Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, China’s reaction in response to the Russian aggression has been fiercely debated in the western media. The majority of the discussions have focused on one particular term: “no-limits friendship” – a phrase believed to have been taken from a Sino-Russian joint statement issued a few months before the war.
But there is one problem with this phrase. While the Russian version of the statement indeed used the word “friendship”, the Chinese version used “friendliness”. Is this just an issue of translation, or did China deliberately avoid using the word “friendship”?
As a researcher who investigates problems of translations in international relations, I traced the usage of the word “friendship” in Chinese and Russian documents when describing their relationship. I discovered that the disconnect between the two nations’ view of the nature of their relationship first appeared in a treaty signed between the pre-communist government of China and the Soviet Union in 1945.
