Trade and Aid Relations, 1950–1957 : Credits

Abstract

The signature in Moscow on February 14, 1950, by the governments of the USSR and the PRC of a series of important agreements ushers in a new phase in the history of contemporary Sino-Soviet diplomacy. Foremost among these documents was the Treaty of friendship, alliance and mutual assistance.1 Despite their predominantly political character, conventions of this type are considered by Soviet scholars as “seminal inter-state juridical acts for the establishment and broad development of mutual trade and other economic relations”2 on grounds that the climate of trust and intimacy thus generated on the political plane automatically stimulates increased contacts and efforts at collaboration in the commercial and economic spheres, too.3 For that matter, the texts of these treaties usually feature a separate clause addressed to this very problem. In the Sino-Soviet sample, Article 5 records the parties’ resolve, in the spirit of friendship and cooperation and in conformity with the principles of equality, mutual interest, and also mutual respect for the state sovereignty and territorial integrity and non-interference in the internal affairs of the other High Contracting Party—to develop and consolidate economic and cultural ties between the Soviet Union and China, to render each other every possible economic assistance, and to carry out the necessary economic cooperation.