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Gorbachev’s Other Legacy: Normalizing Sino-Soviet Ties
Mikhail Gorbachev left an important and often underappreciated geostrategic legacy for Sino-Russian relations.
Mikhail Gorbachev’s death last month unleashed numerous commentaries and evaluations of his legacy.
- Ivan Lidarev
- The National Interest
Predictably, many of these focused on Beijing’s perception of the last Soviet leader and what his political life meant for the future of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
However, this discussion overlooks a key part of Gorbachev’s legacy within China that shapes Sino-Russian relations to this day: the normalization of relations between Moscow and Beijing that took place on his watch.
Normalization represented a…