First, eh?
Headline on the Xinhua (China) web site: "World's first museum on Mongolian history, culture opens to visitors." What follows is the description of a museum just opened in Inner Mongolia (Chinese-occupied). What's this, then?
Stuff like this coming from the likes of a state-sponsored, aggressive colonialist Chinese newspaper really galls me. Like Mongolia doesn't already have a bunch of musea already? It reminds me of the time when I was talking with a fellow from China about Mongolia. In the course of the conversation, I told him that Mongolia earned her independence in the 1921. Oh no it didn't, he informed me. It wasn't independant until the 1960s. Huh? Yea, he said, that's when China recognized Mongolia's sovereignty. So, I guess the world doesn't have a museum about Mongolia until the Chinese government has the goodness to build one. Sheesh.
Stuff like this coming from the likes of a state-sponsored, aggressive colonialist Chinese newspaper really galls me. Like Mongolia doesn't already have a bunch of musea already? It reminds me of the time when I was talking with a fellow from China about Mongolia. In the course of the conversation, I told him that Mongolia earned her independence in the 1921. Oh no it didn't, he informed me. It wasn't independant until the 1960s. Huh? Yea, he said, that's when China recognized Mongolia's sovereignty. So, I guess the world doesn't have a museum about Mongolia until the Chinese government has the goodness to build one. Sheesh.
posted by nabetz at 6/19/2005 10:23:00 PM
3 Comments:
Actually, whether you put the date at 1911, 1921 or 1945* (not the 60s though) depends somewhat on whether by independence you mean de jure or de facto souvereignity. If you say Northern Cyprus, Transdnistria, Abkhasia etc. are independent, then so was Mongolia before 1945. If you say they aren't, then so wasn't Mongolia.
Of course, one could just put forward that by the dissolution of the Qing empire, Mongolia had become independent. But that was obviously neither the view of China, nor that of other nations (esp. Russia) at that time. In fact, in all the treaties between Russia and China regarding Mongolia up to 1945, both powers maintained that Mongolia was under Chinese suzerainity.
*The ROC recognized Mongolia's independence in 1945/46 (they withdrew this recognization after their retreat to Taiwan, though, and regarded Mongolia as part of the ROC until 2002), the PRC did so very soon after October 1st (on the 6th, IIRC), 1949.
Yan, Thanks for the correction re: the dates. I took my friend's dates as gospel. I'll check next time.
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