Quick questions on Mao's foreign policy and the Sino-Soviet split: HSC Modern History Personality

Mao's June 1949 essay "On the People's Democratic Dictatorship" (Lun renmin minzhu zhuanzheng) committed the PRC to "leaning to one side" (yibian dao) of the Soviet Union. The June essay foreclosed a Titoist or neutralist position before the proclamation of the PRC on 1 October 1949. Mao's December 1949 to February 1950 trip to Moscow produced the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance (14 February 1950), a 30-year alliance with a USD 300 million loan over five years and the 156 First Five-Year Plan capital projects.

The Korean War (1950 to 1953) bound the PRC to the Soviet weapons system. The PRC repaid the entire Korean War debt to the USSR. The mid-1950s were the peak of the alliance: Soviet engineers built the First Five-Year Plan; the 1957 Moscow Agreement on Defence New Technology provided for a Soviet prototype atomic bomb to be delivered to China.

The split developed from 1956 to 1960 across several axes:

Khrushchev withdrew about 1,400 Soviet advisers from China in July to August 1960, tearing up around 343 contracts and 257 scientific projects. The Bucharest Conference of June 1960 and the Moscow Conference of 81 communist parties in November 1960 saw public polemics. The "21st Anniversary of Lenin's Birth" Renmin Ribao editorial of 16 April 1960, "Long Live Leninism", was the open ideological attack.

A short border war over Aksai Chin (in the west) and the McMahon Line (in the east) ran from 20 October to 21 November 1962. PLA forces under Zhang Guohua drove Indian forces from disputed territory and then unilaterally withdrew, retaining Aksai Chin. The war embarrassed the Soviets, who had supplied India with MiG aircraft.

China's first atomic bomb test at Lop Nur in Xinjiang took place on 16 October 1964, designed by Qian Sanqiang, Deng Jiaxian, and Yu Min. The first thermonuclear test (Test 6) was on 17 June 1967. The first satellite, Dong Fang Hong 1, was launched on 24 April 1970. The Dong Feng-5 ICBM (1980) gave the PRC strategic deterrence.

The border dispute escalated in 1969. On 2 March 1969 PLA frontier troops ambushed Soviet forces on Zhenbao Island (Russian: Damansky Island) on the Ussuri River, killing about 32. The Soviets counter-attacked on 15 March 1969 with armour and artillery, with casualties on both sides. A larger clash followed in August 1969 in Xinjiang.

Mao's reading of the Sino-Soviet danger, parallel to Nixon's reading of the Vietnam War as needing Chinese leverage, produced rapprochement. The signals included:

Lorenz Luthi (The Sino-Soviet Split, 2008) gave the canonical archival account from Chinese, Russian, and East European sources.

State interests (atomic weapons, border, Indian war) were as important as Marxist doctrine.

25 October 1971, four months before Nixon's visit.

Zhenbao 1969 produced the US opening, not the other way around.