Mongolia is seeking greener pastures with the US and India to balance China’s influence (opinion) www.scmp.com

While being sandwiched between China and Russia, Mongolia regards the United States as a “third neighbour” and crucial to its destiny.
Modern Mongolia was established in 1921 as the second communist nation after the former Soviet Union but transitioned into a democracy with free elections in 1990. Having failed to find true friends in its two immediate neighbours, democratic Mongolia looked further afield. It found the US, which came to consider Mongolia as a democratic sanctuary between Russia and China. Earlier this year, the US and Mongolia declared a strategic partnership as part of Washington’s Indo-Pacific framework.
Mongolia is also exploring diplomatic opportunities with its “fourth neighbour”, India, the world’s largest democracy. Around a week before China’s Communist Party celebrated its 70th anniversary, Mongolian President Khaltmaagiin Battulga paid his first state visit to New Delhi on the invitation of Indian President Ram Nath Kovind. It was a subtle but clear message to China.
In India, Battulga met Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and signed memorandums of understanding on a wide array of bilateral issues, both regional and global. Modi was the first Indian prime minister to visit Mongolia in 2015, also seen as a coded message to China, which is has border disputes with India.
Like China and India, Mongolia has a long history of civilised culture and Mongolians view their neighbours through a historical lens. Genghis Khan, who conquered much of the Eurasian land mass, is very much a part of Mongolia’s national identity. The Mongol empire extended from the Korean peninsula to the Carpathian Mountains and from Siberia to the Indian subcontinent and Indochina. Genghis Khan’s grandson Kublai Khan was the first Mongol to rule China, establishing the Yuan dynasty.

Though the Yuan dynasty never enforced interracial marriages with Han Chinese, the Khan DNA spread widely, as Genghis Khan had had more than 500 concubines across the empire. For the Chinese, both the conquest and the earlier brutal invasions into the Middle Kingdom are part of the subtle psychological wounds of history.

These historical sentiments partly explain modern geopolitical realities, especially Mongolia’s lukewarm attitude towards China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Mongolia is neither playing a significant nor a neighbourly role in the trade-growth strategy aimed at building a “shared destiny”, as Chinese President Xi Jinping branded the massive infrastructure investment plan for connectivity and economic development.
The US and India are not taking part in the Belt and Road Initiative either, although India is a member of the Beijing-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. As one of the world’s 20 largest countries, with a resource-rich land mass but only 3 million people, Mongolia needs a balance-of-power strategy and preventive diplomacy to avoid being victimised by its powerful neighbours.

Economically, however, Mongolia depends on the Chinese market. Foreign investment is nearly non-existent as the economy is largely dependent on mining and natural resources. The Australian mining company Rio Tinto, for example, which is investing about US$7 billion in a copper mine in the Gobi desert, is heavily dependent on exporting to China. When global commodity prices fell in 2017, Mongolia had to ask for an International Monetary Fund bailout.
Battulga has a daunting task ahead, not only due to internal political upheavals, such as corruption charges against him, but also the uncertainty presented by China’s intentions, which go back to its history with Mongolia.

A rising China is exercising increasing influence on weaker countries, such as Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar on its southern border. Meanwhile, Beijing’s political and diplomatic power has already been felt in Mongolia too. The country, which has a sizeable Buddhist population, was forced to cancel a 2017 visit from the Dalai Lama and extend a humiliating apology to Beijing, promising never to invite the Buddhist leader again. China is also putting pressure on Ulan Bator to become a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a Beijing-led security partnership.
Geopolitical and economic rivalry with China is a reality Mongolia must confront. In October, Chinese President Xi Jinping stressed that the people of Taiwan and of mainland China are “brothers and sisters of the same blood”. Mongolia’s best option is to work with and benefit from all of its “neighbours” – China, India, Russia and the US – while remembering its shared bloodline with China.

Dr Patrick Mendis is a distinguished visiting professor of global affairs at the National Chengchi University and a senior fellow at the Taiwan Centre for Security Studies in Taipei. Itgelt Bat-Ochir is a final-year student of international relations at the University of Pecs in Hungary. They travelled across Mongolia during the summer holiday

China General Nuclear To Invest $2.5 Billion In Wind & Solar in Inner Mongolia www.cleantechnica.com

There are some places on Earth that just lend themselves naturally to wind and solar power. Inner Mongolia, with its abundant sunshine and steady breezes, is one of them. This week, China General Nuclear Group announced it is investing almost $2.5 billion to build a 1 gigawatt solar power plant there, as well as a 2 gigawatt (GW) wind farm.

Constitution of Mongolia amended www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/. Discussion on amendments to the Constitution of Mongolia had been passed through the last three Parliaments of Mongolia. Yesterday, November 15, after gaining support of 63 members present and voting, the amendments were adopted unanimously at the Parliament session.

Revenue and grants of general budget increase by 25.5 percent in October www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar/MONTSAME/. In the first 10 months of 2019, total equilibrated revenue and grants of the General government budget amounted to MNT 8.8 trillion and total expenditure and net lending amounted to MNT 8.3 trillion, resulting a surplus of MNT 545.4 billion in the equilibrated balance.

Russia’s trade with BRICS nations exceeds $125 BILLION - Putin www.rt.com

Russia continues expanding economic cooperation with fellow BRICS countries, said President Vladimir Putin at BRICS Summit in Brazil. Russia's trade with Brazil, India, China and South Africa has grown by 22.4 percent.
"We are actively participating in international trade, boosting our mutually beneficial ties with foreign countries — first and foremost, our BRICS partners. In 2018, our trade with the four countries exceeded $125 billion," said the Russian leader.

School bus service to be tested for 27 schools www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/. It is recorded that around 1.2 million people make daily commutes on the roads in Ulaanbaatar city with a total population of around 1.6 million. Parents driving their children to school is a big factor that creates extra traffic congestion during morning and afternoon rush hours as traffic jam is one of the pressing issues faced by Ulaanbaatar city.

Law firm MDS KhanLex launches Mongolia’s first ‘robot lawyer’ www.mdskhanlex.com

Top-tier Mongolian law firm MDS KhanLex has launched ‘iGeree’ – an online contract automation and AI chatbot platform focused initially on employment law, with plans to extend to company law coverage in 2020. The platform is the first offering of its kind in Mongolia.

The iGeree platform consists of 2 services:

A contract automation platform, enabling construction and drafting of legal documents without requiring user legal skill or knowledge; and
An AI / natural-language trained chatbot which provides instant legal advice within its trained scope.
The contract automation platform is subscription based, while the chatbot component is accessible free of charge.

Employment law currently constitutes 13.6% of civil disputes in Mongolia.

Further expansion development announced

At the iGeree launch event, the firm announced that the contract automation platform will be further extended to cover company law matters in the first quarter of 2020, including incorporation related document drafting, shareholder’s agreements and corporate resolutions.

Extension of the chatbot component will take longer – possibly up to two years, due to the extensive amount of time and effort required to map legal knowledge pertaining to civil transactions; building the associated NLP (natural language processing) engine; and enabling the machine learning process which allows for unstructured data to be understood.

Why?

Maizorig Janchivdorj, Managing Partner of MDS KhanLex and founder of CodeLex Legaltech, explained the strategy behind the development:

“We decided as a firm in 2018 that we wanted to actively modernize and innovate our business model and approach to market servicing. The launch of iGeree represents one strand of the execution of this strategy.”

“Also in line with strategy, iGeree presents an opportunity to contribute to improvement of ‘access to justice’ in the Mongolian market, which studies have shown has a direct link to GDP growth[1].”

The impact on SMEs and startup companies is likely to be significant, according to MDS KhanLex partner Batbuyan Sodnomjamts:

“Finding a lawyer who is sufficiently skilled and affordable is a big challenge for early stage companies in Mongolia. The lack of such legal services often results in bad deals or failure to protect interests at a time when such input is highly needed. By having access to iGeree, we hope this theme will change – access to legal services backed by one of the largest law firms in Mongolia via your laptop or smartphone – effectively this platform will be the Virtual Law Department of any given SME or startup once the company law module is in operation.”

iGeree development & inputs

The iGeree platform was built by a team of 26 people from 4 companies, including lawyers, data engineers, coders and designers. A team of 13 from MDS KhanLex spent 4,800 person/hours preparing raw data, tagging and training of 6,300 ‘entities’ (which references [words/phrases/concepts]).

Within the system, 28% of the solutions required development of ontology-based knowledge graphs to identify, map and reflect possible channels of user intent, while 72% of solutions presented within the data require what could be contextually regarded as ‘simple’ intent.

MDS KhanLex staff involved with development of iGeree stand to benefit directly from the platform, via a percentage profit share after operating expenses, for as long as they remain with the firm.

Establishment of legaltech research institute

MDS Khanlex is further spearheading legaltech research and development in Mongolia with set-up of a new legaltech research institute, in conjunction with CodeLex Legaltech, and in collaboration with a number of companies in the fields of data engineering and AI.

Discussions are presently underway with founding members of the proposed institute.

MDS KhanLex is the largest law partnership in Mongolia, assisting local businesses and foreign investors alike by blending international legal industry knowledge with broad local expertise – with a heavy focus on understanding a client’s business needs, and finding practical solutions to meet those needs. MDS KhanLex’s professional expertise and achievements are recognised or recommended in leading legal industry directories such as Chambers and Partners, The Legal500 and AsiaLaw Profiles.
Codelex Legaltech is Mongolia’s first legaltech company, established in Mongolia and Singapore, with staff in Ulaanbaatar, Tokyo and Singapore. Codelex has launched a legal practice management system for small and mid-sized law firms in developing markets (e-Lawyer) which has achieved 30% marketshare in Mongolia, with plans for expansion into other jurisdictions. Codelex is currently pre-launch with a lawyer-to-lawyer document marketplace (Lexub) which will initially be focused across various Asian Markets.
The three companies involved with the development of iGeree are:
Bodsoft LLC is consisted of talented developers who are experienced in developing websites and mobile applications.
Anduud Lab LLC is a team of young professionals who have international working experienced and is working hard to introduce a successful artificial intelligence oriented business assistant to Mongolia.
B Studio LLC is a Mongolian designing company that provide their services, which consists of brand designing, video editing, designing application and program, and website developing since 2014.

Signing of Record of Discussions on Technical Cooperation with Mongolia: Aiming to create a fair business environment www.jica.go.jp

On the 14th of November, 2020, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) signed a Record of Discussions for the Project for Enhancement of the Fair Competition Environment in Mongolia (Phase 2) with the Mongolian government in Ulaanbaatar.

State budget for 2020 approved with revenue of MNT 11.8 trillion www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/. Yesterday, during its plenary session, the Parliament adopted Bills on State Budget for 2020, Budgets of Social Insurance Fund 2020 and Health Insurance Fund 2020.

Prime Minister meets President of European Bank for Reconstruction and Development www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/. On November 14, Prime Minister of Mongolia U.Khurelsukh received delegates headed by Sir Suma Chakrabarti, President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).