Editing Sino-Soviet split (section)

=== Military buildup and geopolitical pragmatism ===
[[File:President Richard Nixon and Mao Zedong.jpg|thumb|To counter the USSR, Chairman Mao met with US President Nixon, and established Sino-American rapprochement, in 1972.]]
Since October 1969, the USSR and the PRC had engaged in decade-long diplomatic negotiations over border issues.<ref name=":17">{{Cite web |last=Zhou |first=Xiaopei |title=我看中苏关系近四十年变迁 |trans-title=My view on the Sino-Soviet relation of nearly forty years |url=http://cpc.people.com.cn/GB/68742/112510/112512/6785024.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210609131847/http://cpc.people.com.cn/GB/68742/112510/112512/6785024.html |archive-date=2021-06-09 |website=[[People's Daily|People's Net]] |language=zh}}</ref> Meanwhile, both sides also continued to increase their military buildup along the border throughout the 1970s.<ref name=":15">{{Cite web |date=December 1982 |title=China Strengthens Its Force on the Soviet Front |url=https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP03T02547R000101110001-8.pdf |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250103202058/https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP03T02547R000101110001-8.pdf |archive-date=2025-01-03 |website=[[CIA]] |page=3}}</ref><ref name=":16">{{Cite web |last=Elleman |first=Bruce |date=1996-04-20 |title=Sino-Soviet Relations and the February 1979 Sino-Vietnamese Conflict |url=https://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/events/1996_Symposium/96papers/elleviet.php |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241204064717/https://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/events/1996_Symposium/96papers/elleviet.php |archive-date=2024-12-04 |access-date= |website=[[Texas Tech University]]}}</ref> It is estimated that the USSR had placed 1 million to 1.2 million troops along the Soviet-China border (also the Mongolia-China order),<ref name=":15" /><ref>{{Cite web |last=Chen |first=Qimao |date=1999 |title=18. Sino-Russian relations after the break-up of the Soviet Union |url=https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/files/books/SIPRI99Chu/SIPRI99Chu18.pdf |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231211132323/https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/files/books/SIPRI99Chu/SIPRI99Chu18.pdf |archive-date=2023-12-11 |website=[[SIPRI]]}}</ref> and the PRC had placed as many as 1.5 million troops along the border.<ref name=":16" />

The first diplomatic negotiation took place in Beijing on October 20, 1969, attended by the deputy foreign ministers from both sides.<ref name=":13" /> Despite the border demarcation remaining indeterminate, the meetings restored Sino-Soviet diplomatic communications, which by 1970 allowed Mao to understand that the PRC could not simultaneously fight the US and the USSR while suppressing internal disorders throughout China.<ref name=":17" /> In July 1971, the US advisor for national security, [[Henry Kissinger]], went to Beijing to arrange for President [[Richard Nixon]]'s [[1972 visit by Richard Nixon to China|visit to China]]. Kissinger's Sino-American rapprochement offended the USSR, and Brezhnev then convoked a summit-meeting with Nixon, which re-cast the bi-polar geopolitics of the US-Soviet cold war into the tri-polar geopolitics of the PRC-US-USSR cold war. As relations between the People's Republic of China and the United States improved, so too did relations between the Soviet Union and the by now largely unrecognised Republic of China in Taiwan, although this thaw in diplomatic relations stopped well short of any Soviet official recognition of Taiwan.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Share |first1=M. |date=6 September 2010 |title=From Ideological Foe to Uncertain Friend: Soviet Relations with Taiwan, 1943-82 |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/713999981 |journal=[[Cold War History (journal)|Cold War History]] |volume=3 |issue=2 |pages=1–34 |doi=10.1080/713999981 |s2cid=154822714 |access-date=15 February 2023|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

Concerning the Sino-Soviet disputes about the demarcation of {{convert|4380|km}} of territorial borders, [[Propaganda in the Soviet Union|Soviet propaganda]] agitated against the PRC's complaint about the unequal 1858 [[Treaty of Aigun]] and the 1860 [[Convention of Peking]], which cheated Imperial China of territory and natural resources in the 19th century. To that effect, in the 1972–1973 period, the USSR deleted the Chinese and Manchu place-names – Iman (伊曼, Yiman), Tetyukhe (野猪河, yĕzhūhé), and Suchan – from the map of the [[Russian Far East]], and replaced them with the Russian place-names: [[Dalnerechensk]], [[Dalnegorsk]], and [[Partizansk]], respectively.<ref name=stephan>Stephan, John J. ''The Russian Far East: A History'', Stanford University Press:1996. {{ISBN|0-8047-2701-5}} [https://books.google.com/books?id=Jce4rBWjG5wC Partial text] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160617144953/https://books.google.com/books?id=Jce4rBWjG5wC |date=17 June 2016 }} on Google Books. pp.&nbsp;18–19, 51.</ref><ref>Connolly, Violet ''Siberia Today and Tomorrow: A Study of Economic Resources, Problems, and Achievements'', Collins:1975. [https://books.google.com/books?id=osW5AAAAIAA Snippet view only] on Google Books.</ref> To facilitate social acceptance of such cultural revisionism, the [[Printed media in the Soviet Union|Soviet press]] misrepresented the historical presence of [[Ethnic Chinese in Russia|Chinese people]] – in lands gained by the [[Russian Empire]] – which provoked Russian violence against the local Chinese populations; moreover, politically inconvenient exhibits were removed from museums,<ref name=stephan /> and vandals covered with cement the [[Jurchen script|Jurchen-script]] stele, about the [[Jin dynasty (1115–1234)|Jin dynasty]], in [[Khabarovsk]], some 30 kilometres from the Sino-Soviet border, at the confluence of the Amur and Ussuri rivers.<ref>Georgy Permyakov (Георгий ПЕРМЯКОВ) ''The Ancient Tortoise and the Soviet Cement'' ([http://85.114.94.194/page.php?page=1787&date_id_num=2000-04-30&year=2000&month=04&day_id=27 «Черепаха древняя, цемент советский»]{{dead link|date=December 2017 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}), ''Tikhookeanskaya Zvezda'', 30 April 2000</ref>