US-China Relations (3rd Ed) Read online

  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

  for purposes of evangelization and good works carried out by the American

  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