DEVELOPMENTS IN SINO- SOVIET RELATIONS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP85T00875R001100180004-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: T
• Document Page Count: 19
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 3, 2004
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: April 23, 1973
• Content Type: IM

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Top Secret
DIRECTORA'T'E OF
INTELLIGENCE
Intelligence Memorandum
Developments in Sino-Soviet Relations
NRO REVIEW
COMPLETED
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Central Intelligence Agency
Directorate of Intelligence
23 April 1973
Developments in Sino-Soviet Relations
Relations between the USSR and China over the
past several weeks have been marked by public ac-
rimony and intense competition for influence with
key third countries.
Each side has openly pressed its case on the
frontier dispute, but both insist there have been
no recent serious border incidents. The talks this
year on border-river navigation ended early last
month without agreement. Bilateral trade seems to
be leveling off, after increasing since the end of
the Cultural Revolution.
The Soviets have been unable to conceal their
discomfiture at signs of continued improvement in
Sino-US ties, and the Chinese have reacted in much
the same way to the prospect of increased Soviet-
Japanese economic cooperation. Sino-Soviet rivalry
in-Europe continues, with the Chinese doing their
best to obstruct Moscow's detente policy.
Note: This memorandum is one in a series of re-
ports on Sino-Soviet relations. It was prepared
by the Office of Current Intelligence, with con-
tributions from the Office of Strategic Research
and the Office of Economic Research.
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 The rancor in Sino-Soviet relations has been
displayed in the unusually outspoken remarks of
Soviet officials over recent weeks. Politburo can-
didate member Ustinov, for exam:.)le, branded Peking's
policies "strange and monstrous," during a major
speech on 20 April. Earlier this month at a press
conference in Stockholm, Soviet Premier Kosygin
took a gratuitous swipe at "the Chinese leaders'
clamour" about a Soviet threat to China. Kosygin
branded the allegation "an out-and-out lie." He
blamed the Chinese for creating tension, saying
that Peking's anti-Sovietism is a product of its
own internal difficulties. Kosygin reiterated
Moscow's pledge to keep on trying to improve state
relations through negotiation, and professed a
belief that China would "sooner or later" return
to a policy of peaceful cooperation with the USSR.
By all the signs, substantial improvement in
Sino-Soviet ties will come only "later"--if at all.
Meanwhile, both sides are clearly molding their
policies on the assumption that the hostility will
be protracted.
A few days before Kosygin spoke, Mikhail
Kapitsa, head of the China division of the Soviet
Foreign Ministry, gave US Embassy officers a status
report on Sino-Soviet negotiations. He acknowl-
edged that Deputy Foreign Minister Ilichev, chief
Soviet delegate at the border talks, and Soviet
Ambassador Tolstikov were "not very busy" in Peking.
According to Kapitsa, China goes on insisting that
"unacceptable demands" be met before the process
of defining the border begins. Presumably, one of
the Chinese requirements is the familiar one for a
Soviet military pullback from the frontier. The
Chinese, he said, accuse the Soviets of trying to
force negotiations "with an atom bomb hanging over
the table." Kapitsa recited the usual list of
overtures by Moscow (proposals on non-aggression
and non-use of force, etc.) ostensibly aimed at
relieving Chinese concerns, Claiming that Peking
had spurned all these initiatives, he concluded
that the Chinese want negotiations, not agreements.
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One-sided though it is, Kapitsa's version seems
to reflect fairly well the sterility of Sino-Soviet
discussions. He complained about the tight restric-
tions on Soviet activities in China, but made a
special effort not to leave his interlocutors with
a totally negative impression. Stretching hard,
Kapitsa said the Soviet Embassy was able to deal
"amicably" with the Chinese on housekeeping problems.
He stressed that the border has been quiet; although
occasional violations by herdsmen have occurred,
there has been no shooting. This last squares with
information from other sources. Chinese Deputy
Foreign Minister Chiao Kuan-hua, for example, told
that there
is been no recent frontier clashes- Verbal clashes
are another matter.
Peking Denounces Soviet Name-changers
Moscow's decree last December announcing that
Russian names had been substituted for Chinese-
sounding ones in nine localities in the Soviet Far
East drew a sharp blast from Peking last month. A
sarcastic article in NCNA charged that Moscow's
action was an effort to whitewash "Tsarist Russia's
crimes of aggression against China" and to promulgate
the "big lie" that the area had never been under
Chinese control. Such "tampering with history,"
the article asserted, was standard behavior for the
"Soviet revisionists." The NCNA article is full of
detail that the Chinese claim supports their posi-
tion and seems to be somewhat beyond other state-
ments in implying a latent Chinese claim to huge
chunks of Soviet territory. In a second decree,
the USSR has given Russianized names to some 250
rivers, mountains, and bays in Siberia and the Far
East. Chinese propagandists will have a field day
with this new material, if and when they choose to
use it.
The frontier dispute has been getting a rather
thorough airing in Soviet tracts. Last month, a
decade after Peking first made a public issue of
"unequal treaties" between Tsarist Russia and China,
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the Soviet academic journal, Problems of the Far
East, carried an article castigating China for
1cartographic aggression" in laying claim to 1.5
million square kilometers of Soviet territory. In
discussing the border fighting of 1969, the article
stressed that all the armed incidents at that time
took place along sections of the frontier shown on
Chinese maps as "undefined" or as "lost" Chinese
territory. More recently, the Soviet journal
International Affairs condemned China's territo-
rial pretensions as a "monstrous conglomeration of
tendentious absurdities." Peking's "foolhardy"
allegations with respect to "unequal treaties" are
without basis in fact, Moscow has been arguing with
growing persistence.
Navigation Talks Run Aground
Given the charged atmosphere, Peking's terse
announcement on 8 March that the annual meeting of
the Sino-Soviet Commission on border-river naviga-
tion ended without agreement came as no surprise.
The talks had begun on 5 January in the Chinese
border town of Hei-ho. NCNA indicated that each
side made a report on navigation matters, but ap-
parently the only thing the two could agree on was
to hold the next meeting in the USSR at a date to
be determined later.
These talks normally deal with such techni-
calities as dredging border rivers and maintaining
navigation markers, but atter