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The Breakdown of State Relations and the Sino-Soviet Military Confrontation, 1966–1973

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A Short History of Sino-Soviet Relations, 1917–1991

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Abstract

This chapter focuses on the deterioration of Sino-Soviet state-to-state relations from 1966 to 1973. The Cultural Revolution had a strong anti-Soviet tone, and the Sino-Soviet border clashes escalated. During the period, China made a futile effort to bring about a split in the Soviet–East European bloc. In March 1969, there was bloodshed when Chinese and Soviet troops clashed on Zhenbao and, as blood was shed, antagonism and military confrontation characterized the Sino-Soviet state-to-state relationship. The Sino-Soviet alliance had become completely bankrupt. This prompted Mao to attempt a new foreign and defense policy. In 1973, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) changed its foreign and defense policy from an “alliance with the Soviet Union to oppose the United States” to “aligning with the United States to oppose the Soviet Union.”

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Radchenko, Two Suns in the Heavens, p. 171.

  2. 2.

    CIA Intelligence Report, “The Sino-Soviet Struggle in the World Communist Movement Since Khrushchev’s Fall,” Part III, September 1967, ESAU 36, pp. 26–27. http://www.foia.cia.gov/cpe.asp

  3. 3.

    Under strong Chinese pressure, the Japanese Communist Party (JCP) did not attend the Twenty-third CPSU Congress. The Party of Labor of Albania also refused to attend.

  4. 4.

    “Circular of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,” 16 May 1966. https://www.marxists.org/subject/china/documents/cpc/cc_gpcr.htm

  5. 5.

    Peking Review 9, no. 34 (19 August 1966): 4–8.

  6. 6.

    For a factual account of Sino-Soviet relations during the Cultural Revolution, see Jones and Siân Kevill, comps., China and the Soviet Union, 1949–84, pp. 73–86.

  7. 7.

    Peking Review 9, no. 52 (23 December 1966): 18–23.

  8. 8.

    To Advance Along the Road Opened Up by the October Socialist Revolution (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1967), pp. 13, 15.

  9. 9.

    For the Red Guard siege of the Soviet embassy, attacks on Soviet personnel in China, and Moscow’s responses, see Radchenko, Two Suns in the Heavens, pp. 177–98; For anti-Sovietism in China during the Cultural Revolution, based primarily on Chinese sources, see Li Mingjiang, Mao’s China and the Sino-Soviet Split: Ideological Dilemma (London: Routledge, 2012), pp. 136–50.

  10. 10.

    The struggle over the suspension of school for students in both countries occurred after the first Red Guard siege of the Soviet embassy in August 1966.

  11. 11.

    For details, see Radchenko, Two Suns in the Heavens, pp. 188–89; Li, Mao’s China and the Sino-Soviet Split, pp. 138–39.

  12. 12.

    Radchenko, Two Suns in the Heavens, pp. 188–89; Li, Mao’s China and the Sino-Soviet Split, pp. 139–40.

  13. 13.

    CIA Intelligence Report, “The Sino-Soviet Struggle in the World Communist Movement Since Khrushchev’s Fall,” Part I, September 1967, ESAU 34, pp. 46–47, CIA unclassified documents, https://archive.org/stream/ESAU-CIA/The%20Sino-Soviet%20Struggle%20in%20the%20World%20Communist%20Movement%20Since%20Khrushchev%27s%20Fall%20%28Part%201%29#mode/2up

  14. 14.

    Jones and Kevill, eds., China and the Soviet Union, pp. 81–82.

  15. 15.

    CIA Intelligence Report, “The Sino-Soviet Struggle in the World Communist Movement since Khrushchev’s Fall,” Part III, September 1967, ESAU 36, p. 90. CIA unclassified documents, https://archive.org/stream/ESAU-CIA/The%20Sino-Soviet%20Struggle%20in%20the%20World%20Communist%20Movement%20Since%20Khrushchev%27s%20Fall%20%28Part%203%29#mode/2up

  16. 16.

    For a recent study on the Interkit, see James Hershberg, Sergey Radchenko, Péter Vámos, and David Wolff, “The Interkit Story: A Window into the Final Decades of the Sino-Soviet Relationship,” CWIHP Working Paper, no. 63 (February 2011), pp. 8, 10, 11–12. The Interkit continued until 1986.

  17. 17.

    Radchenko, Two Suns in the Heavens, pp. 189–90.

  18. 18.

    Wang, “The Soviet Factor in Sino-American Normalization, 1969–1976.”

  19. 19.

    Elizabeth Wishnick, Mending Fences: The Evolution of Moscow’s China Policy from Brezhnev to Yeltsin (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001), p. 32.

  20. 20.

    For studies on the March 1969 Zhenbao Island incident, see Neville Maxwell, “The Chinese Account of the 1969 Fighting at Chenbao,” China Quarterly, no. 56 (Oct.–Dec. 1973), pp. 730–39; Lyle Goldstein, “Return to Zhenbao Island: Who Started Shooting and Why It Matters,” China Quarterly, no. 168 (Dec. 2001), pp. 985–97.

  21. 21.

    https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a083370.pdf

  22. 22.

    Mao first asked the four marshals to study international issues on 19 February 1969. In the afternoon of 1 March 1969, the marshals held their first seminar in the Zhongnanhai leadership compound.

  23. 23.

    “Report by Four Chinese Marshals, Chen Yi, Ye Jianying, Nie Rongzhen, and Xu Xiangqian, to the Central Committee, ‘Our Views about the Current Situation’ (Excerpt),” 17 September 1969, Wilson Center History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive. https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/117154.pdf?v=7ac377d7a2546d86b46f111693f4ea7b

  24. 24.

    Lin Biao, “Report to the Ninth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, delivered on 1 April and adopted on 14 April 1969. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/lin-biao/1969/04/01.htm

  25. 25.

    Mao Zedong, “Talk at the First Plenum of the Ninth Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party,” 28 April 1969. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-9/mswv9_83.htm

  26. 26.

    See Henry Kissinger, The White House Years (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979), p. 183. In the latter half of the year, the Western press also reported rumors of Soviet plans to strike at China’s nuclear base.

  27. 27.

    Xia, Negotiating with the Enemy, pp. 141–45.

  28. 28.

    Western media suspected that Kosygin planned to meet with ZhouEnlai at Ho Chi Minh’s funeral in early September 1969. But the Chinese delegation led by Zhou to express condolences arrived on 4 September and left the same day. Thus, Zhou intentionally avoided meeting with Kosygin in Hanoi. Chinese sources denied such speculation. After arriving in Hanoi on 6 September, through the Chinese embassy in Vietnam, Kosygin asked to meet with Zhou Enlai in Beijing on his way back to Moscow. However, Kosygin did not receive a Chinese invitation until he was already in Dushanbe, in the Tadzhikistan Republic of the USSR on 11 September.

  29. 29.

    Christian Ostermann, “New Evidence on the Sino-Soviet Border Dispute,” CWIHP Bulletin, Issue 6–7 (Winter 1995/1996), pp. 192–93.

  30. 30.

    Gao Wenqian, Zhou Enlai: The Last Perfect Revolutionary, tr. Peter Rand and Lawrence R. Sullivan (New York: Public Affairs, 2007), pp. 7–8.

  31. 31.

    Ostermann, “New Evidence on the Sino-Soviet Border Dispute,” p. 193.

  32. 32.

    For studies that analyze the relationship between the Sino-Soviet border clash and the Sino-American rapprochement, see Kuisong Yang, “The Sino-Soviet Border Clash of 1969: From Zhenbao Island to Sino-American Rapprochement,” Cold War History, vol. 1, no. 1 (August 2000), pp. 21–52; William Burr, “Sino-American Relations, 1969: Sino-Soviet Border Conflict and Steps Toward Rapprochement,” Cold War History, vol. 1, no. 3 (April 2001), pp. 73–112.

  33. 33.

    See Yafeng Xia, “Chinese Elite Politics and Sino-American Rapprochement, January 1969–February 1972,” Journal of Cold War Studies, vol. 8, no. 4 (Fall 2006), p. 8.

  34. 34.

    Xia, Negotiating with the Enemy, p. 159.

  35. 35.

    The Quadripartite Agreement on Berlin was signed on 3 September 1971 by the Soviet Union, the United States, Great Britain, and France. See Anatoly F. Dobrynin, In Confidence: Moscow’s Ambassador to America’s Six Cold War Presidents (1962–1986) (New York: Times Books, 1995), p. 233. For the significance of this agreement to the Soviet leadership, see Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), p. 44.

  36. 36.

    Mr. and Mrs. Strober’s interview with Winston Lord, in Deborah H. and Gerald S. Strober, The Nixon Presidency: An Oral History of the Era (Washington DC: Brassey’s, 2003), p. 130.

  37. 37.

    Nixon-Chou Talks (Soviet Union, 22 February 1972), p. 10, box 848, National Security Council File (cited hereafter as NSCF), Nixon Presidential Materials Project, National Archives (cited hereafter as NA).

  38. 38.

    Qiao (Guanhua)-Kissinger Talks (23 February 1972, 9:35 a.m. –12:34 p.m.), box 92, HAK Office Files, NSCF.

  39. 39.

    “Nixon’s Notes, 22 February 1972,” folder 1, box 7, President’s Personal Files, WHSF, Nixon Presidential Materials Project. On the previous day, Nixon and ZhouEnlai held one “plenary” session, which William Rogers and other State Department officials were permitted to attend. The private sessions included Kissinger, but not any State Department officials.

  40. 40.

    “The President Briefing Paper for the China Trip”—The Soviet Union, pp. 5, 7, folder 4, box 847, NSCF.

  41. 41.

    Nixon-Chou Talks (Soviet Union, 23 February 1972), pp. 21, 36–39, folder 6, box 848, NSCF.

  42. 42.

    Ibid., pp. 3, 20.

  43. 43.

    For a study of the US-China rapprochement, see Xia, Negotiating with the Enemy, esp. pp. 189–212.

  44. 44.

    For details, see Kuisong Yang and Yafeng Xia, “Vacillating between Revolution and Detente: Mao’s Changing Psyche and Policy toward the U.S., 1969–1976,” Diplomatic History, vol. 34, no. 2 (April 2010), pp. 395–423.

  45. 45.

    William Burr, ed., The Kissinger Transcripts: The Top Secret Talks with Beijing and Moscow (New York: New Press, 1998), pp. 83–101. In the published English minutes, which were supplied by the Chinese, there is no mention of “China,” but the word is in the Chinese record.

  46. 46.

    Gao, Zhou Enlai: The Last Perfect Revolutionary.

  47. 47.

    Burr, The Kissinger Transcripts, pp. 183–84.

  48. 48.

    Henry Kissinger, On China (New York: Penguin Press, 2011), p. 276.

  49. 49.

    Friedman, Shadow Cold War, p. 200.

  50. 50.

    Shen Zhihua and Zhang Yue’s interview with Wang Jinqing, 29 September 2000. Wang was a member of the Chinese border negotiating team with the Soviet Union in the 1970s, and later Chinese ambassador to the Soviet Union.

  51. 51.

    Kissinger, On China, p. 277.

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  1. World History Institute, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China

    Danhui Li

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  1. East China Normal University, Shanghai, China

    Zhihua Shen

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Li, D. (2020). The Breakdown of State Relations and the Sino-Soviet Military Confrontation, 1966–1973. In: Shen, Z. (eds) A Short History of Sino-Soviet Relations, 1917–1991. China Connections. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-8641-1_19

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