ABSTRACT
After creating the People’s Republic of China (PRC) on 1 October 1949, Mao Zedong traveled to Moscow. It was his first trip abroad. He arrived in Moscow in December 1949 for eight weeks of talks with Joseph Stalin. The two leaders discussed whether to renegotiate the terms of the 1945 Yalta Agreement and the Sino-Soviet friendship treaty signed by the Nationalists. The resulting treaty gave Stalin enormous diplomatic leverage over China. Simply by refusing to discuss certain issues, he could retain the status quo that favored Soviet interests. The PRC foreign ministry website states that the two countries exchanged “three notes, declaring null and void the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance and the other agreements which were signed by the Soviet Government and the Kuomintang Government of China on 14 August 1945.” Treaty of friendship, alliance and mutual assistance between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the People’s Republic of China.
