The Pandemic's Effects on Educational Disparities Between Mongolia's Rural and Urban Students

COVID-19 has resculpted the global landscape of education, resulting in devastating learning loss that widened the gap between disadvantaged students and their peers. By exacerbating inequities around the world, the pandemic has spurred teachers and policymakers everywhere to rethink education. While various organizations attempt to make collective statements about the pandemic’s effects on the international education as a whole, invaluable information can be gained by using a more singular lens to approach the issue of COVID-19’s impact as it relates to a particular country’s education system. As the world’s most sparsely populated independent country and one whose pandemic response has been largely successful, Mongolia makes for an interesting focus point upon which the pandemic’s effects on education can be examined. Surprisingly, there are few reports exploring the ways in which Mongolian schools have been challenged by and interacted with the pandemic. In this report, I aim to explore how the pandemic affected Mongolia and what inferences can be made regarding the pandemic’s effects on Mongolian education.

Mongolia and the Pandemic

March 9, 2022 marks two years since Mongolia first came in contact with the coronavirus through a French national working in the country. From this moment on, the nation has been grappling with serious questions regarding how to best shape government policy to combat the pandemic and keep people safe. Even before the virus found its way into Mongolia, the government had been on high alert. This trend can be seen as early as January 10, 2020, when the Mongolian government issued its first public advisory, aimed at urging all Mongolians to wear a mask. This was soon followed by the closing of borders to its neighbor China with whom Mongolia shares the longest land border. The transportation restriction meant no Chinese citizen or person traveling from China could enter Mongolia. Through the implementation of its early response to the pandemic, Mongolia had managed to entirely evade any COVID-19 deaths until December 30, 2020. The Mongolian government’s determination to rapidly implement high-impact COVID-19 prevention policies stemmed not only from concerns over its shared border with China, but also from insecurity regarding the country’s health infrastructure. “Here’s the thing: we don’t actually have a great public health system,” explained Davaadorj Rendoo, an epidemiologist at the National Center for Public Health in Mongolia’s capital and largest city Ulaanbaatar. “That’s why our administrators were so afraid of COVID-19.”

As of April 2022, the number of active COVID-19 cases in Mongolia has dropped below 1,000 for the first time since late 2020. With the number of daily infections declining and the percentage of fully vaccinated people exceeding 65%, things seem to be looking up for the Mongolian people. However, while pandemic-related policies in Mongolia seem to have enabled the country to evade overwhelming fatalities, the pandemic has inflicted serious damage to the Mongolian education system. Since all schools were closed on January 27, 2020 to combat the spread of COVID-19 among students, the education system has been forced to undergo significant, unprecedented changes. These changes disproportionately affected Mongolia’s most vulnerable students living in remote areas with limited internet access and electricity. Even in Mongolia’s most populous cities like Ulaanbaatar, the immediate switch to remote learning has left no student unscathed. While UNICEF estimates that schoolchildren across the globe have lost over 1.8 trillion hours of in-person learning due to the pandemic, it is difficult to precisely conclude how much learning loss the students of Mongolia have experienced. Data is still being collected, and the pandemic has not yet been eradicated. 

Mongolian Education: Pre-Pandemic

In order to gain a better understanding of the pandemic’s effects on education in Mongolia, it is important to be acquainted with the pre-pandemic state of Mongolian schools. Mongolia’s 2018 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey provides valuable insight into the strengths and weaknesses of the Mongolian education system before the pandemic. Developed by UNICEF, the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS) program is the largest household survey on women and children worldwide. Its purpose has been “to assist countries in filling data gaps on children’s and women’s health statuses.” Mongolia’s 2018 MICS fortifies the argument that rural/urban educational inequity has existed in Mongolia before the pandemic, opening the doors to explore how the pandemic has interacted with that inequity. According to the report, 58.2% of rural children aged 36-59 months were attending early childhood education institutes. Compared to the 81.4% of urban children, it is evident that living in urban Mongolia comes with a higher likelihood of obtaining access to early childhood education, which has been proven to lower risks of school dropout and contribute to higher learning and employment outcomes later in life. Additionally, having access to early childhood education means that a child’s caregiver can participate in the workforce, which is key to “breaking stubborn cycles of intergenerational poverty.” Early childhood education inequity explains why higher education inequity also exists in Mongolia. According to UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring Report, 53% of 18-22 year olds living in urban Mongolia attend higher education institutes. Compared to the 15% in rural Mongolia, it goes without saying that Mongolia’s “regional variation in poverty” contributes to wealth disparities between rural and urban regions of the country.

Turning back to the 2018 MICS, it can be observed that 4.3% of male urban schoolchildren of lower secondary school age were out of school in 2018 compared to the 8.1% of male rural schoolchildren. However, there are still some nuances to be explored, considering more female urban schoolchildren are out of school than rural female schoolchildren. This is a point upon which I would advise further research to identify what causes female urban schoolchildren to leave school and what incentivizes female rural schoolchildren to remain in school much longer than their male peers. Despite women in Mongolia being better educated than men, a gendered hierarchy still exists in which men are likely to be paid more than women in Mongolia. 

Looking beyond lower secondary school students and onto upper secondary school students, the urban/rural gap in school attendance expands. While only 7.5% of urban upper secondary students were out of school during the year of 2018, the percentage jumps to 25.9% for Mongolia’s rural upper secondary students. This can be explained by the disproportionate lack of support faced by rural students; urban students exceeded rural students in every “Support for Child Learning at School” category in the 2018 MICS— “percentage of children attending school,” “percentage of children for whom an adult household member in the last year received a report card for the child,” “school has a governing body open to parents,” “an adult household member attended a meeting called by governing body,” “a school meeting discussed key education/financial issues,” “an adult household member attended a school celebration or sports event,” and “an adult household member met with teachers to discuss child’s progress.” In the context of the social determinants of learning framework, these factors have the potential to contribute highly to student achievement but are disproportionately denied to rural students. It is important to remember that this is not due to an inferiority on behalf of rural Mongolian parents or a superiority on behalf of urban Mongolian parents. Considering that they are more likely to face poverty than their urban counterparts, rural families are more likely to work more frequently in order to support their children. This means that there is not always time for rural parents and caretakers to meet with teachers and attend school meetings or events. Additionally, schools increase parent involvement—and thus student success—by building community. While developments like Mongolia’s Rural Education and Development program have contributed significantly to tightening the gap between rural and urban schools, the inequity still remains, likely posing the reason as to why rural schools may lack the resources to engage rural families living in poverty. 

The Pandemic and Mongolian Schools

Mongolia’s 2020 MICS offers insight into how the pandemic has interacted with the increasingly urbanized country and its schools. The report’s information on early childhood education offers interesting doors through which more research could be conducted, specifically on the disparity between children of Khalkh ethnicity and children of Kazakh ethnicity. The report also found interesting data on rural school children outperforming city students in foundational numeracy skills in 2020. However, when it comes to information and communications technology (ICT) skills, urban students outperform rural students overwhelmingly. An observation is made in the report that ICT skill acquisition is “hugely influenced” by wealth quintiles. The ICT skills examined in this report include but are not limited to sending an email with an attached file, transferring a file between a computer and another device, creating an electronic presentation using presentation software, connecting and installing a new device, and using a copy and paste tool within a document. In our increasingly digitized world, the importance of ICT skills for students cannot be underestimated. Considering this, it is evident that rural students have faced more barriers throughout online learning than urban students. This is supported by Sodnomdarjaa Munkhbat’s comment to Friedrich-Ebert Stiftung Mongolia. As the Director of the Science and Technology Department at the Mongolian Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, she said, “School children were taught through classes broadcasted on TV and universities used remote learning technology. Both had to be developed and implanted on extremely short notice which put a lot of stress on teachers, professors, and students. TV classes were especially challenging.” 

The 2020 MICS also found that parents’ engagement in ger districts of Ulaanbaatar was 10 percentage points lower than those living in apartments. The study concluded that “the low rate of engagement is also common in rural area[s] and especially in [the] Western region.” When looking at the data on parental homework help, the report found parents with certain qualities were more likely to offer their child homework assistance; these qualities include having obtained a higher education, not having migrated within the last 5 years, and having attended a public school. This offers an explanation as to why in the 2018 MICS, similar findings on lack of support for rural students were identified. This information lends itself to the acknowledgement that, in order to achieve educational equity between rural and urban students, the Mongolian education system must work to enhance resources for students whose parents have not obtained a higher education.

Although the 2020 MICS offers little insight into the pandemic itself, popular Mongolian news sources like Зууны мэдээ (Zuunii medee) supplement this deficit with their article on textbook availability. “The education sector has collapsed due to the pandemic,” journalist Ch. Gantulga wrote mournfully. Gantulga points to a lack of textbook availability as a huge problem facing Mongolia during the pandemic. D. Delgermaa, a middle school teacher, told Gantulga, “I am in charge of the seventh grade. Our class has 31 children. Due to the small number of textbooks distributed by the school, only one book is used by three children. In particular, there are not enough books on Mongolian language and social sciences. Some potential families buy textbooks for their children…Some students have problems with not being able to read e-books because they do not have smartphones. If these children have enough textbooks, there will be no problem.” Put in the context of the wealth disparities between rural and urban students previously established, it is evident that more needs to be done by the Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science to repair the learning losses exacerbated not only by the pandemic but also by lack of school resources. This sentiment does not seem to have been lost on Munkhbat, who said to FES Mongolia, “The pandemic made it very clear that the education system must be ready and responsive to high risk situations. What happened this year can happen any time again. Our way forward will be to enhance online education particularly for the higher education sector. This will be embedded in the government’s strategy of a ‘digital transformation.’” While a digital transformation is likely highly anticipated by students in Mongolia, the data leaves us with an understanding that, in addition to education as a whole, digital literacy instruction is not equitably distributed to all students in Mongolia. It will be important, moving forward, for Mongolia to put adequate resources toward building all students’ ICT skills, paying special attention to rural students.

Having analyzed the state of Mongolian education before and after the pandemic, it is evident that the pre-pandemic challenges faced by rural students have been exacerbated by COVID-19. These challenges are an extension of the poverty faced disproportionately by rural Mongolians. The disparity in school attendance between rural and urban students highlights the presence of class barriers in Mongolia. These inequities may stem from disproportionate access to early education, which has been proven to result in higher learning and employment outcomes later in life. The ways in which the pandemic has exacerbated educational inequity in Mongolia is important to analyze, considering its impact may materialize as a generation divided unequally by their level of access to education. This may be seen in the construction and perpetuation of intergenerational poverty for Mongolians who were in school during the COVID-19 pandemic. Mongolia’s Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science has the ability to change this by financing high-quality schools in rural regions of the country, implementing poverty-reduction policies for rural families so that students are not incentivized to choose work over school, ensuring school resources are equitably distributed, implementing educational policies that focus on honing the digital literacy skills of rural youth, and further analyzing the ways in which the pandemic has differently shaped educational outcomes for rural and urban students.

Oppositional Identities: The Pitfalls of Postcolonial Identity Creation in Mongolia

As nations emerge from beneath the fold of colonial empires, they are faced with the task of differentiating themselves from their former sovereigns, yet while colonial nations had the luxury of centuries to try and test their identities, postcolonial nations are forced to hastily construct modern identities immediately after achieving their independence. The immense pressure to instantaneously distinguish themselves from their colonizers results in postcolonial nations often adopting modes of identity creation that give way to further long term hardship. One of these such pitfalls in postcolonial identity creation is the tendency to fall into the trap of grounding new identities purely in opposition to their former sovereigns. While responding to the damage done to postcolonial nations by the colonial project is an innate component of their postcolonial nations’ identity negotiation, new identities that are rooted exclusively in opposition fail to subvert the damaging material and cultural structures of colonialism that can remain latent and malicious if not deracinated by the development of entirely independent identities. The formation of a liberated and autonomous identity is an act of postcolonial resistance, yet if former members of the subaltern fail to develop identities beyond overt opposition, their identity is still inherently tied to the existence of their former oppressors. Postcolonial nations face further difficulty when undertaking efforts to economically develop, because the years of colonial exploitation often restructured their economies to be centered on the extraction of resources, without providing the technological means to even be able to extract such resources independently. The case study of Mongolia provides a quintessential example to understand the ways that postcolonial nations can fall victim to relying on oppositional identities through. While unique and independent musical and religious movements are developing in Mongolia, both movements have been closely tied to Mongolian nativist movements, and their focus on opposing external powers has delayed the development of independent cultural movements. Both the emerging Mongolian rap music scene and the resurgence of the shamanistic Tengriism religion have been tainted by nationalistic rhetoric. Problematically, the external powers, which newly created identities rely on opposing, are also some of the largest sources of the direct investment that many postcolonial nations’ economies depend upon. Opposed to following the problematic colonial model of identity creation and yielding to the simplicity of founding postcolonial identities on opposition to an ‘Other,’ true transcendence of colonial systems of oppression necessitates the development of identities founded on entirely independent ideology.

Identity creation is an integral component of truly pushing the influences of colonialism into the past in any postcolonial nation, giving citizens a way to differentiate themselves from their former rulers, yet too often this identity formation mirrors the failures of the colonial project by rooting itself in rejecting an epistemologically constructed ‘Other.’ Identities are not a monolithic entity that can be awakened from the miasma of our unconscious, but instead must be artificially invented based upon some central principles or values, as taught by Benedict Anderson in his book Imagined Communities. It is tempting to say that what principle a new identity is founded upon is irrelevant, as long as a new identity is constructed, yet this simplistic view of postcolonial identity creation problematically leaves room for nation’s growth to be stunted by singularly focusing on opposing their former colonizers. A nation cannot be expected to develop and differentiate themselves when their very national consciousness hinges on the identity of another nation. Furthermore, the damage done by the colonial system cannot be transcended when the central component of a nation’s new identity necessitates the continual concentration on the same invented ‘Other’ as their colonizers. Such an external focus perpetuates nations’ perception of themselves as the permanent victim, impeding any independent growth. In Orientalism, Edward Said expounds that Orientalism in the colonial system undertook the deconstruction and reconstruction of the colonized nations in the ‘orient,’ and that deconstruction is what can lead postcolonial nations to repeat the same mistakes as their colonizers. In Mongolia, from 1900-1911, the Chinese New Administration (Hsin Cheng) attempted to sinify Mongolia and force locals to assimilate in order to create a bulwark against Russian aggression, in essence working to eliminate the Mongolian identity that they perceived as the ‘Other.’ Yet, attempts to root the modern Mongolian identity on opposing the Chinese presence in Mongolia hinder the creation of an independent Mongolian identity, and result from the colonial system ingraining the ideology of difference into the Mongolian consciousness. Indeed, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak references Foucault to theorize that the epistemological violence that reconstructed consciousness in Europe enacted the same changes in the subaltern, elucidating that “The clearest available example of such epistemic violence is the remotely orchestrated, far-flung, and heterogeneous project to constitute the colonial subject as the Other.” Thus, the subaltern learned to base their own identity creation on the existence of an ‘Other’ by being essentialized as the ‘Other’ by the colonial system. The narrative of colonization indoctrinated colonial subjects in the subaltern to fix identity creation on the invention of an ‘Other’ in their own societies, hindering the subsequent identity creation of nations such as Mongolia by distracting from the formation of an independent identity.

Ulaanbaatar emerged from colonization and dove head first into capitalism, leading to an increase in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), with an especially large amount of Chinese investment in the Mongolian mining sector. For centuries, Mongolia was ruled and occupied by Chinese empires. After 70 years of a command economy as a Soviet satellite state, Mongolia underwent a democratic revolution in 1990 and became “…one of the world’s fastest growing economies.” The majority of all investment flows directly into the capital, Ulaanbaatar, and the city has changed as a result of the foreign influence. The government promoted foreign investment by relaxing regulations and controls, allowing for the patterns of foreign domination and exploitation to arise from the shadows once more in Ulaanbaatar. In recent years, as economic growth boomed, new animosities have grown out of the influx of outside Chinese business investment which many Mongolians see as exploitative. The globalization and increased primarily Chinese Foreign Direct Investment encouraged by the government within Ulaanbaatar spawned new nationalists movements.

Mongolia attempted to create an environment favorable to external investment to replace the Soviet aid it had previously enjoyed. The government in Ulaanbaatar worked to liberalize policy to encourage FDI, fostering a market oriented free-trade regime. From the earliest days as a capitalist nation, Mongolia opened itself up to FDI by opening up currency exchanges. This opening up of the nation led to Mongolia relying on FDI to propel its economy from a transitioning phase to a growth phase – and it’s worked – with the GDP growth rate hitting new highs above five percent growth in 2004 and 2005. Yet, this growth comes at the cost of local control of much of the economy by the central government in Ulaanbaatar. Now the city is being dominated by outside companies looking to control the government so they can exploit that nation’s resources.

The gross majority of the FDI that flows into Mongolia flows directly into Ulaanbaatar from other Asian countries, specifically into the mining sector. China, Korea, and Japan constitute 63 percent of the total FDI. This illustrates the shifting manifestations of colonialism. Mongolia emerged from direct colonial rule under Dynastic China to neo-colonial domination under the USSR, and now became subject to imperial domination by the more developed Asian economies. Of that new investment, 95 percent of it flows directly into the new foreign company outposts in Ulaanbaatar. The hope of the government is that this investment will build linkages in the capital to other sectors of the economy, such as the service and retail industries, but in reality the only linkages that investors are creating are roads to the resources that they hope to extract. Mining investment makes up 40 percent of all foreign direct investment. While it is true that this investment is contributing to the success of the economy as a whole, with FDI increases paralleling GDP growth, native Mongolians perceive it as an exploitative relationship. China is clearly interested in Mongolia for the riches buried beneath its soil. The two largest FDI projects within Mongolia, Oyu Tolgoi and Taran Tolgoi, are both mineral extraction projects. While external companies on average invest $293,000 in Ulaanbaatar, those investing in mining interests invested $2,300,000 each. China already invested $10.8 billion in road networks to connect the investment hub Ulaanbaatar with mining prospects in the rest of the nation, laying down more than 3,000 kilometers of roads, and will further invest in Mongolia’s transportation channels with their ‘Belt and Road’ project. China even went as far as decreasing its income tariff for Mongolian goods from 24.6 percent 9.4 percent, not in order to promote equitable trade, but to promote the perceived beneficial exportation of ephemeral raw materials. External investment in the mining sector flows through the conduit of Ulaanbaatar, yet without bestowing any of the intended benefits upon it.

 In Ulaanbaatar, there are two kinds of migration occurring; that of wealthy Chinese business people entering the city’s core and that of rural Mongolians moving into the city’s periphery. While the Chinese constitute ‘skilled’ and ‘lifestyle’ migrants, the Mongolians compose ‘economic’ migrants. The Chinese are wealthy business people coming to work for the corporations such as the mining companies directly investing in Ulaanbaatar, whereas the Mongolians are forced to come to the city to find any work at all. This creates a divide between the two groups, and contributes to the Mongolian residents of Ulaanbaatar looking to separate themselves from the Chinese, and they have done so through rap. The sprawling Ger slums on the outskirts of the city, housing almost 1/3 of the entire nation have become a type of satellite city wherein the local population grows and expands such that it develops a different character than the core of the city. While many Mongolians in Ulaanbaatar have been pushed to the outskirts of the cities, the Chinese ‘middling trans-nationals’ are entering the economic core of the city given their higher economic status. The Mongolians in the slums of Ulaanbaatar have to fight with the fact that now outsiders are coming in and bringing their Chinese influence with them, while the While the Chinese are affluent enough to maintain many of their comforts of homeland, the Mongolians who are migrating into Ulaanbaatar for work are being pushed to the outskirts within their own city. Chinese became more and more prevalent as a language of business within Ulaanbaatar as a result of Chinese FDI. There is a growing fear among the periphery of Ulaanbaatar that they will be eventually pushed out due to the economic factors mainstreaming the Chinese identity. The Mongolians on the periphery of Ulaanbaatar are anxious about the increasing growth of a Chinese core fueled by FDI, resulting in animosity towards the Chinese and the evolution of a new differentiated Mongolian identity.

Chinese mining magnates’ relative free-reign allowed by the cooperative Mongolian government incites local tension due to the reinforced belief that their only intention is to strip wealth from the nation. The government is relocating the nomadic farmers which symbolize the nation on the falsified grounds that they are depleting the grasslands in order to allow mining companies to move in and take the land, sparking further anti-Chinese sentiments and provoking one Mongolian rapper to sing that “‘[o]vergrazing is a myth and a lie/ We have grazed animals here thousands of years/ Why has the desertification started since only a few decades ago?’” Mongolians know that they are being exploited by the Chinese, sparking rapper Gee to become almost violently anti-Chinses, going as far as to say that the Chinese want to take everything from Mongolia. The animosity is exacerbated by the intense connection many Mongolians feel to their land, and the destruction that Chinese mines bring to it. Many Mongolian rappers have songs that revere their beautiful grasslands which are now being turned into a dessert by bulldozers and dump trucks. The rappers see the wealth that the Chinese are squeezing dry from the teat of their nation juxtaposed against their own people starving for a drop to drink. Rapper Amraa calls for social reform and creates an economic commentary by positing that “‘[w]e have homeless children, we have poverty, but we also have a very grand history that was inherited from our ancestors. We sing about kids living in sewers, and we ask, ‘Where’s your kid living?’ We want to get a message to the corrupt upper class.’” The economic disparities present within Mongolia give fuel for Mongolian rappers to fire up their audiences calling for change, but the manifestation of that change is entrenching sinophobia in the Mongolian identity.

In the process of differentiating themselves from the Chinese colonizers, the residents of Ulaanbaatar have developed an anti-Chinese sentiment that derails attempts at forming an authentically distinct identity. When discussing sinphobia in Mongolian rap music, I reference an interview with rapper Gee in my article Straight Outta Ulaanbaatar, in which he expounds that “‘I’m not racist toward anybody… except the Chinese. I hate the Chinese.’” The attention given to former colonial powers became a predominant discourse intertwined with efforts to protect the Mongolian identity through musical proliferation, with some racial slurs against the Chinese prevalent and one group going as far as to release a song entitled ‘Don’t Overstep the Limits, You Chinks.’ The presence of Chinese investors in Mongolia is used as a focal point for Mongolian rappers to mobilize their followers against, coming as a consequence of the hyper-nationalistic rhetoric they employ. This fear and hatred stems from the superiority and chauvinism endemic to any exclusionary identity, and unfortunately by promoting the identity, Mongolian rappers are also promoting the animosity.

Rap music became prevalent in Mongolia because there are many Mongolian artists who have made the genre their own, providing a mode to create an entirely distinct cultural object important to the emergence of a new postcolonial identity, yet unfortunately the rise of Mongolian rap music is marred by the rise of Sinophobic tropes within the genre. As a consequence of ubiquitous Chinese FDI, Mongolians are fearful of their new identity being eclipsed by the influx of foreign nationals. Producing rap music in Mongolians’ own tongue is a vital component of encouraging the creation of Mongolians’ own unique identity, yet the mobilization of xenophobic rhetoric exemplifies the ways in which Mongolian identity creation is hindered by lackadaisically following the same problematic methods of identity creation utilized by foreign powers when they controlled Mongolia. Mongolian rapper Amraa and rap group TST both are proud to be outspoken nationalists, hoping to inspire young Mongolians to have pride in their language and their nation, at a time when many young Mongolians are learning Mandarin in pursuit of greater economic opportunities. The focus on protecting the Mongolian language is just one way that Mongolian rappers display their adroit social commentary; rapper Gee has lyrics that show his desire to help Mongolia differentiate itself in the face of neoliberal economic imperialism, rapping that “‘[i] n the ocean of globalization, Mongolia is like a boat without paddles. You better start to care before we … drown.’” Yet, when fighting against the tides of globalization, it is important to recognize that the ‘Other’ is entirely discursively constructed. While independent cultural identities can be created through the ‘Other,’ altering aspects of external influences to localize them in positive ways instead of ignoring them, the foundation of the new identities created does not need to be opposition to ‘Others.’ Despite the significant sinophobia present in Mongolian rap, there are aspects of the musical genre that provide reason to hope for positive identity creation in the future. Rappers have a strong emphasis on environmentalism, even if driven by nationalistic sentiments, wanting to protect their homeland. Mongolian rappers have also rejected the materialism and consumerism endemic to the music of their Western counterparts, allowing listeners to claim a new identity by emphasizing cultural identity over luxury goods in a country where roughly 30 percent of the population lives in poverty.

In efforts to differentiate themselves from their former colonizers, Mongolians have embraced the resurgence of the historic shamanistic religion of Tengriism (sometimes referred to as Tengrism), but this religious resurgence is coupled with the emergence of hyper-nationalist groups that have embraced the religion as a focal point of their identity as Mongolians. Since 1990, the population of shamans in Mongolia ballooned from 10 to 20,000. The rebirth of Tengriism was been largely influenced by the presence of Chinese mining interests within the nation, with a heavy emphasis on environmental concerns, accentuated by the fact that deities in Tengriism have physical geographic representations that are worshipped. Yet, nationalists’ approbation of Tengriism is a stumbling block for the development of a new Mongolian identity. While the resurgence religion in isolation is an incredibly positive way to reclaim an aspect of Mongolia’s precolonial identity, it is tainted by the endorsement of swastika-toting ultra-nationalists. One group, called Tsagaan Khaas, engages in violent crimes such as shaving the heads of Mongol women they suspect of having slept with foreigner. The leader of another previously hyper-nationalist group, Standing Blue Mongol, was convicted of killing his daughter’s boyfriend for studying in China. Presently, Standing Blue Mongol adopted an environmentalist agenda, and is fighting against a Canadian mining company intending to extract resources from a locally revered mountain. While this action is not problematic in and of itself, Standing Blue Mongol used to be a neo-Nazi organization that latched onto Hitler’s beliefs of ‘ethnic purity.’ Even as Tengriism offers a positive route to developing an independent identity, Mongolians turn to nationalist groups because they fear that their capital city is being overrun by Chinese foreigners who they perceive to be ethnically impure. In “Religious Revival, Nationalism, and ‘Tradition,’” Marlène Laruelle examines the ties between the resurgence of Tengriism and ethnocentrism, postulating that “a process of an ethnicization of the divine with ambiguous political consequences reveals the deep ideological changes and the process of social recompositions, which are being experienced by post-Soviet societies.” The use of distinct religious traditions to differentiate nations in the subaltern from their colonizers is widespread throughout former Soviet satellites, with ranging from neo-paganism in Baltic States to Zoroastrianism in Tajikistan. Unfortunately, the construction of this religious identity as exclusive inhibits the successful development of a postcolonial identity, for no nation is entirely homogenous and precluding members of the society from subscribing to a nation’s new identity only serves to create further internal divisions. These examples Tengriism being coopted by nativist movements in Mongolia provide important examples of how easily nations can fall victim to tacit identity creation attempts, such as chauvinism. If attempts at identity creation hinge on rejecting an ‘Other,’ then Mongolia will be inexorably tied to their invented ‘Other’ and the nation will never go on to develop its own unique identity that is necessary to dismantle the remaining structures of colonial oppression.

The process of inventing a national identity out of thin air has been shown to have many obstacles that must be avoided, such as those associated with grounding a new identity on opposing an ‘Other,’ yet the mobilization of exclusive identities to endeavor to develop a postcolonial character also has serious implications for members of nations’ own populations. Women in Mongolia are put in a tenuous position as hyper-nationalism gains prevalence, for as explained by Undarya Tumursukh, “problems arise when we deconstruct the homogeneous and static image of the nation and recognize that contemporary societies, democratic or not, are structured so as to systematically privilege some groups over others along class, race, ethnicity or gender lines.” Tumursukh elucidates that when being masculine is seen as synonymous with being Mongolian, as is evident in the rhetoric employed by nationalist groups such as Tsagaan Khaas, women become the ‘Other’ in society as much as foreigners. Just as it is dangerous for a postcolonial identity to rely on their former oppressors, it is equally dangerous for nationalism to come part and parcel with the domination and control of women’s bodies. As evidenced by the attacks perpetrated by ultra-nationalist groups against women who are suspected of copulating with outsiders, the control that such groups attempt to asset over Mongolian women’s sexuality is the antithesis of modernity and could bar Mongolia from claiming a postcolonial identity if it propagates.

As the case study of Mongolia exemplifies, nations can fail to emerge from beneath structures of colonialism if their attempts at identity creation are stained by the tendency to rely on constructing an ‘Other’ to be oriented against. Oppositional identity creation such as that invoked by Mongolian rappers and ultra-nationalists may result from external exploitation, but it is self-propagating by perpetuating reliance on an ‘Other,’ both inside and outside of the postcolonial society. Oppositional identity creation must be avoided in order to successfully develop a postcolonial identity, for it impedes the authentic identity creation necessary to transcend systems of exploitation.

Straight Outta Ulaanbaatar: Class Consciousness and Sinophobia in Mongolia’s Economic Periphery

Ulaanbaatar is a rapidly modernizing city, but some of its residents fear its new development may come at the price of its former uniquely Mongolian face. From the times of Chinggis Khaan, Mongolians have had their own united character as a people – despite all odds. After the collapse of the Mongol Empire, they were conquered and subjugated by the following Chinese dynasties. After being consumed into the Soviet bloc in the 20th century, the Mongolian people were subjected to further decades of anti-Chinese propaganda, when the USSR hoped to use Mongolia as a buffer to the possibility of a Chinese threat on its southern border. In recent years, as economic growth has boomed, new animosities have grown out of the influx of outside Chinese business investment which many Mongolians see as exploitative. Yet one new idea that globalization has brought to Mongolia has truly resonated with the population: hip hop. Mongolia’s crisis of identity, combined with a deep-seeded want to be separate from China, has spawned a new movement of nationalistic rap within the capital city—empowering the youth to feel a sense of pride, creating a commentary on modern Mongolian society, and exemplifying the underlying class tensions present, while also fanning the flames of anti-Chinese sentiments.

A New Nationalist Identity:

Emerging from Soviet colonialism, rappers within Mongolia are using the genre as a new platform to foster a nationalist sentiment within their youthful audience. Some older Mongolians had feared that the young generation would entirely discard their national identity for the glamorized Western way of life, yet Mongolian rappers are doing all they can to prevent such a loss of culture. One prominent rapper, Gee, inspires a powerful sentiment of unity within his audience. He grew up with a single mother in the Ger district of Ulaanbaatar – an extensive and destitute slum which houses nearly two-thirds of the nation’s largest city’s residents. Gee raps that “[i]n the ocean of globalization, Mongolia is like a boat without paddles. You better start to care before we [...] drown.” He is imploring his audience not to lose their Mongolian identity in all of the foreign influences pouring into the growing capital city.

Many Mongolian men are also afraid of losing their national identity by not being able to marry another Mongolian woman. They see their city as becoming overrun with Chinese foreigners who are impure, compared to their Mongolian blood. Yet the problem for these Mongolian men arises when Mongolian sex workers and even local women mix with members of the Chinese expatriate community within Ulaanbaatar. These fearful Mongolian men find comfort in music which promotes and glorifies the culture they are afraid of losing.

Rappers also fight against cultural assimilation within Mongolia, working to keep their own identity separate from all of those which globalization has brought to Ulaanbaatar. A member of the rap group TST says that “[w]e rap in our mother tongue, and we identify and distinguish ourselves from other groups with our own language,” and even their name TST translates roughly to mean “mother tongue.” The group wants to “inspire ethnic pride among their fans,” says reporter Yuan Ye, for more and more young Mongolians are learning Mandarin Chinese in hopes of economic benefits. The early adopter of the rap genre in Mongolia Sukhbaatar Amarmandakh, or Amraa for short, says that “[h]e is an unashamed Mongolian nationalist, hoping to instill young Mongolians with feelings of pride.” The rap culture is helping to rekindle an ethnic identity within the newly globalized population of Ulaanbaatar, and giving them a new way to voice their pride and opinions.

Rapping with a Conscience:

The Mongolian rappers set themselves apart from the hip hop scenes in many other countries by focusing on social issues over pop culture. Rappers use the platform to critique their society in hopes of improving their nation, and by doing so fostering even more national pride among the Mongolian people. The aforementioned rapper Gee says that “[m]ongol hip-hop should be wise and should tell the people what is right to do.” Indeed, there are significant hardships that a modernizing and urbanizing city endures, yet through rap music, Mongolians can create a commentary on these issues in hopes of solving them. The rappers work to combat substance abuse and violence within their city. Mongolian rapper Quiza states that “[t]here are lots of under-age victims who are addicted to alcohol and tobacco. This is because tobacco and alcohol companies are very powerful.” To combat this, both Gee and Quiza reject sponsorships from beer and cigarette companies, because as Quiza puts it, “[w]e have a responsibility to think about how we affect the younger generation.” Al Jazeera was right when they tweeted out that “Mongolian rappers have less bling, more heart,” for the rappers in Ulaanbaatar are really working to make a difference in their city. They are fighting to combat corruption within the government alongside social issues, so that common people can have a larger say in their own lives. The rappers of Mongolia contribute positively to their society in hopes of helping to create a new positive postcolonial identity as the nation reinvents itself socially and economically. As theorist Stuart Hall puts it, “[t]he very notion of an autonomous, self-produced and self-identical cultural identity […] had in fact to be discursively constructed in and through ‘the Other.’” Hall argues that new identities come from making existing influences their own, and through taking the increasing westernization spawning from the Chinese investment in their young capitalist economy and using the new western styles of music the modernization has brought to create positive change, Ulaanbaatar’s rappers are creating a modern Mongolian identity with their music.

Class Consciousness on the Steppes:

Mongolian rappers are well aware that a divide exists between the core and the periphery in Ulaanbaatar, and that much of the core is made up of rich foreigners. The massive mineral deposits beneath the nation’s grasslands draw in Chinese mining companies who invest billions of dollars, but thanks to corrupt officials within the core, 30 percent of the nation still lives below the poverty line. In a studio surrounded by newly-opened upscale western clothing stores one rap group sings that “[a]lthough we grew up in yurts, after years in the city we’re forgetting our culture.” Yet the rappers are speaking out against some of the more seditious aspects of capitalism. The Mongolian rapper MC Bondoo says that “[w]e don’t admire luxury culture. We hate materialism, and the worship of expensive things.” Despite the efforts of Mongolian rappers to empower the periphery of Ulaanbaatar, the divide becomes even more profound when you examine how the core makes their money.

Chinese mining magnates have relatively free reign from a corrupt and cooperative government to strip the nation of all the wealth they can. The government is relocating the nomadic farmers which symbolize the nation on the falsified grounds that they are depleting the grasslands in order to allow mining companies to move in and take the land, sparking further anti-Chinese sentiments and inciting one rapper to sing that “[o]vergrazing is a myth and a lie/ We have grazed animals here thousands of years / Why has the desertification started since only a few decades ago?” Mongolians know that they are being exploited by the Chinese, sparking rapper Gee to become almost violently anti-Chinese, going as far as to say that the Chinese want to take everything from Mongolia. The animosity is exacerbated by the intense connection many Mongolians feel to their land, and the destruction that Chinese mines bring to it. Many Mongolian rappers have songs that revere the beautiful grasslands which are now being turned into a dessert by bulldozers and dump trucks. The rappers see the wealth that the Chinese are siphoning out of their nation’s well of resources juxtaposed against their own people starving for a drop to drink. Rapper Amraa calls for social reform and creates an economic commentary by posing that “[w]e have homeless children, we have poverty, but we also have a very grand history that was inherited from our ancestors. We sing about kids living in sewers, and we ask, 'Where's your kid living?' We want to get a message to the corrupt upper class.” The economic disparities present within Mongolia give fuel for Mongolian rappers to fire up and unite their audiences by calling for greater change.

The Smoldering Embers of Sinophobia:

Lauren Knapp quotes rapper Gee to say that “I’m not racist toward anybody… except the Chinese. I hate the Chinese.” This sentiment is shared by most Mongolian rappers and much of the local population. Gee even released a new song whose title, “Hujaa,” is a racial slur against the Chinese, and rap group 4 Zug released a song of their own called “Don't Overstep the Limits, You Chinks.” A history of conflict between the nations, alongside modern fears of Chinese economic imperialism, have heightened the racial tensions within Mongolia to a shocking level. It is possible that some of the sinophobia also stems from the sentiment in Mongolia that they are always a step or two behind China. Watching the Chinese mega-companies turn their national resources into huge profits, Mongolians might wish that they were able to do it themselves and see its benefits. On the world stage, China is seen as a key player, while Mongolia sitting immediately next to it has been relegated to backwater country. Thus, it is natural that anti-Chinese sentiments are a negative of the pan-Mongolian nationalism churned out by Mongolian rappers, for they can use universal hatred of the Chinese to further unite their people. A consequence of the postcolonial attempts to reclaim some lost Mongolian identity is a xenophobia. This fear and hatred stems from the pride and chauvinism endemic to any exclusive identity, and unfortunately by promoting the identity, Mongolian rappers are also promoting the animosity.

In Mongolia, rappers have helped to cultivate a new identity as the nation emerges from centuries of subjugation and adjusts to its new role as a part of the periphery within the capitalist global economy. They evoke pride and a new sense of ethnic identity within the youth of Ulaanbaatar, and fight against addiction and political corruption. Yet, they also incidentally feed into ultra-nationalist sentiments which can lead to hatred and racism against the economic core Chinese.