Pacific Currents: Opportunity, progress springing up in Mongolia
Monday, February 3, 2003
By LARRY JOHNSON
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER FOREIGN DESK EDITOR
John Dinger, the U.S. ambassador to Mongolia, says that that remote
nation, sandwiched between Russia and China, offers the tourist and
business visitor great opportunities and challenges.
The opportunities include a marketplace that has been open to
capitalism only since 1990. The challenges include a marketplace
that has been open to capitalism only since 1990.
"Mongolia," Dinger said Friday at a World Affairs Council meeting in
Tacoma, ". . . is a little bit like taking Utah and Nevada, the more
desolate areas of the United States, dropping the temperature about
50 degrees and ripping out all the infrastructure, and you're
getting close to what Mongolia's like."
Mongolia has only about 800 miles of roads in an area that is about
four times the size of California, with one-thirteenth the
population. It has about 2.4 million people, making it one of the
most sparsely populated country's on Earth. About 800,000 of them
live in the capital Ulaanbaatar.
Mongolia was a Soviet satellite for about 70 years. It was the
second Communist country in the world, after Russia. Before that it
was an autonomous region of China for centuries. But in 1990 it
began a transition to democracy following a peaceful revolution.
"Today you can argue that that transition is largely complete,"
Dinger said.
Mongolia has held three parliamentary elections, three presidential
elections and all have been "free and fair," he said.
The nation's transition to a market economy also has been
successful, he said.
"Private enterprise now makes up 70 percent of the economy; 10 years
ago it made up zero," he said.
Almost half of Mongolia's people live the nomadic lifestyle lived by
their ancestors -- raising sheep, goats, horses, camels and cattle.
Dinger arrived in Ulaanbaatar in November 2000, after about 25 years
with the U.S. Foreign Service.
Since he's been in the country, Dinger said, he's seen considerable
progress -- a greater variety of goods and services being offered to
the public, small businesses springing up, cell phones widely used.
There are internet cafes throughout the capital and in most major
cities.
Larger enterprises have also begun making an appearance.
In June Coca-Cola opened a bottling plant in Ulaanbaatar, the first
international producer of consumer products to enter the Mongolian
market.
In July Boeing delivered a Boeing 737 to Mongolia Airlines, the
first new airplane that the airlines has ever had. United Airlines,
Proctor & Gamble and Johnson & Johnson are also doing business
there.
Mercy Corps, based in Portland, created, with help from the embassy,
a micro-lending program that worked so well that, two years after it
began, it became a private bank.
Still, with only 2,000 to 3,000 U.S. visitors to Mongolia each year,
and only perhaps 600 U.S. residents, Dinger said some people might
question the need for a U.S. Embassy in such a remote country, at a
cost to the U.S. taxpayer of about $3 million annually.
"You have an embassy in Ulaanbaatar because it is in America's
interest to help Mongolia succeed," Dinger said.
There are several important reasons for that, he said.
First, if Mongolia succeeds, it offers a market, albeit a small one,
for U.S. companies.
Second, Dinger said, the Bush administration has developed a
national security strategy that follows the theory that U.S.
security is more threatened by failed states than by successful
states.
"If Mongolia succeeds, it will contribute to the political stability
in a strategic region with two enormous nuclear armed powers (Russia
and China), and one rogue state, North Korea, to the east," he said.
And, finally, he said, "America believes in the values of democracy
and private enterprise, and we support countries with those values."
Dinger said that Mongolia still needs improvements in areas of law,
especially related to business contracts, and corruption, and has a
considerable way to go to improve its transportation and
communication infrastructure.
"Ulaanbaatar is considered to be one of the toughest assignments in
the foreign service," said Dinger, who lives in the capital with his
wife, Michie, and 7-year-old son Tai. "We get the maximum hardship
allowance . . . and I would say it's deserved."

P-I foreign desk editor Larry Johnson can be reached at 206-448-8035
or larryjohnson@seattlepi.com
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