Chapter 705: Complex Relationships

For Chinese people, Mongolia is a special country.

Because Mongolia was once a part of China for a long period of time in history. For Chinese people, Mongolia is a strange country. We are so ignorant about this neighboring country with a border of more than 4,000 kilometers that some people in China are still wishful thinking about the possibility of "return".

"Return is 100% impossible. Whether it is Mongolians or Chinese in Mongolia, there will be no other answer to this question." This is the answer given by the staff of the Chinese Embassy in Mongolia when they received Fan Wubing and his party.

One of Fan Wubing's attendants asked curiously, "I heard that the Mongolian Great Khural is discussing the issue of returning to China. Is this just for nothing?"

"That is purely a pie in the sky for those who are busy with good things. The reality is that the Mongolians are not even willing to stay away from China, let alone throw themselves into China's arms?" The embassy staff member replied, "Do you want to know what position the Chinese hold in the hearts of the Mongolians? The Chinese are the same as the Japanese in the hearts of the Chinese. Chinese who have been to Mongolia have had more or less unpleasant experiences. Before I came to Mongolia, my friends in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs warned me to be careful when I was alone, especially at night, and stay away from drunkards on the street."

Chinese companies in Mongolia are the biggest victims of this resistance. When a domestic company, Reed, opened a gold mine in Sukhbaatar Province, local environmental police and county governors often came to cause trouble. This year, at another project site of their company, local environmental police asked all Chinese workers to stand in a row under the sun, while they sat in a yurt to drink.

"This is an insult, but we have to swallow our anger. Other foreign-funded enterprises will not be treated like this." Sun Chengxiao, the head of Reed Company, who came with the embassy staff to receive Fan Wubing and others, was very angry and helpless.

An employee of Reed Company also said that this year his mobile phone was stolen by a thief in Sukhbaatar Square. Who knew that after he caught up with the thief, he was taken to the police station by the local police. The thief was let go, and he was beaten instead.

"If it weren't for the gold here, ghosts would come here, and they deserve to be starved to death!" The employee said with some resentment.

The staff of the embassy also said that the Chinese-Mongolian mixed-race people in Mongolia generally do not take the initiative to talk about their Chinese ancestry to others, especially Mongolian officials with Chinese ancestry are even more secretive about this, because it is a dangerous move that ruins their political future.

The Mongolian media undoubtedly played a role in fueling the Mongolians' unfriendly attitude towards the Chinese. They often exaggerate things that are concentrated on one point into a whole, so that the Chinese Embassy has to do some public relations work to maintain China's image in Mongolia.

However, if a local newspaper makes a positive report about China, it will often make a corresponding negative report soon to neutralize it, which shows the social sentiment of its domestic readers. The same is true for Mongolian political parties. In parliamentary elections, politics often becomes a political bargaining chip during elections. In a democratic country, this at least reflects the likes and dislikes of the local people. Under such public opinion in Mongolia, the Chinese nationalists who demand Mongolia's return. No doubt lack deeper thinking. They don't know themselves or the other side, and they only care about talking to themselves on the Internet, which sometimes only makes things worse. Fan Wubing said with deep feeling, "China's rise requires a mature view of history. Frankly speaking, if historical issues are not addressed, many problems in neighboring countries cannot be solved. National development is staged, and there is a big long-term strategic interest in it. The country has repeatedly emphasized respecting Mongolia's sovereignty, but our people have different views. We cannot say that these people are unpatriotic, but we must seriously think about these issues. Wishful thinking, not facing history and reality and talking big is really boring."

Indeed, if we think about it from another perspective, the Chinese are furious when Japanese prime ministers go to the Yasukuni Shrine to pay homage. When Mongolians who understand Chinese open Chinese websites and see remarks demanding the withdrawal of Mongolia, what will the Mongolians think? This issue cannot be avoided, and there will be no real friendly exchanges between the Chinese and Mongolian people.

In fact, in the eyes of the Chinese, the Americans' writing is out-and-out great power chauvinism, but these neighboring countries near China, especially independent countries like North Korea or Mongolia or Thailand, Myanmar, Vietnam, etc., which were previously vassal states in China's tradition, how do they view a powerful China?

This principle is actually very easy to understand. Of course, everyone wants good things, but others have their own ideas.

"Boss, it seems that this matter is a little difficult to handle." The entourage said to Fan Wubing.

Fan Wubing shook his head and said, "What's so difficult about it? We are a multinational company, and we have China and Russia as our backers. Do you think that relying on these few people and guns in Mongolia, how much trouble can we cause?"

"That's what I said, but isn't there an old saying that the county magistrate is worse than the current one." Someone said.

Fan Wubing smiled, and then said to everyone, "Did you notice on the street just now? Even the security guards here are equipped with guns."

Many people nodded, and the embassy staff explained, "The public security situation in Mongolia is very poor, and there are many wild animals on the grassland, so it's not strange that the security guards carry guns."

"I plan to place another order with Lockheed Martin to buy more armed helicopters and individual soldiers. At least we have to arm a team of tens of thousands of people. The name of the factory protection team is very useful." Fan Wubing told everyone his thoughts.

"Mr. Fan, your idea seems to be a bit problematic. It will cause international disputes." The people in the embassy were shocked and thought, is Mr. Fan here to invest in Mongolia, or is he here to pull the team to riot?

You know, the entire Mongolian armed force is only 20,000 people. Just a few brigades, and the equipment is all outdated. If Fan Wubing really raises tens of thousands of American-style armed forces, they will be scared to death.

Fan Wubing smiled indifferently. In fact, he had already imagined this situation. Although Mongolia has resources, it relies on imports for food and daily necessities. Although Russia is a big country, its current economic situation is very poor. It can't even take care of the lives of its own people. How can it help Mongolia?

China has been providing Mongolia with food and daily necessities, but it is only moral assistance. Once China's assistance to Mongolia is cut off, they will really go crazy, especially since Fan Wubing can persuade the top leaders of China and Russia to take unified actions at the same time, which is equivalent to completely surrounding Mongolia, which not only loses the channel of contact with the outside world, but also loses any possibility of obtaining external assistance.

Russia is not without intentions towards Mongolia, but they withdrew their troops from Mongolia after the normalization of Sino-Soviet relations. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Russia's economy was in trouble and they had no time to look east, so Mongolia was thrown away.

Now is the best time for me to enter Mongolia for development. Once Russia recovers in a few years, and the prices of various resources in the international market rise rapidly, the Mongolians will react and feel that it is not cost-effective for them to monopolize various mineral resources, then they will lose this opportunity to develop the resource market.

Moreover, several important large mining areas that Fan Wubing knows about have not been explored yet, which is a great opportunity for monopoly. If you miss this opportunity, you will miss it.

The factory protection team must be established! It's just a private armed force. It's just a little bigger.

If the Mongolians really dare to turn against me, it's necessary to teach them a lesson, just like Russia has Chechnya making trouble with them, what's the big deal about fighting a war? Even if the country is worried about interference and unwilling to provide arms, the Americans dare to sell everything. Russia is out of reach and worried about the sudden deterioration of Sino-Russian relations, so most of them will sit back and watch. Fan Wubing sees this situation very clearly.

However, the people in the embassy seemed very nervous, and kept asking Fan Wubing if he was serious about what he said just now, which made Fan Wubing feel bored and just found some nonsense to deal with them.

Fan Wubing felt very unhappy about this. Within your sphere of influence, what do you need to be cautious about? Do you mean that if you bully a child at your doorstep, others will come to help you vent your anger? In this era where economy is king, the so-called justice and morality are just a fig leaf, and they can't be taken seriously. For a strong country like the United States, what reason do you need to talk about?

If you don't start your development by bullying the weak, you will never become a truly influential power.

In the international relations pattern, Mongolia is not a very prominent country in terms of power and influence. However, due to the particularity of Mongolia's geopolitical position, in the strategic relationship between major powers, Mongolia is like a weight, which can tilt the balance of the Asia-Pacific strategic structure.

Mongolia has great strategic value to major powers such as China, Russia, the United States, and Japan, and its foreign policy orientation will have a profound impact on the complex strategic relationship between these major powers. At the same time, Mongolia is in the geopolitical structure formed between the relevant major powers. Mongolia's national strategy and foreign relations are severely restricted by the relationship between major powers, and have clear geopolitical characteristics and patterns.

Mongolia's former ruling party, the People's Revolutionary Party, was formerly Mongolia. Their goal is to establish a society and develop a free market economy. They believe that the government should have at least 51% of the controlling stake in the mining industry and become a major shareholder. The second largest party alliance is a pro-Western party whose purpose is development, human rights and a free society. They advocate that private enterprises should become the largest shareholder in the mining industry.

It seems that this is a question of whether to adhere to public ownership or promote privatization. In fact, the secret competition between Russia and the United States is also closely infiltrated. As early as the early 1990s, after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Mongolia settled historical debts. Mongolia owed about 11 billion US dollars in foreign debts for decades. At that time, Mongolia had only about 200 million US dollars in foreign exchange reserves and almost no industry, and was simply unable to repay this huge debt.

In this regard, one of the solutions proposed by Russia is to convert the 11 billion US dollars into state shares. Russia now owns 49% of the shares of Mongolia's state-owned railway transportation. Although Mongolia has a large amount of oil and gas resources, 90% of the country's oil supply comes from Russia's national oil company. Russia has exchanged part of the management rights of Mongolia's national oil industry with a discount slightly below the market price. Recently, there have been rumors that Russia wants to open Mongolia's uranium mines and set up nuclear reactors in its territory.

Mongolia has about 1.3 million tons of uranium reserves, which can be said to be very rich. Therefore, this rumor makes Americans very worried. After all, any nuclear power has an endless desire for uranium resources.

Fan Wubing has also considered that relying on his newly built cooperative relationship with Russia and his personal relationship with all walks of life in the United States, he should be able to settle things here by balancing diplomacy between the two major countries. After all, he still has a relatively independent international investment company as a tool to participate in Mongolia, which can be used well.

"How did Mr. Fan get here?" asked the embassy staff.

"Take the train. This broken place is really boring." Fan Wubing couldn't help shaking his head when he thought of the train he took when he came here.

When he came here, Fan Wubing took an international train that went directly to Ulaanbaatar. Although it was an international train, its degree of dilapidation was worse than that of the domestic trains that were eliminated and unused. Fortunately, Fan Wubing rented a compartment and cleaned it up a little, so he could still endure it for a while.

Although he had not been in Mongolia for long, he saw the luxury cars such as Rolls-Royce running on the streets, and then looked at the extremely poor infrastructure in Mongolia, and he could imagine that the corruption in the officialdom here would only get worse, not the worst.

However, Fan Wubing had also made up his mind. Investing here was of course necessary, but he should also use this as a threat to strive for more privileges, such as air flight rights, etc. In addition, the government officials in Mongolia were very corrupt, and only a small investment was needed to get these things done.

Once he had a firm foothold in Mongolia, he would have the final say on what to do.

After Fan Wubing and his friends had a discussion for a while, someone suggested going to the largest shopping mall in Ulaanbaatar to experience the consumption and daily life of Mongolians. Fan Wubing felt that he had nothing to do, so he nodded and agreed.