By Tian Peng

Regional, page 11, Issue No. 526, July 4, 2011

Translated by Zhu Na    

Original article: [Chinese]  

 Looking from the plane window as we approach the Inner Mongolian city of Xilin Haote(锡林浩特), I everything is brown or green – earth or grass.

The city, home to 200,000 people, is capital of Xilin Gol League (锡林郭勒盟), a province dominated by opencast mines and artificial grasslands.

Inner Mongolia has multiple identities: energy center, environmental protection zone, and grazing land for ethnic minorities. The grassland supports mining, conservation projects and the nomadic lifestyle of the herdsmen.

The harmonious development of the herdsmen, mines and environment has become a target for all society, but nobody here knows exactly what the future holds.

Fast Growing Energy Industry

Xilin Gol’s energy sector recently shot to prominence. Its annual coal output broke through 100 million tons in 2010, and will reach 143 million tons when the remaining projects come on line.  

Coal has enriched local government, generated funds for capital investment and lifted house prices, but it has also brought dust and sand.

“There is dust everywhere when the spring winds arrive and there is little grass.” said an official who works in the local government administration office.

But he still fully supports the mining industry. “We have more coal than Ordos (鄂尔多斯) and it’s better quality.”

Real estate

In Xilin Haote, the local government is busy with new construction. Opposite the government’s 13-storey office, is a new square, Meng-Yuan(蒙元), surrounded by building sites where massive new commercial buildings are going up. To the east is the man-made Xilin(锡林) Lake, surrounded by a series of public constructions and a botanical garden to the south.

In the space of a few years, these developments have quadrupled the price of nearby apartments from 1000 yuan per square meter to 4000 yuan.

The Decline of Livestock Farming

The pastures begin north of Xilin Haote along the provincial highway 101. There’s scarcely any grass along the road, only around the edge of pools of water. Suhe (苏和), a Mongolian driver, said is because there has been much less rain than last year.

Suhe, a 26-year-old who was born in a family of herdsmen, says life on the grassland was “comfortable”, but he didn’t want to raise livestock and instead chose to be a taxi driver at Xilin Haote.

As we drive past a mine, he points out that it used to be grassland belonging to his aunt’s family. “It was more than 2000 acres, they paid 3 million yuan in compensation to my aunt’s family, and the younger relatives were given jobs in the mine.”

Distributing the grassland

Each household of herdsmen in Xilin Gol was allocated grassland, separated them by wire fences, under the government’s policy of “Both Grass and Stock For Households” (草畜双到户)

The deterioration of the grassland is commonly blamed on droughts, population growth and overgrazing, but many believe that the problems have been aggravated by the end of nomadic herdsmen traditions and culture.

“We used to assess a good herdsman according to the quality of their grassland and the health of the livestock, but the policies introduced last century encouraged households to rear large numbers of livestock. The more livestock you owned, the higher your status among herdsman,” said Enke, who works on the land.

However, it’s not possible to return to the nomadic culture, says Temubater(特木巴特尔), the deputy director of the Animal Husbandry Bureau of East Ujimqin Qi. He argues that different families of herdsmen should join up in order to reduce their living costs.