FILE – Chinese leader Mao Zedong receives his Soviet counterpart Nikita Khrushchev September 30, 1959 in Beijing, China. (AP photo, file)
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) – Chinese President Xi Jinping has just wrapped up a three-day visit to Russian President Vladimir Putin, a cordial relationship in which the two men praised each other and spoke of a deep friendship. It’s a culmination in a centuries-long complicated relationship in which the two countries have been sometimes allies and sometimes enemies.
The Chinese and Russian states have had much to do with each other’s foreign relations since the 17th century, when two empires established a border with a treaty written in Latin.
Neighbors can be good friends or bitter enemies. With a border of thousands of kilometers, Beijing and Moscow were both.
“China-Russia relations have always been problematic,” said Susan Thornton, a former diplomat and fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai Center on China.
“Today’s Soviet Union is our tomorrow”
The People’s Republic of China was established in 1949 after a brutal Japanese occupation during World War II and a bloody civil war between the Nationalist (Kuomintang) and Communist parties.
Russia was part of the Soviet Union, a global superpower, while China was poor, war-torn and unrecognized by most governments. Communist leader Mao Zedong was younger than Josef Stalin, who led the Soviet Union until his death in 1953.
In its early days, the People’s Republic of China depended on the Soviet Union for financial aid and expertise. In 1953 Chinese newspapers carried the slogan: “Today’s Soviet Union is our tomorrow”. According to Joseph Torigian, an associate professor at the American University School of International Services, from 1954 to 1958 the Soviets sent around 11,000 experts to help China rebuild after the Civil War.
The two countries also had a formal military alliance, but Moscow did not want to provide China with the technology to make nuclear weapons.
SINO-SOVIET COLLAPSE
There were sticking points, however, especially after Stalin’s death.
In 1956, then-Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev condemned Stalin’s “cult of personality” in a speech to members of the Communist Party that was later dubbed the “Secret Speech.” Mao, who had modeled himself on the former Soviet leader, took this as a personal insult.
When Mao decided to launch rockets at two remote Taiwanese islands controlled by the Nationalist Party, which he defeated in the Chinese Civil War, he did not warn Khrushchev. For the Soviet leader, it was a betrayal of the alliance they had, Torigian said. In 1959, the Soviet Union remained neutral during a border dispute between China and India, in which Beijing felt it was not getting enough support from its ally.
Relations deteriorated until the two countries broke their alliance in the 1961 Sino-Soviet split.
They quickly became sworn rivals. Beijing has criticized Moscow for practicing “sham communism” and revisionism, a term used to refer to a departure from the Marxist path. Soldiers clashed along its borders in China’s northeast and western Xinjiang region.
TRIANGLE USA-CHINA-RUSSIA
The Sino-Soviet rupture left China isolated but created the conditions for US rapprochement. In 1972, the communist state received President Richard Nixon on a visit that paved the way for worldwide recognition of Mao’s rule and for Washington and Beijing to form a tacit alliance against Moscow.
In the 1990s, after the fall of the Soviet Union, China and Russia became closer. The two countries have settled their territorial disputes in a formal agreement.
Since then, the world has changed enormously, as have the fortunes of both countries. China is now the world’s second largest economy, while Russia’s economy was stagnant long before Moscow invaded Ukraine last year. Today it is Beijing that faces Washington in a strategic contest fueled by intense nationalism on both sides.
Once again Moscow and Beijing find common ground. Under Xi Jinping, “repairing the damage and nurturing relations has progressed much faster than ever before,” said Thornton, the former diplomat.
THE PRESIDENT AGREE
Meanwhile, the similarities between the two leaders, as well as their personal connection, have helped ties develop.
Xi and Putin see Western attempts to spread democracy as an attempt to delegitimize it and believe that authoritarian regimes are better able to meet the challenges of the modern world. Russia supplies energy and China exports industrial goods to the Russians.
And while some analysts and commentators have begun to say that China is now the main partner in the relationship, given the history of both nations, that’s not necessarily how things are viewed in China.
Russia’s influence on China is not only historical but also cultural. In literature classes, students read translated Russian stories and poems, and many educated older Chinese learn Russian instead of English.
“Many Chinese, including the elite, have not yet recognized the historic sea-change in China’s national strength compared to Russia,” wrote Feng Yujun, a top Russian scholar at Fudan University in Shanghai, in a paper published last month that has been widely read was shared. Feng did not agree to an interview.
“Although China’s national strength is now ten times that of Russia, the greatest challenge is that many Chinese remain ideologically subservient to Russia,” he wrote.
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AP news researcher Wanqing Chen contributed to this report from Beijing.