Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance

Conclusion

On February 14, 1950, the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union concluded a treaty of alliance in Moscow. It was signed by Mao Zedong and Stalin, and its term was set at thirty years from the date of conclusion. The treaty superseded the earlier treaty concluded by the Kuomintang government in August 1945, and the Republic of China broke off diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. The treaty text consists of six articles.

Background and negotiation

The immediate impulse for the treaty was Mao Zedong's "leaning to one side" directive, set out in "On the People's Democratic Dictatorship" in July 1949, which placed China in the socialist camp and rejected a third road, together with Soviet strategic interests in East Asia. Mao travelled to Moscow on December 6, 1949 to seek a new treaty, but Stalin preferred to keep the existing treaty, which was tied to the Yalta agreement, and repeatedly refused. On January 2, 1950 Stalin agreed to negotiations; Zhou Enlai arrived in Moscow with the Chinese delegation on January 20, and talks were held on January 22. A Soviet draft was delivered to the Chinese side on January 23, and on February 14 the treaty, the agreements and the notes were formally signed in the Kremlin.

Terms

The treaty provided collective security against renewed aggression by Japan or by states allied with Japan: if either party were attacked and entered a state of war, the other was to render military and other assistance (Article 1). Article 2 bound the parties to conclude a peace treaty with Japan together with the other wartime allies, Article 3 barred participation in any alliance or grouping directed against the other, and Article 4 provided for mutual consultation on major international questions affecting their common interests. Article 5 committed them to economic and cultural cooperation and mutual assistance on the principles of equality, mutual interest, respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, and non-intervention, while Article 6 set a thirty-year term subject to automatic extension for five years unless either party objected a year before expiry.

Under the accompanying agreements, the Soviet Union was to transfer all rights and properties relating to the Changchun Railway to China free of charge until the conclusion of a peace treaty with Japan and no later than 1952, and to return Port Arthur and Dalian. It granted China a loan of 60 million dollars a year, 300 million in total, at an interest rate of one percent a year from January 1950, and sent specialists to assist Chinese reconstruction and industrialization.

Significance and limits

The treaty gave China a framework of security guarantees and economic and technical assistance, and contributed to the reconstruction and the planned economy of the newly established republic. For its part, the Soviet Union gave up part of its vested interests in Northeast China in order to strengthen the cohesion of the socialist camp, while Stalin guarded against the possibility that Mao might defy Soviet will, as Tito had done, and imposed more stringent conditions than those applied to Eastern European socialist countries. The loan was not free of charge: repayment was tied to the sale of Chinese surplus production of strategically important resources to the Soviet Union. The Chinese leadership's insistence on applying Marxism to Chinese conditions and the resentment generated by the system of Soviet specialist advice sowed the seeds of the later Sino-Soviet split.

Dissolution

Relations between the two countries deteriorated amid the Sino-Soviet split of the 1960s, and the treaty reached the end of its thirty-year term in 1979. In 1980 the People's Republic of China informed the Soviet Union that it would not extend the treaty, and it therefore lapsed. The lapse of the treaty was also a condition that allowed China to take military action against Soviet-allied Vietnam.