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China Sino-Soviet Relations
After the founding of the People's Republic, the Chinese
leadership was concerned above all with ensuring national security,
consolidating power, and developing the economy. The foreign policy
course China chose in order to translate these goals into reality
was to form an international united front with the Soviet Union and
other socialist nations against the United States and Japan.
Although for a time Chinese leaders may have considered trying to
balance Sino-Soviet relations with ties with Washington, by mid1949 Mao Zedong declared that China had no choice but to "lean to
one side"--meaning the Soviet side.
Soon after the establishment of the People's Republic, Mao
traveled to Moscow to negotiate the 1950 Sino-Soviet Treaty of
Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance. Under this agreement,
China gave the Soviet Union certain rights, such as the continued
use of a naval base at Luda, Liaoning Province, in return for
military support, weapons, and large amounts of economic and
technological assistance, including technical advisers and
machinery. China acceded, at least initially, to Soviet leadership
of the world communist movement and took the Soviet Union as the
model for development. China's participation in the Korean War
(1950-53) seemed to strengthen Sino-Soviet relations, especially
after the UN-sponsored trade embargo against China. The Sino-Soviet
alliance appeared to unite Moscow and Beijing, and China became
more closely associated with and dependent on a foreign power than
ever before.
During the second half of the 1950s, strains in the Sino-Soviet
alliance gradually began to emerge over questions of ideology,
security, and economic development. Chinese leaders were disturbed
by the Soviet Union's moves under Nikita Khrushchev toward deStalinization and peaceful coexistence with the West. Moscow's
successful earth satellite launch in 1957 strengthened Mao's belief
that the world balance was in the communists' favor--or, in his
words, "the east wind prevails over the west wind"--leading him to
call for a more militant policy toward the noncommunist world in
contrast to the more conciliatory policy of the Soviet Union.
In addition to ideological disagreements, Beijing was
dissatisfied with several aspects of the Sino-Soviet security
relationship: the insufficient degree of support Moscow showed for
China's recovery of Taiwan, a Soviet proposal in 1958 for a joint
naval arrangement that would have put China in a subordinate
position, Soviet neutrality during the 1959 tension on the SinoIndian border, and Soviet reluctance to honor its agreement to
provide nuclear weapons technology to China. And, in an attempt to
break away from the Soviet model of economic development, China
launched the radical policies of the
Great Leap Forward (1958-60; see Glossary),
leading Moscow to withdraw all Soviet advisers from
China in 1960. In retrospect, the major ideological, military, and
economic reasons behind the Sino-Soviet split were essentially the
same: for the Chinese leadership, the strong desire to achieve
self-reliance and independence of action outweighed the benefits
Beijing received as Moscow's junior partner.
During the 1960s the Sino-Soviet ideological dispute deepened
and spread to include territorial issues, culminating in 1969 in
bloody armed clashes on their border. In 1963 the boundary dispute
had come into the open when China explicitly raised the issue of
territory lost through "unequal treaties" with tsarist Russia.
After unsuccessful border consultations in 1964, Moscow began the
process of a military buildup along the border with China and in
Mongolia, which continued into the 1970s.
The Sino-Soviet dispute also was intensified by increasing
competition between Beijing and Moscow for influence in the Third
World and the international communist movement. China accused the
Soviet Union of colluding with imperialism, for example by signing
the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the United States in 1963.
Beijing's support for worldwide revolution became increasingly
militant, although in most cases it lacked the resources to provide
large amounts of economic or military aid. The Chinese Communist
Party broke off ties with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
in 1966, and these had not been restored by mid-1987.
During the Cultural Revolution, China's growing radicalism and
xenophobia had severe repercussions for Sino-Soviet relations. In
1967 Red Guards besieged the Soviet embassy in Beijing and harassed
Soviet diplomats. Beijing viewed the Soviet invasion of
Czechoslovakia in 1968 as an ominous development and accused the
Soviet Union of "social imperialism." The Sino-Soviet dispute
reached its nadir in 1969 when serious armed clashes broke out at
Zhenbao (or Damanskiy) Island on the northeast border
(see
fig. 3).
Both sides drew back from the brink of war, however, and tension
was defused when Zhou Enlai met with Aleksey Kosygin, the Soviet
premier, later in 1969.
In the 1970s Beijing shifted to a more moderate course and
began a rapprochement with Washington as a counterweight to the
perceived threat from Moscow. Sino-Soviet border talks were held
intermittently, and Moscow issued conciliatory messages after Mao's
death in 1976, all without substantive progress. Officially,
Chinese statements called for a struggle against the hegemony of
both superpowers, but especially against the Soviet Union, which
Beijing called "the most dangerous source of war." In the late
1970s, the increased Soviet military buildup in East Asia and
Soviet treaties with Vietnam and Afghanistan heightened China's
awareness of the threat of Soviet encirclement. In 1979 Beijing
notified Moscow it would formally abrogate the long-dormant SinoSoviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance but
proposed bilateral talks. China suspended the talks after only one
round, however, following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in
1979.
In the 1980s China's approach toward the Soviet Union shifted
once more, albeit gradually, in line with China's adoption of an
independent foreign policy and the opening up economic policy.
Another factor behind the shift was the perception that, although
the Soviet Union still posed the greatest threat to China's
security, the threat was long-term rather than immediate. SinoSoviet consultations on normalizing relations were resumed in 1982
and held twice yearly, despite the fact that the cause of their
suspension, the Soviet presence in Afghanistan, remained unchanged.
Beijing raised three primary preconditions for the normalization of
relations, which it referred to as "three obstacles" that Moscow
had to remove: the Soviet presence in of Afghanistan, Soviet
support for Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia, and the presence of
Soviet forces along the Sino-Soviet border and in Mongolia. For the
first half of the 1980s, Moscow called these preconditions "thirdcountry issues" not suitable for bilateral discussion, and neither
side reported substantial progress in the talks.
Soviet leadership changes between 1982 and 1985 provided
openings for renewed diplomacy, as high-level Chinese delegations
attended the funerals of Soviet leaders Leonid Brezhnev, Yuriy
Andropov, and Konstantin Chernenko. During this time, Sino-Soviet
relations improved gradually in many areas: trade expanded,
economic and technical exchanges were resumed (including the
renovation of projects originally built with Soviet assistance in
the 1950s), border points were opened, and delegations were
exchanged regularly.
The Soviet position on Sino-Soviet relations showed greater
flexibility in 1986 with General Secretary Mikhail S. Gorbachev's
July speech at Vladivostok. Among Gorbachev's proposals for the
Asia-Pacific region were several directed at China, including the
announcement of partial troop withdrawals from Afghanistan and
Mongolia, the renewal of a concession pertaining to the border
dispute, and proposals for agreements on a border railroad, space
cooperation, and joint hydropower development. Further, Gorbachev
offered to hold discussions with China "at any time and at any
level." Although these overtures did not lead to an immediate highlevel breakthrough in Sino-Soviet relations, bilateral
consultations appeared to gain momentum, and border talks were
resumed in 1987. In the late 1980s, it seemed unlikely that China
and the Soviet Union would resume a formal alliance, but SinoSoviet relations had improved remarkably when compared with the
previous two decades. Whether or not full normalization would
include renewed relations between the Chinese and Soviet communist
parties, as China had established with the East European communist
parties, was uncertain as of mid-1987.
Data as of July 1987
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