With assurances of mutual development and good neighbourliness, Chinese President Xi Jinping courted public opinion today in Mongolia, a country that has often been wary of domination by its massive southern neighbour.
In an address at the Great Hural, Mongolia's parliament, Xi said China stood ready to share wealth and work with its neighbours for peace and stability.
"We will uphold the guidelines of amity, sincerity, mutual benefit and inclusiveness in neighbourhood diplomacy," Xi said.
Xi told reporters yesterday that China would always respect Mongolia's independence, territorial integrity and right to make its own decisions. Those comments reflected concerns among some Mongolians of being subsumed by China, whose size and population of 1.3 billion dwarf this landlocked nation of just 3 million sandwiched between China and Russia.
Xi is the first Chinese head of state to visit Mongolia in 11 years, emphasising the growing ties between the two nations, which during the Cold War sat on opposite sides of the Communist camp. Mongolians are now looking to China to help lift their ailing economy amid a sharp decline in foreign investment and delays in exploiting the country's enormous deposits of coal, copper and other mineral resources.
China and Mongolia pledged yesterday to almost double their annual two-way trade to USD 10 billion by 2020, while Beijing agreed to give Mongolia access to ports in its north and northeast from which to export its resources.
China accounts for more than half of the country's external trade and receives almost 90 percent of its exports, mainly copper, coal and animal products, while supplying 37 percent of its imports. Bilateral trade has soared over the past decade, reaching USD 6 billion last year.
Despite those economic ties, Mongolia has been resolute in treading its own political path. In the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet empire and loss of subsidies from Moscow, Mongolia transitioned into a democracy and a market economy and adopted a "third neighbour" policy to court nations like the United States and Japan and reduce its reliance on its two giant neighbours.
