History of Sino-Russian Relations

History Of Sino-Russian Relations

Prior to the 1600s China and Russia were separated by Siberia. By about 1640 Russian settlers had conquered most of Siberia and founded settlements in the Amur River basin. From 1652 to 1689, China's armies drove the Russian settlers out, but after 1689 China and Russia made peace and established trade agreements. By the mid-1800s China lagged behind technologically and financially, so it signed unequal treaties with Russia and other Western powers, by which Russia annexed the Amur basin and Vladivostok. China's weak position led to the 1911 Xinhai revolution: the revolutionaries deposed the emperor and founded the Republic of China. However, China's president Yuan Shikai was forced to sign further unequal treaties with Russia and with other Western nations.

Following the 1917 October revolution in Russia, China intervened against the communist Reds (or Bolsheviks), in support of the anti-communist White forces. The Bolsheviks won the civil war and established the Soviet Union, or USSR. Subsequently, the USSR lent support to the Kuomintang, a Chinese faction opposed to China's Beiyang government. The Kuomintang took power by force in 1928, and the two countries established diplomatic ties, but fought two wars in the next ten years. Nevertheless, the USSR supported Chiang Kai-Shek's Kuomintang government against Imperial Japan, and USSR leader Joseph Stalin told Mao Zedong's Communist Party of China (CPC) to support China's Kuomintang regime. Mao decided to fight to Kuomintang in spite of Stalin's, but the CPC failed to overthrow Chiang's Nationalist government. From 1937 to 1945 the Kuomintang and the CPC were allied against Japan, but resumed fighting shortly after their victory. Despite lacking substantial Soviet support, in 1949 the CPC won the Chinese Civil War and established the People's Republic of China, which allied itself with the USSR.

Ideological differences between the two countries grew after Stalin's death in 1953. In 1961 Mao accused the USSR's leadership under Nikita Khrushchev of revisionism, and the alliance ended. The two countries competed for control over other communist states and foreign communist movements for twenty years, and in 1969 they fought a brief border war. After the defeat of Mao's followers in 1978 hostility between the two countries lessened somewhat, because China's new leaders abandoned anti-revisionism.

Tensions remained: in 1979 China invaded Vietnam, a Soviet ally. The two countries nonetheless drew closer in the 1980s, and after the establishment of the Russian Federation this trend continued. Relations between the People's Republic of China and the Russian Federation are currently close and cordial. They maintain strong geopolitical and regional cooperation, and significant levels of trade.