[way]

Amid heightening tensions, the Soviet Union and China began border talks. Although the Soviet Union had granted all of the territory of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo to the Chinese Communists in 1945, which decisively assisted them during the Chinese Civil War, the Chinese now indirectly demanded territorial concessions on the basis that the 19th-century treaties transferring ownership of the sparsely-populated Outer Manchuria, concluded by Qing dynasty China and the Russian Empire, were "Unequal Treaties" and amounted to the annexation of rightful Chinese territory.

In July 1964, CCP Chairman Mao Zedong, in a meeting with the Japanese Socialist Party delegation, stated that Russia had unilaterally incorporated vast territories in Siberia and the Far East as far as Kamchatka. He stated that China and Russia still had not resolved this issue.