ON THIS DAY ·
Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship
14 Feb 1950 — Mao secures a Soviet guarantee and a loan of 300 million dollars in the Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance. The agreement has a price: Soviet forces retain this naval base until 1955, while Moscow gains joint companies to mine Xinjiang’s oil and metals.
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The moment in context
A proclamation could announce a government; it could not by itself give that government control of the country. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the Communist Party’s army, had grown from something like a party militia to a force of about five million. In October 1949 it still had campaigns to fight. Follow the arrows into the southwest: Liu Bocheng and Deng Xiaoping’s forces entered Guizhou and Sichuan, taking Chongqing on 30 November and Chengdu on 27 December. Lin Biao’s forces swept into Guangxi and crossed to Hainan in April 1950.
From Mao’s consolidation and land reform, chapter 1 of The People’s Republic under Mao, 1949–1976 (1949).
The place: Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship — map and full story →
Teach this in 5 minutes
- Why it happened — An army that had already won. The Communist victory rested on an army of about five million. In the great battles of 1948–49 the PLA destroyed the Nationalist field armies,…
- The turn — Tiananmen, 1 October 1949. The Gate of Heavenly Peace had been a place from which emperors issued edicts. Mao’s proclamation there on 1 October announced that a new authority…
- What it changed — War arrives before the state is built. The government had scarcely begun building its institutions when war came. The Korean War started eight months after the proclamation, and in…
Then ask the room: Did land reform secure the countryside for the Party chiefly through the land it gave or through the violence it organised? The argued answer is on the chapter page →
The atlas that shows it
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