The Sino-Soviet Border Clash of 1969: From Zhenbao Island to Sino-American Rapprochement

The question of how the Sino-Soviet military clashes at Zhenbao (Damanskii) Island of March 1969 were related to Beijing's rapprochement with Washington has received much attention in the study of China's contemporary foreign relations. It has been widely accepted by scholars that the incident played an important role in shaping the reorientation of China's US policy in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This article uses new Chinese documentation to discuss the Zhenbao Island incident within the context of both the development of the Sino-Soviet border conflict and China's changing domestic and international policies in 1968-69, and concludes that by reducing its own hostile stance towards the People's Republic in the aftermath of the crisis, the Nixon administration made it possible for the Beijing leadership to begin a major reorientation of its foreign relations.