Mongolian herders from eastern Southern (Inner) Mongolia’s Heshigten Banner staged a protest on November 3, 2024, demanding compensation from the local government. According to the protestors, the government of Heshigten Banner has continually withheld a large sum of compensation supposedly already paid to the local Mongolian herders for the Chinese authorities’ livestock grazing ban imposed on the pastoralist communities.

“We are herders from Heshigten Banner of Chifeng Municipality. We are gathering here in front of the Banner government, demanding the payment of grazing land and livestock compensation,” one protesting herder stated in a short video posted on the Chinese social media platform Douyin.

 

Apparently, the Banner government failed to keep its promise to answer the herders’ call. “We were here on October 29th as well. What the government told us was to answer our demand today, Monday,” the protestor said. “But it has been three hours already. No one from the government is receiving us.” 

 

Being denied compensation for two consecutive years starting in 2023, the herders called for the higher authorities to intervene and demanded a satisfactory explanation. Another herder from Heshigten Banner posted a video statement on Douyin, revealing that some herder communities have been denied the payment for more than three years despite authorities’ strict ban on livestock grazing.

 

“This year, the livestock grazing ban had been particularly strict for 75 days from April 1st through June 15th. Our animals were fenced up throughout this period,” the herder continued. “Had the much needed compensation been paid on time, herders would have used it to buy some hay, fodder and veterinary medicine to relieve the situation.”

 

In a video interview shared on Douyin and WeChat, a Mongolian herdswoman from Heshigten Banner said, “We Mongolian herders had no choice but to stand up to fight for our survival by protesting in front of the government for multiple times.” 

 

“The Public Security Bureau telephoned and threatened many of us, ordering us to remove our video statement from Douyin,” the herdswoman said in the interview. “Not only did members of several WeChat groups, each of which has about 500 subscribers, refuse to obey this order, but they also rallied all Southern Mongolians to share the information as widely as possible to show their solidarity with us.” 

 

Starting in early 2000, the government of China started blaming Mongolian herders for the grassland degradation that was instead a direct result of China’s large-scale agricultural practice and unscrupulous mining activities in Southern Mongolia. This justification allowed the Central Government of China to implement various policies particularly hostile toward the Mongolian traditional pastoralist way of life.

 

Over the span of two decades, two sets of policies implemented by the government of China have permanently altered the pastoralist way of life and the mode of production in Southern Mongolia: “ecological migration” and “livestock grazing ban.” Under these policies, the entire herder population was subjected to forced displacement from their ancestral lands to predominantly Chinese-populated agricultural and urban areas. Nomadism has virtually become nonexistent in Southern Mongolia today, and those herders who chose to maintain some livestock must confine them in fences in compliance with the livestock grazing ban.

 

According to the information posted on the Chinese State Council website, China was committed to resettling “the remaining nomads of 246,000 households, or 1.157 million individuals, within the borders of the People’s Republic of China” by the end of 2015. This resettlement means the nomadic civilization the Mongolian people maintained for millennia was officially put to an end in Southern Mongolia almost a decade ago.

 

Heshigten Banner herders protest (SMHRIC - 20241107):