China, Russia unveil boundary markers

The deal is "the result of years of negotiations and shows our strategic partnership," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters at a regularly scheduled news conference. "The settlement is a concrete step of the two countries to implement a treaty of good neighborliness and friendly cooperation."

Under the agreement, Russia is handing over all of Yinlong Island, known as Tarabarov Island in Russian, along with the largely uninhabited half of Heixiazi Island, or Bolshoi Ussuriysky.

The tug-of-war over the eastern part of their 2,700-mile (4,300-kilometer) border reaches back centuries to their competition for territory as imperial China and Czarist Russia expanded toward each other.

China had at one time demanded both islands in their entirety, claiming they were illegally annexed by the former Soviet Union in 1929.

Since the fall of the Soviet empire, however, the sides have moved to end such disputes, finding a common cause in opposition to Western dominance and drawing closer through warming military and economic relations.

Tuesday's ceremony on Heixiazi included diplomats, military, police and local officials and followed an exchange of documents affirming the border agreement, the Russian and Chinese ministries said. Heixiazi and Yinlong lie at the confluence of the Amur and Ussuri rivers in Manchuria, about 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) northeast of Beijing.