Nikolay Samoylov St. Petersburg State University

Sino-Russian Border: From Territorial Disputes via Compromises to Cross-Border Cooperation

The border between Russia and the People's Republic of China had long been an issue of contention. The Sino-Russian border was a legacy of various treaties between the Qing China and the Russian Empire. Therefore, to understand the contemporary situation it is extremely important to focus on the key points of its history. Major attention will be paid to the ways of settling disputes, historical compromises and the present-day situation.

In the first part of the lecture the history of the formation of the Sino-Russian border in the Imperial period will be considered. The Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689), the Treaty of Kyakhta (1727), the Treaty of Aigun (1858), the Treaty of Peking (1860) and other agreements will be analyzed in this part, as well as the status of the border and cross-border areas in the Russian and the Qing Empires. Besides, an attempt will be made to examine the border problem from the standpoints of Russian, Chinese and Western historiography.

The second part will be devoted to the situation on the Soviet-Chinese border in 1949-1991 (from the Soviet-Chinese friendship to the Soviet-Chinese split), while the third part will formulate the principles of reaching a compromise between the two countries concerning the border issue and the basic principles of cross-border cooperation after 1991, when the Sino- Soviet Border Agreement set up demarcation work to resolve most of the border disputes between the two countries.