to refer to the Open Door policy in positive terms, as a US attempt to prevent
China from being carved up into commercially impenetrable foreign colo-
nies. Chinese interpretations often emphasized that Americans were more
concerned about maintaining their own commercial access and were pre-
pared to do little in practice in supporting Chinese sovereignty. The historical record tends to support the Chinese interpretations. 34
Patterns of US-China Relations Prior to World War II
25
Most prominent in US policy toward China in the tumultuous period of
the Open Door Notes was John Hay. Secretary of state under President
William McKinley and, after McKinley’s assassination in 1901, President
Theodore Roosevelt, Hay strove to preserve US commercial access to China
and other interests amid widespread foreign encroachment on the weakened
Qing dynasty. Responding to the unexpected Japanese defeat of China in
1895 and European powers’ extortion of leaseholds and concessions in the
following three years, Hay used the work of State Department China expert
William Rockhill and his British colleague from the Chinese Imperial Mari-
time Customs Service, Alfred Hippisley, as the basis for official US mes-
sages sent to all foreign powers concerned with China in September 1899. 35
The first Open Door Notes were followed by the crisis associated with the
Boxer Uprising. A grassroots antiforeign insurrection in northern China,
known as the Boxers, came to receive support from some Chinese officials,
and by 1899 and 1900 it was carrying out widespread attacks against foreign
missionaries and Chinese Christians. As the movement grew, it received the
support of the Qing court, though regional leaders in most of China did not
support the Boxers. The insurgents occupied Peking and Tientsin, besieging
foreign legations and settlements. About twenty thousand foreign troops
were mustered, including thousands of Americans, to end the siege and put
down the insurgents. They ended the siege of Tientsin in July and of Peking
in August 1900. Many troops stayed, carrying out punitive expeditions. 36
As the United States and other foreign powers dispatched troops to crush
the Boxer Uprising and lift the siege of foreign legations in Peking, Hay in
July 1900 sent a second round of Open Door Notes in which he expressed
concern for preserving Chinese sovereignty. He depicted local Chinese au-
thorities as responsible for law and order and the safety of foreigners in
China. This helped the United States and other powers continue to work
constructively with regional Chinese leaders in central and southern China
who were maintaining law and order, and focus their anti-Boxer suppression
more narrowly, in northern China.
Though Hay tried to reduce the large size of the foreign indemnity de-
manded of China, the United States took its $25 million share of the $333
million indemnity China was required to pay the foreign powers under terms
of the Boxer Protocol signed in September 1901, and the United States
stationed troops along with other powers in northern China under terms of
the protocol. While continuing to work in support of China’s territorial integ-
rity and equal commercial access to China, Hay responded to US pressures to
obtain a coaling station in China by making a perfunctory and ultimately vain
effort in December 1900 to acquire such a station on the China coast. 37
Meanwhile, as Russia endeavored to consolidate its hold in Manchuria,
and Japan and Great Britain worked together against it, ultimately forming an
alliance in 1902, Hay attempted to secure US interests with a new Sino-
26
Chapter 2
American trade treaty and a request for opening two new treaty ports in
Russian-dominated areas of Manchuria. Russia at first resisted Chinese ac-
ceptance of the US request but decided to withdraw its opposition when it
was clear to them that Americans or other foreigners, notably Japanese,
would not settle in the ports. 38
Though Li Hung-chang and his increasingly skeptical view of the utility
Chinese foreign-policy decision making until his death in 1901, simultane-
ously, an important force often arguing for closer Chinese coordination with
the United States came from Chang Chih-tung (1837–1909). A powerful
Chinese official, well entrenched as governor-general in the provinces,
Chang endeavored in the period after Japan’s defeat of China in 1895 and
subsequent European powers’ extortion of concessions to cooperate with the
United States as a power opposing seizure of Chinese territory. Though he
supported China’s reliance on Russia after the defeat by Japan in 1895, he
came by 1898 to seek the support of Britain and the United States, viewing
them as commercial powers with substantial interests in blocking seizures of
Chinese territory by Japan, Russia, and others. 39
That year, he entrusted an American consortium to build the Hankow-
Canton railway. The US business group was known as the American-China
Development Company. Organized in 1895 and representing US railway,
banking, and investment interests, the company received from the Chinese
government in 1898 a concession to build and operate a railway between the
two Chinese cities. The company demanded and received better terms from
the Chinese government in a supplementary agreement in 1900. 40
Chang made overtures to the United States during and after the Boxer
Uprising, seeking US mediation with the foreign powers and US assistance
in moderating the foreign reaction to the crisis. Chang sought, without much
success, US help in limiting the size of the foreign indemnity and in dealing
with Russian military occupation of Manchuria after the Boxer Uprising. He
subsequently became disillusioned with the American consortium for the
Hankow-Canton railroad. Some of the American shareholders sold interest in
the company to a Belgian syndicate, which by 1904 controlled five of seven
seats on the company’s board of directors. Chang and the Chinese govern-
ment then sought to buy back the concession, and the US government en-
couraged efforts by American investors to restore American control to the
company. In the end, American shareholders, having restored American
ownership of the company, gained considerable profit by selling their inter-
ests in the railway concession back to the Chinese government in 1905.
Chang’s frustration with the United States also was seen as he intervened
at several points with the Chinese central government and the US govern-
ment, emphasizing strong antipathy among Chinese patriots over the US
exclusion of Chinese in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Patterns of US-China Relations Prior to World War II
27
During the anti-American boycott of 1905, prompted heavily by Chinese
resentment over US restrictions on Chinese immigration, Chang privately
advised President Theodore Roosevelt to ease the US restrictions. 41
American officials also were active in the late nineteenth and early twen-
tieth centuries, pressing the Chinese government to protect American and
other missionaries and their converts, who were subjected to frequent attacks
often fomented by Chinese local elites. The Boxer Uprising added greatly to
the anti-Christian attacks and implicated the Qing government in the vio-
lence. Hundreds of foreign missionaries and thousands of Chinese Christians
were killed. The violence against missionaries subsided but did not end. The
Lien-Chou massacre of 1905 represented the most serious incident in US-
China relations in the decade. The murder of five US missionaries in this
southern Chinese city prompted President Theodore Roosevelt to consider
the use of force in Canton, and American forces began gathering in Canton
harbor. Roosevelt already was strongly critical of the prolonged anti-
American boycott underway in China. Chinese officials ultimately took steps
to punish those responsible for the massacre and to pay an indemnity. 42
The Sino-American maneuvering over the Hankow-Canton railway was
emblematic of an erratic pattern of American business and government inter-
est in investment in China in railway and other development plans in the last
fifteen years of Qing rule. Also reflected then was erratic Chinese interest in using such US involvement in efforts to offset foreign encroachment. The
focus of interest for the United States and China came to rest in Manchuria,
where Russia and especially Japan were consolidating spheres of influence.
Prominent figures on the Chinese side in this issue were Tang Shao-yi, a
governor in Manchuria, and the regional and emerging national leader of
China, Yuan Shih-kai, both of whom sought such US support. 43
A protégé of Li Hung-chang, Yuan emerged as the most important mili-
tary and political leader in China in the early twentieth century until his death in 1916. His base of power was in northern China, and he was closely
involved with efforts to stem the decline of Chinese influence and control in
Manchuria in the face of Russian and Japanese advances. He supported the
ways Tang Shao-yi and others approached the Theodore Roosevelt adminis-
tration as they sought US support in order to counter Japanese expansion in
Manchuria. Seeking good relations with the United States, he argued for the
suppression of the anti-American boycott. 44
Tang had studied in the United States and worked with Yuan and others
in encouraging US government and business to become more involved with
railway building in Manchuria as a means to counter Japanese expansion
there. Tang sought support from US financial backers and officials in China.
As US consul general in Mukden, Manchuria, during the Theodore Roosevelt
administration, Willard Straight attempted to work with Tang and other Chi-
nese officials to use US investments to counter Japanese domination in Man-
28
Chapter 2
churia. In 1908 Tang traveled to Washington, where he met with Secretary of
State Elihu Root, who underlined the Theodore Roosevelt administration’s
lack of interest in confronting Japan in Manchuria by sharing with Tang the
yet-unpublished Root-Takahira Agreement. This was an exchange of notes
between Root and Japanese Ambassador Takahira Kogoro that underlined
US commitment to the status quo in the Pacific region, including China; US
desire to maintain friendly relations with Japan; and lack of US interest in
considering any Chinese-inspired plan to challenge Japanese interests in
Manchuria. 45
US government policy on supporting railway building as a means to
challenge other powers’ encroachment and support Chinese influence in
Manchuria shifted markedly for a time during the Taft administration,
1909–13. The president and Secretary of State Philander Knox tried to use
schemes involving US investment in railways to prevent Russia and Japan
from dominating Manchuria. A leading example of these plans was a pro-
posed railway in Manchuria between the cities of Chinchow and Aigun.
Willard Straight had left US government service and was working with Chi-
nese officials and US and foreign backers to promote plans to build the
railroad. Straight signed an agreement with Chinese authorities in Manchuria
in October 1909 to have an American banking group finance the Chinchow-
Aigun route. Before moving forward with the deal, the Chinese authorities in
Peking awaited US efforts to deal with expected Japanese and Russian anger
over this challenge to their spheres of influence in Manchuria. In this regard, Secretary of State Knox proposed a bold plan to neutralize or internationalize
all railway projects in Manchuria. Japan and Russia rejected Knox’s plan and
warned against the Chinchow-Aigun railway. Chinese central government
authorities temporized, and US investors showed little enthusiasm. The Taft
administration’s “dollar diplomacy” failed. The US administration subse-
quently adopted a more moderate stance emphasizing US cooperation with
European powers, and ultimately Russia and Japan, in an international con-
sortium dealing with loans to China. Ironically, Hsi-liang, the Chinese
governor-general in Manchuria in the last years of the Qing dynasty, and his
Qing dynasty colleagues chose this time to try to consolidate ties with the
United States and to seek greater US support against Russia and Japan in
Manchuria. However, Chinese government emissaries found the Taft admin-
istration now maintained a low profile regarding Manchuria. 46
The pattern of US government policy on the one hand supporting an open
door of international commercial access to China and Chinese territorial
integrity, and on the other hand avoiding actions that would complicate US
relations with salient foreign powers expanding in China, continued with the
fall of the Chinese empire. In the thirty years from the end of the Qing
dynasty in early 1912 to the attack on Pearl Harbor in late 1941, US policy
and practice endeavored to stake out positions and formulate political mea-
Patterns of US-China Relations Prior to World War II
29
sures designed to support Chinese sovereignty and integrity. But they did so
while generally avoiding the risk of confrontation with imperial Japan, which
emerged as the dominant power in East Asia after the pullback and weaken-
ing of European powers in the region with the start of World War I. US
policy makers also were challenged by revolutionary movements and violent
antiforeign sentiment sweeping China in the 1920s. They tended to adjust to
these trends pragmatically, giving way to some of the Chinese demands and
eventually establishing good working relations with the Nationalist Chinese
government of Chiang Kai-shek, the dominant leader of China by the late
1920s.
Japan moved quickly to consolidate its position in China with the start of
World War I. Allied with Great Britain and siding with the Allies in World
War I, Japan occupied German concessions in China’s Shantung province in
1914. In January 1915 Japan presented the Chinese government with five
sets of secret demands that became known as the Twenty-One Demands. The
demands were leaked, which compelled Japan to de
fer the more outrageous
ones, but they resulted in May 1915 in Sino-Japanese treaties and notes
confirming Japan’s dominant position in Shantung, southern Manchuria, and
eastern Inner Mongolia, and Japan’s special interests in an industrial area in
central China. US officials debated how to respond. Secretary of State
William Jennings Bryan at first reaffirmed US support for China’s territorial
integrity and equal commercial access to China, but also acknowledged Ja-
pan’s “special relations” with China. President Wilson subsequently warned
that the United States would not accept infringements on its rights, and Bryan
said the United States would not recognize infringements on US rights, Chi-
nese sovereignty, or the Open Door policy. In a bid to expand US leverage,
Wilson then reversed an earlier decision and supported American banks lend-
ing money to China through an international consortium as a means to bal-
ance Japanese expansion in China.
Not seriously deterred, Japan maneuvered to see that its position in Shan-
tung province was secured by the Versailles Peace Treaty ending World War
I. Like Japan, the Chinese government had aligned with the victorious allied
powers. US and Chinese delegations worked closely at the peace conference
to free China from restrictions on her sovereignty, and Chinese negotiators
were particularly interested in regaining control of the former German con-
cession in China’s Shantung province. Nevertheless, Japan earlier had signed
secret agreements with European powers that bound them to support Japan’s
claims to the Shantung leasehold, and the Chinese government’s position
was weakened by having agreed as part of the Twenty-One Demands in 1915
to accept German-Japanese agreement on the concessions. Robert Lansing, a
counselor at the State Department during the early years of the Wilson ad-
ministration, argued against confrontation with Japan in defense of China’s
integrity at the time of Japan’s Twenty-One Demands in 1915. As secretary
30
Chapter 2
of state in 1917 he negotiated and exchanged notes with Japanese envoy Ishii