evidence: Buried deep in the heart of the huge Asian land mass, Outer Mongolia is a country of sweeping plains, lake-studded highlands, with an awkward location: it is set squarely between Communist China and the Soviet Union. All but lost to history since the 14th century, when its conquering Khans ruled from Indonesia to the Danube, this ancient heartland has become the newest area in the growing clash between the two Communist rivals. Long an inaccessible province of China, Outer Mongolia became the first Soviet satellite when the Reds pursued the Whites into Urga (later Ulan Bator), and remained to establish the Mongolian People’s Republic in 1924. For the next generation, Moscow monopolized Mongolia’s diplomatic and trade relations to the exclusion of all foreigners, and particularly the Chinese. Mongolia’s wool and hides went westward to Russia, in exchange for a trickle of manufactured goods and swarms of political instructors. The Russians introduced their own Cyrillic alpha bet; Buddhist lamas and a few rich herders were persecuted to "free" the masses for membership in the new cooperatives. [...] In May 1960, Chinese Premier Chou En-lai himself came to Ulan Bator and signed a treaty providing for $50 million in long-term loans to build a cotton mill, a sheet-glass factory, a 10,000-ton steel mill, an irrigation system, a circus, and a project for 240,000 square meters of apartment housing for Ulan Bator. [...] Undoubtedly, Outer Mongolia is a Communist satellite. The question seems to be: Whose?