After the British in 1842 negotiated the Treaty of Nanjing ending the
Opium War and opening five Chinese treaty ports for foreign residency and
trade, the United States appointed Caleb Cushing as commissioner to China
to negotiate a US treaty with China. He negotiated the Treaty of Wang-hsia
in 1844, obtaining the rights and privileges Britain had gained by force of
arms. Chinese negotiator Ch’i-ying followed a general policy of trying to
appease foreign demands, and the US treaty included language to the effect
that Chinese concessions made to other foreign nations would apply to the
United States as well. American merchants, missionaries, and others were
free to settle in the five treaty ports; and Americans, like other foreigners in China, had the right of extraterritoriality. This legal system meant that
foreigners and their activities in China remained governed by their own law
and not Chinese law. 22
Emblematic of the wide-ranging influence some American missionaries
exerted over the course of US policy toward China during that period was the
role of Peter Parker (1804–88). Parker was a medical missionary in Canton in
the 1830s. He assisted Caleb Cushing in negotiating the Treaty of Wang-
hsia. He was an interpreter and also helped facilitate the talks by being on
good terms with the chief Chinese government negotiator and his aides.
20
Chapter 2
Parker eventually became US commissioner in China in 1856. Faced with a
harder Chinese line at that time toward foreign demands for broader commer-
cial and missionary privileges, Parker favored Britain’s approach emphasiz-
ing firmness and appropriate use of force to advance foreign interests. When
Chinese forts in Canton in 1856 fired on US warships under the command of
Commodore James Armstrong, Parker backed Armstrong’s destruction of
the forts. Parker later had ambitions for the United States to gain a foothold
in Taiwan and to have a more active naval presence in China, but these
initiatives were not supported by the US government. 23
The upsurge of the massive Taiping Rebellion beginning in 1850 caught
Chinese authorities and American and foreign observers by surprise as the
rebel movement came to dominate southeastern China and most of the Yang-
tze River valley. Some Americans at first were attracted by Taiping leader
Hung Hsiu-ch’uan’s avowed Christian beliefs. Hung came to his own unique
views of Christianity, though he had three months of study in 1837 with an
American missionary in Canton, Issachar Roberts. As the Taiping leader’s
warped views of Christianity became clearer to Americans, they added to
reasons Americans and other foreigners shied away from the radical rebel
leader and his destructive activities. 24
Though seeing US interests resting with continued Qing dynasty rule,
American officials nonetheless were ready to join with Great Britain, France,
and others in pressing for treaty revisions that would open more treaty ports,
allow for missionary activities outside the treaty ports, and establish foreign legations in the Chinese capital. Britain and France used military force to
back up their demands, and in 1858 the Chinese government signed treaties
with them as well as with the Americans, who did no fighting. When British
and French envoys returned in 1859 to exchange ratification, they refused
Chinese ratification instructions, and a battle resulted in which the Chinese
drove off the foreigners. During the battle, the US commodore accompany-
ing Minister John Ward, the American envoy, had his forces, with Ward’s
approval, join with the British in fighting the Chinese. Ward nonetheless
followed the Chinese instructions for treaty ratification and managed to ex-
change ratification. The British and French returned in force in 1860 and
marched to Peking before setting forth new conditions in the treaties of 1860
that also benefited the United States. 25
US policy in China supported stronger Chinese government efforts after
1860 that worked within the confines of the Treaty System and accepted
Western norms while strengthening the Chinese government, economy, and
military. American Frederick Townsend Ward had led a foreign mercenary
force paid by Chinese merchants to protect Shanghai during the Taiping
Rebellion, and he later worked with Chinese authorities in leading a Chinese
force that helped crush the rebellion. Americans supported the newly estab-
lished Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs Service. This foreign-managed
Patterns of US-China Relations Prior to World War II
21
customs service had its roots in Shanghai in the 1850s during the years of
threat posed by the Taiping Rebellion; it emerged as a unique Chinese-
foreign enterprise (more than four hundred foreign employees in 1875) that
preserved the Chinese government’s access to an important and reliable
source of revenue. The US government saw its interests well served by
cooperating amicably with Britain and France as they worked collaboratively
with a newly reformist Chinese government seeking to strengthen China
along Western lines. The American Civil War weakened American military
presence in China and prompted US policy to place a premium on avoiding
disputes with Britain and France that might lead the European powers to be
more inclined to support the secessionist South. 26
Anson Burlingame, US minister to China 1861–67, symbolized American
collaboration with other foreign powers and with China in promoting Chi-
nese reforms and greater outreach to advanced Western countries. After leav-
ing his position as minister, Burlingame accepted a Chinese offer to lead a
Chinese delegation to observe and have talks with leaders of the West. The
trip was moderately successful, meeting acceptance notably in America and
England. The so-called Burlingame Treaty was signed during the delega-
tion’s visit to the United States in 1868. Among other provisions in the
treaty, the United States said it would not interfere in the internal develop-
ment of China, China recognized the right of its people to emigrate, and the
United States gave Chinese immigrants the right to enter the United States.
At the time, there were more than one hundred thousand Chinese in the
United States. Many had come with the support of American business inter-
ests and their national and local US government backers seeking reliable
labor for the rapid development of the American West. 27
Unfortunately, American society showed deep prejudice against Chinese
that eventually spread to other immigrants from Asia. Ironically, this came at
a time when a wide range of elements in the United States generally wel-
comed the hundreds of thousands of immigrants coming annually to the
United States from Europe. There emerged in the 1870s a broadly based
exclusion movement in the United States that was a dominant feature in US
relations with China for decades to come. This widespread US movement
was grounded in prejudice and fear of Chinese workers amid sometimes
difficult economic times in the United States. Showing blatant racism against
Chinese, Americans took legal and illegal
actions, including riots and the
murder of hundreds of Chinese in the United States, to stop Chinese immi-
gration to the United States. In September 1885, mobs of white workers
attacked Chinese in Rock Springs, Wyoming, killing twenty-eight in an out-
burst of burning, looting, and mayhem. State governments and the national
government passed an array of laws and the US courts made a variety of
decisions that singled out Chinese immigrants for negative treatment and
curbed the legal rights of Chinese residents and Chinese citizens in the Unit-
22
Chapter 2
ed States. In 1888 the Scott Act restricted Chinese laborers’ entry and denied
them reentry into the United States. In 1892 the Geary Act stripped Chinese
in the United States, whether citizens or not, of substantial legal rights,
requiring them to obtain and carry at all times a certificate showing their
right to reside in the United States. Without such proof, the punishment was
hard labor and deportation. The movement broadened to include all Asians.
The National Origins Act of 1924 barred new Asian immigration. 28
Chinese officials in the Chinese legation in Washington protested US
discrimination and persecution of Chinese and endeavored to reach agree-
ments with the US government that would assure basic protection of Chinese
rights. They repeatedly found US actions in violation of treaty obligations
and other agreements. US violations seriously undermined diplomatic rela-
tions between the two countries in the 1890s. US mistreatment of Chinese
people in the United States also prompted patriotic merchants, students, and
others to organize anti-American movements. The 1905 boycott closed sev-
eral coastal Chinese cities to US goods for several months. Nevertheless, the
US exclusion movement persisted and grew.
Adding to the friction in Sino-American official relations were the ten-
sions caused by expanding US and other foreign missionary activities in
China and the resulting antiforeign backlash in China. Attacks against Chi-
nese Christians and their missionary leaders became common occurrences in
the latter part of the nineteenth century, prompting American and other West-
ern governments to press the Chinese government for strong remedial ac-
tions, and prompting foreign officials to take actions on their own, including
the use of foreign gunboats, in order to protect their interests and citizens.
The Chinese authorities repeatedly found themselves caught between com-
peting pressures. On the one hand were the strong American and other
foreign pressures to protect missionaries and Chinese Christians. On the
other hand was the strong need to preserve the support of the local Chinese
gentry class, whose cooperation was essential for the maintenance of local
governance in the minimally staffed Chinese administration at the grassroots
level. The gentry often tended to see the foreign missionaries as posing
social, political, and ideological challenges to the Chinese elite, and they
frequently took steps to foster antiforeign sentiment against them by the
broader Chinese society. 29
Illustrating the marked shift toward the negative in official US attitudes
toward China from the comparatively benign and somewhat paternalistic
views of Anson Burlingame was the change in approach of Charles Denby,
who served as American minister in China (1885–98). A loyal Democrat
appointed by the first Grover Cleveland administration, Denby stayed as US
minister through the end of the second Cleveland administration. Initially
favoring a temperate position in seeking cooperation with Chinese officials
seen as moving toward reform, Denby came later to the view that Chinese
Patterns of US-China Relations Prior to World War II
23
government incompetence and weakness endangered American and other
missionaries and opened China to unchecked ambitions by outside powers.
He saw little alternative to the United States’ joining coercive foreign powers in order to protect US interests. 30
Chinese official disappointment and frustration with the United States
were reflected in the experience of Li Hung-chang (Li Hongzhang)
(1823–1901). Dominating Chinese foreign policy in the last third of the
nineteenth century, this senior regional and national leader and commissioner
of trade in northern China repeatedly employed the past practice of Chinese
leaders in using initiatives toward the United States in an effort to offset
pressures on China from other powers. And, as in those earlier episodes, he
found the US response wanting and became increasingly cynical about the
utility of appealing to the United States for support. 31
As in the case of earlier episodes of Chinese efforts to use the United
States against more aggressive foreign powers, Li’s view was based on the
judgment that the United States posed little threat to Chinese territories or
tributary states, while its commitment to commerce provided common
ground in US-China relations that could be used by Chinese officials to win
American support against more grasping and aggressive foreign powers. Li
was forced to deal with the growing source of friction between the United
States and China posed by US immigration policy discriminating against
Chinese. Initially, he endeavored to deal with this issue through negotiation.
Li sought US assistance in dealing with Chinese difficulties with Japan
over the Liu-ch’iu (Ryukyu) Islands in the 1870s. President Ulysses S. Grant
favored a cooperative US policy toward China and was a personal friend of
Anson Burlingame, the prominent proponent of cooperative China-US rela-
tions. After leaving office, Grant traveled to Asia in 1879 and was encour-
aged by Li to intercede with Japan on China’s behalf regarding a dispute over
the Liu-ch’iu (Ryukyu) Islands. Grant also received a promise from the Chi-
nese government to negotiate treaty restrictions on Chinese immigration into
the United States. Li later sought US endorsement of Chinese claims in
Korea in the face of Japanese pressure there in the 1880s. He also sought US
mediation in a growing dispute with France over Vietnam in the 1880s. All
these initiatives achieved little of benefit to China. By July 1894 Li sought
US good offices to avoid a war with Japan over Korea only after exhausting
other options. Li then endeavored to rely on Russia and other European
powers to deal with Japanese demands after the Japanese defeated China in
1895. Unlike other Chinese officials, including his senior colleague Chang
Chih-tung (Zhang Zhidong), Li did not emphasize the option of turning to the
United States for meaningful assistance in the period of demands by Russia,
Japan, and other imperial powers for major territorial and other concessions
from China at the turn of the nineteenth century. 32
24
Chapter 2
US-CHINA RELATIONS AMID FOREIGN DOMINATION,
INTERNAL DECLINE, AND REVOLUTION IN CHINA, 1895–1941
China’s unexpected defeat by Japan in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95
led European powers to join Japan in seeking exclusive spheres of influence
and c
ommercial and territorial rights in China. Alarmed that US interests in
free commercial access to China would be jeopardized, US officials formu-
lated a response that led to the so-called Open Door Notes of 1899 and 1900.
The notes sought the powers’ agreement that even if they established special
spheres in China, they would not discriminate against foreign trade or inter-
fere with customs collection. They underlined US interests in preserving
equal commercial access to China and the preservation of the integrity of the
Chinese Customs Service, a crucial source of revenue for the struggling
Chinese government. 33
Though generally unenthusiastic about the US initiatives, most concerned
powers offered evasive and qualified responses, but all in effect endorsed the
principles in the Open Door Notes. As the United States and other foreign
powers dispatched troops to crush the Boxer Uprising and lift the siege of
foreign legations in Peking, the United States in July 1900 sent a second
round of Open Door Notes that expressed concern for preserving Chinese
sovereignty. The foreign powers went along with the notes.
US policy makers repeatedly referred to the US Open Door policy follow-
ing the issuing of the Open Door Notes. The William H. Taft administration
in 1910 interpreted the policy to extend beyond equal trade opportunity to
include equal opportunity for investment in China. The Wilson administra-
tion in 1915 reacted to the Japanese Twenty-One Demands against China by
refusing to recognize such infringements of the Open Door policy. The relat-
ed principles concerning US support for the territorial integrity of China
were featured prominently in the Nine Power Treaty of the Washington
Conference in the Warren G. Harding administration in 1922, and in the
nonrecognition of Japanese aggression in Manchuria during the Herbert
Hoover administration in 1932. The Harry Truman administration sought
Soviet Union leader Joseph Stalin’s promise that the Open Door policy
would be observed in the Soviet-influenced areas of Manchuria following the
Soviet military defeat of Japanese forces there in 1945. In general, American
political leaders dealing with China throughout the twentieth century tended
US-China Relations (3rd Ed) Page 4