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Roads that Separate: Sino-Mongolian Relations in the Inner Asian Desert

Abstract We usually think of roads as tools of social and material connection which serve to enchain places, things and people that have not before been as directly, or intensely, linked up. Yet, in the sparsely populated grasslands and deserts of the Sino-Mongolian border zone, it is equally much the other way around. Rather than facilitating more interaction between local Mongolians and the growing number of Chinese employed in mining and oil companies, the many roads that are now being built or upgraded to transport natural resources, commodities and labour power between Mongolia and China serve to curb both the quantity and the quality of interactions taking place between Mongolians and Chinese. Thus, roads here act as technologies of distantiation, which ensure that the two sides become less connected as time passes.