Constructing a De-Ethnicised Inner Mongolia

‘Northern frontier culture’ (北疆文化, umrat khiliin soyol) has recently become a trendy term in propaganda texts and academic publications in and about Inner Mongolia. Numerous activities, including cultural festivals, archaeological discoveries, intangible heritage exhibitions, and academic conferences, are organised under the banner of or carry the tag ‘northern frontier culture’. For instance, the newspaper Inner Mongolia Daily (内蒙古日报), the official mouthpiece of the provincial committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), recently produced a special program called Northern Frontier Melody (北疆歌韵, Umrat Khiliin Duulal) to celebrate the seventy-fifth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China (Inner Mongolia Daily 2024). It featured 75 episodes, each introducing the history of a well-known local song, mostly grassland songs (草原歌曲) and red songs (红歌).

Beijiang (北疆, literally ‘northern frontier’) traditionally refers to the region north of the Tian Shan mountain range—the northern part of Xinjiang since the Qing era. Li and Liu (2023) state that this region includes not only Xinjiang, but also the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and Heilongjiang Province, with Inner Mongolia at its core. However, today, as it has become increasingly popular in official discourse, the term is sometimes conterminous with Inner Mongolia alone. The interesting question here is: how does this new northern frontier cultural discourse reframe the region?

The northern frontier culture was first mentioned in a July 2023 document by the provincial committee of the CCP called ‘Decision of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Party Committee on the All-Round Construction of a Model Autonomous Region’ (内蒙古自治区党委关于全方位建设模范自治区的决定) (People’s Daily 2023). The document advanced the idea that the northern frontier culture includes grassland culture, farming, Great Wall culture, Yellow River culture, and red (revolutionary) culture. In discussing the culture’s relations with Chinese civilisation, the local Party authorities said it was both a component of Chinese civilisation (中华文明) and a factor contributing to the forging of the ‘unified community of the Chinese nation’ (中华民族共同体意识). As repeatedly expounded by successive media reports and academic works, one central tenet that enlivens the northern frontier culture is ‘ethnic exchange, interaction, and mingling’.

In this piece, I discuss how the discursive construction of the northern frontier culture anonymises ethnicity and foregrounds locality. I suggest that the making and promotion of a territory-based and de-ethnicised northern frontier culture marginalise and deterritorialise the titular group: ethnic Mongols from Inner Mongolia.

Lexical Matters

Before I proceed, we must dwell briefly on the Chinese word jiang (疆) and especially its Mongolian rendering in propaganda texts: as khil (‘border’) rather than khijgaar, which literally means ‘edge’ and is closer in meaning to ‘frontier’.

Beijiang (北疆) is shorthand for beibu bianjiang (北部边疆, ‘northern frontier’). Bianjiang refers to borderland or frontier, with the word bian denoting periphery, edge, or fringe. The truthful Mongolian translation of beijiang would be umrat khijgaar or umrat khijgaar oron, which mean ‘northern frontier’ or ‘northern borderland’, respectively. Instead, Inner Mongolia Daily and other official media opted for umrat khil (‘northern border’). A dictionary of the Mongolian language (Haschuluu and Yulan 2017) defines khijgaar as the edge of places/regions, the areas along borders, edges, peripheries, or the limit of one’s heart or ideas. Meanwhile, the definition of khil is edge, frontier, or a state’s boundary. To be sure, khil and khijgaar are nearly synonymous, but there are nuanced differences. Akin to the senses evoked by the English word ‘frontier’, the Mongolian word khijgaar denotes peripheries, distance from the centre, wilderness, or being at the limit or fringe of something.

If that is the case, why is khil (‘border’) chosen over khijgaar (‘frontier’) in the official Mongolian texts? It is because Mongols are reluctant to refer to their homeland as a frontier. The logic behind this choice is somewhat similar to the idea that underpins Mongols’ omission of the ethnic inflector hua (华, ‘Chinese’) in their translation of Zhonghua minzu (中华民族, ‘Chinese nation’) as dumdadu-yn ündüsten (literally ‘middle nation’)—that is, the possibility of imagining that they are part of a supra-ethnic middle nation rather than a Han-ethnocentric nation (Baioud 2023). Their preference for ‘border’ over ‘frontier’ fits with their self-perception as a group residing inside the national fault line—the border of the Chinese nation-state (in a supra-ethnic national sense)—rather than a distant, ‘uncivilised’, and peripheral group dwelling in a frontier yet to be absorbed into the expanding Han-centric nation-state. The frontier’s implication of a colonial dynamic is evident, for instance, in the reference in Qing sources to Dzungarian lands as Xinjiang (新疆, literally ‘new frontier’) after they were incorporated into the imperial dominion (see, for example, Elliott 2014). In addition, the concept of a border as a sacred line requiring protection serves Mongols’ perception of themselves as a people who contribute to the nation simply by being there and guarding it, if not protecting it directly (Billé 2012).

At a time when Chinese nation-building intensifies in the border regions and the Mongols’ loyalty to the motherland undergoes new tests—such as the 2020 bilingual education reform, which provoked widespread Mongolian resistance (Atwood 2020)—there is an urgent need among Inner Mongols to present once again the image of the Mongols as a model minority and loyal Chinese citizenry to earn back the master’s trust; this even at the cost of downplaying their multifaceted identities. After all, history taught the Inner Mongols dwelling along the Sino-Mongolian border that suspicions from the centre can be fatal. In an extreme example, in their recent book on the Cultural Revolution in Inner Mongolia, Cheng et al. (2023) recount the story of an Inner Mongolian soldier accused of harbouring Mongolian nationalist and separatist desires, who, after being heavily tortured, cut open his own abdomen and pulled out his pulsating heart to show his loyalty to the CCP.

Regardless of the credibility of this and similar stories, the point is that the loyalty desired by the Han-centric state or the internalised demand to live up to the name of the model minority, which are impossible to fulfil, haunt the Mongols and animate repeated performances of political loyalty (e.g., Lacan 1996). It is exactly this logic that is in operation in the Inner Mongols’ choice of the word khil over khijgaar. By using this language, they implicitly represent themselves as a people who loyally and proudly protect China’s altan khil (‘golden border’), as aptly inflected in the name of a border sumu (‘township’) in the East Üjemchin Banner (东乌珠穆沁旗) called Altan-Khil. Altan-Khil Sumu, which the state frames as a ‘national security barrier’ (国家安全屏障) (Altan-Khili Propaganda 2023), shares a 75-kilometre border with none other than Mongolia.

From the Chinese nation-state’s perspective, the coinage of the term ‘northern frontier’ to refer to Inner Mongolia, on one hand, is unequivocal in its expression of the homogenising and nationalising imperial state’s desire to firmly incorporate and assimilate the group which is regarded as occupying a fuzzy and linguistically and culturally still-distant frontier zone. In other words, the state strives to make everyone in this indistinct frontier area align with the state’s geo-body by aggressively assimilating them into the unifying Han-centric national body, which currently goes under the name of the ‘unified community of the Chinese nation’. It does so by eradicating what Bulag (2012) has called an interethnic gehe (隔阂, ‘psychological barrier’).

Yet, on the other hand, as Frank Billé (2012) points out, the Chinese State’s perception of itself as an ever-advancing cultural front exists in parallel with a formal demarcation (and resolution) of its national borders. Resonating with this line of argument, Andrew Grant (2018) also underscores China’s double body—that is, the simultaneous assertion of a territorially bounded Chinese nation-state and the promotion of an expansive civilisational state. Largely aligning with this, the Chinese term beijiang wenhua expresses the state’s dual desire of expanding the front of the Han Chinese cultural dominion into the frontier and domesticating those who fall within its demarcated national border. However, this double connotation of the term ‘northern frontier’ is lost in the Mongolian translation umrat khil. As mentioned, it is so because the Inner Mongols, perhaps out of both fear and loyalty, choose to reinforce a rigid and linear boundary between nation-states and claim: ‘We are dwelling inside the border rather than in a dangerously liminal and shifting frontier zone!’

Anonymising Ethnicity through Localisation

To consolidate the hegemony of the Han Chinese culture in the borderland, the discourse of the northern frontier culture adopted two interlocked techniques: ethnicity anonymisation and locality foregrounding. Both strategies effectively de-territorialise Mongols from Inner Mongolia.

One of its components, the Great Wall culture, is represented as a culture that is not identified with any ethnicity, as nomadic groups and agriculturalists constantly engaged in interethnic contact, exchange, and blending along the Great Wall since antiquity. It is represented as a material embodiment of ethnic mixing, conveniently avoiding how the Great Wall also historically acted as a boundary between nomads and agriculturalists. Similarly, the Yellow River culture, a highly Han-inflected but supposedly ethnically neutral culture, is generally added to the northern frontier culture. Specifically, the military reclamation of the Ordos area by General Meng Tian for a short period during the Qin Dynasty (third century BCE), as well as Han Chinese immigration to and agricultural colonisation of the Hetao Plain (nineteenth century) on the southern edge of the Mongolian Plateau, are presented as the prime evidence of the existence of an anonymous Yellow River culture and farming culture within Inner Mongolia.

That the dimension of ethnicity is hidden and largely anonymised in the northern frontier culture is further evidenced in how the grassland culture is defined. In fact, before the emergence of the term ‘northern frontier culture’ in Inner Mongolia, it was the ‘grassland culture’ (草原文化) that was propagated by the Chinese State as an umbrella term to cover the cultures of peoples who live on the Mongolian Plateau. This grassland culture encompasses the cultures of nomadic groups such as the Xiongnu, Xianbei, Turks, Khitan, Mongolians, and Manchurians. As to lifeways, it is argued that the grassland culture entails hunting, gathering, farming, and industrialisation, apart from its primary component, nomadic pastoralism. As the Inner Mongolian scholar Nasan Bayar has pointed out, this means that:

Inner Mongolia, as the main domain for grassland culture, is no longer the homeland for merely Mongolians, who are the titular group of the region in official documents. In other words, there is a potential dimension to deterritorialise the Mongolians from Inner Mongolia. (Bayar 2014: 450)

Hence, although the name ‘grassland culture’ conjures images of nomadic pastoralism or sustains connections with Mongolian ethnicity, its official definition strives to disrupt this association. The anonymisation and marginalisation of Mongolian ethnicity and their culture from Inner Mongolia, however, go much further in the northern frontier culture discourse. Here, the once regionwide representative grassland culture is subsumed within and relegated to be a mere constituent of the northern frontier culture along with newly added ethnicity-transcending cultures such as the red revolutionary and Great Wall cultures.

Accordingly, in many events organised under the banner of the northern frontier culture, ethnicity is not featured as a keyword. Instead, the conglomeration of largely de-ethnicised and locality-based cultures looms large. For instance, the intangible cultural heritage exhibition in July 2024 in East Üjemchin Banner displays Üjemchin-style traditional costumes, knuckle-bone games, and traditional Mongolian medicine-making techniques alongside folk embroidery from Shaanxi Province and Wenzhou, Baotou papercut art, as well as Evenki sun-shaped accessories. A relevant news report states that the exhibition aims to promote the northern frontier culture (umrat khiliin soyol) and transmit Chinese culture (dumdadu-yn soyol) (East Üjemchin Integrated Media 2024).

In his study of the promotion of Alasha camel culture in western Inner Mongolia, Thomas White (2024a) remarked on how culture is increasingly scaled in terms of locality rather than ethnicity. Alasha’s camels, he argues, ‘came to enjoy protection as a local breed, and their conservation has reinforced emergent conceptions of a post-ethnic local culture, in which differences between nationalities are de-emphasised’ (White 2024b). The northern frontier culture epitomises such locality-based formulation of post-ethnic cultures.

That the propagation of the northern frontier culture encourages the flourishing of subregional cultures is also on full display in the newly branded West Liao River culture in eastern Inner Mongolia. In July 2024, Tongliao Municipality (formerly known as Jerim League) in eastern Inner Mongolia organised a series of events as part of the West Liao River Cultural Festival (西辽河文化节) to create and develop this local cultural brand. Despite Mongolian songs and dances taking a substantial part in one of its events, the Folksong Night, the program was titled ‘The Liao River Melody, the Northern Frontier Sentiment’ (辽河韵北疆情) (Tongliao Integrated Media 2024). On that occasion, experts gathered at an academic workshop on Liao River culture unanimously emphasised how the upper stream of the river, which flows across the Inner Mongolian municipalities of Chifeng and Tongliao, has nurtured different lifeways, including farming, pastoralism, and fishing, witnessed ethnic exchange and blending, and forms one part of the northern frontier culture. In short, the emergence of the northern frontier culture encourages, in the words of official media, ‘the excavation and development’ (挖掘和发展)of de-ethnicised subregional cultures across Inner Mongolia (Tongliao Integrated Media 2024).

De-Politicising Mongolianness

By reformulating cultures in terms of localities, the northern frontier culture discourse creates a depoliticised, de-ethnicised, and ‘model’ Inner Mongolian autonomous region where no singular ethnicity’s culture acts as a representative. Rather, it is the anonymous and overarching end product of ethnic exchange and mingling—the northern frontier culture that is an integral element of Chinese civilisation (中华文明)—that acts as a legitimate symbol of Inner Mongolia.

Needless to say, the narratives of northern frontier culture and its twin rhetoric of localisation and de-ethnicisation of cultures closely follow the calls of the so-called second-generation ethnic policy for ‘de-politicisation [去政治化] and culturalisation [文化化] of ethnicity to reduce minzu [ethnic] autonomy to a deracinated form of “culture”’ (Sinica 2019, cited in Sorace 2020). To cite the argument of Ma Rong (2014: 241), one of the key champions of the second-generation ethnic policy, ‘a depoliticisation of the nationality issue in China is to urge these minority groups to move away from its political appeal (i.e. nationality consciousness for self-determination or independence) and to move in the direction of cultural and socioeconomic demands’.

Clearly, such a rallying call is materialised in the hyped northern frontier culture trumpeted across Inner Mongolia since late 2023. In his discussion of the ‘bilingual’ education reform in Inner Mongolia in relation to China’s radical departure from its early Marxist-Leninist principles and embrace of a melting-pot formula, Christian Sorace (2020: 42) argues that ‘the changing reality will most likely leave in place the institutional structure and name of the Autonomous Region, while further emptying its content and any remaining meaningful sense of “autonomy”’. This essay to some extent has shown that now even the empty names carrying any traces of Mongolianness are facing erasure and replacement through the rescaling of ethnicity in terms of locality and culture.

Featured image: ‘The Grassland Eulogy’, one of the 75 songs in the 2024 Northern Frontier Melody program. The lyrics praise the two ‘heroic grassland sisters’ (草原英雄小姐妹), who almost sacrificed their lives to protect the sheep of their people’s commune in a snowstorm in February 1964.

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