The four-day Sino-Soviet Summit was held in Beijing from 15 to 18 May 1989. This would be the first formal meeting between a Soviet Communist leader and a Chinese Communist leader since the Sino-Soviet split in the 1950s. The last Soviet leader to visit China was Nikita Khrushchev in September 1959.[1] Both Deng Xiaoping, the paramount leader of China, and Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, proclaimed that the summit was the beginning of normalized state-to-state relations.[1][additional citation(s) needed] The meeting between Mikhail Gorbachev and then General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Zhao Ziyang, was hailed as the "natural restoration" of party-to-party relations.[1]