Prior to the 17th century, China and Russia were on opposite ends of Siberia, which was populated by independent nomads. By about 1640 Russian settlers had traversed most of Siberia and founded settlements in the Amur River basin. From 1652 to 1689, the Qing dynasty's armies drove the Russian settlers out, but after 1689, the Qing and the Russian Empire made peace and established trade agreements.
By the mid-19th century, the Qing dynasty's economy and military lagged far behind the colonial powers. It signed unequal treaties with Western countries and Russia, through which Russia annexed the Amur basin and Vladivostok. The Russian Empire and Western powers exacted many other concessions from the Qing, such as indemnities for anti-Western riots, control over China's tariffs, and extraterritorial agreements including legal immunity for foreigners and foreign businesses. Issues that affected only Russia and China were mainly the Russian-Chinese border since Russia, unlike the Western countries, bordered China. Many Chinese people felt humiliated by the Qing's submission to foreign interests, which contributed to widespread hostility toward the Qing emperor.
The 1911 Revolution led to the establishment of the Republic of China. However, the Beiyang government, was forced to sign more unequal treaties with Western countries and Russia. In late 1917, after the beginning of the Russian Civil War, Beiyang government sided with the White Russians and sent troops to fight against the Bolsheviks. The Soviet Union, established in 1922, supported the Kuomintang and ordered the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to enter into an alliance with them in 1923. The First United Front launched the Northern Expedition, aiming to united China. In 1927, Kuomintang turned against the CCP, leading to the start of the Chinese Civil War. After the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, the Soviet Union provided military help to the Republic of China, eventually launching an invasion of Manchuria in 1945, which at the time was under Japanese occupation.
After Japan was defeated in 1945, the Chinese Civil War erupted again. In 1949, with Soviet support, the CCP established the People's Republic of China, which entered into an alliance with the Soviets. After Stalin's death in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev came to power, who denounced Stalin in 1956, leading to ideological tension between the two countries to emerge. In 1961, CCP leader Mao Zedong accused the Soviet leadership of revisionism, leading to the Sino-Soviet split. Both countries competed for leadership over the global communist movement. In 1969, a brief border war between the two countries occurred. Khrushchev was replaced by Leonid Brezhnev in 1964, who abandoned many Soviet reforms criticized by Mao. However, China's anti-Soviet rhetoric intensified under the influence of the Gang of Four. Mao 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. The philosophical difference between both countries lessened since China's new leadership abandoned anti-revisionism. Deng's reform and opening up did not bring an immediate end to conflict with the Soviet Union. In 1979, China invaded Vietnam, which was a Soviet ally. After Mikhail Gorbachev became the Soviet leader in 1985, the Soviet Union reduced the garrisons at the Sino–Soviet border and in Mongolia, resumed trade, and dropped the border issue.
Rapprochement accelerated after the Soviet Union fell and was replaced by the Russian Federation in 1991. Sino–Russian relations since 1991 are currently close and cordial. Both countries maintain a strong geopolitical and regional alliance and significant levels of trade. The land border between the two nations was demarcated in 1991, and they signed the Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation in 2001. Ties have continued to deepen after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, with Russia increasingly becoming dependent on China since it was hit with large-scale international sanctions.
Imperial period
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. 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.
South to the Amur (1640–1689)
About 1640 Siberian cossacks spilled over the Stanovoy Mountains to the Amur River basin. This land was claimed by the Manchus who at this time were just beginning their conquest of China (Qing dynasty). By 1689 the Russians were driven back over the mountains and the Stanovoy Mountains remained the Russo-Chinese frontier from the Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689) to the Treaty of Aigun in 1859. For a full account see Sino–Russian border conflicts.R. A. Pierce, Eastward to Empire: Exploration and Conquest on the Russian Open Frontier, to 1750 (Montreal, 1973).
Russian expansion eastward along the southern edge of Siberia Russian expansion in Siberia was confined to the forested area because the Cossacks were skilled in forest travel and were seeking furs while the forest natives were weak and the steppe nomads warlike. In the west, Siberia borders on the Kazakh Steppe. North of what is now Mongolia, there are mountains, Lake Baikal and more mountains until the Argun River separates Trans-Baikalia from Manchuria. West of Siberia, Russia slowly expanded down the Volga, around the southern Urals and out into the Kazakh steppe.
Early contacts From the time of Kievan Rus' there was trade (fur, slaves) down the Volga to the Caspian Sea and Persia. Later trade extended southeast to the main Asian trade routes at Bukhara. Under the Mongol Yoke, Russian princes would regularly travel to Sarai for investiture. When Marco Polo returned from China he mentioned Russia as an obscure country in the far north. In 1466/73 Afanasy Nikitin made a journey southeast to India and left an interesting account. After the English reached the White Sea, Anthony Jenkinson travelled through Muscovy to Bukhara. In 1608 the Voivode of Tomsk tried and failed to reach China via the Altan Khan in western Mongolia. In 1616 a second attempt got as far as the Khan (Vasilly Tyumenets and Ivan Petrov). The first Russian to reach Peking was probably Ivan Petlin in 1618/19.
After the Russians reached Trans-Baikalia in the 1640s, some trade developed, but it is poorly documented. At this point there were three routes: 1) Irtysh River and east across Dzungaria and Mongolia, 2) Lake Baikal, Selenga River and southeast (the shortest) and 3) Lake Baikal, east to Nerchinsk, and south (slow but safe).
Early Russo-Chinese relations were difficult for three reasons: mutual ignorance, lack of a common language and the Chinese wish to treat the Russians as tributary barbarians, something that the Russians would not accept and did not fully understand. The language problem was solved when the Russians started sending Latin-speaking westerners who could speak to the Jesuit missionaries in Beijing.
In 1654 Fyodor Baykov was sent as the first ambassador, but his mission failed because he was unwilling to comply with the rules of Chinese diplomacy. Setkul Ablin, a Central Asian in the Russian service travelled to Peking in 1655, 1658 and 1668. It was apparently on his third trip that the Manchus realized that these people from the west were the same as those who were raiding the Amur. In 1670 the Nerchinsk voyvode sent Ignatiy Milovanov to Beijing (he was probably the first Russian to cross Manchuria). The next ambassador, Nicholae Milescu (1675–78) was also unsuccessful. After months of fruitless arguments, he was given a blunt lecture about the proper behavior of tributary barbarians and sent home. After the capture of Albazin in 1685, a few Russians, commonly referred to as Albazinians, settled in Beijing where they founded the Chinese Orthodox Church.
Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689)
After their first victory at Albazin in 1685, the Manchus sent two letters to the Tsar (in Latin) suggesting peace and demanding that Russian freebooters leave the Amur. The resulting negotiations led the Treaty of Nerchinsk. The Russians gave up the Amur valley but kept the land between Lake Baikal and the Argun River. The treaty said nothing about what is now Mongolia since that area was then controlled by the Oirat Zunghar Khanate.Peter C. Perdue, "Boundaries and trade in the early modern world: Negotiations at Nerchinsk and Beijing." Eighteenth-Century Studies 43#3 (2010): 341–356 online.
After Nerchinsk regular caravans started running from Nerchinsk south to Peking. Some of the traders were Central Asians. The round trip took from ten to twelve months. The trade was apparently profitable to the Russians but less so to the Chinese. The Chinese were also disenchanted by the drunken brawls of the traders. In 1690 the Qing defeated the Oirats at the Great Wall and gained complete control over the Khalka Mongols in Inner Mongolia. In 1696 the Oirats were defeated and driven back to the Altai Mountains (Kangxi Emperor in person with 80,000 troops in a battle near Ulaanbaatar). This opened the possibility of trade from Baikal southeastward and raised the problem of the northern border of Outer Mongolia. In March 1692 Eberhard Isbrand Ides, a Dane in the Russian service, was sent from Nerchinsk as ambassador. The Manchus raised the question of the border west of the Argun. Ides returned to Moscow January 1695. From this time it was decided that the China trade would be a state monopoly. Four state caravans travelled from Moscow to Peking between 1697 and 1702. The fourth returned via Selenginsk (near Lake Baikal) in 90 days and bore a letter from the Li-Fan Yuan suggesting that future trade use this route.
In 1712 Tulishen became the first Manchu or Chinese official to visit Russia (not counting earlier visits to Nerchinsk). He was mainly interested in the Kalmyks along the Caspian Sea and how they might be used to deal with their cousins, the Oirats. He left Peking in June 1712 and reached Tobolsk in August 1713. Here he learned that he could not see the Tsar because of the Swedish wars. He went to Saratov and down the Volga to visit Ayuka Khan of the Kalmyks. He returned to Peking in April 1715. His report, 'Yiyilu' of 'Record of Strange Regions' was long the main source of Chinese knowledge of Russia.
About this time the Kangxi Emperor began to put pressure on Saint Petersburg to delineate the Mongolian border west of the Argun, and several Russian caravans were held up. In July 1719 Lev IzmailovJohn Bell, (Travels from St Petersburg in Russia to diverse parts of Asia, Edinburgh,1808 and OCR reprint) has a record of this journey was sent as ambassador to Peking where he dealt with Tulishen, but the Chinese would not deal with the trade problem until the border was dealt with. Izmailov returned to Moscow in January 1722. Lorents Lange was left as consul in Peking, but was expelled in July 1722. He returned to Selenginsk and sent reports to Petersburg.
Treaty of Kyakhta (1729)