Kinship imaginaries of similarity and difference: gifts from Inner Mongols to Mongolia during the COVID-19 pandemic

In much of the world the intensification of nationalism during the COVID-19 pandemic manifested itself as a desire for more strictly controlled borders. In this paper, however, we identify a ‘cross-border’ form of solidarity that emerged in Inner Mongolia, China. Here, ethnic Mongols share cultural and linguistic ties with people across the border in independent Mongolia. Through an analysis of Inner Mongolian media, we show how COVID-19 prompted a reimagining of these cross-border ties, in the context of Inner Mongolia's fraught ethnic politics, and concerns over assimilation which were heightened by education reforms in 2020. Even as Inner Mongols’ donations of money, foodstuffs, clothing and medical equipment were couched in a language of similarity and affinity, they were predicated upon and (re)created notions of difference. Ultimately, the donations also reproduced the developmentalist discourse of the Chinese state, whereby China was positioned as more developed than a ‘backward’, impoverished Mongolia.