ABSTRACT
Stretching from the Pamir plateau of Central Asia to the Pacific Ocean, the 6,640 km boundary between China and Russia is divided into two sections by Mongolia. In the eastern sector, control of certain areas was established by both the Chinese and the Russian empires in the 17th century and there was sporadic fighting between them. At the Treaty of St Petersburg, Russia agreed to evacuate half the territory it had occupied in return for retention of the other half and territorial concessions further north, to the east of Lake Zaysan. Thus, by the end of the 19th century, with Russian expansion into the Pamir Knot, the delimitation of the Sino-Russian border was complete. From the 1960s until recently, relations between China and the Soviet Union/Russia deteriorated; there were numerous boundary clashes and the maps produced by each side were disputed.
