Russia-China Relations: the Bear and the Dragon

Russia-China Relations: The Bear and the Dragon

- by Guest Lecturer: Dr Rosita Dellios

Introduction & Overview

China and Russia are the two largest and most powerful countries of the Eurasian region. (See Map 1.) They share a 4,300 km border,[1] less than it was in the old days of the USSR - the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to which Russia belonged, and which lasted as a Communist Party-ruled state from 1917-1991. Upon the success of China's Communist Revolution in 1949, resulting in its formal emergence as the People's Republic of China (PRC), the two were Communist allies, with the USSR supplying much-needed aid for China's efforts to industrialise. The comradely union was short lived. Ideological divisions and old rivalries emerged as of 1960 and by 1969 the two were at war with one another. Their border war[2] was ostensibly over the actual demarcation but was actually highly charged by ideological and nationalist sentiments. For over a decade the two Eurasian neighbours became sworn enemies, with Mao calling upon his fellow Chinese to dig nuclear shelters lest their next war be a nuclear one. However by 1982 normalisation talks began, with plodding progress throughout the 1980s. China refused to resume relations until what it termed the Three Obstacles were removed. These were:

withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan;
an end to Soviet support of the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia; and
reduction of Soviet military strength on the Sino-Soviet border to pre-1969 levels - amounting to an 80 per cent cut. (See Box 1.)

Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the first two 'obstacles' were removed (and not only for China's sake but as part of the end of the Cold War), while the removal of the third was well underway. China and Russia (then called the USSR) resumed full diplomatic relations in May 1989, shortly before the Tiananmen tragedy in which the Chinese authorities cracked down on pro-democracy demonstrators killing an estimated 1000 people. China was determined not to follow the Soviet Union's lead in what was to become, on Christmas Day 1991, the death of the world's premier socialist state. That title has now gone to China which, although still socialist in name is increasingly capitalist in orientation. Russia emerged from the old USSR as an independent but troubled democratic country.

Early Impressions: 13th Century - the Mongol Mantle

Russia's most unforgiving memory of the Chinese was arguably not a memory of the Chinese at all, but of the Mongol conquerors. They ruled Russia for 240 years from 1240 to 1480, and China for 89 years from 1279 to 1368, under separate dynasties of their empire: the dynasty that absorbed Russia and Eastern Europe was known as the Golden Horde ('Golden' meant imperial); that of the Chinese, the Yüan.

Mongolia, which today is a poor state wedged between the enormity of Russia and China (see Map 1), provides the setting for the formative stages of Russian-Chinese relations. Mongolia was the birthplace of one of history's 'world-conquerors', Ghengis Khan. It was he who created through wars of conquest an empire across the Eurasian expanse linking Europe, the Middle East and Asia. The Mongol Empire, according to one historian, "achieved what all Inner Asian steppe empires had dreamed of, control of the continental caravan routes from China to Persia".[3] Another remarked that: "No nomad people has ever attained a fame equal to that of the Mongols, and Ghengiz Khan and his sons ruled over a wider land empire than has ever been formed before or since."[4] Indeed his grandson, Kublai Khan, thanks to the writings of Marco Polo, "is perhaps the only Emperor of China whose name is commonly known in the west".[5]

With these myth-making - and hence meaning-making - early histories, confusion in the European imagination between Chinese and Mongols is perhaps understandable. Even the name 'Cathay' by which Europeans first knew China derives from 'Khitai', a steppeland nomadic culture which had more in common with the Mongols than the Han Chinese. To complicate matters, not only was the fabled Chinese empire, about which little was known, part of the larger and better known Mongol world, but the Mongols somehow became subsumed by Chinese history. Their identities - from the perspective of the untrained eye (almost all of Latin Europe and their Russian cousins) - blurred into one another even more. The Kublai regime adopted many features of the Chinese system of administration and honoured Confucianism. In short, the Mongol invaders were sinicised.

By contrast, they were not Russianised, despite spending more time ruling the Russians, well over a century more, than ruling the Chinese. This need not reflect badly on the Russians in terms of cultural power, for there were other important contributing factors, such as the Golden Horde's ability to rule Russia indirectly from the outlying steppes and Russia's peripheral economic importance in terms of the China-Persia caravan trade.[6]

History as a Powerful Cultural Resource

Nonetheless, there is the more nuanced issue of comparative national histories. One's history is a cultural resource conducive to pride as much as any acquired physical resource, such as the power of military technology. For the purposes of international relations as much as domestic politics, history may be regarded as a cultural product, carefully packaged for public viewing. An outstanding example is the Long March.[7] The Chinese communists converted a military retreat from their opponents in the Chinese Civil War into a propaganda victory and launched one of China's great heroic narratives.

Thus from the point of view of history as a resource, Russia's marginalisation contributed little to its national standing vis-a-vis China. Instead of making the Mongols appear to be part of an enduring Russian system, as the Chinese had, they were rendered the 'Tatar Yoke'; an unspeakable period in Russian history. While both nations suffered severely, their responses as signalled by their histories suggest differences in outlook. The Chinese (culturally) swallowed their (territorial) predators so that it was difficult for those far removed to tell Mongol from Han, let alone who conquered whom. Admittedly it was easier for the Chinese to cushion the adverse effects of occupation given the strength of China's cultural and economic attractions. While this may seem obvious it did have to be pointed out to the Mongols by the Chinese scholar and politician, Yelü Chucai (1190-1244). There is many an account applauding his ability to appeal to Mongol economic self-interest, and in doing so to save productive expanses of northern China from being turned into grazing lands for the Mongols' herds.[8] Yelü Chucai's story is an example of a recurring theme in Chinese history. It is the theme of gaining the strategic upper-hand in a seemingly hopeless situation. It was evident in the transformed value of the Long March; it was also evident in Mao's problem of how a weak army can best defend against a strong one (the people's war doctrine which employs guerrilla warfare); or Deng's problem of how China might be strengthened without loss of socialist identity ('Socialism with Chinese characteristics' which seems to be 'Capitalism with Confucian characteristics'[9]).

Psychological Opposites?

In view of China's resourceful strategic culture it is worth pausing to consider Lucian Pye's view that the cultures of China and Russia are psychological opposites:

The Chinese, ever the optimists since the 1911 Revolution, are prone to proclaim that the past was awful, the present grim, but the future is certain to be wonderful and glorious with the emergence of a "New China" - a perfect cast of mind for a society of entrepreneurs. In contrast, the Russian spirit is full of gloom and negativism, terrible for boosting business, but exactly what is needed for producing great literature.[10]

Certainly with regard to the Mongol chapter in their history, the Russians have tended to dwell on the horrors inflicted but, curiously, they avoided actually admitting that they were conquered.[11] One might add to Pye's "gloom and negativism" a certain lack of realism. Their historians spoke of the 'Tatar Yoke' without connecting to the political realities, or even to ethnic ones. The designation 'Tatar' was more a statement of disdain than an accurate portrayal of ethnicity (just as Mongol was hardly a suitable synonym for Chinese). The Tatars were a steppe peoples who were conquered and absorbed into Mongol identity.

Xenophobes, Chauvinists and Ethnocentrists?

The Tatars, like the Chinese, were all 'Mongols' to the Russians; Asiatics who brought to Russia their Oriental despotism and barbarous ways. Whether the threat be nomadic, Turkic, Mongolian, Chinese, or even Japanese, it all issued from Russia's Oriental frontiers. Terms like 'Great Khan expansionism' were still used in anti-Chinese propaganda issuing from Moscow in the 1980s.[12] 'Great Khan expansionism' was not an accusation directed at Mongolia whose fortunes had greatly diminished by this time. The ancestral home of the Mongols had, in fact, been reduced in the Cold War years of the 20th century to a Soviet puppet state hosting some four Soviet military divisions across the border from China. Russian xenophobia simply did not draw distinctions between the sedentary Chinese and the military extravagance of their one-time conquerors. Their conflation by fear was later reinforced by chauvinism. The Chinese emperor had to be watched and held in check. Even revolutionary China was by no means to be trusted. The same passage which speaks of 'Great Khan expansionism', reminds the reader that "a number of writers, going back to Kan Yu Wei, the 19th century political leader . . . foresaw the day when the yellow dragon flag . . . would fly over all countries".[13]

The Chinese, for their part, have been accused by external analysts of harbouring a 'Middle Kingdom' complex. While the Chinese did traditionally regard themselves as culturally superior, and hence displayed ethnocentrism, they cannot be portrayed - as the Russians often are - as xenophobes. The caravan trade and the tribute-trade system ensured a cosmopolitan disposition. During the 20th century, Republicanism was imported into China and even the Communist helmsman, Mao Zedong, had no difficulty relating to foreigners like writer Edgar Snow or, indeed, adapting for China a foreign ideology, that of Marxism-Leninism.[14]

Mutual Suspicion

Russia's bleak view of China was rivalled only by popularised Chinese views of the Russians. Neither side was 'fooled' by the other's Socialist pretensions. Aggressive imperialist ambition was regarded as symptomatic of the other's national character. As the Russians themselves had observed of Chinese historical writings in the post-Mao China years:

Articles distorting the history of Russia and of Russo-Chinese relations, and portraying the Russian State at all times and in relation to all continents as "the fiercest aggressor", an "enemy of the peoples", a threat to China "from the north", . . . made no distinction between the policy of tsarist Russia and the policy of the Soviet State . . .[15]

This passage captures the spirit of Chinese documented attitudes toward Russia. They seemed unreservedly to regard the Russians as interlopers into China's suzerain domain.[16] Whereas the Mongol experience shaped early Russian perceptions of China, it was Russia's expansion into Siberia, two and a half centuries after the end of Mongol hegemony, that brought it into the Chinese mental orbit of friend and foe. (See Box 2 and Map 2.) Clearly, this formative impression was not a favourable one.

As they were to do in the 1980s thaw of Sino-Soviet relations,[17] in those early days the Russians were the ones to make overtures to the Chinese and not vice-versa. Russia established its first mission in China in 1618. It was the first European nation to sign a treaty with China. This was the Treaty of Nerchinsk, 1689. Eventually, in its zeal to maximise its benefits during China's period of weakness and in line with the imperialistic practices of other European powers, the Russians were to gain territory through the infamous 'unequal treaties' method. China still claims this territory as being rightfully Chinese because the treaties (of which there were nine with Russia) were granted by China under duress. This territory amounts to half a million square kilometres and includes Russia's gateway to the Pacific - the city of Vladivostok.

Similarities

Despite their differences, Russia and China share outstanding commonalities. Suffering is one outstanding feature. Russians and Chinese died in the tens of millions, in the name of politics by every means, not only in the 20th century but also most notably under the Mongol invasions of the Middle Ages. Another feature is their national greatness: greatness of artistic enterprise, territorial expanse, strategic power, and Communistic politics. Whereas the United States of America deserves the term 'superpower'[18] - it is an American word for an American global condition - Russia and China are truly 'great powers'. They have persevered in their greatness despite being Easterners in a Western-organised world. Indeed they both experienced the reach of the West at about the same time, and after a period of having undergone their own isolated development as essentially unified cultures. Treadgold relates this observation to another major similarity between Russia and China - their conversion to Communism - and that ideology's own bias, at least as practised by Communist-ruled states, toward producing a unified culture.[19]

Divergent Security Perceptions

Cultural unity could also hold the key to understanding divergent security perceptions between the two countries. Occupying as they do the northern and southern sectors of the vast Eurasian landmass would offer China and Russia an obvious cause for connections (as it had for the Mongols) into a wider regional identity with its security and economic considerations. This, however, has not been the case. It has traditionally been overruled by their own sense of centrality. For the Chinese 'Middle Kingdom' centralitywas an outcome of cultural confidence in a barbarian wasteland. The Russian 'Empire of the Middle',[20] by contrast, expressed more a centrality of uncertainty (being in between): was Russia European or Oriental, Western or Eastern?

While having endured the aesthetically monotonous culture associated with Communist rule, and for reasons deemed obviously more important than artistic pleasure (that is, reasons of social emancipation), it is nonetheless a curious contradiction that both the Chinese and Russian cultures were highly aesthetic ones. Their quest for social emancipation, with its attendant bloody revolution, may in fact be but a severe expression of this sensitivity.

Literary greatness is a better known manifestation of the Russian aesthetic, as is the related quality of Russian spirituality. The Russians are understood to have chosen Byzantine Christianity over its Roman alternative on aesthetic rather than theological grounds.[21] As Treadgold has elaborated:

Russian Christianity from the first sought to reproduce the beauties of the services of the Constantinopolitan churches. Byzantine iconography, ecclesiastical architecture, and liturgical music were imported at once, and became the starting point for brilliant and original achievements by the Russians themselves.[22]

The names of literary works from the Byzantine were, interestingly, reminiscent of the Chinese practice of poetic labelling. Examples are The Pearl, The Emerald, and The Gold River.[23] Chinese literary works, historical periods, governmental divisions, and even social practices are invariably described in poetic language. For example, in literature there is China's famous novel, The Dream of the Red Chamber, and history has the Spring and Autumn Period (770-450 BC). In government, the administrative region that was located sufficiently far from both court intrigue at the centre and barbarian raids at the periphery was known as the domain of tranquil tenure. The object of one of the more perverse aesthetic attractions, the bound (deformed) female foot, was called Golden Lotus. Demonstrating that which was regarded as unattractive was not discriminated against in this labelling system, larger unbound feet were simply referred to as Lotus Boats.

If the Russians and Chinese have regarded themselves as Easterners coming to terms with the West, the time may fast be approaching when the West will be riveted - economically, culturally and geopolitically - by the East in a globalising world. Meanwhile, in the 'middle', there is a reformulated Eurasia. Six new Central Asian nations emerged from the break-up of the Soviet empire, all "holding out hopes for lucrative, market-invigorated revivals of trade and industry along the ancient Silk Route to Europe".[24] Eduard Shevardnadze, when he was Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union in its last days, foresaw a "modern 'Great Silk Road'", linking the continents of Europe and Asia, while the last Soviet President, Mikhail Gorbachev, in his famous 1986 Vladivostok Speech[25] had firmly identified a Eurasian identity for his country's future.