MOSCOW – The atmospherics surrounding Xi Jinping’s coming trip to Russia – his first visit to a foreign country as China’s new president – remind me of a slogan from my early childhood in the late 1950’s: “Russia-China, Friendship Forever.” The irony is that, even in that slogan’s heyday, Sino-Russian relations were deteriorating fast, culminating in spasms of combat along the Amur River in Siberia less than a decade later.
莫斯科—习近平来俄罗斯访问——这是他成为中国新主席后第一次出访——所带来的热氛让我想起了20世纪50年代末儿提时代的口号：“中苏友谊世代相传”。讽刺的是，即使在口号漫天的时代，中苏关系也很快地恶化了，不到十年，西伯利亚黑龙江地区就交上了火。今天的口号会比当时更加真实吗？