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Prior to the 1600s China and Russia were on opposite ends of Siberia, which was populated by independent nomads. By about 1640 Russian settlers had conquered most of Siberia and founded settlements in the Amur River basin. From 1652 to 1689, China's armies drove the Russian settlers out, but after 1689 China and Russia made peace and established trade agreements. By the mid-1800s China's economy and military lagged far behind the colonial powers, so it signed unequal treaties with Western countries such as Russia, through which Russia annexed the Amur basin and Vladivostok. The Russian Empire and other powers exacted many other concessions from China, among which were indemnities for anti-Western riots, control over China's tariffs, and extraterritorial agreements including legal immunity for foreigners and foreign businesses. Many Chinese people felt humiliated by China's submission to these foreign interests, and this contributed to widespread hostility towards the emperor of China. In 1911 public anger led to a revolution, which marked the beginning of the Republic of China. However, China's new regime (known as the Beiyang government) was forced to sign further unequal treaties with Western countries, including Russia. In October 1917, the capital city of Russia 'Petrograd' (St. Petersburg) was taken over by a communist group called the Bolsheviks, in a coup known as the October Revolution. This caused a civil war in Russia between the Bolshevik Red Army and the anti-communist White forces. China's Beiyang government sided with the Whites, and along with most of the colonial powers, sent troops to fight against the Reds. In 1922 the Reds won the civil war and established a new country: the Soviet Union, or Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). From 1923 onward the USSR provided aid and support to the Kuomintang, a Chinese faction opposed to the Beiyang government. In alliance with the small Communist Party of China (CPC), the Kuomintang seized power in 1928 and the two countries established diplomatic ties. Sino-Soviet relations remained fractious, and they fought two wars in the next ten years. Nevertheless, the USSR under Joseph Stalin supported Chiang Kai-Shek's Kuomintang government against Imperial Japan. Stalin told the CPC's leader Mao Zedong to support China's Kuomintang regime. Mao attacked the Kuomintang anyway, but the CPC failed to overthrow Chiang's Nationalist government. In 1937 the Kuomintang and the CPC formed a new alliance to oppose the Japanese invasion of China, but they resumed fighting each other shortly after their victory in 1945. Despite lacking substantial Soviet support, in 1949 the CPC won the Chinese Civil War and established the People's Republic of China, which made an alliance with the USSR. Mao became the PRC's first leader. Mao's most radical supporters, who became known as 'the Gang of Four', gradually eliminated most of Mao's rivals throughout his twenty-seven years in power. Ideological tension between the two countries emerged after Stalin's death in 1953. Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin's crimes in 1956, and the two regimes started to criticise each other. At first the criticism was indirect and muted, but in 1961 Mao accused the Soviet leadership of revisionism and the alliance ended. The two countries competed for control over foreign communist states and political movements, and in many countries there were two rival communist parties that concentrated their fire on each other. In 1969 there was a brief border war between the two countries, which stopped just short of nuclear war. Khrushchev was replaced by Leonid Brezhnev in the 1960s, and during Brezhnev's rule the USSR abandoned many of the reforms that Mao had objected to. Mao Zedong died in 1976, and the Gang of Four lost power in 1978. After a period of instability, Deng Xiaoping became the new leader of China. Thereafter the philosophical difference between the two countries lessened somewhat, because China's new leadership abandoned anti-revisionism. China's internal reforms did not bring an immediate end to conflict with the USSR. In 1979 China invaded Vietnam, which was an ally of the USSR. China also sent aid to the anti-Soviet Mujehadeen in the USSR's war in Afghanistan. In 1982 Brezhnev made a speech offering reconciliation with the PRC, and Deng agreed to restore diplomatic relations. In 1985, when Mikhail Gorbachev became President of the USSR, he reduced the Soviet garrisons at the Sino-Soviet border and in Mongolia, resumed trade, and dropped the border-demarcation matter which had caused the war between the two nations sixteen years prior. In 1989 he withdrew Soviet support from the communist government of Afghanistan. Sino-Russian rapprochement accelerated after the USSR was superseded by the Russian Federation in 1991, and relations between China and Russia are currently close and cordial. They maintain a strong geopolitical and regional alliance, and significant levels of trade. ==First contact== Lying at opposite ends of Eurasia, the two countries had little contact before about 1640.〔The section down to the Treaty of Nerchinsk is largely a summary of G. Patrick March, 'Eastern Destiny: Russia in Asia and the North Pacific, 1996, who in turn summarizes Mark Mancall, Russia and China: Their Diplomatic Relations to 1728,1971.〕 Both had to deal with the steppe nomads, Russia from the south and China from the northwest. Both were ruled by the Mongols (Golden Horde in Russia (1240–1480), and Yuan dynasty in China (1271–1368)), but this led to little contact. Russia became a northern neighbor of China when in 1582–1643 Russian adventurers made themselves masters of the Siberian forests. There were three points of contact: 1) south to the Amur River basin (early), 2) east along the southern edge of Siberia toward Peking (the main axis) and 3) in Turkestan (late). The Oirats transmitted some garbled and incorrect descriptions of China to the Russians in 1614, the name "Taibykankan" was used to refer to the Wanli Emperor by the Oirats. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「History of Sino-Russian relations」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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