New light on the Sino-Soviet alliance: Chinese and American perspectives

Abstract

With the partial opening of the documentary record in the United States and a willingness on the part of Chinese officials and researchers to give a more considered assessment of their country’s relationship with the Soviet Union in the 1950s, the value of the Sino-Soviet alliance to Beijing can now be better determined.

Recent Chinese analysis demonstrates that the Beijing leadership believed that it derived security, technological, and economic benefit from the alliance until 1958–59. American records show that U.S. administrations always perceived the alliance as conditional and circumscribed but nevertheless operative if, as a result of warfare, the overthrow of the Chinese Communist government appeared possible.

The American intelligence community was very well informed about the nature of the divisions between Beijing and Moscow. But only from 1962 onwards, and as a result of bureaucratic changes that promoted a shift away from assessing the ideological aspects of the Sino-Soviet dispute, were certain U.S. officials willing to argue that the breach between the two was fundamental and could itself lead to military conflict between the erstwhile alliance partners.