Mongolia steps up renewable energy www.xinhuanet.com

ULAN BATOR (XINHUA) – Four renewable energy power plants, with a total of 120 megawatts (MW), will be put into operation in Mongolia’s south-east province of Dornogovi, within this year. Mongolia’s first large solar power plant, with a capacity of 10 MW, was installed in the country’s northern province of Darkhan-Uul in Jan, 2017. The country’s second wind farm, the 50-MW Tsetsii Wind Farm, also opened in Oct, that year. The government aims to make renewable energy use account for 20 percent by 2020 and 30 percent by 2030

Too smart, too successful: Mongolia’s superwomen struggle to find husbands www.theguardian.com

At the UB comedy club at the back of a bar in central Ulaanbaatar, the audience is overwhelmingly female. Groups of smartly dressed women, just out of the office, sip from bottles of beer while watching a young Mongolian man on stage.

“Our women are beautiful,” he says, nodding at a few men seated at the front. “They’re great to be friends with, but they are crazy.” A few men chuckle but the room is mostly silent.

“Everywhere, every lounge, pub or club is like this,” says Mandkhai, a 31-year-old journalist at the show with two friends, “there’s a surplus of women.”

Over the past few decades, Mongolian families have been investing in their daughters by sending them to school and university in the capital. Some parents believe daughters will take better care of them in their old age. Others think women need to learn other skills as herding livestock is work reserved for men – the boys are kept at home to tend the animals. This trend has given rise to what is known as Mongolia’s “reverse gender gap”. Now women are more educated than men. They are less likely to be unemployed. They also live longer – by a decade on average.

But by outpacing men, Mongolian women in the city, many of whom stayed on after university to work, struggle to find partners the way their parents did. The marriage rate in Ulaanbaatar has fallen to 8.9 per 1,000 people in 2016, from 22.9 in 2007, according to the country’s statistics office.

Women in the city complain that there is a shortage of eligible men. In a way they are right. Home to half of the country’s three million people, the city has about 60,000 more women then men. At universities and in the workplace there are often far more women than men. These men are more likely to be taken: almost 40% of men in urban areas over the age of 15 are married, compared with only 32% of women.

Mongolian women face the dual cultural pressures of establishing a career and getting married before the age of 29, preferably earlier. For women who are older, the calculation changes. Zola [not her real name], 39, a former economist, has been looking for a long-term partner for several years now, since returning from doing a master’s degree abroad. She has tried dating events and having friends set her up. She once visited a shaman. Recently, she decided to adjust her initially high standards.

“Now I’m thinking he should just care and accept me. I’m not looking for money, or for very good education. He doesn’t have to be successful … as long as he is kind, listens and takes care of me. That’s all.”

It’s not just the numbers. Many say the issue is a mismash of attitudes and expectations. “Young girls are taught they should succeed, then you succeed and there’s no equal partner for you. The social pressure is for you to get married but finding an equal partner is very hard,” says Alimaa Altangerel, a columnist who writes about social issues. Manduhai Tsogtbal, 32, an entrepreneur who runs an online translation services company, has been starting businesses since she was a student. While getting an MBA degree in the US, she bought the Thai restaurant where she had worked as a waitress and turned it into a more profitable sushi bar. She can tell men don’t appreciate it when she challenges their business ideas. “I can sense it,” she says. “A lot of my girl friends and guy friends suggest I shut up, be dumb and ask more questions.”

Young girls are taught they should succeed, then you succeed and there’s no equal partner for you.
Alimaa Altangerel, writer
A survey released in March by the World Bank found Mongolian men in their 20s often described women as more ambitious than men, a trait they found unattractive. Some wondered why women invested so much in their education, given that it increased their risk of not being able to find a husband.

Bulganchimeg Gantulga, 19, a university student studying political science, says men her age always catcall women who wear short skirts. She says these men, even her classmates, are often behind when it comes to . She is considering never marrying at all.

“When men don’t respect women, it’s obvious what kind of husband they will be,” Bulganchimeg says.

Mongolia’s reverse gender gap, and the difficulties women and men have relating to one another, illustrate how little attention is paid to the poor state of the country’s men, according to Boldbaatar Tumur, head of the Men’s Association in Govisümber province.

Thousands of men lost their jobs in the privatisation of state-owned companies in the 1990s, as Mongolia transitioned from a communist system, and they still have not recovered. NGOs and the government focus more on women than on men, who face rising rates of alcoholism, as well as unemployment, he says. “Women have started to look down on Mongolian men because they have fallen far behind. No woman wants to live with an under-educated, impolite man. On the other side, men feel women are looking for men who are wealthier and more educated,” Tumur says.

At Caffe Bene, a trendy Korean coffee chain in central Ulaanbaatar, almost all the tables are occupied by young women on their own. One sits with her shopping bags on a chair, typing on her phone. Another reads a comic, while the woman across from her peers at a laptop. Single women in Mongolia face a certain stigma, which makes dating even harder. The Lunar New Year holiday, a time for family reunions, is especially hard: women inevitably face questions about their marital status. “You feel like you’re being blamed for being single,” says Solongo Bold, a single mother of two who works at a mining company.

They also face a relatively conservative dating culture. Rather than meet in bars or clubs, single Mongolians often find each other on Facebook or Instagram, chatting over private message, away from the public eye. “For flirting Instagram is effective, but for talking Facebook is better,” says Tsogtbal. Clubs and bars in Ulaanbaatar have begun holding speed-dating events, but people are sometimes embarrassed to attend, says Bat-Ulzii Altantsetseg, head of an events group called UB Nights. Now, instead of singles nights, they hold partner parties where men and women are assigned random pairs of numbers. He says usually 60% of attendees are women.

For Anna Battulga, 25, a recent graduate working in human resources, dating seems different from how it was for her parents, who met in the 1980s in Ulaanbaatar when Mongolia was still under a communist system.

Her mother was a shop assistant and her father a police officer who, after meeting Battulga’s mother, came to inspect the shop every week, scaring the owner. Eventually they started going to the cinema where her father would translate the films, available only in Russian, into Mongolian for her mother. After a few months he nervously asked if his parents could come to her house to ask for her hand in marriage, a Mongolian tradition.

Battulga is more likely to meet someone on Facebook, Instagram or Tinder which she has just started using. She flicks through several pages of profiles, skipping anyone who has posted a landscape photo, as well as any foreigners.

The number of people on the app is much higher now than it was a few years ago, she says. When asked about a popular Mongolian phrase that translates roughly as “your soulmate will be waiting for you on your path,” she pauses. “I think that’s unrealistic.”

Additional reporting by Munkhchimeg Davaasharav

MBD will host Indian giant Rusan Pharma's visit in Mongolia www.mongolianbusinessdatabase.com

Indian Rusan Pharma www.rusanpharma.com trade delegation headed by Mr.Navin Singh, the regional director is going to visit to Mongolia from this week and MBD is hosting the business program.

German carmakers join American farmers on front line of U.S.-China trade war www.reuters.com

WASHINGTON/FRANKFURT/BEIJING (Reuters) - An increasingly shrill exchange of words between the United States and China that is threatening to trigger a global trade war has claimed another victim - Germany’s auto sector.

Indian Home Affairs Minister Rajnath Singh arrives www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ Minister of Home Affairs of the Republic of India Rajnath Singh arrived in Mongolia today to pay an official visit at the invitation of Prime Minister of Mongolia U.Khurelsukh.

Xi meets executives of famous multinational companies www.xinhuanet.com.cn

BEIJING, June 21 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping Thursday met with executives of a number of famous multinational companies, who are in Beijing to attend a special session of the round-table summit of the Global CEO Council.

Focusing on the summit's theme of opening up, cooperation and mutual benefit, Xi and the executives exchanged views on topics ranging from the Belt and Road Initiative, innovation and smart manufacturing, to green development and global governance.

Xi said the companies had participated in, witnessed, contributed to and benefited from the reform and opening-up drive of China over the past four decades, during which the country sustained rapid economic growth and helped more than 700 million of its people shake off poverty, according to UN standards.

Looking forward to the future, China had more confidence in reform and opening up, and more belief that opening up can be a key move for China's development, he said.

Since 2017, the global economy had seen steady and positive development. However, Xi said world economic growth was still weak, as trade protectionism, isolationism and populism continued to rise, and the challenges to world peace and development were getting more severe.

"In the new situation, opening up should never stop and quality of the opening up should be pursued," Xi said.

"People should carry out cooperation to help each other and face challenges together, while pursuing a win-win situation.

"The international community is a global village and should not engage in zero-sum games. The future of the world should be decided by all countries, with international rules written by all, global affairs jointly governed by all, and development progress shared by all. China is willing to work with other countries to build a community with a shared future for humanity," said the Chinese president.

He pointed out that the Belt and Road Initiative, which has greatly tapped potentials and benefited the people since it was launched five years ago, is not exclusive, but open and inclusive.

"It is not a solo performance of China but a chorus of countries along the route," he said. "We encourage multinational companies to cooperate with Chinese companies to achieve mutual benefits and realize more substantial results."

He emphasized that as innovation and development had become more popular, and innovation-driven development strategies advanced, the pace of China's technological innovation had become more steady.

"We always regard meeting the people's aspirations for a better life as the starting point and final objective of technological innovation," he said.

On green development, Xi said the modernization China is building is the one of harmonious coexistence between human and nature.

He stressed that China would impose the strictest rules and laws to protect the eco-environment in order to leave a sustainable environment to future generations.

Xi said that economic globalization had made important contributions to world economic development, and had become an irreversible trend.

"China will follow the principle of achieving shared growth through discussion and collaboration in engaging in global governance, continue to play a responsible role as a major country, actively participate in the reform and construction of global governance systems, and inject impetus into the reform and optimization of global governance," he said.

Xi called on the international community to "take the road of reform, opening up, innovation and development, and not to go backward to isolation, inflexibility, protectionism and unilateralism."

He stressed that foreign capital had played an active and important role in China's economic development and the process of deepening reform.

"Over the past 40 years, China's economic development has been achieved thanks to opening up. In the future, China's high-quality economic development must be pursued with even greater opening up," he said.

"China's door to the outside world will open even wider, rather than being closed," he said. "China will continue to greatly ease market access, create a more favorable environment for investors, strengthen the protection of intellectual property rights and expand imports to create a more relaxed and orderly environment for domestic and foreign entrepreneurs to invest and start businesses in China."

The entrepreneurs attending the meeting spoke highly of China's reform and opening-up achievements, and said they appreciated China's contribution to world economic growth.

They stressed that multinational corporations were pleased to be part of the reform process of China over the past 40 years, as they had benefited from the long-term growth of China while making their own contribution to China's development.

They said the rest of the world should increase their understanding of the Chinese culture and the governing of the Communist Party of China.

They said they appreciated China's firm support for globalization and its opposition to trade protectionism, as economic globalization was an irreversible trend.

The executives agreed that multinational corporations enjoy a constantly expanding space for development in China.

They said China had demonstrated its leading role in building a community with a shared future for humanity with contributions such as pushing to reach the Paris agreement on climate change.

They said transnational companies were willing to participate in the Belt and Road Initiative and expand exchange and cooperation with China in many areas to achieve greater development and grow with the Chinese economy.

Peace plays: How foreign companies have lost a bundle in North Korea www.reuters.com

SEOUL (Reuters) - Months before the first summit between leaders of two Koreas in 2000, South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics Inc (005930.KS) invested $730,000 in Pyongyang’s top computer lab. North Korean programmers there would develop online chess games and food recipes for Samsung to sell outside the North.

Bylaws of the Assistance Fund for Mongolian citizens living abroad revised www.gogo.mn

On June 20, Cabinet approved revisions to the bylaws of the Assistance Fund for Mongolian citizens living abroad and the appointment of the fund’s board members. The revisions will provide a regulatory framework for the management of translation costs associated with mutual legal assistance treaties held with other countries.

Cabinet reviews issues regarding social, tax and agriculture affairs www.theubpost.cmn

During its weekly meeting, Cabinet updated the rules of the fund to support Mongolians living abroad. The fund operates to help over 150,000 Mongolian citizens living abroad and addresses some challenges facing them.

Investment projects introduced at ‘Greater Tumen Initiative’ Program Meeting www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ A Consultative Commission Meeting of ‘Greater Tumen Initiative’ Program between Mongolia, Russia, China and Korea is taking place in Ulaanbaatar city on June 21-22. Over 100 delegates from the four countries are partaking in the consultative meeting, discussing Mongolia’s investment program, government policy and funding opportunities for priority sectors such as agriculture and mining.