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Provincial China, Vol. 7, No. 2, October 2002: 196–234

From Yeke-juu league toOrdos municipality: settler
colonialism andalter/native urbanizationin Inner Mongolia1
Uradyn E. Bulag

PreludeThroughout the summer of 2001 people in the southwestern corner of Inner
Mongolia, eagerly awaited a jubilee to mark the official change of the nameYikezhao Meng (Yeke-juu league) to E’erduosi Shi (Ordos municipality).
Although approval of the name change came as early as April 2001, the local
government decided to wait until August, the month of harvest, of plenty, tolaunch the change in a huge ceremony. The number 8, pronounced as ba, is agreat number in the new Chinese astrological tradition in the age of economic
boom, for its Cantonese pronunciation is phonetically approximate to the character fa, meaning to make a fortune. The number 8 has been associated with
opening factories, companies, or restaurants throughout China since the 1980s,
as though the supernatural sign of 8 or fa could ensure instant gratification andeternal prosperity. The irony is that this new money-making superstition masquerades as a sign of modernity, superimposing itself on the vanquishing of thenon-money-making ‘feudal’ Yikezhao Meng. The only problem confronting the
local leadership seemed to be whether to make just one fortune or two fortunes.
So right up to the end of July, they were unable to settle on which date, August
18 or August 28, because 8-1-8 or fa-yi-fa makes one fortune, and 8-2-8 or
fa-liang-fa makes fortune twice.
Unfortunately, as August 18 approached, the leadership was forced to postpone
the celebration to September, because the ambitious reconstruction of thestreets of Dongsheng city (qu), the new capital of the Ordos municipality, had
ISSN 1326-7612 print/1476-7104 online/02/020196-39 © 2002 Taylor & Francis Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/1326761032000176122

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not been completed in time. Though disappointed at missing an auspicious date,
the people there were determined to hold a mammoth ceremony as soon as the
restructuring project was declared complete. Such enthusiasm was not without
good reason. Originally a poor place with rugged terrain marked by vast andever-expanding deserts, Yikezhao emerged towards the end of the twentiethcentury as the richest league in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, withthree of the region’s leading profit-making industries – cashmere sweaters, coaland chemicals. It is also home to the Chinggis Khan Mausoleum, perhaps Inner
Mongolia’s most popular tourist destination, attracting hundreds of thousandsof tourists each year. Nothing could mark this hard-won progress better than
dropping the feudal, backward-sounding name Yikezhao Meng and replacing itwith E’erduosi Shi, conveying simultaneously a positively exotic indigenous
image and a cosmopolitan ring, perhaps auguring humanity’s future – E’erduosi is not only associated with the mighty Chinggis Khan, but is also China’s
best-known cashmere sweater brand name. Such a great transition must be
celebrated not only with appropriate local ethnic Mongolian flavor but also ona most auspicious date.
Not everyone was overjoyed, however. Many Mongols decided to stay at homeinstead of joining the overwhelmingly Chinese revelers in the streets of the newly
named Dongsheng Qu (Dongsheng city). Still, this muted protest was scarcely
noticed. The name rectification was only one of the latest in a series of municipalizations or urbanizations in Inner Mongolia. Until 1976, the Inner Mongolia
Autonomous Region had only two municipalities, Baotou and Hohhot. Now there
are five additional municipalities: Wuhai established in 1976, Chifeng in 1983,
Tongliao in 1999, Ordos in 2001, and Hulunbuir in 2002, outnumbering the prefecture-level leagues: Alashan, Bayannuur, Ulaanchab, Shilin-gol, and Hinggan.
What is remarkable is that some of the original league names have been dropped,
and in some cases replaced with Chinese names: whereas Yeke-juu was replacedby Ordos, a Mongol word, and Hulunbuir remained intact, Juu-Uda and Jerim
were replaced by the Chinese names Chifeng and Tongliao.
This article examines this interesting ‘urbanization’ process cum rectificationof names in Inner Mongolia. The changing map of Inner Mongolia presents a
rapidly modernizing image of Inner Mongolia. What is unique about this transformation is that it differs from the classical urban development pattern whereby
a relatively small town grew in size through gobbling up surrounding rural areas,
as in the cases of Baotou, Wuhai and Huhhot. It invites comparison with ruralbased industrialization whereby small towns expand in size through the development of (predominantly) non-state township enterprises or private enterprises.
This latter form of urbanization appears to be a channel through which thesurplus rural labor created after decollectivization, but which cannot be absorbed
by large cities, can engage in small commodities production. It is also a productof a Chinese political decision to prevent rural to urban migration, for a varietyof reasons that lie behind China’s notorious urban–rural segregation system(hukou), and it is and remains a strategy to deny benefits afforded to urban residents to their rural cousins. In a more optimistic assessment, Arif Dirlik and04 rPRC Bulag (bc/d)

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Zhang Xudong argue that ‘the industrial penetration of the rural areas also gives
rise to a post-urban, decentralized and place-based mode of development thatpromises to narrow rural–urban disparity and to rebuild rural communities in
the market environment.’2 A more comparable model can perhaps be found in
the new phenomenon that localities all over China aspire to ‘elevate themselves’by rectification of names, a phenomenon called di-gai-shi and xian-gai-shi. The
magic of the term city, or any term that elevates one on the administrative scale,is sought by all and sundry. Chongqing’s coup in 1997 to change from a prefecture-level city in Sichuan province to an independent provincial-level municipality is the most important example. At a modest level, Wugong xiang(township) in Hebei province, for instance, becomes Wugong zhen (town), thus
elevating it above the other xiang (townships) in the county, and bringing accessto money. Such an upgrading is not confined to the administrative and spatial
continuum, but permeates the entire social and economic sphere. In the last
decade there has been a rectification of names from gongsi (company) to jituan(group), zongjingli (general manager) to zongcai (CEO), etc., which is less of a
substantial change than a face-lift. In other words, it reflects a kind of commodity
aesthetics as Wolfgang Haug described in capitalist societies, which has more ofan exchange value than a use value.3 Such aestheticization is more appealing to
the senses, but perhaps frustrating to sensuality.
I argue that, in the case of the four new municipalities noted above, it can best
be comprehended in the context of Inner Mongolian ethnopolitics, that is,
China’s mode of administrating non-Chinese minorities, as well as China’s Confucian practice of rectification of names, in the process of China’s ever-changing
political economy. It is in the social relations of production or economic development that we should find a more appropriate answer to comprehending this kindof urbanization and modernity in the northern frontier of China. In exploring
this question, I will first analyze the Chinese administrative practices regarding
non-Chinese minorities, cultural practices of naming with regard to minorities
in China’s history, and then expound on how the regional disparity rendered by
Deng Xiaoping’s development policy engendered a new passionate desire fordevelopment on the part of both frontier Chinese and Mongols. Such a modernity is what I will call alter/native modernity, that is, not just an alternative
Chinese modernity, but one which hinges on altering the native Mongol culturaland political institutions and properties. Finally, municipalization through rectification of names will be analyzed as both a shortcut to modernity and a means
to overcome ethnic autonomy, which is viewed by the Chinese leadership asincompatible with economic development, the national priority for the postMao developmental regime.

The politics of administrative division and multinationalism
Western theorists of ethnicity and nationalism have largely ignored administrative naming as an important component in maintaining ethnic relations. So too,04 rPRC Bulag (bc/d)

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probably, have students of demography and urbanization. Nor have those whohave examined China’s ethnicity paid much attention to the administration of
non-Chinese.4 The conventional understanding of literati officials as China’s
quintessential bureaucrats has probably prevented inquiries into other forms ofadministrative systems, especially concerning those carried out in non-Chineseareas in China. It is often assumed that China’s Confucian culture invariably
assimilated the barbarians who resided within their political terrain. However,the fact remains that until 1884 when the Qing dynasty established ‘Xinjiang
province,’ the ‘Chinese’ bureaucracy did not penetrate into 60 percent of today’s
non-Chinese inhabited territories. Here I submit that one of the most important mechanisms in maintaining the boundary between the Chinese and nonChinese has been through separate administration, based on differences inlanguage, economy, geography, or any other tangible factors. I also suggest thatthe municipalization of the Mongol league system, marking the elimination ofleagues, reflects the tension between China’s multinational reality and the Confucian-cum-nationalist Chinese state’s desire for cultural and administrative
homogeneity.
This is not the place to give a detailed study of the non-Chinese administrations in China; rather I limit myself to some brief comments, especially in
relation to the Mongol conquest and rule of China in the thirteenth to fourteenth centuries. Mongols exerted a far-reaching impact on the Chinese administrative system, particularly in terms of governing non-Chinese peoples. On the
one hand, Mongols instituted the xingsheng or ‘province’ system,5 which latercame to be understood as a unique ‘Chinese’ local administrative institution.
Mongol and their loyal non-Chinese officials, known as darugachi, wereappointed by the Mongol emperors to serve in various localities.6 On the other
hand, during the Yuan non-Chinese peoples in today’s southwest and northwest
were granted wide autonomy, with their native chieftains (tuguan) permitted torule their domains hereditarily.7 Both were apparently innovations.8 One may
argue that such administrative separation was not so much Mongol altruism inbuilding a multicultural empire, as a Mongol strategy to liberate the underdogs
despised by the Chinese. During the Mongol Yuan many of the predecessors oftoday’s non-Chinese minorities9 were organized as legitimate components of theMongol empire, and their leaders were made hereditary.
The establishment of the dual administrative system separating the Chinese
from other peoples has profound implications as it informs the dynamics of later
Mongolian and Chinese histories. Although the tusi system was further institutionalized during the Ming, it was also the Ming that started to dismantle it
under the program called gaitu guiliu, that is, replacing hereditary native chiefs
with centrally appointed civil service officials. This attempt prompted strong
resistance from non-Chinese peoples who came under Chinese rule. The Qing
dynasty, on the other hand, building on the Mongol system, instituted a moreelaborate system that recognized native autonomy, although that recognition
hinged on their support for the Manchu in ruling China. For instance, whereas
the Chinese were administered in more than a dozen provinces controlled

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directly by the Qing court, Mongols in different communities were allowed tokeep their khanates (aimag) as in Outer Mongolia, or organized under a league(chuulgan) and banner (hoshu) system as in Inner Mongolia, wherein the hereditary Chinggisid and Hasarid10 princes enjoyed great autonomy in administering
their leagues or banners.
It is important to note that the Mongol-derived administrative system ofhome rule remained an important device for keeping non-Chinese loyal to theimperial center. The greatest source of dissatisfaction and rebellion by nonChinese people came often when their relative autonomy was revoked and they
were subjected to direct Chinese-style provincial administration. What is interesting is that, as Mongols attained a non-ruling minority status under the Qing,
administered in the khanate, league and banner system, the provincial system
which they had introduced during the Yuan became distinctly ‘Chinese’ andnon-Mongol in their own eyes. Mongols saw the establishment of provinces interritories of Inner Mongolia in 1928 as an imposition of Chinese regularadministration depriving Mongols of their autonomy. Defending leagues andbanners, both in form and substance, became the very source and content ofmodern Mongolian nationalism in Inner Mongolia.
Let me elaborate this point further. Modern Inner Mongolian nationalism
has been punctuated by a response to the loss of Inner Mongolia as an autonomous territorial administrative zone. Chinese nationalism, similarly, set theunification of all territories under a uniform provincial administration as its
ultimate goal. By 1928, as soon as Jiang Jieshi conquered north China and set
up Central Government rule under the Guomindang, the Chinese Nationalist
Party, he placed all frontier territories under newly created provinces, such as
Rehe, Chahar, Suiyuan, Ningxia, Qinghai, etc. – all except Outer Mongolia andcentral Tibet which were beyond Chinese control. This attempt to impose
administrative unity was soon followed by revoking the solemn promise of theunion of five nationalities, the foundational pact of a multinational Republic ofChina,11 thereby rendering Manchu, Mongols, Tibetans and Muslims as
branches of the Han-centered Chinese nation, and explicitly specified in Jiang’s
China’s Destiny, his testament and a text that has sometimes been seen as a
Chinese Mein Kampf.
The Chinese Communist Party, for its part, influenced by Leninist doctrine
and perhaps obligated by the terms of the alliances it established with someminorities in order to oppose the Guomindang and the Japanese, as well as the
sheer demand for autonomy on the part of some minorities, instituted what it
called ‘nationality regional autonomy’ after 1949, modeled on the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Government, the first autonomous region, established in
1947. In fact, in earlier decades, the CCP set up independent Soviet republics
for themselves, and autonomies for non-Chinese minorities, thus incurring
Chinese nationalist wrath, calling them bandits or traitors. This is an important
topic in its own right, but here I only want to point out that because of Mongols’
strong aversion to the very term sheng (‘province’), the territory under thecontrol of the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Government established in May

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1947 came to be called ‘Autonomous Region’ (zizhi qu) rather than ‘Autonomous
Province’ (zizhi sheng) after 1949.12
Within the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, the local administrative
divisions included league (prefecture, aimag in Mongolian, or meng in Chinese),banner (county, hoshu in Mongolian, or qi in Chinese), and sum (township, sumin Mongolian, or sumu in Chinese). Aimag is a revival of the indigenous Mongol
term for confederation, replacing the Qing imposition of chuulgan (assembly,translated as hui meng in Chinese). Hoshu was an ancient Mongol administrative
name kept by the Qing, so it was not abolished. Sum was also an ancient Mongol
administrative term.
What is worth noting is that the Chinese translation of the terms reflects thedistinct character of the Mongol administrative tradition. Interestingly, even the
English translation preserves the Mongol characteristics of the terms rather
than rendering them into prefecture, county or township. The situation ofadministrative names in other minority regions appears to be different. While
the provincial-level autonomous units are all called qu or region, the lower
administrations are named zizhi zhou (autonomous prefecture), zizhi xian
(autonomous county), or minzu xiang (nationality township), all Chinese termswith no cultural or historical connotation in minority languages, although nonautonomous Chinese prefectures are called diqu, which is usually translated as‘prefecture’ in English.
Although this pattern is almost uniform all over China, including Xinjiang
and Tibet, no Chinese term was used to name administrations at the secondary
level in Inner Mongolia, in deference to a Mongol desire to abolish all the
Chinese provinces established in the territories of Inner Mongolia, and restore
the territories of the former Inner Mongolian banners that had been annexed byneighboring provinces. At the tertiary level, however, within Inner Mongolia,
we see a clear pattern of ethnic division: Mongol banners (hoshu or qi) coexist
with Chinese counties (xian), which is not only a manifestation of a lost battle
to restore Mongol administrative characteristics, but also a forced recognition of
the reality that the Chinese constitute the overwhelming majority in the autonomous region overall and even in many rural areas. Nor should the banners beconstrued as purely Mongol in population. Banners are also studded with
Chinese xiang (townships) along with Mongolian sum (arrow). Along with theseadministrative names embroiled in ethnic struggle there exist cities or municipalities (hot in Mongolian or shi in Chinese).

The rectification of names as linguistic nationalism?
To sum up briefly, naming the autonomous administrative territorial units forminorities is as important as their establishment per se, especially in Inner
Mongolia. Naming is not a trivial issue, something simply decorative in nature.
At issue is not just the symbolic importance of ethnic pride, but questions ofautonomy and power relations between titular minorities and non-titular

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Chinese. It is a common practice that subunits of an autonomous area do notwear the modifier ‘zizhi’ (autonomous) unless they pertain to a separate minority
nationality. For instance, only three banners in Inner Mongolia are ‘autonomous,’ belonging to three different nationalities: Orochon, Ewenki and Daur.
Mongol leagues or banners do not wear the ‘autonomous’ label, because it isassumed that Mongols are the titular nationality of the entire autonomous
region, and they do not need to be autonomous within it. However, China’s Law
of Nationality Regional Autonomy, either in the original 1984 version or the
2001 amendment, does not specify how to distinguish a Mongol administrative
subunit from a Chinese subunit, given the existence of linguistic differentiation.
Custom rules that Chinese in counties of Inner Mongolia are titular, and we may
safely say that counties in Inner Mongolia are ‘Chinese autonomous counties.’
Therefore, naming an administrative unit as banner or county infringes on
extreme ethnic sensitivity, as it is a matter of ethnic autonomy and power
relations. While no more ‘counties’ are likely to be formed in Inner Mongolia –because of its ethnic sensitivity and because ‘counties’ are falling out of fashionin other parts of China, too, thanks to the overall trend of urbanization in China
as a form of modernity (see below) – the proliferation of cities or municipalities
in Inner Mongolia is, among other things, also a reflection of this ethnic struggle,
and a strategy of the Chinese to expand their territorial space. Cities are notsupposed to be ethnic, or autonomous, as we can glean from the absence of ‘city’in the definition of autonomous areas in China’s Law of Nationality Regional
Autonomy. I argue that although cities are also customarily associated withthings ‘Chinese,’ this legal lacuna and the obvious benefits to locals, especiallylocal officials, of being honored by the rise to city status checkmates ethnic sensitivity. Before we go on to discuss this matter, in relation to post-Mao economic
development in the rest of China, let us examine briefly the tradition andpractice of rectification of names as reflected in minority administrations.
As noted above, one of the important contentions in ethnic relations lies innaming administrations and localities. Naming, in traditional Chinese politicalculture, is an important device for keeping social order in harmony. As François
Thierry has noted:
The importance given in China to the harmony between the thing and its
name is well known: every name must agree perfectly with the profoundnature of what is named. Thus the graphic classification of the name of eachtype of Barbarian under a radical marking his animal nature is an ontologicalnecessity. So one finds in the ideograms designating some Barbarians the root
‘reptile’ (the Mo, the Wei, the Liao, etc.), the root ‘worm’ (the Ruan, the Bie,the Dan, the Man, etc.), and above all the root ‘dog’ (the Di, the Yan, the
Qiang, the Tong, etc.); some may be written equally with the root ‘dog’ or theroot ‘reptile’ (the Wei, the Lao).13
We may extend this insight to discussing place names. Many place names in
China still betray the origin of either fait accompli (or perhaps more properly
fate accompli!) or desire to put down or ‘tranquilize’ the disturbances caused by

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non-Chinese peoples. Some of those insulting place names have never beenabolished. For instance, the capital of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region
is Nanning – meaning bringing tranquility to the south; the capital of Qinghai
is Xining, bringing tranquility to the west; Ningxia in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region means tranquilizing the Tangut kingdom or Xixia; and Liaoning
province, bringing tranquility to the non-Chinese Liao dynasty. Along theGreat Wall, immediately south of Ordos, are two border towns called Dingbian,which means stabilizing the border region, and Jingbian, pacifying the borderregion. It is remarkable that these terms continue to exist, although some moreinsulting terms have been removed. For instance, the former names given by
the Ming dynasty to Urumqi and Hohhot were Dihua and Guihua, meaning to‘enlighten and civilize’ barbarians, and to ‘return to civilization and to pacify’barbarians, respectively, a far cry from the original Mongol meanings of Urumqi
and Hohhot as ‘fine pasture’ and ‘blue city.’
Some of these derogatory place names continue to exist inside Inner
Mongolia. For instance, there is a county called Huade in Shilin-gol league. In
the memoir of Prince Demchugdongrub there is an interesting description of
his battle to change the name after the establishment of the Mongolian Military
Government under the aegis of the Japanese Kwantung army in early 1936.
In terms of ‘internal administration’, the first thing we did was to change
Huade county to Dehua city. With regard to the establishment of Huadecounty, I once expressed my discontent, because the county seat was originallycalled Jabusu, and it just bordered my banner. Moreover, the Chinese transliteration of my name is De Mu Chu Ke Dong Lu Pu, and people call me De
Wang, Prince De, using the first character De. If it is still called Huade, itmeans that I would be civilized [hua] to this place, but if it is changed to
Dehua, it means that it would be civilized for me. During the period of
Bailingmiao Mongolian Political Council, Bao Yueqing transmitted my discontent with the two characters Huade to Xiao Zhengying, a trusted aid ofSong Zheyuan, governor of Chahar province. Xiao Zhengying immediately
explained that the name came down in a series of names like Congli (following rite), Shangyi (upholding righteousness), it absolutely does not mean toconvert or insult Prince De. If Prince De is not happy about it, I’ll immediately advise governor Song Zheyuan to change it. Please explain to Prince De
not to misunderstand. Indeed, soon I received a notice from the Guomindang
Ministry of Internal Affairs notifying that Huade county was changed to‘Xingmin xian’, New People county. However, despite the explicit order from
the Ministry of Internal Affairs, since the East Chahar incident occurred
before the name change of Huade took effect, the local people continued tocall it Huade. Therefore, as soon as the Mongolian Military Government was
founded, I decided to change Huade county to Dehua city.14
Prince Demchugdongrub, the foremost Inner Mongolian nationalist leader inthe twentieth century, directly engaged in the struggle of ‘rectification of name,’in order not to be politically eliminated or ‘hua’ (civilized) by the Chinese.

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Moreover, he changed it from county to city, diluting its ‘Chinese’ flavor, andappointing Mongols to become mayor and administrators of the city. Although
it may sound as though it was a matter of Prince Demchugdongrub’s royal prerogative or princely ego, the underlying tension was profoundly political as wellas cultural. It is perhaps not so mysterious why the CCP altered it back to Huadecounty, regardless of Mongol discontent, after 1949. That they could continue
to do so with impunity was due to the fact that Prince Demchugdongrub became
an indicted war criminal after the war. Insulting a Mongol war criminal was amatter of revolutionary righteousness, but in doing so the CCP did not distinguish revolutionary justice from ethnic discrimination.15
The naming history of Hohhot is no less interesting. Originally a fortified
monastic center built in 1581 especially for the 3rd Dalai Lama when the Tumed
Chief Altan Khan granted the title ‘Dalai Lama’ to the Tibetan Gelugpa
Buddhist leader Sonam Gyatso in 1578, and called Hohhot, the blue city, after
the color of the temple walls built with bluish bricks, it was named Guihua by
the Ming dynasty, literally meaning ‘return to civilization.’ The Chinese namewas retained by the Manchu. In 1735 the Manchu built a garrison town northeast of the city, and it was called Suiyuan cheng (Pacifying Afar City), also known
as Xincheng (New City).16 In the Republican period, with the Manchu garrison
dismantled, the two cities were combined to become the capital of the newly
established Suiyuan province, and it attained a new name, Guisui, meaning submission and pacification. When Prince Demchugdongrub occupied the city inthe late 1930s with the help of the Japanese army, he replaced the Chinese namewith the Mongol original name Hohhot. But the Chinese rendering of Hohhot
became Houhe Haote, which means ‘favoring the peace (houhe) city (haote),’perhaps echoing the Chinese phrase xiehe (coordination or harmonization),
which became popular in Japanese propaganda for the Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere. That the character ‘he’ is the same one for Japan made thechoice particularly fascinating. However, the Chinese restored the Chinese name
Guisui after August 1945, when Prince Demchugdongrub’s army was defeated
and the Chinese nationalist army under the former governor of Suiyuan
province, Fu Zuoyi, retook the city. Only in 1954, four years after the foundingof the People’s Republic, when Suiyuan province was finally abolished andincorporated into the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, was Guisui replacedby the original Mongol name Hohhot, the blue city. This was a rather latechange, because as early as May 16, 1951, the State Council had already issued
a directive ordering the removal of or a ban on ethnonyms, place names, stelae,
or board inscriptions which were deemed discriminatory or insulting to minority
nationalities.17 But the two characters Huhe chosen for Hoh were interesting;they were partially different from Prince Demchugdongrub’s Houhe. While thecharacter ‘he’ is the same, its meaning becomes contextually different whenmodified by a different character. The character hu means calling or crying out.
In the new context of Chinese propaganda for ‘national unity’ (minzu tuanjie),harmony between Chinese and Mongols in this frontier has become particularly
desirable. Hohhot thus becomes the ‘calling for harmony city’!

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This constant ‘rectification of names’ is of more than casual interest. Eachchange marked the brutal history of one nationality defeating the other, or aregime change. However, the restoration to Hohhot or Huhehaote should not be
construed as the final victory. Chinese transliterations of Mongolian names areoften deemed tongue twisting to Chinese. As noted above, Prince Demchugdongrub’s Chinese transliteration is rather long, consisting of seven characters:
De Mu Chu Ke Dong Lu Pu. And the Chinese never called him by his fullseven-character name, but always abbreviated to the first character De, followedby his title Wang, or Prince. Similarly, Huhehaote is seldom called in full, but
often abridged to either Huhe, or Hushi, the Hu city. Almost all the Mongol
league and banner names are abridged: for instance, Bayannuur league is called
Ba Meng (Ba league), Otog banner is called E Qi (E banner, taking the first character of the Chinese transliteration Etuoke). Is it merely a Chinese linguistic
propensity, a matter of technicality, or is something deeper at play?
While we may acknowledge that the Chinese language, made up of pictographic characters, is not particularly adept at transliterating non-Chinese polysyllabic languages, using fewer characters in names, preferably two, is actually aunique form of sinicization. In an interesting paper, Patricia Ebrey notes thatmany Chinese in south China are derived from non-Chinese peoples, but in
Song, Ming and Qing times, few would acknowledge their non-Chinese descent:‘Rather than say they became Chinese the Confucian way, by adopting Chinese
culture, they wanted to say they were Chinese by patrilineal descent.’ She thenasks a compelling question: ‘If Chineseness was actually something one could
acquire by learning, why were so few willing to admit that they had learned it?’18
Much of the assimilation process can be found in the change of their names,
especially surnames. In all the cases she has found, ‘tribal names are transcribedas single characters, making them easy to assimilate to Chinese surnames.’19 As
it turned out, having more than one character in a surname denotes barbarian
origin, and while conquerors would be happy to retain multi-character names as
their distinction, ‘once they were defeated or ousted, if they had become assimilated such distinctive names labeled them as alien, as non-Chinese, perhaps
even hated non-Chinese.’20 The strategy to assimilate, either as a preference or
as a way to survive, was to drop their multi-character surnames, which were
results of Chinese transcription from their polysyllabic languages, and to adopt
single-character names, ‘preferably one that looked like a Chinese surname.’ Astime went by, even completely Chinese two-character surnames like Sima, Situ,
Gongsun and Shusun began to be associated with non-Chinese origin, andpeople who had those names had to drop one character!21
Following this theory, we may argue that although Mongols managed to win
victories by replacing Chinese discriminatory or insulting names with Mongolnames – a victory perhaps facilitated by the CCP’s initial pro-minority policies,
given the fact that Chinese is the national language and Chinese constitute themajority in almost all minority autonomous areas – their hard-won victories havebeen compromised by the more subtle cultural process of sinicization.
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names, there is another process, namely translation. We have already noted that
Mongol administrative names like aimag or hoshu are not transliterated as
Aimake or Haoshu, but always as Meng or Qi (except sum, which would generally be transliterated as sumu, although in Qing times it was translated as ‘jian’or arrow). On Chinese maps, we find, for instance, that the former eight-banner
Chahar Mongols have been divided between Shilin-gol league and Ulaanchab
league, each having three banners, with the remaining two missing, presumably
carved and divided up. Interestingly, the three Chahar banners in Ulaanchab are
named Chaha’er Youyi Hou Qi, Chaha’er Youyi Zhong Qi, and Chaha’er Youyi
Qian Qi, meaning Chahar Rightwing Rear, Middle and Front banners, in which,except for the characters Chaha’er, all are Chinese translations. Those threebanners in Shilin-gol league are called Xianghuang Qi, Zhengxiangbai Qi, andZhenglan Qi, all translations of Mongol names: Hövööt Shar Hoshu, Shuluun
Hövööt Chagaan Hoshu, and Shuluun Höh Hoshu.
Although Hohhot is usually transliterated as Huhehaote, which is the official
name, the Chinese not only abridge it as Huhe or Hushi, as noted, but also, moretellingly, translate it as Qingcheng, the Blue City. It is this translation, perhaps
because of its clear meaning to the majority Chinese in the city, that has attainedsome poetic sense, as in the appellation of Saiwai Qingcheng – the Blue City
Beyond the Great Wall. Baotou, the largest industrial city in Inner Mongolia, isoften called Lucheng, Deer City, because Baotou is the transliteration of bugut,
which means a place with deer. The character lu and the statues of deer are theusual decorative logos of this city which has long been devoid of deer in the wild.
The association with the image of deer as expressed in the Chinese characterlu is certainly more aesthetic than the lackluster and even obtuse-sounding
two-character Chinese transliteration Baotou, which literally means ‘wrapping
head,’ evoking the image of turbaned Shanxi peasants, the main stock of the local
Chinese.
Let us proceed to discuss the characters used for Ulaanhad. Although thisterm is alive and well in Mongolian, the official Chinese name for the city has
always been Chifeng, Red Peak, the Chinese translation of Ulaanhad. Hongshan,a less literal translation of Ulaanhad – Red Mountain – is used to denote anarcheological site containing artifacts of the New Stone Age. Though largely
filled with pastoral animal motifs, the so-called Hongshan culture has been
appropriated to construct a glorious ancient Chinese civilization.
Chifeng was the capital of Juu-uda league until 1983 and is that of its successor Chifeng municipality. What is surprising is that instead of calling it Juu-uda
municipality or Zhaowuda Shi, it was designated as Chifeng municipality. At
one stroke, Juu-uda league, a Mongol league, was turned into a city with aChinese name. This name change did not go unchallenged.
According to a senior Mongol official who participated in the meeting that discussed the choice of the name, the then Party secretary Zhou Hui, a Chinese
appointed by the CCP Central Committee, insisted on choosing Chifeng as theofficial name for the new municipality. A participant in the meeting opposed it
and suggested that even if the original Mongol name Juu-uda were not used, at

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least the Mongol word Ulaanhad (Wulanhada, in Chinese) for Chifeng be chosen,
if only to show a token deference to the Mongols’ feeling in this region. According to my informant, Zhou Hui shouted angrily at the speaker for exhibiting
Mongol nationalist sentiment. Ironically, the speaker turned out to be a Chinese,
but Zhou mistook him for a Mongol, whose only mistake was to call for respecting the historical fact that Juu-uda league was a Mongol administrative unit.
This incident happened in a very tense period in Inner Mongolia in terms of
ethnic relations after the Cultural Revolution. In 1981, for more than a month,
Mongol students throughout Inner Mongolia went on strike, protesting Central
Document No. 28, issued in response to Zhou’s report to the central leadershipon the Inner Mongolian situation. The document indicated that Inner Mongolia
would receive more Chinese immigrants, an issue that was particularly sensitive
to Mongols, especially young students who went through the Cultural Revolution, many of whose parents had been tortured to death by Chinese immigrants.22 This student protest spread to a struggle between Mongol and Chinese
leaders within the Party and government. Mongol leaders, recently rehabilitatedafter the Cultural Revolution, and having experienced brutal ethnic suppression
in the campaign against an alleged vast ring of underground Mongol nationalists, were especially sympathetic to the student demands. Their sympathy,
however, cost them their political careers. More than 200 high-ranking Mongol
officials were either demoted or sacked because of this incident, ushering in thefirst U-turn in the fragile post-Cultural Revolution pro-minority policies. Not
surprisingly, Zhou Hui, a leader who had originally vowed to right the pastwrongs done to Mongols, began to bridle at any criticism and any pro-Mongol
remarks. Unfortunately, a Chinese Party secretary’s personal mood aptitude
could even deprive a Mongol league of its Mongol character.
The change of Jerim league to Tongliao municipality in October 1999 is asimilar story. It was also a case of replacing the Mongol league name with thename of the capital city, except that Tongliao is a straightforward Chinese namemeaning ‘penetrating or opening up the Liao,’ with its background in dealing
with the Liao dynasty (AD 916–1125), a dynasty founded by non-Chinese Kitan
people. Worth noting is the justification for the name rectification. As the Party
Secretary and the Mayor of Tongliao municipality wrote in their glowing piece
published in People’s Daily on October 6, 1999:‘This is the result of deepening reform, expanding opening-up, and accelerating development undertaken by the people of Tongliao under the leadership of the Party. . . . By replacing league with municipality, history once
again gives Tongliao people a development opportunity that comes only oncein a thousand years.’ They vowed, ‘Replacing league with municipality opensa brand-new page for the development of Tongliao’s economy. Our first term
municipal party committee and the municipal government will, taking the
replacement of league with municipality as the turning point, further emancipate the mind, grasp the opportunity, speed up the development, and carrya united, wealthy and civilized Tongliao into the twenty-first century.’23

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One cannot but notice a forward outlook expressed in the above passage, as
though the advancement of the people of Tongliao had been until 1999
hampered by the Mongol administrative unit called Jerim league, and therenaming had at long last emancipated them.
One of the first programs undertaken by the first term municipal party committee and government was dismantling three Mongolian colleges – Inner
Mongolia Nationality Teachers’ College, Inner Mongolia Mongolian Medical
College, and Jerim League Animal Husbandry College – and amalgamating theminto a newly created Tongliao University. This decision was promptly opposedby Mongol students from the three colleges, who issued a signed petition to
China’s State Council, State Nationality Affairs Commission, State Education
Ministry, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region People’s Government, Inner
Mongolia Autonomous Region Nationality Affairs Commission, and Inner
Mongolia Autonomous Region Education Commission, on November 30, 1999.
They protested that the replacement of Juu-uda league with Chifeng league andJerim league with Tongliao municipality had never been discussed with Mongols,
and such acts violated Mongols’ aspirations and interests. They argued that aname is an integral part of a thing, and it is a reflection of it. Changing the nameof Jerim league deprived it of its Mongol substance. They insisted on adding themodifier ‘minzu’ (nationality) in front of the word university, thereby denotingits ‘Mongolness.’24 It is not known what came of their petition.
In contrast to these dismal stories of ‘rectification of names’ at the cost ofMongol culture and autonomy, the change of Yeke-juu league to Ordos municipality (E’erduosi Shi) and the retention of Hulunbuir appears encouraging,even gratifying. In the case of Ordos, it is ostensibly the revival of the moreauthentic tribal name of the local Mongols, a name associated with the shrinesof Chinggis Khan, replacing Yeke-juu, an administrative name imposed by the
Qing dynasty and meaning Great Monastery. Transformed into a municipality,
the Ordos appears to be both authentically Mongol and modern. Before going
into the details that led to this interesting situation, let us first examine theurbanization process in Inner Mongolia and China at large.

Oedipus and urbanization: capitalism and reterritorialization
Despite a nomadic tradition, cities were not unknown on the Mongolian
steppe.25 As Mongols conquered more land and people, they either brought incraftsmen to build cities or moved out to conquered land and ruled from thecities there. Karakorum, once one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world,
but now in ruins in the heart of Mongolia, was the capital of the Mongol empire.
Beijing, a major city and capital of China, was largely established by the
Mongols. However, as Mongols were driven out of China in the late fourteenth
century and never regained their former strength, they swiftly reverted to the
traditional nomadic lifestyle and inter-tribal war, far removed from urban life.
Cities only survived in the Mongols’ historical memories in the form of ruins,

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known as balgas, reminding one of Dadu/Taitu (Beijing), known as Khanbalic,or Balac, as recorded in Marco Polo’s travel book, a memory perhaps comparable
to Samuel T. Coleridge’s imagination of Xanadu, his Kubla Khan’s ‘stately
pleasure dome.’
The Mongols’ second and this time thorough conversion to Tibetan
Buddhism in the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries transformed them fromworld-conquerors to world-renouncers, and much of their interest and capital
was devoted to monastery building in Mongolia and Tibet. Monasteries thus
studded the otherwise sparsely populated Mongolian plateau, which then also
served as market centers, where Chinese and Muslim merchants, allowed in by
the Qing authorities, settled and built shops, creating a vast merchant empire
exploiting Mongols. Over centuries, Kuriyen (Khuree) or Urga (today’s Ulaanbaatar) in Outer Mongolia and Hohhot in Inner Mongolia developed into thetwo largest merchant cities in Mongolia.
With the influx of Chinese immigrants towards the end of the nineteenth
century, settling in Mongol monastic centers, usually located in the best natural
settings, as determined by Buddhist geomancy, there had been an increasing
cultural inward-looking development on the part of Mongols, who believed thatcities were necessary evils, necessary for obtaining commodities, but not suitablefor Mongol residences. Cities thus became culturally Chinese, as trading became
known as hudaldaa, ‘cheating’ in Mongolian, displacing the original term ariljaa,
making trading something alien to the very ethic of ‘Mongolness.’
Unlike some other minority regions such as Tibet and Xinjiang, which havetheir own urban tradition, it was not until 1949, after several centuries, that
Mongols began to flow into cities in relatively large numbers as party, government and educational personnel. Cities, associated with industrialization, wereattractive to Mongols, who were then also mesmerized by the notion of socialist modernity. But their cultural incapacity has never been resolved, for the
Mongols have always maintained that their authentic Mongol culture is locatedin the grassland. This is reminiscent of Mao’s suspicion of urban culture;26 but
while Mao’s concern was ideological, Mongols’ concerns are ethnic and cultural.
Of course, the Chinese establishment of a formalized urban and rural divide
policed by the institution called hukou – household registration – produced
perhaps the largest inequality presided over by the Chinese Communist Party.
With the peasantry discriminated against and locked into villages, urbanites,
including industrial workers, have been protected as producers and vanguard
forces in building the communist utopia. It would be an important topic to study
how Mongol sense of rurality and urbanity in terms of ethnicity has been configured in the context of Chinese administrative separation, but here, suffice it
to make a broad generalization that, in Inner Mongolia, the rural is divided in
ethnicity: while Mongols are supposed to live in muqu (Chinese) or maljih oron
(Mongolian) (pastoral regions), the Chinese live in nongqu (Chinese) or tarialangiin oron (Mongolian) (agricultural regions). Although at present more
Mongols are peasants than herdsmen and they live in agricultural or semiagricultural regions, instead of acknowledging this as a normal development, the04 rPRC Bulag (bc/d)

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historical memory of a painful transformation invariably represents it as a resultof colonization and sinicization.27 Cities, on the other hand, though usuallyassociated with the Chinese because of history and the sheer numbers of Chinesethere, provide some hope for transcending this ethnicity as they represent modernity and the future of humanity. The result is the constant fear of losing their
distinct Mongol culture and language in the Chinese-dominated cities, and theirnostalgia for pastoral homeland notwithstanding, the overwhelming desire formodernity and the availability of modern amenities – products of China’s ideological bent towards things urban – have driven a rapid Mongol flow into cities.
An ‘urban’ Mongol category and an urban Mongol culture are on the rise, withevery element hybridized with both Chinese and modern elements.
Cities have expanded and flourished in Inner Mongolia since the 1950s. While
many have developed from monastic centers or market towns to administrative
centers of leagues and banners, a few are newly developed industrial towns, withplants and workers transferred from coastal China. Such cities are usually selfcontained places, with little relation to the local neighboring society. Fei
Xiaotong, the eminent Chinese anthropologist, found in his study of Baotou in
1985 that most of the skilled workers who came in the 1950s and 1960s frominland China had aged, and many of their jobs had been inherited by theirchildren, thus building a close kin society around the factories.28 He urged that
Baotou establish links with neighboring areas, exporting its skilled laborers, so
as to both help develop the neighboring economies, and perhaps find relief forthe ever-burgeoning population in a cramped city.
While Baotou is a municipality in Inner Mongolia, there are also a few
enclaves built in recent decades and controlled directly by the central government in Beijing, to tap the natural resources. Xuejiawan in eastern Yeke-juu
league is a case in point. Built in the 1980s exclusively for the purpose of extracting coal from the world’s largest open-pit coalmine, Xuejiawan’s relations with
Yeke-juu league or Inner Mongolia were limited until recently when the seat ofJungar banner moved there from Shagedu. The labor is largely imported
Chinese labor. The nature of such industrial towns or cities is reminiscent of
cities built predominantly in minority regions by the central government in thelate 1960s in its Third Front program.29 The difference is that, while the earlier
towns were justified for national defense purposes in the face of an ostensible
threat of war with the Soviet Union, the post-Mao new towns are built for the
explicit purpose of extracting natural resources.
All this points to a rapidly changing landscape in Inner Mongolia. Urbanization is a two-way process, generated both from within and without Inner
Mongolia. I suggest that the change of four leagues to municipalities in the postMao period constitutes a new process of deterritorialization and reterritorialization. David Harvey, following Deleuze and Guattari, argues that:the accumulation of capital is perpetually deconstructing . . . social power by
reshaping its geographical basis. Put the other way round, any struggle toreconstitute power relations is a struggle to reorganize their spatial basis. It is

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in this light that we can better understand ‘why capitalism is continuously
reterritorializing with one hand what it was deterritorializing with theother’.30
Harvey’s point is important, pointing to the political and geographical dimensions of capitalist development. But can the urbanization or municipalization ofleagues in Inner Mongolia be understood only as a result of capitalism? Harvey’s
Marxist analysis stresses the working-class resistance to capitalism. In so doing,
however, he perhaps fails to appreciate why, in many cases in the Third World,
the introduction of capital is actually initially welcomed by the local community
as well as the national or capitalist elites. It is only when capitalist exploitation
exceeds people’s expectations, bringing more harm than benefit, that people
begin to contemplate resistance. In other words, we must explain why, in Inner
Mongolia, municipalization has not met with any serious open Mongol resistance, in contrast to the Chinese-initiated land reclamation of 1902, which
prompted Mongols throughout Inner Mongolia to rebel violently, becoming theharbinger of modern Inner Mongolian nationalism.
Key to Deleuze and Guattari’s analysis of capitalism in their majestic AntiOedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1977) is the psychoanalysis of social desire,
which flows around the surface or body of the earth, driven by capital. Capitalism as a ‘desiring machine’ produces the ‘subject,’ which then takes the initiative or indeed is driven to pursue its desire, traversing vast space. Capitalism
produces floating desires, and its prime aim is to engineer an encounter between
the deterritorialized wealth of capital and the labor capacity of the deterritorialized worker. But deterritorialization is simultaneously reterritorialization,according to Deleuze and Guattari:
There is the twofold movement of decoding or deterritorializing flows on the
one hand, and their violent and artificial reterritorialization on the other. The
more the capitalist machine deterritorializes, decoding and axiomatizing flows
in order to extract surplus value from them, the more its ancillary apparatuses, such as government bureaucracies and the forces of law and order, dotheir utmost to territorialize, absorbing in the process a larger and larger shareof surplus value.31
Much of this theory can be applied to the Chinese colonization of minority areas,
and we may argue that the current municipalization or urbanization is a violent
form of deterritorialization and reterritorialization. And this is induced by
Chinese capitalism, which increases not only regional disparity but also theurban and rural disparity in post-Mao China.
Almost simultaneous with the rise of what David Harvey calls the postFordist ‘flexible accumulation’ in the 1980s to 1990s,32 we saw a post-Cultural
Revolution rebellion against revolution or the socialist work regime that emphasized equality and unselfish contribution, and a move toward a ‘black-or-whitecat-which-catches-mice-is-a-good-cat’ strategy of capitalist accumulation. But
in a cautious way, the Party decided that capital should be accumulated in a few

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coastal regions, hoping or claiming that the capital accumulated would then betransferred to other areas. In this regional development strategy, as in the Confucian and perhaps ‘feudal’ practice of ‘exemplary’ politics, the showcase
developmental zones expanded, while the inland provinces and autonomous
regions, especially the frontiers, remained starved of development. This engineering of regional disparity had the effect of making all the regions in China
scramble for their own special benefits or special policies. Apparently the coastal
advantage is caused as much by geographical location as by the state’s differential taxation policies, providing preferential allowances to the cities, which can
attract foreign investment. Regions not granted such policies are deprived of avital opportunity to attract foreign capital.33
Thanks to the state’s fiscal devolution policy in the 1990s, non-coastal regions
could exercise their own authority to devise more attractive policies. As all
development-crazed regions, including Inner Mongolia, vie for their own comparative and competitive advantages to attract outside capital, they compete toremove ever more legal or administrative hurdles.34 Cities have emerged as thecenters where industrial miracles and ‘actions’ occur, pointing towards a future
utopia, departing from Mao’s ideological ambivalence, and are represented in
the media as an embodiment of modernity ‘replete with much of the palette ofglobal capitalist renderings of “modernity” and its radically persuasive imageryof the good life, progress and development.’35 The city has attracted millions ofrural peasants to seek temporary jobs while being denied basic benefits andalmost permanently barred from settlement. The material prowess has beenmatched by its political advancement. Barry Naughton finds a good distinction
between cities during the Maoist period and contemporary cities.36 While theearlier cities enjoyed little autonomy, and indeed were subject to the twin policies
of neglect and exploitation, the post-Mao period has seen the creation of ‘conditions for a substantial expansion in the autonomy of cities and urban groups.’37
They are now allowed to keep a larger share of their fiscal revenues than before.
Urbanization appears not to be a side effect of China’s economic strategy, butrather its goal. The rate of urbanization has become the major index to measure
the degree of a province’s development. One of the schemes to accelerate urbanization is the conversion of counties and prefectures into cities, a scheme calledin Chinese, zhen gai shi (town to city), xian gai shi (county to municipality), anddi gai shi (prefecture to municipality). Cities and municipalities have proliferated
as a result. Between 1979 and 1997, the number of cities increased from 193 to
668, of which 221 were prefecture-level municipalities.38
Some provinces, especially the coastal provinces, started municipalization in
the 1980s. Jiangsu province, for instance, changed all of its thirteen prefectures
to municipalities in the 1980s, and had changed half of its counties to cities aswell by 2000.39 On January 5, 2001, Shandong province proudly declared thatit had completed the project of ‘di gai shi’ (prefecture to municipality) and its
rate of urbanization was 36.7 percent.40 Worth noting is the cultural change inthe process. In 2001, the prefecture-level Huaiyin municipality of Jiangxi
province was changed to Huai’an municipality. It is not an upgrading, rather

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an abandoning of an ill-omened name, Huaiyin. The character ‘yin’ in Huaiyin
denotes either the southern side of a river/northern side of a hill, or the
feminine or negative principle in nature, in opposition to yang, the masculine
and positive, or indeed, it denotes the nether world, ghosts. Bolstered by prosperity, the leadership decided to embrace the bright new world with sunshine
and enjoy the tranquility, hence the new name ‘Huai’an,’ ‘an’ denoting peace,
tranquility.41
In April 2001 Xiao Jincheng, a researcher for China’s State Development
Planning Commission, proposed that urbanization should be the main road todevelopment in the western region of China. In his survey of ten ‘western’municipalities, provinces and autonomous regions, which include Chongqing,
Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan, Tibet, Shanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia andXinjiang, there are seven major cosmopolitan cities each with over one million
people, and thirty-seven prefecture-level municipalities. But there are still
twenty-two prefectures and autonomous prefectures which still do not havecities, sixteen of them being autonomous prefectures. Some of them simply have
too few people to warrant municipalities. Ali prefecture in Tibet, for instance,
has only 72,000 people. Still Xiao believes urbanization or municipalization isthe answer to getting out of poverty. He argues:
The fundamental significance of ‘prefecture to municipality’ lies in transforming the ‘xu’ (nominal) first-level government to a ‘shi’ (concrete) firstlevel government, increasing its capability to allocate resources. In the 1980s
the state promoted the systems of ‘prefecture to municipality’ and ‘municipality to administer county’ throughout the country, in order to break down
the administrative barriers separating cities from their surrounding counties,
so as to propel a coordinated urban-rural economic development. This reform
has clarified the jurisdictional relationship between cities and their surrounding counties, enabling cities to access more land and water supply, guaranteeing the supply to urban economic development. It has also allowed cities toopen their gates to the countryside, making it possible for groups of people togo out of the villages into cities to engage in industrial work and commerce,
thereby forming a new structure for an integrated development in urbanrural economy. Such a reform has basically been completed in the central
provinces. However, in the western provinces and autonomous regions, due
to the small size of cities and their weak functions, there are still thirty-nine
prefectures which are yet to become municipalities.42
This was apparently a prelude to a comprehensive urbanization program theState Development Planning Commission launched on August 8, 2001 for thetenth five-year plan period (2001–2005). According to the blueprint document,
the numbers of cities and towns increased respectively from 193 and 2,173 in
1978 to 663 and 20,312 in 2000. Meanwhile, the country’s urban population
increased from 170 million to 456 million, an increase from 17.9 percent to 36.1
percent of the total population. The government sets two different goals: it will
restrict the number, but improve the quality of cities in the eastern region, and04 rPRC Bulag (bc/d)

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the priority for the western region is to increase the number of cities or municipalities. Urbanization is promoted as the major way to bridge the gap between
the eastern and western parts of China.43
Deng’s regional and urban development policy has thus produced a strong
contrast between coastal/urban and frontier/rural, as well as desires on the partof frontier Chinese, to ‘open up’ and ‘catch up.’ It also set forth new political
dynamics that deterritorialize and reterritorialize frontier ethnic minority
autonomous areas.
Post-Mao history is not all economy and finance, however. In the frontier
minority regions, priority was initially given to restoring and expanding ethnic
autonomy, giving more power to the ethnic minorities who had faced discrimination, or been subjected to harsh treatment as in the case of Inner Mongolia
where a genocidal campaign against alleged Mongol underground nationalists
cost tens of thousands of lives.44 Numerous new laws and regulations have been
passed to enhance autonomous rights among the titular minorities.45 The mostsignificant achievement, despite all its problems, was the Law of Regional
Nationality Autonomy of 1984, drafted under the personal supervision of
Ulanhu, the paramount Mongol (and nationality) leader in China from 1947 to
1966, and again in the 1980s.
Local autonomy in the realm of culture and politics could not, however, be
directly translated into economic advantage. In fact, local autonomy frequently
constituted rebellion against central state penetration, aiming particularly tohalt the inexorable Chinese migration, which had brought havoc during the
Cultural Revolution and throughout the long twentieth century had undermined the position of the nationalities in their homelands. The problem, ofcourse, was that, from an economic development perspective, migration and theprovision of state resources were critical to the development of productive
power. Since capital inflow was often accompanied by Chinese migration,
Mongols faced a problem: to oppose migration risked further impoverishment,
falling behind economically during a period of rapid growth. In the event,decision-making power was never exclusively in the hands of Mongols. Indeed,
attempts to block or slow, or even sentiments critical of Chinese migration, havealways been denounced as manifestations of local nationalism or national splittism, which is susceptible to harsh suppression by the Chinese leadership, which
never admits to its own nationalism, not to speak of racism.
As a result of the state’s regional development policy that prioritized thecoastal regions at the expense of the interior, and frontier ethnic resistance to
the Chinese influx, minority regions, and Inner Mongolia in particular, lagged
ever further behind, constituting a ‘third world’ within China. Of course, no one
wants to be poor, especially when one’s neighbor is gaining power throughwealth. This juxtaposition of regional disparity and ethnic disparity characterizes the emerging condition in Inner Mongolia.
In the last decade or so, broadly speaking, there are three ways by which
capital has flowed to the frontiers. We have already touched on the first, viz. thestate’s direct investment in the exploitation of natural resources in the frontier

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regions. In this massive flow of capital, minorities benefit little, nor do frontier
Chinese much more, the reason being that the central government monopolizes
the profits, with no or little share to local government. Moreover, much of thelabor came from outside, with few jobs especially for local minorities.46
The second is the Tibet and Xinjiang model. As a consequence of ethnicunrest and the specter of Tibetan and Uygur independence, the Chinese government has been transferring vast sums of money and large numbers of Han
Chinese to settle and develop the local economy, hoping to achieve the twin aim
not only of consolidating the region with Chinese settler population, but also ofdeveloping the economy, following the new reasoning in ethnic policy that an
economically contented minority would not aspire to secede from China. The
model is such that the more politically volatile Tibet and Xinjiang become, themore money is likely to flow from the center.47 But the sum is small in comparison to the foreign capital the coastal region attracts, and the local minorities
do not benefit as much as the old and new settler Chinese population does. This
is not to say that foreign capital does not go to the frontiers; it does, but often
not in contradiction of the regime’s security interest.
Last but not least is the model pertaining to the southwestern minority andother less volatile regions, where, despite or because of continuing poverty,
ethnic tourism is a burgeoning business.48 Ethnic culture, as articulated by theformer premier Zhao Ziyang’s advisors Wang Xiaoqiang and Bai Nanfeng (1991)
in The Poverty of Plenty, can be turned into capital. They argue that since theminorities lack technical skills that can be used to extract their region’s abundantnatural resources, they should get rich by selling their cultural differences
through ethnic tourism.
In a fascinating paper on the impact of globalization on poverty-stricken
Guizhou province and its large numbers of ethnic minorities, Tim Oakes writes
perceptively about the Oedipus desire of the Guizhou provincial leaders fordevelopment:
Faced with the inadequacy of central development funds designed to compensate for the adverse effects of fiscal decentralization on the minority andimpoverished counties of China’s interior, Guizhou has increasingly advocated the commercialization of the rural sector as the means by which therural poor may escape poverty. In other words, the province’s answer to its simmering fiscal crisis is to ‘sell Guizhou’.49‘The most significant avenue for attracting investment,’ Oakes writes, ‘is thetourism industry. Touristic marketing of Guizhou as an attractive and exotic
place has dominated the province’s commercial development strategy, and in
this regard, the region’s significant population of ethnic minorities has played acrucial role.’50
Inner Mongolia is an interesting case, for it has the characteristics of all threemodels of capital flow. It is a frontier region with extremely rich natural
resources, some degree of aspiration for more autonomy, and it is promoting
Mongol culture for tourism. Although rich in natural resources, Beijing controls

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most of them directly. What is interesting is that under such circumstances,envious of the prosperous coastal region and frustrated by their region’s own
sluggish development, some Chinese in Inner Mongolia vent their frustration
at the Mongols, blaming them for being insufficiently rebellious in contrast to
the Tibetans or the Uygurs. Had the Mongols made trouble, they imply, thecenter would have sent more money, some to the Mongols to appease them, andsome to the local Chinese to award their struggle against ethnic secessionism.
This case illustrates an interesting but typical mentality of settler colonialists ina poor region, one that simultaneously blames Beijing and the local ethnic population for their poor luck.
Unfortunately for Inner Mongolia, when China envisaged its ‘Go West’ planin the late 1990s, Inner Mongolia was not included. To be not included in the
bandwagon of development was a serious moral blow. The Oedipus complex of
the Inner Mongolian leadership is reflected in an officially sponsored bookentitled Inner Mongolia in the Eyes of Famous People.51 In the often overblown,
but perhaps also excessively polite, remarks contained in the book, the leadership hopes to encourage people to see the greatness of Inner Mongolia, past,present and future.
The change of leagues to municipalities may thus be seen as a unique productof this complex, which in turn has been generated by China’s regional andurban economic development design. Although the change of Juu-uda league
to Chifeng municipality in 1983, Jerim league to Tongliao municipality in 1999,
Yeke-juu league to Ordos municipality in 2001, and Hulunbuir league to
Hulunbuir municipality in 2002 are part of the national trend of municipalization, I argue that the Inner Mongolian cases reflect distinct local ethnopolitics.
There appear to be many advantages in abandoning league administration infavor of a municipality. The primary aim of this change is, I argue, to overcome
ethnic autonomous barriers, so as to allow for more leeway to pursue predatory
economic development without concerns for social and environmental consequences. Ethnic autonomy, when it cannot generate economic prosperity, andwhen it is understood as a barrier to economic prosperity, has to be discredited.
More to the point, since ‘prefecture’ is not a ‘legitimate’ administration sanctioned by the Chinese Constitution, changing the Mongol administration ofprefectural-level leagues to municipalities became curiously a legal rectification! Below I discuss how ethnicity and capitalism have resulted in the reterritorialization and creation of an interesting post-modern ‘entity’ – Ordos
municipality.

Ordos municipality: a corporate model for urbanizing Inner
Mongolia?
I have noted above that Ordos municipality is distinguished from Chifeng andTongliao in one important point: instead of using Chinese names as in Chifeng
and Tongliao, Yeke-juu is replaced by a more authentic Mongol tribal name –04 rPRC Bulag (bc/d)

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Ordos, rather than Dongsheng, the name of the capital city of the league.52 In
fact, there is nothing in Dongsheng that is less auspicious from a Chineseperspective than Chifeng and Tongliao. Dongsheng is a very old town, and waslong an exclusively Chinese town, until the 1950s when it was chosen as thecapital of the new Yeke-juu league. Once a small shabby outpost, with jurisdiction over Dongsheng county, the only Chinese county in Yeke-juu, Dongsheng
was elevated to the status of a county-level municipality in 1982. In recent years,
the city has become known for its improved sanitation, and in the 1990s, ithosted the All-China Small Town City Conference. Dongsheng is now one of
the most important clusters in the newly emerging Golden Triangle of Hohhot,
Baotou and Dongsheng. It had all the qualifications to be equal to or surpass
Tongliao or Chifeng. But it failed.
Robert Young notes that an important feature of colonialism as distinguishedfrom capitalism is that while capitalism may homogenize everything in its wake,colonialism does not. He takes issue with Deleuze and Guattari:
The problem with the Anti-Oedipus as it stands for any form of historicalanalysis, apart from its sheer difficulty, is that the processes of decoding,recoding and overcoding imply a form of cultural appropriation that does not
do justice to the complexities of the way in which cultures interact, degenerate and develop over time in relation to each other. Decoding and recoding
implies too simplistic a grafting of one culture on to another. We need tomodify the model to a form of palimpsestual inscription and reinscription, an
historical paradigm that will acknowledge the extent to which cultures were
not simply destroyed but rather layered on top of each other, giving rise to
struggles that themselves only increased the imbrication of each with theother and their translation into increasingly uncertain patchwork identities.
In addition, contrary to the implication of deterritorialization and reterritorialization, it was often the case that colonial powers such as Britain did noterase or destroy a culture, but rather attempted to graft on to it a colonialsuperstructure that would allow the convenience of indirect rule, freezing theoriginal indigenous culture by turning it into an object of academic analysis,
while imposing the mould of a new imperial culture.53
This theory has to be qualified in China. In different historical periods, different
Chinese governments have instituted different policies, ranging from conserving the minority culture to destroying it. As noted above, ethnic tourism has
been promoted as a means of developing the local ethnic economy. While thismay also be true to some extent in Inner Mongolia, I argue that the adoption of
Ordos is the result of a three-way process: Chinese promotion of Chinggis Khanas a Chinese national hero; Mongol ethnonationalist promotion of Chinggis
Khan as a Mongolian hero and Ordos culture as representative Inner Mongolian
culture; and Chinese appropriation of Ordos as a cashmere sweater brand, which
has become the most famous Inner Mongolian brand name in China.
The territory of Yeke-juu league – surrounded by the Great Wall to the south,and encircled by the Yellow River on the west, north and east – is known as

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Ordos internationally as well as within China. Archeologists may be familiar
with the so-called Ordos bronze. This is the result of a backward reading of
history, using the Ordos Mongol ethnonym to refer to their predecessors. The
Ordos Mongols were relatively late-comers to the region. The association of theOrdos with the region was the product of a Mongol attempt to worship and safeguard Chinggis Khan’s shrine. Toward this end, the Ordos tribe (formerly
known as Ordos tumen – ten thousand households) settled in the region as
recently as the sixteenth century. Nonetheless, the recoding has been taken as
presuppositional. Thus, when some western scholars discuss the Han–Xiongnu
conflict as early as two thousand years earlier, they refer to the territory as
Ordos.54
The Manchu seemed not entirely sure of how to deal with the identity of
the Ordos Mongols. While administered in Yeke-juu league – meaning Big
Monastery, deriving from the largest Buddhist temple, Wangiin Juu, in theregion – the banners within the league were however named after Ordos: all thebanners were divided into two wings of Ordos, eastern and western, and each
was called in accordance with its location, for instance, Ordos West Wing Frontbanner, etc. This is because the Manchus, while promoting Buddhism in order
to better control the Mongols, also encouraged the cult of Chinggis Khan,
claiming that their emperors were reincarnate successors of Chinggis. And
Ordos is the plural form of Ordon, or eight special imperial ritual tents (naimanchagaan ordon) housing Chinggis Khan’s shrine and those of his consorts andmany Mongol historical figures.
With the collapse of the Qing, Ordos became a hotbed of contention as the
Chinggis Khan shrine was critical to Mongol nationalism. As early as 1910, theBuryat nationalist intellectual Tseveen Zamtsarano, who was actively involvedin Outer Mongolia’s independence, paid homage to the Chinggis shrine in
Ordos, and advised Mongolia’s foreign minister to take Chinggis Khan’s Black
Standard as the national emblem.55 In the subsequent Mongolian expedition toInner Mongolia seeking unification in 1913, one column advanced in the direction of Ordos with the aim of taking the shrine. The new international signification of the Chinggis Khan shrine in Ordos apparently alarmed Chinese
historians and archeologists, prompting them to investigate the real location ofChinggis’ tomb. A series of debates between the renowned Chinese Mongolist
Tu Qi and geographer Zhang Xiangwen was published between 1915 and 1917
in China’s leading journal of geography, Dixue Zazhi (Journal of GeographicalScience). Zhang, in a rather orientalist mood, claimed that he had ‘discovered’
Chinggis’ tomb in Ordos during his tour, while Tu Qi, as a historian, insisted
that Chinggis’ tomb was actually in Outer Mongolia. Although ostensibly
academic in nature, given the contemporary context of Mongolian nationalism
and the rise of Chinggis Khan as a Mongolian national symbol, their spirited
debate certainly helped draw Chinese attention to Chinggis’ shrine in Ordos andelevate its profile in Chinese history.56
The symbolic importance of Ordos in association with Chinggis Khan wasenhanced in the 1930s when the Chinggis Khan shrine became a major point of

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contention among the mutually quarrelsome Japanese, Mongols and Chinese.
The evacuation of the shrine from Ordos to Gansu in 1939, and the CCP and
Guomindang worship of Chinggis, soliciting his martial spirit against theJapanese and their Mongol supporters, brought world focus on this mysterious
land. After 1949, the CCP, in a major ploy to win over the Mongolian People’s
Republic, and of course at the demand of the Ordos Mongols to return theirshrine, agreed to the repatriation of the shrine, and built a gigantic dome structure to collect all the Chinggis-related shrines in Ordos in one location for better
control. Such promotion of a Chinggis Khan cult in a Communist era thatemphasized ‘people’ rather than ‘heroes’ in making history was nothing but
politically and nationalistically motivated. Perhaps this expedient promotion ofa major ‘feudal’ hero was equally matched by the CCP’s creation of a pantheonof ‘people’s’ exemplars or models, such as Lei Feng and the two little sisters of
the grassland,57 and Mao’s own personality cult. By contrast, the Soviet Union
prohibited all manifestations of a Chinggis Khan cult in the Mongolian People’s
Republic.
It was, however, not until the post-Mao period, after the thorough destruction of the Chinggis Khan shrine during the Cultural Revolution, that Mongols
in the region began to take the initiative to promote a local ‘Ordos culture’ inrelation to Chinggis Khan. The Ordos songs, the Ordos wedding and Ordos
women’s dress, and others, have become the core of ‘Inner Mongolian’ culture,
due not only to new folkloric aestheticization, but also to the general identification of the Mongols with Chinggis Khan. The conviviality of the Ordos songs,
wedding and dresses makes them particularly suitable for representing Inner
Mongolia at large. However, as ethnic tourism develops, Mongols are now feminized.58 When tourists go to the grassland of Inner Mongolia, wherever it may
be, they are greeted and entertained by lines of Ordos-dressed young girls, firstwith the famous Ordos drinking song, Altan Hundag (Gold Cup).
This feminized Ordos Mongol culture as representative of Inner Mongolian
culture is particularly odd when accompanied by the promotion of the Chinggis
Khan cult. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the so-called Chinggis Khan Mausoleum, a historic misnomer,59 has been promoted not so much as representing
a Mongol cultural tradition of ancestral worship, but as representing a Chinese
hero, the greatest hero, ‘the only Chinese who ever defeated the Europeans.’ Assuch, the mausoleum has been renovated and expanded, now modeled after Sun
Zhongshan’s Mausoleum in Nanjing, attracting millions of Chinese tourists
every year to experience the glory of China’s racial victory over the Whites.
But these ethnocultural developments would never make a league into amunicipality, for urbanization has to do with industrialization. Until the 1970s,
the league had been a rather poor region, with a dual economy of pastoralism
and agriculture. In the 1980s, however, the league began to develop three majorindustries: cashmere sweaters, coalmining and chemicals. They were so successful in the 1990s that they became the three most successful industries in thewhole of Inner Mongolia. They were also the three earliest Inner Mongolianindustries to be listed on the stock markets in Shanghai and Shenzhen in 1994.

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Between 1995 and 1997 the core companies of the Ordos Group Corporation,
Yeke-juu League Chemical Industrial Group Corporation, and the Yeke-juu
Coal Group Corporation made up one-third of all the stocks of Inner Mongolian companies in the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets, and they raised
funds exceeding 2 billion yuan, constituting over 70 percent of all the capital in
Inner Mongolia raised in the stock market.60 Today, these three industrial
groups have become cross-regional and transnational companies.
The Ordos Group Corporation is particularly interesting. Established in 1994,
its core company, the Ordos cashmere factory, took its name ‘Ordos’ only in
1992. Its predecessor was Yeke-juu League Cashmere Factory, built in 1980 withJapanese investment and machinery. That the factory decided to take up ‘Ordos’
as its name in 1992 is not surprising, because by then the name Ordos had
become famous through folkloric enhancement. We may also grant the possibility that the company, because of its export orientation, was particularly eager
to find an eye-catching brand for its product, as is the business convention in
the West. Nothing seemed to be better than the word Ordos. In the mid-1990s,
the newly appointed Party Secretary of Inner Mongolia, Liu Mingzu, made it
known that promoting top brands was his strategy for developing the Inner
Mongolian economy. With this Party encouragement and the company president Wang Linxiang’s astute management, the Ordos-brand cashmere sweaters
have become a household brand throughout China. Seductive advertisementswith a one-line poem – ‘Ordos Cashmere Sweater Warms the Entire World’ –beam across TV screens in China, and Ordos cashmere sweater billboard posters
become major landscapes in many urban centers. The Ordos – or rather its
misspelt, though official, rendition ‘Erdos’ – brand trade-mark was formallyrecognized as a ‘Chinese famous trade-mark’ by the state industrial and commercial administration bureau of China on January 5, 1999. The brand value of‘Erdos’ topped 3.416 billion yuan in 2000, and it is the most famous brand in
China’s textile circle and also the most valuable brand in Inner Mongolia.61
The spectacular success of Ordos Group Corporation lent tremendous power
to the debate about China’s regional development strategy. As early as the 1980s,
the Yeke-juu League Cashmere Factory, the predecessor of the Ordos Group
Corporation, was a major model used by scholars and officials in the interior
provinces and autonomous regions against the central government’s diffusion
model or the so-called ‘ladder-step theory,’ i.e. China’s ‘development was toproceed one step at a time from the coastal region to the interior regions.’62 In
the argument of what coalesced as the ‘western school,’ the ladder-step theory
was detrimental to the development of the western region. They challenged theofficial assumption of the ladder-step theory that the backwardness of the westernregion was based on considerations of economic efficiency, arguing that the socalled industrial inefficiency of interior regions was ‘calculated on the basis ofstate-fixed prices which depress those of extractive industries.’63 ‘Their favorite
example,’ writes Yang, ‘is the Yi[kezhao] League Woolen Sweater Factory (andthe wool) processing industry in general in Inner Mongolia. Imported fromabroad in the early 1980s, this factory soon bested its coastal competitors by

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becoming the most efficient and profitable enterprise in mainland China’s wool
processing industry.’64 It may thus be argued that the factory played an important role in helping shift China’s focus from the coastal region to the interior in
the early 1990s, scoring tremendous symbolic, political and economic capital forthe factory and its successor – Ordos Group Corporation.65
Promoting the ‘Erdos’ brand name thus became its strategy for success, capitalizing on the ethnopolitical significance of this region’s tribal name associatedwith Chinggis Khan. Indeed, this industrially promoted, lyrically aestheticizedbrand name has accrued and is continuing to accrue tremendous value for thecompany. Unfortunately, the value-laden ‘Erdos’ brand has nothing to do withpromoting Mongol culture, or helping Mongols.
Far from benefiting the local Mongols who have been encouraged to raisegoats, which in turn has led to rapid desertification, the successful Ordos
company deserted the local Mongols and cast its eyes elsewhere – on the Mongol
herders in Mongolia. Their recent domination of the Mongolian cashmere
market has aroused strong Mongolian nationalist feelings.66
Indeed, the company’s predatory exploitation of cashmere resources has
begun to undermine its own success. In a sober study of the cashmere industry
in Inner Mongolia, Wang, Qin and Ding write that there have been at least two
major wars for cashmere resources in Inner Mongolia: first in 1988 and secondin 1993–1995. The first war pushed the raw cashmere price from 70 yuan perkilo to 130 yuan per kilo. And the second war blew the price up to 360 yuan perkilo, and 400–500 yuan per kilo at its peak. This was caused by the rapid increasein the cashmere processing industry dominated by the Ordos cashmere
company. Since 1996, there has started another war, this time a war to slash theprice of cashmere products. Since 1997, the cashmere sweater price has dropped
by 20–30 percent, and some brands by even 50–60 percent. Because of thissluggish market, the raw cashmere price nose-dived to about 100 yuan per kilo
in 1998, making herders lose money in raising goats. Apparently the processing
capacity of China’s cashmere industry has far exceeded both the material supply
and the market demand for the finished products. In 1999, 95 percent of themore than 80 medium- and small-size cashmere processors in Linghe city near
Baotou stopped production, and the Ordos cashmere group had 1.2 million
cashmere sweaters piled in stock, worth 0.7 billion yuan, and the Luwang
cashmere group in Baotou had 900,000 in stock, worth 0.5 billion yuan. There
were 7 million cashmere sweaters in stock in Inner Mongolia in 1999, more thanthe entire sales volume in Chinese and international markets in that wholeyear.67
Nonetheless, this exploitation of cashmere resources, both locally and internationally, as well as the crisis it has created, has not stopped the Ordos groupfrom appropriating local history and historical images. Nor does it prevent itfrom imposing a corporate model on the Yeke-juu league. In a hagiographicalbook promoting the Ordos Group Corporation and its two companions, the two
Chinese authors, Cheng Li and Wang Xun, write as though the Ordos Group
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Ordos is like a golden steed, soaring up, galloping in the front in the pictureof the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region’s rapidly advancing economy. But
the power that energized the internal impulse of this steed is the thickly
deposited rich mineral resources under the thin layer of soil, upon which thetraditional agricultural tilling production depends, which has nothing to dowith traditional agricultural civilization. This is the raw material and spice forthe industrial civilization.68
The following passage invoking Chinggis Khan is particularly pertinent:
The proud son of heaven Chinggis Khan once fixed his eagle-like eyes on thismysterious land, not only decreeing that he be buried here upon death, butleaving Ordos with the following masterpiece, composed in the ‘refined’ stylewhich he was not good at:[It is a place]For stags to graze
For hoopoes to lay eggs
For a declined state to revive, andFor me to enjoy happiness.
However, he did not live long enough to see the ‘revival’ of the place in its
true meaning; the army was pulled back, and the body died, the disparity
between ideal and reality persisted so stubbornly in Ordos, which shaded off
in the last moment of his memory.69
The arrogance of the above passage is reminiscent of Mao’s 1936 poem ‘Snow’
in which he compared himself to all the ancient emperors, including Chinggis
Khan, and was convinced that only he could make a greater hero:
This land so rich in beauty
Has made countless heroes bow in homage.
But alas! Qin Shihuang and Han Wudi
Were lacking in literary grace,
And Tang Taizong and Song Taizu
Had little poetry in their souls;
That proud son of Heaven,
Genghis Khan,
Knew only shooting eagles, bow outstretched.
All are past and gone!
For truly great men
Look to this age alone. (emphasis added)
And the truly great men, according to the pens of Cheng Li and Wang Xun, are
Wang Linxiang, president of the Ordos Group Corporation, Li Wu, president of
the Yeke-juu League Chemical Industry Group, and Zhang Shuangwang, president of the Yeke-juu League Coal Group. It is they who, according to them, havemade Ordos a household name in China, and it is they who have made Ordos
great beyond the expectation of Chinggis Khan. They deliberately mystify:

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Someone made a joke: ten years ago, many outsiders did not know where
Yeke-juu league is located. Spreading out a map of China, they looked for it
carefully everywhere under a magnifier for a whole day, without any luck.
They then burst into anger: why do you fool me with a false place name?’70
Ten years later, in contrast, ‘The line of advertisement “The Ordos cashmere
sweater warms the whole world” is known to everybody. In fact, many people
remember Ordos only after first knowing this product of cashmere sweater. Only
when they remember the name of this plateau do they start to follow with greatinterest the take off of Yeke-juu league.’71
With these bloated claims, it becomes natural that they should be the mastersof this Ordosland which they claim to have made prosperous and famous. If theleague assisted them to be successful, now the league must be transformed to fit
the image they have built. The time is now ripe for a fundamental transformation
or reterritorialization: the land they live in and the site of the profits it produces
must now be made a municipality and called Ordos. Since the momentum has
been built, the ‘propensity’ does not have to be enforced. A Chinggis-laden, postmodernist, globe-trotting and yet exotic, as well as perhaps a ‘legal’ Ordos municipality came naturally to replace feudal, backward and Mongol-flavored Yeke-juu
league. And Yeke-juu, which means Great Monastery, with its celibate overtone
is particularly inappropriate in this new age when libido drives humans towards
lustful utopia.
Concluding remarks: urbanization and the future of Inner
Mongolian ‘autonomy’
It is too early to tell how and if Deleuze and Guattari’s ‘nomadism’ or David
Harvey’s ‘spaces of hope’ as anti-capitalist resistance force72 will strike back tochallenge this reterritorialization of Inner Mongolia through urbanization, forindeed it is ironic that the history of modernity has been a process of settling
down and urbanizing for the nomadic Mongols. Nor should we expect that thethree industrial conglomerates will make Ordos, or, for that matter, the entire
Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, any more prosperous. For after all, theirindustry lies in extracting the natural resources, and the resources come rightfrom the land Mongol pastoralists live on. As the Chinese state discovers morenatural resources, Mongols as well as disadvantaged Chinese have been thrown
off their land. This process started long ago, and there is no sign of a stop evenas people celebrate the birth of Ordos municipality adorned with ancient heroic
images and modern high-tech wonders. The Ordosland and Inner Mongolia atlarge is a land of growing desertification, ever more Mongol pastures being swallowed up by rolling sand or being expropriated in various forms by both insiders
and outsiders for industrial and agricultural purposes. Lester Brown, in a recent
piece on the sandstorms emanating from north China, blamed both overgrazing and over-cultivation for causing the sandstorms. But the following
passage indicates a unique process of Mongols losing their pasture to croplandat an astonishing speed:04 rPRC Bulag (bc/d)

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In addition to local pressures on resources, a decision in Beijing in 1994 torequire that all cropland used for construction be offset by land reclaimed
elsewhere has helped create the ecological disaster that is now unfolding. In
an article in Land Use Policy, Chinese geographers Hong Yang and Xiubein[sic] Li describe the environmental effects of this offset policy. The fastgrowing coastal provinces, such as Guangdong, Shandong, Zhejiang, andJiangsu, which are losing cropland to urban expansion and industrial construction, are paying other provinces to plow new land to offset their losses.
This provided an initial economic windfall for provinces in the northwest,
such as Inner Mongolia (which led the way with a 22-percent cropland expansion),
Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia, and Xinjiang.73 (emphasis added)
If Inner Mongolia suffers at the hands of the more industrialized coastal
provinces, can the industrialization of Inner Mongolia do anything good for its
own disadvantaged ethnicized, though titular, others? This question immediately points to the issue of ethnicity and, more importantly, the impact of municipalization on the question of ‘autonomy.’ I mean the impact on the remaining
token degree of autonomy. What is the constitutional basis for such a change?
And how does the non-existence of ‘prefecture’ in the Chinese Constitution
figure in the debate and decision to abolish the Mongolian league system? These
questions hinge on the assumption of the existence of a respectful constitution,
which would provide at least a rule of thumb of how to behave.
In a recent policy recommendation, Luo Shujie and Xu Jieshun, two Chinese
ethnologists from the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, allege that theautonomy law passed in 1984 has never been taken seriously as legally binding
and thus it must be scrapped and a new law passed to reflect the new reality.74
While there are good suggestions such as establishing authorities to interpret thelaw and a court to implement the law, there is one item that looks especiallyglaring in this context. They suggest that ‘Autonomous Region’ be changed to‘Autonomous Province,’ so that people would not take autonomous regions (qu)for county-level regions (qu).75 The authors’ opinion may be right in theirnarrow sense, but they reflect the continuing impulses of Confucian ‘rectification of names,’ as they explicitly write: ‘Therefore, changing “autonomous
region” to “autonomous province” can serve the function of rectifying names,
favorable not only to the consolidation of the status of the provincial-level autonomous areas, but also to the provincial-level autonomous areas’ participation ininternational exchanges.’76 Autonomy looks odd, and they must be made toconform to ‘normalcy,’ and the wider pattern. And this normalcy-seeking
passion is precisely the source of power that eliminates any historicallyembedded ‘differences,’ the raison d’être for nationality autonomy.
Cities or municipalities are not autonomous areas, as they are not stipulated
as autonomous in China’s Law of Nationality Regional Autonomy. Autonomous
areas include only ‘autonomous region,’ ‘autonomous prefecture’ and ‘autonomous county.’ In Inner Mongolia, leagues are not ‘autonomous’ constitutionally, but customarily. Now with more than half of the prefecture-level04 rPRC Bulag (bc/d)

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administrative units having already become municipalities, and with othercounty-level municipalities, perhaps more than 70 percent of the population are
already ‘urbanites.’ And given China’s ambitious plan which sets urbanization
as its form of modernity, and its form of urbanization by changing the name ofcounties and prefectures to municipalities, we may safely predict that the rest of
the Inner Mongolian leagues are doomed to become municipalities. And prefectural municipalities are ‘autonomous’ of provinces or autonomous regions interms of personnel appointment and other matters.
In a paper on the direction and characteristics of urbanization in Inner
Mongolia, Shi Xiangshi writes that urbanization has three functions: (1) it is aneffective means to accelerate the economic development of Inner Mongolia; (2)it will lead to improvement of the economic structures, not only creating morejobs but attracting more capital and skills; and (3) it will elevate people’s education and scientific levels, and improve their ‘quality.’77 He writes that withindustrialization of the countryside, the urban-rural structure has been altered,breaking down the isolation of cities, enabling cities to absorb large numbers of
surplus rural laborers. But in Inner Mongolia, the government’s fiscal power islimited, so there is little government money to be used for promoting urbanization. Instead, he argues that combining the market forces and the administrative power of the government in promoting urbanization is a unique Inner
Mongolian characteristic of urbanization. He mentions that the change of Jerim
league to Tongliao municipality and the change of the suburbs to towns in
Hohhot are two examples of using government’s ‘external power’ (waibu liliang)
to create conditions for urbanization.78
In other words, the change of leagues to municipalities does not mean thatthese leagues have already been urbanized because of rural industrialization or
urbanization of the countryside, as is happening in many parts of China (cf.
Naughton 1995: 81–86); rather it is an intention or a ‘desire’ for urbanization!
It is a desire for more jobs, more capital inflow, and of course more prosperity.
And the old system, including the nationality form and content of autonomy, isconsidered a hindrance, something that must be eliminated using the government’s ‘external power.’ After all, shi or municipality is to be hailed to exorcise
the haunted failure of modernization in minority regions. Municipalization istherefore more of a narration of future than of past and present. Thus it is notquite a celebration of achievement, but a yearning for a utopian moment withan enthusiasm quite comparable to building ‘People’s Communes’ (renmin
gongshe) with drums beating, flags waving and people parading in the late 1950s
to early 1960s. And don’t we see provinces after provinces, autonomous regions
after autonomous regions, declaring either that they have completely municipalized, thus modernized, or pointing to the imminent horizon?
The change of Yeke-juu league to Ordos municipality might be both to consolidate the gains of industrial development and to pave the way to facilitate
further economic growth – failure to do so would suffocate the budding
economy – hence the necessity to rectify the name ‘in accordance with the truthof things.’79 If that ‘truth of things’ in Confucian parlance is reincarnated as

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Provincial China‘kaifa’ (open up and develop) and remains so for a long time, and if Inner
Mongolian autonomy is considered a hindrance to that truth of things, what
could prevent the rectification of its name, so as to ensure that ‘affairs’ be carriedon to success? The ‘feminine’ Huaiyin municipality has just changed to the‘masculine’ Huai’an municipality, as noted.
The above conclusion sounds a bit alarmist, but not quite so if understood ina Chinese political culture perspective. In China, an important concept in comprehending historical transformation is shi, or tendency, propensity, which isembedded in the eternal concern with ‘change.’ ‘Historical tendency,’ writes
François Jullien, ‘bestows a necessary direction and a logical end upon all evolution. And this direction, this result, always stems anew from the play of factors
making up the relations of force at a given moment.’80 Individuals are deemed
powerless to change the tendency, but they must ‘appraise the moment in sucha way as to detect its tendency and, consequently, seek to conform with its coherence,’ according to the medieval Chinese philosopher Wang Fuzhi.81 In thisthought, people are denied subjectivity, and so are institutions, as Wang Fuzhi
writes, ‘the state of things evolves in accordance with the tendency, and institutions must be adapted accordingly.’82
In our context, urbanization is perhaps accepted as an ‘irreversible’ historicaltendency, but the question remains whether institutions must be adapted
accordingly or must work to harness urbanization to ends that would not only
benefit all citizens but also respect the history of the land. To what extent is therelative lack of Mongol resistance the result of the state’s high-handed policy, or
the result of their acceptance of urbanization as an unstoppable historicaltendency? Or have they been induced, as Pierre Bourdieu puts it, ‘to collaborate in the destruction of their instruments of expression.’83 The future of Inner
Mongolia, whether or not it will remain a Mongol autonomous region, if only
in name, will be largely determined by the answers to the above questions.
There are already ominous signs. Although the name Ordos is famous and theChinese characters used convey some kind of aesthetic feeling, especially in
Chinese calligraphy, we cannot predict that it will not be twisted for some
purposes, such as abridging to keep only the first character, thus calling it Eshi,
as in the case of Hushi for Hohhot. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the English
rendering of Ordos was a mumbo jumbo Ertos, a Chinese imagination of how
Mongols would pronounce E’erduosi in Mongolian without consulting Mongol
intellectuals, who number not a few in Dongsheng. In the late 1990s, the spelling
was improved, though still incorrect, and it became Erdos, which is proudly
mounted on its sweaters as a logo, with E written in a curly form to denotecashmere hair. Remarkably, the Mongolian script spelling never appears.
What is more, Erdos andare private properties of the Erdos
Group Corporation. As Wolfgang Fritz Haug writes perceptively on theprivatization of brand names:
Spending out ‘many millions’ of Deutchmarks on a brand-name campaign,
which entails appropriating and privatizing a word in common usage and04 rPRC Bulag (bc/d)

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consciousness and making it into a name exclusive to one’s own commodity,
is seen by the capitalists as a normal purchase, and what has thus been‘earned’ is regarded self-evidently as a piece of private property. The words
turned into brand-names by the campaign now become a part of thecompany’s capital assets. (1986: 28–29)
Similarly, it would not be inconceivable that Erdos orwould never
be used by any other party or individual for commercial purposes.
But the issue is perhaps more subtle here. It would not be far-fetched to
speculate on two related questions. First, would the name Ordos in its various
linguistic forms be denied to the Mongols themselves? As countless legal casesof cultural appropriation by Euro-Americans of indigenous names, stories, andother cultural forms and substances show, this is a possibility.84 The second
question is concerned with the extension of Ordos to represent the whole ofInner Mongolia. Since more people know the brand name Ordos, and are
attracted to it aesthetically and practically, what would prevent people fromimagining Inner Mongolia as Ordos or rather Erdos? It does have a precedent.
Tongliao municipality, for instance, substituted Jerim league, which is also
known as Horchinland. The more generic and wider subethnic and territorialconcept Horchin, however, has replaced a small city, Tongliao, the capital ofJerim league until 1999, so the city of Tongliao is now renamed Horchin Town!
Just what does this swap of part for the whole entail for the future political legitimacy of Inner Mongolia as an autonomous region?
The story of the demise of Yeke-juu league and the birth of Ordos municipality is one example of alter/native modernity. While it shares certain characteristics of the national pattern, it is also unique in its entanglement of capitalism,
colonialism and ethnicity. It is a story of settler-colonial corporate branding of anative region, distilling Ordos from its folkloric tradition to point to a lustful andexotic future. But such branding with a native symbol and name can only beunderstood in its most banal meaning as given by the Oxford English Dictionary(2000): branding simultaneously connotes the corporate labeling of a thing andthe permanent, physical, even violent transformation and commodification ofboth things and living beings.85
Notes
1 I would like to thank Mark Selden, Peng Wenbin, Li Narangoa, Pan Jiao and Wurlig
Bao for their comments on an earlier version of this article.
2 Arif Dirlik and Zhang Xudong (eds), ‘Introduction to Postmodernism and China,’
special issue of boundary 2, 24, no. 3, 1997, p. 6.
3 Wolfgang Fritz Haug, Critique of Commodity Aesthetics: Appearance, Sexuality andAdvertising in Capitalist Society (trans. Robert Bock), Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1986.
4 China has a long tradition of studying frontier geography and administration. In
recent decades numerous publications have appeared in China, which usually extol the
positive function of Chinese administrative incorporation for bringing out Chinese‘unity,’ while mildly attack Chinese chauvinistic attitude in such practices.

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5 Xingsheng is a short form of Xing Zhongshu Sheng, sometimes translated as regionalsecretariat. Cf. Elizabeth Endicott-West, Mongolian Rule in China: Local Administrationin the Yuan Dynasty, Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard
University, Harvard-Yenching Institute, distributed by Harvard University Press, 1989.
6 Cf. Endicott-West 1989. See Zhi’an Li, ‘Yuandai xingshengzhi de tedian yu lishi
zuoyong,’ Lishi Yanjiu, no. 5, 1997, pp. 82–99.
7 Gao Shirong, Xibei Tusi Zhidu Yanjiu (Studies on the Northwestern Tusi System),
Beijing: Minzu Chubanshe, 1999; Bai Yaotian, ‘Tusi zhidu queli yu Yuandai shuo,’
Guangxi Minzu Yanjiu, no. 4, 1999, pp. 97–102.
8 In an important study propounding the establishment of the tusi (native administration) system during the Yuan, Bai Yaotian (1999) argues that the tusi system institutedby the Mongols differs fundamentally from the earlier Chinese system of treating nonChinese people, i.e. the jimi or ‘loose rein’ system. The essence of the jimi system lies intreating the non-Chinese as animals, as is explained in Sima Qian’s Shi Ji (The Recordsof the Grand Historian of China): ‘Ji is to bridle horse, while mi is to yoke an ox. To speakof controlling four kinds of barbarians is like bridling and yoking horses and oxen’(quoted in Bai 1999, p. 98). These words effectively describe the Chinese administrative
praxis regarding non-Chinese peoples over the subsequent millennia until the Sung
dynasty. The Mongols, on the other hand, according to Bai, treated them as ‘wumin,’meaning ‘our people’ (ibid., p. 98).
9 Mongols at the time were under the jurisdiction of Lingbei xing zhongshu sheng(xingsheng), although this province or regional secretariat was somewhat different fromthe Chinese xingsheng, subjected to looser form of administrative control from the Great
Khan (cf. Endicott-West 1989, pp. 12–13).
10 Hasar was Chinggis Khan’s brother. Most of the Horchin Mongols in eastern Inner
Mongolia claim descent from him. During the Qing dynasty, Horchin nobles, thanks totheir marital relations with the Qing royal family, enjoyed more privileges than Chinggisid nobles.
11 John Fitzgerald, Awakening China: Politics, Culture, and Class in the Nationalist
Revolution, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996.
12 The Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region was not a provincial-level administrative
unit after all, rather a supra-provincial administration equivalent to the six other administrative regions of China, such as North China Administrative Region (huabei xingzhengqu), Northeast China Administrative Region (dongbei xingzheng qu), etc. It was only in1954 when province was made the highest local administration that the Inner Mongolia
Autonomous Region was downgraded to the provincial level, albeit without changing‘region’ to ‘province.’ The downgrading cost the Mongols a great degree of autonomy,
as the ministries (bu) had also to be changed to ‘departments’ (ting, ju).
In the 1950s, there was confusion over the term ‘zizhi qu,’ autonomous regions.
Between 1949 and 1954, Yeke-juu league and Ulanchab league were named Yikezhao
Zizhi Qu and Wulanchabu Zizhi Qu under Suiyuan province. They were prefecturallevel autonomous regions. In Kueisui city (Hohhot), the local Muslims were organizedunder a Huizu Zizhi Qu (Hui Nationality Autonomous Region), which was no more thana borough. For an analysis of the situation on the southwestern frontiers, see George
Moseley, The Consolidation of the South China Frontier, Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1973.
13 François Thierry, ‘Empire and minority in China,’ in Gérard Chaliand (ed.),Minority Peoples in the Age of Nation-States, London: Pluto Press, 1989, p. 78.
14 Demchugdongrub, Demuchukedonlupu Zishu, vol. 13 of Nei Menggu Wenshi Ziliao,
Huhehaote: Zhongguo Renmin Zhengzhi Xieshang Huiyi Neimenggu Zizhiqu Weiyuanhui Wenshi Ziliao Yanjiu Weiyuanhui, 1984, pp. 40–41.
15 This story remains a popular political joke that Mongols constantly make against the
Chinese Communist-nationalist-cum-Confucian discrimination against Mongols.
16 The Manchu urban tradition is probably unique. In many parts of the Qing empire,04 rPRC Bulag (bc/d)

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they built garrison towns or so-called ‘Manchu cities’ or ‘new cities’ (cf. Piper Rae
Gaubatz, Beyond the Great Wall: Urban Form and Transformation on the Chinese Frontiers,
Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996; Mark Elliott, The Manchu Way: The Eight
Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China, Stanford: Stanford University Press,
2001, pp. 89–132). James Millward notes that nineteenth- to twentieth-century Chinese
historians often consciously or unconsciously referred to the Manchu cities in Xinjiang
as ‘Chinese cities’ (Hancheng): ‘The distinction between “Mancheng,” or “Xincheng,”on the one hand, and “Hancheng,” on the other,’ he argues, ‘is not a trivial or pedantic
one. Though these nineteenth- and twentieth-century historians may not even have beenaware of the terminological shift they were executing, in doing so they have contributed
to the historiographical erasure of the Manchu role in the creation of the empire and theconflation of “Qing” and “China” by turning Qing cities in Xinjiang into Chinese ones
retroactively’ (cf. James Millward, Beyond the Pass: Economy, Ethnicity, and Empire in
Qing Central Asia, 1759–1864, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998, p. 150).
17 ‘Zhengwu Yuan Guanyu Chuli Daiyou Qishi huo Wuru Shashu Minzu Xingzhi deChengwei, Diming, Beijie, Bianlian de Zhishi (1951 nian 5 yue 16 ri),’ in Minzu gongzuo
shiyong fagui shouce, Beijing: Falü Chubanshe, 1958, pp. 187–189.
18 Patricia Ebrey, ‘Surnames and Han Chinese identity,’ p. 23, in Malissa J. Brown(ed.), Negotiating Ethnicities in China and Taiwan, Berkeley: Institute of East AsianStudies, University of California, 1996, pp. 11–36.
19 Ibid., p. 24.
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid.
22 See Crackdown in Inner Mongolia. An Asia Watch Report. United States: Human
Rights Watch, 1991. Also, William R. Jankowiak, ‘The last hurrah? Political protest in
Inner Mongolia,’ The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, nos. 19/20, 1988.
23 Zhu Guangkai and Zhao Shuanglian, ‘Xushi erfa, zaichuang jiaji,’ Renmin Ribao,
October 6, 1999, p. 4.
24 ‘Nei Menggu Zhelimu Meng (xian gaiwei Tongliao shi) san da minzu yuanxiao
xuesheng qingyuanshu (zhi er) 1999 nian 11 yue 30 ri’ (Petition from the students of threenationality colleges in Jerim league (now changed to Tongliao municipality), Inner
Mongolia (Part 2), November 30, 1999), posted on http://southernmongolia.hypermart.
net/forum/ July 21, 2001.
25 Cf. Gaubatz 1996.
26 Mao’s ambivalence to cities may have stemmed from Chinese nationalist and intellectual romanticization of peasantry and the rural. Li Dazhao, once Mao’s tutor, forinstance, wrote in 1919, comparing city life to the life of ‘ghosts’ and country life to thatof the ‘people’: ‘My young friends drifting about in the cities! You should know that thecities are full of crime, and that great contentment is to be found in the villages; that lifein the city is more or less the life of a ghost, but that the work going on in the villages is
the work of people; that the air in the city is foul and the air in the villages is pure. Why
don’t you just pack up your things, settle your travel expenses and go back to your home
towns?’ (quoted in Fitzgerald 1996, p. 136).
27 Almaz Khan, ‘Who are the Mongols? State, ethnicity, and the politics of representation in the PRC,’ in Malissa J. Brown (ed.), Negotiating Ethnicities in China and Taiwan,
Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1996, pp. 125–159.
28 Fei Xiaotong, ‘Baotou Pian’ (An article on Baotou), in Fei Xiaotong lun Xibu Kaifa
yu quyu jingji, Beijing: Qunyan Chubanshe, 2000 (1985), pp. 111–127.
29 Barry Naughton, ‘The Third Front: defense industrialization in the Chineseinterior,’ China Quarterly, no. 115, 1988, pp. 351–386; Judith Shapiro, Mao’s War Against
Nature: Politics and the Environment in Revolutionary China, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2001, pp.139–194; Zeqi Qiu, Bianqu Qiye de Fazhan Licheng (The
Development Process of Enterprises in the Frontier Regions), Tianjin: Tianjin Renmin
Chubanshe, 1996.

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30 David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, Oxford: Blackwell, 1989, p. 238.
31 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia(trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen Lane), New York: Viking, 1977, pp. 34–35.
32 Harvey 1989.
33 Cf. Dali L. Yang, ‘Reforms, resources, and regional cleavages: the political economy
of coast–interior relations in mainland China,’ in Bih-jaw Lin and James T. Myers (eds),
Forces for Change in Contemporary China, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press,
1993, pp. 285–306.
34 Cf. Hans Hendrischke and Feng Chongyi (eds), The Political Economy of China’s
Provinces: Comparative and Competitive Advantage, London and New York: Routledge,
1999.
35 Tad Ballew, ‘Xiaxiang for the ’90s: The Shanghai TV rural channel and post-Mao
urbanity amid global swirl,’ p. 266, in Nancy N. Chen et al. (eds), China Urban: Ethnographies of Contemporary Culture, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2001,
pp. 242–273.
36 Barry Naughton, ‘Cities in the Chinese economic system: changing roles andconditions for autonomy,’ in Deborah S. Davis, Richard Kraus, Barry Naughton andElizabeth J. Perry (eds), Urban Spaces in Contemporary China: The Potential for Autonomy
and Community in Post-Mao China, Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press,
1995, pp. 61–89.
37 Naughton 1995, p. 88.
38 Xinhua News, December 5, 1998.
39 http://www.greattide.org.cn/one/shengzou01.htm
40 http://www.shandong-press.com/458htm/1b3.htm
41 Cheng Yan and Shi Aichun, ‘Jiangsu sheng bufen shixian xingzheng quhua jinxing
zhongda tiaozheng,’ Yangzi Wanbao, February 7, 2001.
42 Xiao Jincheng, ‘Fahui chengshi zai Xibu Da Kaifa zhong de daidong zuoyong’(Bring into play the exemplary function of cities in developing the Western Region),
Lianhe Luntan (Union Forum) of China Economic Information Network, April 4, 2001.
http://unionforum.cei.gov.cn/
43 See the full text, ‘Shiwu Chengzhenhua Fazhan Zhongdian Zhuanxiang Guihua’(The key plan for urbanization during the tenth Five Year Plan period) at http://www.
people.com.cn August 8, 2001.
44 Cf. Tumen and Zhu Dongli, Kangsheng yu Neirendang Yuanan (Kang Sheng and the
Unjust Case of the Inner Mongolia People’s Revolutionary Party), Beijing: Zhonggong
Zhongyang Dangxiao Chubanshe, 1995.
45 Cf. Katherine Palmer Kaup, Creating the Zhuang: Ethnic Politics in China, Boulder
and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2000.
46 The newly revised Law of Nationality Regional Autonomy (passed on February 28,2001) aims to provide a legal framework to facilitate resource extraction and major infrastructure construction, which are now the main priorities for minority nationality areas.
The revised law stipulates that the state will ‘adopt measures’ to give a ‘certain level’ of‘compensation’ to minority nationality areas that supply natural resources (Article 65).
Although not clear whether the ‘certain level of compensation’ is sufficient to benefit the
local population, or indeed which local population, it nevertheless is a positive departurefrom the Chinese Constitution, which states: ‘In exploiting natural resources [whichaccording to Article 9 are owned by the state] and building enterprises in the national
autonomous areas the state shall give due consideration to the interests of those areas’(Article 118).
47 For this kind of development, see Wang Lixiong’s recent book Tianzang: Xizang de
Mingyun (Sky Burial: The Fate of Tibet), Xianggang: Ming Jing, 1998. He howeverargues that because of the high altitude of Tibet, Chinese from the lowland will never beable to settle in Tibet permanently.
48 Cf. Louisa Schein, Minority Rules: The Miao and the Feminine in China’s Cultural
Politics, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2000.

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49 Tim Oakes, ‘Bathing in the far village: globalization, transnational capital, and thecultural politics of modernity in China,’ Positions, vol. 7, no. 2, 1999, pp. 307–342, p. 319(emphasis added). See also Oakes, ‘Selling Guizhou: cultural development in an era ofmarketization,’ in Hendrischke and Feng Chongyi 1999, pp. 31–72.
50 Oakes, ‘Bathing in the far village,’ 1999, p. 320.
51 Nei Menggu Zhengxie Biancuan Weiyuanhui, Mingren Yan zhong de Nei Menggu,
Huhehaote: Nei Menggu Chubanshe, 1999.
52 Dongsheng city is now called Dongsheng Qu (borough). Interestingly, Tongliao city,
the capital of Jerim league, is now called Ke’erqing Qu (Horchin borough), Horchin being
the subethnonym of a Mongolian group, the most populous Mongol group in Inner
Mongolia. This is perhaps a tradeoff between Mongols and Chinese. Chifeng city is still
called Chifeng with three boroughs: Hongshan, Songshan and Yuanbaoshan.
53 Robert J.C. Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race, London
and New York: Routledge, 1995, pp. 173–174.
54 Cf. Arthur Waldron, The Great Wall of China: From History to Myth, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1990.
55 Cf. Uradyn E. Bulag, Nationalism and Hybridity in Mongolia, Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1998.
56 For a collection of these texts, see Liu Yizheng, Shariledai and Ce. Alatengsongbuer(eds), Chengjisi Han Ling Yanjiu Wenji (1912–1949), Dongsheng: Ykezhao Meng
Chingjisi Han Yanjiusuo, 1988.
57 Uradyn E. Bulag, ‘Models and moralities: the parable of the two little sisters from
the Mongolian grassland,’ The China Journal, no. 42, July, 1999.
58 For my critique of the thesis of feminization in Inner Mongolia, see chapter 3, ‘Naturalizing national unity: political romance and the Chinese nation,’ in Uradyn E. Bulag,
The Mongols at China’s Edge: History and the Politics of National Unity, Lanhem:
Rowman and Littlefield, 2002.
59 Since Chinggis Khan’s corpse is not in Ordos, it is a mistake to call the shrine in
Ordos Chinggis Khan Mausoleum. This mistake was initiated by Ulanhu who in 1956
wrote the inscription ‘Chengjisi Han Ling’ in Chinese, which is translated as Chinggis
Khanii Ongon in Mongolian (Chinggis Khan tomb). The traditional Mongol name is
Naiman Chagaan Ordon (Eight White Palaces).
60 Cheng Li and Wang Xun, Zhongxibu de Shuguang: E’erduosi Xianxiang Touxi (The
Dawn of the Central and Western Regions: An In-depth Analysis of the Ordos Phenomenon), Huhehaote: Nei Menggu Jiaoyu Chubanshe, 1998, p. 173.
61 See the Corporation’s website: http://www.chinaerdos.com/english/news/index.
html
62 Yang 1993, p. 301.
63 Ibid., p. 303.
64 Ibid.
65 See also Cheng and Wang 1998, pp. 242–244.
66 Morris Rossabi, ‘A new Mongolia in a new world,’ pp. 72–74, Proceedings of theConference ‘Mongolian Political and Economic Development During the Past Ten Years andFuture Prospect,’ Taipei: Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission, 2000, pp. 42–85.
67 Wang Yan, Qin Zhihong and Ding Weidong, ‘Nei Menggu yangrong chanye kaifa
yanjiu’ (A study on the development of the cashmere industry in Inner Mongolia), Nei
Menggu Daxue Xuebao, vol. 33, no. 1, 2001, pp. 14–24, p. 16.
68 Cheng and Wang 1998, p. 210.
69 Ibid., p. 211.
70 Ibid, p. 156.
71 Ibid., p. 219.
72 David Harvey, Spaces of Hope, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 2000.
73 Lester R. Brown, ‘Dust bowl threatening China’s future,’ Earth Policy Institute,
May 23, 2001. http://www.earthpolicy.org/Alerts/Alert13.htm

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74 Luo Shujie and Xu Jieshun, ‘Shiji zhi jiao Zhongguo minzu zhengce tiaozheng desikao’ (Some ideas about adjusting China’s policy towards nationalities at the turn of the
century), Guangxi Minzu Xueyuan Xuebao, vol. 21, no. 2, 1999, pp. 2–12.
75 Ibid., p. 10.
76 Ibid.
77 Shi Xiangshi, ‘Nei Menggu chengshihua de fazhan qushi he tedian,’ Nei Menggu
Shehui Kexue, vol. 118, no. 6, 1999, pp. 108–112, pp. 108–109.
78 Ibid., p. 112.
79 Cf. James R. Ware (trans.), The Sayings of Confucius, Taipei: Wenchi Ch’upanshe,
1980.
80 François Jullien, The Propensity of Things: Toward a History of Efficacy in China(trans. Janet Lloyd), New York: Zone Books, 1995, pp. 208–209.
81 Quoted in Jullien, 1995, p. 209.
82 Quoted in ibid., p. 186.
83 Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1991, p. 7.
84 Cf. Bruce Ziff and Pratima V. Rao (eds), Borrowed Power: Essay on Cultural Appropriation, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997.
85 Cf. Miriam Greenberg, ‘Branding cities: a social history of the urban lifestylemagazine,’ Urban Affairs Review, vol. 36, no. 2, 2000, pp. 228–263, p. 229.

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Uradyn E. Bulag is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Hunter College
and the Graduate Centre of the City University of New York.
Address for correspondence: Department of Anthropology, Hunter College
CUNY, 695 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10021-5085 USA.