On July 16, 2025, the Hudson Institute, one of the most influential think tanks that provides policy recommendations to U.S. policymakers, released a report titled China After Communism: Preparing for a Post-CCP China. This report outlines policy recommendations on how U.S. policymakers should respond to the collapse of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime. Among the recommendations is a section specifically focused on the Southern Mongolia issue. It clearly states that, in the event the CCP regime collapses and the people of Southern Mongolia declare independence, the U.S. government should be prepared to support that independence. This is the first report by a major U.S. think tank to present a policy proposal on how to respond to the potential future independence of Southern Mongolia. The following is an excerpt from the original report:

Inner Mongolia

Inner Mongolia The Autonomous Region of Inner Mongolia will face three choices: gaining independence, remaining as an autonomous part of China, or uniting with the neighboring Republic of Mongolia. Though unification may at first seem reasonable, a closer look indicates it is not likely, and the United States should support its sovereign independence instead.

Inner Mongolia borders the Republic of Mongolia, which is one of the world’s most sparsely populated countries with just 3.3 million people and ranks among the free nations of the world.248 Once part of the Mongol Empire of Genghis Khan, Mongols on both sides of the border share a common language and continue contact with cross-border trade and travel. Some 95 percent of the residents of the Republic of Mongolia are ethnically Mongol, and many of them, like many within Inner Mongolia’s ethnic Mongolian community, are Buddhist.249 Tibetan Buddhism arrived there in the sixteenth century, and four centuries later, reportedly a third of the Republic of Mongolia’s adult males were Buddhist monks. In 2016, the Dalai Lama discovered a boy there whom he considers the reincarnation of a high spiritual leader.

Inner Mongolia, though, has been the target of accelerating forced assimilation measures in recent years, by which the CCP aims to abolish the Mongolian language in schools and in media. In 2020, large crowds protested these measures in several cities, and parents extracted their children from schools, stating that this was an attempt to erase their identity. “Our language is Mongolian, and our homeland is Mongolia forever! Our mother tongue is Mongolian, and we will die for our mother tongue!” students shouted during a protest. Defying Chinese government threats against those criticizing the new language policy, some Inner Mongolians sent videos and messages of their protests to the Republic of Mongolia, where others reposted them on Facebook and Twitter.

In addition, demographic manipulation by the CCP has had a large impact on Inner Mongolia. Any proposal to unify Inner Mongolia and the Republic of Mongolia is likely to be unacceptable to Ulaanbaatar, whose people would become an ethnic minority in their own country overnight in such an arrangement. The Chinese- speaking Han ethnic population now constitutes the overwhelming majority within Inner Mongolia’s population of 24 million, vastly outnumbering its 5 million ethnic Mongolians and the republic’s entire population of 3.3 million.253 The Republic of Mongolia may also fear that the sudden influx of a much larger population with no tradition of democracy would jeopardize its form of government. German reunification, by contrast, entailed the absorption of a proportionately smaller population of East Germans into West German democracy, and both were largely German ethnics.

That said, the Republic of Mongolia could consider some accommodation of citizenship for the Mongolians of Inner Mongolia and even for Tibetan Buddhists in Tibet, along the lines of the birthright citizenship policies of Israel for Jews and of Armenia CHINA AFTER COMMUNISM: PREPARING FOR A POST-CCP CHINA for ethnic Armenians. Controlled immigration could benefit the republic and offer a steam valve for tensions within the native minority communities of both Inner Mongolia and Tibet. This is an idea that the United States should explore.

The United States should expect Inner Mongolia to declare sovereign independence, and if this happens, it should be prepared to support it, consistent with the US guidelines.