Abstract
Autore:
Bordone Sandro
Titolo:
"I rapporti sino-russi dalle origine alla proclamazione della Repubblica Popolare Cinese"
The story of the relations between China and Russia for the
supremacy in the Far East is rich of dramatic turns of
events. This article intends to recall this story placing
the two main players on a stage where other walk-on actors
move trying to carve out pieces of political influence and
sovereignty. Growing contacts between the two empires began
to be established after the fall of the Mongolian domain and
intensified during the XVIII century, when hard clashes blew
up in order to control trade routes and to collect taxes.
Such troubled relations, ruled by the first treaty signed by
the two powers competing in huge disputed territories
(Nertcinsk treaty), did not prevent the Russian emperors,
Peter the Great and Catherine I, to obtain important trade
concessions and to draw well-defined borders. All along the
XIX century the Sino-Russian confrontations were influenced
by expansive ambitions of other powers (Great Britain,
France and Japan) aiming at constraining the Chinese empire
for commercial purposes. The Chinese defeat in the two
“opium wars” and the engagement of Western powers in Crimea
War appeased the Chinese relations with Russia which,
signing the Nanking Treaty and Peking Additional Convention
(1842, 1860), gained a definitive sovereignty on the left
bank of Amur and on the territory between Ussury and the
sea. Besides, opening the Vladivostok harbour, Russia gained
a formidable strategic and commercial position facing the
Pacific Ocean.The XX century was welcomed by new tensions,
which cost to Russia the military evacuation of Manchuria
and some maritime and territorial concession in favour of
Japan. The establishment of the Republic (1911) in China and
the revolutionary change in Russia (1917) upturned deeply
the historical contest. The Sino-Soviet relations were
turbulent in every respect. Manchuria became the stage of
the fighting wings of Russian Revolution (Red against White
armies) and, due to a weak political power of central
Chinese government, Japan relieved the railway and mining
rights of Russia in that region. After unification of China
by nationalist leader Chang Kai-Schek, who replaced the weak
Cantonese government of Sun Yat-Sen, the unresolved dispute
on Manchuria aggravated and, at the end, Russia, despite its
success in keeping the joint administration of Oriental
Railway, did not succeed in preventing Japan to restore a
complete sovereignty on Manchuria (Manzhouguo regime). The
period after the peace of Yalta was marked by a guarded
“friendly” relations between the new Asian communist Power
ruled by Mao Zedong and Stalin who after nine weeks of “hard
bargaining” brought back the Russian position to that
existing before the Russian-Japanese war (1904-5).
