Russian President Vladimir Putin is to meet China's Xi Jinping Thursday for the first time since Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. Russia and China share a strong bond, facing off against the West, but the friendship is threatened by the unresolved issue of 600,000 square kilometres of Chinese territory near Vladivostok, occupied by Russia since 1860.
The Putin-Xi meeting will take place in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, under the auspices of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a security alliance created by Beijing in 1996, made up of core members China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. India, Pakistan, Uzbekistan and Iran were later added as full members.
This is Xi's first trip abroad since the start the Covid-19 pandemic, and he is meeting with the SCO and Putin “at a time when Putin's war is going badly in Ukraine," Steve Tsang, Director of the School of Oriental and African Studies China Institute, told RFI.
“It shows the level of support that Xi Jinping is committed to give to Putin.”
There is now the almost absurd situation that both Russia and China talk about a strategic partnership. But Russia, while short of weapons, cannot get resupplies from China and is buying them from North Korea.
PODCAST: Steve Tsang, Director of SOAS China Insitute, talking about the significance of the Xi-Putin meeting.
"Far from being a Chinese NATO, the SCO member states are regarded as partners," Tsang added.
"The get-together signals Xi’s desire to show that his first priority is not to engage with Europe or America, but with the friendly countries of the SCO and with Russia."
'Limitless' friendship
The Xi-Putin meeting is the first since Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February. Two weeks earlier, Putin had travelled to Beijing, officially to attend the Olympic Winter Games, though he likely also informed Beijing of his invasion plans.
The meeting resulted in a joint communiqué, which stated that “friendship” between the two states “has no limits”.
Since the start of the invasion China has paid lip service to Russia’s propaganda, while never endorsing it, and calling for “respect of sovereignty”. Beijing has also refused overt military support of Russia’s war efforts.
Doing so might “trigger secondary sanctions against China,” according to Tsang, something Beijing is not willing to contemplate.
The result is “an almost absurd situation in which both Russia and China talk about a strategic partnership. But Russia, while short of weapons, cannot get resupplies from China and is buying them from North Korea".
Friendship turned sour
An article on the website of the official Chinese paper Nanfang Daily discussing the upcoming summit refers to the first foreign trip Xi made when he became China’s supreme leader in 2013. Destination: Moscow.
Xi chose the Russian capital, according to the newspaper, to “show the great importance that China attaches to the development of Sino-Russian relations”.
As a gift, Putin offered Xi a copy of the USSR’s Communist mouthpiece Pravda of 14 February 1950, when then Chinese leader Mao Zedong and the Soviet Union's Joseph Stalin signed their ill-fated Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship.
But after Stalin’s death, relations between China and Russia deteriorated quickly. Mao hated Moscow’s de-Stalinisation - which he saw as a direct attack on his own personality cult - and the Soviets did not understand why China focused on the peasantry instead of the urban proletariat to advance socialism.
The result was a massive ideological rift that led to deadly border skirmishes which were resolved only after the fall of the Berlin Wall, lengthy border negotiations and a series of demarcation treaties.
The relationship improved after the start of China’s Open-Door policy in 1978 and the visit of Soviet leader Michael Gorbachev in 1989.
But in that same year, the ultimate demise of European communism started, leading to the fall of the Soviet Union itself, something for which Beijing blamed Gorbachev.
Today, the two countries find common ground in their shared regret of the fall of the USSR, their dislike of the US, and the eastward expansion of NATO.
But the current love affair between China and Russia has all the elements of a marriage of convenience.
'Vladivostok' or 'Haishenwai'?
“There are structural problems in the relationship between Russia and China,” says Tsang.
Probably the largest elephant in the room is a swathe of some 600,000 square kilometres north of China’s Heilongjiang province, an area currently called “Primorsky Krai”, which has the port town of Vladivostok as its administrative center.
Vladivostok was once a Chinese city known as Haishenwai and was part of China's Qing dynasty. It was annexed by Russia in 1860 after China's defeat by the British and French forces in the Second Opium War. The area has been administered by Russia ever since.
Today, in spite of the numerous treaties that have defined the border between China and Russia, the idea that the vast area surrounding Vladivostok is Chinese is still strongly present among Chinese commentators.
The issue flared up in 2020, when the Russian embassy to China published a tweet celebrating Vladivostok's 160th anniversary.
This “tweet” of #Russian embassy to #China isn’t so welcome on Weibo
— Shen Shiwei 沈诗伟 (@shen_shiwei) July 2, 2020
“The history of Vladivostok (literally 'Ruler of the East') is from 1860 when Russia built a military harbor.” But the city was Haishenwai as Chinese land, before Russia annexed it via unequal Treaty of Beijing. pic.twitter.com/ZmEWwOoDaA
The Tweet "isn’t so welcome on Weibo", China's Twitter, wrote commentator Shen Shirwei.
According to the Russian embassy, the history of Vladivostok - which means Ruler of the East - is from 1860 when Russia built a military harbour.
But Shen says "the city was Haishenwai as Chinese land before Russia annexed it via [the] unequal Treaty of Beijing".
The stretch of land became part of the Qing empire in 1689, under the Treaty of Nerchinsk, the first ever treaty between Tzarist Russia and the Qing. The 1860 Peking Treaty reversed the Nerchinsk document and granted the area to Russia.
"It provides a basic limit to how closely Russia and China will work together," according to Tsang.
For now, Beijing does not seem inclined to criticise Russia in the way it has been relentlessly attacking the UK for imposing "150 years of shame" on China - the period covering Britain's colonisation of Hong Kong.
But, according to Tsang, Moscow knows and the issue will continue to hang dangerously over relations between the two countries.
