The history of China–United States relations during the Qing and Republican eras saw many changes. Harold Isaacs in 1955 identified six stages of American attitudes toward China. They were "respect" (18th century), "contempt" (1840–1905), "benevolence" (1905 to 1937), "admiration" (1937–1944); "disenchantment" (1944–1949), and "hostility" (after 1949). The historian Jonathan Spence updated Isaac's model to include "reawakened curiosity" (1970–1974); "guileless fascination" (1974–1979), and "renewed skepticism" (1980s).Jonathan Spence ""Western Perceptions of China from the Late Sixteenth Century to the Present"" in
The newly independent nation eagerly took part in the immmensely profitable Old China Trade. The country did not take military action during the Opium Wars (1839-1842) but signed the 1845 Treaty of Wangxia which provided for most favored nation benefits. American businesses anticipated a vast market and missionaries a field for evangelization, while Chinese began to emigrate to the United States. The 1871 Burlingame Treaty provided for equal relations and legal immigration, but the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act led to a closing down of legal immigration. In 1900, Washington joined the European powers and Japan in sending troops to suppress the anti-foreign Boxer Rebellion.
The Open Door Policy of 1900 advocated equal trade opportunities and opposed any country taking territorial control. The early years of the century were a period of optimism. Missionaries grew in influence on both sides of the Pacific but efforts during the Taft presidency to secure US investment in Chinese railways were unsuccessful and after 1911 the Republic of China struggled to resist Japanese financial and military expansion. President Woodrow Wilson signed the 1919 Treaty of Versailles which ceded territory to Japan. In 1937 Nationalist and Communist parties temporarily united to fight the Second Sino-Japanese War. President Franklin D. Roosevelt called for support, but the United States did not join the war until 1941. Following Japan's surrender in 1945, the two parties resumed the Chinese Civil War, and US diplomatic efforts to mediate ultimately failed. The Communist forces prevailed, leading to the establishment of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. Critics of the United States government called this "The Loss of China". The Nationalist government retreated to Taiwan.
The Qing Dynasty and the United States
According to John Pomfret: To America's founders, China was a source of inspiration. They saw it as a harmonious society with officials chosen on merit, where the arts and philosophy flourished, and the peasantry labored happily on the land. Benjamin Franklin venerated China's prison system and sought information on its senses, silk industry, and how its people heated their homes.... Thomas Paine compared Confucius to Jesus Christ. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson admired China's ability to close itself off from the outside world, finding virtue in its isolation. The Americans who actually went to China, by contrast, were befuddled and awed by the empire....Amasa Delano described China with the wonder of a country hayseed, contending that it, "is the first for greatness, riches and grandeur of any country ever known." Still, he too was distressed when he saw what appeared to be the corpses of mixed-blood babies floating down the Pearl River.
The newly independent United States dispatched consuls to Guangzhou as early as 1784—the first was Samuel Shaw. However they were not formally received by Chinese officials as state representatives. The negotiations and treaty of 1844 marked the first recognition under international law, as the countries negotiated the Treaty of Wangxia.Ping Chia Kup, "Caleb Cushing and the Treaty of Wanghia, 1844" Journal of Modern History 5, no. 1 (1933): 34–54. online
Old China Trade
The first United States vessel that traded in China was the in 1784.Rhys Richards, "United States trade with China, 1784-1814," The American Neptune, (1994), Special Supplement to Vol 54. In the following decades, trade grew in silver and gold coins, ginseng, and furs, and more prominently tea, cotton, silk, lacquerware, porcelain, and exotic furniture were traded, and Americans joined the trade in opium. The American merchants, mostly based in the East India Marine Society in Salem, Massachusetts, became wealthy, giving rise to America's first generation of millionaires. Chinese artisans began to notice the American desire for exotic wares and adjusted their practices accordingly, manufacturing goods made specifically for export. These export wares often sported American or European motifs in order to fully capitalize on the consumer demographic.
Missionaries
The first American missionary in China was Elijah Coleman Bridgman (1801–61), who arrived in 1830. He soon transcended his prejudices against Chinese "idolatry," learned the Chinese language, and wrote a widely used history of the United States in Chinese. He founded the English-language journal The Chinese Repository in 1832, and it served as a major source of information on Chinese culture and politics.
American missionaries, along with Western-educated Chinese, brought Western science, sports, industry, and law. They established China's first universities and hospitals. Many, though renamed, remained important even after the 1949 revolution.John Pomfret, The beautiful country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the present (2016) p. 3
Missionaries used physical education and sports to promote healthy life styles, to overturn class conventions by showing how the poor could excel, and by expanding gender roles using women's sports. Women missionaries organized moral crusades against female infanticide and foot-binding, helping what Pomfret calls "the greatest human rights advances in modern Chinese history."Pomfret, The beautiful country and the Middle Kingdom (2016) p. 3
During the Boxer Rebellion of 1899–1901, Christian missions were burned, thousands of Christians were executed, and American missionaries killed. In the early years of the century, however, missions burgeoned. Paul Varg summarized American missionary work in the following period: The growth of the missionary movement ... wove a tie between the American church-going public and China that did not exist between the United States and any other country. The number of missionaries increased from 513 in 1890 to more than 2,000 in 1914, and by 1920 there were 8,325 Protestant missionaries in China. In 1927 there were sixteen American universities and colleges, ten professional schools of collegiate rank, four schools of theology, and six schools of medicine. These institutions represented an investment of $19 million. By 1920, 265 Christian middle schools existed with an enrollment of 15,213. There were thousands of elementary schools; the Presbyterians alone had 383 primary schools with about 15,000 students. Catholics in America also supported large mission operations in China.
President Woodrow Wilson was in touch with his former Princeton students who were missionaries in China, and he strongly endorsed their work. In 1916 he told a delegation of ministers: This is the most amazing and inspiring vision –- this vision of that great sleeping nation suddenly awakened by the voice of Christ. Could there be any greater contribution to the future momentum of the moral forces of the world than could be made by quickening the force, which is being set of foot in China? China is at present inchoate; as a nation it is a congeries of parts, in each of which there is energy, but which are unbound in any essential and active unit, and just as soon as unity comes, its power will come in the world.Eugene P. Trani, "Woodrow Wilson, China, and the Missionaries, 1913—1921." Journal of Presbyterian History 49.4 (1971): 328-351, quoting pp 332-333.
Caleb Cushing
After the British victory in the First Opium War in 1842, the resulting Treaty of Nanking opened Shanghai and four other Chinese "treaty ports" to British trade. President John Tyler In 1843 appointed Massachusetts diplomat Caleb Cushing as commissioner and minister. With the goal of impressing the Imperial Chinese court and gaining access to the five ports, the Cushing mission suddenly appeared with four Navy warships, loaded with gifts that exalted scientific wonders including revolvers, telescopes, and an encyclopedia. His arrival at Macau in February 1844 created a local sensation, but the Chinese government was reluctant to designate another most favored nation. Cushing cleverly mixed the carrot and stick. He warned – against the backdrop of his warships – that not to receive an envoy was a national insult. He threatened to go directly to the Emperor – an unheard of procedure. The Emperor tried delay, but he finally sent an envoy to negotiate with Cushing, leading to the signing of the Treaty of Wanghia on 3 July 1844. In addition to most favored nation status, Cushing made sure that Americans received extraterritoriality, which meant that legal cases involving Americans inside China would be tried by Western judges, not by Chinese judges. In the following years American trade with China grew rapidly, thanks to the high-speed clipper ships which carried relatively small amounts of high-value cargo, such as ginseng and silk.Eldon Griffin, Clippers and Consuls: American consular and commercial relations with eastern Asia, 1845-1860 (1938). American Protestant missionaries also began to arrive. The popular Chinese reaction was mostly hostile, but there was a favorable element that provided a base of support for American missionaries and businessmen. Foreign trade and popular Chinese opinion of outsiders in general, suffered during the Taiping Rebellion; which lasted from 1850 to 1864, cost millions of Chinese deaths and led to a stagnation in foreign trade.
During the Second Opium War, American and Qing forces briefly clashed in November 1856 at the Battle of the Barrier Forts, the first instance of military engagement between the two. After China's defeat in the Second Opium War, the Xianfeng Emperor fled Beijing. His brother Yixin, the Prince Gong, ratified the Treaty of Tientsin in the Convention of Peking on 18 October 1860. This treaty stipulated, among other terms, that along with Britain, France, and Russia, the United States would have the right to station legation offices in Beijing.Kendall A. Johnson, The New Middle Kingdom: China and the Early American Romance of Free Trade, (2017).
Formosa
Some Americans suggested the annexation of Taiwan from Qing China, but that idea won no support in Washington. Local aboriginals sometimes massacred shipwrecked Western sailors. In 1867, during the Rover incident, Taiwanese aborigines attacked shipwrecked American sailors, killing the entire crew. They subsequently defeated a retaliatory expedition by the American military and killed another American during the skirmish.
The Burlingame Treaty and the Chinese Exclusion Act
In 1868, the Qing government appointed an American Anson Burlingame as their emissary to the United States. Burlingame toured the U.S. building support for equitable treatment for China and for Chinese emigrants. The 1868 Burlingame Treaty embodied these principles. It was the first equal treaty signed between China and the United State. In 1871, the Chinese Educational Mission brought the first of two groups of 120 Chinese boys to study in the United States. They were led by Yung Wing, the first Chinese student to graduate from an American college.