ABSTRACT
The minorities of China have increasingly become involved in China’s international relations since 1990. In the far northwest, the fall of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991 has imposed a very different texture of relations with the countries to China’s west, which has involved the minorities in a way much tighter and more direct than was the case during the Soviet period. On the whole, the minorities have exercised a beneficial effect on China’s relations with Russia and other bordering countries to its west.
