In 1990 Mongolia abandoned its 70-year-old Soviet-style one-party state and embraced political and economic reforms.
Democracy and privatisation were enshrined in a new constitution, but the collapse of the economy after the withdrawal of Soviet support triggered widespread poverty and unemployment.
Once the heartland of an empire stretching to Europe under Genghis Khan, Mongolia is a landlocked country dominated by sparsely populated steppe and semi-desert.
Mongolia spreads across 1.5 million sq km of the Central Asian plateau, but its population is far smaller than the Mongol population of China.
Sunni Muslim Kazakhs in the west are the only significant national and religious minority, comprising some 5% of the population. Migration to Kazakhstan in the 1990s reduced their numbers.
AT-A-GLANCE
A third of the population lives in the capital, while around forty percent of the country's workforce herds livestock in Mongolia's extensive pasturelands. But the centuries-old nomadic lifestyle is being eroded; some say it will be lucky to survive the changing times.
The country has some of Asia's richest deposits of minerals, although these remain largely unexploited.
Mongolia has an extreme climate, with a temperature range to suit. Droughts and unusually cold and snowy winters have decimated livestock, destroying the livelihoods of thousands of families.
Mongolia has expanded political and financial ties with the US, Japan and the European Union, but its main trading partners are neighbouring Russia and China. The latter is the biggest market for Mongolian exports; Beijing is also keen to exploit Mongolia's mineral and energy resources.
Despite generous funding by the International Monetary Fund and donor countries, economic progress has been slow and growth has been hampered by corruption.
The legacy of Genghis Khan, the warrior who united warring tribes and established the Mongol empire in the 13th century, has been invoked in an attempt to foster national pride.
President: Nambaryn Enkhbayar
Nambaryn Enkhbayar, parliamentary speaker and the candidate of the ruling Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party, the MPRP, won presidential elections in May 2005.
Mr Enkhbayar, a former prime minister, pledged to fight poverty and unemployment.
The MPRP, the former communist party, ruled Mongolia for much of the 20th century and enjoyed Moscow's backing in Soviet times.
Although the prime minister and parliament exercise real political power, the president heads the armed forces and has the power of veto in parliament. Frequent changes of government have enhanced the role of the presidency.
A literary scholar, Mr Enkhbayar studied in Moscow and in Britain.
A law passed in 2005 paved the way for the transformation of Mongolia's state-run radio and TV into a public-service broadcaster. Its networks compete with private TV and radio and satellite and cable services. In all, there are more than 300 print and broadcasting outlets.
In general the media are free and sometimes outspoken in their criticism of the authorities. Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders noted in 2007 that journalists risked imprisonment for defamation and violating "state secrets".
Many of Mongolia's livestock herders rely on the national public radio station for information, although access to satellite TV is on the rise.
There are many newspapers, but despite a high level of literacy, circulations and editions are often small. State-owned papers have been privatised; some titles are published by political parties.
The BBC World Service is available on FM in Ulan Bator.
The press
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