In August-October 1969, for China’s leader Mao Zedong, the potential threat of war with the Soviet Union produced a major shift in his view regarding China’s security: that the Soviet Union, not the United States, posed the immediate danger to China. Furthermore, until then, Mao believed that the United States and the Soviet Union were working together to destroy China. Mao soon heeded his military’s counsel that political, ideological, and military competition between the Americans and Soviets prevented them from aligning their forces against China.
By 1969, Mao’s hard-line Marxist views had changed dramatically, this shift also being influenced by the negative effects of China’s long period of diplomatic isolation from the international community. Mao became convinced that China’s security was best served with an alliance of convenience with the United States, which he saw as the lesser danger. Mao remarked that it was better “to ally with the enemy far away … in order to fight the enemy who is at the gate”. Furthermore, in 1968, the United States decision to withdraw its forces from the Vietnam War was received positively by the Chinese government.
In the midst of the Sino-Soviet split, the United States also wanted to establish diplomatic ties with China, in order to play the two communist giants against each other. The United States would thereby weaken communism generally, and also undermine the ambitions of its rival, the Soviet Union. Then in 1969, the government of newly elected U.S. President Richard Nixon secretly prepared to foster rapprochement with China. During the course of the year, the United States issued a number of diplomatic feelers, e.g. that the U.S. government would lift trade and travel restrictions to China; that the United States encouraged communication with China; and that China emerging from isolation would benefit Asia and the world community.
The breakthrough came from an unlikely source: at an international table tennis competition in Japan in April 1971, American and Chinese athletes developed a bond of friendship, which led to the U.S. table tennis players visiting China (the first Americans to do so under communist rule) that same month, on the invitation of the Chinese government. This series of events, called the “ping-pong diplomacy”, paved the way for opening secret diplomatic-level communications between the two countries, leading to Henry Kissinger, U.S. National Security Adviser, making two trips (the first being secret) to China in 1971, where he met with Premier Zhou Enlai. In these meetings, Kissinger gave the following assurances: that the United States would work for China’s entry to the United Nations (China was admitted to the UN in October 1971, replacing the Republic of China (Taiwan), which was expelled); that the United States would provide China with American-Soviet dealings; and that U.S. forces gradually would be withdrawn from the Vietnam War.
Kissinger’s trips set the stage for President Nixon’s monumental visit to China in February 1972, which together with the announcement of the trip in July 1971, set shock waves around the world. Closer United States-China relations soon developed, particularly after Mao’s death in September 1976 and the emergence of reformist Deng Xiaoping as the top Chinese leader. Full diplomatic relations between the two countries were established in January 1979. Earlier in 1973, the United States assured Mao of direct American support if the Soviet Union attacked China.
(Taken from Sino-Soviet Border Conflict – Wars of the 20th Century – Twenty Wars in Asia)
The United States-China rapprochement caused great concern for the Soviet Union. Then on the invitation of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, President Nixon visited Moscow in May 1972 (three months after visiting China), where the two sides signed a number of nuclear weapons control agreements, leading to a period of improved relations between the two countries.
Aftermath The threat of a Soviet-Chinese general war abated following the informal meeting between Premiers Kosygin and Zhou in September 1969. However, tensions remained high in the immediate aftermath, and through the 1970s and much of the 1980s. Even in 1990, when the two countries had moved forward toward achieving a political and territorial resolution, their shared border continued to be heavily militarized: the Soviets had 700,000 troops, or ¼ of its ground forces, as well as ⅓ of its air force, and ⅓ of its navy, while the Chinese had 1 million troops.
Furthermore, talks to achieve a definitive border treaty failed to make progress. Both China and the Soviet Union shared the credit in North Vietnam’s victory over South Vietnam in April 1975, but the reunified Vietnam soon came under the Soviet sphere of influence, straining Sino-Vietnamese relations. Then in February-March 1979, during the brief war between Vietnam and China (Sino-Vietnamese War, separate article), tensions spiked along the Chinese-Soviet border. The Soviet Union, apart from raising diplomatic protests, did not intervene militarily for Vietnam, despite a 1978 military agreement between Vietnam and the Soviet Union.
In December 1979, the Soviet Union launched an invasion of Afghanistan, and subsequently occupied the country for nearly a decade (until February 1989), which further exacerbated Soviet-Chinese relations, as China accused the Soviets of planning to encircle China. The Soviet-Chinese ideological clash also extended to various conflicts in Africa, e.g. Rhodesian Bush War, Angolan Civil War, Ogaden War, etc.
By the early 1980s, China had effectively abandoned Marxism-Leninism and the communist tenets of class warfare and world revolution, and had adopted a mixed, semi-capitalist economy. China’s relations with the West also improved. And with these reforms de-emphasizing communism as paramount in China’s foreign policy, Chinese-Soviet tensions eased. In 1982, with Brezhnev calling for improved ties and the Chinese government responding favorably, vice-ministerial levels and trade relations were restored between the two countries.
In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev, the new Soviet leader, started to implement major political, social, and economic reforms in the Soviet Union, which soon led to profound and dramatic national, regional and international political and security consequences. By 1989, Eastern Bloc countries had discarded socialism and state-controlled economies, and were adopting Western-style democracy and free market economies. By the end of 1991, the Soviet Union disintegrated, and its Cold War rivalry with the United States ended.
Gorbachev also initiated reconciliation with China, which the latter received favorably. Relations between the two countries improved considerably, particularly after the Soviet Union removed what the Chinese government called the “three obstacles” to Chinese-Soviet relations: Soviet forces were withdrawn from Afghanistan; the Soviet Union ended its support for Vietnam’s occupation of Cambodia; and the Soviet Union and China signed an agreement which reduced their forces at the border.
At the same time, border talks between the two countries accelerated toward the end of the 1980s and into the early 1990s. China promised to honor the 19th century treaties, and negotiations focused only on the currently disputed areas comprising some 35,000 square kilometers.
In May 1991, China and the Soviet Union signed a final border agreement, which delineated much of the frontier along the eastern region. The border agreement gave China a net territorial gain of 720 square kilometers. The thalweg principle, or the median line of a water channel, was used to set the border line. As a result, in the Argun River where 413 disputed islands were located, China gained 209 islands, while Russia retained 204. In the Amur River where 1,680 disputed islands were located, China gained 902 islands while Russia retained 708. In the Ussuri River where 320 disputed islands were located, China gained 153 islands while Russia retained 167. Border lines also were set along Lake Khanka and the Granitnaya and Tumen rivers. In October 2003, a supplementary border agreement was signed, which resolved ownership of three other islands (which were not covered in the 1991 agreement). Of these islands, Damansky/Zhenbao Island, the site of the 1969 clashes, was awarded to China.
Following the Soviet Union’s dissolution in 1991, three former Soviet states in Central Asia, Kazakhstan Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, became independent countries, and also inherited from Russia the disputed western border with China. Negotiations were held to resolve the issue. In 1994, in the Kazakhstan-China border agreement, of the 944 square kilometers of disputed territory, China gained 406 square kilometers (43%), while Kazakhstan retained 538 square kilometers (57%). In Tajikistan, where much of the former Soviet-Chinese disputed border was located, a border agreement with China was signed in 2002; 1,000 square kilometers of territory in the Pamir mountain region was transferred to China, while 28,000 square kilometers were retained by Tajikistan. In 2004, in the China- Kyrgyzstan border treaty, China gained 900 square kilometers in the Uzengi-Kuush mountain area, or some 32% of the disputed area.