Sino-Russian relations since 1991
 |
|
 Russia |
 China |
|---|---|
Diplomatic relations between the People's Republic of China and the Russian Federation dramatically improved after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the establishment of the Russian Federation in 1991. American scholar Joseph Nye argues:
The two countries share a long land border which was demarcated in 1991, and they signed a Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation in 2001. On the eve of a 2013 state visit to Moscow by Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin remarked that the two nations were forging a special relationship.
Leaders of the People's Republic of China and the Russian Federation since 1991.
China and the USSR were at sword's point after the Sino-Soviet split in 1961. They were competing for control of the worldwide Communist movement. There was a serious possibility of a major war in the early 1960s; a brief border war took place in 1969. This enmity began to lessen after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, but relations were poor until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
On December 23, 1992, Russian President Boris Yeltsin made his first official visit to China.
In December 1998, at the end of Prime Minister Li Peng’s visit to Moscow, Russia and China issued a joint communique pledging to build an ‘equal and reliable partnership’. This reinforced the Sino-Russian views that the United States was their main competitor in the global political scene.
In 2001, the close relations between the two countries were formalized with the Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation, a twenty-year strategic, economic, and – controversially and arguably – an implicit military treaty. A month before the treaty was signed, the two countries joined with junior partners Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). The organization is expected to counter the growing influence of the United States military outreach program in Central Asia. The PRC is currently a key purchaser and licensee of Russian military equipment, some of which has been instrumental in the modernization of the People's Liberation Army. The PRC is also main beneficiary of the Russian Eastern Siberia – Pacific Ocean oil pipeline.
...
Wikipedia