This backgrounder is part of a ChinaPower series on China-Russia relations. Click here to view other content in the series.
Following the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in October 1949, China’s ruling Communist Party moved quickly to establish official ties with its communist neighbor to the north, the Soviet Union. Throughout the early 1950s, the two countries enjoyed strong ties founded on the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance—a bilateral treaty which established a security alliance and facilitated significant economic, military, and technological aid and cooperation.
The relationship began to sour, however, in the mid-1950s when an ideological rift emerged between Beijing and Moscow after Nikita Khrushchev assumed leadership of the Soviet Union. Escalating tensions resulted in the Sino-Soviet split, which saw the two countries engage in open hostility, including the 1969 military clash at Zhenbao (Damanskii) Island, which nearly escalated to war. The rift between the two countries was so severe that Chinese leader Mao Zedong pursued normalization of relations with the United States to balance against the perceived Soviet threat.
Significant tensions continued to simmer between the two communist powers until the late 1980s. Under Deng Xiaoping, China pursued a more pragmatic, less ideologically driven foreign policy that enabled a détente with the Soviet Union. The relaxing of tensions led to the 1989 Sino-Soviet Summit, in which Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev visited Beijing to meet with Deng and other Chinese leaders. The summit was the first meeting between leaders of the two countries since the 1950s and marked the official resumption of normal state-to-state and party-to-party relations.
Chinese leader Jiang Zemin reciprocated with a visit to Moscow in 1991, during which the two countries agreed to resolve a portion of their long-held border dispute. These developments culminated in the 1996 upgrading of the relationship to a “partnership of strategic coordination,” as well as the multilateral Agreement on Confidence-Building in the Military Field in Border Areas Between China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, which brought about mutual reductions in military forces along their shared borders.
The years that followed saw steady improvements in the relationship, with a significant acceleration in the 2000s. In 2001, China and Russia inked the Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation, which “Endeaver[ed] to enhance relations between the two countries to a completely new level.” That same year, Russia joined with China and other countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan) as founding members of the China-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which aims to promote cooperation between several countries across the Eurasian continent. A few years later, in 2004, China and Russia achieved a significant breakthrough with the final resolution of their border dispute.
Improvements in political and diplomatic relations were accompanied by major upticks in economic and military cooperation during this period. From 2000 to 2010, China’s total annual trade with Russia (imports plus exports) grew sixfold from $8 billion to $55.5 billion. On the military front, China and Russia held their first joint military exercise, known as Peace Mission 2005, in August 2005. Russian arms sales to China also ballooned over the course of the decade. During the period from 2000 to 2010, China’s arms purchases from Russia were 258 percent higher than during the previous decade.
China and Russia continued to strengthen ties throughout the 2010s. In 2011, the two sides marked the 10th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation by upgrading China-Russia relations to a “comprehensive strategic partnership of cooperation.” In 2019, the countries once again upgraded their relations to a “comprehensive strategic partnership of cooperation for a new era.” During a state visit to Moscow to mark the 2019 upgrading of relations, Chinese President Xi Jinping stated “the China-Russia relationship is seeing a continuous, steady and sound development at a high level, and is at its best in history.”
As China and Russia have bolstered ties with each other, both sides have sought cooperation where it is mutually beneficial while avoiding interfering in the core interests of each other. This approach has been written into many of the joint statements that frame the relationship. The 2019 joint statement upgrading relations listed five basic principles of the relationship, among which was the principle of “mutual understanding and accommodation and win-win cooperation.” This approach, based on shared interests and accommodation, has helped Beijing and Moscow weather multiple shocks and avoid the kind of rigid, ideological alliance that devolved into the Sino-Soviet split of the 20th century. China’s decision to not oppose Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, for example, played a major role in cementing the relationship and shaping it into its current form.
“[R]elations between Russia and China are superior to political and military alliances of the Cold War era. Friendship between the two States has no limits, there are no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation.”
February 4, 2022 China-Russia Joint Statement
These same dynamics were at play again on February 4, 2022—less than three weeks before the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—when Xi Jinping met with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the Winter Olympic Games taking place in Beijing. The visit marked Xi’s first in-person meeting with a foreign leader since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. The meeting culminated in a joint statement which reaffirmed that “relations between Russia and China are superior to political and military alliances of the Cold War era.” It added, “Friendship between the two States has no limits, there are no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation.”
Click here to explore other features in the ChinaPower series on China-Russia relations.
February 14, 2020, marks 70 years since a major Cold War turning point: the conclusion of a treaty of alliance between two communist giants, the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China.
The Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance shook up global geopolitics and the balance of power between the two Cold War camps. Cooperation and close relations between the USSR and the PRC, however, were ultimately short-lived. The Sino-Soviet split from the early 1960s through the mid-1980s likewise had a dramatic effect on the global Cold War.
Thousands of primary source documents published by the Wilson Center’s History and Public Policy Program depict the evolution of Sino-Soviet relations, from the aftermath of World War II to the collapse of the Soviet Union. The documents come from archives in both Russia and China, as well as dozens of other countries in Asia, Europe, and North America.
Making of the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1945-1950
This collection charts the bumpy road to the signing of the Sino-Soviet alliance in February 1950.
Drawn largely from Soviet records, it begins with correspondence between Mao and Stalin (as well as other Soviet officials) in 1947-1948 about a potential visit by Mao to the Soviet Union. It then turns to a flurry of correspondence and exchanges between the Soviets and the Chinese Communist Party in early 1949 – including a visit by Stalin’s emissary, Anastas Mikoyan, to Xibaipo, China – that coincided with an irreversible turn in the trajectory of the Chinese Civil War.
Following Mikoyan’s meetings with Mao, Liu Shaoqi traveled to Moscow in the summer of 1949 for further discussions about Soviet-Chinese relations. After the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in October 1949 and the formal exchange of diplomatic relations between the new regime and the Soviet Union, the Chinese and Soviets continued to arrange Mao’s long anticipated visit to Moscow.
The collection concludes with many reports and records of conversations stemming from Mao’s eventful sojourn to the Soviet Union. On December 16, during a first meeting, Stalin indicated that he did not want a Sino-Soviet alliance, leaving the new Chinese leader frustrated (and, reportedly, humiliated). But Stalin soon changed tact, and Zhou Enlai and other Chinese leaders joined Mao in Moscow and hammered out the details for the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance, over several weeks. The treaty was concluded on February 14, 1950.
Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1950-1959
This Digital Archive collection picks up the documentary record following the conclusion of the treaty negotiations, and offers many examples of Sino-Soviet cooperation over a nearly 10-year period.
The majority of the files from the period 1950-1953 concern the Korean War: coordination between Moscow and Beijing (and Pyongyang) over China’s intervention; Chinese efforts to gain Soviet military and economic assistance in light of the conflict on the Korean Peninsula; and discussions about how best to bring the conflict to an end. In August-September 1952, Zhou Enlai paid another visit to Moscow to confer with Stalin. Zhou’s numerous briefs back to Beijing form a substantial part of the collection.
Diary entries from Pavel Yudin, the Soviet ambassador in Beijing, make up the majority of sources for the period covering the mid- and late 1950s. In July 1958, Mao and Yudin had an extremely testy exchange over a Soviet proposal to establish a joint Chinese-Soviet submarine flotilla. Mao, according to the Chinese record of the meeting, accused Yudin of “never trust[ing] the Chinese!” Mao went on to say that “You only trust the Russians! [To you] the Russians are the first-class [people] whereas the Chinese are among the inferior who are dumb and careless.”
Mao continued to debate the proposal and broader tensions in the Sino-Soviet relationship with Nikita Khrushchev in July-August 1958.
The collection also includes several files on Sino-Soviet nuclear cooperation, as well as many documents on various stressors on the Sino-Soviet relationship (such as the Taiwan Strait Crisis, the Sino-Indian border dispute, and tumult in Hungary and Poland).
Sino-Soviet Split, 1960-1984
Dating the exact start of the split between China and the Soviet Union (and the unraveling of their economic, diplomatic, and military cooperation) is an inherently tricky matter.
But this collection shows the Sino-Soviet alliance in turmoil from the very early 1960s: over the Sino-Indian border war; over a mass migration of Uyghurs and Kazakhs to the USSR in 1962; and over Khrushchev’s handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis, to name only a few. The withdrawal of Soviet experts from the PRC and the cancelling of Sino-Soviet nuclear cooperation offered other strong signals that the honeymoon was over.
Documents from the late 1960s and 1970s depict relations between China and the Soviet Union in light of the Vietnam War; the border war fought between the two countries in 1969; China’s courting of the United States and countries in Western Europe; and the Soviet Union’s efforts to coordinate China policy with members of the eastern bloc.
The collection includes many examples of Chinese and Soviet officials meeting with Romanians, Albanians, North Koreans, Vietnamese, and other members of the socialist bloc to discuss Sino-Soviet relations. It also shows the lengths, which both China and the Soviet Union went, to curry favor with nations in the communist world, as well as in the Third World or the Global South.
Sino-Soviet Rapprochement, 1985-1989
This final collection on Sino-Soviet relations in the Digital Archive shows the attempts made by Chinese, Soviet, and other international figures to achieve a modus vivendi between the two countries and put almost 15 years of bitter acrimony behind them. The Sino-Soviet “rapprochement” coincided with the immense economic, political, and diplomatic changes pursued by both China and the Soviet Union in the 1980s. The collection includes diary entries from Teimuraz Stepanov-Mamaladze from February through May 1989, as well as reconstructions of the meetings that Mikhail Gorbachev held with Deng Xiaoping and Zhao Ziyang in May 1989. These meetings took place as students and workers protested in Beijing, and just days before the brutal Tiananmen Square crackdown.
Other Digital Archive Collections of Note
The Wilson Center's Digital Archive features a “catch all” collection on Sino-Soviet relations. This collection includes all of the documents in the preceding four collections, plus a few more that did not fit neatly into the above categories. Four other collections related to Sino-Soviet relations are also of interest:
The first two show how Soviet involvement in a borderland area of China shaped the overall relationship between the two countries, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. The collection on the 1969 border conflict shows the relationship at its most dangerous moment. And the final collection on “Interkit” offers insights into an organization created by the Kremlin to coordinate Soviet-bloc analysis of, and policy toward, China from 1967 until the mid-1980s.
Wilson Center Publications on Sino-Soviet Relations
- “The Sino-Soviet Alliance and China’s Entry into the Korean War,” by Chen Jian
- “Stalin, the Cold War, and the Division of China: A Multi-Archival Mystery,” by Brian Murray
- “The Soviet-Chinese-Vietnamese Triangle in the 1970's: The View from Moscow,” by Stephen J. Morris
- ‘"One Finger's Worth of Historical Events": New Russian and Chinese Evidence on the Sino-Soviet Alliance and Split, 1948-1959,” by David Wolff
- “Mao's Conversations with the Soviet Ambassador, 1953-55,” by Paul Wingrove
- “The Soviet's Best Friend in Asia: The Mongolian Dimension of the Sino-Soviet Split,” by Sergey Radchenko
- “1962: The Eve of the Left Turn in China’s Foreign Policy,” by Niu Jun
- “The Quarrelling Brothers: New Chinese Archives and a Reappraisal of the Sino-Soviet Split, 1959-1962,” by Dong Wang
- “Sino-Hungarian Relations and the 1956 Revolution,” by Peter Vamos
- “The Interkit Story: A Window into the Final Decades of the Sino-Soviet Relationship,” by James G. Hershberg et al
- “Between Aid and Restriction: Changing Soviet Policies toward China’s Nuclear Weapons Program: 1954-1960,” by Shen Zhihua and Yafeng Xia
- “Sino-Soviet Nuclear Relations: An Alliance of Convenience?,” by Khine Su Thant
- and many sections of the CWIHP Bulletin over the years