History of Sino-Russian relations
There were three points of contact: 1) south to the Amur River basin (early), 2) east along the southern edge of Siberia toward Peking (the main axis) and 3) in Turkestan (late).
The fourth returned via Selenginsk (near Lake Baikal) in 90 days and bore a letter from the Li-Fan Yuan suggesting that future trade use this route.
About this time the Kangxi Emperor began to put pressure on Saint Petersburg to delineate the Mongolian border west of the Argun, and several Russian caravans were held up.
In 1714, Peter the Great sent Ivan Bukholts with 1,500 troops, including Swedish miners who were prisoners of war, up the Irtysh to Lake Zaysan to search for gold.
A major reason for the failure was that Lorents Lange at Selenginsk had turned over a number of Mongol refugees to the Manchus as part of the buildup to the Treaty of Kyakhta.
[15] Hostilities broke out around Peter the Great Gulf, Vladivostok, when the Russians tried to shut off gold mining operations and to expel Chinese workers there.
Unlike the Netherlands and Portugal in the 18th century, who were considered part of the tribute system,[18] Russia was able to trade directly with Beijing, and their relations were under the jurisdiction of Mongolian and Manchu border officials.
[20] A British observer, Demetrius Charles de Kavanagh Boulger, suggested a British-Chinese alliance to check Russian expansion in Central Asia.
General Zuo Zongtang was outspoken in calling for war against Russia and hoped to settle the matter by attacking Russian forces in Xinjiang with his Xiang army.
At the start of the Opium War, China had no unified navy and no sense of how vulnerable she was to attack from the sea; British forces sailed and steamed wherever they wanted to go....
Meanwhile, new but not exactly modern Chinese armies suppressed the midcentury rebellions, bluffed Russia into a peaceful settlement of disputed frontiers in Central Asia, and defeated the French forces on land in the Sino–French War (1884–85).
Witte chose the latter policy, and in 1894 Russia joined Germany and France in forcing Japan to soften the peace terms that it had imposed on China.
A large coalition of eleven major Western powers, led by Russia and Japan, sent an army to relieve their diplomatic missions in Peking and to take control of the Chinese capital.
[36] Chinese Honghuzi bandits were nomads who came from China, roamed the area around Manchuria and the Russo-Chinese border, and raided Russian settlers in the Far East from 1870 to 1920.
By 1927, when the Northern Expedition was nearly concluded, Chiang purged the CCP from the KMT-CCP alliance, resulting in the Chinese Civil War which was to last until 1950, a few months after the People's Republic of China, led by Mao Zedong, was proclaimed.
The split quickly made a dead letter of the 1950 alliance between Moscow and Beijing, destroyed the socialist camp's unity, and affected the world balance of power.
However, when the Warsaw Pact crushed the dissident movements in Eastern Europe in 1956, Beijing was pleased that Moscow had apparently realized the dangers of de-Stalinization and would no longer tolerate independence or encourage revisionism.
Beijing was also pleased that the success of the Soviet Union in the space race (the original Sputniks) demonstrated that the international communist movement had caught up in high technology with the West.
Mao argued that as far as all-out nuclear war was concerned, the human race would not be destroyed, but a brave new communist world would arise from the ashes of imperialism.
Although Moscow supported Beijing's position of Taiwan entirely belonging to China, it demanded to be forewarned of any invasion or serious threat that would bring an American intervention.
However China escalated its threats to the northern fringes of India, especially from Tibet, and was building a militarily significant road system that would reach disputed areas along the border.
At one major meeting of communist parties, Khrushchev personally attacked Mao as an ultraleftist and a left revisionist and compared him to Stalin for dangerous egotism.
[47][48][49][50] Increasingly, China began to consider the Soviet Union, which it viewed as social imperialist, as the greatest threat it faced, more so than even the leading capitalist power, the United States.
A month later, the Gang of Four were overthrown by his successor, Chairman Hua Guofeng, with the support of Deng Xiaoping, who was to soon implement pro-market economic reform.
The economy of Russia in the early 2000s was largely driven by demand for export of natural resources to Europe and Asia, with a gradual move up the value-added chain as Russian aluminum and steel mills upgrade to international standards.
China and Russia share a land border which was demarcated in 1991, and they signed the Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation in 2001, which was renewed in June 2021 for five more years.
[52] On the eve of a 2013 state visit to Moscow by General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xi Jinping and President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin remarked that the two nations were forging a special relationship.
[57]: 347 Citing principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and global order, China used its influence in the SCO to prevent the organization from supporting Russia.
During the massive Russian build-up of force on the Ukrainian border, with the two expressing, the two countries are nearly united in their anti-US alignment and that both nations shared "no limits" to their commitments.
[60] In March 2022, Russia added Taiwan to a list of foreign states and territories that commit "unfriendly actions" against its military invasion of Ukraine.
