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Chapter 7: Sustaining People-to-People Relationships
- Hong Kong University Press, HKU
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“If you care about what you do, you can overcome most barriers.” People-to-people relationships are the lifeblood of any bilateral partnership between countries, the foundation on which all other long-term engagements are built. Long before formal diplomatic relations were established, Americans and Mongolians were meeting together, sometimes in unlikely places. Photographs taken during the Roy Chapman Andrews expeditions to the Gobi during the 1920s attest to some of these early interactions. Even during the long decades of the Cold War, some Americans visited Mongolia as tourists or academics; and a few Mongolians visited the United States, primarily as dependents of Mongolian officials assigned as diplomats to the United Nations. It was the opening of a formal diplomatic relationship between the United States and Mongolia in January 1987, however, that launched first a trickle and then a flood of interactions between Mongolians and Americans, both private and public. In fall 1989, McKinney Russell, one of the most senior public affairs diplomats in the US Foreign Service—and at that time head of the United States Information Agency office in Beijing—traveled by train to Ulaanbaatar to visit the very rudimentary American embassy then in place. “I did an analysis of the university, the cultural scene, the media,” he later recalled. “It was great fun to be the first officer to go and talk to people to find out what the opportunities there would be for us when it did open up.” US public diplomacy in Mongolia has since increased exponentially, supplemented by numerous privately funded initiatives. Private relations include a growing number of visits by tourists and business executives as well as a variety of encounters that are academic, cultural, or religious in nature. By 2010, more Chapter 7 Sustaining People-to-People Relationships 118 Mongolia and the United States than 10,000 American tourists were visiting Mongolia annually, while nearly as many Mongolians were taking the opportunity to travel to various parts of the United States. The year-round American population living in Mongolia is estimated at approximately 1,500 and growing, primarily related to mining and other new business opportunities. Perhaps one-third are believed to be the children of Mongolian parents who were born in the United States and therefore have a claim to US citizenship. Most Americans living in Mongolia reside in Ulaanbaatar, but some geologists , miners, and others live and work in the South Gobi and other areas of Mongolia rich in minerals. Also, several dozen American missionaries, NGO workers, and entrepreneurs have lived in Mongolia for many years, a few raising families in some of the more remote areas of Mongolia, including in unlikely smaller regional towns such as Choibalson in eastern Mongolia, Tsontsengel in Zavkhan, and Hatgal near Lake Hovsgol. Private US citizens living and working in Mongolia have been involved in a range of activities in a variety of settings. For example, in recent years American volunteers have helped raise funds to provide new facilities for the Lotus Center, a well-known children’s home located just east of Ulaanbaatar and run by Didi, a Buddhist nun from Australia. Other private US citizens have addressed social issues, taught English, managed hotels, launched bakeries, opened restaurants and coffee shops, addressed environmental concerns, restored historical monuments , promoted wrestling exchanges, and played in Mongolia’s professional basketball league. American NGOs often facilitate private encounters with Mongolia. These include World Vision, which funds community development programs across Mongolia; Habitat for Humanity, which has built or improved housing for more than 1,500 Mongolian families since 2000; Experiment in International Living, which introduces American high school students to life with Mongolian herder families on the steppe; and the Snow Leopard Trust, which works to conserve and protect snow leopards in western Mongolia. * * * * * * * [3.82.2.112] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 09:07 GMT) Sustaining People-to-People Relationships 119 The number of Mongolians living, working, or studying in the United States on a long-term basis far exceeds the number of Americans resident in Mongolia. Since the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1987, the US embassy in Ulaanbaatar has issued more than 70,000 visas of all types to Mongolians for business, tourism, study, and migration purposes. At this point, the number of visas issued annually by the embassy now exceeds 10,000 and is growing rapidly. By now, the number of Mongolians living in the United States almost certainly exceeds 20,000, placing the United States as the second most popular destination for...