Foreign ministry archives declassified

By Wu Jiao (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-11-13 07:34

Archives detailing major developments in foreign affairs between 1960 and 1965, a tumultuous time for China's external relations, were made public on Wednesday.

Amid acute ideological differences between China and the former Soviet Union during the early 1960s, China on one hand managed to help the former Soviet Union transport aid to Vietnam during the latter's war against the US, while solving disputes with the Soviets on the other.

Why the Chinese side suddenly ceased fire in the China-India border war in late 1962 and how it repatriated Indian prisoners of war and military spies soon after are also revealed for the first time.

And the above is just a sample of information from more than 41,000 historical archives declassified yesterday by the archives bureau of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

They comprise the third batch of documents declassified since 2004 on the diplomatic history of the newly founded China.

People can visit the bureau to check up on the information with a letter of reference from their work units, Guo Chongli, director of the bureau, said.

Guo told reporters that the early 60s was a complicated period for China's foreign relations.

As well as stalemating relations between China and the former Soviet Union, Sino-US ambassador-level talks spanned 15 years before formal bilateral ties were eventually established.

The talks during this period mainly touched on the exchanges between journalists, the cross-Straits relationship and the Vietnam-US War, which eased the fragile relationship between the two countries at many delicate moments, said Guo. There was also solemn protest from the Chinese side over US flights into the Chinese airspace.

"Though the major plots of history have been made public, it's definitely interesting to know the details in that part of history,' Fu Xiaoqiang, a researcher with Beijing-based China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, said.

Fu said the newly released files are helpful to both researchers' efforts to reshape history and diplomats to avoid sensitive issues.

The US' Wilson Center and Cornel University cooperated with the ministry to share information, according to Guo.

Guo said up to 70 percent of the original documents during the current batch were declassified, about the same proportion released by counterparts in Russia and the US.

The first batch declassified in 2004 only accounted for 30 percent of the total contents.

Guo said the ministry would work in the next three years to declassify archives from between 1965 to 1977.