CHINA, RELATIONS WITH

CHINA, RELATIONS WITH. America has always been interested in China, but rarely has evidenced much understanding of the Middle Kingdom or of the different ways that the two countries viewed political, economic, and social issues over the years. In 1784 at Canton harbor, the empress of China opened trade between the new United States, now excluded from the European mercantilist system of trade, and China. At that time, China was, for the most part, self-sufficient economically, and America had few goods to offer until the expansion of the fur trade in the Pacific Northwest.

Later, in the aftermath of the Opium War (1839–1842) and the British imposition of the so-called unequal treaty system during the late nineteenth century, the United States sought to increase its presence in China. Americans came, as did Europeans, bringing religion (missionaries), drugs (opium largely from Turkey rather than, as did the British, from India), and warriors (naval forces and marines). In 1844, by the terms of the Treaty of Wanghsia, the Qing rulers of China extended most-favored-nation status to the United States.

In the 1840s, the United States settled the Oregon boundary dispute with Great Britain and defeated Mexico, there by acquiring a long Pacific coastline and several major anchorages. Trade with and interest in China certainly increased, however, the locus of activity shifted eastward. As the British forced open ports north of Canton and as opium continued to devastate South China, many Chinese would emigrate and a goodly number immigrated to North America (the Burlingame Treaty of 1868 helped facilitate such immigration), settling eventually in so-called Chinatowns in Vancouver, San Francisco, and elsewhere. Indeed, the Chinese phrase for San Francisco is "jiu jin shan" or "old gold mountain." As the United States began constructing the transcontinental railway and also began mining the great mineral wealth of the West, many of these immigrants found terrible, dangerous work. As the railroad building boom wound down and as the tempo of mining operations changed and became less labor intensive, the periodic cycle of boom and bust turned to depression. Resistance to Chinese emigration increased greatly and violence sometimes resulted. In response, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, suspending Chinese immigration for ten years and declaring Chinese ineligible for naturalization. It was the only time in American history when such drastic immigration legislation was aimed at excluding a single ethnic group.

The pace of China's disintegration accelerated in the aftermath of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895, and U.S. Secretary of State John Hay produced the famous "Open Door" notes of 1899 and 1900. The western imperialist powers and Japan moved from Britain's model of informal empire that had dominated much of the mid-nineteenth century to grabbing territory and carving up China. While Hay certainly sought to preserve China for U.S. trade, he also was acting to preserve the idea of China and to help improve the image of the United States in China. The decision to use money from the Boxer Rebellion (1900) indemnity to educate Chinese youth also won favor, especially when compared to the actions of European countries and Japan.

The pace of change accelerated in China during the early twentieth century, as the Qing dynasty collapsed, Sun Yat-sen's Guomindang nationalists temporarily were frustrated by Yuan Shih K'ai, a military dictator, and China began a slow devolution into warlordism. Meanwhile, in 1915, as Europe was locked in mortal combat in World War I, the Japanese minister to China delivered the infamous "21 Demands" to Yuan; had Yuan agreed to them, China would have been made virtually a Japanese protectorate. President Woodrow Wilson helped Yuan by pressing Japan to withdraw the demands and the crisis ended.

Sino-American relations suffered following World War I. Modern Chinese nationalism began with the May Fourth Movement on 4 May 1919, when Chinese students in Beijing and other major cities rallied and were joined by towns people to protest the decision of the major powers to transfer Germany's concession in China to Japan. To China, it was outrageous, while, to President Wilson, it was a price to pay for passage of the Versailles Peace Treaty and to achieve his cherished League of Nations. The Washington Naval Conference (1921–1922) and the various treaties the attending powers signed, promising to respect each other's possessions in the Pacific and calling of an Open Door to China, in the words of historian Akira Iriye, left East Asia in an unstable state. Japan began taking aggressive action—first with the 1928 assassination of Chang Tso-lin, a Manchurian warlord, and then with the Mukden Incident in September 1931 and the takeover of this large and resource rich part of northeastern China. President Herbert Hoover and his secretary of state, Henry Stimson, would not intervene during these beginning years of the Great Depression but they engaged in a kind of moral diplomacy. During the 1930s, as Japan began expanding first into the Chinese provinces adjoining Manchuria, later crossing the Great Wall, and finally engaging in a more general war against the Nationalist government, President Franklin Roosevelt secretly supported the Chinese. Roosevelt ultimately began imposing sanctions on Japan, both to halt its aggression and to force it out of China.

After World War II (1939–1945), the United States became caught up in the Chinese civil war between the Nationalists and the communists, which had begun nearly two decades before. American marines went to North China to help accept the surrender of some 500,000 Japanese troops and found themselves defending communications and transportation as Nationalist leader Jiang Jieshr moved his best troops from southwest China to Manchuria. Communist leader Mao Zedong and his communist guerrillas, however, first won an overwhelming victory in Manchuria and later secured north China, crossed the wide Yangtze River and, in 1949, forced Jiang to flee the mainland for the island redoubt of Taiwan.

Conflict next broke out in Korea in 1950, which soon widened into a fight between the United States and the new and communist People's Republic of China. As the Korean War dragged on until 1953, U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy began searching for communists in the State Department and other government agencies, while some politicians questioned "who lost China" and a witchhunt began. Thereafter, in the wars breaking out in Indochina, the French received increased support from the United States while the Viet Minh received support from communist China. The Geneva Conference of 1954 brought a temporary halt to the fighting, but it resumed several years later, and President John Kennedy, convinced by the so-called domino theory (that if communists were permitted to take over Vietnam all Asia would eventually fall to communism), expanded the U.S. presence. When President Lyndon Johnson ordered large numbers of troops to South Vietnam beginning in 1964, he did so in part because he believed that the Chinese communist rulers needed to be contained.

In the summer of 1971 President Richard Nixon announced that he would travel to China early in 1972. In February, Nixon flew to Shanghai, then traveled to Beijing and met with both Premier Zhou Enlai and communist leader Mao Zedong. The visit benefited both the United States, which was seeking to balance Soviet expansionism and reduce its involvement in Vietnam, and China, which was concerned about the possibility of a Soviet preemptive military strike within its borders.

Since Nixon's visit, tens of thousands of Americans have visited China, and many thousands of Chinese have come to the United States to study and to work. Trade has increased, especially if the goods made in China and transshipped through Hong Kong are considered. Nevertheless, great points of stress still exist in the Sino-American relationship. Taiwan remains a source of tension, for Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait believe there is only one China, while the United States continues to support, in a fashion, a separate Republic of China situated on Taiwan. Another source of tension is that China does not always honor patent and copyright regulations and enjoys a huge balance of trade surplus with America while restricting American imports into the mainland. The Chinese crackdown on young people gathered in Tiananmen Square in June 1989 also upset the United States, although China viewed it as an internal matter. In addition, for many years, China sold arms to various groups that threatened the stability around the world and, often, American interests. In the aftermath of 11 September 2001, there appeared to be more concurrence in Sino-American thought on the threat of radical Islamic-based terrorism. The United States is currently the world's preeminent superpower, while China is the emerging power in eastern Asia; the relationship will have to continue to mature and develop.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Anderson, David L. Imperialism and Idealism: American Diplomats in China, 1861–1898. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985.

Cohen, Warren I. America's Response to China: A History of Sino-American Relations. 4th ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.

Davis, Elizabeth Van Wie, ed. Chinese Perspectives on Sino-American Relations, 1950–2000. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edward Mellen Press, 2000.

Fairbank, John King. The United States and China. 4th ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983.

Foot, Rosemary. The Practice of Power: U.S. Relations with China since 1949. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Ross, Robert S., and Jiang Changbin, eds. Re-examining the Cold War: U.S.–China Diplomacy, 1954–1973. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001.

Van Alstyne, Richard W. The United States and East Asia. London: Thames and Hudson, 1973.

Young, Marilyn. The Rhetoric of Empire: American China Policy, 1895–1901. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968.

Charles M.Dobbs

See alsoChina, U.S. Armed Forces in ; China Trade ; Chinese Americans .

China, relations with. Direct British trading contacts with China began in 1637, and were soon followed by a considerable artistic and cultural interest in the world's longest-established civilization. Difficulties in finding suitable exports to China, coupled with the problem of dealing with an empire which acknowledged no equals in the world, led to the first China (Opium) War in 1839–42. A British victory was rewarded with many privileges in five ‘treaty’ ports (a number later much increased), and by the acquisition of Hong Kong. Further differences precipitated the second China War when the Chinese were finally forced (1860) to conform to western ideas of diplomatic practice. The British thereafter had no wish to see China weakened further since they already enjoyed the lion's share of trade and investment. Competition for trade and concessions increased in the 1890s, and Britain participated in an international force to raise the siege of the legations in Peking by the Boxers (1900). In the 1920s and 1930s Chinese nationalism was strong enough to persuade the Foreign Office to start the renegotiation of the unequal treaties. On the other hand, from 1931 Britain was unable to assist China against growing Japanese pressure, while victory in 1945 temporarily made the USA the leading outside power in Chinese affairs. Britain, unlike the USA, recognized the new communist regime which came to power in China in 1949, and tried to moderate American policy towards Peking during and after the Korean War (1950–3). China insisted on the return of Hong Kong when the lease expired in 1997, and firmly opposed British efforts in 1993–4 to extend democracy in the colony.

C. J. Bartlett