China’s reluctance to refer to the Sino-Russian partnership as “friendship” may stem from its previous interactions with the Soviet Friendship Association
Post Date – 12:52 AM, Tuesday – December 20

China’s reluctance to refer to the Sino-Russian partnership as “friendship” may stem from its previous interactions with the Soviet Friendship Association
go through Ariel Shangguan
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, how China responds to Russian aggression has been hotly debated in the Western media. Most of the discussion has focused on one particular term: “unlimited friendship” – a phrase believed to have been taken from a Sino-Russian joint statement issued in the months before the war.
But there is a problem with this statement. The Russian version of the statement did use the word “friendship”, while the Chinese version used the word “friendly”. Is this just a matter of translation, or did China deliberately avoid using the word “friendship”?
[1945Treaty[1945年条约
As a researcher on the translation of international relations, I have traced the use of the word “friendship” in Chinese and Russian documents to describe the relationship between the two countries. I found that the disconnect between the two countries’ views on the nature of their relationship first emerged in the treaties signed between the pre-communist governments and the Soviet Union in 1945.
The Chinese and Russian versions of the treaty have different names. In the Russian version, the treaty is “Treaty of Friendship and Alliance”, in the Chinese version it is “Treaty of Friendship and Alliance”.
This asymmetric partnership labeling persists in two other treaties signed after the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. The first is (in Russian) the “Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance” signed in 1950, and the other is the “Treaty of Good-Neighborliness, Friendship and Cooperation” signed in 2001. In both texts, the Chinese version replaces the word “friendship” with “friendly”, indicating that despite the collapse of the Soviet Union, the essence of Sino-Russian relations has not changed.
More importantly, China’s 2019 statement on developing the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership used the word “friendly” several times to describe the bilateral relationship between the two countries. The word “friendship” only appeared once when it specifically referred to the “friendship” between the peoples of China and Russia. This proves that this is not a translation error, but that the Chinese deliberately distinguish between “friendly” and “friendship”.
Reluctant China
Why is China so reluctant to use the label “friendship”? What does Russia’s “friendship” mean to China? My research suggests that Chinese resistance to Russian “friendship” may be related to their experience with a particular organization that demonstrates through its actions what Soviet – and by extension, Russian – “friendship” meant to China wearing something. This organization is the Soviet Friendship Association.
Officially established in 1927, the Soviet Friendship Society was a network of communist organizations designed to mobilize sympathizers of Soviet ideology outside the socialist camp. With the rise of fascism in the 1930s and the consequent alliance of the Soviet Union with the United States, these associations were rebranded as facilitators of global cultural exchange and sought to reach non-communist audiences. The Sino-Soviet Friendship Association was born out of these cultural exchanges.
[In1945theSino-SovietFriendshipAssociationwasestablishedinthenorthernChinesecityofDalianthenunderSovietcontrolItimmediatelybecamepopularamongthelocalsBy1949thereweremorethan50fraternitiesacrossthecountry[1945年,中苏友好协会在当时处于苏联控制下的中国北方城市大连成立。它立即在当地人中流行起来。到1949年,全国已有50多个联谊会。
But Chinese enthusiasm for these societies didn’t last long as people started to realize what they stood for. The Chinese Communists, who had just led the country out of a devastating civil war, wanted Sino-Soviet relations to be “mutually beneficial.” Through these associations, they had hoped that the Soviets could teach China some socialist ways of governing the country.
As Liu Shaoqi, then vice chairman of the Communist Party of China, said in 1949: “The Soviet Union is the teacher of China. The Chinese should be the students of the Soviets.”
Russia’s imperialist ambitions
But Chinese officials soon realized their naivety, as it became clear that the main purpose of these friendship associations was to promote Soviet superiority and to emphasize how grateful China should be for Soviet aid. For example, Shenyang associations often hold lectures on topics such as “How great is the Soviet Union?” and “Why did the Soviet Union help the Chinese people?”
By the end of the 1950s, it became clear that the Sino-Soviet relationship was not one of “mutual benefit” but mutual misunderstanding. The Chinese believed that their hard-won communism victory deserved the respect and equal status of the Soviet Union. But to the Soviets, the newly formed People’s Republic of China was just another satellite state in the vast Soviet system.
In this socialist bloc, national boundaries and sovereignty do not matter. As far as the Soviets were concerned, the system’s source of authority had always been—and always will be—from Moscow.
This suggests that China’s reluctance to refer to the Sino-Russian partnership as “friendship” may have stemmed from its previous interactions with the Soviet Friendship Association. By deliberately not translating the word as “friendship,” China is showing minimal resistance to a label that might have made them once vulnerable to Russia’s imperialist ambitions.
In light of this, and given the extent to which Chinese statements about the war in Ukraine emphasize the importance of national sovereignty, it is clear that Chinese sympathy for Ukrainians comes from slightly different sources than in the West. It does not come from a sense of morality or responsibility, but from the standpoint of fellow citizens who must strive for equality and their own national identity in a clearly unequal relationship.

(The author is an assistant professor at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University. theconversation.com)