The Historical Relationship Between Russia and China

Today, we discuss the long relationship between Russia, the Soviet Union, and China throughout the past four hundred years. If you'd like to support the podcast with a small monthly donation, click this link - https://www.buzzsprout.com/385372/support

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Episode 278 – The Historical Relationship Between Russia and China

Last time, we finished up our five-part series on the Gulag. Today, we will discuss the relationship between Russia, the Soviet Union, and China.

For today’s episode, I will be using four main works, A History of Russia by Riasanovsky and Steinberg, A History of China by John Keay, A History of Modern Russia by Robert Service, Russia: A History by Gregory Freeze, and A Failed Empire by Vladislav Zubock. I chose A History of China because I wanted to see things from both sides and not just from the Russian point of view. 

One of my difficulties with this episode was whether to include Russia's relationship with the Mongols. I know they aren't Chinese, but they ruled China between 1271 and 1368. The Mongols weren’t interested in developing relationships between their vassal states. Quite the contrary, they would bar that to avoid any potential of creating combined enemies. That said, there is little evidence that the Muscovite state had any relationship with China during that period. There is some scant evidence that during the period of Kyivan's dominance, it had developed trade with the Chinese, as it is very likely that they did, but there is little to go on, so we'll have to move on.

It was not until 1640 when Russian merchants and explorers made contact with the Chinese with the founding of settlements in the Amur River basin. This area would become a bone of contention and the possible trigger point of a major nuclear war. We’ll get to that later. 

The conquering of the khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan opened the doors to the expansion of Muscovite Russia into Siberia. Siberian Cossacks traversed over the Stanovoy Mountains to the Amur River basin. The Manchus claimed this area as they were just beginning their conquest of China. They would be known as the Qing Dynasty. Between 1652 and 1689, the Russians were constantly under attack and were driven back over the mountains. The Stanovoy Mountains would remain the Russo-Chinese frontier border from the Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689) to the Treaty of Aigun in 1859.

The Treaty of Nerchinsk was signed in Nerchinsk on August 27, 1689. The signatories were Songgotu on behalf of the Kangxi Emperor and Fyodor Golovin on behalf of the Russian tsar's Peter I and Ivan V. Originally, the meeting was set to be in the town of Selenginsk near Lake Baikal in October 1688. This had to be changed as warring factions were duking it out in the area. Interestingly, the original treaty was written in Latin, having been translated into Russian early on, with a Chinese version not finalized for several years.

What both sides wanted was the Amur River basin. The Russians knew they were ill-prepared to defend that region, so they agreed to the Treaty of Nerchinsk to open trade relations with China. Russia was further hampered in protecting their gains as they were fighting the Ottoman Empire at the time.

The treaty had six parts, with the first and the second defining the border. The third called for the Russian fort at Albazin to be abandoned and destroyed. The fourth dealt with refugees who arrived before the treaty, allowing them to stay. For those arriving after the treaty, they were to be sent back. Section five defined trade to commence if the partners had the proper documents. Part six called for erecting boundary stones and language that would help avoid conflict in the future.

Trade would continue between 1689 and 1727, but there were problems on the Russian – Mongolian border. The Oirat Dzungar Khanate threatened the newly entrenched Manchus, consolidating power as the Qing Dynasty. The Oirat were Mongols known as the forest people. They would not recognize the Manchu government, which led to them wanting a treaty with Russia to avoid their support for the Oirat. This would lead to the signing the Treaty of Kyakhta in 1727 under Tsar Peter II. The negotiations for this treaty were initially started under Peter the Great during the last years of his life.

The treaty would accomplish the following: diplomatic and trade relations were established that lasted until the mid-19th century. It also set the northern border of Mongolia (which was then part of the Qing-Russian border). The caravan trade from Kyakhta opened up (Russian furs for Chinese tea), and the agreement with Russia helped China expand westward and annex Xinjiang. The Kyakhta trade between Qing and Russia was vital to Russia as one of its primary sources of income. The Qing was aware of this and occasionally used to suspend the trade to exert pressure on the Russian rulers. This would lead to the Kyakhta International Protocol of 1792, further protecting the trade between Russia and China.

In the 18th century, Central Asia became a major focus of Russian expansion, especially in the area now known as Kazakhstan. This would increase the trade between Russia and China, although it would show a growing weakness within the Chinese government. Included in the ever-increasing trade with China was a new market, India. 

While the Chinese Empire established its control over Xinjiang in the 1750s, the Russians continued to expand until the two empires' areas of control met in what is today eastern Kazakhstan and Western Xinjiang. The 1851 Treaty of Kulja legalized trade between both countries in the region. This treaty was crucial to both Russia and China as it was in opposition to the British making inroads in China. Some suggest that the Treaty of Kulja was a reason why Great Britain joined France and the Ottoman Empire in the Crimean War that began in 1853.

While the treaty primarily legalized additional trade routes, it recognized the growing Russian presence in Central Asia. China's defenses on this border had been greatly neglected since the start of the 1800s. This was also a period of rapid decline in the strength of the Chinese government, which the Russians, as well as other European powers, would exploit.

One of the interesting connections between Russia and China is through the Russian Orthodox Church, which sent missionaries to China and, in particular, their capital, Beijing. The mission to Beijing began under Tsar Peter the Great and continued until the 1917 revolution. One priest, Father Bichurin, would write a fundamental work on the country. He led the Russian Orthodox Mission to Beijing from 1807 to 1821. During his time in China, he learned fluent Manchu, Mongolian, and Chinese and made some of the most accurate Qing dynasty maps of Beijing. After returning to Russia, he founded the country's first Chinese studies department in 1837.

Bichurin was not your typical priest as he was known to be a champagne-drinking, womanizing, cigar-smoking kind of monk, and in the eyes of the Russian Church, that was not considered acceptable behavior. Even though he was put on house arrest after his return to St. Petersburg, Bichurin had many friends in high places. 

While researching Bichurin, I came across some fascinating history. In the aftermath of the 1685 Siege of Albazin on the Sino-Russian border, the emperor Kangxi gave the defeated Russian soldiers a choice - they could either return home or enroll in the Chinese army. Forty-four Cossacks accepted his offer and allegedly forced a priest to remain alongside them. When the group arrived in Beijing, they were granted a plot of land – this land remains the location of the Russian embassy today. Such was Bichurin’s devotion to China that at times he was accused of relying too heavily on Chinese sources in his work; however, when he died, even his staunchest critics had to admit that nobody meant as much to Russian orientalism as this cigar-smoking monk.

Starting in 1858–1860, through a series of unequal treaties forced upon the Qing dynasty of China, the Amur Annexation of the southeast corner of Siberia by the Russian Empire added a vast area of formerly Chinese and Manchurian land. This was a period of Chinese history known as the Second Opium Wars. The start of this period was the signing of the Treaty of Aigun. This 1858 treaty between the Russian Empire and the Qing dynasty established much of the modern border between the Russian Far East and China by ceding much of Manchuria (the ancestral homeland of the Manchu people). Negotiations began after China was threatened with war on a second front by Governor-General of the Far East Nikolay Muraviev when China was suppressing the Taiping Rebellion. The Russians camped tens of thousands of troops on the borders of Mongolia and Manchuria, which essentially forced the Chinese to sign the treaty.

To clarify things, the Taiping Rebellion was a civil war within China that lasted between 1850 and 1864. The Second Opium War was an external threat to China that went on between 1856 and 1860. Both conflicts severely weakened the Qing Dynasty allowing Russia, Great Britain, and France to take advantage of the Chinese.

When the Second Opium War ended in 1860, Russia, France, and Great Britain called for a meeting with China, known as the Convention of Peking. Prince Gong, the regent of the Chinese Empire, was compelled to sign two treaties on behalf of the Qing government with Lord Elgin and Baron Gros, who represented Britain and France, respectively. Although Russia was not belligerent, Prince Gong also signed a treaty with Nikolay Ignatyev. These treaties are part of those known as the unequal treaty, a name given by the Chinese to a series of treaties signed during the 19th and early 20th centuries between China of the Qing Dynasty and various Western powers, Great Britain, France, the German Empire, the United States, and the Russian Empire, as well as the Empire of Japan.

This series of treaties would leave a bad taste in the mouth of many Chinese, especially after the Chinese Revolution and the ascendency of the communists. The term "unequal treaty" became associated with the concept of China's "century of humiliation", which occurred between 184 and 1950, especially the concessions to foreign powers and the loss of tariff autonomy through treaty ports.

The Russians, though, had a better relationship with the Chinese than did the other Western powers. They were more interested in fair trade, while the others just wanted to take advantage of China. The relationship between the two countries was not handled by the monarchs, as was the case with the West, but by the legislative bodies of both nations. 

One of the main objectives aside from trade that the Russians wanted was a warm-weather port. This would be known as Vladivostok. According to the Chinese viewpoint of this was that the Russians would supply secret support to the Qing against the West. This was, of course, a ruse, and it worked as the treaties were never to the benefit of the Chinese.

Towards the end of the 19th century, this is what the book China: A History has to say about things. “The Russians debated plans for detaching Mongolia, Manchuria, and Xinjiang; the British began to take an interest in Tibet; the French, lately established in what they called Indo-China, showed a proprietary interest in Guangxi and Yunnan; and a Japan transformed by the Meiji reforms staked a claim to Ryukyu Islands and an interest in Korea that would soon extend to Manchuria.” 

While the Russians and Chinese were unequal trading partners, another antagonist was operating in Asia, Great Britain. We are in the post-Crimean War period, and there was still a lot of concern in England about the expansion of Russia into Asia. Their genuine concern was about the control of India and the surrounding territories. One of those areas of contention was Xinjiang. Russia had seized the land under the guise of protecting their trade routes. When an envoy to St. Petersburg from China signed the Treaty of Livadia in 1879, it caused an uproar in Beijing. The ill-informed diplomat gave in to the Russian demand for a permanent stay in Xinjiang. By 1881, a new treaty was signed, which repudiated the prior agreement.

The Chinese believed that they had forced the hand of the Russians, but in truth, the British and other countries put pressure on St. Petersburg. By 1898, Germany had entered the picture and was given a port in Shandong, Qingdao. This made the Russians ask for more land to complete the Trans-Siberian Railway. This linked Vladivostok with Russia for the first time.

Of course, the British got more access to ports, the French got mining rights, and the Americans demanded that everyone had access to everything. This partitioning of China stirred up intense nationalist fervor led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen. This would lead to the Boxer Rebellion starting in late 1899. With the death of the young emperor and his dowager mother, Cixi, the Qing dynasty was on its last leg. 

The Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05 was the first time that an Asian country defeated a Western force in such a convincing fashion. It would lead many within China to believe that they could eventually throw off the yoke of the West. From 1911 to 1950, the country would be in almost eternal civil war or at war with the Japanese. With the Russian Revolution in 1917, the relationship between Russia and China took a hiatus. That is, until there was a possibility that the Chinese government would take a turn towards communism.

In 1920, Soviet troops, with the support of Mongolian guerrillas led by Damdin Sükhbaatar, defeated the White Army warlord Ungern von Sternberg and established a new pro-Soviet Mongolian client state. By 1924, it had become the Mongolian People's Republic.

In 1924, Soviet Foreign Minister Georgy Chicherin began to open formal relations between his country and China. This would lead to the Soviets backing the Kuomintang, who were working in conjunction with the Mao Tse Tung lead communists. When Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek abruptly dismissed his Soviet advisers and imposed restrictions on CCP participation in the government in 1926, the Soviets decided to back Mao, leading to the horrific Chinese Civil War. 

During World War II, the Soviet Union backed the communist side in China, but they had more than they could handle in their own country. After the war, the Soviets provided the last bit of aid to Mao and his army to finally end the civil war in late 1949, early 1950. This was one of the first victories of communism, led by the Soviet Union.

Between 1950 and 1960, the bond between China and the Soviet Union went from a father-and-son relationship to an antagonistic one bordering on war. When Stalin was alive, the bond between the two countries was strong as Mao and the Soviet leader had similar ideas about Marxism–Leninism and the way to control their respective countries, especially the use of violence. With Stalin’s death, things began to sour quickly. The turning point was Khrushchev's Secret Speech at the 20th Party Congress on February 25, 1956, where he denounced Stalin's purges and ushered in a less repressive era in the Soviet Union. Mao was reportedly furious when he found out what Khrushchev had said.

Another difference between the two sides was that China took a belligerent stance towards the Western world and publicly rejected the Soviet Union's policy of peaceful coexistence between the Western Bloc and Eastern Bloc. Also, the Soviet Union was beginning to soften relationships with India, a country that had disputes with China regarding several border areas. The Sino-Indian border dispute is an ongoing territorial dispute over the sovereignty of two relatively large and several smaller, separated pieces of territory between China and India. The Soviets wanted to bring India over to the side of communism and socialism, while China wanted to ostracize their neighbor.

By 1958, Chinese domestic politics developed an anti-Soviet tone from the ideological disagreement over de-Stalinization and the radicalization that preceded the Great Leap Forward. In 1962, the Sino-Indian War broke out. As the Sino-Soviet split deepened, the Soviet Union made a major effort to support India, especially with the sale of advanced MiG fighter aircraft. Simultaneously, the United States and the United Kingdom refused to sell advanced weaponry to India, further compelling it to turn to the Soviets for military aid.

Another country that the Soviets were having trouble with was Albania. Their leader, Enver Hoxha, refused to support reforms against Stalin's legacy. Khrushchev, in 1960, withdrew support from Albania. This would give China another chance to increase its influence within the communist world by replacing the aid from the USSR with its own. 

When the Soviets shot down Gary Powers U2 plane, Mao expected a sharp reaction from them, which did not occur. Furthermore, at the 1960 International Meeting of Communist and Workers Parties. Mao and Khrushchev each other’s interpretations of Marxism-Leninism as the wrong road to world socialism in the USSR and in China. Mao argued that Khrushchev's emphases on consumer goods and material plenty would make the Soviets ideologically soft and un-revolutionary, to which Khrushchev replied: "If we could promise the people nothing, except revolution, they would scratch their heads and say: 'Isn't it better to have good goulash?”

In 1966, the Chinese revisited the national matter of the Sino-Soviet border, which we talked about, imposed upon the Qing dynasty by way of unequal treaties that annexed Chinese territory to the Russian Empire. This would lead to one of the most dangerous moments in world history. Soviet Armed Forces had stationed six divisions of soldiers in Outer Mongolia and 16 divisions, 1,200 airplanes, and 120 medium-range missiles at the Sino-Soviet border to confront 47 light divisions of the Chinese Army. By March 1969, the border confrontations escalated, including fighting at the Ussuri River, the Zhenbao Island incident, and Tielieketi. Things continued to be tense between the two countries until the death of Mao in 1976.

There was still one more tense standoff between the two nations, and that involved the Sino-Vietnamese War of 1978-79. The Soviets supplied military weapons to the Vietnamese, which irked the Chinese. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the Chinese decided to halt reconciliation talks in response. 

In the 1980s, the relationship between the two countries improved dramatically. Sino-Soviet relations were finally normalized after Mikhail Gorbachev visited China in 1989 and shook Deng Xiaoping’s hand. The renewed demarcation of the border between the two countries was agreed upon 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. 

The relationship between the two countries has ebbed and flowed under Putin and Xi Jinping, but it improved dramatically when the US put sanctions on Russia following its annexation of Crimea in 2014. 

Well, I'm going to end things here as we are now leaving the historical relationship and entering current events. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Join me next time when I look back at the entirety of Russian and Soviet history to determine the most important turning point moments that changed the trajectory of the country and its people.

So, until next time, Dasvidania eh Spasiba za Vinyamineya.