ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is to put contemporary Russia's relations with China into a historical and geopolitical context. * The first part surveys Tsarist Russia's interactions with China, and to a lesser extent with the rest of Asia, between the eighteenth and early twentieth centuries. Special attention is devoted to the nature of Russia's imperial expansion into Central Asia and the Far East and to the legacy of this process for the Soviet Union. The second part sketches Soviet policy toward Central and East Asia, examining the continuities and discontinuities with the Tsarist era. Turning to the post-Soviet period, the third part briefly compares contemporary Russia's geopolitical circumstances in Asia with the circumstances during past eras. The chapter's principal theme is that the physical environment and the spatial distribution of various resources in Eurasia have strongly influenced the dynamics of Sino-Russian relations in past centuries, and that influence of this kind will persist. However, in the future these spatial effects are likely to take a somewhat different form, due to ongoing changes in Eurasia and the international system as a whole. The geopolitical circumstances of the post-Soviet era pose novel challenges to Moscow, but they also offer it new opportunities.
