Utilizes archival documents to argue against the perception that America turned its back on China during the Paris Peace Conference, a belief that convinced many Chinese to turn to Soviet Russia instead. The author contends that President Wilson did everything in his power to help China. Chapters focus on topics such as the origins of the United Front Policy, assertion of Soviet control over the Chinese Eastern Railway, the restoration of Russian territorial concessions, and Soviet Foreign policy and the Chinese Communist Party. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

During the Soviet period the USSR conducted diplomatic relations with incumbent regimes while simultaneously cultivating and manipulating communist movements in those same countries. The Chinese case offers a particularly interesting example of this dual policy, for when the Chinese Communists came to power in 1949, their discovery of the nature of Moscow's imperial designs on Chinese territory sowed distrust between the two revolutionary powers and paved the way to the Sino-Soviet split.Drawing on newly available documents from archives in China, Taiwan, Russia, and Japan, this study examines secret agreements signed by Moscow and the Peking government in 1924 and confirmed by a Soviet-Japanese convention in 1925. These agreements essentially allowed the Bolsheviks to reclaim most of tsarist Russia's concessions and privileges in China, including not only Imperial properties but also Outer Mongolia, the Chinese Eastern Railway, the Boxer Indemnity, and the right of extraterritoriality. Each of these topics is analyzed in this volume, and translations of the secret protocols themselves are included in a documentary appendix. Additional chapters discuss Sino-Soviet diplomacy and the parallel history of Soviet relations with the Chinese Communist Party as well as the origins and purpose of the United Front policy.

China and the Soviet Union, first published in 1950, is written by a Chinese former diplomat and university professor, and calls on his many years of experience to provide an even-handed analysis of Sino-Russian relations. It ranges back to 1618 for some much-needed historical background, but the major part of Wu’s examination of the diplomatic relations between the two countries deals with the Soviet Union since 1918.

The purpose of this treatise is to give a brief account of Soviet foreign policy from the moment of the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917 to the involvement of the Soviet Union in the Second World War, in June, 1941.