AH challenge - 21st century geopolitical antagonism & harsh rhetoric between China and Russia

raharris1973

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POD must be no earlier than January 1990.

In OTL, Moscow-Beijing relations have been on the upswing since
Gorbachev's visit in May 1989. Russia and China do joint military
exercises and are members of the Shanghai Pact, a regional security
organization with Central Asian states. I would still find it hard to
believe they would actually go to war on each other's behalf, so that
aspect of the 1950s relationship isn't back, but in many respects,
the relations have never been better.

The nearly thirty years of harshness from the 60s through the 80s, was perceived as a permanent
fixture of the international scene at the time & the natural state of Russo-Chinese
relations, but has totally receded into the background since 1990.

Meanwhile, more often than not the Chinese and Russians find common interests on the international stage and both have harsher rhetoric towards the United States and have more geopolitical antagonism towards the United States than towards each other. So how could we change this to make Sino-Russian mutual relations with each other at least as bad as those of each with the USA (which was really the prevailing situation in the 1960s. In the 1970s and 1980s, China and the USA generally got on *better* with each other than each did with the USSR)

So, the challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to plausibly get
crappy Chinese-Russian relations by 2005. They can be anything from
Greece-Turkey crappy, all the way to war crappy.

More points the closer you get to war though.
 
Hard to say, I studied the Sino-Soviet split for a thesis, the tensions for some issues predate WW1, you could try to keep unfavorable status quo in the East. If by act of God the Soviet Union can not also survive by somehow thrive you've curtailed Chinese influence in Asia.


Perhaps the Soviets are able to maintain much friendlier relations with Europe that doesn't drive them into better relations with China, with Mongolia and maybe North Korea coming along for the ride.
 
I would be curious to see it if you have an electronic copy and would not mind. Was your interpretation more focused on nationalistic or ideological wedges between the two sides?

I'll ask for contact details over PM, however as fair warning I talk more about how the split itself is a refutation of the U.S domino theory, how it split the second world and how not also was the second world not some rigid monolithic or even bipolar bloc but that some of these nations made the choice to pick sides or even switch sides. Although strictly speaking my focus was on a combination of both political and national as the causes, the closest I get to historiography, on the split is from political scientists, who talk about the split as either being political or ideological, with several contemporary Chinese scholars weighing in.

Mind you I did this as a history thesis, so I look at it a bit differently, then say strictly adhering to one school of political thought or the other.
 
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