The Diplomatic Crisis between Bulgaria and North Korea in 1962 and China’s Policy Adjustment toward Eastern Europe

Bulgarian Historical Review, 54 (2026), No. 3, pp. 164-188
DOI: https://doi.org/10.71069/BHR3.26.ML06

Ma Li

Ma Li - Assistant Professor, School of History and Culture, National Collaborative Research Center of Revolution Relics, Sichuan University Chengdu, China; ORCID iD: 0009-0005-7745-8532, E-mail: mali37203720@outlook.com

Abstract: Based on declassified Chinese diplomatic archives, this study explores the evolution of China’s foreign policy toward Eastern European socialist countries during the Cold War, utilizing the 1962 diplomatic conflict between Bulgaria and North Korea over international students as a micro-empirical case. Previous research has largely tended to view Sino-Eastern European relations as a derivative of the Sino-Soviet split. However, archival documents reveal that in the first half of 1962, driven by strategic rationality and peripheral security considerations, China initially attempted to maintain restraint and neutrality between supporting North Korea and avoiding entanglement in the dispute. Yet, as the Bulgarian authorities granted asylum to the rebellious students, the incident touched the Chinese Communist Party’s political bottom line of guarding against internal “revisionism”, plunging China into a severe “ideological dilemma”. Consequently, China’s policy toward Bulgaria and other Eastern European socialist countries shifted sharply from “neutral observation” to “open confrontation”. This policy transition in a micro-historical event demonstrates that the Bulgarian-North Korean diplomatic crisis was not only a key catalyst prompting China’s policy adjustment toward Eastern Europe, but also empirically proves that Sino-Soviet relations and Sino-Eastern European relations are “two intertwined yet relatively independently evolving analytical objects”. China’s diplomatic shift toward Eastern Europe was not a simple spillover of the Sino-Soviet conflict, but a proactive choice driven by China’s own internal political and security needs.

Keywords: Bulgaria-PRC relations, Sino-Soviet split, Bulgaria-DPRK relations, Cold War, CCP foreign policy, China–Eastern Europe relations

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