The Sino-Soviet treaty

On 14 August 1945 in Moscow the Foreign Minister of the Republic of China, Wang Shijie, and the Soviet People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Vyacheslav Molotov, signed a treaty of friendship and alliance between the two countries, concluded for thirty years. Signed with it was a package of agreements and notes concerning the Manchurian railways, Port Arthur, Dairen, Outer Mongolia and the conduct of Soviet troops in Manchuria. That same day the Japanese government decided to accept the surrender terms, and American bombers were flying the last raids on Japan.

The treaty was the price China paid for concessions that had been agreed without its participation six months earlier. Chiang Kai-shek’s government accepted them in return for a Soviet undertaking that Moscow would support only the Nationalist government and would give no help to the Chinese Communists.

The Yalta commitment

At the Yalta Conference on 11 February 1945 Joseph Stalin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill signed a secret agreement on the USSR’s entry into the war against Japan. In it Stalin demanded the restoration of “the former rights of Russia violated by the treacherous attack of Japan in 1904” – that is, the position lost in the Russo-Japanese War and confirmed by the Treaty of Portsmouth. Some of these demands, however, concerned not Japan but China: the lease of Port Arthur as a Soviet naval base, the internationalisation of the port of Dairen with the “pre-eminent interests” of the USSR safeguarded, joint Soviet–Chinese operation of the Chinese Eastern Railway and the South Manchuria Railway, and the preservation of the status quo in Outer Mongolia, formally Chinese but governed since 1924 as the Mongolian People’s Republic under Soviet tutelage. The agreement stipulated that the provisions concerning Manchuria and Mongolia required Chiang Kai-shek’s consent, and Roosevelt, at Stalin’s request, undertook to obtain it.

The Chinese were told of these arrangements belatedly. According to Chinese and American accounts, the US ambassador to China, Patrick Hurley, presented their full text to Chiang at the end of April, and in June President Harry Truman confirmed them to the Foreign Minister, Song Ziwen (known in the West as T. V. Soong), who was then in the United States. At the end of May Truman’s envoy Harry Hopkins was told by Stalin in Moscow that the USSR would recognise Chinese sovereignty over Manchuria, support the unification of China under Chiang’s government and had no territorial claims on China; Stalin did, however, expect a Chinese delegation in Moscow by 1 July at the latest. For Washington the most important thing was for the USSR to attack the Kwantung Army as soon as possible; the details of China’s concessions were a secondary matter.

Song’s talks with Stalin

Song Ziwen, who since the spring had also been President of the Executive Yuan – in effect head of government – arrived in Moscow on 30 June and began talks with Stalin and Molotov that same day. From the outset it was clear that Stalin interpreted the Yalta formulas broadly. He understood the “status quo” in Outer Mongolia to mean formal Chinese recognition of its independence; he wanted Port Arthur together with an extensive military zone; in Dairen he demanded effective control of the port; and on the railways, the upper hand in management. Song, following Chiang’s instructions, offered Mongolia only broad autonomy within China. According to the records of the talks, Stalin explained that the USSR needed Mongolia for strategic reasons and reminded his guests that the Japanese might one day rise again.

At the beginning of July Chiang Kai-shek agreed in principle to the independence of Outer Mongolia after a plebiscite, but in return demanded Soviet guarantees: respect for Chinese sovereignty in Manchuria, non-interference in the affairs of Xinjiang, where a Soviet-backed rising had been under way since 1944, and aid solely to the Nationalist government, not to the Chinese Communist Party. The disputes over Mongolia’s borders, Dairen and Port Arthur were still unresolved when on 14 July Stalin broke off the talks to leave for the Potsdam Conference. The American ambassador in Moscow, Averell Harriman, on Washington’s instructions, encouraged the Chinese not to concede more than Yalta had provided for; the Americans were particularly concerned to uphold the “open door” principle in Dairen.

Song did not want to put his own signature to such large concessions. At the end of July he gave up the Foreign Ministry, which passed to Wang Shijie, though he continued to lead the Chinese delegation. The talks resumed in Moscow on 7 August in an entirely new situation: the day before, the Americans had dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima; on 8 August the USSR declared war on Japan, and from 9 August the Red Army was advancing in Manchuria. The Chinese were now under pressure of time – without a treaty Soviet forces would be occupying Manchuria with no agreed obligations towards China. When on 10 August Japan declared its readiness to accept the Potsdam Declaration, Stalin pressed for a quick end to the negotiations. According to participants’ accounts, the last concessions concerned the administration of Dairen and the borders of Outer Mongolia, which in the end were not defined, the parties settling for the formula of “existing borders”. The documents were signed late on the evening of 14 August.

What was signed

The treaty itself was short. The two sides undertook to wage war against Japan until victory, not to conclude a separate peace with it, to act together against any renewed Japanese aggression, not to enter into alliances directed against the other party, to respect each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and not to interfere in each other’s internal affairs. The substance of the settlement lay in the accompanying documents:

• The railways. The Chinese Eastern Railway and the South Manchuria Railway were merged into the Chinese Changchun Railway, owned jointly by the two states and run by mixed bodies for thirty years; it was then to pass into Chinese ownership without compensation.
• Port Arthur. For thirty years it was to serve as a joint naval base, closed to the warships of other states. Its defence was entrusted to the USSR and its civil administration to China.
• Dairen. It was declared a free port open to the trade of all nations, under Chinese administration, but with a Soviet harbour master, wharves and warehouses leased to the USSR, and exemption from customs duties for goods carried to and from the USSR.
• Outer Mongolia. In an exchange of notes China agreed to recognise its independence within its existing borders if a plebiscite confirmed it after Japan’s defeat.
• Soviet troops and policy towards China. A separate agreement laid down that once military operations had ended the Chinese government would take over the administration of the occupied areas of Manchuria. In the notes the USSR confirmed China’s full sovereignty over Manchuria, declared its non-interference in the affairs of Xinjiang and undertook to give “moral support” and military and material aid solely to the Nationalist government. According to the Chinese record of the talks, Stalin announced that the withdrawal of the Red Army from Manchuria would begin within three weeks of Japan’s surrender and be completed within three months at most.

Compared with Yalta, China obtained more than it had feared: joint rather than exclusively Soviet management of the railways and Port Arthur, formal recognition of its sovereignty in Manchuria and a promise that the USSR would not support the Communists. It paid for this with the loss of Outer Mongolia and a lasting Soviet presence in Manchuria’s most important ports and on its main railway lines. Both sides ratified the treaty in August, and its text was published at the end of the month.

The Communists and the treaty

For Mao Zedong and the Communist leadership in Yan’an the treaty was an unpleasant surprise. The Red Army was just entering Manchuria, where the Communists had hoped to find a base, and yet Moscow had solemnly undertaken to support only their opponent. Soon after the treaty was signed, Stalin, in telegrams to Yan’an, urged Mao to negotiate with Chiang Kai-shek and warned that civil war might destroy the Chinese nation; on 28 August Mao flew to Chongqing for talks. The Kuomintang government regarded the treaty as a success that cut the Communists off from Soviet help.

What came of it

Reality soon diverged from the letter of the documents. On 20 October 1945 a plebiscite was held in Outer Mongolia in which, according to the official results, almost every voter came out in favour of independence; on 5 January 1946 the Chinese government formally recognised it. The withdrawal of Soviet troops from Manchuria, planned to take three months, dragged on – partly at the request of the Chinese government itself, which had not managed to move its own forces there in time – and was completed only at the beginning of May 1946. In the meantime the Russians carried off a large part of Manchuria’s industrial equipment as “war booty”; the American mission led by Edwin Pauley estimated the losses at hundreds of millions of dollars. According to most historians, Soviet commanders, contrary to the August undertakings, also helped the Communists to take over Japanese weapons and let their units into parts of Manchuria, while in Dairen and Port Arthur they prevented government troops from landing. Manchuria – the very region whose seizure after the Mukden incident in 1931 had launched Japanese expansion in China – became the main arena of the Chinese Civil War.

The treaty lasted only a few years. After the Communist victory and the proclamation of the People’s Republic of China, Stalin and Mao concluded a new treaty of friendship, alliance and mutual assistance in Moscow on 14 February 1950, which replaced the agreements of 1945. The USSR returned the Changchun Railway to China at the end of 1952 and left Port Arthur in 1955. The government of the Republic of China on Taiwan renounced the treaty in 1953, accusing the USSR of aiding the Communists, and withdrew its recognition of Mongolian independence. The treaty of 14 August 1945 thus proved to be the last act of the Yalta division of spheres of influence in East Asia: it confirmed Mongolia’s independence and the Soviet return to the Yellow Sea, but it did not give Chiang Kai-shek what he had expected from it – Moscow’s neutrality in the coming struggle for power in China.