Word: bordering
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...scene of two brief but bitter encounters in June; two other skirmishes occurred in March and July farther to the east, along the Amur and Ussuri rivers separating eastern Siberia and Manchuria. In a protest to Moscow, Peking's foreign ministry charged last week that Soviet border guards had advanced 1¼ miles into Sinkiang's Yumin County and opened fire on Chinese guards carrying out "normal patrol duty." The Chinese fell back, they said afterward, to "prevent worsening of the situation." Two officers were captured by the Russians in the midst of the Chinese retreat, the first...
Different Version. Moscow described the battle very differently. The Russians charged that Chinese troops had been systematically organizing "provocative intrusions" in the area since May, despite Soviet protests. Finally a force of 150 launched last week's attack. According to Russian commentators, Soviet border guards, using armored personnel carriers stormed Chinese positions with submachine guns and hand grenades. Two Russians were killed and eight reported wounded in a one-hour battle, while 25 Chinese died and 25 were wounded. A nagging discrepancy in the Russian account was the contention that the encounter took place six miles east...
...battle took place only five days after representatives of the two nations had met in the Russian border city of Khabarovsk to sign an agreement on river navigation. Observers had thought that the navigation talks might presage productive discussions on borders. The outbreak of shooting seemed to indicate that hostility between sides runs too deep for border unrest to die down...
...battle could, of course, have begun by accident. But Western observers reason that if anybody deliberately started the skirmish, the Russians would seem the more likely culprits. By keeping the Kazakhstan-Sinkiang border stirred up, Moscow may hope to prevent the Chinese from starting trouble along Russia's more remote and vulnerable far eastern border. There, several cities lie within easy reach of Chinese guns. More important, they lie within an area that was once controlled by China, a point that Peking drives home nightly with Russian-language radio broadcasts beamed to Siberia. The broadcasts sign off with...
Along the border with Sinkiang, on the other hand, the Russians have all the advantages. Their rail network runs to the border, ending at a town ironically named Druzhba (meaning friendship). The Chinese rail system goes no farther than Urumchi, Sinkiang's capital, 250 miles from the border...