CHINA BOUNDARY ISSUES WITH THE FORMER SOVIET-UNION

The Sino-Russian border was a product of Tsarist Russian expansion, and in the nineteenth century, the Russians seized a total of 1.5 million square kilometers of Chinese territory. However, the only areas which Peking considers to be in dispute are those of 35,000 square kilometers on which the two sides disagreed at their first border talks in February 1964. Border tension, which was sustained for more than two decades, finally subsided after Mikhail Gorbachev's Vladivostok speech in July 1986. Thereafter, the two sides held five rounds of talks and signed a treaty on the eastern most section of the border which was endorsed by the Russian Federation after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The Chinese claims to the islands of Heixiazi, Tarabarovskiy, and Bolshoy have yet to be settled. Furthermore, the western sector has been unexpectedly complicated by the appearance of three newly independent states.