Mongolia Energy : year loss narrows to HK$44.43m www.marketscreener.com

[ET Net News Agency, 19 June 2019] Mongolia Energy Corporation Limited (00276) said its

India to overtake China as the world's most populous country: UN www.cnn.com

(CNN)India is set to overtake China as the world's most populous country in less than a decade, according to a new United Nations report.

Mongolia: Bridge or Buffer in Northeast Asia? www.thediplomat.com

What if you held a big party for 200 people and one of the guests you most wanted to see RSVPed but never showed up? This was the scenario with North Korea’s absence at the sixth Ulaanbaatar Dialogue (UBD) on Northeast Asian Security, a 1.5 level forum for officials and academics, which I attended from June 5-6 in the Mongolian capital. Nonetheless, Mongolia succeeded in making its case as a meaningful interlocutor on North Korean issues and a participant in Northeast Asian economic integration efforts, such as ongoing discussions about expanding the use of wind and solar power in a regional power grid.

Although Mongolia was considered as a venue for one of the summits between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, it was eventually not selected. Of course, it was not unexpected that North Korea would prefer an authoritarian host to a fledgling democracy that had made a transition from socialism. Nevertheless, Mongolia has played an important, if often overlooked, role over the years as a facilitator of Northeast Asian diplomacy with North Korean officials. As Foreign Minister Damdin Tsogtbaatar put it, Mongolia has the potential to be a “bridge for peace” in Northeast Asia, due to its own unique history as a socialist state and more recent development as a democracy.

Mongolia is also one of a few countries to enjoy good relations with both South and North Korea. Mongolia’s relations with South Korea have deep historical and cultural roots, and democratization in both countries has deepened their mutual affinity. Alicia Campi, a former diplomat and scholar of Mongolia’s foreign policy, notes that its longstanding bilateral relations with North Korea are “underappreciated.” Despite the differences in their trajectory after Mongolia’s democratic transition, the two countries have retained mutually beneficial economic ties, including the provision of North Korean guest workers (until sanctions prohibited this in 2018). Then-President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj used the occasion of a state visit to Pyongyang in 2013 to offer his country as a mediator in the nuclear crisis (as well as to praise democracy during his speech at Kim Il Sung university). The annual Ulaanbaatar Dialogue began in 2014 as a means of encouraging regionwide security discussion and reducing distrust among the parties in the aftermath the collapse of the Six-Party Talks.

Elbegdorj was the first foreign leader to meet Kim Jong Un, and his successor, President Khaltmaagiin Battulga, extended an invitation to the North Korean leader to visit Mongolia. In December 2018, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho visited Ulaanbaatar to celebrate 70 years of diplomatic relations between the two countries. Mongolian officials have also participated in a number of less public mediation efforts, helping to facilitate the return of Japanese abductees from North Korea and assisting South Korea in resettling North Korean refugees. As a nuclear weapons-free state and a small developing country surrounded by stronger powers, Mongolian officials believe their experience is highly relevant to ongoing discussions of security on the Korean Peninsula. To this end, at the recent UBD some proposed Mongolia’s participation in future multilateral talks on the nuclear crisis, a position that Russian officials supported in the past.

Apart from North Korea’s no show at the June 2019 UBD, the other hot topic in Ulaanbaatar was whether or not Mongolia should seek full membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which both Russia and China have encouraged. Membership was restricted to China, Russia, and the Central Asian states until 2017, when India and Pakistan both joined. Mongolia has been an observer in the SCO since 2004. Some Mongolian officials contend that full membership would enhance trust between Mongolia, Russia, and China, and potentially add new dynamism to their trilateral economic cooperation plans. Others argue that such a move might compromise Mongolia’s “third neighbor” policy and that Mongolia does not share the same concerns as other SCO members over terrorism, extremism, and separatism. Moreover, at a fraught time in U.S. relations with both Russia and China, Mongolia’s membership in the SCO might be construed in Washington and other Western capitals as anti-NATO, despite Mongolia’s history of military cooperation with it. Certainly, Mongolia’s participation last summer in the major Russian military exercise, Vostok, along with a contingent of Chinese forces, raised some eyebrows.

While India has been able to navigate between membership in the SCO and its partnership with the United States and other democracies, it does not face the same economic or geopolitical pressures as landlocked Mongolia, which seeks to balance sustainable development with independence from its two powerful neighbors. Despite expectations of a shift in Mongolia’s position, Battulga’s attendance at the SCO summit in Bishkek did not lead to any change from his country’s observer status. Admitting that SCO membership remained controversial at home, the Mongolian president noted that “Mongolia is exploring levels of increase of its participation” in the organization and supported the additional opportunities at the Bishkek summit for observer states and international organizations to join in the discussions with member states.

Presidents Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, and Battulga met on the sidelines of the summit to discuss their trilateral cooperation in the framework of the China-Mongolia-Russia-Economic Corridor established as a part of the Belt and Road in 2014. In their individual statements, each president provided a different vision of what this corridor should involve. Given the lack of consensus among the three, it is not surprising that the corridor has made little progress so far, not even in achieving mutually acceptable feasibility studies, not to mention completing planned projects.

Mongolia has enthusiastically supported the trilateral economic agenda with its two neighbors, but bilateral issues have stymied its progress. On the one hand, the slow pace of Sino-Russian regional cooperation has held up trilateral plans for road and rail connections via Mongolia. For example, the bridge from Blagoveshchensk, Russia, to Heihe, China, on the books since 1995 and at long last constructed earlier this month, will be a key link in these new transit routes once road and rail connections are completed. The possibility of a second Sino-Russian gas pipeline transiting Mongolian territory depends on the protracted Sino-Russian negotiations over routing and pricing, as well as China’s view of pipelines transiting third countries as an energy security risk, a concern likely to color its view of a Northeast Asian energy grid as well. Other key areas of China-Mongolia-Russia trilateral cooperation (simplifying customs clearance and rail logistics) also need to be negotiated bilaterally.

On the other hand, the deepening Sino-Russian political partnership makes Mongolia’s effort to balance a good relationship with each of its two neighbors — with the goal of avoiding economic dependence on either one — all the more difficult. Although Battulga, responding to anti-Chinese sentiment in the Mongolian public, appeared to be tilting more toward Moscow in his first year in office, a series of meetings with Xi since 2018 have sought to rebalance Mongolian foreign policy, given the inescapable fact of the country’s considerable reliance on trade and investment from China. Nonetheless, excessive dependence on China for trade and investment creates new vulnerabilities, as economic stagnation in China diminishes its demand for Mongolian minerals, a fact that already worsened Mongolia’s economic woes earlier in the decade. The challenge will be for Mongolia to implement some of its creative foreign policy thinking, which looks beyond the immediate pressures of the two large neighbors and seeks to put Mongolia on the map through a variety of multilateral initiatives as well as its “third neighbor” policy.

Elizabeth Wishnick is a Professor of Political Science at Montclair State University and a Senior Research Scholar at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University.

Przewalski’s mares successfully transported from Prague Zoo www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ Four Przewalski’s mares were successfully transported from the Czech Republic to Mongolia, on June 19.

Mongolia-China EXPO to kick off in September 2019 www.akipress.com

The 3rd Mongolia-China EXPO will take place on September 23 in Hohhot, the capital city of China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous region, MongoliaNow reports.

Mongolia's central bank leaves key interest rate unchanged www.xinhuanet.com

ULAN BATOR, June 19 (Xinhua) -- Bank of Mongolia, the central bank of the country, on Wednesday decided to maintain the benchmark interest rate unchanged at 11 percent.

Main road for transporting crops to be paved www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ At its regular meeting on June 19, the Cabinet approved revisions to the concession agreement on paving a 130.85 km road between Darkhan-Selenge road and the road which connects Shaamar, Zuunburen, Tsagaannur, Tushig, and Zelter. In particular, commissioning year of the paved road is 2021 and recoupment period of the project is from 2022 to 2025.

Harley-Davidson will build motorcycles in China at the risk of angering Trump www.rt.com

American motorcycle manufacturer Harley-Davidson said on Wednesday it is teaming up with China’s Qianjiang Motorcycle to make a new smaller motorcycle than its trademark ‘big hogs’.
The decision is part of Harley’s plan to cut costs and source half of its sales outside the United States by 2027. The company views China as a major growth market, with sales in the country increasing 27 percent last year compared to the previous year.

Trump’s biggest move to end the ‘war on coal’ won’t rescue the industry www.bloomberg.com

President Donald Trump is scaling back sweeping Obama-era curbs on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants burning coal, his biggest step yet to fulfill his campaign promises to stop a “war” on the fossil fuel.

Yet the Environmental Protection Agency’s rewrite of the Clean Power Plan — which is being unveiled Wednesday — will do little to halt a nationwide shift away from that fossil fuel and toward cheaper electricity generated by the wind, the sun and natural gas.

The U.S. is experiencing “a wave of coal retirements — and we don’t think we’re near the end of it,” said Nicholas Steckler, head of U.S. power for BloombergNEF. “Coal is inferior to natural gas in many ways today — it’s less flexible, it’s higher cost, even its fuel is generally more expensive, and, of course, it’s dirty. It has so many reasons stacked against it.”

The EPA’s final “Affordable Clean Energy” rule is designed to pare carbon dioxide emissions by encouraging efficiency upgrades at individual power plants. Like an earlier proposal released in October, the final rule will empower states to develop performance standards for plants based on assumptions about the kind of improvements that can be eked out by plugging duct leaks, installing advanced soot blowers and making other upgrades at the sites.

EPA says more Americans will die under its power-plant rollback
Where the new plan focuses on what can be achieved at individual coal plants, the Clean Power Plan it is replacing aimed to drive broader changes in the U.S. electric mix and threatened to spur a wave of coal plant closures. That measure — one of former President Barack Obama’s signature initiatives to combat climate change — compelled states to make systemwide changes in the name of cutting emissions, from bolstering energy efficiency and adding renewables to shutting coal-fired plants altogether.

Industry advocates say the Trump administration is curbing federal government overreach and leveling the playing field.

“It won’t necessarily be the saving grace for coal,” but “this regulation gives coal a fighting chance,” said Nick Loris, an economist with the Heritage Foundation. The EPA is following the rule of law and removing “government-imposed barriers that will lead to increased innovation, competition and efficiency that will ultimately drive down pollution.”

The EPA’s new approach is rooted in Clean Power Plan foes’ arguments that the agency does not have legal authority to regulate emissions beyond the boundaries of existing plants. In some cases, efficiency gains spurred by the new rule could encourage utilities to run their coal power plants more often, undercutting potential environmental benefits.

The flexibility for states in the final rule should help stave off premature coal plant closures, said Michelle Bloodworth, president of the American Council for Clean Coal Electricity. “These improvements to coal plant competitiveness will help to increase the longevity of the existing fleet,” she said.

Environmentalists attacked the proposal, saying the EPA was shirking its responsibility to protect public health and the environment. The power plant measure comes as the agency separately moves to ease rules curbing greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles and oil wells.

“Any rule that resembles the proposal would amount to a do-nothing program that fails to protect Americans from climate change and fails to fulfill EPA’s responsibilities under the Clean Air Act,” said Sean Donahue, a lawyer representing the Environmental Defense Fund.

Environmentalists have already vowed to battle the replacement rule in federal court, setting up potential legal wrangling that could last years.

On the campaign trail in 2016, Trump promised to revive the coal industry and restore mining jobs — a message that resonated with the working-class voters who helped elect him. In coal-rich West Virginia, a once reliably Democratic state, Trump won 68% of the vote.

The Clean Power Plan rewrite is the Trump administration’s most tangible move to deliver on that promise, though the EPA has also proposed lifting a de facto requirement that any new coal power plants be built with expensive carbon-capture technology. The agency also has proposed that limits on mercury pollution from power plants are no longer “appropriate and necessary.”

Trump lifting hurdle to coal plants no one wants to clear
Yet state regulations are also encouraging utilities to adopt more renewable wind and solar power. At the same time, the lower cost and cleaner-burning profile of natural gas has encouraged a shift toward that fossil fuel.

Power plant owners are unlikely to make dramatic shifts in their plans and portfolios based on the Trump administration policy change, especially given the prospects a new president could reverse course as soon as 2021 and amid competing pressure from state policies, said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Kit Konolige.

“The economics and the desire in many jurisdictions for clean power continue to be the strong drivers of what gets done on the ground,” Konolige said.

While states and utilities with a significant amount of coal will have “more flexibility,” under the Trump administration approach, “everyone’s moving in the direction of eventually eliminating coal plants,” he said.

Some 65 gigawatts of coal-fired electric generating capacity have gone offline since 2011 — with another 41 gigawatts pending retirement and 105 gigawatts at risk of closure, according to BloombergNEF.

The Clean Power Plan never actually went into effect, having been halted by the Supreme Court in February 2016. Even without it, the U.S. is on track to meet its original goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 32% from 2005 levels by 2030, BNEF’s Steckler said.

(By Jennifer A. Dlouhy)

Mongolia attracts 30 nations for peacekeeping exercise www.akipress.com

The Mongolian Armed Forces and U.S. Indo-Pacific Command have announced their participation in Exercise Khaan Quest 2019, scheduled to be held at the Five Hills Training Area, Mongolia on June 14-28, the DVIDS reported.