Ethnic tensions simmer on Inner Mongolian plains

HOHHOT, China (Reuters) - Annie Feng seems like an easy-going person, with her ready smile and happy demeanor.

But ask the young teacher who she wants to marry and her expression turns serious.

"A Mongolian of course," said the 24-year-old. "They are my people. I could never marry a Han Chinese. My parents would never let it happen anyway."

Feng, a Chinese citizen, is also an ethnic Mongolian, a people who eight centuries ago were united by Genghis Khan and forged an empire that stretched from Beijing to Poland.

Today, decades of migration by the dominant Han has made Chinese Mongolians a minority in their own land, officially comprising less than 20 percent of the almost 24 million population of the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region.

Still, more Mongolians live in China than Mongolia.

Inner Mongolia, which covers more than a tenth of China's land mass, is supposed to offer a high degree of self-rule. In practice, though, Mongolians say the Han run the show.

"There are very few Mongolians with any real power here," said Dulaan, who runs a Mongolian art and book shop in Hohhot, capital of the autonomous region.

"Mongolians are always deputy managers rather than manager. Those places are reserved for the Han," she added.

In November, police raided Dulaan's shop and several others in Hohhot and seized Mongolian language books and CDs, under the pretext, she says, of cracking down on piracy and illegally imported foreign publications.

But she says the real reason was political.

"The Han fear anything that suggests national pride in being Mongolian," Dulaan said, gesturing to a calendar written in the cursive, classical Mongolian script, which looks a little like Arabic written on its side and read from top to bottom.