The article examined the scientific heritage of an outstanding Russian historian, sinologist and diplomat Sergei Leonidovich Tikhvinsky (1918-2018), whose 100th anniversary is celebrated this year, and analyzed his contribution to the studies of Chinese history and the formation of new research directions in this field. The author pays the closest attention to academician Tikhvinsky’s contribution to the studies of Russia’s image in China. The author of the article believes that it was S. L. Tikhvinsky who was the first among Russian sinologists to show in detail the process of Russia’s image evolution in China throughout the history of Russian-Chinese relations. He proposed a clear and scientifically based periodization of this process, highlighting the main stages of this image evolution. S. L. Tikhvinsky also proved that the majority of the periods he considered were characterized by the ambivalence of Russia’s perceptions in China, and was able to explain the reasons for such a phenomenon in each segment of historical development. Thus, it was Tikhvinsky who should be considered the founder of imagological approach in Chinese studies.