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18.07.2001 07:58:25
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Современность; Политек;
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Chinese debate value of Sino-Russian landmark treaty -- сорри что на ангицком..
Chinese debate value of Sino-Russian landmark treaty
Foreign Affairs News Keywords: RUSSIA CHINA TREATY
Source: Singapore Straits Times
Published: July 18, 2001 Author: Ching Cheong
Posted on 07/17/2001 20:24:15 PDT by DeaconBenjamin
BEIJING - China and Russia signed a landmark treaty on Monday, in which they hoped to lay the foundation for lasting peace between the two nations.
Yet Chinese scholars are bitterly divided over the value of the Good Neighbourly Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation in serving China's strategic and national interests.
Essentially, the issue boils down to one basic question: How trustworthy are the Russians?
Supporters of the new treaty claim that the most important national interest of China is economic development. To this end, it needs a peaceful external environment.
Since Russia is China's largest neighbour, it is extremely important that there is peace between them.
'Without a peaceful neighbour, any talk about economic development is futile,' said an informed Chinese scholar, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
'At the height of the Sino-Soviet tensions in 1967, as much as 60 to 70 per cent of the state budget was spent on defence because the country had to maintain a 15-million-strong troop,' he recalled.
'All the heavy industries in the three north-eastern provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning - the most developed industrial regions of China at that time - had to be moved to the far remote western interior for fear of war.
'This resulted in huge economic losses of several hundred billion yuan,' he noted.
With the friendship treaty in place, the situation has changed completely.
Both sides have now agreed to build a demilitarised zone extending 100 km from each side of the border for the full stretch of the 4,000-km border.
The total troop strength required to police the border is reduced drastically to only about 150,000, a sharp drop from the one million troops that used to be stationed along the border.
However, opponents of the treaty are sceptical of its value.
They pointed out that the latest treaty is the third that China has concluded with Russia (and the former Soviet Union) since the end of World War II.
'If the last two had brought about loss of territories and war for China, how can one be certain that the latest one will benefit us?' asked another scholar.
He noted that all three treaties bore the same 'friendship and cooperation' tag.
Yet the first, signed in 1945 when China was still ruled by the Kuomintang, obligated China to accept the independence of Mongolia.
Russia had attempted to split Mongolia from China as early as the 1920s. By signing the treaty, China tacitly endorsed the loss of more than three million sq km of territory.
The second treaty, signed in 1950 when China was ruled by the Chinese Communist Party, reconfirmed the loss of Mongolia.
Although it established a strong military alliance between two like-minded communist giants, it failed, ironically, to avoid a bloody war between the two sides.
Thus the second treaty, which was supposed to bring peace to both nations for at least 30 years, was effectively nullified after the first 10 years.
'So on what grounds can one believe that the third one would best serve China's interests?' asked the scholar.
Supporters point out that the latest treaty provides for China a secure strategic rear made necessary by the hawkish turn in American foreign policy, which treats China as the main source of threat.
But opponents of the treaty said that Russia too is hedging against a 'China threat', although this is not stated explicitly.
For example, Russia is selling to India weapons that are more advanced than those it sold to China. It also vowed to help India develop and deploy a form of missile-defence system.
Russia is fully aware of the animosity between China and India. Clearly, by doing so, it is playing India against China.
Similarly, the Russians are still stationing troops in the Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, which share borders with China.
After the break-up of the former Soviet Union and the subsequent formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), Russia vowed to withdraw its troops from all other CIS states except these three states.
Supporters of the treaty hail it as a document codifying previous efforts at border negotiation, and thus guaranteeing a peaceful border for both countries.
Opponents, however, point out that the latest treaty - like the previous two - tends to codify all previous unequal treaties that Czarist Russia imposed on China.
When Lenin established the first socialist republic, his government made three separate policy declarations towards China, vowing to return to the Chinese all territories exacted by the Czar. These territories amounted to 1.5 million sq km, or 10 times the size of France.
The three bilateral treaties of 1945, 1950 and 2001 started with the basic premise that China respected the border's status quo. In other words, it did not challenge the legality of the border imposed by the Czar.
The treaty's opponents are quick to add that they did not mean a war had to be waged again to reclaim those lost territories. 'We just want to stress that peace along the border is obtained at a high cost, with China forfeiting all claims to former territories,' the sceptical scholar said.
'By pointing this out, we hope that our people and leaders would not be blinded to the inherently unequal nature of the latest bilateral treaty,' he added.
Another worry is that the latest treaty might contain hidden memorandums or appendices that compromise Chinese sovereignty, as was the case in the previous two treaties.
For example, the appendix to the 1945 treaty forced China to accept the split of Mongolia, while the one attached to the 1950 treaty was not made public until now.
'One is tempted to conclude that the secret attachment contained something at odds with China's interests,' the scholar said.
Although the text of the latest treaty did not indicate the existence of an appendix, opponents are not entirely convinced.
'It's a pity that, given the political system in China, the people have no legitimate means to find out the truth,' the scholar added.
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b55015f6c21.htm