European powers and later Japan began at the end of the nineteenth century
to carve up Chinese territory into exclusive spheres of influence. However,
US government actions in response were mainly symbolic, using nonbinding
measures such as diplomatic notes and agreements to support the principles
of free access to China and Chinese territorial integrity. US importance in
China also grew by default as previously active European powers withdrew
forces and resources during World War I. Imperial Japan used military and
other coercion to solidify Japanese control in parts of China, notably Man-
churia. 4
Though there often was strenuous US debate, the prevailing US official
position was that limited US capabilities and interests in China argued
against the United States confronting increasingly dominant Japanese power
in East Asia. US officials endeavored to use international agreements and
political measures to persuade Japanese officials to preserve Chinese integ-
rity and free international access to China. The US efforts were seriously
complicated by political disorder in China and by US leaders’ later preoccu-
pation with the consequences of the Great Depression. In the 1930s, Japan
created a puppet state in Manchuria and continued encroachments in northern
China. The United States did little apart from symbolic political posturing in
response to the Japanese aggression and expansion. 5
US-China relations in this more than century-long period saw the emer-
gence of patterns of behavior that influenced US and Chinese attitudes and
policies toward one another. American officials and elite and popular opinion
tended to emphasize what they saw as a uniquely positive role the United
States played as a supporter of Chinese national interests and the well-being
of the Chinese people, with some commentators seeing the emergence of a
US special relationship with China. Chinese officials and elites, including a
rising group of Chinese patriots in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, tended to see American policies and practices as less aggressive
than other powers but of little substantive help in China’s struggle for nation-al preservation and development. Chinese officials often endeavored to ma-
nipulate American diplomacy to serve Chinese interests, but they usually
were disappointed with the results. American government policies and prac-
tices were seen at bottom to serve narrow US interests, with little meaningful
concern for China. Gross American discrimination against and persecution of
Chinese residents and Chinese immigrants in the United States underlined a
perceived hypocrisy in American declarations of special concern for China. 6
Patterns of US-China Relations Prior to World War II
15
US INTERESTS, ACTIONS, AND PERCEPTIONS
Beginning in the late eighteenth century, new American freedom from Brit-
ish rule brought American loss of access to previous British-controlled trade
partners. This prompted an American search for new trading opportunities in
China. Though actual US trade with China remained relatively small, the
China market often loomed large in the American political and business
imagination. Meanwhile, US officials sometimes sought to channel US in-
vestment in ways that would preserve American commercial opportunities in
China in the face of foreign powers seeking exclusive privileges and spheres
of influence. 7
Americans also were in the vanguard of Protestant missionaries sent to
China in the nineteenth century. US missionaries came in groups and as
individuals to work in the treaty ports and eventually grew to many hundreds
working throughout China to spread the gospel and to carry out relief, educa-
tion, medical, and other activities of benefit to Chinese people. Part of a well-organized network of church groups that reached deep into the United States
for prayers and material support, American missionaries explained Chinese
conditions to interested Americans, fostering a sense of special bond between
the United States and China. They also served as advisers to US officials
dealing with China, and sometimes became official US representatives in
China. Their core interest remained unobstructed access to Chinese people
missionaries and their foreign and Chinese colleagues. 8
Though commercial and missionary interests remained at the center of
US priorities in China well into the twentieth century, a related strategic
interest also had deep roots. In 1835, several years before the first US treaty with China in 1844, the United States organized the Asiatic Squadron. This
US Navy group began in 1842 to maintain a regular presence along the China
coast. It later was called the Asiatic Fleet. Initially two or three vessels, it grew to thirty-one vessels by 1860 before forces were recalled on account of
the American Civil War. It varied in size after the Civil War, but was suffi-
ciently strong to easily destroy the Spanish forces in Manila harbor during
the Spanish-American War in 1898. It protected American lives and com-
merce in China and throughout maritime East and South Asia and reinforced
American diplomacy in the region. 9
Strong American interest in commercial, missionary, and strategic access
to China seemed to contrast with only episodic American diplomatic interest
in China. The US government occasionally gave high-level attention to the
appointment of envoys or the reception of Chinese delegations. Caleb Cush-
ing, Anson Burlingame, and some other nineteenth-century US envoys to
China were well connected politically. Some US envoys endeavored to use
their actions in China to influence broader US policy or to advance their own
16
Chapter 2
political or other ambitions. US envoys sometimes came from the missionary
community in China. On the other hand, the post of US minister in China
often was vacant, with an interim official placed in charge in an acting
capacity. Generally speaking, whenever nineteenth-century US envoys
pushed for more assertive US policies that involved the chance of significant
expenditure of US resources or political risk, Washington decision makers
reflected the realities of limited US government interests in the situation in
China and responded unenthusiastically. This broad pattern continued into
the twentieth century, though US officials from time to time took the lead in
low-risk political and diplomatic efforts in support of US interests in unim-
peded commercial and other access to China. 10
Not surprisingly, the Americans with an interest in China tended to em-
phasize the positive features of US policy and behavior. Thus, the United
States was seen to have behaved benignly toward China, especially when
compared with Japan and the European powers that repeatedly coerced and
attacked China militarily. The US government repeatedly voiced support of
China’s territorial and national integrity. Through missionary and other ac-
tivities, including education activities that brought tens of thousands of Chi-
nese students for higher education in the United States
by the 1940s,
Americans also showed strong sympathy and support for the broader welfare
of the Chinese people. 11
US officials, opinion leaders, and commentators tended to ignore or soft-
pedal negative features of US relations with China. Most notable was the so-
called exclusion movement that grossly discriminated against and often vio-
lently persecuted Chinese immigrants to the United States. The movement
took hold in US politics beginning in the 1870s and lasted for almost a
hundred years. At first centered in western states with some significant con-
centrations of Chinese workers, the exclusion movement reflected wide-
spread American prejudice and fear of Chinese workers amid sometimes
difficult economic times in the United States. American elites and common
people took legal and illegal actions, including riots and the murder of hun-
dreds of Chinese in the United States, to stop Chinese immigration to the
United States and drive away those Chinese already in the United States.
Various 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 of the United States. The movement eventual-
ly broadened to include all Asians. The National Origins Act of 1924 barred
all new Asian immigration. US mistreatment of Chinese people in the United
States became a major issue for the Chinese government, which complained
repeatedly against unjust US actions, but with little effect. It was the target of a Chinese anti-American boycott in 1905. 12
Patterns of US-China Relations Prior to World War II
17
CHINESE INTERESTS, ACTIONS, AND PERCEPTIONS
The Chinese side of the US-China relationship during the more than century-
long experience prior to World War II saw Chinese officials and elite opinion
in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries remain preoccupied with mas-
sive internal rebellions and disruptions. In this context, the United States
figured secondarily in Chinese government and elite concerns. The opinion
of the Chinese populace was less important in China-US relations until the
occurrence of anti-Christian and anti-missionary riots later in the nineteenth
century and grassroots nationalistic actions like the 1905 anti-American boy-
cott reacting to the US mistreatment of Chinese immigrants. 13
Qing dynasty officials often were too weak to confront foreign aggression
and military pressure in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Their
diplomacy frequently amounted to versions of appeasement. Forced to give
ground to foreign demands, the Qing officials gave special emphasis to capi-
talizing on real or perceived differences among the foreign powers, hoping to
use some foreign powers to fend off others. Chinese officials repeatedly tried
to elicit US actions that would assist Chinese interests against other generally more aggressive and demanding powers. Although US envoys in China often
would be caught up in these Chinese schemes and argue for US positions at
odds with other powers in China, Washington decision makers tended to
adhere to a low-risk approach that offered little of substance to support the
Chinese efforts. 14
Qing dynasty initiatives endeavoring to use possible US support against
other foreign powers did not blind Chinese government officials to US inter-
ests in China that worked against Chinese government concerns. The spread
of foreign missionaries throughout China as a result of treaties reached in
1860 meant that these foreign elites soon ran up against strong resistance
from local Chinese elites. The local Chinese leaders, the so-called gentry
class, often fomented popular outbursts and riots against the foreigners and
their Chinese Christian adherents. The American missionaries sought the
support of their official representatives in China who backed their demands
to the Chinese government for protection, punishment of Chinese malefac-
tors, and compensation with strong diplomacy and frequent use of gunboats.
This posed a very difficult dilemma for Qing officials, who needed to deal
with the threats from the Americans and other foreign officials pressing for
protection of missionaries and punishment of offending Chinese elites, while
sustaining the support of local Chinese elites who provided key elements of
Chinese governance at the local levels. 15
Meanwhile, American government officials were seen by Chinese offi-
cials and other elites as transparently hypocritical in demanding protection of special rights for American missionaries and other US citizens in China,
while US officials and people were carrying out repeated and often violent
18
Chapter 2
infringements on the rights and basic safety of Chinese workers in the United
States. In this context, Chinese officials tended to be sympathetic with the
merchant-led and student-encouraged anti-American boycott that took hold
in Chinese coastal cities in 1905 and that focused on Chinese anger over US
discrimination against Chinese immigration to the United States and poor
treatment of Chinese in the United States. 16
With the withdrawal of the European powers to fight World War I, the
United States loomed larger in the strategies of the weak Chinese govern-
ments following the end of the Qing dynasty in 1912. However, the United
States remained unwilling to take significant risks of confrontation with the
now-dominant power in China: imperial Japan. The US reaction to the gross
Japanese infringements on Chinese sovereignty in the so-called Twenty-One
Demands of 1915 elicited statements on nonrecognition and not much else
from the United States. President Woodrow Wilson gravely disappointed
Chinese patriots by accepting Japan’s continued control of the former Ger-
man leasehold in China’s Shantung province at the Versailles Peace Treaty
ending World War I. 17
The Nine Power Treaty at the US-convened Washington Conference of
1921–22 pledged to respect Chinese territorial integrity, but when Japan took
over Manchuria, creating a puppet state in the early 1930s, the US govern-
ment offered little more than words of disapproval. Given this experience,
Chinese patriots were not persuaded by the protestations of some American
commentators that the United States had developed a special relationship
with China based on concern for the well-being of the Chinese people and
preservation of China’s sovereignty and integrity. When Japan, after occupy-
ing Manchuria, moved in 1937 to launch an all-out war against China and the
United States did little in response, Chinese patriots became even more cyni-
cal about American intentions and policies. 18
NINETEENTH-CENTURY ENCOUNTERS
American traders and seamen were the first from the United States to interact
with China. When American traders went to China prior to the Opium War of
1839–42, Chinese regulations under the Tribute System in foreign affairs
confined them, along with most other foreign maritime traders, to Canton, in
southeastern China. There,
local officials supervised and taxed foreign trade,
foreigners were required to live and work in a designated area of Canton
during the trading season, and foreign interaction with Chinese was kept to a
minimum; certain Chinese merchants were designated to deal with foreign
merchants. 19
Chinese foreign relations under the Tribute System were unequal; they
emphasized the superiority of China, its system of governance, and the em-
Patterns of US-China Relations Prior to World War II
19
peror. The foreigners were expected to abide by Chinese laws and regula-
tions and to accord with Chinese instructions. As a result, although American
and other foreign merchants and their foreign employees benefited from the
trading opportunities at Canton, they were subject to interventions from Chi-
nese authority that appeared unjust from a Western perspective and danger-
ous to those concerned.
A graphic illustration of the vulnerability of foreigners in China was the
case of Francesco Terranova. A Sicilian-born sailor on an American ship
trading at Canton in 1821, Terranova was accused of the murder of a boat-
woman selling fruit to the ship. He and his shipmates denied the charge. A
standoff resulted, with Chinese authorities cutting off American trade until
Terranova was handed over. The American merchants and shipowners gave
in; Terranova was handed over, tried in secret under Chinese procedures with
no American present, convicted, and executed. Trade between the United
States and China resumed. 20
Like their British colleagues, American merchants brought opium into
China, balancing their purchases of tea and other Chinese commodities. The
burgeoning trade in illegal opium entering China in the period before the
Opium War was carried out mainly by British merchants, though American
merchants carried Turkish opium to China and held about 10 percent of the
Chinese opium market. American opium along with British opium was con-
fiscated and destroyed by Chinese authorities in Canton in 1839, leading to
Great Britain going to war. The US government took no part in the fight-
ing. 21