi-party system. Despite facing many challenges and having our ups and downs, we are going forward on this path. For example, one of our biggest challenges today is to remove the roots of corruption by making political party funding transparent and having political parties produce their campaign financing and expenditure reports.
The authorities of our two countries have been trying to decide economic matters using political means just like they used to in the relations between the USSR and the People’s Republic of Mongolia rather than adhering to the principles of market economy. This is the reason why our negotiations and talks have not been productive.
The current relations between the two countries cannot be seen through the same lens of political means that are used in the structures of the co-owned railway, Erdenet mine, Monros, and other state-owned entities. In Mongolia, people have become highly critical of state-owned companies being managed by whoever appointed by election-winning political party, running deficits most of the time, and being a political institution rather than an economic one. There is a group of people who have the exact opposite view because their life revolves around state-owned companies. It would be obsolete to understand Mongolia through the views of those people. This particular group of people is interested in expanding the government involvement and influence in Mongolia’s economy, sustain the state-owned companies despite the deficits they are running, and keep their operations secret because it profits them.
Any business or economic entity has no choice but to adapt their operations to the market they supply their products to. It is strongly demanded within Mongolia’s society that every single state-owned company conduct transparent operations and publish their financial reports truthfully. If the co-owned railway can offer the fastest and cheapest service to the Sino-Russian trade and the broader Asia-Europe trade, related parties will be benefited. If Mongolia connects the largest two railway networks in the world and becomes a transit hub that provides excellent transshipment services, it will be a win-win situation for citizens of Mongolia, Russia, and China. It is hoped that Russia will support Mongolia becoming a regional railway transit country. Mr. President, Mongolians are grateful for your Steppe Road proposal and wish that a historical project gets implemented under your name.
AT BUSINESS/PEOPLE’S LEVEL
There is a Mongolian saying that goes “If seats are not found at the top, directions will not be found at the bottom.” It means that, if the authorities cannot find where they sit, the people will not be able to know where they are going. The lack of mutual understanding between the two countries at the government level has resulted in increased confusion in the media. Many Mongolian and Russian citizens cut off their commercial links due to the visa process that lasted for the past 20 years. We are glad that you have put an end to it. No one, the people or politicians, benefited from having to have visas to travel between the two countries. Mongolian businessmen are more likely to go around Russia if they can.
The Russian media rarely talks about the current situation of Mongolia’s socio-economic reform and has taken an ignorant, mocking view for many years. Except for the decreasing number of people who were educated in the USSR, Mongolians are receiving information about Russia from the translated news stories provided by the Western media. Yet, Ulaanbaatar would readily welcome Russian tourists and offer them with good hotels that serve meals from different countries.
The Sant Maral Foundation, an independent institution that investigates the public opinion, has had a survey that said 70 percent of Mongolians still view Russia as our closest, most reachable neighbor. As a person who was graduated from the Moscow State University, I can see, as do my fellow friends, that the ordinary citizens of Russia and Mongolia share similar beliefs and opinions, and wish to restore the relationship with each other.
Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich, you must have noticed that Mongolia and Russia today have become different nations than they were in the socialist era. The owners of our homes have become new people from new generation. We can also see that Russia has become a different country than it was before.
It is time for the eternal neighboring countries of ours to tear down the glass wall that we built without even noticing it. We believe that it starts from this visit of yours. It is time for the glass wall to shatter. Davno pora, ne tak li? (It has long been overdue, hasn’t it?)
2014.09.03