Ethnicity:
Forty-nine ethnic groups live in Inner Mongolia including the Mongolian, Han, Manchu, Hui, Daur, Ewenki, Oroqen, and Korean. The region is inhabited by 3.97 million Mongolians, 18.75 million Hans, and 900,010 of other groups. The rural population hits 13.78 million, with 11.87 million in villages and 1.91 million in pastoral area.

Education:
Inner Mongolia has 500,000 technicians, 140,000 of whom have received senior and middle-level technical certificates. It has 324 scientific and technological research centers. By 2000, 71 counties in the region had implemented the nine-year compulsory educational campaign and basically eliminated illiteracy among young and middle-aged people. As many as 98.36 percent of children of school age enjoyed school education, 97.19 percent of children of secondary-school age entered junior middle school and 60 percent of them graduated and entered senior middle school in 2001. Inner Mongolia has 21 institutes of higher learning with a total of 99,600 students. The percentage of literate middle-aged and young people has reached 96.8 percent.

In 2001 the region had 9,312 primary schools in 6,299 places, 1,664 middle schools, and 425 vocational secondary schools including 269 junior secondary schools and 156 senior secondary schools.

Elevation
Besides hills, plains, deserts, rivers and lakes, Inner Mongolia has plateau landforms, mostly over 1,000 meters (about 13,780 feet) above sea level, including the Inner Mongolia Plateau, the second largest among the four major plateaus in the country.

Mountains: Greater Hinggan Range and Yinshan Mountains

Plateaus: Hulunbuir Plateau in the north; Xilingol and Ju Ud Plateaus in the east; Alxa Plateau in the west; Ordos Plateau south of the Yellow River

Deserts and sands: Hulunbuir Sands in the north; Horqin Sands in the east; Lesser Tengger Sands in the central east; Hobq Desert and Muus Sands south of the Yellow River; Ulanbuh and Tengger Deserts in the central west, Badainjaran Desert in the west

Rivers: Yellow River, Ergun River and upper reaches of Liaohe River

Climate
Inner Mongolia has a temperate continental climate. There, spring is warm and windy; summer is short and hot with many rainy days; autumn usually sees early frost and plummeting temperature; winter is long, bitter cold with frequent polar outbreaks. The region has an annual precipitation of 100-500 mm, 80-150 frost-free days, and 2,700 hours of sunshine. The Greater Hinggan Mountains and the Yinshan Mountains divide the regions into areas with different climate. The area east of the Greater Hinggan Mountains and north of the Yinshan Mountains has lower temperature and less precipitation than the opposite area.

Average Temperature: -23C to -10C in January, 17C to 26C in July

Annual Average Rainfall: 50 - 450 mm; high precipitation in the east; 70 percent of the rain centralized in the summer

Natural resources
Animals and plants: Inner Mongolia has 2,351 species of plants including vegetation of arbors, shrubs and herbs. It is home to 117 species of wild animals and 362 species of birds, 49 species of them under state and regional protection and 10 precious and rare.

Hydropower:
Inner Mongolia has water resources of 90.3 billion cubic meters, of which 67.5 billion is surface water. Nearly 1,000 rivers run in the region, 107 rivers averaging a valley area of more than 1,000 square km each. Moreover, 1,000 lakes dot the region, eight of them with an area of over 100 square km each. Inner Mongolia boasts mineral water and springs with medical value. It has a total water area of 984,300 hectares including 655,000 hectares of fresh water, which accounts for 10.68 percent of the country's total fresh water area.

Forests, grasslands, and cultivated land: The region has 7.22 million hectares of cultivated land, or 6.11 percent of the country's total, 86.67 million hectares of grasslands, or 73.3 percent of the country's total, and 18.67 million hectares of forests, 15.8 percent of the country's total.

Minerals:
More than 120 kinds of minerals of the world's total 140 kinds have been found in the region, five of which have the largest deposits in China and 65 of which rank among the top ten of their kinds in the country. The reserves of rare earth amount to 84.59 million tons, or 80 percent of the world's total and over 90 percent of the country's total. The proven deposits of coal hit 224.75 billion tons, the second largest in the country. The region has large reserves of ferrous metals, non-ferrous metals, precious metals, and industrial chemicals, and non-metal minerals. It also has abundant oil and natural gas and 13 large oil and gas fields have been discovered with expected oil reserves of 2-3 billion tons and gas reserves of 1,000 billion cubic meters. The minerals (excluding oil and natural gas) in the region have a potential value of 13,000 billion yuan (US$1,570 billion), accounting for 10 percent of the country's total volume and ranking as the third largest in the country.

Tourism:
Inner Mongolia is rich in tourist attractions: Colorful ethnic culture, grassland scenery, the virgin forests in the Greater Hinggan Mountains, grand views along the Yellow River, the majestic Xiangsha Gulf, rivers and lakes, and springs. Inner Mongolia is home to the Mausoleum of Genghis Khan, the Zhaojun Tomb, ancient Great Wall, Wudang Monastery at the bottom of the Yinshan Mountains, Wuta Monastery, Bailing Temple, and tomb murals dating back to the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220).

Environment and current policies:
Owing to its special geological condition, Inner Mongolia features a harsh eco-environment. In recent decades, the greenhouse effect and unscientific exploitation have aggravated drought, desertification, and soil erosion. The desertified land and the potential ones cover 60 percent of the regional area and are increasing 670,000 hectares per year.

The desertification and alkalization of grasslands have brought frequent sandstorms. The deterioration of water conservation capacity of the Greater Hinggan Mountains has resulted in floods in the Songhua and Liaohe river valleys. Each year 300 million tons of soil are washed away in the Yellow and western Liaohe rivers, or 30,000 hectares of land lost. As a result, rivers are choked with silt that stops their flow.

To improve ecological environment, the Ecological Construction Project, one of the ten projects of the western development campaign, has been launched recently in the region which includes turning the cultivated land into forests and grasslands, planting grass and suspending animal husbandry, shelterbelts in the northeast, northwest and the north, anti-desertification, virgin forest protection in the Greater Hinggan Mountains, and resettlement. It is expected that by 2005 the deteriorated eco-environment can be brought under control, with first steps at reclamation achieved by 2010, and that mountains will be green and rivers clear again by mid-century.

Transportation
Railway:
The region has 14 main national and 12 feeder railways as well as five local railways, with a total length of 7,083 km. The density is 59.9 km/10,000-sq-km. The Beijing-Tonghua, Beijing-Baotou, and Baotou-Lanzhou railways traverse west to east through the province, which link the northeast, the north and northwest of China. Manzhouli and Erenhot, two large land ports in the region, connect the region with Russia and Mongolia, and European countries.
The volume of goods flow by rail reached 86.966 billion tons km in 2001, up by 5 percent. The annual volume of passenger flow was 8.965 billion people km, a drop of 2.9 percent.

Highway:
It has a total length of 63,000 km, with a density of 532.6 km/10,000 square km. More than 95 percent of townships have access to highways.

The volume of goods flow by highway reached 22.035 billion tons km in 2001, up by 4 percent. The annual volume of passenger flow was 12.193 billion people km, up by 4.8 percent.

Airport:
It has seven civil airports, which are open to 20 domestic and two international air routes, with a total length of 67,000 km.

The volume of goods flow by air in 2001 was 10 million tons km, up by 66.7 percent. The annual volume of passenger flow reached 1.373 billion people km, up by 30.8 percent.

Telecommunications
A modern post and telecom network has been set up which serves the whole region and links the region with the outside world. By the end of 1999, it had a fixed asset investment of 1.5 billion yuan (US$181.2 million) in post and telecom and a postal length of 62,000 km. Towns and townships have been accessible by postal communications and counties in the region offer computer-controlled postal service. Eight main express mail ways have been built to link the region with other cities such as Beijing. Its express mail can be delivered to the rest of the world.

In 2001, the region earned a total of 16.369 billion yuan (US$1.98 billion) in added value from transportation and post and telecommunication services, up by 13.8 percent. The annual volume of post and telecom business amounted to 6.26 billion (US$756 million), up by 20 percent.

Telecom and telephones:
So far, a digital telecom transmission network has been established in the region that features transmission via optical cable in addition to satellite and digital microwaves. The network has facilitated the construction of regional digital and information portal. The long-distance-call national A-grade cable includes the Beijing-Hohhot-Yinchuan-Lanzhou cable line and the regional Hohhot-Xi'an, Hohhot-Beihai, Zhalantun-Qiqihar, Ulanhot-Baicheng, and Chifeng-Chaoyang lines. Its transmission facilities utilize the updated SDH technology.

In 2001, the number of city telephone users reached 2 million while rural telephone subscribers numbered 550,000. In addition, the region had a total of 2.09 million of mobile phone subscribers. The Internet users in the region also had numbered 150,000.

Radio and TV stations:
The radio and television system has served 81.3 percent of the total region.