Original artwork by Tse Yuet Ching.

12:06 am | 25. July 2019

Looking Back on Strategic Partnership

As China celebrates the 70th anniversary of relations with Russia and “unprecedented” friendship, with a possible alliance in the future, the record in the Chinese press tells a more complex story of brotherhood, disillusionment and conflict.

By Qian Gang

During a three-day visit to Moscow in June, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin signed an agreement elevating bilateral relations to what both sides called — in an apparent nod to the prevailing political discourse of the Chinese Communist Party — “a comprehensive strategic Sino-Russian cooperation partnership for the new era.”

The visit was, by all accounts, a warm one. A package of trade deals were signed. A pair of pandas took up residence at the Moscow Zoo. General Secretary Xi noted that he had met with Putin on 30 occasions already as China’s top leader, and he referred to the Russian president as “my best friend and colleague.” For his part, Putin said the relationship had reached “an unprecedented level.”

QUICK TAKE

Warming Up: The relationship between China and Russia, celebrating its 70th anniversary this year, is growing warmer and warmer, and there is some speculation from Russian sources (shared in Chinese) that the military relationship could be upgraded to an "alliance" in 2021, when the 2001 Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Relations expires.
Same Same: China's Xi Jinping has said in exchanges with Russia's Vladimir Putin that he and Putin share "the same character."
Speed Bumps: Despite the developing romance, there could be tension ahead as China continues to make inroads into Central Asia, with an economy six times the size of Russia's.
Hello Lenin: While the Russian revolutionary is no longer a factor in contemporary politics in the Russian Federation, the Chinese Communist Party continues to look for Lenin, and validation of its own legitimacy, in the ghosts of Russia's Soviet past.

While the Russian Federation traces its origins to the dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 26, 1991, the clock of bilateral relations has kept on running for China, which marks this year as the 70th anniversary of Sino-Russian relations, stretching back to the formal establishment of diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and the newly founded People’s Republic of China on October 2, 1949.

The ups and downs of this 70-year stretch of history, however, can be difficult to face. When China Daily, published by the Information Office of the State Council, presented its “chronology of major moments” in Sino-Russian relations during Xi Jinping’s Moscow visit, the chronology blanked out a half century of PRC history. The establishment of relations in 1949 was followed immediately by the signing of a treaty of friendship on July 16, 2001. (We've included a screenshot of this coverage below.)

Gaps and omissions like this one can often tell us a great deal about how the Chinese Communist Party understands questions of history – and how these reflect on the always crucial question of legitimacy. And they can give us a clearer historical view of a bilateral relationship that seems to be rapidly warming toward an alliance (mentioned by Russian sources, with Chinese media following suit), something that could have profound global implications.

If we look back on this 70-year history of friendship, following the traces in official Chinese media coverage, what can we see? And what does this history tell us about the foundations of this “comprehensive strategic cooperation partnership” as understood on the Chinese side?

Five Themes, One Thread

Walking back through the pages of the Chinese Communist Party’s official People’s Daily newspaper, we can identify five clear themes defining various phases in the Sino-Russian relationship, changing as the relationship changed. The five main themes, in the order they emerge in the history of the Sino-Russian relationship, are: “Soviet Big Brother” (苏联老大哥); “Khrushchev Revisionism” (赫鲁晓夫修正主义), “Social Imperialism” (社会帝国主义); “reform and new ideas” (改革与新思维); and finally “strategic cooperation partner” (战略协作伙伴). This last theme brings us up to the present day — what Xi and Putin referred to in their agreement as the “new era.

But we also find one core concept threaded through the entire 70-year history of the relationship — and that is the concept of Leninism.

Half century missing? A timeline of the Sino-Russia relationship at the official China Daily omits five decades on key developments. Screenshot from Chinadaily.com.

Leninism is something I won't deal with in detail here. The cores of Leninism, violent revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat, have already been thoroughly renounced in Russia. But in China, of course, the opposite is true. Leninism remains at the heart of the political legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party, and of its system marrying authoritarian rule and the market economy.

And this is why China is so insistent on calculating the history of bilateral relations the way it does. With this in mind, let's move on to our five themes.

Love Letters to “Big Brother”

“Big brother” is an old concept in China, a mark of respect. In Chinese, it does not convey, even in the context of China’s relationship with the Soviet Union, the image found in George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.

References to our “Soviet Big Brother” are something Chinese of my generation, those especially born in the 1940s and 1950s, will associate with their childhood, even with a sense of nostalgia. Related language at the time included “Stalin,” “unconditional support” (一边倒), “the USSR as the head” (以苏联为首) and “the Soviet Union’s today is our tomorrow” (苏联的今天是我们的明天).

The phrase “Soviet Big Brother” first appeared sometime before 1949.

On February 14, 1950, the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China signed the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance (中苏友好同盟互助条约). It was Saint Valentine’s Day, and love was in the air.

Reporting the news of the treaty, the People’s Daily ran a photo of Stalin alongside a photo of Mao Zedong.

Stalin and Mao appear side-by-side on the front page of the People's Daily as it announces the Treaty of Friendship.

“We thank big brother, we study from big brother,” was a slogan commonly seen at the time. Another slogan was, “The Soviet Union’s today is our tomorrow.” Both appeared frequently in the newspapers.

In the very first edition of the People’s Liberation Army Daily (解放军报), published by the CCP’s Central Military Commission, the influence of the Soviet Union is clearly in evidence. An image at the top of the front page is of a Chinese soldier playing the accordion, an instrument introduced from Russia. Further down on the page, a soldier is pictured wearing a Soviet-style beret.

Shen Zhihua’s (沈志华) Outline of the History of Sino-Soviet Relations (中苏关系史纲) is essential reading for anyone delving into the history of the Sino-Russian relationship. Shen’s book makes clear that through the 1950s the Soviet Union rendered a great deal of assistance to China. This included military support for the Korean War, for economic recovery and large-scale economic development, and for scientific research and nuclear weapons development.

A book published in the 1950s is called "Soviet Big Brother." Not the centrality of the Russian figure, teaching his little brothers.

China received substantial assistance in the form of equipment, aid and scientific and technical materials. In the twelve years from 1949, some 18,000 Soviet experts were sent to China. From 1953 to 1957, corresponding to China’s First Five-Year Plan, it was the recipient of roughly half of the total foreign aid the Soviet Union provided to other socialist countries. It is fair to say, in fact, that it was thanks only to the assistance of the Soviet Union that the First Five-Year Plan was achieved at all.

But even at this time, the bilateral relationship was not all about brotherly love and friendship. From early on there was disagreement, suspicion and the contesting of respective interests.

The Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance came only with a great deal of arm wrestling between Stalin and Mao Zedong. Mao is said to have referred to his gaining of concessions from Stalin over the North Manchuria Railway and Port Arthur (present-day Dalian) in China’s northeast as “taking food straight from the tiger’s mouth” (虎口夺食).

The front page of thee first edition of the People’s Liberation Army Daily (解放军报) shows strong Russian influence, including this image of a soldier with a Soviet-style beret.

But China also paid a steep price for Soviet assistance. Much of this cost came in human lives as the country was thrown into the conflict on the Korean Peninsula, in which nearly 200,000 Chinese lives were lost. The war itself was part of Stalin's grand strategy to lure the United States into war with China, and in this way to buy time to consolidate strength in the Soviet bloc against a possible future third world war.

The honeymoon period in Sino-Soviet relations lasted just five years, from 1954 to 1958. Khrushchev’s assistance to China rose significantly during this period, and included assistance for China’s nuclear program. This of course was not only a matter of goodwill. Each warming of relations, and each wave of generosity, corresponded to resistance Khrushchev faced within the socialist camp and within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In such times, China’s support was beneficial, and support came with a price.

In the July 5, 1957, edition of the People’s Daily we can find an important clue to the history unfolding at the time, with huge implications for the Soviet relationship with China.

The headline of the July 5 article reads, “Resolution from the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party on the Malenkov, Kaganovich and Molotov Anti-Party Clique.” The article refers to the outcome of the failed ouster of Khruschev by hard-liners within the Communist Party who opposed his policy of de-Stalinization. The drama had unfolded through June, and China was rewarded for its support of Khrushchev by the relaxation of the Soviet Union’s guarded attitude toward sharing its nuclear know-how.

But even at this time, the bilateral relationship was not all about brotherly love and friendship.

Mao Zedong acted quickly in Khruschev’s moment of need, publishing the full text of Khruschev’s resolution in the People’s Daily. Mao had, as we say in Chinese, delivered coal in the dead of winter. Khrushchev returned the favor by lending support to China’s nuclear program. The October after the coup attempt, China and the Soviet Union signed a protocol on nuclear power and “new weaponry.” This was happening even as US-Soviet negotiations over a possible agreement on nuclear disarmament were moving forward in the summer of 1957.

The Sino-Soviet friendship was absolutely critical to China’s future at this juncture, and the sense of friendship among Russians and Chinese was deeply felt. Soviet culture poured into China, impacting a whole generation of Chinese. As Mao Zedong moved to purge so-called “rightists” in 1957, this included those who had dared criticize “Soviet Big Brother,” and a charge leveled at the time was “attacking the Soviet Union” (攻击苏联). The Soviet Union was acknowledged as having a leading role in the relationship, and this was reflected in the phrase “with the Soviet Union as the head” (以苏联为首), which often appeared in the news pages.

Before long, however, Mao grew impatient with his role as the little brother. He yearned to find his own model for economic development that could break free of the Russian model suggested by Khrushchev and Malenkov, with its stress on heavy industry.

By the second half of 1958, the brothers were growing apart. The honeymoon was coming to an end.

“Khrushchev’s Revisionism” and China’s Homegrown Tragedy

The word “revisionism,” or xiuzheng zhuyi (修正主义), has a complex past. In the context of the international communist movement, it refers first to the efforts of German political theorist Eduard Bernstein and others to revise Marxist doctrine and some of its core ideas. After 1949, Chinese and Soviet communists alike criticized the “revisionism” of Earl Russell Browder, the leader of the Communist Party USA, and the “revisionism” of Josip Tito in Yugoslavia. One Christmas Day in 1956, the People’s Daily offered a definition of revisionism in a page-six article: “Revisionism is a philosophy held by reformists within the workers movement,” it said. In this case, being a reformist meant favoring gradual change over revolution.

By the 1960s, it was Khrushchev’s turn to become a revisionist in the eyes of the Chinese Communist Party -- and this marked the crucial next phase in the China-Russia relationship.

Even during the honeymoon phase, Khrushchev and Mao constantly tested one another. Mao excelled at stirring up trouble and manufacturing tension. Before Mao shelled the Kinmen Islands during the 1958 Taiwan Strait Crisis, he not only failed to inform Khrushchev but fostered the impression that this had been a strategy cooked up together with the Soviet Union. Each time Mao created drama that drew in the United States and the Soviet Union, Khrushchev had no choice but to voice his support for China.

The basic lines of “Khrushchev revisionism” have been referred to in the West as “Khrushchevism” (赫鲁晓夫主义) — a reckoning of the tyranny of Stalin, an easing of tense relations with the West, and opposition to violent revolution in favor of “peaceful coexistence” (和平共处) or “peaceful competition” (和平竞赛).

While Khrushchev's ideas were widely circulated in China, for example his collection of speeches called A World Without Weapons: A World Without War, they were a source of consternation for Mao Zedong. In the end, though, it was China’s own domestic politics, and not Khrushchev’s ideas directly, that lit the fuse on the bilateral relationship.

In 1958, Mao Zedong launched the folly of the Great Leap Forward (大跃进) and the people’s communes (人民公社) with a mind to militarizing Chinese society to achieve rapid economic progress. The result was the tragedy of the Great Chinese Famine. The Great Leap Forward was criticized within the Chinese Communist Party by the likes of Peng Dehuai (彭德怀), China’s defense minister, and criticism came internationally from the Soviet Union.

As the criticism mounted at home and abroad in 1959, Mao Zedong found the situation unbearable.

In the fall of 1962, as Mao faced increasing pushback at home over his failed policies and talk of correcting the errors of the left, he struck back against his political opponents under the auspices of class struggle. In the realm of international affairs, he launched a relentless critique of "revisionism" that was essentially all about the preservation and consolidation of his own personal power.

Mao was a master at setting the agenda to his advantage. "Revisionism" became the hot button of political struggle he used to clear away his opponents and discredit his critics.

In May 1963, Mao held a meeting of the Standing Committee of the Central Committee at which the theme was “opposing revisionism and preventing revisionism." On October 5, 1963, the abbreviated term “anti-revisionism,” or fanxiu (反修), appeared for the first time in the People’s Daily. The related term “preventing revisionism” (防修) appeared for the first time on February 13, 1964.

Between September 6, 1963, and July 14, 1974, the People’s Daily and Red Flag magazine jointly ran nine official commentaries criticizing the “revisionism” of the Soviet Union. Collectively, these were called the “Nine Critiques” (九评). The last two of these criticized Khrushchev by name in headlines: “The Proletarian Revolution and the Revisionism of Khrushchev"; and “Concerning the False Communism of Khrushchev and its Historical Lessons."

The casual European reader might think of nine commentaries as a casual thing. But that would be a mistake. In the Chinese political context, discourse is weaponized. It is regarded -- particularly if it comes from core media -- as something serious, and as such it can have serious consequences. This is something we might bear close in mind, in fact, concerning the recent nine-part commentary series issues by the People's Daily on the trade war with the United States.