Chinese - Soviet Relations

During the Sino-Japanese war of 1937-1945, the Chinese people suffered great degradation at the hands of the Japanese. The spectacle of China's debasement as well as the very real prospect of the restoration of alien rule incensed nationalist passions throughout China. As the military, economic, and political crises deepened, three different Chinese regimes emerged--the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Chinese Nationalist Party or Kuomintang (KMT), and the pro-Japanese government headed by Wang Jingwei--all competing for nationalist legitimacy. Through an exhaustive and meticulous examination of available resources, John Garver here illuminates the complicated relationship between these different variants in Chinese nationalism and the Soviet Union during this period. In doing so, Garver elucidates the diplomacy of Chiang Kai-shek and the Chinese Nationalists, the inner history of Chinese Communist relations with the Soviet Union, and the intersection of these two themes within the larger context of international relations in East Asia and the world.

During the Soviet period the USSR conducted diplomatic relations with incumbent regimes while simultaneously cultivating and manipulating communist movements in those same countries. The Chinese case offers a particularly interesting example of this dual policy, for when the Chinese Communists came to power in 1949, their discovery of the nature of Moscow's imperial designs on Chinese territory sowed distrust between the two revolutionary powers and paved the way to the Sino-Soviet split.

Drawing on newly available documents from archives in China, Taiwan, Russia, and Japan, this study examines secret agreements signed by Moscow and the Peking government in 1924 and confirmed by a Soviet-Japanese convention in 1925. These agreements essentially allowed the Bolsheviks to reclaim most of tsarist Russia's concessions and privileges in China, including not only Imperial properties but also Outer Mongolia, the Chinese Eastern Railway, the Boxer Indemnity, and the right of extraterritoriality. Each of these topics is analyzed in this volume, and translations of the secret protocols themselves are included in a documentary appendix. Additional chapters discuss Sino-Soviet diplomacy and the parallel history of Soviet relations with the Chinese Communist Party as well as the origins and purpose of the United Front policy.

Praise for earlier editions: "Presenting an admirably cohesive picture of China's 'shifting role in an increasingly interdependent & interactive world' ... the book's analyses are fresh & relevant, particularly to China's post-Tiananmen stressed external relations." Perspectives on Political Science "Should be the premier text in the field of Chinese foreign policy." June Teufel Dreyer University of Miami