The Russian Approach to China under Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and Putin

Abstract

Russia inherited from the USSR good working relations with China. The last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who had viewed the normalization of relations between Moscow and the West as the priority of Russian foreign policy, simultaneously started from the notion that ending the outdated conflict with the most powerful socialist state after the Soviet Union would serve the interest of world socialism. The process of normalization of relations with China began already at the start of the 1980s; however before Gorbachev, the inclination of Soviet leaders to normalization was based on strategic and ideological conceptions, a desire to find a common language with a “socialist” neighbor and to strengthen the position of the Soviet Union with respect to the United States. Such an approach fit firmly within the limits of the dominant strategic conception of the time, the “triangle” of relations among the great powers. From the time Gorbachev came to power and pronounced his “new thinking” in foreign affairs, previously commonly shared strategic conceptions began to give way. In their place came the idea of the primacy of “universal human values” and broad international cooperation. Corresponding to these new political ideas, strategic thinking in the Soviet approach to China was, to a significant degree, strengthened by the idea of the necessity of economic and political reforms inside the country.