Forgotten world (50): Mongolia
Inner Mongolia is a province of China, but Mongolia proper spreads out across 1.5 million sq km of the Central Asian plateau, while its population of only 2.7M is much smaller than the Mongol population of China.
In 1990 Mongolia abandoned its 70-year-old Soviet-style one-party state and embraced political and economic reforms. Democracy and privatisation were enshrined in a new constitution, but the collapse of the economy after the withdrawal of Soviet support triggered widespread poverty and unemployment.
A third of the population lives in the capital Ulan Bator, while half the people herd livestock in the countryside. The centuries-old nomadic lifestyle is being eroded and may not survive the changing times. The country has some of Asia’s richest deposits of minerals, although so far these remain largely unexploited.