The protest march of civil movements on Monday concluded with its leaders, L.Tsog, G.Uyanga, D.Battsogt, B.Lhagvajav and L.Ninj, going to Government House to submit their charter of demands to the Parliament Speaker. However, D.Demberel refused to receive it in person and the Secretary of the Parliament Office, S.Magnaisuren, came to collect it. The protesters would not submit it to him, though, and finally the head of Parliament Office, Ts.Sharavdorj, received it.

The protesters demand a response within 72 hours from 2.10 pm yesterday, when the charter was delivered. They sought and received permission from the Mayor to put up gers in Sukhbaatar Square until the response is received. Some 400 people are taking part in the sit-in, including representatives from six districts of UB and 21 provinces.

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Executive Director of Oyutolgoi LLC Keith Marshall has signed an agreement with the Government and UB Mayor G.Munkhbayar to increase jobs. The company will hire 3,000 people from the six districts in Ulaanbaatar and spend MNT 12 billion each year on salaries and other expenses. Individual salaries will depend on the job description. The capital city has about 120,000 unemployed people, of whom 7,000 are registered at the employment exchange.

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Well now, this is a sort of farewell. Not a permanent parting but long absence at least. An au revoir more than an adieu but a valediction all the same. 
This morning there were 13 days, several hours, a few minutes and couple of seconds until my boots kiss the Mongolia Steppe and most of my connections with the outside world, for brief periods of time will fall mute. I will walk and give it more than I have ever given any mission in my life, until the end of June.

Some people can work with ease in whatever environment they find themselves. In an office, on a bus, in their home, a steamy-windowed café or on a tropical beach. Some don't mind noise, distraction or a broken up day. 
I, unhappily, am not made of this material. I need peace, absolute peace, an empty landscape and zero comforts. I enter a kind of walking arena, an eremitical seclusion in which there is just me, my trailer named Molly Brown, and robust boots, which I hope were made for walking, all in a country so vast you could fit one third Europe within its borders and still have room for a table and four chairs. 
I would have added whisky as a constant and necessary companion, but that's not going to help my walking direction. Wandering around like a hairy faced and rather smelly lunatic in the middle of the Steppe, Gobi or Altai - (if I made it that far on 40% proof) - while hauling 250kg of supplies and 3 pairs of thin and cheap looking skiddies may raise a few red flags.

I have a single appointment and that's to complete this walk and every obstacle and challenge that presents itself in to my daily routine over the coming hours, days and weeks. I would like to say that I shall be as wiped from the map of human existence but my SPOT Satellite Messenger will see to is that my location is marked. This is how it must be.

All this is a way of saying; of course, that my twitter, facebook and LinkedIn stream will be bulging with rich blogs, brief sentences, thoughts and images from my walk. I am not so sunk in false modesty as to be unaware that there are loyal followers who will emit long, loud wails of "Yaaaaaaaah!" and who will feel elated and overwhelmed. 
They will understand that this is a) imperative and b) temporary. I shall return.

And what of this expedition? Six years ago I thought of picking up my old adventurous spirit and walking across some dusty plain wearing a tagelmust. It's been a while since I last left the comforts of home to immerse myself in a number of mental and physical hardships. 
It is all essentially a memoir of childhood and. The Mongolia 2010 Expedition book I have begun to write will follow on from this. Whether it will be chronological or thematic, first person or third I have no idea. That is the adventure, if I can call it such, that lies before me. The loneliness of a solo expedition, or of my kind of walking at least, is absolute. Whether my reclusive isolation will be painful or glorious remains to be seen.

I look forward to the day when I will be able to be back amongst you all and share my epic story in words and pictures and film. 
The next blog will be from Mongolia. A land with a rich culture, deep history and diverse environment that will feel my footsteps and Molly's tire's sink her tread in to her surface for some time.

See you at the other end.

The government of Mongolia approved on March 31st, the feasibility study presented by Ivanhoe Mines and its strategic shareholder, Rio Tinto. The feasibility study was the last of the ten conditions Ivanhoe had to meet, paving the way to start developing the Oyu Tolgoi copper gold mine.

The Mongolian Government announced yesterday at a press conference, that it confirmed that the procedural and administrative conditions contained in the Investment Agreement had been satisfied within the allocated six-month period that has followed the agreements official signing on October 6, 2009

Prime Minister S.Batbold has advised Mongolian businesses to keep strict watch over the quality of their products if they wish to compete in the international market. In this context it is interesting to see how China and Japan are tackling their own unique quality crises. In China, officials are hunting for 170 tons of contaminated milk powder that is still on shelves more than a year after the melamine scandal was first exposed. And in Japan, discussions are focused on all that has gone wrong with its automotive industry after Toyota's recent recalls. But a closer look at the two scandals shows how far apart the countries are in their approach to quality—and how much China stands to learn from Japan.

China's quality challenge has at times been compared to Japan's efforts in the 1950s and 1960s to transcend a bad reputation for manufacturing low-quality goods. At that time Japan also suffered tragic industrial disasters, like the mercury poisoning in Minamata that left 1,000 people dead. But Japan's leading companies have since been able to establish strong reputations for quality. Although the automotive recalls currently underway are extensive, design errors and electronic malfunctions are in a different league from China's instances of willful product manipulation, especially when that manipulation has involved artful efforts at circumventing third-party controls.

In China, operators display an incredible willingness to place public safety at risk in exchange for only the smallest gains in profit. The dairy industry's 2008 scandal is instructive. The trouble started when dairy farmers began adulterating milk with water, prompting dairy companies to test protein levels. Milk suppliers next discovered they could trick laboratory equipment into believing protein concentrations were higher by adding a toxic, chemical compound —melamine. Over time, more of the chemical was added, along with more water, and no one knows how little real milk was in the final product by the time the scandal broke. We only know the end result: six babies died, 300,000 were sickened and over 50,000 were hospitalized, causing untold grief to Chinese families.

The melamine scandal is by far the most disturbing of all the quality crises China has faced in recent years. It was not just the amount of suffering endured, but the fact that the contamination was an open secret shared by possibly hundreds of individuals at dozens of companies. While some people involved in the 2008 scandal might have been able to claim that they did not know melamine could do so much harm, those caught using melamine more recently cannot possibly plead ignorance.

Making matters worse has been the government's wrongheaded response. Beijing reacted to this year's melamine scandal with a heavy-handed cover-up. Chinese journalists have been warned not to report details surrounding milk cases. Parents of children sickened by melamine-tainted products who have attempted to organize themselves to protest or seek compensation risk being sent to jail for "social disruption".

China's State-directed legal system has failed to provide justice to victims. The government meted out severe punishment to only a small number of perpetrators engaged in the distribution and production of poisoned milk—two were executed—and a far greater number were let off the hook. China's response to past scandals has been to protect industry with a government shield, so no one should be surprised when fraud recurs in such an environment.

The melamine case illustrates the dangers of Chinese manufacturers' pathological focus on short-term profitability. Accidents can happen in almost any production process, but melamine did not coincidentally make its way into milk. China's obsession with thrift is a virtue often carried to a fault. Police have noted that the current melamine scandal was made possible by the many tons of melamine that remained from the 2008 scandal. Some distributors chose to repackage the tainted powder and put it on store shelves. They could not stand the thought of throwing away so much milk powder, even if it was dangerously contaminated, and even if it meant running the risk of being punished for it.

Japan's reputation for high quality in recent decades owes much to W. Edwards Deming, the father of "total quality management". Were he around today, Deming would remind us that negative reinforcement mechanisms are no way to improve quality standards. Quality must be seen as something positive; it must be seen as something that drives long-term growth. It must be a goal shared by all stakeholders. As it stands today, a small number of unscrupulous actors in China threaten to ruin the export opportunity for many.

When he arrived in Japan in the 1950s, one of Deming's goals was to drive fear out of manufacturing processes. Workers ought to have an open line of communication with management. There must be an opportunity to report incidences and concerns from the factory floor. Partly thanks to the work of Deming, Japan is today an economy that places a high value on the pursuit of quality for its own sake, and that vision has helped Japan to become an innovator in a wide variety of manufacturing sectors.

In China, workers are too afraid to report even the most obvious production errors or the most egregious cases of unethical misconduct. In many factories, line operators are reluctant to report anything at all. Managers ignore issues that might cause embarrassment. Everyone involved is making a risk calculation, determining that staying silent reduces the likelihood of trouble, at least in the short run. Where workers ought to speak up, the inclination is to look the other way instead.

One of China's problems is that efforts to improve quality are focused on the finished product only. Every time a scandal erupts, the answer has been to test more of the finished product. This after-the-fact approach is no match for an emphasis on continual, systemic improvement. As Deming suggested, "We should work on our process, not the outcome of our processes."
China should not take Japan's recent stumble as an opportunity to gloat. Japan's quality problems are unfortunate, but they are an aberration not representative of the manufacturing industry there. Now more than ever, China should be looking to its easterly neighbor as an example of how its own economy can adopt a philosophy of quality and product development that is the envy of the world.

Source: The Wall Street Journal Asia
Highlighted in BCM Newswire Article 105