2003 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

Reevaluation of Sino-Soviet Confrontation

Research Project

Project/Area Number	13620083
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Section	一般
Research Field	Politics
Research Institution	The University of Tokyo
Principal Investigator	ISHII Akira The University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Arts and Science, Professor, 大学院・総合文化研究科, 教授 (10012460)
Project Period (FY)	2001 – 2003
Keywords	Mao Tsetung / Sino-Soviet Alliance / Sino-Soviet Political / Negotiation Teng Xiaoping
Research Abstract	I have look back over the cycle of conflict between China and former Soviet Union. after progressing from friendship to passive resistance by the Chinese, then confrontations, and finally. back to reconciliation. Mao Tsetung, the main architect of the PRC( People's Republic of China ), declared a completely pro-Soviet policy on Jury 1, 1949, and visited the Soviet Union himself in December of the same year. On February 14, 1950, the Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance Treaty was signed between two countries. However, the Sino-Soviet Alliance did not last long. The rift gradually widened, and the Soviets unilaterally notified China on June 20, 1959 of the abandonment of the agreement regarding new military technology, refusing to supply new armaments, such as a prototype of an atomic bomb. On March 2 and again on March 15, 1969, skirmishes broke out between border patrols on Chenbaodao Island in the Ussuri River, resulting in hundreds of casualties on both sides. The first sign of rapprochement came in 1979 after years of antagonism. On April 3 of that year, then Foreign Minister Huang Hua invited Russian Ambassador Shichelbakov and proposed to open negotiations to clean up unresolved disputes between the two countries, and improve relations. Sino-Soviet Political Negotiation stopped because of the Soviet Invasion into Afganistan in the end of the year 1979. But under Teng Xiaoping's strong political leadership rapprochement process was accelerated. We are able to know the details of this process by the Memoirs of the former Foreign Minister Chen Chishen.