"Military and Military Sub-Plane" by Jielian Chu
On August 31, at a regular press conference at the Foreign Ministry, a reporter asked questions about the death of Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union.
Spokesman Zhao Lijian said that Mr. Gorbachev has made positive contributions to promoting the normalization of Sino-Soviet relations, and we express our condolences for his death and condolences to his family.
In our previous article "The Soviet Union is dead, but Gorbachev is not sad", I have written about the fact that Gorbachev became a "winner in life" after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and everyone's impression of him basically stays at the level of "here is happy, not thinking".
So, where did he make positive contributions to the normalization of Sino-Soviet relations?
Threats from the North
At the end of the 1960s, the Xuanhua people of Zhangjiakou could always hear the rumbling sound of explosions coming from huangyang mountain in the distance, and it was not long before the upper part of the yin slope of the half of the mountain on the northwest side of the main peak of Huangyang mountain was brushed off tens of thousands of cubic meters, revealing a white stone wall.
At the same time, all kinds of military heavy trucks, laden with all kinds of equipment, instruments, and personnel, were busy going back and forth on the road down the mountain, and they carved out a huge platform on the rock wall and then installed a strange "wall".
Since then, the surrounding area of the mountain has begun to be heavily guarded, ordinary people can no longer get close, and the mysterious and huge "wall" has remained in the memory of many people.
People at that time did not know that this was China's first generation of ultra-long-range early warning radar - 7010 phased array radar, which was also known as "the largest phased radar position in Asia".
The radar's planar array antenna is 40 meters wide and 20 meters high, and the array is honeycomb fiberglass spliced on the cliff, which looks very spectacular from a distance, and in order to assemble this radar, 500 train skins were called.
Why is China building such a large and complex radar? In fact, look at the direction of the radar's front, looking in the direction of the radar front normal, the coverage is two-thirds of the Soviet Union's territory.
Like the soviet multi-warhead missile tested in a low-ballistic manner in the direction of the Pacific in 1981, and the cosmic 1402 nuclear-powered satellite that the Soviet Union dropped in 1983, they were accurately tracked and predicted by the 7010 radar.
The reason why I did this is because the pressure of the Soviet Union on China was too terrible!
You must know that since the Sino-Soviet confrontation in the 1960s, the Soviet Union is no longer the ideal country that sent Marxism-Leninism with the sound of a cannon of the October Revolution, but has become a "shotgun" that is really on the door of the head.
At that time, the Soviet Strategic Corps could carry out tasks with a depth of more than 700 kilometers, and from the Mongolian border to Beijing was only more than 500 kilometers, on the open plains of China's northeast, northwest and north China, once the Sino-Soviet war began, China could not resist the Soviet Union's steel torrent.
Moreover, not only did the Soviet Union's intercontinental missiles cover all of China, but even medium-range missiles deployed on the border could turn China's heavy industrial base upside down.
As part of the world's first anti-missile project, the 640 project, this ultra-long-range early warning radar existed to buy valuable time for China's final counterattack, which was only one of the nine cattle in the various projects to prepare for the Soviet Union at that time.
In 1969, the Zhenbao Island Incident and the Tirekti Incident broke out one after another, and Sino-Soviet relations fell directly to the freezing point, according to the information revealed by the United States that the Soviet Union was going to carry out a "surgical nuclear strike" against China, so that the Chinese leaders had every reason to believe that sooner or later the Soviet army would cross the border and strike a blow.
In such a tense situation, the central authorities issued an urgent combat readiness order to evacuate the main leaders of the central organs, and the major universities in Beijing were also evacuated to all parts of the country.
Among them, Chairman Mao went to Wuhan, Premier Zhou Enlai went to the Xishan Command Center, Lin Biao went to Suzhou, Zhu De and Dong Biwu went to Guangzhou, in short, they could not put their eggs in the same basket, and the leaders were ready to become the main leaders at any time.
Since the northeast and southeast coasts concentrate most of the mainland's industrial facilities, the destruction of the war will seriously affect the military and people's lives of the mainland.
Therefore, the state decided to concentrate factories, equipment and raw materials in the hinterland of the third line. As a result, the third-line construction projects that lasted for 15 years, as many as 1100 construction projects, and successively invested more than 10 million manpower were launched.
In order to delay the Soviet offensive, China deployed two million troops on the Sino-Soviet border to form the first line of defense together with the original Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang garrisons. At the same time, a second line of defense was also deployed in the area from Taihang Mountain to Yanshan Mountain, relying on a large number of "artificial mountains" to form a crossfire network to buy time for the central organs to transfer.
Since it was almost impossible to effectively counter the Soviet army's new tu-22 and tu-22M bombers, civil air defense leading groups at all levels were set up throughout the country and extensive activities of digging air raid shelters and air defense trenches were carried out extensively.
Chairman Mao even later put forward the famous nine-character policy: "Dig deep holes, accumulate grain, and do not seek hegemony." In first-tier cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, air raid shelters have become large-scale, while in the southern region, many mountains have been hollowed out.
To this day, these various fortifications built to prepare for the Soviet Union are still everywhere, and it is conceivable how much psychological shadow the Soviet Union caused to China, but with Gorbachev's rise to power, the situation began to change.
On October 9, 1985, romanian President Ceausescu visited China, and while treating him warmly, Deng Xiaoping also asked him to send a message to Gorbachev, saying that if the Soviet Union reached an understanding with China and Vietnam withdrew its troops from Cambodia and could do it, then it would be possible to make an exception to go to the Soviet Union to meet with Gorbachev.
At that time, there were "three major obstacles" restricting the normalization of Sino-Soviet relations: one was the Soviet Union's troops against Mongolia, the second was the Soviet Union's support for Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia, and the third was the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan.
Therefore, even in 1979, when the Sino-Soviet "Friendship and Mutual Assistance Alliance" treaty was about to expire and the two countries wanted to put the normalization of relations on the agenda, hardliners had always occupied the mainstream in the soviet high-level, and it was still difficult to reach a consensus on the core issues of the "three major obstacles".
However, with the protracted war in Afghanistan and the continued downturn in the national economy, the Soviet Union, which was worried about internal and external troubles, had to reconsider its relations with China.
After receiving the message, Gorbachev delivered an important speech in Vladivostok on July 28, 1986, in which he publicly stated that he would withdraw six regiments of Soviet troops from Afghanistan and a considerable number of Soviet troops from Mongolia by the end of 1986, and was willing to discuss with the Chinese side specific steps to reduce the garrison on the Sino-Soviet border, and confirmed that the border line between the two countries was officially bounded by the main channel.
Gorbachev also said that he would cooperate with the Chinese side in developing Heilongjiang resources, cooperate in training Chinese astronauts, and cooperate in building a railway from Xinjiang to Kazakhstan.
Although this speech did not remove the "three major obstacles," it was the first compromise speech made publicly by a Soviet leader after the Sino-Soviet confrontation.
In fact, Gorbachev has always been a "de-détente" in the upper echelons of the Soviet Union, and this "détente" does not mean that Gorbachev is "pro-China" or "pro-American"; he only believes that the Soviet Union should ease tensions with China based on the actual situation.
Since he was in charge of the economy in 1983, Sino-Soviet economic and trade has heated up significantly, and the total sino-Soviet trade in 1983 was 670 million US dollars, an increase of 175% over 1982, and reached 1.1 billion US dollars in 1984, an increase of 60% over 1983. It was also at the end of 1984 that The First Vice-Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, Arkhipov, visited China, and the two countries signed a number of agreements involving economic, trade, scientific and technological exchanges.
In 1985, when Gorbachev was formally in power, Sino-Soviet economic and trade exchanges continued to grow explosively, with a total amount of 1.8 billion US dollars, an increase of 73% over 1984.
It can be said that the normalization of Sino-Soviet relations initially began with the economic and trade exchanges under Gorbachev's administration.
In January 1987, the Soviet Union began to withdraw its troops from Mongolia, the Soviet Union finally made substantial moves, and the solid ice of Sino-Soviet relations began to melt.
In order to show his sincerity in normalizing relations with China, Gorbachev has repeatedly publicly expressed his willingness to meet with The Chinese leader, and the specific location can be determined by the Chinese side, whether in the Soviet Union or China, on land or at sea.
He also announced that from 1989 onwards, he would unilaterally reduce 200,000 troops in Asia within two years, abolish the Central Asian Military District, and lay off sixteen warships from the Pacific Fleet.
In view of this, the foreign ministers of the two countries completed their exchange of visits at the end of 1988 and the beginning of 1989, and issued a nine-point statement between China and the Soviet Union on the Cambodian issue.
Soviet Foreign Minister Shevardnadze shook hands with Deng Xiaoping
Before Gorbachev's visit to China, Deng Xiaoping made detailed arrangements for his visit to China, in which he specifically explained that when they met, they "only shook hands and did not hug."
The reason for this is to give a shot of calm to Sino-Soviet relations, which have already "feverished", and to give China and the Soviet Union good-neighborly and friendly cooperation, instead of the previous "embrace into a group" (alliance).
At 10 o'clock in the morning of May 16, 1989, Gorbachev was received by Deng Xiaoping in the east hall of the Great Hall of the People, and the leaders of the two countries finally shook hands again after more than 20 years.
During his visit to China, in the face of the ups and downs of Russia-China relations of three or four hundred years and the enmity and grievances of Soviet-Chinese relations for thirty or forty years, Gorbachev said:
1. The Soviet side has its own views on the causes of certain problems in Russian-Chinese and Soviet-Chinese relations;
2. The Soviet side "also feels a certain degree of fault and responsibility" for certain problems arising from the not-too-distant past between the two countries;
Third, agree that the past issues will end here.
At the end of their visit to China, China and the Soviet Union issued a "Joint Communiqué" in Beijing, and Sino-Soviet relations, which have been "revived by mountains and rivers" for more than twenty years, have finally ushered in "willows and dark flowers."
What Gorbachev brought to China
With the normalization of Sino-Soviet relations, the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan and Mongolia, the reduction of warships in the Pacific Fleet, the withdrawal of Vietnam from Cambodia, and the consensus reached between China and the Soviet Union on the border issue and held border negotiations, the military threat to China's north-south border was greatly reduced.
During the Sino-Soviet confrontation period, out of the judgment of the Soviet security threat and the international situation, China shifted the direction of its national development strategy from peace construction to "preparing for war and preparing for famine", which to a large extent delayed the pace of China's modernization.
With the weakening of border threats, China's strategic focus has gradually shifted to economic construction, and the tranquil domestic environment and stable international environment have provided relaxed conditions and impetus for reform and opening up.
During this period, on the one hand, the economic, trade, technological and scientific exchanges between China and the Soviet Union were strengthened, cooperation in the economy, energy, transportation and other aspects also gradually entered the agenda, the environment for China's domestic reform and construction was further improved, and the pace of reform accelerated.
On the other hand, the normalization of Sino-Soviet relations has weakened military and security concerns between China and its neighbors and provided a solid environment for China to implement its diplomatic strategy in the new era.
Under the influence of the normalization of Sino-Soviet relations, Indian Prime Minister Ra Gandhi and Mongolian Foreign Minister visited China one after another, and the two countries, which had previously been the Soviet Union's anti-China anti-China pawns, began to seek to change relations with China.
Li Peng and La Gandhi exchanged greetings
With the political settlement of the Cambodian issue, there is also the possibility of normalization of Sino-Vietnamese relations, and peace on the Indochina Peninsula is on the agenda.
At the same time, Singapore has also established diplomatic relations with China. The all-round development of this kind of good-neighborly and friendly relations has greatly improved China's surrounding environment.
Subsequently, the failure of Gorbachev's reforms and the collapse of the Soviet Union benefited China a lot.
At the beginning, Tsarist Russia seized millions of square kilometers of land from China since the end of the Qing Dynasty, and when the Soviet Union was strong, they did not pay attention to China's territorial claims.
But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the CIS countries fell into chaos and decline, and China negotiated more than 300, 1,300, 1,158, and 1,190 square kilometers of territory from Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, respectively.
Although this is only a small part of the territory lost in China's history, if it were not for the collapse of Gorbachev and the Soviet Union, I am afraid that none of this would have been recovered.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, China also opened up land and air corridors to Europe.
When the Soviet Union was still alive, from the Yalu River along the national border to the west to the Wakhan Corridor, beyond the border was the Soviet sphere of influence, from China to Europe to take the air route, you have to go through the Soviet sphere of influence, affected by political factors can easily be interrupted.
If you want to take the land route, the middle section of the Eurasian Railway is in the territory of the Soviet Union, the amount of goods transported is very small, and the Soviet Union collapsed, the air route from Xinjiang through Central Asia to Europe is unimpeded, and the Sino-Russian European train freight business is in full swing.
Because the Soviet Union is a heavy industrial country, light industry is extremely underdeveloped, after the disintegration, the industrial system was cut to pieces by the original member countries, on the one hand, their huge demand for light industrial products provided a market for China, on the other hand, they provided China with energy support due to rapid economic regression and energy surplus.
Like later, the Sino-Russian crude oil and natural gas pipelines built by China and Russia, and the four natural gas pipelines built by the five Central Asian countries, are of great significance to ensuring China's energy security.
▲Schematic map of the Route of the Sino-Russian Crude Oil Pipeline
In addition, the talent and technology "dividend" formed after the collapse of the Soviet Union has made China a lot of money.
Due to economic difficulties, several member countries could only survive by selling the family property left by their ancestors, and China took the opportunity to buy from them a lot of advanced equipment that the Soviet Union was reluctant to sell at that time, and studied and imitated them.
For example, the Varyag aircraft carrier bought by China from Ukraine for $20 million in floor prices, the Ukrainian "Bison" hovercraft, aero engines, naval gas turbines, prototypeSK-10 carrier-based fighters, Belarusian heavy-duty transport vehicles, Russia's "Hyundai" class destroyers, "Flanker" series fighters and so on.
All this has allowed China's military technology to develop in a short period of time, and the most let China make a lot of money is the talent left over from the Soviet Union.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the CIS countries were in turmoil and panic, a large number of factories and institutions were closed, many experts and professors in the field of military industry were unemployed, their incomes were sharply reduced, especially in some cutting-edge industries, and a large number of first-class engineers fell into extreme poverty.
China's basic technology at that time was relatively backward, and the level of technical exchanges at the beginning was relatively low and the scale was relatively small. Later, China exchanged light industrial products for advanced equipment, and Ukrainian experts began to travel to China on a large scale.
Most of these experts were old Bolsheviks of the Stalin era, attached great importance to Sino-Soviet friendship, had low requirements for life, worked rigorously, had to answer questions, and provided technology and materials very refreshingly, and even poured out their lungs.
To speed up the pace of talent introduction, China has launched a "double introduction project," the full name of which is "introducing technology and talents," that is, to introduce a large number of advanced technologies and outstanding talents accumulated in the former Soviet era from the former Soviet Union member countries.
Li Peng, then premier of the State Council, who was in charge of this project, frankly said: This is a group of outstanding talents who have been unable to cultivate after ten years of efforts, and it is a golden opportunity for China, and it must not be missed.
In this rare period, China took the initiative to attack, the purpose is very strong, straight to the key technology in the field of military industry, in the words of naval expert Li Jie, that is, Chinese take a week's train, go out from Manchuria, through Siberia, through Moscow, and then to Ukraine and other CIS countries, to explore and fit, and soon know what technologies the other side can cooperate.
China has invested a lot of manpower and capital costs in the "Double Introduction Project", providing technical experts with generous material treatment and a good scientific research environment.
According to incomplete statistics, from 1992 to 2002, through the simultaneous implementation of the "double introduction project" through the government and the people, through multiple channels and at multiple levels, about 10,000 experts and more than 2,000 technical projects were introduced from Russia and other CIS countries.
At the same time, in order to serve the "Double Introduction Project", the State Council also authorized the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs to formally establish the National Friendship Award in 1991 to commend the contributions made by foreign experts to China.
It is precisely these talents and technologies left behind after the collapse of the Soviet Union that have laid a solid foundation for China's blowout in the field of military industry in the 21st century.
Cover the coffin
As the saying goes, a coffin is a conclusive conclusion.
When Gorbachev finally left, China didn't seem to say anything about his brief assessment, but seemed to say a lot more.
When he first proposed the "new thinking", the purpose was to improve socialism, but in the end it buried socialism, buried the Soviet Union, for which he was a sinner.
Out of naïve ideology, perhaps we should spurn it, but we should also acknowledge that the normalization of China and the Soviet Union that he promoted and the subsequent disintegration of the Soviet Union were of great help to China on the side.
In any case, may Gorbachev rest in peace.