Mongolia mends ties with Beijing

Mongolia expressed regret over the negative impact caused by the Dalai Lama’s visit, and China hopes the country has learned a lesson in respecting China’s sovereignty, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said on Wednesday.

Mongolia should keep its promise, respect China’s core interests and make efforts to improve the China-Mongolia relationship, Hua said.

“China’s stance on Tibet is firm and clear,” she told a regular news conference.

The Dalai Lama, a political exile with ambitions to split the Tibet autonomous region from China under the cloak of religion, visited Mongolia from Nov 18 to 23. China voiced strong dissatisfaction over the visit.

On Tuesday, Mongolian Foreign Minister Tsend Munkh-Orgil said the Dalai Lama will not be allowed to visit in the future, even in the name of religion. Even though the Dalai Lama visited Mongolia via religious channels, the consequences of the visit went beyond religion and became a problem for Mongolia’s relations with China, Munkh-Orgil said.

Mongolia firmly supports the one-China policy, and deems Tibet an inalienable part of China, he said, adding that Tibet is a domestic matter for China.

In late November, Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said China urged Mongolia to recognize the separatist nature of the Dalai Lama clique and take effective measures to remove the negative impacts of the visit to avoid disturbing China-Mongolia relations.

In the first three quarters of this year, Mongolia exported $2.74 billion in goods to China, accounting for 82.26 percent of the country’s total export volume, according to China’s embassy in Mongolia. The country’s trade surplus with China was $1.92 billion in the same period, it said.

Last month, Beijing imposed new tariffs on commodity shipments between China and Mongolia, according to Al-Jazeera. China closed a key border crossing nearly a week after the visit of the Dalai Lama, the report said.

“All parties will pay more attention to China’s warnings and take the warnings into consideration,” said Jin Canrong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University of China.