Reflections | A brief history of China-Russia relations, from bitter rivals to close allies
China and Russia have forged a deepening strategic partnership in recent years, but relations between the two have not always been so warm
Compared to American President Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again bromance with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, the relationship between the latter and Chinese President Xi Jinping is on a much more even keel.
In recent years, China and Russia have forged a deepening strategic partnership marked by expanding trade, closer military cooperation and shared opposition to United States-led international norms, or what passes for norms in these bewildering, topsy-turvy times.
The relationship between China and Russia stretches back centuries, long before either nation crystallised into its modern form, and is marked by commerce, conflict, diplomacy and cultural exchange.
In 1618, a contingent led by the Siberian Cossack Ivan Petlin traversed Mongolia and the Gobi Desert to reach Beijing, making him the first Russian to have arrived in China in an official capacity. Petlin’s mission heralded the dawn of Sino-Russian diplomacy.
Just decades later, in 1654, 10 years after the collapse of the Ming dynasty, Tsar Alexis sent Fyodor Baykov as the first Russian ambassador to China, marking the first formal diplomatic missions between the fledgling Qing dynasty and Russia.