DONG WANG - The UNITED STATES AND CHINA - A History From The Eighteenth Century To The present.-ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD (2021)

The United States and China
Mao Tse–Tung (Mao Zedong) Cartoon, 1958. “Confuse us, he say. . . .” Soviet
Premier Nikita Khrushchev (left) and Western leaders (left-to-right): Dwight Ei-
senhower of the United States, Charles de Gaulle of France, and Harold Macmil-
lan of Great Britain puzzle over how best to deal with the Chinese Communist
leader Mao Zedong (seated, center). U.S.–Chinese relations have been unfolding
on all fronts, so the international dimension and dilemma Mao embodied as de-
picted in 1958 is even more relevant today. Source: GRANGER, image ID
0115524, 25 Chapel St., Suite 605, Brooklyn.
The United States and China
A History from the Eighteenth

Century to the Present
Second Edition
Dong Wang
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London
Published by Rowman & Littlefield
An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
https://rowman.com
86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE
Copyright © 2021 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems,
without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote
passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Wang, Dong, 1967- author.

Title: The United States and China : a history from the eighteenth century
to the present / Dong Wang.
Description: Second edition. | Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield, [2021] |
Series: Asia/Pacific/perspectives | Includes bibliographical references
and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021020007 (print) | LCCN 2021020008 (ebook) | ISBN
9781538149379 (cloth) | ISBN 9781538149386 (paperback) | ISBN
9781538149393 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: United States--Foreign relations--China. | China--Foreign
relations--United States.
Classification: LCC E183.8.C5 W3416 2021 (print) | LCC E183.8.C5 (ebook)
| DDC 327.73051--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021020007
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021020008
TM
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed
Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Contents
List of Illustrations vii

List of Tables ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction xv
Part I: The Pacific Frontier and Qing China, 1784–1911 1

1 Yankee Merchants and the China Trade 3
2 Opium Wars and the Open Door 23
3 Chinese Immigration: Roots in the United States 51
4 American Protestantism: Roots in China 73
Part II: The United States and China in the Era of World Wars
and Revolutions, 1912–1970 97
5 Revolutions, Nationalism, and Internationalization 99
6 The Pacific War and Red China 119
7 Deterrence and Negotiation: American-Chinese Relations at the
Height of the Cold War 143
8 Facing East and West: Agents of Encounter 167
Part III: Rapprochement, the United States as the Benchmark

Setter, and the China Challenge, 1970–Present 187
9 Renewing the Bilateral Relationship, 1970–1989 189
10 The China Market and the Allure of the United States 213
v
vi Contents
11 Clashes, Cooperation, and Fluctuations in the Relationship 243

12 The Race: Changing Dynamics in the Economic, Social, and
Cultural Arenas 279
Epilogue 321
Bibliography 329
Index 355
ASIA/PACIFIC/PERSPECTIVES: Series Editor: Mark Selden 375
About the Author 379
List of Illustrations
Mao Tse–Tung (Mao Zedong) Cartoon, 1958.

“Confuse us, he say. . . .” Soviet Premier Nikita
Khrushchev (left) and Western leaders (left-to-right):
Dwight Eisenhower of the United States, Charles de
Gaulle of France, and Harold Macmillan of Great
Britain puzzle over how best to deal with the Chinese
Communist leader Mao Zedong (seated, center).
U.S.–Chinese relations have been unfolding on all
fronts, so the international dimension and dilemma
Mao embodied as depicted in 1958 is even more
relevant today. Source: GRANGER, image ID
0115524, 25 Chapel St., Suite 605, Brooklyn. Front-4
Fig. 10.1 U.S. Trade Balance with China, 1971–1980
(Chinese and U.S. figures, in millions of current
U.S. dollars) 224
(U.S. and Chinese figures, in millions of current
U.S. dollars) 225
Fig. 10.3 Chinese Exports to the United States,
1981–1990 (U.S. and Chinese figures, in
millions of current U.S. dollars) 230
(Chinese and U.S. figures, in billions of US
dollars). 294
vii
viii List of Illustrations
Fig. 12.2 Comparison of Growth in China’s Exports to the

World and to the United States, 2001–2020
(percent annual growth). 295
List of Tables
Table 1.1 List of Business Names of Merchants,

Merchants, and Hong Names 8
Table 3.1 Chinese Immigration and Emigration, 1848–1868 55
Table 3.2 Chinese Immigration to the United States,
1869–1943 56
Table 10.1 U.S.-Chinese Trade, 1971–1980 (U.S. figures,
in millions of current U.S. dollars) 222
Table 10.2 U.S.-Chinese Trade, 1971–1980 (Chinese
figures, in millions of current U.S. dollars) 223
in millions of current U.S. dollars) 231
figures, in millions of current U.S. dollars) 232
in billions of current U.S. dollars) 296
figures, in billions of current U.S. dollars) 299
ix
Acknowledgments
While presenting my findings from original research, a historical synthesis

such as this book also draws on the work and wisdom of others. Looking
back on the more than one-year preparation for the revised second edition of
The United States and China (January 2013), I gratefully acknowledge the
assistance provided by colleagues, friends, and students across Africa, North
and South America, Asia, Europe, and Oceania—physically separated yet
mentally connected by the ongoing war on the coronavirus.
I am especially beholden to Susan McEachern, an extraordinarily experi-
enced editor in the China and U.S.-Chinese relations field and vice president
at Rowman & Littlefield, who was confident that I would smoothly carry out
the revisions for the second edition. It has been my privilege to work again
with Mark Selden, Flemming Christiansen, and Paul Sorrell, who have pro-
vided counsel, criticism, and editing services. I am forever in the debt of Dr.
Sorrell, my editor of seventeen years, for his professionalism, generosity, and
friendship. My thanks also go to the two anonymous readers for their com-
ments on the first edition of this book and the Rowman & Littlefield team of
Katelyn Turner, Chris Fischer, and others for their speedy support.
In 2014–2015, I joined forces with my late mentor, Daniel H. Bays
(1942–2019), to apply for and successfully direct a U.S. National Endow-
ment for the Humanities program, “America and China: 150 Years of Aspira-
tions and Encounters,” at Calvin College in Michigan. At Dan’s suggestion,
in the NEH seminar we used a series of films and Trudeau’s Doonesbury
strips on Nixon and his China trip, which elicited laughs and knowledge both
for me and for our seminar group. I also learned a great deal from the NEH
and Calvin staff as well as the fifteen brilliant faculty participants from all
over the United States.
xi
xii Acknowledgments
Over the period from 2013 to 2020, my talks at the University of Califor-
nia at San Diego, the University of California at Irvine, Westmont College,
the University of Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg-Essen’s Käte Hamburger Kolleg
(the Centre for Global Cooperation Research), the University of Bochum,
Leipzig University, the Hudson Institute, the Royal Asiatic Society Shang-
hai, Shanghai University, Shandong University, the University of Macau, the
Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, the Associ-
ation for Asian Studies annual meetings and digital dialogue, and other insti-
tutions enriched my thinking about U.S.-Chinese relations in global affairs.
My sincere thanks also go to Emily Baum, Olivier Bouin, Timothy
Brook, Kerry Brown, Sébastien Colin, Fabiana Di Paola, Ryan Dunch, John
Fitzgerald, Galen Ford, Carla Freeman, Chas Freeman, Robert Eric Fryken-
berg, Jin Guangyao, Adeline Hinderer, David L. Kenley, Tugrul Keskin,
Saadi Lahlou, Terry Lautz, Xi Lian, Simon Luck, Liu Hong, Elizabeth Sinn,
Richard Madsen, Chandra Mallampalli, Geneviève Marmin, Paul Midford,
Tak-Wing Ngo, Friis Arne Petersen, Alain Peyraube, Rajiv Ranjan, Ivan
Rasmussen, Connie Shemo, Richard Smith, Robert Sutter, Andrew T. H.
Tan, Frank Tsai, Bill Tsutsui, Steve Upton, Grant Wacker, Jeff Wasserstrom,
Richard Weitz, Tim Wright, Frances Wood, Lin Xiao, and Hon-ming Yip.
Some of my ideas about China and the United States were sparked by
conversations with my colleagues and students from around the globe at
Shanghai University, the NEH 2014–2015 seminar, and the University of
Virginia’s Semester at Sea program in spring 2016. I also wish to express my
gratitude to the Royal Institute of International Affairs, the European Insti-
tute for Chinese Studies in Paris, L’Institut d’études avancées de Paris, and
Maison Suger Paris for the support they have given (in their different ways)
for my research and writing for this revised second edition.
Several parts of chapters 7, 10, and 12 are based on some reformulated
and updated material and ideas from my previous articles: “Portraying Chi-
nese Christianity: The American Press and U.S.-China Relations since the
1920s,” Journal of American-East Asian Relations 13 (2004–2006, published
in November 2008): 81–119; “Circulating American Higher Education: The
Case of Lingnan University (1888–1951),” Journal of American-East Asian
Relations 9, nos. 3–4 (Fall–Winter 2000, published in 2006): 147–67; and
“China’s Trade Relations with the United States in Perspective,” Journal of
Current Chinese Affairs 39, no. 3 (October 2010): 165–210. A few para-
graphs in chapters 2, 4, 5, and 7 derive from my books China’s Unequal
Treaties: Narrating National History (Lexington Books, 2005) and Manag-
ing God’s Higher Learning: U.S.-China Cultural Encounter and Canton
Christian College (Lingnan University), 1888–1952 (Lexington Books,
2007).
It has been nearly three decades since I left China—as a fresh PhD gradu-
ate of the Institute of Modern History at the Chinese Academy of Social
Acknowledgments xiii
Sciences in Beijing—for the United States in August 1993; my plane ticket

to Kansas City, Missouri, was purchased as part of a generous Pew Charita-
ble Trusts fellowship. That first flight to the United States opened up a bright
new world that I still feel passionate about. I thank my daughter Rose at MIT
and Stanford who constantly reminds me that the American dream is alive
and even more magnetic than ever.
Dong Wang
Central Paris, France, and Northwest Germany
Introduction
Combining original research with contemporary scholarship, this revised edi-

tion of my book first published in January 2013 reexamines almost two and a
half centuries of interaction between the United States and China in a chang-
ing world. It explains the foundations and character of their political, eco-
nomic, military, social, and cultural relations and shows how they have come
to shape the domestic and external affairs of the two countries and the world
at large. But this is not the complete picture. American-Chinese relations
have also been affected by national and global forces. Societal interchanges
and government-level interactions are dual themes, although the boundaries
of these connections are often hard to distinguish. This study differs from
conventional overviews of United States–China relations to the extent that I
give equal consideration to American and Chinese experiences and perspec-
tives and to the modern (1784–1949) and contemporary (1949–present) peri-
ods. Readers are invited to explore the sources for my conclusions in the
further reading section at the end of the epilogue.
As I remarked in the first edition of this book, since 1784 when the first
American ship, the Empress of China, landed in Canton, U.S.-Chinese rela-
tions have moved from the periphery to the center of strategic attention, not
only for both countries but also on the world stage. 1 Managing U.S.-Chinese
relations is a major challenge for our times. In the early 1980s, China had
only 2 percent of the world’s GDP, whereas today that figure stands at 20
percent, accounting for nearly 30 percent of the world’s manufactured goods.
This transformation, achieved by the 2010s, has tested American supremacy
and created new opportunities as well as challenges for the ruling Chinese
Communist Party (CCP). The result has been a new order of national, supra-
national, bilateral, and multilateral institutions that link both countries. For
the past fifty years, these new arrangements have been utilized relatively
xv
xvi Introduction
effectively by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) at open platforms and

venues where it articulates its ideology and promotes its own agenda to the
international community. 2
Seen from a long historical perspective, the relationship between the
United States and China has passed through three phases, with the lines of
division falling in the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, respec-
tively. Relations shifted significantly from the interaction between an empire
(Qing China) and a young nation-state (the United States), then to the inter-
play between two nation-states, and finally to wide-ranging encounters and
competition between a nation-state (the PRC) and an empire-nation (the
United States) during the post–World War II era. In the twenty-first century,
many are wary of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), perceiving it as a
blueprint for the recreation of imperial power that draws on traditional Chi-
nese notions of tianxia (heaven)—governing “all under heaven”—and a sino-
centric world at the expense of American power and democratic values. 3
The BRI announced by President Xi Jinping in September 2013, already
the world’s most ambitious foreign aid program, is closely linked to its twin
geostrategy, a Community of Common Destiny for All Mankind (renlei
mingyun gongtongti 人类命运共同体). First appearing in an official docu-
ment “China’s Peaceful Development White Paper” issued by the PRC State
Council in September 2011, 4 the expression of a Community of Common
Destiny (CCD) has been widely promulgated by China, especially in 2016
and 2017, and was written into a United Nations Security Council resolution
for the first time. 5 The dual geostrategy of the BRI and CCD, propagated
alongside the slogan “building a new kind of great power relationship,” has
been presented as “Chinese wisdom” 6 and China’s contribution to the world.
In practice, it helps China focus its interests in a competitive setting to the
extent that it has been serving as the main driver for the country’s internal
growth and mass mobilization efforts.
The concept of empire in the history of American-Chinese relations has
two connotations. When applied to Qing China (1644–1911), it refers to the
last of China’s dynastic empires—one that still evoked the glory of an an-
cient civilization but found it hard to grasp what nation-states and sovereign-
ty meant until the latter half of the nineteenth century. 7 When used as an
epithet for the United States after World War II, empire denotes the proselyt-
izing exercise of national power and influence over other peoples—criticized
by some as a deviation from the ideals of America’s founding fathers, hailed
by others as America’s proud mission, a duty to make the world a better
place for everyone. Some critics have seen the American empire (or the
permanent warfare state) as grounded in the U.S. view of itself as a global
state with no boundaries and a belief that American ideals and institutions
ought to be emulated by the rest of the world. In the words of Rosemary
Foot, “While at times this [view] has persuaded Americans that they would
Introduction xvii
do better to retreat from the world and be content to act as a beacon to others,
the trend over the second half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-
first has been to take the lead in attempts to universalize American values so
as to guarantee a stable global order.” 8
What paradigms have dominated the study of U.S.-Chinese relations in
the past and present? As William C. Kirby noted in the mid-1990s, many
historians of China’s foreign relations have shied away from the realist
school of international relations, which treats states as primary actors pursu-
ing national interests and rational geopolitics. 9 Three influential conceptual
frameworks for understanding the relationship are John K. Fairbank’s para-
digm—built around the Western impact on and stimulation of China, and
China’s response; Paul A. Cohen’s China-centered (and his later “China
unbound” or human-centered) approach; and William C. Kirby’s focus on
internationalization. The three political, economic, and cultural propositions
considered by the present study validate the perspectives that these different
methodologies and viewpoints share more than what separates them. 10
PROPOSITION ONE:
U.S.-CHINESE RELATIONS CONSTITUTE AN
ONGOING CONTEST BETWEEN TWO STATES
IN A CHANGING GLOBAL CONTEXT
The American and Chinese states, as the primary shapers of their mutual
relationship, have a mandate and an obligation to manage their relations. The
forces of nationalism and globalization confront each state with choices in its
dealings with the outside world. Each government needs to manage complex
trade-offs between domestic welfare and the external environment on a case-
by-case basis. The entangling of nationalism and globalization as considera-
tions in decision making complicates the process.
America’s early experiences in China (1784–1850s) reveal the dynamic
beginnings of American nationalism in the country’s transformation from a
British colonial frontier to a sovereign state. This historical process had two
distinct components, which, until recently, received scant attention in schol-
arly discussions of early U.S.-Chinese relations. The first was America’s
conscious pursuit of national greatness as an independent country. The sec-
ond element was the entrepreneurial flexibility and tactical pragmatism
shown by the United States.
In 1843, just after China’s defeat by Britain in the Opium War
(1840–1842), U.S. Secretary of State Daniel Webster (1841–1843,
1850–1852) directed Caleb Cushing, the U.S. commissioner to China, to
concentrate on matters of strategic importance to the United States—that is,
xviii Introduction
to avoid contentious issues, to be mindful of American national dignity, and

to be respectful of the Chinese:
It will be no part of your duty to enter into controversies which may exist
between China and any European State; nor will you, in your communications,
fail to abstain altogether from any sentiment or any expression which might
give to other Governments just cause of offence. It will be quite proper, how-
ever, that you should, in a proper manner, always keep before the eyes of the
Chinese the high character, importance, and power, of the United States. You
may speak of the extent of their territory, their great commerce, and the nu-
merous schools and institutions established in them, to teach men knowledge
and wisdom. It cannot be wrong for you to make known, where not known,
that the United States, once a country subject to England, threw off that sub-
jection years ago, asserted its independence, [s]word in hand, established that
independence after a seven years’ war, and now meets England upon equal
terms upon the ocean and upon the land. 11
The assertion of national identity and independence was of prime importance

to the U.S. secretary of state in the 1840s. What, then, concerned the Qing
empire’s decision makers? Among other things, they worried about the
Americans’ request to visit Beijing, China’s capital, in order to negotiate
directly with the Qing court. European-originated notions of sovereign states
and trading terms were incomprehensible to the Qing rulers. In a memorial to
the emperor, Qiying—the Qing government representative appointed to
negotiate the first treaty with the United States—reported on his meetings
with the Americans in June 1844:
They were polite and very respectful but did not mention going to Peking for
an audience and the presentation of their credentials. For several days in suc-
cession Your slave has sent Huang En-t’ung, with various officials, to explain
everything clearly, to commend the envoy for having waited in Kwangtung
peacefully, and also to tell him that even if he went to Peking he would
certainly be ordered back, thus making the trip in vain & Then he [Cushing]
presented the précis of a commercial treaty. Although translated into Chinese,
it was not clear and the phraseology was uncouth, but the purport was in
general like the recently fixed regulations [with Britain]. Moreover, he said
that they would not venture to follow the example of the English barbarians in
appropriating islands. Your slave examined it carefully and there seemed to be
nothing detrimental to the general commercial picture & Your slave consid-
ered it reasonable to conclude negotiations. 12
In the latter half of the nineteenth century, the United States seized the
opportunity to further its geopolitical, commercial, religious, and cultural
presence in China. The American state strengthened its regional and global
power through diverse diplomatic strategies—a policy of noninterference or
neutrality in European affairs, the forceful Monroe Doctrine aimed at keep-
Introduction xix
ing Europeans out of Latin and South America, and the Open Door principle
in China. Rather than following the Europeans and Japanese who scrambled
for Chinese territories, concessions, and spheres of influence, the United
States championed the Open Door doctrine—free trade and the maintenance
of Chinese territorial and administrative integrity.
Meanwhile, Qing China was forced to submit to the global expansion of
capitalism and to conform to Western standards of free trade and diplomatic
protocol. The treaty system imposed on China (1842–1943) was probably the
best example of this submission. Modern Chinese nationalism was forged on
the anvil of degradation and decline visited on China by foreign intervention
and the economic competition among predatory nation-states. It was also
framed by the xenophobic attitude that held the Manchus—the Qing dynasty
rulers—responsible for all China’s miseries in modern times. A strong, cen-
tral state was the key to China’s national success, but the pathway to modern-
ization remained elusive, frustrating generations of Qing Chinese leaders and
elites.
In a public speech in 1899, President Theodore Roosevelt commented on
the differences between the Chinese and American attitudes toward national
life and global competition:
We cannot, if we would, play the part of China, and be content to rot by inches
in ignoble ease within our borders, taking no interest in what goes on beyond
them, sunk in a scrambling commercialism; heedless of the higher life, the life
of aspiration, of toil and risk, busying ourselves with the wants of our bodies
for the day, until suddenly we should find, beyond a shadow of question, what
China has already found, that in this world the nation that has trained itself to a
career of unwarlike and isolated ease is bound, in the end, to go down before
other nations which have not lost the manly and adventurous qualities. 13
During the first half of the twentieth century, the United States and China
developed different national programs and used differing strategies to deal
with new global geopolitical and economic challenges. The fall of the Qing
in 1911 put an end to a dynastic system that had lasted for over two thousand
years. But what would replace imperial rule? American-style republicanism,
rather than constitutional monarchy on the British model, attracted many
anti-Manchu Chinese. China’s ensuing experiment in constitutional govern-
ment, the first Republic of China (1912–1928), was accompanied by political
and military disintegration. But it also further opened up China to foreign
technologies, science, ideas, and modes of governance. The United States
proved to be an important source of inspiration to many Chinese, who were
also exposed to Russian, Japanese, German, and other models of develop-
ment. 14 As a result of all these influences, the first Republic of China tena-
ciously pursued equitable treatment on the international stage.
xx Introduction
In the United States, the end of the Gilded Age (circa 1870s–1900) wit-
nessed a heightened feeling of national identity and a confidence in the
spread of American power around the globe—as befitted an “exemplary”
nation endowed with the moral superiority of a capitalist economic system,
democratic institutions, and Protestant values. The drive for progressive re-
form—seen in terms of social justice and political order—continued into the
Woodrow Wilson administration (1913–1921). Lauded as a supreme hero
responding courageously to the gathering storm clouds of a European war,
Wilson infused America’s mission to the world with a new vigor: the “idea
of America is to serve humanity,” he declared, and the United States was to
strive “for the elevation of the spirit of the human race.” 15 His later failures
aside, the new paths envisaged by Wilson essentially referred to the need for
the United States to set a global agenda in conformity with its emerging
economic and political hegemony.
In contrast, during the 1920s China was engulfed by the anti-imperialist,
anti-warlord revolution that aimed to unify the nation. As a political and
social platform, violent revolution held a growing appeal for many Chinese.
The two major political parties—the Guomindang (Nationalist Party, GMD)
and the CCP—were alike in their nationalistic outlook and Soviet Bolshe-
vik–influenced worldview but grew apart over the tactics and content of the
revolution in 1927. As the Chinese Nationalist government (1928–1949) set
out to modernize the country, its leader, Chiang Kai-shek, looked to the
United States to contain Japan’s and Russia’s imperial ambitions in China.
The United States outflanked other interested parties by being the first to sign
a treaty with China in 1928, granting it tariff autonomy, an important step
appreciated by the Nanjing authorities. The bilateral relationship was more
important to Chiang than to the United States, though, which at the time was
more inclined toward Japan. Japan’s attack on the United States in 1941
strengthened American-Chinese political and military relations. During
World War II, the United States proved helpful to Chiang’s attempts to raise
China’s international status and to eliminate his chief enemy on the home
front, Mao Zedong and the CCP. China’s quest for treaty revisions and
cancelations was realized in 1943 with the aid of the United States.
Rival Nationalist leaders—in particular Chiang and Mao—resisted and
ultimately upset American and Russian designs for China. America’s unwill-
ingness to use military force to intervene in the Chinese Civil War and its
failure to abandon the unattainable goal of establishing a progressive, anti-
Communist Chiang government led ultimately to disappointment in Wash-
ington. The Chinese Communists became the historical agent of change.
Following World War II, the United States assumed global leadership in
the anti-Communist crusade and established its long-standing military hold
on the Asia-Pacific region. The National Security Act of 1947 placed U.S.
military forces on a permanent footing geared toward securing America’s
Introduction xxi
global preeminence. The hyperpower of the national security state was, how-
ever, both constrained and legitimized by its democratic, representative form
of governance. 16 During the 1950s, Mao’s new People’s Republic of China
(PRC) leaned toward the Soviet bloc. It sought to resist American hegemonic
ambitions, circumvent the U.S. isolation of China, and improve relations
with America’s allies—such as Britain, France, and Japan—and newly inde-
pendent Asian and African countries. As the United States drew itself into
the conflict across the Taiwan Strait, it found that it could not easily push
either Chiang or Mao around. The PRC vehemently asserted its sovereign
rights to Taiwan, while Chiang defied American efforts to reduce the Nation-
alists’ military presence on the offshore islands.
Against the backdrop of Nationalist revolutions and the Cold War, the
PRC and the United States faced off in the two major conflicts of the postwar
era, first in Korea in 1951–1953 and then in Indochina in the 1960s, particu-
larly Vietnam. The stalemate in Korea and the U.S. defeat in Vietnam, to-
gether with the mutual recognition of a Soviet threat, led to the opening of
formal relations between the PRC and the United States. But it took the
United Nations twenty-three years to admit Mao’s China as a member state
and the United States thirty years to officially recognize mainland China,
although the two countries held 136 meetings at the ambassadorial level
between 1955 and 1970. Internally, the Chinese Communist state was con-
sumed by the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) and missed the opportunity
to fully engage in the burgeoning regional economy—unlike its neighbors
Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.
A new phase in the relationship began in the early 1970s with President
Nixon’s historic visit to China. Rapprochement and the normalization of
relations grew out of shared antagonism toward the Soviet Union, America’s
redefinition of its role in a diverse world, and China’s continuing efforts to
build a strong and unified nation. The establishment of full diplomatic rela-
tions in 1979 helped China to reorient its priorities; Deng Xiaoping led the
country in rebuilding an economy that had been on the brink of collapse. At
this time, industrialization now at last seemed to be within reach for China. If
achieved, it would be the only real success experienced by the majority of
Chinese in two hundred years of dynastic decline, foreign aggression and
national humiliation, and revolutionary upheavals. However, China deferred
to most of the American-made rules during this period. In the 1980s, the two
countries worked out their differences peacefully, especially on the Taiwan
issue. Creating and sustaining a peaceful international environment for eco-
nomic development became China’s national priority in foreign affairs. And,
in 1985–1986, China and the Soviet Union, which was led by the reform-
minded Mikhail Gorbachev, improved their relations.
Subsequently, relations between the United States and China endured
some sharp swings, especially during 1989–2001. During this period, the
xxii Introduction
relationship was shaped by many factors: conditions arising from the end of
the Cold War, China’s rejuvenated reforms, constant political conflicts be-
tween the two nations, change of leadership in Taiwan, China’s accession to
the World Trade Organization (WTO), the consequences of the September
11 attacks in the United States, the global financial crisis in 2008, and the
national pride and goodwill generated by the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the
2010 Shanghai Expo.
From China’s perspective, its diplomatic efforts have largely been in
reaction to issues and criticisms initiated by the United States. China’s chief
priority has been to maintain a sense of national dignity while remaining
open to the world. From the American perspective, China has been steadily
pushing the United States out of the Asia-Pacific region, and a strong China
has been seen as a threat to American national and international interests.
During the past two decades, China did not seek to openly challenge
American global supremacy but rather to restrict its scope and impact. This
approach was met with resistance from some Asian states that perceived
China’s rise as aggressive and as a threat to the peace and stability of the
region.
Both the United States and China have sought to strengthen their posi-
tions through nurturing good relationships with other countries, diverting
resources to third parties, revitalizing existing regional and global economic
and political frameworks, and developing new security structures. 17 As the
third decade of the twenty-first century begins, Chinese influence is increas-
ingly felt around the world—and as an existential threat to the United States.
As the chief architect of a rule-based world system, the United States stood at
the center of international politics for over seventy-five years. Now America
feels it must confront China, whose belligerent behavior and massively ambi-
tious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) are projecting China’s economic and
geopolitical power across the Asia-Indo-Pacific and other parts of the world.
China’s financial contribution to the United Nations increased from 1 percent
in 2000 to 12 percent in 2019 with the second largest share of the UN regular
budget, while the United States remains the same at around 22 percent as the
largest UN donor. 18 As of early 2021, Chinese nationals head up four of the
fifteen UN specialized agencies, including the Food and Agriculture Organ-
ization, the International Telecommunication Union, the United Nations In-
dustrial Development Organization, and the International Civil Aviation Or-
ganization. Chinese phrases such as “win-win cooperation” are inscribed in
UN General Assembly official documents, 19 creating a Chinese-friendly en-
vironment in international multilateral institutions. China is also increasing
its influence outside existing international organizations through its Asian
Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization,
designed to make the world safer for Chinese economic and geopolitical
expansion. 20
Introduction xxiii
PROPOSITION TWO:
THE RACE FOR ECONOMIC SUPREMACY IS ON, WITH
CHINA MATCHING AMERICA’S CAPABILITY
AND DESIRE TO CONTROL CHANGE
In the early 2010s, China’s global economic influence elicited unease in the
West; it was variously seen as dominant, as partial, as an issue to be con-
tested between “us” and “them,” or as the “end of the beginning of the
Chinese century.” In Arvind Subramanian’s scenario, set out in 2021, Ameri-
ca’s dominance will be eclipsed by a resurgent China: “The odds are strong
that China will act to maintain the current open rules-based trading sys-
tem. . . . If it were to do so, and given its size, the resulting conflict could
undermine the post-World War II system.” 21 Conversely, David Shambaugh
argued in 2013 that China “will never ‘rule the world’” because the “ele-
ments of China’s global power are actually surprisingly weak and very un-
even. China is not as important, and it is certainly not as influential, as
conventional wisdom holds.” 22 Pushing the “us” versus “them” opposition,
Peter Nolan assessed the position of Chinese firms around the globe: “Their
presence in the high-income countries is negligible . . . ‘we’ are inside
‘them,’ but ‘they’ are not inside ‘us.’” 23 Taking a contrarian position, Chi-
nese economist Hu Angang countered Western arguments by asserting that
China is embracing a new stage of development, a “new normal” that the rest
of the world will need to get used to. 24
The story of intellectual property rights (IPR) reflects an important histor-
ical and economic dimension of American-Chinese relations, an aspect of the
international political economy of modernity. IPR cannot be simply seen as
positive rights to intellectual discoveries created once and for all by the state
but rather constitute a continuing, contested process aimed at legalizing con-
ceptions of rights and duties. 25 This is another area of contention between the
two countries. The common impression is that China is the main IPR offend-
er in modern and contemporary times. 26 On the one hand, China’s theft of
American industrial secrets has been a long-standing security concern. 27 On
the other hand, among other factors, the real driver for their respective IPR
policies and their implementation is the different choices made by the
American and Chinese states in order to balance benefits against costs.
There exists a thriving global market for legal standards in which national
bodies of commercial law compete for adoption in international business
contracts. A number of organizations are active in this field. The WTO
harmonizes national laws on intellectual property as well as trade; the Organ-
ization for Economic Cooperation and Development has attempted to accom-
modate investment laws through the now-abandoned Multilateral Agreement
on Investment; and the European Union has harmonized member state law in
many areas. These organizations also compete among themselves: the WTO
xxiv Introduction
has captured “market share” from the World Intellectual Property Organiza-
tion by adopting mandatory intellectual property rules. 28
In China, most of the laws and regulations regarding intellectual property
were issued in the final decade of the Qing dynasty, under foreign pressure
and as part of the Qing government’s tardy attempts at modernization, known
as Xinzheng (the new policy). The Sino-British, Sino-U.S., and Sino-Japa-
nese commercial treaties of 1902 and 1903 represent the earliest international
efforts to regulate IPR in China through treaties.
The earliest American attempt to regulate intellectual property matters in
China is evidenced in Articles 9 (trademarks), 10 (patents), and 11 (copy-
rights) of the Treaty as to Commercial Relations between the United States
and China concluded in October 1903 and ratified in January 1904. The
treaty protected the exclusive use within the United States of trademarks
lawfully patented by foreign nationals. And the U.S. government required the
Qing state to give full reciprocal protection to American commercial interests
in China, irrespective of whether these were represented by individuals or
firms. The treaty stated, “The Chinese Government agrees to issue by its
proper authorities proclamations, having the force of law, forbidding all sub-
jects of China from infringing on, imitating, colorably imitating, or knowing-
ly passing off an imitation of trade-marks belonging to citizens of the United
States.” 29 In addition, the Qing government agreed to establish a patent of-
fice and give full protection to the American authors, designers, or proprie-
tors of any book, map, print or engraving, or translation into Chinese of any
book. In other words, Americans were given exclusive rights to print and sell
such material.
These new initiatives were strongly opposed by Chinese negotiators, in-
tellectuals, and political elites. As Zhang Zhidong, the Qing statesman and
one of the regime’s chief negotiators, commented, “At the moment, China is
learning from foreigners how to make machines and is translating foreign
books in order to enlighten its own people. If we were to agree to these two
clauses, it would be harmful to us. China would lose any hope of becoming
strong.” 30 The Chinese negotiators were also concerned that “the poor could
ill afford the rising book prices” that would result if Americans were given
exclusive rights to print and sell these books.
Qing China was not exceptional in resisting the implementation of intel-
lectual property protection for Americans. Economists commonly observe
that during the early stages of modernizing development, the regulatory in-
centives for developing countries to protect foreign IPR are low because they
prefer to protect their national economies from global competition. Trade
protectionism and free trade worked side by side as, depending on the issue
at hand, both were closely linked with nation building and industrialization.
The U.S. Copyright Act of 1790, for example, granted copyright protection
only to American citizens, while Britain—the first industrialized nation—
Introduction xxv
took the lead in extending reciprocal copyright protection to foreign coun-

tries. An essay by the leading American industrialist and philanthropist An-
drew Carnegie (1835–1919) sheds light on America’s resentment against the
British at the time. According to Carnegie, a major source of Anglo-
American tensions was industrial competition: “In our day, when every na-
tion of the front rank aspires to manufacture and produce for its own wants,
‘Foreign Commerce’ and ‘Free Trade’ do not always make for peace and
good will among nations, but the contrary. Nations are disposed to resent
industrial invasion, Free-Trade Britain no less than Protective Germany.” 31
In China’s Nationalist government era (1928–1949), Chiang Kai-shek
promoted industrial development through newly formed state-owned enter-
prises, especially during the Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945). A stream of
recent scholarship has questioned the long-established view that Chiang’s
government was hostile to business and industrial entrepreneurship. Charac-
terizing the Guomindang government as an “embryonic developmental
state,” William C. Kirby argues that Chiang “sought to control China’s
progress from the center” through bureaucratic superagencies such as the
National Reconstruction Commission, the National Economic Council, and
the National Resources Commission, all instruments set up to manage the
economy. 32
On the question of Chinese IPR, the Nationalist government was not as
motivated to bring about reform as it was in areas of high national priority
such as the unequal treaties and China’s international status. 33 In September
1932, patent regulations—not formal legislation but provisional regulations
on promoting industrial technology—went into effect in China on the order
of the industrial and administrative ministries.
The government documents relating to these measures were unequivocal
about the reasoning behind them. First, in light of the “infant state of our
country’s industrial technology,” the Nationalist government decided to
“continue adopting a protectionist policy” in its international dealings and to
continue “confining the protection of inventions to domestic nationals.” Sec-
ond, the government noted that making the regulations temporary and infor-
mal through ministerial order (buling 部令) would avoid international “trou-
bles”:
We are using the following expedient to deal with any international protests
and request for patent protection. We do not have special national statutes, or
registration offices, or membership of international industrial unions; if the
proposed regulations pass the legislative council, and if the National Govern-
ment publicly issues them, there is a real fear that the international community
would come to us and complain that the patent law was already promulgated,
or that confining protection only to Chinese was in violation of treaty provi-
sions. This would be a nuisance. 34
xxvi Introduction
In Nationalist China of the 1930s, these measures had predictable conse-

quences, and not only for Chinese nationals. Carl Crow (1884–1945)—a
pioneering American advertising agent and author based in Shanghai—re-
sponded to the serious issues at stake with disarming humor:
The Chinese manufacturer is also a graceless and shameless imitator of trade

marks. . . . At one time we were advertising a sticky pomade which would
keep the hair slicked down and give heads the appearance of having been
covered with lacquer. It enjoyed a good sale. . . . In a few weeks there was an
imitation brand on the market, and an average of one or more new imitations
appeared every month. We finally began collecting them, like new issues of
postage stamps. At one time, we had twenty-one varieties. 35
Since World War II, the United States has been the driving force in con-
structing the global IPR regime. American control of changes in IPR corre-
sponded to growing U.S. economic might in the twentieth century. In 1900
the United States produced around 30 percent of total world industrial output,
in 1913 it produced 36 percent, and by 1926 it produced 42 percent. By the
end of World War II, the United States already held two-thirds of the world’s
gold reserves and produced half of the world’s goods. By 1957, American
gross national product per capita was over US$2,500, 36 whereas mainland
China could muster no more than US$10.
Economic relations between the United States and the PRC took off after
President Nixon’s historic visit to China in 1972. Thereafter, China gradually
entered the American-dominated world economic order. Over the past five
decades, China has become the largest consumer market in the world—but
IPR remains a major source of friction between the United States and China.
The issue has spawned both conflict and conciliation as the two countries
have competed to turn IPR to their own advantage. Besides bilateral negotia-
tions and dialogues, the U.S. government has used the WTO to compel China
to make statutory adjustments. Transparency and the rule of law are two
important WTO and global governance standards in relation to which China
has been selectively adapting its regulations and legislation.
American-initiated changes to China’s IPR laws were implemented dur-
ing the 1980s–1990s. For China, the normalization of bilateral relations is an
impetus for their modernization, a process launched by Deng Xiaoping over
four decades ago. In 1979, China and the United States reached a bilateral
agreement on trade relations, which, among other things, dealt with the mu-
tual protection of copyright. Since then, China has begun developing an
intellectual property system designed to conform with global norms, includ-
ing signing a series of international intellectual property treaties and conven-
tions and joining the World Intellectual Property Organization in 1980. How-
ever, China’s regulatory compliance with American norms and values
proved unsatisfactory to the United States, which linked intellectual property
Introduction xxvii
issues with China’s human rights record and most-favored-nation status fol-
lowing the 1989 Tiananmen crisis and the end of the Cold War.
In 1989 and 1990, in response to U.S. industry complaints about copy-
right infringements, the senior Bush administration twice placed China on
the Special 301 Priority Foreign Countries list. The Special 301 provision of
the U.S. Trade Act of 1974 identifies intellectual property infringement as an
unfair trade practice. U.S. industry complaints about intellectual property
protection abroad are investigated by the United States Trade Representa-
tives (USTR). In reaction to the Bush administration’s actions, China an-
nounced its first copyright law in 1990. The following year, the USTR in-
voked Special 301 status, responding to American business requests. The
United States threatened China with trade sanctions unless it agreed to im-
prove intellectual property protections, while China threatened to retaliate by
drastically raising tariffs on American products. In 1992, intense negotiations
between the two countries yielded a comprehensive agreement, the Memo-
randum of Understanding on the Protection of Intellectual Property (1992
MOU). In 1996, the United States put China on the Special 301 list for a third
time, but a trade war was averted when the parties signed a last-minute
agreement. 37
During the past thirty years or so, China has been seeking to seize back
the initiative on this issue, with the Chinese developmental state providing
guidance and coordination. IPR are described as a “strategic resource”
(zhanlüe ziyuan 战略资源) in China’s IPR strategy (zhishi chanquan zhanlüe
知识产权战略) for national development. Following its WTO entry, China
witnessed a soaring number of domestic intellectual property lawsuits. In
2011, 66,000 IPR cases went to court, up 37.7 percent from 2010. 38 Similar-
ly, there has been a patent explosion: in 2011, China became the world’s top
patent filer and has maintained this position since. In September 2014, the
Chinese National Congress, China’s legislative body, established specific
IPR courts in Beijing, Shanghai, and Canton (Guangzhou). 39 In the same
year, the USTR once again placed China, along with other countries, on its
priority watch list for IPR violations. 40
American-Chinese relations over IPR involve interactions between two
different capitalist systems—between a market-based and profit-oriented
American system, on the one hand, and a Chinese form of capitalism on the
other. The latter includes a three-tiered developmental state, with huge politi-
cally integrated corporations at the national level, other large state-controlled
firms, and vast numbers of small- and medium-sized enterprises. Over the
past three decades, the Chinese state has worked to develop IPR capability on
an unprecedented scale. This has been a deliberate national strategy similar
to Japan’s in the 1960s–1970s. Thus we saw early on an enhanced state
ability to invest in advanced and green technology—such as high-speed rail-
ways, sulfur dioxide scrubbers, and flue-gas desulfurization facilities—
xxviii Introduction
where the state-guided acquisition of IPR, expanding markets, and technolo-

gy are strategically integrated.
The state’s strategy also involved planning and creating IPR frameworks
and funding structures and enabling the coordination and transfer of knowl-
edge through superagencies such as the State Intellectual Property Office and
the National Development and Reform Commission in China. As the Wall
Street Journal noted in May 2012, “Most economies can pull two levers to
bolster growth—fiscal and monetary. China has a third option: The National
Development and Reform Commission can accelerate the flow of investment
projects.” 41 For both China and the United States, continuous technological
innovation holds the key to controlling their economic futures. 42
PROPOSITION THREE:
ON THE GEOCULTURAL FRONT, WHILE THE
UNITED STATES HAS BEEN AN IMPORTANT
MODEL FOR CHINA, AMERICA’S ROLE WAS
CHALLENGED FROM THE BEGINNING
Global power is in large part dominance over ideas and agendas. The U.S.
role as one of China’s models or tutors is perhaps best symbolized by
American missionary endeavors in China from 1830 to 1951 and the massive
flow of Chinese students to the United States. Despite the probability that
Americans, in the opinion of Werner Levi, were considered as “the best liked
and least suspected foreigners” in modern Chinese history, China has chal-
lenged America’s dominant role from the inception of the relationship. 43
Beginning in the 1870s, American- and Chinese-sponsored educational
efforts cultivated an elite power base in China, along with a belief in
American values and influence on China’s future and its intellectual elite in
particular. Chen Xujing (1903–1967), who received a PhD from the Univer-
sity of Illinois in 1928, became the president (1948–1952) of Lingnan Uni-
versity, founded in 1888 by an American Presbyterian missionary. He went
so far as to champion the total Americanization and Westernization of Chi-
nese education and culture. Chen did not stand alone. The leaders of the
National Trade Commission in China—an organization on par with the Na-
tional Resources Commission that controlled both public and private trading
enterprises in the Nanjing government between 1937 and 1945—personified
America’s role as China’s teacher. Of the ninety-five senior members of the
commission, forty-two had received degrees, mostly masters and doctorates,
from American universities or from St. John’s University in Shanghai, estab-
lished by an American missionary organization. 44
Compared with Catholic and British foreign missions, the American Prot-
estant missionary enterprise was a late starter but was carried out with great
Introduction xxix
energy and a strong social agenda. Besides proselytizing, many U.S. mission-
aries in China devoted considerable time and resources to help modernize
Chinese education, science, technology, medicine, culture, and society in
general. Mostly founded or financed by Americans, the eighteen Chinese
Christian colleges and universities were the most visible fruit of these mis-
sionary endeavors. But they do not represent the full picture. Between 1860
and 1900, for example, the missionary presence provoked anti-Christian agi-
tation and violence among Chinese elites, officials, and ordinary villagers—
incidents that “challenged the most skillful diplomacy of all the nations in-
volved.” Qing Chinese leader Li Hongzhang (1823–1901, Li Hung Chang)
did not hesitate to voice his opinion that Americans were able to build loco-
motives and steamships yet still believed in “devils” and “miracles”—con-
cepts Li dismissed as “missionary propaganda.” 45
In an interview with The Independent, Yuan Shikai (1859–1916), the
president of the first Republic of China (1912–1928), questioned the efficacy
of Christian missionary work—albeit in friendly tones—while affirming the
role of Confucianism as China’s state religion:
I could not have proclaimed Christianity with any effect, even had I so desired;
for ninety-nine per cent of our people would not have known what it meant.
But when I used the name of the wonderful Confucius and called upon the
people everywhere to take upon his words, teachings and examples again,
there was an immediate response. And a better China is already here. This, in
itself, creates a larger and better field for the Christian missionary, for, as the
noted Bishop Fabre once said to me, “Confucius is an excellent stepping stone
to Christ.” 46
Many Chinese perceived Christianity as a foreign intrusion into their relig-

ious and cultural traditions. During 1922–1927, the powerful Anti-Christian
Movement in China severely shook American missionaries and their support-
ers. The Chinese intellectuals and students who orchestrated this anti-West-
ern backlash declared that Christianity was “not only unscientific and outdat-
ed, but also a major obstacle to China’s attainment of national indepen-
dence.” The Restoring Educational Rights Movement in 1924 bore an even
stronger nationalistic and anti-imperialist bent, targeting Christian colleges
and schools in China. “China is the most difficult field in the world for
missionary work,” one American newspaper article lamented. 47
Aside from proselytizing and the pursuit of imperial exceptionalism,
American cultural approaches to China were shaped in part by Cold War
anti-Communism. To many Americans, the Communist victory in China in
1949 had violated the laws of history. 48 In the words of Harold R. Isaacs,
Americans assumed responsibility for the minds, bodies, and immortal souls of
the Chinese, and the United States assumed responsibility for China’s political
xxx Introduction
independence and administrative integrity. . . . It was an experience shared by

all the millions who put pennies, dimes, and quarters on collection plates for
generations, who contributed to relief funds for the Chinese, and whose tax
money made up the vast sums, ultimately billions of dollars, paid out to succor
and support China and its people in peace and war. . . . They [the Chinese]
ejected Americans from China through that very Door which Americans had
striven so long and so valiantly to keep Open. . . . They were, in short,
ungrateful wretches. 49
In the PRC, by the early 1970s, the planned economy was in tatters. No
further significant growth was possible within China’s existing system. Ac-
cording to Li Lanqing—a member of the CCP politburo standing committee
(1997–2002) and first vice premier of the Chinese State Council
(1998–2003)—in 1955 China accounted for 4.7 percent of world GDP, but
by 1976 it had shrunk to a mere 1 percent. 50 China and the CCP were
collapsing, so reaching out to the United States mattered in stark terms of
national survival. The PRC has given the United States due credit for helping
steer the nation’s transition from belief in violent revolution to belief in
prosperity and power through evolution.
As China became more closely integrated into the U.S. orbit, America’s
expectations for a China “made in America’s image” increased accordingly.
But China’s contemporary resurgence has also sharpened its perception that
the American-led global political and financial order is inequitable. Since the
end of the 1970s, working alongside many postcolonial, developing states in
Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin and South America, China has
successfully used multilateral international organizations and a largely benef-
icent liberal order to its own advantage, determined to lead global govern-
ance system reform.
Out of these developments came two conflicting geocultures that have
become a major source of discord. On the one side stand free market compe-
tition, democratic norms, and checks and balances versus irrational totalitar-
ianism and state intervention; the other side, rational coordination and devel-
opmental planning are pitted against chaotic, rudderless capitalism and a
disorderly democracy. Each ideology predicted the instability and ultimate
downfall or reversal of the other. Between the 1980s and the late 2010s,
interactions between the United States and China took place guided by these
polarized notions.
Development and peace are China’s theme songs for the twenty-first
century; they take their place alongside democracy and freedom, most in-
fluential values espoused by America and other Western countries. When I
was first writing this book in 2012, the China I saw then was different from
the one we see today. In less than a decade we have witnessed the omnipres-
ence of the CCP in nearly every corner of Chinese life. On the economic
front, in 2018 China was responsible for around 30 percent of the world’s
Introduction xxxi
manufactured goods, on par with the United States at the turn of the twentieth
century.
During the past ten years or so, China and China’s defenders have re-
sponded by blaming the United States for not being able to adjust to the new
China, its negative attitudes driven by America’s political and hegemonic
angst as its global power wanes. From China’s perspective, the recent deteri-
oration in the bilateral relationship has been mostly caused by Washington. 51
However, many people believe that the CCP’s ability to govern has been
hampered by the very pervasiveness of its ideology and by the country’s
quality of life, quality of development, and quality of cadres (eager to fawn
on the party and motivated by self-interest rather than good citizenship)
despite the shrinking material gap between China and advanced countries.
REVISIONS AND CHAPTER OUTLINE
Principles of Revisions
Five main principles were applied in revising the first edition of the text.
First, as with its predecessor, the second, revised edition of this book takes a
long-term and in-depth view of the trends, patterns, and lessons to be ex-
tracted from the 240 years of interaction between the United States and
China, always with an eye to the future. Second, about a quarter of the
original book was updated, added, and rewritten. These revisions were ap-
plied to each of the twelve chapters of the first edition.
Third, in addition to transposing chapters 7 and 8 and rewriting and
revising subsections throughout the book, new topics—including Black
Americans and Mao’s China and China’s growth dynamics and international
development—and research findings were incorporated into all the chapters.
Fourth, because this is a textbook designed for a typical ten- to fourteen-
week semester course, I have retained the original structure of twelve chap-
ters, along with an introduction and epilogue and further reading guides.
Fifth, a supplementary package has been prepared that will initially offer
twelve podcasts supported by graphics, commentary, biographies, anecdotes,
additional sources, and other information that cannot be included in the
printed book.
Chapter Outline
Grouped chronologically into three parts, the book’s twelve chapters are
structured thematically to cover the political, economic, social, religious, and
cultural dimensions of the relationship between the United States and China
from the late eighteenth century to the present, always within a global con-
xxxii Introduction
text. Person-to-person relations between the two countries are also empha-
sized.
In part I, “The Pacific Frontier and Qing China, 1784–1911,” chapter 1
explores the initial commercial contacts between the young United States and
Qing China, followed, in chapter 2, by an examination of two trade wars (the
Opium Wars), fought primarily between Britain and the Qing in the mid-
nineteenth century; the ramifications of the first treaties between Qing China
and the United States; and the Open Door policy as an expression of Ameri-
ca’s soft power and pragmatism in East Asia.
By the end of President Donald Trump’s term in office in January 2021,
U.S.-Chinese relations were at their lowest point in the four decades since the
establishment of diplomatic relations in 1979. In chapters 3 and 4, I reflect on
the deep roots and human dimensions of those relations as represented by the
stories of Chinese Americans and Christianity in China.
Following a comparable discussion of political, economic, social, relig-
ious, cultural, and people-to-people encounters, part II focuses on the United
States and China in the era of the two world wars. The chief topics discussed
are the rise of Chinese nationalism, the Nationalist and Communist revolu-
tions (chapters 5 and 6), deterrence and negotiations during the first half of
the Cold War (chapter 7), and mutual cultural influence in the period
1912–1970 (chapter 8).
With an emphasis on geopolitical (chapters 9 and 11), trade and social,
religious, and cultural elements (chapters 10 and 12), part III focuses on a
heady potpourri of subjects: rapprochement, the United States as rule maker,
the China market, the China challenge, the allure of the United States,
clashes, cooperation, and the dynamic competition between China and the
United States on all fronts from 1970 to the present. 52 The United States and
China are of central importance to global well-being in the twenty-first cen-
tury. This book explores a range of solutions to their ongoing conflicts
through a dispassionate analysis of the various waves of controversy and
crisis over security, military affairs, trade, the global supply chain, intellectu-
al rights, religion, human rights, the environment, public health, geoculture,
Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, and Taiwan that have unfolded over the years.
NOTES
1. Dong Wang, “The Character of U.S.-China Relations,” The Montréal Review, March
2013, http://www.themontrealreview.com/2009/The-Character-of-U-S-China-Relations.php.
2. Rosemary Foot, China, the UN, and Human Protection: Beliefs, Power, Image (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2020); Dong Wang, “How Did U.S.-China Relations Get to Where
They Are?” European Institute for Chinese Studies Briefs/Analyses, no. 8, January 2021, http://
www.eurics.eu/upload/document/20210203020235_eurics-january2021.pdf.
Introduction xxxiii
3. On the myth of sinocentrism, see Dong Wang, “Between Tribute and Unequal Treaties:
How China Saw the Sea World in the Early Nineteenth Century,” History: The Journal of
Historical Association 103, no. 355 (April 2018): 262–285.
4. The PRC Foreign Ministry, https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/web/zyxw/t855789.shtml (ac-
cessed on March 11, 2021).
5. Another translation of this phrase is “a community with a shared future for mankind.”
Chinese Global Television Network (CGTN, official PRC television channels broadcasting
from Beijing and around the world), Wei Yutong, “The Chinese Word and Phrase of 2017,”
December 21, 2017, https://news.cgtn.com/news/77557a4d33637a6333566d54/share_p.html;
Wang Yi (foreign minister of PRC), “Work Together to Create a Community of Shared Future
for Mankind,” May 31, 2016, https://www.mfa.gov.cn/ce/cgjb/eng/xwdt/zgyw/t1369269.htm.
6. Jin Canrong (金灿荣) et al., Zhongguo zhihui: Shibada yilai Zhongguo waijiao [中国智
慧: 十八大以来中国外交 China’s wisdom [sic]: Chinese diplomacy since the 18th National
Congress of the Chinese Communist Party] (Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe,
2017).
7. For the debate over nomadic empires, see Peter C. Perdue, China Marches West: The
Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University
Press, 2005). For a discussion of empire as a notion applied to the United States, see Michael
H. Hunt and Steven I. Levine, Arc of Empire: America’s Wars in Asia from the Philippines to
Vietnam (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), introduction. Also see
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
2000). For a comparative study of the transition from empire and nation, see Joseph W.
Esherick, Hasan Kayali, and Eric Van Young, eds., Empire to Nation: Historical Perspectives
on the Making of the Modern World (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006).
8. Rosemary Foot, “Strategy, Politics, and World Order Perspectives: Comparing the EU
and US Approaches to China’s Resurgence,” in US-China-EU Relations: Managing the New
World Order, ed. Robert S. Ross, Øystein Tunsjø, and Zhang Tuosheng (London: Routledge,
2010), 212–232.
9. William C. Kirby, “Chinese-American Relations in Comparative Perspective,
1900–1949,” in Pacific Passage: The Study of American-East Asian Relations on the Eve of the
Twenty-First Century, ed. Warren I. Cohen (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996),
163–189.
10. Ssu-yü Teng and John King Fairbank, China’s Response to the West: A Documentary
Survey, 1839–1923 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1954; 1982 reprint with a
new preface); Paul A. Cohen, China Unbound: Evolving Perspectives on the Chinese Past
(New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), introduction; William C. Kirby, “The Internationaliza-
tion of China: Foreign Relations at Home and Abroad in the Republican Era,” China Quarterly
150 (June 1997): 433–458.
11. Instructions from Daniel Webster on May 8, 1843, in Jules Davids, ed., American
Diplomatic and Public Papers: The United States and China (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly
Resources, 1973), series I, vol. 1, pp. 150–156.
12. Davids, American Diplomatic and Public Papers, series I, vol. 1, pp. 253–254.
13. Theodore Roosevelt, The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses (New York: Century
Co., 1900), 6.
14. Wang Gungwu, Anglo-Chinese Encounters since 1800: War, Trade, Science, and
Governance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), synthesizes a broad range of
interactions between the Anglo world—including the United States—and the Chinese. Moving
beyond politics and diplomacy, Wang calls for further attention to be paid to the underappre-
ciated impact of the West on China’s modernization.
15. Woodrow Wilson, “Annapolis Commencement,” June 5, 1914, http://www.presidency.
ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=65380.
16. The nature and effectiveness of these checks and balances have fueled the ongoing
controversy over the extent of the power exercised by the U.S. government. See William
Novak, “The Myth of the ‘Weak’ American State,” American Historical Review 113, no. 3
(June 2008): 752–772; Michael Hudson, Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of
U.S. World Dominance (London: Pluto Press, 2003; first edition in 1972). For insights on the
xxxiv Introduction
strength of the Chinese state and revolution, see Joseph W. Esherick’s “Ten Theses on the
Chinese Revolution,” Modern China 21, no. 1 (January 1995): 44–76.
17. In 2011, the U.S. military was spending about US$500 billion per annum, 5 percent of
its GDP and over 40 percent of the world’s total military expenditure. In the same year, the
United States had over 83,000 troops deployed in East Asia and the Pacific. “Roundtable:
Turning to the Pacific: U.S. Strategic Rebalancing toward Asia,” Asia Policy, no. 14 (July
2012): 21–49.
18. German Auswärtiges Amt (Federal Foreign Office), https://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/
de/aussenpolitik/internationale-organisationen/uno/01-grundlagen-uno/01-haushalt-uno/
274848 (accessed on March 12, 2021).
19. The United Nations General Assembly, September 10, 2018, https://www.un.org/press/
en/2018/ga12048.doc.htm.
20. The Economist, “China v America: Who Is in Charge?” July 18, 2020, https://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=roCoE94N7yc.
21. Arvind Subramanian, Eclipse: Living in the Shadow of China’s Economic Dominance
(Washington, D.C.: Peterson Institute for International Economics, 2011), 186.
22. David Shambaugh, China Goes Global: The Partial Power (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2013), x and 6.
23. Peter Nolan, Is China Buying the World? (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012), 140–141.
24. Hu Angang, “Embracing China’s ‘New Normal’: Why the Economy Is Still on Track,”
Foreign Affairs (May/June 2015): 8–12, e-version; Kai-Fu Lee, AI Superpowers: China, Sili-
con Valley and the New World Order (Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018).
25. For an examination of the global evolution of IPR, see Dong Wang, “US-China Eco-
nomic Relations,” in A Handbook of US-China Relations, ed. Andrew Tan (Surrey: Edward
Elgar Publishing, 2016), 155–177.
26. Available research correctly ascribes the persistence of counterfeiting in China to the
country’s political culture, the complex network of bureaucracies, and the lack of state capacity
for protecting the three IPR branches—copyright, trademark, and patent—through administra-
tive, civil, and criminal law. Three representative works on this topic are Martin K. Dimitrov,
Piracy and the State: The Politics of Intellectual Property Rights in China (New York: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2009); Andrew C. Mertha, The Politics of Piracy: Intellectual Proper-
ty in Contemporary China (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2005); and William P.
Alford, To Steal a Book Is an Elegant Offense: Intellectual Property Law in Chinese Civiliza-
tion (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1995).
27. Roger Faligot, Chinese Spies: From Chairman Mao to Xi Jinping, trans. Natasha Lehre
(Brunswick: Scribe Publications, 2019), first edition in French Les services secrets chinois in
2008.
28. Kenneth W. Abbott and Duncan Snidal, “International ‘Standards’ and International
Governance,” Journal of European Public Policy 8, no. 3 (2001): 345–370.
29. William M. Malloy, comp., Treaties, Conventions, International Acts, Protocols and
Agreements between the United States of America and Other Powers, 1776–1909 (Washington,
D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1910), vol. 1, pp. 261–270.
30. Wang Yanwei (王彦威), comp., Qingji waijiao shiliao [清季外交史料 Diplomatic
sources for the late Qing] (Beijing: Shumu chubanshe, 1987), vol. 3, p. 2722.
31. According to Carnegie, America’s anti-British sentiments also drew strength from the
Canadian question. Canadians and Americans wrangled over the Irish American terrorists,
tariffs, boundaries, fishing rights, and seal hunting. Andrew Carnegie, “Does America Hate
England?” originally published in 1897, in his The Gospel of Wealth and Other Timely Essays
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard College, 1962), 197–210.
32. William C. Kirby, “Engineering China: Birth of the Developmental State, 1928–1937,”
in Becoming Chinese: Passages to Modernity and Beyond, ed. Wen-Hsin Yeh (Berkeley,
Calif.: University of California Press, 2000), 137–160.
33. Dong Wang, China’s Unequal Treaties: Narrating National History (Lanham, Md.:
Rowman & Littlefield, 2005).
Introduction xxxv
34. Zhongguo di’er lishi dang’anguan, comp., Zhonghua minguoshi dang’an ziliao huibian
[中华民国史档案资料汇编 Collected archival sources for the history of the Republic of Chi-
na] (Nanjing: Jiangsu guji chubanshe, 1994), vol. 5, part 1, caizheng jingji (5), pp. 76–97.
35. Carl Crow, 400 Million Customers: The Experiences—Some Happy, Some Sad—of an
American in China and What They Taught Him (Norwalk, Conn.: EastBridge, 2003; reprint of
1937 edition by Hamilton in London), 268–269. Crow once worked as an advertising agent for
the American government in China.
36. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to
1957 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1960), 139.
37. Chun-Shuo Chen and Terrence A. Maxwell, “Three Decades of Bilateral Copyright
Negotiations: Mainland China and the United States,” Government Information Quarterly, no.
27 (2010): 196–207.
38. China Daily European Weekly, News Briefs, “Number of Lawsuits Soars,” March
16–22, 2012, p. 2.
39. PRC National People’s Congress, http://www.npc.gov.cn/npc/c12489/201409/
9d38b14721f44b35817082f371afb76a.shtml (accessed March 6, 2021).
40. Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, “2014 Special 301 Report,” https://ustr.gov/
sites/default/files/USTR%202014%20Special%20301%20Report%20to%20Congress%20-
FINAL.pdf (accessed March 6, 2021).
41. Tom Orlik, “China Option: Show Me the Stimulus Money,” Wall Street Journal, May
30, 2012, p. 32.
42. http://www.uspto.gov/about/stratplan/USPTO_2010-2015_Strategic_Plan.pdf (accessed
June 4, 2012). Wang Fenyu (王奋宇) and Zhao Jing (赵晶), “Meiguo zhuanli zhidu gaige jiqi
dui Zhongguo de yingxiang” [美国专利制度改革及其对中国的影响 American patent reform
and its impact on China], Diaoyan baogao 1561, no. 14 (February 23, 2012).
43. Werner Levi, Modern China’s Foreign Policy (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Min-
nesota Press, 1953), 125.
44. Zheng Huixin (郑会欣), Guomin zhengfu zhanshi tongzhi jingji yu maoyi yanjiu
(1937–1945) [国民政府战时统制经济与贸易研究 A study of the Nationalist government’s
controlled wartime economy and trade regime] (Shanghai: Shanghai shehui kexueyuan chuban-
she, 2009), 326–340.
45. Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim, comp. and ed., Li Hung Chang’s Scrap-Book (London: Watts
and Co., 1913), foreword.
46. Yuan Shikai, “The Chinese Republic Reports Progress,” The Independent, July 26,
1915.
47. “Christianity in China,” Los Angeles Times, April 15, 1927, p. A4.
48. Thomas J. Christensen, “A ‘Lost Chance’ for What? Rethinking the Origins of U.S.-
PRC Confrontation,” Journal of American-East Asian Relations 4, no. 3 (Fall 1995): 249–278.
49. Harold R. Isaacs, Scratches on Our Minds: American Views of China and India (New
York: John Day Company, 1958), 193.
50. Li Lanqing, Breaking Through: The Birth of China’s Opening-Up Policy (Beijing:
Waiyu jiaoxue yu yanjiu chubanshe, 2009), 14.
51. CGTN, Liu Xin’s interview with Larry Summers and Martin Jacques, July 8, 2020,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1PQOy8arr4; Christiane Amanpour’s interview with Vic-
tor Gao on August 25, 2020, https://www.pbs.org/wnet/amanpour-and-company/video/experts-
discuss-u-s-china-relations/.
52. Chas Freeman, “The United States and a Resurgent Asia,” Brown University, April 14,
2020, canceled due to COVID-19, https://chasfreeman.net/the-united-states-and-a-resurgent-
asia/.
Part I
The Pacific Frontier and Qing China,

1784–1911
Chapter One
Yankee Merchants and the China Trade
Direct contacts between the United States and China originated in the “old”
China trade of 1784–1844. The earliest U.S. foray into China in the eight-
eenth century proved useful for the newly independent republic, which was
in political and financial trouble. It also brought North America into the
global network of exchange in the Asia-Pacific and Indo-Pacific region.
Many private Yankee merchants, American frontiersmen, worked profitably
within and around the Chinese cohong and British monopoly systems and
consciously took on the European imperial powers in overseas markets. On
the Chinese side, however, commercial growth did not translate into prosper-
ity for most of Chinese hong traders, especially by the early nineteenth
century. The Qing government failed to capitalize on the lucrative Canton
(Guangzhou) trade as a tool for national development. America’s private
China trade indicated the systemic gap between the enterprising institutions
of a young nation and the threadbare economic organization of a declining
empire.
THE SETTING
Trade between South China and the outside world allegedly dated back mil-
lennia. By 500 BCE, a decentered and polycentric web of commercial con-
nections linked the South China Sea, the Pacific, the Bay of Bengal, the
Indian Ocean, the Arabian Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, the eastern
Mediterranean, Imperial Rome, East and West Africa, and other places. 1
From early times, Canton, the inland seaport on China’s southeast coast, was
an emporium for both local and long-distance commerce during the eras of
the Persian cosmopolis and Sanskrit cosmopolis in West, South, and South-
east Asia. Besides Europe, other participants in the trading system included
3
4 Chapter 1
Persia, Madagascar, India, Ceylon, Syria, Arabia, and Egypt. By the eighth
century, China’s foreign trade market was regulated through the Shibosi
(Bureau of Sea Trade). Over the following centuries, the Chinese system of
taxation, administration, and regulation of trade was well established. Begin-
ning in the sixteenth century, the arrival of Europeans—impelled by im-
proved naval technology and religious zeal—ushered in a new era of capital-
ist penetration of China. And the Arabs lost their dominant trading position.
New intercontinental sea routes that spanned the globe expanded mercantile
networks as well as the range of goods traded. This expansion of trading
patterns brought South China into closer contact with Europe, India, South-
east Asia, and the Americas. 2
Americans were latecomers to the China trade conducted on a regional
and global scale. The Portuguese had reached Canton in 1517, followed by
Spain, the Netherlands, Britain, Russia, and France later in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. 3 Between 1690 and 1842, hundreds of ships from
diverse ports of origin made long voyages to Canton, the sole port open to
foreigners legally in China. The China trade in early modern times involved
multiple companies, governments, ethnic groups, and trading families—in-
cluding Americans, English, Spaniards, Portuguese, Dutch, French, Danes,
Swedes, Chinese, Parsees, Moors, Armenians, and Russians. People traded
commodities such as tea, silk, porcelain, opium, lacquerware, furniture, and
paintings across locations including Macau, Canton, London, Lisbon, Ant-
werp, Amsterdam, Batavia, Malacca, Manila, Calcutta, Bombay, New York,
Boston, and Philadelphia. The old Canton trade was one of the most impor-
tant contributors to the rise of global maritime trading networks during the
century from 1750 to 1850.
AMERICAN, CHINESE, AND GLOBAL FACTORS
Why did Americans travel vast distances to trade with China? Besides the
exotic and lucrative aspects, two other factors fueled the new nation’s push
for overseas trading markets as far away as China. First, following indepen-
dence, a severe economic depression and Anglo-American rivalry prodded
Americans to elbow their way into world markets. Second, Canton—the
center of the booming Sino-foreign trade—enticed Yankee merchants as
“one of the most flexible places to negotiate business,” capable of handling
large volumes of goods and offering competitive prices, transactions on cred-
it, and, most important of all, profitable deals. 4 Before the American Revolu-
tion, the thirteen colonies in North America had already become acquainted
with China because their tea arrived in the British East India Company’s
ships from Canton by way of Great Britain.
Yankee Merchants and the China Trade 5
Economic Challenges and Opportunities in the Postrevolution Era
As a colony of a hegemonic power, America had been included in the British

colonial system. It gained entry to global trading markets, with Britain pick-
ing up the major military and administrative costs of the colonies. Britain’s
North American colonies had to some extent been business enterprises, con-
cerned to yield a profit for their charter sponsors. Alongside the agricultural
economy, commerce and trade developed among the thirteen colonies them-
selves and with the British West Indies, England, continental Europe, and
West Africa. North American settlers traded rum, meat, fish, and other agri-
cultural goods for sugar, molasses, and slaves with Caribbean islanders and
Africans. Colonial products including furs, timber, and American-built ships
also had access to markets in England and continental Europe.
The Treaty of Paris, signed in September 1783, brought an end to the war
between Great Britain and its American colonies, signifying British recogni-
tion of America’s independence. However, continuing Anglo-American hos-
tility produced problems at all levels during the postwar period, despite some
improvements in their relationship as a result of Jay’s Treaty of 1794 and
Pinckney’s Treaty of 1795. There was a new dimension to trade as well. The
British and British West Indian ports and trade routes that Americans had
utilized for over a century were now closed to the United States. In addition,
France and Spain terminated wartime trading privileges by placing maritime
constraints on American commerce. In the early years of the republic, foreign
trade and the merchant marine were vital components of its economy and
diplomacy. The acquisition of independent commercial rights in world mar-
kets and the military power to sustain them were matters of national survi-
val. 5 By the late 1780s, American exports per capita had fallen 30 percent
from the 1760s.
These changes to the structure of the Atlantic and Caribbean trade
forced—indeed, liberated—Americans to find new channels for wealth. The
lure of adventure and the hope of making quick fortunes led young men into
overseas enterprises aboard refitted privateers. 6
Foreign Trade in Canton
Although the initiative for doing business with China originated from the
U.S. side, it would be misleading to conclude that America’s old China trade
was a unilateral effort. The bustling international port of Canton and the
activities of Chinese merchants were well established and well known, at-
tracting American adventurers to the South China Sea.
When Captain John Green and Supercargo Major Samuel Shaw of the
Empress of China reached Canton in 1784, China was ruled by the Qianlong
emperor (r. 1735–1796) of the Qing (1644–1912), the last imperial dynasty.
6 Chapter 1
Qianlong, whose sixty-year reign was the longest in Chinese history, sought
to control and institutionalize maritime trade but not to eliminate it.
Canton, Macau, and the Pearl River Delta constituted the core of the
Sino-foreign trade network. 7 River and sea channels forming an A-shaped
gulf forty miles long link Canton to the former British colony of Hong Kong
at its right foot and to the former Portuguese colony (1557–1999) of Macau
at its left.
In 1684, shortly after Taiwan came under Chinese control, the Qing court
lifted its ban on the entry of foreign vessels, thus allowing foreign commer-
cial ships legal access to China. The following year, the Qing government
designated Canton, Zhangzhou, Ningbo, and Yuntaishan as foreign trading
ports and established maritime customs agencies in Guangdong, Fujian,
Zhejiang, and Jiangsu. However, in 1757, to control the activities of foreign-
ers and bar them from entering poorly defended coastal areas, all internation-
al trade was limited to Canton. This lasted until 1842 when China was defeat-
ed in the Opium War.
The Canton trade was structured by a system that consisted of four key
components—the Guangdong Maritime Customs (hereafter “Customs”), the
port of Macau, the important anchorage at Whampoa, and the cohong sys-
tem. 8 It was operated by the Customs—the imperial provincial agency—and
overseen by the Manchu Qing court. The Canton foreign trade framework
included two tiers of supervision—it was intended to “control the Chinese
merchants through the government” (yiguan zhishang) and “control foreign-
ers through the Chinese merchants” (yishang zhiyi). Working alongside the
provincial governors of Guangdong and Guangxi, the Guangdong Maritime
Customs was headed by a superintendent known as the hoppo. 9 The Customs
enforced customs procedures, supervised the hong merchants, regulated
foreign shipping, and collected direct duties on foreign vessels and cargoes at
Whampoa—the anchorage twelve miles downstream from Canton City
where foreign vessels moored in the Pearl River. Under its jurisdiction, there
were allegedly thirty-one tollhouses, twenty-two inspection posts, and twen-
ty-two registration stations. In 1834, the tax revenue raised through the Cus-
toms was over 1.6 million taels.
Macau, about eighty miles from Canton, was the first “port of entry” and
a sort of home base for foreign merchants to retreat to when the trading
season was over. Foreigners were not permitted to establish permanent settle-
ments in China.
In 1720, the Qing central government instituted the cohong system, which
authorized a group of merchants, known as the Thirteen Hongs (or guilds), to
regulate and conduct business with foreigners. 10 However, the following
year, the system was dismantled as a result of objections by foreign mer-
chants. In 1760, the Qianlong emperor granted a petition for a reorganization
of the system and exclusive rights to deal with foreign vessels submitted by
nine hongs represented by Pan Zhencheng. In 1771, the cohong was again
suspended and then reformed in 1780. It continued in this form until 1842,
when the signing of the first opium treaties imposed by Britain marked the
beginning of a new era in Sino-foreign trade. The licensed Chinese mer-
chants—many of whom immigrated to the Canton area from Fujian Prov-
ince—functioned as middlemen working between the government and
foreign traders. Their monopolistic position enabled them to acquire for-
tunes. The precise number of hongs varied at different times. Between 1800
and 1803, for instance, there were eight hongs involved in business transac-
tions, as shown in table 1.1. 11
The last dozen miles between the Whampoa anchorage and Canton were
closed to foreign trading vessels. Thus, after ships had passed through the
Guangdong maritime customhouse at Whampoa, their cargo was unloaded
into Chinese riverboats, “chop boats,” or “sampans” and carried to the hongs’
storage depot, just outside Canton City, where foreign traders maintained
their warehouses.
Under the Canton system, foreigners were normally restricted to three
locations—Macau, Whampoa, and a quarter-mile radius around the foreign
warehouses, which were known as “factories,” “foreign hongs,” or simply
“hongs.” 12 European and American buildings with national flags flying over
their sloping roofs stood two or three stories high on the banks of the Pearl
River. This was also where foreigners stayed while conducting business in
the trading season starting in the spring. The trading season ended with the
arrival of winter when all foreigners were expected to leave Canton and
return home, or at least go back to Macau. 13 Women, as well as guns, spears,
or arms of any kind, were expressly banned. Three times a month, foreign
seafarers could make special excursions, in groups no larger than ten, across
the Pearl River to visit the flower gardens (Fati) or joss house (Buddhist
temple) on Honam Island. 14
Whatever the inconvenience and restrictions imposed on foreign and Chi-
nese merchants alike under the Canton system, the volume of international
business in the port steadily increased from the late seventeenth century. Up
until 1842, when the Canton system came to an end, the Chinese govern-
ment, foreigners, and a few hong merchants benefited handsomely from it. In
1783, forty-five European ships sailed into Canton, sixteen of them English.
The following year, the total of thirty-five included nine English ships, four
French, five Dutch, three Danish, four Portuguese, and one American. In
1787, sixty-eight foreign vessels called at Canton, including fifty-two Eng-
lish ships and five American ships from New York, Philadelphia, and Sa-
lem. 15
Despite discrepancies in the figures, independent Chinese accounts con-
firm these trends. Liang Tingnan recorded thirty-six foreign vessels in 1783,
forty-six in 1785, seventy-three in 1787, and eighty-three in 1789. 16 In 1790,
8 Chapter 1
Table 1.1. List of Business Names of Merchants, Merchants, and Hong Names
Business Name of Merchants Hong Names

Merchants
Puankhequa (潘启官) Pan Zhencheng 潘振承 Tongwen hang 同文行
(1714–1788), Pan
Zhixiang 潘致祥
(1755–1820)
Mowqua (卢茂官) Lu Guanheng 卢观恒 Guangli hang 广利行
(?–1812)
Puiqua (伍佩/沛官) or Wu Bingjun 伍秉钧 Yihe hang 怡和行
Howqua (浩官) (?–1801), Wu Bingjian 伍
秉鉴 (1765–1843)
Yanqua (叶仁官) Ye Shanglin 叶上林 Yicheng hang 义成行
(1753–1809)
Chunqua (刘章官) Liu Dezhang 刘德章 Dongsheng hang 东生行
(?–1825)
Pongqua (倪榜官) Ni Bingfa 倪秉发 (?–1810) Dacheng hang 达成行
Gnewqua (郑侣官) Zheng Chongqian 郑崇谦 Huilong hang 会隆行
(?–1813)
eighty-three foreign vessels anchored in Canton harbor, bringing tax reve-

nues of 1.1 million taels. Over the next half century the number would
increase to two hundred, with 1.8 million taels in customs dues, comprising
60 percent of the Guangdong provincial revenues. 17 Chinese hong merchants
also reported being swamped by the burgeoning business conducted between
Canton and Macau in 1792. 18 This overall increase in shipping underlines the
point made by Paul A. Van Dyke: “If Chinese regulators in Canton were
indeed only interested in discouraging and restricting the trade, as is so often
the hypothesis of modern histories, how is it that the opposite happened?” 19
The Empress of China
On Sunday, February 22, 1784—George Washington’s birthday—the 360-

ton Empress of China (hereafter Empress), which had served during the
American Revolution, departed New York for Canton. Two groups of New
York and Philadelphia merchants, Daniel Parker & Company (John Holker,
William Duer, and Daniel Parker) and Robert Morris (one of the major
financiers of the American Revolution and superintendent of finance ap-
pointed by the Continental Congress between 1781 and 1784), had jointly
purchased the refitted privateer. With a cargo representing US$120,000, a
huge investment at the time, 20 the ship was loaded with American-produced
ginseng, wine and brandy, tar and turpentine, woolen garments, cotton, fur
skins, and $20,000 in specie. 21 Among the crew of forty-five were Captain
John Green, Second Captain Peter Hodgkinson, Supercargo Samuel Shaw of
Boston (a war veteran in charge of the business affairs of the ship), Purser
John White Swift, and Surgeon and Mate Robert Johnson and Andrew Cald-
well. 22
After stopping over at the Cape Verde Islands, a Portuguese colony off
the coast of Senegal in Africa, the vessel crossed the Cape of Good Hope and
set sail for the Indian Ocean. In company with two friendly French ships
encountered in the Straits of Sunda near the Java shore, the Empress headed
across the South China Sea. On August 25, 1784, after over six months of the
over 18,000-mile journey, the ship arrived at Macau. Here the Empress pro-
cured the official permit, a chop or stamp, to enter China, hiring a Chinese
pilot to guide the ship up the Pearl River to Canton, as well as a fiador, or
surety—a leading Chinese merchant; a comprador, who furnished provisions
and other necessities; and a linguist who arranged for small boats to transfer
the ship’s goods.
In December 1784, the Empress, loaded with 3,000 piculs of Hyson and
Bohea tea, sixty-four tons of porcelain, and other goods from China, headed
back to the United States and arrived in New York in May 1785. 23 The net
profit of the voyage amounted to around $30,727, an estimated 25 to 30
percent return on the original investment. 24 America’s venture into the China
market was off to a good start. Its ginseng fared especially well in the China
market, the price in 1787 rising from US$140 to $200 a picul. 25 In the early
Canton trade, the United States essentially provided raw materials, whereas
the Chinese offered processed manufactures such as tea, silk, and porcelain.
The expedition was widely noticed in major American newspapers and by
the government. Boston’s American Herald published an excerpt from a
diary kept by “a gentleman on board.” It noted that American traders were
treated “in all respects, as a free and independent nation; as such, during our
stay, we were universally considered. The Chinese themselves were very
indulgent towards us, and happy in the contemplation of a new people, open-
ing to view, a fresh source of commerce to their extensive empire.” 26 Upon
his return from Canton, Samuel Shaw reported to key Federalist Party figures
Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and John Jay. Shaw was later appointed
American consul to Canton.
TRADING COMMODITIES, FINANCE, AND MECHANISMS
Enjoying considerable flexibility compared to their British competitors who

contracted with monopoly enterprises, 27 American private traders infused
energy into the Asia market. In licit and illicit trade alike, Americans found
innovative ways to operate profitably within and around the Canton and
10 Chapter 1
British monopoly systems. Although not comparable to the British China

trade, the U.S. trade with China rose to the second largest in volume within
ten years, surpassing continental Europeans. The annual average number of
American ships docking at Canton grew from 7.4 in 1785–1800 to 23.6 in
1801–1811. 28
The U.S. old China trade can be divided into four periods. The first was
the period of beginnings and expansion, 1784–1790. Then came a period of
further expansion and wars (1791–1814), when the China trade experienced
a considerable boost during the European wars in the aftermath of the French
Revolution. The United States became the neutral common carrier for Eu-
rope and previous trade barriers were swiftly eliminated. Between 1801 and
1811, between a quarter and half of European imports of tea were reexported
from the United States. 29 The third period lasted from the close of the War of
1812 with Britain to the outbreak of the conflicts over opium (1815–1838);
during this phase the China trade expanded, most notably in 1818–1819,
when forty-seven American vessels were trading in Canton. 30 The fourth and
final phase (1839–1844) was marked by the First British-Chinese Opium
War, culminating in the Treaties of Nanjing and Wanghia. The Opium Wars
and their outcome will be discussed in the next chapter.
Among the Chinese exports—chiefly tea, silk, porcelain, furniture, and
lacquerware—tea figured very large. After 1784, over two-thirds of the tea
business was carried out by the British East India Company, reflecting the
numbers and tonnage of English shipping involved in the China trade. In
1784, tea exports from China to Britain and its dependencies weighed in at
14 million pounds, and for the months of March, May, June, September, and
December of 1786, the company’s tea sales exceeded 15.6 million pounds by
weight, amounting to over 3.3 million pounds sterling in value. In 1787, tea
exports carried by English ships were upward of 21 million net pounds in
weight. 31
Following the successful voyage of the Empress of China, however, the
American tea trade grew rapidly. American tea exports from Canton were
880,100 pounds in 1785, reaching the 1 million pound mark in 1787, over 3
million in 1790, upward of 5 million in 1800, 9 million in 1830, and more
than 19 million pounds in 1840. 32 As a percentage of total American imports
from China, tea increased from 36 percent in 1822 to 65 percent in 1837 and
82 percent in 1840. However, Chinese tea imports declined after this period
as a result of the reimposition of tariffs following the American Civil War
and increased imports of Japanese tea. 33
Innovation and flexibility helped Americans succeed in the China market.
Ships from Boston, such as the Columbia, inaugurated the “triangle” fur
trade. After sailing around South America to exchange iron chisels for sea
otter fur with the Native Americans on the northwest coast, these Bostonian
adventurers set off westward across the Pacific to trade fur for teas, silks, and
other goods in Canton. After three years at sea, the Columbia returned to
Boston with earnings of $90,000. 34 From the 1790s to the 1820s, “[t]o the
Indians who knew the English as ‘King George men,’ the Americans were
known as ‘Boston men.’” 35 In Canton, Yankee fur traders bartered freely,
underselling fine quality British pelts by up to 20 percent.
In November 1794, Britain granted Americans highly limited trading
rights in the British West Indies and India under the Treaty of Amity, Com-
merce and Navigation (the Jay Treaty). Under the treaty provisions,
Americans could export and import goods directly only between the United
States and India. 36 This severely limited U.S. participation in the lucrative
opium trade with China. With no access to the Patna opium exported from
Calcutta in eastern India—the production, inspection, and sales of which had
been regulated by the British East India Company since 1773—American
merchants began exporting Turkish opium from Smyrna to Canton in a bid to
crack the British monopoly on the Chinese opium market. Later, American
firms such as Augustine Heard & Co. penetrated the Malwa opium network
in central India. The cheap Malwa drug was produced by independent prince-
ly states in the Malwa uplands and shipped from Bombay by native Parsee
and Hindu merchants operating beyond British jurisdiction.
In 1836, American traders sold $275,921 worth of opium—a large sum,
but only 4 percent of the $9 million worth of American goods imported into
China that year and less than 10 percent of the size of the Anglo-In-
dian–Canton drug market, a large source of the revenue of the British imperi-
al state. Although the American opium trade in Canton was operated as a
subsidiary means of purchasing and shipping teas and silks, the Americans
soon undercut their British rivals who had previously enjoyed a monopoly on
opium.
As in the case of the Empress of China, aboard the American vessels the
supercargoes were initially put in charge of purchases. Later, resident trading
firms, which hired resident commission agents to work in Canton or repre-
sented American mercantile houses, took their place. Resident commission
agents of note included Samuel Shaw (of the firm of Shaw & Randall),
Samuel W. Russell, John P. Cushing (commissioned by Thomas H. Perkins
& Co. of Boston), Benjamin Chew Wilcocks of Philadelphia, and Daniel
Stansbury of Baltimore. Russell & Co., Perkins & Co., Olyphant & Co.,
James Oakford & Co., Archer & Co., T. H. Smith & Co., and Wetmore &
Co. ranked among the largest American trading houses in Canton. 37
Under the merchant security system (known as baoshang zhidu 保商制
度) inaugurated by the Qing in 1745, every foreign seaman and foreign ship
was the personal liability of the hong merchants, who were held accountable
by the hoppo for inbound and outbound merchandise, import and export
duties, and even the behavior of foreigners. Foreigners were not allowed to
communicate directly with the authorities; this could only be done through
12 Chapter 1
the hong merchants, who virtually became the securities of foreign traders.
American and European merchants were thus forced into close partnerships
with their Chinese counterparts.
Over time, the multinational mercantile community in Canton developed
a unique form of pidgin English, a commercial patois mixed with loan words
from Portuguese, Hindi, Cantonese, and other languages. Words such as
mandarin (originating from Portuguese mandar, “to order”), comprador
(from Portuguese comprar, “to buy”), bazaar (from Hindi, “market”),
Schroff (from Hindi, “moneylender”), and coolie (from Hindi, kuli, “labor-
er”) have since been adopted into standard English usage.
The hong merchants entertained Americans at their grand residences,
offering them delicate foods such as “birds’ nest soup, with plover’s eggs and
Bêche-de-Mer, curiously prepared sharks’ fins and roasted snail,” 38 sumptu-
ous dinners often costing more than 100,000 taels. Samuel Shaw noted the
lengths to which these wealthy merchants went to landscape their properties:
[T]he gardens belonging to Chowqua [Chen Yuanquan; hong name, Yuanquan

hang] are extensive; much art and labor are used to give them a rural appear-
ance, and in some instances nature is not badly imitated. Forests, artificial
rocks, mountains, and cascades, are judiciously executed, and have a pleasing
effect in diversifying the scene. 39
Shaw also praised the hong merchants for their professional standards:
The knavery of the Chinese, particularly those of the trading class, has become
proverbial. . . . It must at the same time be admitted that the merchants of the
cohoang [cohong] are as respectable a set of men as are commonly found in
other parts of the world. . . . They are intelligent, exact accountants, punctual
to their engagements, and though not the worse for being well looked after,
value themselves upon maintaining a fair character. 40
Years later, William C. Hunter, a Russell & Co. partner, likewise spoke
highly of his Chinese counterparts:
As a body of merchants, we found them honourable and reliable in all their

dealings, faithful to their contracts, and large-minded. Their private residences,
of which we visited several, were on a vast scale, comprising curiously laid-
out gardens, with grottoes and lakes, crossed by carved stone bridges, path-
ways neatly paved with small stones of various colours forming designs of
birds, or fish, or flowers. 41
In return for tea and other Chinese processed manufactures, the Americans
traded items such as ginseng, raw cotton, yarn, cotton cloth, kerosene, furs,
sandalwood, and opium—goods that were mainly raw materials and were not
in great demand in China. How then was the China trade financed? Ameri-
ca’s trade deficit was redressed with specie, mostly Spanish silver dollars, as
well as with loans from London bankers. In the early nineteenth century,
Spanish bullion—the proceeds from the sale of American products in the
Spanish West Indies, South America, Portugal, and Gibraltar—made up ap-
proximately 65 percent of annual American exports to China, amounting to
over $7 million per year (as in 1819). 42 From the late 1820s on, the bulk of
Sino-American trade was financed by bills of exchange drawn on London,
through credit arrangements with London banking houses such as Barings
and Browns—because paying in bullion had become more expensive than
sending bills. “During the years 1827–1833, nearly 9 million dollars worth of
English bills were used by the American merchants to pay off their debts at
Canton . . . during the period 1871–1894, British credit still accounted for
one-third of American payments to China.” 43 Up until World War I, in inter-
national markets “a bill drawn on London was almost the only kind of bill
which the holder could be sure of converting into gold in case of any failure
of credit, [and] bills drawn on London were preferred to bills drawn on any
other commercial center.” 44
A letter written in Canton in 1832 by John Murray Forbes of Russell &
Co. affirms this practice:
Sir, Mr. A [Augustine] Heard [Forbes’ partner] having kindly afforded me a

letter of introduction to you and assured me that you would be good enough to
transact a little business which I may have in your place. I have been induced
to order the proceeds of several shipments to Europe and the U.S. (under
certain circumstances, [sic]) to be invested in Bills on Payable and remitted to
you for collection for my account. . . . As I am about leaving this country for
the U. States I have now to beg you that in care of receive [sic] such remit-
tances you will be good enough to advise Mr. A. H. [Augustine Heard] of the
same and to hold the amount when collected subject to his orders. The Bills if
sent will be guaranteed by Mr. P. B. [full name unknown] B & C. [Reid Beale
& Co., a private English trading house in India and China] of London, and I
must really say that in case of non acceptance or nonpayment it will be neces-
sary to have them protested immediately and returned, begging your indul-
gence for troubling you. 45
While some Chinese hong merchants stood to make large profits from the
American trade, throughout the latter half of the eighteenth and the first half
of the nineteenth centuries in particular they also accumulated a large volume
of arrears and debts—the other side of the expanded foreign trade in Canton.
Before the 1730s, when the value and volume of the China trade in the four
designated ports was relatively small, accounts were normally cleared by the
season or by the ship. Financing arrangements were small scale and manage-
able—although instances of hong merchants putting down a security deposit
for delivery, delay, or default were just as common as cash advances from
14 Chapter 1
foreigners. 46 In the latter two-thirds of the eighteenth century, however, most

of the hong merchants found themselves in financial difficulties. Trade
growth, coupled with the predominance of chartered joint-stock companies
such as the British East India Company, exacerbated their funding and sup-
ply problems. “[T]he European trade was expanding rapidly while the Hon-
gists’ network of trade and sources of income were shrinking; consequently,
they became increasingly dependent on the cash advances of foreigners,
credit from up-country suppliers and the delayed payment of imperial du-
ties.” 47
Lacking political power, the hong merchants could not appeal to the
government but constantly had to submit to official requests for money and
the demands of foreign creditors. 48 The merchant security system of 1745
forced all cohongs still in business to assume the debts left by those that had
declared bankruptcy. In 1780, hong merchants Kewshaw and Yngshaw went
into bankruptcy for the nearly 2 million silver taels they owed to British
traders. As a result, the Chinese government ordered other merchants such as
Puankhequa (Pan Wenyan) to pay off Kewshaw and Yngshaw’s debts over
ten years. 49 William C. Hunter noted a similar case where, following default
by three hong merchants, Hingtai, Mouqua, and Kingqua, the governor of
Guangdong and Guangxi required that other cohongs pay off “the indebted-
ness of three of their own number to ‘outside barbarians.’” 50
The relations between cohong merchants, foreign traders, and the Chinese
government were inextricably enmeshed. In the postscript to a letter to John
Perkins Cushing, a partner with Russell & Co., dated April 23, 1833, a senior
Chinese hong merchant in Canton, Houqua (Howqua), 51 wrote,
As I trust you will always feel an interest in whatever relates to me, it will
afford you pleasure to learn that my no. 4 son, in whose name is the Hong[,]
has within a few days received from the Emperor the highest evidence of his
favor, namely a Peacocks Tail!!! In the last serious rebellion[,] I made, in the
name of my son[,] a voluntary donation of a sum . . . with which proof of
loyalty the Emperor was much pleased and has bestowed this public honor; the
greatest a subject can receive, and for which I esteem this the happiest circum-
stance of my life. 52
Houqua was clearly overjoyed with the recognition he and his son received
from the Qing imperial court, something coveted by a merchant whose social
status was inherently humble. In late imperial China, silk rank badges differ-
entiated by decorative animals indicated a mandarin’s importance; peacock
tail feathers served the purpose just as well. Success in the civil service
entrance examinations was the normal pathway for ordinary men to enter the
world of officialdom, with its nine grades. The conferring of such an extraor-
dinary honor on a businessman like Houqua was the result of the financial
contribution he had made in his son’s name to the government’s repression
of a peasant rebellion. The letter throws an intimate light on what—beyond

wealth—lay closest to the hong merchant’s heart.
A story told by Samuel Shaw, on the other hand, details a strained rela-
tionship in which hong merchants found themselves vulnerable to the extor-
tionate behavior of government officials such as the hoppo:
A few years since, Shykinkoa, one of the most respectable merchants of the
co-hoang [sic], having failed in an engagement to send some teas to the Eng-
lish ships, assigned as a reason for it, that he had been disappointed of seeing
the hoppo, who, he said, was drunk when he called at his house to take out the
chop [stamp, permit for the merchant to visit the factory]. Shortly after, an-
other of the co-hoang coming to the English factory, the chief casually men-
tioned the disappointment, and the reason given for it by Shykinkoa. This man,
who was Shykinkoa’s enemy, reported the matter to the hoppo, and Shykinkoa
was forced to make his peace by a present of thirty thousand taels! 53
The following letter illustrates another side of the triangular relationship

between foreign businessmen, hong merchants, and the Chinese government.
Acting as broker and guarantor between the government and foreign traders,
hongs established close connections with particular foreign agents, giving
them access to the same ships season after season. Houqua, for example,
known as a bête noire among English merchants, preferred to trade with
Americans. On June 15, 1833, Houqua wrote offering counsel to John P.
Cushing, his business partner, regarding his associate, Captain Pearson:
Your open letter by Capt. Pearson was handed me yesterday by himself in

whom I was happy to recognize an old acquaintance. It is [an] unfavorable
moment now to commence Tea operations to the extent that would be required
to fill his large ship, and it appears most advisable that he should return for
another load of rice and be here again in the commencement of the ensuing
season. . . . Captain Pearson will probably get a fair freight on his Rice,
although within the last 15 days the price had fallen nearly a dollar per picul,
you may rest assured that I should render him every assistance in my power, in
the hopes of hearing from you soon. 54
ASSESSMENT OF AMERICA’S EARLY CHINA TRADE
The old China trade came to an end because of the wars between Britain and
China in the 1840s. Although it had a limited effect on overall economic life,
the first encounter brought the United States into a useful relationship with
China. Below are three legacies, both tangible and intangible.
First, many American traders and a few Chinese hong merchants amassed
vast fortunes in a very short time. In particular, American merchants, as a
special interest group, left a palpable mark on the U.S. economy, politics, and
foreign relations, although the significance of the China market in total
16 Chapter 1
American exports to the world was minimal, less than 0.5 percent by the end
of the nineteenth century. 55
Elias Hasket Derby (1739–1799) of Salem, Massachusetts, one of the
early millionaires in the United States, owed his fortunes to the China trade.
Known as “King Derby,” he was widely credited with resuscitating Salem’s
failing economy. Others also made their fortune in the trade. John Murray
Forbes of Russell & Co., for instance, made profits of $150,000 in two years.
On his return to Boston in 1837, he devoted his funds and energy to iron-
works, steamships, and railroads. John P. Cushing returned from Canton to
Boston in 1828, at the age of forty-one, with over $600,000. Back home, he
invested his China money in railroads, textile mills, and other modern enter-
prises. Some of the capital Forbes invested in western railroads came directly
from Houqua’s family.
The founder of Girard College, Stephen Girard of Philadelphia, whose
ships were engaged in sending opium to China, helped finance the War of
1812 and subscribed $3 million to the Second Bank of the United States in
1816. John Jacob Astor, known as the “landlord” of New York, made his
fortune in the China fur trade and became the richest American in 1834.
Among Boston’s urban landmarks, Tremont House—best known as the first
hotel in the United States with indoor plumbing, toilets, bathrooms, and
running water—and the Massachusetts General Hospital, still in use today,
were built with the fortune amassed by Thomas Handasyd Perkins, Astor’s
archrival in the China trade.
A few Chinese merchants were on a fast track to wealth as well. In 1834,
Houqua estimated his assets at 26 million silver dollars, worth approximately
$US52 million, and more than 6 million pounds sterling in 1882. 56 In China,
both American and Chinese traders took the lead in creating new steamship
companies. Edward Cunningham, Hsun Jun, and Koofunsing founded and
financed the Shanghai Steam Navigation Company in 1862 and the China
Merchants’ Steam Navigation Company, the first steamship company owned
and managed by Chinese. 57 However, without the support and encourage-
ment of the Qing state, the enormous potential of the old China trade re-
mained untapped on the Chinese side. In the late 1830s, the growing dispar-
ity between the Chinese economy—with a low level of capital accumulation
and underdeveloped domestic industry—and the rapidly industrializing Brit-
ish manufacturing sector eventually brought down the Canton system.
Second, the China trade also helped Americans and Chinese become ac-
quainted with each other. The most substantive early American literary
works on China were written by maritime traders who had traveled to China.
The China trade helped Americans form their understanding of China—both
favorable and unfavorable—through their own firsthand experience.
American knowledge was not just a simple duplicate of European thought on
China. 58 This direct interaction stimulated an American appetite for luxury
goods made in China. The artwork and furnishings acquired through the
China trade—especially porcelain, paintings, and furniture—have long been
admired by Americans.
Third, America’s early experiences in China have lodged in the American
psyche and become a symbol of national spirit. In the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries, the United States was beset with political divi-
sions and geostrategic and economic difficulties. The Canton trade fed anti-
British sentiment at the same time as it boosted American self-assurance.
These helped create the American industrial and financial complex that later
became dominant in world affairs while laying a foundation for America’s
rising empire “for liberty” that grew as a result of landed expansion and
overseas economic struggles. 59
These themes were embodied in many of the China trade’s chief propo-
nents. Samuel Shaw (1754–1794) was the first American consul in Canton in
1786; he had been an aide to General Henry Knox, commander of artillery of
American forces during the American Revolution, and was later first secre-
tary of the War Department of the United States. As supercargo of the Em-
press of China, Shaw pointed to British efforts to thwart American advances
into the Canton trade:
It is true, that the Court of Directors [of the British East India Company], in
their instructions to the supercargoes, [at] the present season, enjoined it upon
them to use every endeavour to prevent the subjects of Great Britain from
assisting or encouraging in any shape the American commerce; but if this
prohibition was intended by the directors, or construed by their servants, to
extend to the civilities heretofore paid the Americans, it cannot be denied that
such conduct was extremely illiberal. 60
Early economic relations between the United States and China reflected the
preindustrial nature of the American economy, which was yet to produce
major manufactures for export. The U.S. debut in China, however, consti-
tuted the triumphant entry of a new nation into an expanding international
system of politics and trade, where the competition to regulate the terms of
contact was dominated at first by the Qing government, then by hegemonic
Britain and other European powers. 61 Yet no power on earth could block
America’s historic desire for prosperity and strength on the global stage,
from the Atlantic to the Pacific, “destined by some secret providential design
to hold in their hands the fate of half the world at some date in the future.” 62
FURTHER READING 63
In assessing the early American China trade and geopolitics in the Asia-
Pacific and the Indian Ocean, recent scholarship emphasizes the complex
18 Chapter 1
interactions between U.S. strategic interests, competition, profitability, the

Chinese way of conducting commerce, foreign notions of free trade, and the
changing business environment. See Jonathan Goldstein, Stephen Girard’s
Trade with China, 1787–1824: The Norms versus the Profits of Trade (Port-
land, Maine: MerwinAsia, 2011), and Andrew C. A. Jampoler, Embassy to
the Eastern Courts: America’s Secret Pivot toward Asia, 1832–37 (Annapo-
lis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2015). Two interpretative strands—the depen-
dency and modernization models—have shaped the broad contours of schol-
arly writing in this area. The dependency school contends that the old China
trade—the commercial component of a westward Pacific movement by the
United States—was intrusive and imperialist, with the United States gaining
capital for development at the expense of others. The modernization para-
digm, on the other hand, suggests that the American enterprise in China
ultimately stimulated China’s long-term modernization efforts. See James R.
Gibson, Otter Skins, Boston Ships, and China Goods: The Maritime Fur
Trade of the Northwest Coast, 1785–1841 (Seattle, Wash.: University of
Washington Press, 1999; first edition 1992); Robert Y. Eng, Economic Impe-
rialism in China: Silk Production and Exports, 1861–1932 (Berkeley, Calif.:
University of California Press, 1986); and Yen-p’ing Hao, The Commercial
Revolution in Nineteenth-Century China: The Rise of Sino-Western Mercan-
tile Capitalism (Berkeley, Calif.: Institute of East Asian Studies, University
of California, 1986).
Works in Chinese covering similar ground include Zhang Kaiyuan (章开
沅) and Zhu Ying (朱英), eds., Jindai jingji guanxi yu Zhongguo jindaihua
[近代经济关系与中国近代化 Modern economic relations and the modern-
ization of China] (Wuhan: Huazhong chubanshe, 1990), and Wang Jingyu
(汪敬虞), Waiguo ziben zai jindai Zhongguo de jinrong huodong [外国资本
在近代中国的金融活动 The financial activity of foreign capital in modern
China] (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1999).
Philip Chadwick Foster Smith’s The Empress of China (Philadelphia, Pa.:
Philadelphia Maritime Museum, 1984) brings history to life with its vivid
treatment of financial scandals and human failings surrounding America’s
China venture. Concerning the U.S. participation in the opium trade, two
books stand out: Jacques M. Downs’ The Golden Ghetto: The American
Commercial Community at Canton and the Shaping of American China Poli-
cy, 1784–1844 (Bethlehem, Pa.: Lehigh University Press, 1997) is strong on
the moral challenges of the opium business confronting American merchants.
Combining history and anthropology, Thomas N. Layton unearths the story
of an opium clipper Frolic in The Voyage of the “Frolic”: New England
Merchants and the Opium Trade (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press,
1997).
On the cultural impact of the China trade and early American images of
China, see Alfred Owen Aldridge’s The Dragon and the Eagle: The Pres-
ence of China in the American Enlightenment (Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State

University Press, 1993) and John Rogers Haddad, The Romance of China:
Excursions to China in U.S. Culture, 1776–1876 (New York: Columbia Uni-
versity Press, 2008).
Two useful textual and visual databases can be found at https://
visualizingcultures.mit.edu/rise_fall_canton_01/index.html and https://www.
cap.amdigital.co.uk/Introduction. For an annotated bibliographic overview of
the United States in Asia, see Dong Wang, ed., “The United States, Asia, and
the Pacific, 1815–1919,” in The Society for Historians of American Foreign
Relations (SHAFR) Guide: An Annotated Bibliography of American Foreign
Relations since 1600, ed. Alan McPherson (Leiden: Brill, 2017), http://
referenceworks.brillonline.com/browse/the-shafr-guide-online.
NOTES
1. For the construction, reconstruction, and mythologizing of the idea of the Maritime Silk
Road, see Kwa Chong Guan, “The Maritime Silk Road: History of an Idea, Nalanda-Sriwijaya
Centre Working Paper,” no. 23 (October 2016), https://www.iseas.edu.sg/images/pdf/
nscwps23.pdf.
2. Takeshi Hamashita, Mark Selden, and Linda Grove, China, East Asia and the Global
Economy: Regional and Historical Perspectives (New York: Routledge, 2008). Guo Deyan (郭
德焱), Qingdai Guangzhou de Basi shangren [清代广州的巴斯商人 Parsee merchants in Can-
ton during the Qing period] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2005). Huang Qichen (黄启臣), Guang-
dong haishang sichou zhilu [广东海上丝绸之路 Guangdong’s maritime Silk Road] (Guang-
zhou: Guangdong jingji chubanshe, 2003).
3. Bruce A. Elleman and S. C. M. Paine, Modern China: Continuity and Change, 1644 to
the Present, second edition (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), 38 and chap. 5.
Warren I. Cohen, East Asia at the Center: Four Thousand Years of Engagement with the World
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), chap. 6.
4. Chinese Repository 2, no. 7 (November 1833): 289.
5. Bradford Perkins, The Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations, vol. 1, The
Creation of a Republican Empire, 1776–1865 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995),
7.
6. Charles L. Ver Steeg, “Financing and Outfitting of the First U.S. Ship to China,” Pacific
Historical Review 22, no. 1 (February 1953): 1–12.
7. Dong Wang, Managing God’s Higher Learning: U.S.-China Cultural Encounter and
Canton Christian College (Lingnan University), 1888–1952 (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Little-
field, 2007), chap. 1.
8. The terms hong and cohong are derived from the word for “agent” or “guild,” denoting
the idea of trading companies.
9. The hoppo’s full title was “commissioner of the board of revenue in charge of customs
duties for the maritime trade of Guangdong province.”
10. Liang Jiabin (梁嘉彬) et al., Guangdong shisan hang kao [广东十三行考 The Thirteen
Hongs of Canton], reprint (Guangzhou: Guangdong renmin chubanshe, 1999; first edition
1937), 102–104. Zhongguo diyi lishi dang’anguan (中国第一历史档案馆 No. 1 Chinese His-
torical Archives) and Guangzhou liwanqu renmin zhengfu (广州荔湾区人民政府), eds., Qing-
gong Guangzhou Shisanhang dang’an jingxuan [清宫广州十三行档案精选 Selected Qing
court archives on the Thirteen Hongs] (Guangzhou: Guangdong jingji chubanshe, 2002).
Zhongguo diyi lishi dang’anguan, comp., Qinggong Yuegang’ao shangmao dang’an quanji [清
宫粤港澳商贸档案全集 A complete collection of the Qing court archives on trade in Guang-
dong, Hong Kong, and Macau], 10 vols. (Beijing: Zhongguo shudian chubanshe, 2002).
20 Chapter 1
11. Yang Guozhen (杨国桢), “Yangshang yu daban: Guangdong Shisanhan wenshu chutan”
[洋商与大班: 广东十三行文书初探 Foreign merchants and supercargoes: A preliminary
study of the correspondence relating to the Thirteen Hongs in Guangdong], Jindaishi yanjiu,
no. 3 (1996): 1–24.
12. Here the term factories refers to the establishments of “factors” or “agents”—not manu-
factories—the residential and business areas that became interchangeable with hongs.
13. Huang Guoxin (黄国信), Huang Qichen (黄启臣), and Huang Haiyan (黄海妍), Huozhi
huayang de yueshang [货殖华洋的粵商 The Cantonese merchants—trading goods in China
and overseas] (Hangzhou: Zhejiang renmin chubanshe, 1997), 167–181.
14. William C. Hunter, The “Fan Kwae” at Canton before Treaty Days: 1825–1844 (Tai-
pei: Ch’eng-wen Pub. Co., 1965; reprint of 1882 edition), 28–29.
15. Samuel Shaw, The Journals of Major Samuel Shaw, the First American Consul at
Canton, with a Life of the Author by Josiah Quincy (Taipei: Ch’eng-wen Pub. Co., 1968;
reprint of Boston 1847 edition), 182, 228, https://archive.org/details/journalsof-
majors00shawiala.
16. Liang Tingnan (梁廷枏, b. 1796–1861), Yue haiguan zhi [粤海关志 Gazetteer of the
maritime customs of Guangdong] (Taipei: Cheng’wen Pub. Co., 1968), vol. 24, pp. 1783–1796.
17. Tan Bo (覃波), “Qinggong Guangzhou shisanhang dang’an de zhengui jiazhi” [清宫广
州十三行档案的珍贵价值 The significance of the Qing imperial archives on the Thirteen
Hongs in Canton], Lishi dang’an 4 (2003): 117–123.
18. Fong Lau (刘芳), comp., and Zhang Wenqin (章文钦), proofreader, Putaoya Dongbota
dang’anguan cang Qingdai Aomen zhongwen dang’an huibian [葡萄牙东波塔档案馆藏清代
澳门中文档案汇编 Collected Qing archival sources in Chinese at the Instituto dos Arquivos
Nacionais da Torre do Tombo in Portugal] (Macau: Aomen jijinhui, 1999), 633, document no.
1241. Yang Guozhen (杨国桢), “Yangshang yu Aomen: Guangdong Shisanhang wenshu xu-
tan” [洋商与澳门: 广东十三行文书续探 Foreign merchants and Macau: A further exploration
of the correspondence relating to the Thirteen Hongs in Guangdong], Zhongguo shehui jingjishi
yanjiu, no. 2 (2001): 43–53.
19. Paul A. Van Dyke, The Canton Trade: Life and Enterprise on the China Coast,
1700–1845 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005), introduction. Also see Van
Dyke’s Merchants of Canton and Macao: Politics and Strategies in Eighteenth-Century Chi-
nese Trade (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2011); Merchants of Canton and
Macao: Success and Failure in Eighteenth-Century Chinese Trade (Hong Kong: Hong Kong
University Press, 2015); and Whampoa and the Canton Trade: Life and Death in a Chinese
Port, 1700–1842 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2020).
20. The inaugural capital of the Massachusetts Bank in Boston, opened in 1784, the year the
Empress of China sailed, was only about twice that involved in the China expedition. The sum
of $120,000 could purchase 24,000 acres of good land then. Steeg, “Financing and Outfitting of
the First U.S. Ship to China.”
21. With regard to the $20,000 in specie put on board, there was a $2,300 shortage caused
by Daniel Parker, the cashier for the Empress of China. Litigation over the disputed accounts
especially involving Samuel Shaw and Daniel Parker was not settled until 1791.
22. Shaw, The Journals of Major Samuel Shaw, 212. Clarence L. Ver Steeg puts the number
of crew at forty-six in Steeg, “Financing and Outfitting of the First U.S. Ship to China.” Foster
Rhea Dulles, The Old China Trade (Cambridge, Mass.: Riverside Press, 1930), 7. Alfred
Tamarin and Shirley Glubok, Voyaging to Cathay: Americans in the China Trade (New York:
Viking, 1976).
23. 1 picul = 133.33 pounds.
24. John Austin Stevens, Progress of New York in a Century, 1776–1876: An Address
Delivered before the New York Historical Society on December 7, 1875 (New York: Printed for
the Society, 1876), 45. H. A. Crosby Forbes, review of The Empress of China by Philip
Chadwick Foster Smith, New England Quarterly 57, no. 4 (December 1984): 602–605.
25. Shaw, The Journals of Major Samuel Shaw, 252.
26. American Herald 4, no. 187 (May 16, 1785). Providence Gazette and Country Journal
22, no. 1117 (May 28, 1785).
27. Richard Harding et al., eds., British Ships in China Seas: 1700 to the Present Day
(Liverpool: National Museum, 2004).
28. Yen-p’ing Hao, “Chinese Teas to America—A Synopsis,” in America’s China Trade in
Historical Perspective, ed. Ernest R. May and John Fairbank (Cambridge, Mass.: Committee
on American-East Asian Relations, Harvard University, 1986), 13.
29. Kenneth Scott Latourette, The History of Early Relations between the United States and
China (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1917), 29 and introduction.
30. Miriam Butts and Patricia Heard, comps., The American China Trade: “Foreign Devils
to Canton” 1783–1843 (New York: Grossman Publishers, 1974).
32. Hao, “Chinese Teas to America—A Synopsis.” Dulles, The Old China Trade, 210.
33. Timothy Pitkin, A Statistical View of the Commerce of the United States of America:
Including Also an Account of Banks, Manufactures, and Internal Trade and Improvements,
Together with That of the Revenues and Expenditures of the General Government, Accompa-
nied with Numerous Tables (New Haven, Conn.: Durrie & Peck, 1835). Isaac Smith Homans
Jr., A Historical and Statistical Account of the Foreign Commerce of the United States (New
York: Putnam, 1857), 181–182.
34. Tamarin and Glubok, Voyaging to Cathay, 125–133.
35. Dulles, The Old China Trade, 55.
36. Article XIII, Treaty of Amity, Commerce and Navigation, in William M. Malloy, comp.,
Treaties, Conventions, International Acts, Protocols and Agreements between the United States
of America and Other Powers, 1776–1909 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office,
1910), 599.
37. Dorothy Schurman Hawes, To the Farthest Gulf: The Story of the American China
Trade (Ipswich, Mass.: Ipswich Press, 1990), chap. 9.
38. Hunter, The “Fan Kwae” at Canton, 40.
41. Hunter, The “Fan Kwae” at Canton, 40.
42. Latourette, The History of Early Relations between the United States and China, 71.
43. May and Fairbank, eds., America’s China Trade in Historical Perspective, 21–25.
44. Henry Clay, Economics: An Introduction for the General Reader (New York: Macmil-
lan, 1918), 209.
45. Letter from J. M. Forbes from Canton, dated December 29, 1832, to Aushootes [?
illegible in original letter] Esq. in Calcutta. V. F-5, Forbes Family Collection, Baker Library,
Harvard Business School.
46. Zhang Wenqin (章文钦), Guangdong Shisanhang yu zaoqi Zhongxi guanxi [广东十三
行与早期中西关系 Guangdong’s Thirteen Hongs and early Sino-foreign relations] (Guang-
zhou: Guangdong jingji chubanshe, 2009).
47. Weng Eang Cheong, The Hong Merchants of Canton: Chinese Merchants in SinoWest-
ern Trade (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 1997), 246.
48. Kuo-Tung Ch’en, The Insolvency of the Chinese Hong Merchants, 1760–1843 (Taipei:
Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica, 1990).
49. Liang, Yue haiguan zhi, vol. 25. Liang, Guangdong shisan hang kao, 273–274.
50. Hunter, The “Fan Kwae” at Canton, 46–47.
51. Houqua’s business name was Wu Shaorong or Wu Bingjian and his hong name was
Yihe hang. Huang, Huozhi huayang de yueshang, 167–181. John D. Wong, Global Trade in the
Nineteenth Century: The House of Houqua and the Canton System (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2016).
52. V. F-5. John Murray Forbes, 1813–1898, Forbes Family Collection, Baker Library,
Harvard Business School.
54. V. F-5. John Murray Forbes, 1813–1898, Forbes Family Collection.
55. 0.3 percent in 1890, less than 1 percent in 1910, and a little over 2 percent in 1930.
Michael H. Hunt, “Americans in the China Market: Economic Opportunities and Economic
Nationalism, 1890s–1931,” Business History Review 51, no. 3 (Autumn 1977): 277–307.
22 Chapter 1
56. Hunter, The “Fan Kwae” at Canton, 48. Liang, Guangdong shisan hang kao, 216.
Morse, The Chronicles of the East India Company, vol. 4, p. 348.
57. May and Fairbank, eds., America’s China Trade in Historical Perspective, 29–31.
58. Besides Samuel Shaw, other examples include André Everard Van Braam Houckgeest,
Voyage de l’Ambassade de la Compagnie des Indes Orientales Hollandaises, vers l’Empereur
de la Chine, dans les Années 1794 & 1795 [Voyage of the Embassy of the Dutch East India
Company to the emperor of China in the years 1794 & 1795], 2 vols. (Philadelphia, Pa.: M. L.
E. Moreau de Saint-Méry, 1797–1798); Amasa Delano, Narrative of Voyages and Travels, in
the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, Comprising three Voyages round the World; together
with a Voyage of Survey and Discovery, in the Pacific Ocean and Oriental Islands (Boston,
Mass.: E. G. House, 1817); Robert Waln Jr., China: Comprehending a View of the Origin,
Antiquity History, Religion, Morals, Government, Laws, Population, Literature, Drama, Festi-
vals, Games, Women, Beggars, Manners, Customs, &c of That Empire (Philadelphia, Pa.: J.
Maxwell, 1823); and Robert B. Forbes, Remarks on China and the China Trade (Boston,
Mass.: Samuel N. Dickonsen, 1844).
59. Michael Cox and Doug Stokes, eds., US Foreign Policy, second edition (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2012), chap. 3.
60. Shaw, The Journals of Major Samuel Shaw, 233–234, 250–251.
61. Carl Guarneri, America in the World: United States History in Global Context (New
York: McGraw-Hill, 2007). Dong Wang, “Between Tribute and Unequal Treaties: How China
Saw the Sea World in the Early Nineteenth Century,” History: The Journal of Historical
Association 103, no. 355 (April 2018): 262–285.
62. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America and Two Essays on America, trans.
Gerald E. Bevan (New York: Penguin Books, 2003, first edition in French in 1835–1840), 485.
63. The select references under this heading at the end of each chapter have been chosen to
supplement the notes and elaborate the themes discussed throughout the book.
Chapter Two
Opium Wars and the Open Door
In November 1787, Federalist John Jay, who directed much of U.S. foreign
policy during the 1780s, wrote, “In the trade to China and India we interfere
with more than one nation, inasmuch as it enables us to partake in advantages
which they had in a manner monopolized, and as we thereby supply our-
selves with commodities which we used to purchase from them.” 1 While
private maritime trade propelled the U.S. government into the China arena,
the Opium Wars, commercial treaties forced on China by the Western pow-
ers, continued development of American economic and political ties with
China and other countries, and the Open Door doctrine became the defining
issues in American-Chinese relations for the latter half of the nineteenth
century. In 1898, the United States proposed its distinctive Open Door poli-
cy, espousing equal commercial opportunity and respect for China’s admin-
istrative and territorial integrity. But did the United States in China simply
follow in Britain’s footsteps up until that time, as a “junior partner” or
“brother nation” to the European states, or as a participant in the “quasi-
colonial system the European powers imposed on China”? 2 The answer must
be no.
In the race for global resources, markets, and power, the United States
employed an independent and flexible strategy in China that permitted the
American state to differentiate itself from the European nations under certain
circumstances and to collaborate with them in others. America’s rising pres-
ence in the East fell within the ambit of its consistent pursuit of national
greatness since the presidencies of George Washington (1789–1797), John
Adams (1797–1801), and Thomas Jefferson (1801–1809), well before the
onset of industrialization in North America. This strategic stance—pragmatic
yet with an eye to the future—validated America’s own belief that the United
States was set to lead the world, despite its internal division over the exten-
23
24 Chapter 2
sion of slavery, the Civil War, and the growing social injustice that had
resulted from urbanization. On the other hand, the execution of America’s
global ambitions varied in character, depending on whether the nation veered
more toward landed (territorial) expansion, overseas markets and territories
backed by gunboats, self-sufficiency, industrialization, or a mix of all of
these. For Qing China, defeat in the two Opium Wars showed that avoiding
difficulties and seeking short-term palliatives would be of no use in dealing
with foreign countries. Groping for solutions, the Qing state had employed
the diplomatic means available to a country whose material weakness made
it susceptible to the machinations of international politics. Obtaining assis-
tance from the United States and other major powers became part of China’s
armory of tactics—which included pitting foreign nations against one an-
other, multilateralism, negotiation, and inducing changes in the China poli-
cies of foreign countries.
THE UNITED STATES, THE OPIUM WARS,

AND COMMERCIAL TREATIES
Backdrop
This section examines the effect of the two Opium Wars between Britain and
China (1839–1842 and 1856–1860) on the relationship between the United
States and Qing China. The First Opium War—widely viewed as one of the
most extraordinary events in modern Chinese history—erupted out of the
irritation long brewing on both sides over the opium trade. There were four
major factors that prompted Britain to invade China.
First of all, Britain used force in response to the humiliation and business
losses inflicted when the Chinese authorities seized and dumped huge quan-
tities of opium, largely owned by British merchants, in Canton. The event
that triggered the military conflict was the confiscation of over twenty thou-
sand chests of opium in March 1839. 3
Another herbal stimulant, tea, played an important part in the lead-up to
war. Over the course of the eighteenth century, tea had become a national
drink in Britain. By 1830, the British East India Company was selling 30
million pounds sterling weight of Chinese tea per annum, bringing in a net
profit of 1 million pounds; at one time the tax on tea provided one-tenth of
the British government’s entire revenue. 4 Unable to export goods to the
Chinese in comparable volume, Britain was forced to pay for the resulting
trade deficit in silver bullion. Indian opium, therefore, became a remedy for
the trade imbalance, although it was already regarded as contraband in Qing
China in 1729, when the Yongzheng emperor (r. 1723–1735) issued the first
anti-opium edict, holding drug sellers and their local accomplices—rather
than opium smokers or cultivators—legally accountable. 5 The push of Brit-
Opium Wars and the Open Door 25
ish Indian supply and the pull of Chinese demand for the drug created a
powerful web of international business activity outside the legal framework
of Anglo-Chinese trade. The importation, cultivation, and consumption of
opium were outlawed in China by Emperor Qianlong’s (r. 1735–1796) edict
of 1796. The main vendors—private British merchants—were the country
traders who shipped opium to China in vast quantities. They worked under
license from the East India Company until the abolition of its monopoly on
Britain’s trade with China in 1833. 6
Second to this simmering contention over opium, a series of conflicts
over Britain’s legitimate trade with China contributed to the outbreak of war.
Prominent among these was the inglorious end to the mission of Lord
William Napier, Britain’s chief representative in China. It was a political
humiliation that added weight to British arguments for armed intervention.
By the early nineteenth century the gap between the agricultural economy
of China and the rapidly developing industrial economy of Britain—with its
reliance on foreign trade—made armed collisions inevitable. The results of
earlier British attempts to harness Sino-British trade to its own advantage are
seen in Sir George Macartney’s failed mission to China in 1793 and Lord
Amherst’s equally unsuccessful mission of 1816. In 1834, one year after the
East India Company’s trade monopoly had ended, the British foreign secre-
tary Lord Palmerston appointed Lord William Napier, a retired naval officer,
as the British government’s superintendent of trade in China. 7 Intent on
reforming Anglo-Chinese business relations, Napier arrived in Canton in
July 1834. His request for a “personal interview” with Lu Kun, the governor-
general (viceroy) of Guangdong and Guangxi provinces, fell on deaf ears. 8
After more than a month’s standoff, Lu suspended trade with Britain and
ordered Napier to leave Canton. In mid-September, a humiliated Napier re-
turned to Macau where he died of malaria the following month. The Napier
fiasco effectively sank British attempts to open up China through diplomatic
means. 9
In 1836, Charles Elliot succeeded Napier as superintendent of trade at a
time when opium imports to China already exceeded thirty thousand
chests. 10 In December 1838, the Daoguang emperor dispatched Lin Zexu
(1785–1850) as his plenipotentiary commissioner to Canton to put an end to
the opium trade. 11 In Canton, Lin targeted foreign opium merchants rather
than domestic drug users; he demanded that the merchants forfeit their opium
stocks and sign a bond committing them to desist from the drug trade on
penalty of death. 12 According to Robert B. Forbes, an American trader in
Canton, Lin’s determination to suppress the opium trade took the foreign
community by surprise:
The merchants supposed that he was coming to make some arrangements by

which he could keep it out of sight, or to feather his own nest; but he came
26 Chapter 2
with an honest intention of doing his duty. . . . He struck directly at the head
and front of the offending. 13
In a similar vein, John Thacker, a British trader, recollected that in expecta-

tion of the arrival of Commissioner Lin,
it was understood by the Chinamen and Europeans that he came to soften

matters down from what the Viceroy [Lu] had been doing. . . . It was thought
that something would be done to obviate the difficulties that had been thrown
in the way by the Viceroy. 14
Encountering resistance to his demands, Lin imposed an embargo on all trade

and ordered Chinese cooks, coolies, and compradors serving foreign mer-
chants in Canton to leave, making the latter virtual prisoners in their own
factories. Forbes’ eyewitness account of life without servants sparkles with
humor:
Not desiring to starve them, the officers of government, or the Hong mer-
chants, sent in supplies of food in the shape of pigs, fowls, and sheep on the
hoof. . . . In the American hong lived Mr. P. W. Snow, United States Consul,
Russell & Co., Russell, Sturgies, & Co., and others. I was called upon to
organize the house for work; lots were drawn to settle who should cook, and
who play the part of waiters, chambermen, &c. It fell to me to be chief cook.
The first thing to be done was to clean out the kitchen, into which no white
man had before entered; all hands went at it, and soon made things fit for my
new work. My first effort was fried ham and eggs; when the dish came to
table, it was difficult to distinguish between eggs and ham: all bore the color
and partook of the consistency of dirty sole-leather. It was immediately voted
to depose me, and to put Warren Delano in my place, and I assumed his duties,
which were to look after the glass and silver. . . . W. C. Hunter was lamp-
trimmer, and all had something to do. The livestock was driven into the rear,
and barricaded . . . pigs, sheep, and fowls all mixed up together, and making
day and night hideous with their smell and noises. . . . Bathing being impor-
tant, and no coolies at hand to carry water to the upper rooms, we rigged
whips, and attempted to hoist up the big pails into the verandas; but this
proved a failure, the ropes twisted up, and the pails remained suspended in mid
air. 15
In response to these most effective measures, Elliot was forced to call upon
his countrymen to surrender their opium stocks to Lin. On June 3, 1839, Lin
began destroying over twenty thousand chests of opium—then worth around
US$10 million (about 9 million Mexican silver dollars)—by dissolving them
in trenches. Trade was reopened—but only briefly. Rather than continue to
wrangle with Lin over the signing of bonds, the British community in China
decided to cease trading, vacate Canton, and move to Macau (later to Hong
Kong). China was to be punished for its intransigence. At the urging of a
group of merchants headed by William Jardine and James Matheson, the

British Parliament voted in favor of war against China in early 1840. In May,
sixteen British warships armed with 540 guns between them, four steamers,
one troopship, and twenty-seven transports—carrying about four thousand
foot soldiers led by Charles Elliot and his cousin Admiral George Elliot—left
Macau for Canton and the coast of Zhejiang Province. These events marked
the outbreak of the First Opium War.
Third, the British business community in China had its own reasons for
war. British merchants had never ceased to resent what they saw as the
arbitrary trade restrictions and customs fees imposed under the Canton sys-
tem. Clamoring for access to China’s interior market, they advocated armed
intervention, believing that it would enable them to force a commercial treaty
on China and thus conduct business under military protection and on very
favorable terms. 16 The Chinese understood the British motives only too well;
the opening sentence of an essay by a Chinese commentator written around
1850 reads, “Cunning were the British barbarians who had long been covet-
ing the inland territories.” 17 From this perspective, the war can be understood
less as a conflict over drugs and more as a commercial trade war. 18 In the
1830s in particular, there had been lengthy discussions of the opium trade in
the Chinese Courier and Canton Gazette, the Chinese Repository, and the
Canton Register, English-language newspapers published in Canton and
Hong Kong. The evidence clearly shows that the British expatriate commu-
nity in China virtually drew up plans for military action, as well as for treaty
negotiations with the Qing court—provisions that were enacted by the British
negotiators after the war.
Finally, British opium traders had a psychological motive for pressing
Britain to fight a war with China because opium smuggling was not a legal,
sustainable business. Although the distribution of the drug was mostly han-
dled by Chinese smugglers from a base on Lintin Island—the warehouse of
the opium trade about two miles northeast of Macau—British country traders
such as William Jardine and James Matheson would sometimes service buy-
ers along the Chinese coast themselves. Dealing with drugs contradicted
middle-class mores in nineteenth-century England, which opposed addiction
whether to rum or opium. Britain banned the domestic importation of opium
in 1856. Maurice Stewart Collis (b. 1889–1973), a British colonial adminis-
trator and writer, summed up the moral issues at stake:
To trade in a noxious drug was not characteristic of British commerce. The

wares of England had always been noted for the soundness of their workman-
ship and the excellence of their material; and her merchants for their solidarity,
their caution and their honesty. . . . That so reputable a community should in
China have fifty per cent of its capital sunk in opium smuggling was a role that
did not really suit it. 19
28 Chapter 2
The United States, the First Opium War,

and the Treaty of Wanghia
As the Anglo-Chinese trade conflict intensified, American expatriates, politi-

cians, and diplomats took up the China question in their own way. American
traders in the Canton region responded to the opium crisis with flexibility
and pragmatism and benefited by complying with Commissioner Lin Ze-
xu’s demands. At the same time, both businessmen and missionaries exerted
pressure on the U.S. government to take a more active role. As a further
complication, the American government and public alike were not slow to
pass judgment on the moral issues arising from the Opium War.
In contrast to their British colleagues, American merchants continued to
trade with China, making profitable journeys up and down the Pearl River
between May 1839 and June 1840, when Canton was blockaded by British
forces. When in May 1839 Charles Elliot asked Robert B. Forbes of Russell
& Co., the largest American trading house in China, to consider suspending
trade so as to bring the “rascal . . . Chinese to terms,” Forbes replied jokingly
that “we Yankees had no Queen to guarantee our losses.” Forbes recalled that
Elliot “asked if I was willing to do business with a chain around my neck,
and said he would soon make Canton too hot for us. I rejoined that the chain
was imaginary, the duty to constituents and the commission account was
real.” 20
The international ramifications of the opium crisis were the subject of
discussion by Americans both at home and abroad. The war between Great
Britain and the Qing empire was seen by one newspaper editor as involving
“more or less directly a large portion of the human family.” 21 Labeling the
Opium War as a “conflict between two of the mightiest nations of the globe,”
John Quincy Adams (1767–1848, president 1825–1829)—then representa-
tive of the state of Massachusetts and chairman of the Committee of Foreign
Affairs—took Britain’s part. For Adams, “commercial intercourse between
nations” was “among the natural rights and duties of men” under “the Chris-
tian law of nations.” For him,
[t]he cause of the war is the pretension on the part of the Chinese, that in all
their intercourse with other nations, political or commercial, their superiority
must be implicitly acknowledged, and manifested in humiliating forms. . . . It
is time that this enormous outrage upon the rights of human nature, and upon
the first principle of the rights of nations, should cease. 22
In his report to Congress on January 24, 1843, Adams continued to insist that
the war declared by Great Britain against China had originated in the refusal of
the Chinese Government to receive ministers of peace appointed by the British
sovereign, and by the rejection and expulsion, with insult and indignity, of
Lord Napier, a commissioner and plenipotentiary so appointed. . . . The con-

flict was, in root and substance, for equal rights of independent nations, against
the insolent and absurd assumption of despotic supremacy. 23
In contrast to Adams’ views, British moral failure was the target of some
American critics. Invoking Christianity as Adams had also done, one editori-
al attributed the Anglo-Chinese conflict to the “low state of morality, among
western nations,” and foreign contempt for the Chinese edicts and appeals
issued against the introduction of opium. 24 In March 1840, Caleb Cushing
was vocal in his disapproval of the British action:
But God forbid me that I should entertain the idea of cooperating with the
British Government in the purpose, if purpose it has, of upholding the base
cupidity and violence and high-handed infraction of all law, human and divine,
which have characterized the operation of the British, individually and collec-
tively, in the seas of China. 25
One lengthy article written by a lawyer for Hunt’s Merchants’ Magazine

called the British the “invader.”
[Although the] bearing of the Chinese government was preposterous, and the
aspect of Chinese institutions, to a stranger, ludicrous in the extreme. . . .
China has as perfect a right to regulate the character of her imports, as either of
the countries with whom she trades; and we can imagine no more glaring
violation of the law of nations, than the successful attempt which has been
made to cram down her throat, by force, an article which she had deliberately
refused to receive. 26
The growing tensions between Britain and Qing China and the increasing
efforts of the United States to promote commerce as well as to further its
political influence led to greater American involvement in China. In its rapid
rise on the world stage, the United States—despite its expressed sympathies
and rapport with the Chinese hong merchants—often found itself more on
the side of the European powers.
Pressure for federal government intervention was finally translated into
action. At the request of American traders and missionaries in China, Presi-
dent John Tyler (president 1841–1845) dispatched Lawrence Kearny, the
commander of the U.S. East India Squadron, to China to protect American
lives and property. The squadron that set sail comprised two vessels, the
flagship Constellation and the Boston. On arrival in Macau in March 1842,
Kearny, in response to a report in the Hong Kong Gazette, took a hard line
against the opium trade. He informed both the Chinese and the international
community that “the government of the United States does not sanction ‘the
smuggling of opium’ on this coast, under the American flag, in violation of
the laws of China. Difficulty arising therefrom in respect to the seizure of any
30 Chapter 2
vessel by the Chinese, the claimants certainly will not, under my instructions,
find support or any interposition, on my part, after the publication of this
notice.” 27 Kearny was specifically instructed by the State Department to
inquire into allegations that Robert B. Forbes, American consul in Canton,
had links with a company engaged in the opium trade. 28
In June 1840, British warships—after successfully blockading Canton—
seized the island of Zhoushan on the Chinese Zhejiang coast. The Qing
Daoguang emperor removed Commissioner Lin Zexu and appointed Qishan
to negotiate with Charles Elliot, but the result ultimately satisfied neither
party. The war resumed when Elliot was replaced by Sir Henry Pottinger in
August 1841. Sixty British ships were deployed along the Zhejiang coast, an
important communications center and entry to the Grand Canal, the artery
through which rice and other provisions from south China reached the north-
ern capital in Beijing. The First Opium War ended in July 1840 with the fall
of Zhenjiang, an important city on the Yangzi River. The Qing court author-
ized Qiying, a high-ranking official, to make peace but with no clear objec-
tives other than the withdrawal of British troops. The Treaty of Nanjing—
known as the first of the “Unequal Treaties”—comprising thirteen articles,
was signed on August 29, 1842, on the British flagship Cornwallis by Qi-
ying, Yilibu, and Henry Pottinger. 29
Progress on the Treaty of Nanjing was closely watched by Americans.
Learning of British successes in securing legal and trade rights in China,
Kearny jockeyed with the British for a favorable “postwar settlement.” In a
letter to the governor of Canton, Kearny wrote that he
learns with deep interest [that] the high Imperial commissioners [Qiying and
Yilibu] deputed to arrange commercial affairs with the British are expected in
a short time to arrive at Canton, and that a commercial treaty is to be negotiat-
ed to operate in favor of “British merchants” exclusively. . . . The undersigned
is desirous that the attention of the Imperial government might be called with
respect to the commercial interest of the United States, and their citizens, in
that matter, be placed upon the same footing as the merchants of the nation
most favored. 30
At the urging of President Tyler, Caleb Cushing (1800–1879) and other

China lobbyists such as Peter Parker, the Committee on Foreign Affairs,
following several years of debate on the China question, proposed an appro-
priation of $40,000 to fund a diplomatic mission to China in January 1843.
Four months later, while Congress was in recess, President Tyler appointed
Cushing as the American commissioner to China. 31 Cushing arrived in Ma-
cau in February 1844.
American missionaries Peter Parker and Elijah C. Bridgman were made
joint Chinese secretaries to the legation in the United States dealing with the
Chinese government. Diplomatically, the American legation attempted to
steal a march on the British by making it known that the United States was
“the most disinterested and the most valuable of the friends of China.” 32 To
the disquiet of the Qing court, however, Cushing expressed the hope that the
new American envoy might travel north to the imperial capital of Beijing and
be officially welcomed there. In April 1844, the Qing emperor appointed
Qiying as imperial commissioner with orders to hasten to Canton to mollify
Cushing and restrain the American legation from undertaking the long jour-
ney to Beijing. 33 At the end of May, Qiying arrived and commenced negotia-
tions with Cushing in Macau.
In the negotiations, the primary concern of the Qing court was Cushing’s
planned trip to Beijing in North China rather than trade regulations—the
terms of which were mostly incomprehensible to the Chinese. So having
been assured that the United States would not follow Britain to take Chinese
islands away, Qiying reached a speedy conclusion to negotiations with Cush-
ing in Wanghia Village near Macau in South China on July 3, 1844.
Fuller and more coherent than the Treaty of Nanjing, the Treaty of Wan-
ghia between the United States and the Qing was considered “superior” to
the British treaty by early American commentators. 34 Primarily owing to the
efforts of Cushing, a Massachusetts lawyer, the new treaty would “give to
American commercial interests in China the best possible opportunities for
the prosecution of their growing trade in the face of British competition.” 35
As a “basis for the conduct of trade,” it proved to be a “model treaty” for
other nations, in particular the French, Norwegians, and Swedes. The
American treaty was ratified by Congress in December 1845.
A clause specifying the details of most-favored-nation (MFN) status was
added to Article 8 of the Supplementary Treaty at the last minute. Privileges
and immunities granted by Qing China to the citizens of one country would
be extended to all other foreign nationals, but Chinese subjects overseas
would not enjoy reciprocal treatment. Article 21 introduced consular juris-
diction (extraterritoriality), whereby American citizens in China were subject
to U.S. law.
Missing from the British treaty, the issue of opium is addressed in Article
33 of the Treaty of Wanghia, confirming America’s opposition to illegal
opium trafficking. It stands in stark contrast to the provisions cited above for
MFN status and consular jurisdiction.
Citizens of the United States, who shall attempt to trade clandestinely with
such of the ports of China as are not open to foreign commerce, or who shall
trade in opium or any other contraband article of merchandise, shall be subject
to be dealt with by the Chinese Government, without being entitled to any
countenance or protection from that of the United States; and the United States
will take measures to prevent their flag from being abused by the subjects of
other nations, as a cover for the violation of the laws of the Empire. 36
32 Chapter 2
With foresight and a cautious confidence, the United States had positioned
itself advantageously in China. Consistently, America talked up its destiny as
a continental and sea empire. William H. Seward—senator from New York,
1849–1861; secretary of state, 1861–1869—pronounced with nationalistic
zeal in 1846: “Our population is destined to roll its resistless waves to the icy
barriers of the North, and to encounter oriental civilization on the shores of
the Pacific.” 37
The United States, the Second Opium War,

and the Treaty of Tianjin
The outbreak of the Second Opium War in 1856 was rooted in China’s
continued trade imbalance and ongoing friction between the trading powers,
mainly Britain and China but also, increasingly, the United States and China.
By the mid-1850s, Qing China had become Britain’s third-largest importer,
following the United States and France. Between 1853 and 1881, Chinese
imports (£323 million), principally tea and silk, totaled more than two and a
half times the value of British exports to China (£121 million). 38 Britain’s
trade deficit with China, about £4 million per annum on average, continued
to be covered by income derived from opium. However, opium was still an
illegal drug in China—the Treaty of Nanjing contained no reference to it. It
took another war and a set of treaties for Britain to square off with the self-
consumed Qing empire. This conflict, known as the Second Opium War,
resulted in the signing of the Treaty of Tianjin and the conditional legaliza-
tion of opium as an import.
The ostensible cause of the war was the dispute between Britain and
China over whether the Treaty of Nanjing had given British subjects the right
of trade and residence within the walls of Canton—and, if so, when they
would be allowed to exercise those rights. After 1844, when Henry Pottinger
was replaced as the governor of Hong Kong by J. F. Davis, relations between
Britain and China began to deteriorate. In 1847, Davis ordered the capture of
the forts guarding the approaches to Guangzhou. Qiying was forced to prom-
ise the British entry into Canton City in spring 1849. In 1848, the Daoguang
emperor (r. 1821–1850) dismissed Qiying and appointed Xu Guangjin as
governor-general of Guangdong and Guangxi and commissioner for foreign
affairs. Both Xu and Ye Mingchen—governor of Guangdong and later
governor-general of Guangdong and Guangxi—disliked dealing (and espe-
cially compromising) with foreigners. As April 1849—the agreed date for
British entry into Canton—approached, Xu encouraged local gentry to use
their militia to oppose any occupation. He then forged an imperial edict
ordering him to “respect the will of the people.” Sir George Bonham, the
newly appointed governor of Hong Kong, accepted a further postponement
of British entry—a concession that was greeted by the Chinese as a victory
and marked by the granting of imperial honors to Xu and Ye. The whole
affair was deeply resented by the local British community.
Another continuing irritant was the question of treaty revisions. As far as
the Americans were concerned, the legal basis for the treaty revisions that
fell due in 1856 lay in Article 34 of the Treaty of Wanghia:
When the present Convention shall have been definitively concluded, it shall
be obligatory on both powers, and its provisions shall be not be altered without
grave cause; but, in as much as the circumstances of the several ports of China
open to foreign commerce are different, experience may show that inconsider-
able modifications are requisite in those parts which relate to commerce and
navigation; in which case the two governments will, at the expiration of twelve
years from the date of said Convention, treat amicably concerning the same,
by the means of suitable persons appointed to conduct such negotiation. 39
For the American side, revising the Treaty of Wanghia was necessary on two
counts. First, owing to the disruption caused by the Taiping Rebellion (see
chapter 4), the treaty was in abeyance in Shanghai where the Qing govern-
ment was unable to fulfill its obligation to protect foreign citizens. The
unstable situation in China had severely damaged American commercial
interests as well, although the United States was committed to aiding China
in quelling the Taiping rebels. 40 Second, inconsistent internal taxes (transit
dues, likin), applied to foreign as well as Chinese goods by local authorities,
interfered with the expansion of American influence and trade with China.
American commissioner Robert McLane struck a typically pragmatic note:
“As a consideration for such enlargement of the protectorate character of the
existing treaty, the interior should be opened to us, where we would extend
the moral power of our civilization, and the material power necessary to
protect the lives and property of our people.” 41
Although the British handling of its entry into Canton was perceived as an
aggressive act by some Americans in China including James Biddle and
Peter Parker, the United States acted in alliance with Britain, France, and
Russia in formulating treaty revisions in the 1850s while maintaining its
opposition to opium. This time, the American government also used military
force against China in concert with other powers.
In 1856, two events—the Arrow Incident and the murder in Guangxi of
Abbé Auguste Chapdelaine (1814–1856), a French priest—became conven-
ient pretexts for foreign military intervention. This action was directed at
commercial reform—abolishing the limits on trade and the irregular transit
fees levied on foreign goods—as well as punishing the Qing government for
its lack of cooperation in revising existing treaties. On October 8, 1856, the
Qing Canton naval force arrested twelve Chinese crewmen aboard the Ar-
row, a Chinese-owned lorcha (small boat) with an expired registration with
the British authority in Hong Kong, on suspicion of piracy. The Chinese
34 Chapter 2
boarding party allegedly tore down the British flag flying from the ship’s
mast. The British consul in Canton, Harry S. Parkes, pressed Ye Mingchen,
viceroy of Guangdong and Guangxi, to release the crewmen and apologize
for the disrespect shown for the British flag, but without satisfaction. To
punish the recalcitrant Ye, John Bowring, British plenipotentiary and chief
superintendent of trade in China, ordered an attack on Canton.
After the news reached London, Lord Palmerston, now prime minister,
decided to send an expeditionary force, headed by the Earl of Elgin, to seek
further redress. The British forces were joined by a French task force. On
December 29, 1857, the combined British and French forces, commanded by
the new British plenipotentiary Lord Elgin and French representative Baron
Gros, seized Canton and soon afterward demanded revisions to the existing
treaties. Having exhausted his military resources, on May 29, 1858, the Xian-
feng emperor appointed Guiliang and Huashana as his representatives with
full powers to negotiate with Britain, France, the United States, and Russia,
who were then all occupying Tianjin near Beijing.
The resulting Sino-British Treaty of Tianjin and the agreement containing
Rules of Trade and Tariff involved little negotiation. Less than a month
elapsed between Emperor Xianfeng’s authorizing of negotiations on May 29
and the conclusion of the fifty-six-article treaty on June 26, 1858. In the case
of the Rules of Trade and Tariff, the negotiations in Shanghai lasted only
twenty-four days. The American treaty was negotiated by William B. Reed,
and concluded on June 18. For the Qing court, the signing of the Treaty of
Tianjin was merely an expedient to get the foreigners to withdraw their
troops from their door.
Central to the negotiations was the issue of permanent residence for the
British representative in Beijing, a demand that the Xianfeng emperor per-
sonally resented the most. British diplomats were permitted residence in
Beijing under Article 2, “Appointment of Ambassadors,” and Article 3,
“Residence of [the] British Representative at Peking.” In addition, three other
contentious clauses dealt with rights of travel in the interior, trade on the
Yangzi River, and the issue of indemnity for foreign powers. 42 Although the
emperor approved the Treaty of Tianjin with Britain, he continued to harbor
a strong desire to have these unpalatable clauses deleted.
After the close of negotiations over the Rules of Trade, Britain, France,
and the United States resumed their military campaign and marched toward
Beijing with the intention of subduing the Qing court. China had insisted that
the ratification of the Treaty of Tianjin should not take place in the imperial
capital. In June 1859, foreign diplomats returned to Tianjin to ratify the
treaty. When they attempted to pass the Dagu forts, Chinese forces opened
fire, killing more than four hundred British seamen and sinking four ships.
On September 21, 1860, the 10,500-strong British Expeditionary Force, as-
sisted by more than 6,000 French soldiers, defeated an army of 30,000 of the
Qing empire’s crack troops in the suburbs of Beijing. The following day the
Xianfeng emperor fled to his summer retreat at Rehe, about one hundred
miles from Beijing, leaving it to his brother, Prince Gong (Yixin), to deal
with the approaching foreign forces. Beijing fell on October 13. Eleven days
later, Prince Gong signed the peace treaty known as the Sino-British Conven-
tion of Beijing—establishing the right of foreign diplomatic representation in
China’s capital—presented by Lord Elgin, with France, Russia, and the Unit-
ed States following suit shortly afterward. Thus, the protracted disputes over
treaty revisions came to a halt. 43
During the 1850s–1860s, the United States seized the opportunity to fur-
ther develop its mercantile, religious, and geopolitical involvement in China.
Despite reservations and disagreements, the American government decided
to put its weight behind the European powers in conflict with Qing China. As
part of the imperialism of free trade, the unequal treaty system institutional-
ized the conduct of both the Americans and Europeans in China. On the
commercial front, the United States was confronted with a moral dilemma,
the opium question, and ultimately championed the criminalization of the
drug trade in the first quarter of the twentieth century. In combination with
the anti-opium movements in other countries, this led to the dismantling of
the lucrative trade centered on the triangle of Britain, British India, and
China. The U.S. push for the international suppression of the opium trade
was closely linked with the attitudes and moral judgments that Americans
had developed in their earlier contacts with China.
FORGING DISTINCTIVE U.S.-CHINESE

RELATIONS (1860S–1880S)
The role of China in American strategic thinking and vice versa during the
three decades of the 1860s through the 1880s remains elusive and lacks
systematic treatment in academic research. These thirty years cover two Qing
Chinese emperors, Tongzhi (r. 1861–1875) and Guangxu (r. 1875–1908),
and seven U.S. presidents, Andrew Johnson (1865–1869), Ulysses S. Grant
(1869–1877), Rutherford B. Hayes (1877–1881), James A. Garfield (1881),
Chester Arthur (1881–1885), Grover Cleveland (1885–1889; 1893–1897),
and Benjamin Harrison (1889–1893). While eminent historians including
Michael Hunt touch upon this period, it is conventionally interpreted in terms
of the Open Door policy, anti-Chinese exclusion, the Tongzhi Self-Strength-
ening Movement, and Christianity (see chapters 3 and 4).
Sino-American relations from the 1860s through the 1880s can be charac-
terized in trends. First, although Qing China lacked a protocol for its emper-
ors to accept letters of credence from foreign representatives until 1898,
following the Convention of Beijing of 1860 mutual diplomatic representa-
36 Chapter 2
tion gradually took shape in both Beijing and Washington. Designating con-
suls to Canton before the Opium Wars, the United States began the process
of forming official relations with the Qing. 44 Anson Burlingame
(1820–1870)—an abolitionist and a former U.S. House of Representatives
member from Massachusetts, appointed by President Abraham Lincoln at the
outset of the American Civil War—was the first U.S. minister in residence in
the capital Beijing from 1862 to 1867 and also the first official envoy sent by
China to the United States in 1868. In 1875, China dispatched its first perma-
nent mission to Washington with Chen Lanbin (1816–1895) as minister,
which was followed by the opening of Chinese consulates in San Francisco,
New York, and other American cities. 45 The Qing policy toward foreign
countries was marked by cooperation, in line with its international treaty
obligations, in order to advance the shared interests discussed below.
Second, following the Opium War treaties, many Americans (like Secre-
tary of State Seward) sought collaboration with other foreign nations in Chi-
na in securing a reciprocal balance of power and sustaining the Manchu
rule—although the use of military force was never ruled out. Raphael Pum-
pelly (1837–1923), the first American mining engineer and economic geolo-
gist of note—who explored the mineral resources of interior China in
1863–1864 and who championed reconciliation with Britain—argued for the
fair treatment of Japan and China and acknowledging “a vigorous national
vitality” in both countries:
Throughout eastern Asia we have to deal with people on whom, at present, we

are far more dependent than they are upon us; at the same time we are hoping
to create among them the principal markets for the products of our indus-
try. . . . The cunning of the Japanese or Chinese statesman, by which he seeks
to compensate for his nation’s weakness, not only in exciting jealousies among
foreign ministers, but in a thousand other ways, must be met by a just and
united action on the part of the representatives of the West. 46
Dedicating his influential book published in 1870 to Burlingame, Pumpelly

urged Japan and China to fulfill their treaty obligations, but he argued at the
same time that the West must help East Asians to maintain stronger govern-
ments to create favorable conditions and economic wants for buying Western
industrial products.
Echoing the principles of equality and noninterventionism enshrined in
the 1868 Seward–Burlingame Treaty, 47 these tendencies partially illustrated
the gradually improving relationship between Washington and London ex-
emplified in the 1871 Treaty of Washington, although economic nationalism
and anti-British sentiment were still palpable in the United States. In May
1871, American secretary of state Hamilton Fish (1869–1877, under Presi-
dent Grant) and Sir John Rose and Sir Edward Thornton (under Prime Minis-
ter William Gladstone) agreed to resolve their differences—chiefly the Ala-
bama Claims, refinancing, the Atlantic fisheries, and Canadian–U.S. border

disputes—through international arbitration and reciprocal multilateral con-
cessions. 48 In the final settlement of the Alabama Claims and other disputes,
the United States was awarded $15.5 million with an apology from Britain,
whereas America dropped the option of annexing Canada and paid $5.5
million to Britain as compensation for its lost fisheries. These came to be
regarded as model peaceful solutions to international conflicts for space and
resources—certainly an option to help ease strained U.S.-Chinese relations of
our time.
Third, the America of the Gilded Age (circa 1870s–1900) and China each
saw the other as providing opportunities for acquiring national wealth and
power. Through his close connections with Chinese leaders Li Hongzhang
and Yuan Shikai, Charles H. Denby (1830–1904), U.S. minister to China
(1885–1898), made efforts to support American firms operating in China and
helped finance Chinese railway construction for the movement of U.S.
goods, oil, steel, and other industrial products. A model American railway
track and a small clockwork train were even installed in the Forbidden City
of Beijing for the pleasure of the young Guangxu emperor and the Qing
court. 49 However, at the close of the nineteenth century, American banks and
the U.S. business community as a whole were cautious in seeking foreign
investment opportunities for the nation’s surplus capital. 50 They were unwill-
ing to provide capital on acceptable terms in the new scramble for invest-
ments in China, while European governments and large businesses showed
an interest in developing mining, territorial access, and transport infrastruc-
ture even in interior Henan, one of the very few Chinese provinces that had
no treaty port. This reluctance explains America’s tiny 300-mile share of the
nearly 7,500 miles of railroad concessions in China established by the end of
1898. 51
On the other hand, Li Hongzhang, the “Chinese Otto von Bismarck,” and
other statesmen enlisted the United States and other powers to support the
Chinese bid for control of Taiwan, the Ryukyu Islands, Korea, and Vietnam
(Cochinchina, Indo China). In June 1879, while visiting Beijing and Tianjin
on his world tour of 1877–1879, former President Grant was approached by
Prince Gong and Li Hongzhang to mediate between China and Japan over
the Loochoo (Ryukyu) dispute, which was seen as undermining both interna-
tional trade and Chinese sovereignty according to international law. “General
Grant thought that any course short of national humiliation or national de-
struction was better than war. . . . The policy of some of the European powers
was to reduce Japan and China into the dependence which had been forced
upon other nations. He had seen indications of this policy during his travels
in the East which made his blood boil.” 52
Arriving in Japan in July, Grant conveyed the Chinese request to mem-
bers of the Japanese cabinet including interior minister Ito and minister of
38 Chapter 2
war Saigo, who responded by defending Japan’s immemorial rights to the

Ryukyus. Although President Grant’s brokering efforts bore no fruit, his
intervention presaged America’s future role in Asia as the United States
scrutinized European advances “that threatened to close the portals to Eastern
riches.” 53 A few years later, John Russell Young (1840–1899), who had
accompanied Grant on his world tour and was minister to China
(1882–1885), appointed by President Chester A. Arthur, was likewise asked
by the Qing government to mediate in disputes over France’s expansion in
Vietnam that erupted in the Sino-French War of 1883–1885.
Beginning in the 1870s, the rise of Japan following the Meiji Restoration
of 1868–1912 paved the way for its expansion into Chosŏn Korea and its
push to drive both Qing China and Russia out of the Korean Peninsula.
Denying the Qing government’s claims to Korea as a tributary state, Japan
strengthened its ties with Korea through gunboat diplomacy and the Treaty
of Kanghwa (Ganghwa), which was forced on Korea in 1876. 54 Together
with other developments, these geostrategic changes altered power relations
in the Pacific region that fueled the Sino-Japanese War of 1894 and Ameri-
ca’s announcement of the Open Door policy.
EXERCISING “SOFT POWER” IN CHINA:

THE OPEN DOOR DOCTRINE
This section examines the context, meaning, and significance of what be-
came known as America’s Open Door policy toward China. It can be seen as
but one permutation of nineteenth-century U.S. foreign policy in China, sit-
ting alongside other positions such as neutrality, noninterference and nonen-
tanglement, expansionism, and the Monroe Doctrine—various policy stances
adopted simultaneously or at different times by the United States.
In 1895, for example, President Grover Cleveland and his secretary of
state, Richard Olney, picked a quarrel with Great Britain over the essentially
trivial question of the boundary between Venezuela and British Guiana when
gold was discovered in the disputed area. 55 In this case, America’s nonentan-
glement policy was stopped dead in the water. In a dispatch dated June 20,
1895, Richard Olney declared to Lord Salisbury, the British foreign minister,
that “[t]oday . . . the United States is practically sovereign on this continent,
and its fiat is law upon the subject to which it confines its interposition.”
Britain accepted American demands and agreed to a treaty of arbitration with
Venezuela that satisfied the United States. 56
The Open Door doctrine gave expression and form to America’s consis-
tent pursuit of its national interests, independence, and perceived distinctive-
ness since its first contact with China in 1784. In the real world, the applica-
tion of the Open Door, as a policy and a principle, varied greatly depending
on the particular historical moment and the individual actors involved. No-
tions identical to the Open Door can be found in British commercial practices
and in the Berlin Conference of 1885 that was intended to keep the balance
of power in the European scramble for territories in Africa.
The so-called Open Door notes, drawn up with measured caution by two
China hands—William W. Rockhill of the United States (1853–1914, minis-
ter to China, 1905–1910) and Alfred E. Hippisley of Britain (1842–1940)—
recognized the limits of American power in China at a time when the United
States was on the cusp of national greatness. Rather than emulating the
European and Japanese way—as exhibited in the contest for concessions and
territory in China at the turn of the twentieth century—the Open Door was a
reasoned policy designed to exert soft power by means of American-style
persuasion. The Open Door doctrine was the corollary of U.S. strategic oper-
ations in other parts of the world.
Japan’s rapid victory over China in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895,
which was fought for influence over Korea, precipitated an international race
among Europeans and Japanese to carve China into spheres of influence for
control of China’s port cities, railroads, and mines. In the United States,
where a severe economic depression had begun in 1893, political and eco-
nomic leaders were concerned about the consequences of being squeezed out
of China. In January 1898, a group of business leaders in New York founded
a lobby group, the Committee on American Interests in China—later re-
named the American Asiatic Association—to pressure the State Department
to oppose the possible partition of China.
Through its close contacts with John Hay, secretary of state in the
William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt administrations (1897–1905),
the association effectively pushed its mission to “foster and safeguard the
trade and commercial interests of the citizens of the United States, and others
associated therewith, in the Empires of China, Japan, and Korea, and in the
Philippine Islands, and elsewhere in Asia or Oceania.” 57 Meanwhile, Charles
Denby Jr. (1861–1938)—the first secretary of the U.S. legation in China—
urged Japan to form an alliance with China “against Europe in working out
their common destiny.” “The future of the Pacific is the future of the world,”
and the United States “has changed with changes of her own and must
change further [through aggressive business methods] because the East has
changed.” 58 As a result, the government was increasingly swayed to protect
the American business community in China.
During the final years of the nineteenth century, the United States was
exercising its regional and global clout in various ways—gearing up to chal-
lenge Spain in Cuba, the Philippine Islands, Guam, and Puerto Rico, while
reaching the brink of war with Germany over the small island of Samoa in
the Pacific and quarreling with Britain over the boundary between Venezuela
and British Guiana. 59 The outbreak of the Spanish-American-Cuban-Filipino
40 Chapter 2
war in April 1898 thrust the United States into playing a more active role
throughout the Asia-Pacific region.
It was against this complex background that the Open Door principle was
announced. America’s “‘open-door’ policy”—to cite the expression used by
John Hay—was officially declared in two sets of nonbinding circular letters
sent on September 6, 1899, and July 3, 1900, to the governments of France,
Germany, Britain, Italy, Japan, and Russia, requesting them to “make a for-
mal declaration” of such a principle “in the territories held by them in Chi-
na.” 60 The first of these diplomatic notes is documented in Papers Relating
to the Foreign Relations of the United States, with the Annual Message of the
President Transmitted to Congress December 5, 1899, under the heading of
“Correspondence Concerning American Commercial Rights in China.” 61
William Rockhill, who was commissioned by Hay to draw up the Open
Door notes in 1899, addressed the American Asiatic Association at its fourth
annual dinner in 1902. For Rockhill, trade and support for administrative
reform in China—rather than change of regime—and assistance in safe-
guarding China’s territorial integrity and political independence were inte-
gral to the U.S. Open Door principle. 62 Later, Rockhill wrote, “The whole of
our policy since Mr Hay’s time has been based on a proper recognition of the
interrelation of commerce, finance and politics.” 63 For Rockhill, serving
American trade and financial interests, protecting American citizens, pre-
serving China’s territorial and administrative integrity, and competing with
international rivals in China were all interconnected issues and together lay
at the heart of the Open Door policy.
In 1899, by way of Andrew D. White, American minister to Germany,
John Hay asked the German government to give formal assurances that the
treaty rights and privileges of American citizens would not be jeopardized in
the port of Jiaozhou and the adjacent territory, newly leased by Germany, in
China’s Shandong Province. In addition, the United States urged Germany to
“lend its cooperation in securing like assurances from the other interested
powers.” 64 In his note to Britain, John Hay clarified the Open Door principle
further—not only did it include retaining the open market in the foreign
spheres of influence such as the British-leased territory of Weihaiwei in
Shandong, but Hay also pushed for political reforms to maintain China’s
territorial integrity. 65 Because the U.S. proposals encountered no clear objec-
tions, foreign assent was considered “final and definitive.” 66
In 1900, the “China problem”—the result of the Boxer Uprising (see
chapter 4), directed against foreigners in China—became more pressing in
American foreign affairs circles, as explained by President McKinley in his
annual message to Congress. 67 Emerging in northwest and southwest Shan-
dong, the Boxers referred to those poverty-stricken villagers practicing mar-
tial arts with the belief that, possessed by spirits, they had a magical invulner-
ability to weapons. In spring 1900, the Boxer Movement gained strength; its
followers attacked foreigners, destroyed property and railways, killed Chris-

tian converts, and ended up besieging the foreign legations in Beijing until a
joint international relief force reached the city. Viewing the Boxer Uprising
as a dangerous anarchy, on July 3, 1900, John Hay circulated a second note
to the powers, reiterating that the policy of the United States “is to seek a
solution which may bring about permanent safety and peace to China, pre-
serve Chinese territorial and administrative entity [sic], protect all rights
guaranteed to friendly powers by treaty and international law, and safeguard
for the world the principle of equal and impartial trade with all parts of the
Chinese Empire.” 68
Apart from stabilizing China in the race for territories and in the face of
the Boxer threat, American business and missionary interest groups lobbied
the McKinley administration to do more in China. They presented China as a
vast market for American business interests, a fertile ground for Christian
missions, and a political “sleeping giant” whose reawakening largely de-
pended on the stance taken by the United States. 69
The Chinese had their takes on the Open Door principle. To some reform-
ers at the end of the nineteenth century, “the carving up of China and the
scramble for spheres of influence equate to political aggression as a tactic in
power competition; talk of preserving China’s integrity and the opening up
of China are the common means of economic aggression employed by all the
powers.” 70 Liang Qichao—a prominent political activist and essayist at the
turn of the twentieth century—labeled the Open Door as “the new way to
exterminate China” devised by the imperialists, an example of “intangible
partition”:
Those who claim to preserve China’s integrity seek to do so by adopting the

Open Door. The literal rendering of “Open Door” means opening up the whole
country as treaty ports. Great Britain is, in essence, an open-door country, but
unlike China it does not yield extraterritorial rights to foreigners. The so-called
territorial concessions in Shanghai and Hankou are nothing more than colo-
nies. Opening up the whole of China as trade ports would be the same as
turning the whole of China into a colony. . . . The Western policy of “preserv-
ing China’s integrity” will in reality spell the end for China—like fish rotting
from the inside. 71
Taking a different tack, the Qing leaders, such as Zhang Zhidong, had their
own version of the Open Door, parallel to the American policy. Formulated
and partially implemented in the latter half of the nineteenth century, Chinese
bureaucratic nationalism involved playing the powers off one another—
keeping the balance of power by opening the Chinese market to all parties
and giving each of them an interest in curbing monopoly privileges. 72 Man-
churia became the testing ground for these various “open door” principles.
42 Chapter 2
In 1900, Russian troops moved into Manchuria in Northeast China on the

pretext of protecting the Chinese Eastern Railway from the Boxer distur-
bances. Diplomatic talks between China and Russia over the withdrawal of
Russian forces dragged on. Russia’s intention to exercise exclusive control
over Manchuria expedited the conclusion of the Anglo-Japanese alliance
against Russia in 1902. To counter Russia, the United States asked that new
ports be opened in Manchuria to Americans and other foreigners. The Russo-
Japanese War of 1904–1905 enabled Japan to consolidate its already strong
hold on South Manchuria and prompted China to step up its efforts to open
up the region as well as other territories to American diplomatic and business
interests under the William Howard Taft administration (1909–1913). In the
end, however, Taft’s secretary of state Philander C. Knox (1909–1913) was
forced to opt for a cooperative policy—in tandem with Britain, Germany,
France, Japan, and Russia—attempting to float three major loan projects to
finance China’s currency reform, and economic development and reorgan-
ization, in addition to the construction of the Huguang Railways. 73
CONCLUSION
The 1899 Open Door policy has often been perceived in academic publica-
tions and by the public at large as a watershed, demarcating a shift in Ameri-
ca’s China policy from a de facto “follower” of British diplomacy—allowing
the United States to make commercial, political, religious, and social gains
from China—to an “independent” player. As one scholar puts it, “[u]ntil
1899, the United States simply deferred to Great Britain on most China
policy matters.” 74 This tendency to characterize early U.S. policy in China as
following the lead of Great Britain has been challenged in recent years. 75
At the end of the nineteenth century, the nationalistic bent came increas-
ingly to the fore in American politics. A group of influential figures includ-
ing Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge, the Massachusetts senator,
lobbied President McKinley over the direction of U.S. foreign policy. 76
Roosevelt and Lodge were trumpeting expansionist foreign policies, in their
view important to “our national well-being.” In an essay, Lodge wrote,
England has studded the West Indies with strong places which are a standing
menace to our Atlantic seaboard. We should have among those islands at least
one strong naval station. . . . The modern movement is all toward the concen-
tration of people and territory into great nations and large dominions. . . . It is a
movement which makes for civilization and the advancement of the race. As
one of the great nations of the world, the United States must not fall out of the
line of march. 77
In a confidential letter, Roosevelt revealed that his circle had been keeping
up the pressure on President McKinley:
I earnestly hope we can make the President look at things our way. Last
Saturday night Lodge pressed his views upon him with all his strength. I have
been getting matters in shape on the Pacific coast just as fast as I have been
allowed. . . . I do not fear England; Canada is a hostage for her good behavior;
but I do fear some of the other powers. 78
Fiercely critical of America’s self-righteous war in Vietnam in the 1960s,

John K. Fairbank argued that American imperialist behavior ought to be
dated back to its first endeavors in Asia rather than to the 1898 Open Door.
Disputing the notion of America’s “virtue” and “innocence” in the Far East
during the nineteenth century, Fairbank said of American involvement that
we cannot “overlook its genetic unity as a foreign intrusion upon Asian
societies” or ignore the “conflict between the Atlantic and the East Asian
civilizations.” 79 He even went so far as to claim that “[t]he most basic deci-
sions affecting American activity in China were made in London.” On the
other hand, Fairbank was clearly aware of Anglo-American tensions during
this early period, the “nation-state rivalries in Asia,” the so-called “dynamic
mechanism of Europe’s expansion.” Nevertheless, “Americans were still in-
veighing against British imperialism while using British facilities like Hong
Kong in order to rival Britain in the trade of these Chinese and Japanese
treaty ports.” 80
While Fairbank’s characterization of U.S. activity in China as unalloyed
imperialism is certainly plausible, it underestimated the paradoxical com-
plexity of American nation building in the nineteenth century. As a latecomer
on the international scene, the United States had the will to dismantle the
obstacles to entering a geopolitical arena dominated by Great Britain. The
American presence in China had a quintessentially American flavor, encap-
sulating the American Way. Commenting on the French mission led by M.
de Lagrenée following the First Opium War, Caleb Cushing was assertive
about the American instinct for competition: “Whatever additional conces-
sions either English or French force may extort from China, none of them can
be exclusive; and, in equal circumstances, the enterprise of our merchants
and the skill and courage of our navigators may be safely trusted to the
chances of all fair commercial competition in China.” 81 Subsequently, it was
not a question of the United States either following the European powers or
sitting on its hands; rather America acted pragmatically, sometimes under-
mining other powers’ efforts in China and at other times encouraging or
collaborating with other nations including Great Britain, France, Germany,
Russia, and Japan.
44 Chapter 2
FURTHER READING
Michael Hunt’s The Making of a Special Relationship: The United States and
China to 1914 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983) is an incisive
diplomatic and cultural study of the Open Door constituency—businessmen,
missionaries, and diplomats—in the seminal phase of United States–China
relations. The First Opium War is treated in Hsin-Pao Chang, Commissioner
Lin and the Opium War (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1964); Peter Ward Fay, The Opium War, 1840–1842: Barbarians in the
Celestial Empire in the Early Part of the Nineteenth Century and the War by
Which They Forced Her Gates Ajar (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North
Carolina Press, 1997; reprint of 1975 edition); and Julia Lovell, The Opium
War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China (London: Picador, 2011). In
Chinese, the best single-volume monographs on the mismatched military
maneuvers and discrepant perceptions of treaty negotiations that marked the
two opium wars are Mao Haijian (茅海建), Tianchao de bengkui: Yapian
zhanzheng zai yanjiu [天朝的崩溃: 鸦片战争再研究 The fall of the celestial
kingdom: A reexamination of the Opium War] (Beijing: Sanlian shudian,
1995) and Mao Haijian, Jindai de chidu: Liangci Yapian Zhanzheng junshi
yu waijiao [近代的尺度: 两次鸦片战争军事与外交 Military and diplomat-
ic aspects of the two opium wars: A modern assessment] (Shanghai: Sanlian
shudian, 1998).
For the creation of the unequal treaty system, see John King Fairbank,
Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast: The Opening of the Treaty Ports,
1842–1854 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1969; first edition in
1953 by Harvard University Press). A documentary collection that can use-
fully be consulted alongside Fairbank’s study is Earl Swisher, China’s Man-
agement of the American Barbarians: A Study of Sino-American Relations,
1841–1861, with Documents (New Haven, Conn.: Far Eastern Publications
for the Far Eastern Association, 1951). In Bargaining with the State from
Afar: American Citizenship in Treaty Port China, 1844–1942 (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2001), Eileen P. Scully argues that the relation-
ship between the American government and U.S. expatriates in China was
more about exercising jurisdiction over its sojourning citizens than protecting
them. Curtis T. Henson, Commissioners and Commodores: The East India
Squadron and American Diplomacy in China (Tuscaloosa, Ala.: University
of Alabama Press, 1982), explores the introduction and role of American
naval power in China. For the roles of individual American policy makers,
see David L. Anderson, Imperialism and Idealism: American Diplomats in
China, 1861–1898 (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1985).
On the Open Door policy, Marilyn B. Young’s The Rhetoric of Empire:
American China Policy, 1895–1901 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1968) sheds light on the contributions of commercial and missionary
groups to the changing climate of public opinion that gave rise to the policy.
Two further contributions on this subject, Jerry Israel, Progressivism and the
Open Door: America and China, 1905–1921 (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of
Pittsburgh Press, 1971), and Paul A. Varg, Open Door Diplomat: The Life of
W. W. Rockhill (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois, 1952), should be read
along with Alfred Whitney Griswold, The Far Eastern Policy of the United
States (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1966; first edition in 1938
by Harcourt, Brace). Four publications in Chinese reflect changing trends in
research on the Open Door over the past three decades: Wang Xi (汪熙),
“Lüelun Zhongmei guanxishi de jige wenti” [略论中美关系史的几个问题
A brief discussion of several issues in Sino-American relations], Shijie lishi,
no. 3 (1979): 12–19; Ding Mingnan (丁名楠) et al., eds., Diguo zhuyi qin-
huashi [帝国主义侵华史 A history of imperialist aggression in China] (Bei-
jing: Renmin chubanshe, 1986), vol. 1; Niu Dayong (牛大勇), “Yingguo yu
duihua menhu kaifang zhengce de qiyuan” [英国与对华门户开放政策的起
源 Great Britain and the origins of the Open Door policy], Lishi yanjiu, no. 4
(1990): 21–35; and Wang Wei (王玮) and Dai Chaowu (戴超武), Meiguo
waijiao sixiangshi (1775–2005) [美国外交思想史 A history of American
diplomatic thought] (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 2007).
NOTES
1. John Jay, “Concerning Dangers from Foreign Force and Influence,” in James Madison,
Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers (Lexington, Ky.: Tribeca Books,
2011, October 1787–May 1788 first edition), Federalist No. 4, p. 8.
2. George C. Herring, From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 177.
3. One chest weighed about 63.5 kilograms, and the average cost of Indian Malwa opium
was 539.76 Mexican silver dollars per chest, exclusive of interest and commission. Timothy
Brook and Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, eds., Opium Regimes: China, Britain, and Japan,
1939–1952 (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2000), 6–7.
4. Jack Beeching, The Chinese Opium Wars (San Diego, Calif.: A Harvest/HBJ Book,
1975), 29.
5. Li Gui (李圭, 1842–1903), Yapian shilüe [鸦片事略 A sketch of the opium question], in
Xuxiu siku quanshu bianzuan weiyuanhui [续修四库全书编纂委员会], comp., Xuxiu siku
quanshu [续修四库全书 A Sequel of the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries] (Shanghai:
Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1995–1999), 308–310.
6. Tripta Desai, The East India Company: A Brief Survey from 1599 to 1857 (Amherst,
N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1985).
7. Viscount Palmerston to Lord Napier, January 25, 1934, Correspondence relating to
China, no. 1, Correspondence, Orders in Council, and Reports Relative to the Opium War in
China, 1840: British Parliamentary Papers, vol. 30 (Shannon, Ireland: Irish University Press,
1971), 239.
8. Lord Napier to Viscount Palmerston, August 9, 1834 (received January 31, 1835),
Correspondence relating to China, no. 6, Correspondence, Orders in Council, and Reports
Relative to the Opium War in China, 1840: British Parliamentary Papers, vol. 30, pp.
245–249.
46 Chapter 2
9. Frederic Wakeman Jr., “The Canton Trade and the Opium War,” in The Cambridge
History of China, ed. Denis Twitchett and John K. Fairbank (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1978), vol. 10, part I, pp. 163–212.
10. “Report from the Select Committee on Trade with China; Together with the Minutes of
Evidence, Taken before Them. And An Appendix, and Index, Ordered by the House of Com-
mons, to be Printed, June 5, 1840,” Captain John Thacker’s testimony, in Correspondence,
Orders in Council, and Reports Relative to the Opium War in China, 1840: British Parliamen-
tary Papers, vol. 30, pp. 60–77.
11. For the Chinese imperial court’s debates on opium, see Liang Tingnan (梁廷枏,1796–
1861), Yifen wenji [夷氛闻记 Records of things heard in the company of barbarians], reprint of
1959 edition (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1997; first edition circa 1850), vol. 1, pp. 8–17.
12. Liang Tingnan, Yifen wenji, 18.
13. Robert E. Forbes, Personal Reminiscences, second edition (Boston, Mass.: Little,
Brown, 1882, first edition in 1876), 145.
14. Correspondence, Orders in Council, and Reports Relative to the Opium War in China,
1840, 60.
15. Forbes, Personal Reminiscences, 145–147.
16. Wu Yixiong (吴义雄), “Yapian zhanzheng qian zaihua xiren yu duihua zhanzheng
yulun de xingcheng” [鸦片战争前在华西人与对华战争舆论的形成 The molding of public
opinion in support of war with China among Westerners in China prior to the Opium War],
Jindaishi yanjiu 179, no. 2 (March 2009): 23–43.
17. Liang Tingnan, Yifen wenji, vol. 1, p. 1.
18. Liu Cunkuan (刘存宽), “Shilun yingguo fadong diyici Yapian zhanzheng de shuang-
chong dongyin” [试论英国发动第一次鸦片战争的双重动因 On the dual motives of the Brit-
ish in the First Opium War], in Liu Cunkuan, Xianggang shi luncong [香港史论丛 Essays on
the history of Hong Kong] (Hong Kong: Qilin shuye youxian gongsi, 1998), 1–24.
19. Maurice Stewart Collis, Foreign Mud: Being an Account of the Opium Imbroglio at
Canton in the 1830s and the Anglo-Chinese War That Followed (New York: New Directions,
2002; reprint of 1946 edition), 183.
20. Robert B. Forbes, Personal Reminiscences, second edition (Boston, Mass.: Little,
Brown, 1882, first edition in 1876), 149–150. Letters from China: The Canton-Boston Corre-
spondence of Robert Bennet Forbes, 1838–1840, comp. and ed. and with background essays by
Phyllis Forbes Kerr (Mystic, Conn.: Mystic Seaport Museum, 1996); emphasis added.
21. Editorial article, “Retrospection, or a Review of Public Occurrences in China during the
Last Ten Years, from January 1st, 1832, to December 31st, 1841,” Chinese Repository 11, no. 5
(May 1842): 241.
22. John Quincy Adams, “Lecture on the War with China, Delivered before the Massachu-
setts Historical Society, December 1841,” Chinese Repository 11, no. 5 (May 1842): 274–288.
23. John Quincy Adams, “China and Sandwich Islands,” 27th Congress, 3rd Session, Janu-
ary 24, 1843, in American Diplomatic and Public Papers: The United States and China, ed.
Jules Davids (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources Inc., 1973), series I, vol. 1, p. 148.
24. “Remarks on the Present Crisis in the Opium Traffic, with Inquiries Respecting Its
Causes, and the Best Course to Be Pursued by Those Now Connected with It,” Chinese
Repository 8, no. 1 (May 1839): 1–8. Michael C. Lazich, “American Missionaries and the
Opium Trade in Nineteenth-Century China,” Journal of World History 17, no. 2 (June 2006):
197–223.
25. Tyler Dennett, Americans in East Asia: A Critical Study of United States Policy in the
Far East in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1963; reprint of 1922
edition), 104–105.
26. Francis Wharton, “China and the Chinese Peace,” Hunt’s Merchants’ Magazine and
Commercial Review 8, no. 3 (March 1843): 205–226.
27. Lawrence Kearny, letters sent from U.S. Ship Constellation, Macao Roads, March 31,
1842, and April 22, 1843, in Davids, American Diplomatic and Public Papers, series I, vol. 1,
pp. 5, 13.
28. H. S. Legare of Department of State, letter on June 12, 1843, in Davids, American
Diplomatic and Public Papers, series I, vol. 1, p. 17.
29. The origins of what are today understood in China as the “Unequal Treaties” can be
found in the treaties, conventions, and agreements concluded between China and various
foreign states during the nineteenth century. The most important treaty rights ceded to foreign-
ers in China were low fixed tariffs, extraterritoriality, concessions and settlements, leased
territories, and the nonreciprocal most-favored-nation clause. The Treaty of Nanjing was the
first of two formative instruments that shaped the “Unequal Treaties” in China—particularly in
its two annexes, the General Regulations for Trade and Tariff of 1843 and the Supplementary
Treaty (aka the Treaty of the Bogue) of 1843. The second was the Sino-British Treaty of
Tianjin of 1858. Seventeen countries benefited from these inequitable treaty relations with
China. They were Britain (from 1842), the United States (1844), France (1844), Sweden/
Norway (1847), Russia (1851), Prussia (1861), Portugal (1862), Denmark (1863), the Nether-
lands (1863), Spain (1864), Belgium (1865), Italy (1866), Austria (1869), Japan (1871), Brazil
(1881), Mexico (1899), and Switzerland (1918). Tariff autonomy was restored to China in
1930, but extraterritoriality was not revoked until 1943. Dong Wang, China’s Unequal Trea-
ties: Narrating National History (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), chap. 1.
30. Lawrence Kearny, letter to the governor of Canton on October 8, 1842, in Jules Davids,
American Diplomatic and Public Papers: The United States and China, series I, vol. 1, p. 64.
31. John Adams, report on January 24, 1843, “China and Sandwich Islands,” to accompany
bills H.R. nos. 720 and 721, House of Representatives, Rep. no. 93, 27th Congress, 3rd Session,
in Davids, American Diplomatic and Public Papers, series I, vol. 1, p. 147.
32. United States legation, dispatch, Macao, April 24, 1844, in Davids, American Diplomat-
ic and Public Papers, series I, vol. 1, p. 213.
33. Wen Qing (文庆) et al., eds., Chouban yiwu shimo [筹办夷务始末 A complete account
of the management of barbarian affairs], Daoguang chao (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1964), vol.
6, pp. 2812–2815.
34. Kenneth Scott Latourette, The History of Early Relations between the United States and
China, 1784–1844 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1917), 140.
35. Dennett, Americans in Eastern Asia, 159–160.
36. William Frederick Mayers, ed., Treaties between the Empire of China and Foreign
Powers, Together with the Regulations for the Conduct of Foreign Trade (Taipei: Ch’engwen
Publishing Company, 1966; reprint of 1877 J. Broadhurst Tootal, “North China Herald” Office,
edition in Shanghai), 83.
37. William H. Seward, The Works of William H. Seward (New York: Redfield, 1884), vol.
3, p. 409.
38. Freda Harcourt, “Black Gold: P&O and the Opium Trade, 1847–1914,” International
Journal of Maritime History 6, no. 1 (June 1994): 1–83.
39. William M. Malloy, comp., Treaties, Conventions, International Acts, Protocols and
Agreements between the United States of America and Other Powers, 1776–1909 (Washington,
40. “Meishi Mailian zhi Liangjiang Zongdu Yiliang zhaohui” [美使麦莲致两江总督怡良
照会 American commissioner Robert McLane’s note to the governor-general of Jiangnan and
Jiangxi, Yiliang], dated June 22, 1854, Zhongyang yanjiuyuan jindaishi yanjiusuo (中央研究
院近代史研究所), comp., Zhongmei guanxi shiliao: Jiaqing, Daoguang, Xianfeng chao [中美
关系史料: 嘉庆, 道光, 咸丰朝 Sources on Sino-American relations: The reigns of Jiaqing,
Daoguang, and Xianfeng] (Taipei: Zhongyang yanjiuyuan jindaishi yanjiusuo, 1968), docu-
ment no. 235, p. 165.
41. U.S. Congressional Printed Documents, Robert M. McLane Correspondence, Senate
Document no. 22, Serial no. 734, 33rd Congress, June 14, 1854, p. 54; emphasis added.
42. Qi Sihe (齐思和) et al., eds., Di’erci Yapian Zhanzheng [第二次鸦片战争 The second
Opium War] (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1978–79), vol. 3, p. 544.
43. This material draws on Dong Wang, China’s Unequal Treaties, chap. 1.
44. For a list of American chiefs of missions in China, see https://history.state.gov/
departmenthistory/people/chiefsofmission/china (accessed January 23, 2021).
45. A full list of Chinese and American diplomatic representatives in the Qing dynasty can
be found in Zhongguo diyi lishi dang’an’guan and Fujian shifan daxue lishixi, comp., Qingji
48 Chapter 2
Zhongwai shiling nianbiao [清季中外使领年表 A table of late Qing and foreign countries’
ministers and consuls] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1997, first edition in 1985).
46. Raphael Pumpelly, Across America and Asia: Notes of a Five Year Journey around the
World and of Residence in Arizona, Japan, and China (New York: Leypoldt and Holt, 1870),
vol. 1, p. 126. Peggy Champlin, Raphael Pumpelly: Gentleman Geologist of the Gilded Age
(Tuscaloosa, Ala.: University of Alabama Press, 1994); Bailey Willis, “Biographical Memoir
of Raphael Pumpelly 1837–1923,” National Academy of Sciences of the United States of
America Biographical Memoirs, 1931, pp. 23–62, reprint of 1925 edition.
47. See chapter 3 of this book; John Schrecker, “‘For the Equality of Men—for the Equality
of Nations’: Anson Burlingame and China’s First Embassy to the United States, 1868,” Journal
of American-East Asian Relations 17, no. 1 (2010): 9–34.
48. See the full text of Amity (The Treaty of Washington 1871) at https://www.loc.gov/law/
help/us-treaties/bevans/b-gb-ust000012-0170.pdf (accessed January 23, 2021). Caleb Cushing,
The Treaty of Washington: Its Negotiation, Execution, and the Discussions Relating Thereto
(New York: Harper, 1873); Charles William Calhoun, The Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant
(Lawrence, Kans.: University of Kansas Press, 2017).
49. Dennett, Americans in East Asia, 598.
50. Milton Plesur, America’s Outward Thrust: Approaches to Foreign Affairs, 1865–1890
(DeKalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois University Press, 1971), chap. 2, 15–17. In the 1880s, U.S.
congressional subsidies and protective tariffs were designed to build up internal resources
rather than to encourage foreign trade.
51. John Russell Young, Around the World with General Grant: A Narrative of the Visit of
General U.S. Grant, Ex-president of the United States, to Various Countries in Europe, Asia,
and Africa, in 1877, 1878, 1879 (New York: The American News Company, 1873), vol. 2, pp.
410–420, p. 520.
52. Young, Around the World with General Grant, vol. 2, p. 558, p. 581, and p. 606.
53. Plesur, America’s Outward Thrust, 225.
54. Wang Yanwei (王彦威) and Wang Liang (王亮), comp., Qingji Waijiao Shiliao [清季
外交史料 Diplomatic sources for the Late Qing] (Changsha: Hunan shifan daxue chubanshe,
2015), 10 vols., vol. 1, pp. 76–80.
55. Anders Stephanson, “Global Competition and Manifest Destiny on the Cusp of the
Twentieth Century,” in Major Problems in American History: Documents and Essays, vol. 2,
Since 1865, ed. Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman and Jon Gjerde (Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin,
2007), 103–109.
56. Judith Ewell, Venezuela and the United States: From Monroe’s Hemisphere to Petrole-
um’s Empire (Athens, Ga.: Georgia University Press, 1996).
57. John Eperjesi, “The American Asiatic Association and the Imperialist Imaginary of the
American Public,” Boundary 2 28, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 195–219.
58. Charles Denby Jr., “America’s Opportunity in Asia,” The North American Review 166,
no. 494 (1898): 32–39, 32 and 35.
59. Stephanson, “Global Competition and Manifest Destiny on the Cusp of the Twentieth
Century,” 103–109.
60. John Hay to Mr. Vignaud, September 6, 1899, United States Department of State,
Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, with the Annual Message of the
President Transmitted to Congress December 5, 1899 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government
Printing Office, 1899), 128. Arguably there was a “third” set of diplomatic notes: during the
negotiations among foreign powers for the restoration of order in China, John Hay reaffirmed
the American policy regarding “impartial trade and the integrity of the Chinese Empire” in his
notes of October 29, 1900, addressed to the British and German governments. United States
Department of State, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, with the
Annual Message of the President Transmitted to Congress December 3, 1900 (Washington,
D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1902), 355.
61. United States Department of State, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the
United States, 1899, 128–143.
62. William Rockhill, “Response by Hon. William W. Rockhill,” Journal of the American
Asiatic Association 2, no. 5 (June 1902): 112–114. For Rockhill, the gradual, peaceful reform
of the Chinese administrative system was the more sustainable option: “To try to change the
present regime [the Qing government] and substitute something more in conformity with West-
ern ideas would be folly and entail responsibilities which no nation could afford to assume. The
Powers have also realized that administrative reform in China can only result from constant and
general pressure from without, and that sudden change must inevitably bring revolution and be
followed by years of chaos.”
63. William W. Rockhill to John V. A. MacMurray, April 11, 1913, William Woodville
Rockhill papers, 1854–1914, Letters, 1912–1913, bMS Am 2121 (2155)–(2174), folder 1, file
no. 2172, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
64. John Hay to Andrew D. White, September 6, 1899, United States Department of State,
Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1899, 129.
65. John Hay to Joseph H. Choate (b. 1832–1917, American ambassador to the Court of St.
James’s in England, 1899–1905), September 6, 1899, United States Department of State,
Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1899, 131.
66. John Hay, instructions sent mutatis mutandis to the U.S. ambassadors at London, Paris,
Berlin, St. Petersburg, and Rome, and to the U.S. minister at Tokyo, March 20, 1900, United
States Department of State, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States,
1899, 142.
United States, 1900, vii.
United States, 1900, xiv, 299.
69. James Lorence, The American Asiatic Association, 1898–1925: Organized Business and
the Myth of the China Market, PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1970.
70. Yu Zichen (雨子臣), “Lun shijie jingji jingzheng zhi dashi” [论世界经济竞争之大势
On trends in international economic competition], in Zhang Nan (张枬) and Wang Renzhi (王
忍之), eds., Xinhai geming qian shinianjian shilun xuanji [辛亥革命前十年间时论选集 A
selection of political essays from the decade before the Xinhai Revolution] (Beijing: Sanlian
shudian, 1960), series 1, vol. 1, pp. 202–203.
71. Liang Qichao (梁启超), “Guafen weiyan” [瓜分危言 Warnings about the carveup],
written in 1898, in Liang Qichao, Yinbingshi heji [饮冰室合集 Collected essays by Liang
Qichao] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1989), Yinbingshi wenji, no. 4, pp. 36–39. “Mieguo xinfa
lun” [灭国新法论 A new method of exterminating a nation-state employed by Western coun-
tries], 1901, in Liang Qichao, Yinbingshi heji, Yinbingshi wenji, no. 6, pp. 32–47.
72. Yang Tianhong (杨天宏), “Wanqing ‘Junshi’ waijiao yu ‘Menhu kaifang,’” [晚清“均
势”外交与“门户开放” The diplomacy of “the balance of power” in the late Qing and the
“Open Door”], Shehui kexue yanjiu, no. 6 (2008): 146–153. Daniel H. Bays, China Enters the
Twentieth Century: Chang Chih-Tung and the Issues of a New Age, 1895–1909 (Ann Arbor,
Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 2016, first edition in 1978).
73. Michael H. Hunt, Frontier Defense and the Open Door: Manchuria in Chinese
American Relations, 1895–1911 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1973).
74. Michael Schaller, The United States and China: Into the Twenty-First Century (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2001), 26.
75. Macabe Keliher, “Anglo-American Rivalry and the Origins of U.S. China Policy,” Dip-
lomatic History 31, no. 2 (April 2007): 227–258; Macabe Keliher, “Americans in Eastern Asia,
Revisited: Anglo-American Rivalry and the China Market,” MA thesis, George Washington
University, 2007.
76. When Theodore Roosevelt came to office, he retained McKinley’s cabinet including
John Hay as secretary of state and Elihu Root as secretary of war.
77. Henry Cabot Lodge, “The Business World vs. the Politicians” (1895), Documents in
United States History (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2006), CD-ROM, Part 20:
America around the Globe.
78. Theodore Roosevelt’s letter to Alfred Thayer Mahan, May 3, 1897, in Elting E. Mori-
son, ed., The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1951), vol. 1, pp. 607–608.
50 Chapter 2
79. John K. Fairbank, “‘American China Policy’ to 1898: A Misconception,” Pacific Histor-
ical Review 39, no. 4 (November 1970): 409–420.
80. Fairbank, “‘American China Policy’ to 1898.”
81. Caleb Cushing to Hon. John C. Calhoun (secretary of state), Macao, August 16, 1844, in
U.S. Senate, Public Documents, 28th Congress, 2nd Session (D.C.: Gales and Sfaton, 1845),
vol. II, doc. 67, no. 85, p. 91.
Chapter Three
Chinese Immigration
Roots in the United States
Chinese immigration has been an important aspect of U.S.-Chinese relations

since the mid-nineteenth century. It illuminates both nations’ approaches to
global issues and throws light on the pattern of Chinese settlement in the
United States. Three main lines of inquiry are pursued in this chapter.
First, over the course of the century 1848–1943, U.S. congressional legis-
lation targeted Chinese immigrants with the deliberate aim of restricting their
numbers and influence. The federal government exercised and expanded its
power through regulating immigration and depriving resident Chinese of
their citizenship and other constitutional rights. Second, I question the per-
ception that Chinese in America were merely silent sojourners, passive vic-
tims, and the model minority, keeping a low profile under unfavorable
circumstances in the age of racism. This conventional view undervalues the
extent and effect of social activism and social justice movements among the
Chinese diaspora, Americans, and other migrant communities in the United
States. 1 Third, the checks and balances inherent in the American political
system often produced favorable judicial decisions for Chinese petitioners,
decisions that—unpopular as they were—overrode the judgments of local
bureaucrats. Resistance, protest, defiance, and utilizing Western legal and
political systems were key components of Chinese immigration to American
and Sino-foreign encounters, and their effectiveness should not be dismissed.
This process actually got underway early. Maritime historian Stephen Davies
tells the story of twenty-six Chinese seamen who in 1847 filed and won a
lawsuit in New York City against the Keying (a Chinese-built junk from
Hong Kong) and Captain Charles Kellett, at a time when Chinese emigration
to the Americas was beginning to take off. 2
51
52 Chapter 3
MIGRATION BETWEEN CHINA

AND THE UNITED STATES: AN OVERVIEW
The majority of Chinese immigrant workers in the United States hailed from
the Pearl River Delta, the fertile alluvial area of Guangdong Province where
the Pearl River flows into the South China Sea. As discussed in the preceding
chapters of this book, from early times, the Pearl River region has been a
major hub of domestic and international trade. Economically, it is still one of
the most dynamic regions in China; the mainland government has recently
been attempting to integrate its economic activity, in particular through its
Great Bay Area mega projects such as the $20 billion, 55-kilometer Hong
Kong–Zhuhai–Macau Bridge, the world’s longest sea crossing (it has, how-
ever, suffered heavy financial losses since its grand opening at the end of
2018). Over time, much of its population emigrated to Southeast and South
Asia and later to North and South America, as well as to other places, forging
significant links between the region, overseas Chinese, and the outside
world.
In common with labor migration to other parts of the globe, the influx of
Chinese to the United States was primarily driven by economic factors. It is
widely believed that the mass of Chinese immigrants to the United States in
the nineteenth century were coolies, no better than indentured slaves. In the
mid-nineteenth century, the flourishing Asian coolie trade took the place of
the African slave trade to make up labor shortages on South American and
Caribbean plantations. Chinese coastal cities such as Amoy, Macau, Hong
Kong, Canton, and Shantou served as major ports where laborers were
bought, sold, and shipped out. 3 In 1866, in view of the abuses done to coolies
who were “abducted by malignant people to go abroad,” the Qing govern-
ment attempted to regulate the labor market and sought an agreement with
the United States. 4 Six years later, admitting its failure to enforce these
regulations at the local level, the Zongli Yamen, the Qing government’s
foreign office, again expressed its desire to collaborate with the United
States.
The Chinese who came to America were far from being a faceless collec-
tion of laborers. Chinese villagers in the latter half of the nineteenth century
had to deal with overpopulation, rebellions, ethnic feuds, natural disasters,
and a host of other pressures. To them, the United States represented the
prospect of economic advancement and employment in mining, railways, and
agriculture, especially after gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill in California
in 1848. 5 Of the half a million or so Chinese who eventually came to the
United States, more than half were from a single county, today’s Taishan, in
Guangdong Province.
The first three Chinese, two men and one woman, arrived in San Francis-
co in the autumn of 1848. 6 Chinese immigration to the United States rapidly
Chinese Immigration 53
reached a peak in 1852, and the registered number of immigrants that year
was 18,434, among whom only 50 were women. For the remainder of the
nineteenth century, Chinese immigration displayed a severe gender imbal-
ance, with a male to female ratio of 27:1 in 1890.
During the twenty years of 1848–1868, over 100,000 Chinese arrived in
the United States, more than 45,000 of whom eventually returned to their
homeland as a result of the hostility they experienced in California. From
1869 until 1882 when the Chinese Exclusion Act was signed into law,
200,000 Chinese entered the United States. Lured by the promise of making
a quick fortune on the gold fields, over 70 percent of them had settled in
California, constituting about 8 percent of the state’s population. 7
The coming of Chinese immigrants was closely linked with the benefits
as well as the downside of America’s rapid industrialization. Although over
80 percent of Chinese migrant workers were engaged in mining in the early
years, a substantial number labored on the railways. As an important indus-
trial force for mass production and marketing, railroad construction—the
pioneers of big business—received support from federal and state govern-
ments with public land grants. In 1862, the Central Pacific Railroad Corpora-
tion and the Union Pacific were chosen to build the first transcontinental
railway lines in the United States. Hailed at the time as a triumph of
American technological know-how, the transcontinental railroad shrank the
time it took to cross the United States from between four and six months to
only six days. Faced with a labor shortage, the Central Pacific took on over
12,000 Chinese navvies to construct the 690-mile railway through the Sierra
Nevada Mountains and across Nevada to Utah.
The flow of Chinese workers across the Pacific was a two-way traffic,
which fluctuated dramatically according to political, economic, and legal
conditions in both China and the United States. In the United States, anti-
Chinese agitation and discrimination showed its hand at an early stage. The
sharp fall in Chinese migrant labor from 18,434 in 1852 to a mere 4,316 in
1853 was the direct result of repeated calls for legislation against Chinese
miners. These included a “special message” from the governor of California,
John Bigler, that urged the legislature to stem the inflow of “Asiatic” immi-
grants, particularly Chinese coolies, by imposing heavy taxes on immigration
and foreign mining ventures. 8
In May 1852, the California legislature passed two discriminatory bills:
the first authorized a foreign miners’ license tax of US$3 per month to
discourage mining by the Chinese, and the second enacted a commutation tax
of approximately US$5 on each new Chinese migrant. Combined, these taxes
accounted for 25 percent of the state’s entire revenue until the miners’ tax
was repealed in 1870. Further discriminatory measures followed. In 1853,
the California State Supreme Court ruled that Chinese as a class were not
eligible to vote in California, testify in court, or become U.S. citizens. 9 This
54 Chapter 3
provoked the widespread appropriation of Chinese mining sites. Although

the West Coast, California in particular, was the stronghold of anti-Chinese
sentiment, antagonism toward Chinese was not institutionalized on a national
scale until the 1870s and 1880s, abetted by the press and led by U.S. politi-
cians who laid the blame for the industrial crisis on Chinese laborers. Inten-
sified by worsening unemployment and the failure of financial markets, anti-
Chinese violence broke out widely across the western states and territories,
as we will see below. The most vocal proponent of this racist agitation was
the Irish-born labor leader Denis Kearney and the Workingman’s Party he
led in the 1870s. However, according to historian Andrew Gyory, “ignoring
workers’ demands for an end simply to imported contract labor,” American
politicians of the Gilded Age convinced the nation that working people
would be better off without Chinese immigrants. 10
During World War II, the changing political landscape, the economy, and
the state of the bilateral relationship contributed to the flow of immigrants to
America. After the repeal of the Chinese exclusion laws on December 17,
1943—an enactment known as the Magnuson Act—Chinese elites and refu-
gee émigrés escaping the Chinese Communist takeover of China began arriv-
ing via Hong Kong and Taiwan. Other measures swelled the flow. A combi-
nation of the War Brides Act of 1945, the Alien Wives Act of 1946, and
various refugee acts doubled the growth of the Chinese diaspora between
1950 and 1960 from over 110,000 to more than 230,000. 11 As a result of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Immigration Act of 1965 (the Hart-Celler Act),
and the establishment of diplomatic relations between the United States and
the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese population increased rapidly,
from 430,000 in 1970 to about 3 million at the beginning of the twenty-first
century. 12
WIELDING AND CONTESTING THE POWER OF THE STATE
This section begins with an outline of the pertinent Sino-American treaties

and the American domestic legislation relating to Chinese immigration (in-
tended to channel social discontent against the Chinese and thereby strength-
en the federal government), followed by an analysis of the various efforts at
the state and federal levels to control the flow of immigrants. These treaties
and laws are key to understanding the nature of Chinese immigration to the
United States. Popular familiarity with the issues usually ends at the discrim-
inatory legislation and the injustices visited upon Chinese immigrants. Two
important (and related) questions have been sketchily handled in many previ-
ous accounts: How did the U.S. government seek to align the U.S. constitu-
tion and domestic laws with international law and treaties in the case of the
“China problem”? And how did Chinese migrants survive and ultimately
thrive by making use of American political and legal institutions?
The Burlingame Treaty of 1868
The first legal instruments to deal with immigration were the Additional
Articles to the Treaty between the United States and China of June 18, 1858,
Table 3.1. Chinese Immigration and Emigration, 1848–1868
Year Male Female Immigration Emigration Excess over

Total Total Immigration
1848 2 1 3 0 0
1849 323 0 323 0 0
1850 447 0 447 0 0
1851 2,716 0 2,716 261 0
1852 18,384 50 18,434 2,056 0
1853 3,917 399 4,316 4,405 89
1854 14,450 513 15,063 2,386 0
1855 3,188 24 3,212 3,328 116
1856* 4,935 95 5,030 2,675 0
1857* 5,935 423 5,806 2,675 0
1858* 5,358 323 5,681 2,675 0
1859 3,100 427 3,527 2,907 0
1860 7,312 308 7,620 2,079 0
1861 5,997 510 6,507 2,151 0
1862 5,583 442 6,025 3,001 0
1863 7,149 32 7,181 2,510 0
1864 2,756 175 2,931 3,086 155
1865 2,375 0 2,375 1,945 0
1866 2,350 1 2,351 3,015 664
1867 3,779 27 3,806 4,167 361
1868 (to July 1) 5,101 16 5,117 565 0
Total 104,705 3,766 108,471 45,887 1,387
Source: The statistical data, with adjustments by the present author, are taken
from the letter by Daniel Cleveland of San Francisco to J. Ross Brown,
American minster to China, dated July 27, 1868, in Jules Davids, ed.,
American Diplomatic and Public Papers: The United States and China, 1.
* Figures from 1856 to 1858 are estimates.
56 Chapter 3
Table 3.2. Chinese Immigration to the United States, 1869–1943
Year Immigration Year Immigration Year Immigration

1869 12,874 1894 1,170 1919 1,964
1870 15,740 1895 539 1920 2,330
1871 7,135 1896 1,441 1921 4,009
1872 7,788 1897 3,363 1922 4,406
1873 20,292 1898 2,071 1923 4,986
1874 13,776 1899 1,660 1924 6,992
1875 16,437 1900 1,247 1925 1,937
1876 22,781 1901 2,459 1926 1,750
1877 10,594 1902 1,649 1927 1,471
1878 8,992 1903 2,209 1928 1,320
1879 9,604 1904 4,309 1929 1,446
1880 5,802 1905 2,166 1930 1,589
1881 11,890 1906 1,544 1931 1,150
1882 39,579 1907 961 1932 750
1883 8,031 1908 1,397 1933 148
1884 279 1909 1,943 1934 187
1885 22 1910 1,968 1935 229
1886 40 1911 1,460 1936 273
1887 10 1912 1,765 1937 293
1888 26 1913 2,105 1938 613
1889 118 1914 2,502 1939 642
1890 1,716 1915 2,660 1940 643
1891 2,836 1916 2,460 1941 1,003
1892 0 1917 2,237 1942 179
1893 472 1918 1,795 1943 65
Source: Helen Chen, “Chinese Immigration into the United States: An Anal-
ysis of Changes in Immigration Policies,” PhD dissertation, Brandeis Univer-
sity, 1980, 174.
known as the Burlingame Treaty, introduced in chapter 2. This treaty was

signed in Washington on July 28, 1868, by Secretary of State William H.
Seward for the United States and by Anson Burlingame (1822–1870)—a
retired American minister to China who was appointed by the Chinese em-
peror as “ambassador from China to all the treaty powers”—and two further
Chinese representatives, Zhigang and Sun Jiagu. Burlingame, Zhigang, and
Sun formed the first-ever Qing diplomatic mission to Europe and the United
States. 13 Opposing forced immigration, Article 5 of the Burlingame Treaty
upholds the principle of free migration and immigration between the two
countries as “the inherent and inalienable right of man to change his home
and allegiance.” In recognition of the “mutual advantage” of migration, Arti-
cle 6 states that Americans resident in China
enjoyed the same privileges, immunities, or exemptions in respect to travel or

residence, as may there be enjoyed by the citizens or subjects of the most
favored nation. And, reciprocally, Chinese subjects visiting or residing in the
United States, shall enjoy the same privileges, immunities, and exemptions in
respect to travel or residence as may there be enjoyed by the citizens or
subjects of the most favored nation. 14
One day before the signing of the Burlingame Treaty, the 40th U.S. Con-
gress, Session 2, declared in the same spirit that “the right of expatriation is a
natural and inherent right of all people, indispensable to the enjoyment of the
rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and . . . in the recognition
of this principle this government has freely received emigrants from all na-
tions, and invested them with the rights of citizenship.” 15
The Amended Treaty of 1880
Under pressure from anti-Chinese agitators, most notably labor unions on the
Pacific West Coast, the U.S. government and national politicians reframed
the issue of Chinese immigration, seeking to abrogate the 1868 Burlingame
Treaty, much to the chagrin of the Qing government. The U.S. government
expressed the opinion that both the influx of Chinese laborers and resident
Chinese in America threatened the national interests and order of the United
States. In the end, the Chinese government gave way and in 1880 signed an
amended treaty permitting the American government to regulate, limit, or
suspend immigration—but it “may not absolutely prohibit it.” This provision
was applicable only to Chinese laborers, not to teachers, students, merchants,
or tourists. Article 2 of the revised treaty stipulated that the United States
accorded to the Chinese already residing in the United States “all the rights,
privileges, immunities, and exceptions which are accorded to the citizens and
subjects of the most favored nation.” 16 Resident Chinese “shall be allowed to
go and come of their own free will.” Although not providing for total exclu-
sion, this amended treaty set the direction for the more thoroughgoing exclu-
sionary immigration policy that would soon be put in place.
58 Chapter 3
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Its 1888 Supplement,

the Geary Act of 1892, and the 1904 Act
Contradicting its previous acts and proclamations, Congress for the first time
put restrictions on voluntary, free immigration through the Chinese Exclu-
sion Act of 1882, which was signed into law on May 6, 1882, by President
Chester Arthur. It was the first law to bar immigration of a particular racial
group into the United States. Asserting that the influx of Chinese laborers
endangered the “good order of certain localities within the territory,” the
1882 Exclusion Act (also known as the Scott Act) ordered that the admission
to the United States of Chinese laborers, both skilled and unskilled, be sus-
pended for ten years; that no courts should admit Chinese to citizenship; and,
further, that a certificate authorized by either the U.S. or the Chinese govern-
ment identifying Chinese laborers or “Chinese other than laborers” should be
retained for inspection by immigration officers on arrival, departure, or re-
turn. The act stipulated further, “No Chinese person shall be permitted to
enter the United States by land without producing to the proper office of
customs the certificate in this act required of Chinese persons seeking to land
from a vessel.” 17
Because the 1882 Exclusion Act was vague on whether Chinese laborers
could be allowed to stay on in America or return to America after a short visit
overseas, on October 1, 1888, Congress attempted to correct alleged abuses
of the law and passed a new act explicitly barring Chinese laborers from
returning to, or remaining in, the United States without authorization. 18 In
May 1892, the Geary Act passed in Congress, going further than any previ-
ous legislation in discriminating against Chinese. This new law not only
continued all previous legislation excluding Chinese from the United States
for a further ten years but also mandated all legal Chinese residents or per-
sons of Chinese descent to apply for a certificate of residency to avoid arrest
and deportation. 19 Twelve years later, in 1904, Congress consolidated all its
legislative efforts to close the door to all would-be Chinese immigrants,
“without modification, limitation, or condition.” 20 In June 2012, the U.S.
House of Representatives in H.Res.683 expressed that it “regrets the passage
of legislation that adversely affected people of Chinese origin in the United
States because of their ethnicity.” 21
The 1894 Treaty Regulating Chinese Immigration
In step with these congressional acts, the 1894 treaty between the United
States and China reaffirmed that Chinese laborers were “absolutely prohibit-
ed” from immigrating to the United States. “[I]n view of the antagonism and
much deprecated serious disorders to which the presence of Chinese laborers
has given rise in certain parts of the United States,” the Chinese government
bowed to the wishes of the American government, expressing its desire “to
prohibit the emigration of such laborers from China to the United States.” 22
However, the treaty was terminated on December 7, 1904, following notice
given by the Chinese government that its provisions were disadvantageous to
China.
Two major conclusions emerge from this body of legislation and treaty
making. First, in line with its evolving policies of racial exclusion, the execu-
tive branch of the U.S. government kept up the pressure on the Chinese
government to sign new bilateral treaties that were intended to keep pace
with American domestic laws. Second, excluding Chinese laborers through
legislation had become a congressional priority; Congress refused to surren-
der control over immigration to bilateral treaties and thus increased the ca-
pacity of the federal government in this area. Implementing the Chinese
exclusion laws involved a massive effort—the first of its kind—by the feder-
al government to provide customs collectors and to expand the Immigration
Bureau established in 1891 in the Treasury Department. 23 Taking cognizance
of international treaties, the U.S. Supreme Court was firm that control over
immigration was indispensable to the sovereignty of an independent state
such as the United States. In concert with the federal government, the Court
had the disposition to subject international law to the U.S. Constitution and
American congressional acts on matters of enforcement, modification, or
repeal. “The power of the legislative department of the government to ex-
clude aliens from the United States is an incident of sovereignty which can-
not be surrendered by the treaty making power.” 24 And again, the Court
affirmed, “This government could never give up the right of excluding
foreigners whose presence it might deem a source of danger to the United
States.”
CONTROLLING IMMIGRATION
AND SURVIVING EXCLUSION
Two points are helpful in gauging the extent of American legal initiatives
aimed at controlling immigration and the Chinese countertactics directed at
surviving exclusion.
First, U.S. legal approaches to Chinese immigration manifested at several
levels. As the highest court in the land and the sole interpreter of the Consti-
tution, the Supreme Court had the last word on immigration issues at the
federal level. At the same time, spokesmen for state and local government
(such as in California) urged the federal government to take measures to
prevent further immigration by Chinese. 25 Nevertheless, responsibility for
enforcing and interpreting the exclusion regulations mostly devolved upon
customs collectors and court judges, especially in San Francisco.
60 Chapter 3
Second, some setbacks were experienced by exclusionists, in particular

those who advocated empowering the federal government in the area of
immigration. The American political and legal system allowed for resident
Chinese to seek redress for their grievances through the courts. The Chinese
legation in the United States repeatedly lobbied the State Department, pro-
testing the losses, injuries, and hardships suffered by resident Chinese and
demanding that bilateral treaty obligations be observed. In a variety of ways,
Chinese supporters argued that it was unconstitutional, illiberal, and detri-
mental to the interests of the United States and California to exclude Chinese
immigration.
Because it was agreed that a sovereign state like the United States could
not give away its rights to exclude foreigners deemed dangerous to national
interests, promises made to the Chinese through bilateral treaties were
deemed to be inferior to the American Constitution. This principle was up-
held time after time in the courts. In 1889, the Supreme Court in an 8–0
decision ruled against Chae Chan Ping, a Chinese laborer in San Francisco
who was refused reentry to the United States after a four-month visit to
China. 26 Chae contended that this denial was in violation of existing treaties
such as the Burlingame Treaty between China and the United States. Al-
though the Court conceded that the congressional act of 1888 “is in contra-
vention of express stipulations of the treaty of 1868 and of the supplemental
treaty of 1880,” it also insisted that a treaty made by the United States with
any foreign nation was “subject to such acts as Congress may pass for its
enforcement, modification, or repeal.” 27 Sometimes judgment was made in
favor of the Chinese plaintiff. In 1898, a case was brought by Wong Kim
Ark—a twenty-one-year-old born in the United States to Chinese parents
living in San Francisco—who was likewise denied entry after a visit to
China. Having been issued a writ of habeas corpus, Wong argued that he had
been “restrained of his liberty” by the collector of customs, and by the gener-
al manager of the steamship company involved, in violation of the Constitu-
tion and laws of the United States, solely upon the pretense that he was not a
citizen of the United States. 28 In a 6–2 decision in favor of Wong, the Su-
preme Court gave its opinion that the fundamental rule of citizenship by birth
included all children of resident aliens born in the United States. Wong was a
citizen because he was born in the United States, and therefore the Chinese
exclusion acts did not apply to him. 29
The decisions arrived at in Chinese exclusion cases helped establish the
superiority of the Constitution and the Supreme Court’s preference for a
legal recourse based on the principles of liberty and natural rights. The Court
also did not bar Congress from enacting laws that were inconsistent with the
international obligations of the U.S. government. In other words, the treaty
violation argument—adopted by some Chinese immigrants, their supporters,
and the Chinese government—did not prevail in the courts.
But that did not stop the federal government from seeking international
solutions to the “China problem.” Archival records show that during the
latter half of the nineteenth century the U.S. government launched inquiries
into the coolie trade and pressed the Qing, British, Canadian, and Mexican
governments to stop the flow of Chinese laborers. It became clear to the
American government that the source of the problem lay in the British and
American steamship companies that facilitated human trafficking in Hong
Kong, Macau, Nassau, and Havana. On March 7, 1884, in a memorandum to
Frederick T. Frelinghuysen (secretary of state, 1881–1885), John Russell
Young, minister to China (1882–1885), summarized the issue:
[W]hile the cause of the evil is in Hongkong or Macao, we have no treaty with
China to prevent Chinamen going from Canton to these ports; that once at
Hongkong or Macao, ports within a few hours of sail of Canton, the Chinese
are outside of the jurisdiction of the emperor, and under the control of Great
Britain or Portugal, that it is not within the power of Prince Kung to give us a
remedy! 30
To counter the problem, the U.S. government proposed negotiating with the
British and Mexican governments to help enforce the Chinese Exclusion Act.
Young commented that
the [U.S.] Government will never reach the root of this trouble, until you have
an understanding with Great Britain so far as Hongkong is concerned, and with
Portugal in regard to Macao. . . . For it stands to reason that if Chinese subjects
can pass in a few hours from Canton to Macao and Hongkong, and can there
purchase from any knavish firm fraudulent certificates entitling them to land in
the United States, the trade will not only be a flourishing one, but a trade that
this government cannot suppress. . . . China might as well ask us to prevent
emigration from Nassau or Havana, or to punish our people who choose to
lead evil lives there. 31
The results of the U.S. requests to Great Britain, Mexico, and Canada were
negative. Mexico confirmed that its refusal was based on its constitutional
provisions, which made it impossible to “carry out any plan for enforcing
legislation against the entry from Mexico into the United States of Chinese
laborers.” 32 The Canadian government reached a similar conclusion:
There is no Canadian law by virtue of which restrictions could be placed on

Chinese residents in Canada to fetter their freedom of movement any more
than any other foreign resident. . . . The Dominions are therefore of the opinion
that no practical way exists by which effect could be given to the request
embodied in the resolution of the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States above referred to. 33
62 Chapter 3
Over the years, the series of congressional laws restricting Chinese immigra-
tion and their enforcement by federal officials prompted Chinese to contest
the power of the state through the courts. Individual Chinese placed thou-
sands of writs of habeas corpus before federal district and circuit courts, a
process that—together with America’s treaty obligations to protect the rights
of Chinese already residing in the United States—scotched the popular as-
sumption that the Exclusion Act would end Chinese immigration for good.
As a staunch opponent of Chinese immigration, the Californian customs
collector John S. Hager implemented the Exclusion Act in the strictest terms
by regularly refusing to allow intending Chinese immigrants to land. Like
anyone else, however, Chinese were entitled to challenge the detention im-
posed by the collector through a procedural recourse to habeas corpus by
claiming to have been unlawfully restrained of their liberty. As a result, in
California’s northern district, between June 27, 1882, and December 1, 1890,
individual Chinese filed 7,080 writ petitions in Judge Ogden Hoffman’s
docket, leaving the courts with little time to conduct regular judicial busi-
ness. 34 Judge Hoffman, along with Judge Lorenzo Sawyer, often rendered
unpopular decisions in favor of Chinese petitioners. On January 25, 1888, the
Alta California reported that, five years after the passage of the Chinese
Exclusion Act, 87 percent of the nearly four thousand Chinese migrants
seeking writs of habeas corpus from the federal courts had succeeded and
landed in San Francisco. Similarly, Mary Roberts Coolidge’s research re-
veals that the number of merchants’ wives and children debarred from enter-
ing the United States fell dramatically over a two-year period, from 25 per-
cent in 1904 to 8 percent in 1906, while at the same time the total number of
Chinese applying for admission had almost doubled. 35
The nature of the American judicial system forced a case-by-case apprai-
sal of Chinese petitioners, each of whom had the right to present evidence or
argument in favor of their case. This process often differed from the adminis-
trative procedures adopted by the executive branch that systematically ex-
cluded Chinese. 36
Anti-Chinese violence was at an apex in the 1880s in more than ten states
in the United States, and there were over two hundred “roundups” or “po-
groms” ridding communities of Chinese in California. 37 On October 31,
1880, Chinatown in Denver, Colorado (with 450 Chinese residents), was
destroyed by a mob, killing one Chinese, Look Young, and allegedly causing
$20,000 to $30,000 in losses in property damage. The Chinese legation com-
plained about the incompetence of the local authorities and demanded the
punishment of those responsible. In response, William M. Evarts, secretary
of state (1877–1881), insisted that the federal government—limited by the
Constitution—could not interfere in the administration of the municipal laws
of an individual state. Both Evarts and his successor James G. Blaine (1881,
1889–1892) 38 refused to make indemnity to the Chinese residents of Denver,
labeling it a “misconception” to regard international treaties as part of the

supreme law of the United States. 39
The Rock Springs Massacre of 1885 in Rock Springs, Wyoming, was the
most extreme example of racial violence directed against Chinese immi-
grants in American history. Its origins lay in a labor dispute over better
wages between the Union Pacific Railroad and white immigrant Irish, Cor-
nish, Welsh, and Swedish/Finnish miners. Chinese miners were often used as
strikebreakers when white miners went on strike, and this was the case at
Rock Springs. In the early morning of September 2, 1885, a dozen or so
white miners stormed a coal pit and injured three Chinese miners. That
afternoon around 150 armed white immigrants went on a rampage, killing at
least twenty-eight Chinese, injuring fifteen, and burning and looting over
seven hundred Chinese residences. Later, Chinese miners were found burned
alive, scalped, mutilated, branded, decapitated, and hanged. Federal troops
were called in to suppress the continuing violence. Under pressure, the U.S.
government agreed to indemnify the Chinese government the sum of
US$147,748.74. Nevertheless, a grand jury in Wyoming refused to indict any
suspects. 40
Stressing the importance of harmonious relations with Qing China, in his
first annual message President Grover Cleveland (presidency 1885–1889)
admitted that the “condition of the China question” was “far from satisfacto-
ry” and that “individual cases of hardship” had occurred that called for judi-
cial determination because they were beyond the power of his office to
redress. While attributing the Rock Springs Massacre to “race prejudice” and
the “lawlessness” of men “not citizens of the United States engaged in com-
petition with Chinese laborers,” Cleveland was also firm on the “admitted
right” of the American government to “prevent the influx of elements hostile
to its internal peace and security.” According to him, the United States did no
worse than Canada in legalizing Chinese exclusion. 41
In the face of the strengthening anti-Chinese crusade, the Chinese also
defended their rights through the American establishment, using the same
language of liberty and equality as ordinary Americans. In 1852, in reaction
to California governor Bigler’s anti-Asian message, businessman Sang Yuen
appealed to Bigler by openly invoking the U.S. Constitution and Declaration
of Independence:
I am a Chinaman, a republican, and a lover of free institutions; am much

attached to the principles of the Government [sic] of the United States, and
therefore take the liberty of addressing you as the chief of the Government of
this State. . . . I am not much acquainted with your logic, that by excluding
population from this State you enhance its wealth. . . . You are deeply con-
vinced you say “that to enhance the prosperity and preserve the tranquility of
this State, Asiatic immigration must be checked.” This, your Excellency, is but
one step towards a retrograde movement of the Government . . . immigration
64 Chapter 3
made you what you are—your nation what it is. . . . The declaration of your
independence, and all the acts of your government, your people, and your
history, are all against you. 42
Individual Chinese and Chinese community associations, including the Chi-

nese Six Companies (the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association),
articulated their grievances and solicited the support of Caucasian lawyers,
large business owners, commissioners of immigrants, Christian missionaries,
and the China lobby to denounce the policy of excluding Chinese immigra-
tion as unconstitutional and detrimental to the best interests of the nation. 43
In a letter dated July 27, 1868, to J. Ross Brown, American minister to China,
attorney Daniel Cleveland stated unequivocally, “The Chinese constitute a
large and important element in our society. . . . Their sudden removal . . .
would cause a great and lasting injury to our State. . . . It would cause a
diminution in our State revenue of at least one-fourth, and would be regarded
as an inconvenience by almost every citizen.” 44
The status of resident Chinese was also tenuous. On March 24, 1894,
Henry D. Paul—the lawyer retained by Sam Moy, Hip Lung, and other
prominent Chinese residents—wrote to Walter Q. Gresham, secretary of state
(1893–1895), seeking a legal remedy to the disabilities suffered by Chinese,
including those lawfully resident in the United States. He called Gresham’s
attention to “features of our Chinese exclusion laws and administrative ques-
tions likely to cause trouble to Chinamen of the exempt classes.” At the time,
there was no detailed provision for the registration and certification of any
Chinese migrants except laborers. Yet, at the same time, there were stringent
provisions for the arrest and deportation of all Chinese who had not regis-
tered or could not produce certification “to the satisfaction of the justice,
judge or commissioner before whom they may be taken for hearing at the
instance of any meddlesome or interested person choosing to set the law in
motion.” Characterizing the problems he had identified as “infamous in-
stances of our administration of the Chinese exclusion acts,” Henry Paul
continued,
The Chinese government is not in a position to know the status of its non-
resident subjects nor of their children born here who are not Chinese subjects
but American citizens, consequently can give no certification of value except
to persons directly within its knowledge and jurisdiction who are about to
depart for America. Chinamen long resident here (for instance, Sam Moy
came here when seven years old and has been here twenty eight years) have no
Chinese acquaintances nor interests, [sic] this government is the only one
which could give them or their children born here any certificate upon knowl-
edge. 45
As an organization that desired to “maintain the best possible relations” with

China, the American Asiatic Association spoke out against the illiberality of
the Chinese exclusion laws and the “brutality with which they have been
administered.” In connection with the visit of the Qing Chinese imperial
commission led by Dai Hongci and Duanfang, the association commented on
the exclusion acts that “the business and professional men of the United
States are as much disgusted with this chapter of our legislation as the most
critical of Chinamen can possibly be.” 46 In face of strong opposition in
Congress and the mass media, the association also joined the unpopular
effort to moderate the exclusion laws so as to narrow the definition of the
excluded class of Chinese.
The Chinese in America also received support from China. A boycott of
American goods broke out in Chinese cities such as Shanghai, Canton, and
Xiamen from May 1905 to October 1906. 47 Although unsuccessful in forcing
the U.S. government to abandon its exclusion laws, the anti-American boy-
cott, as a social movement, raised awareness among mainland Chinese of the
exclusionary legislation, the mistreatment of immigrant Chinese, and the new
treaty negotiations under way between the United States and Qing China.
The Chinese government and its U.S. legation repeatedly urged the U.S.
government to protect the rights of Chinese living in the United States ac-
cording to existing treaty stipulations. In 1880, Yung Wing—the first Chi-
nese student to graduate from an American university (Yale College)—
lodged a protest with the U.S. secretary of state over the mistreatment of
Chinese in violation of bilateral treaties. 48 At times the critics went further
and challenged the validity of the exclusionary laws. Following the Chinese
line of argument, Wu Tingfang, the Chinese minister to the United States,
protested that “the continuation of the exclusion of Chinese laborers and the
restrictions placed upon Chinese merchants and others seeking admission to
the United States are not only without international authority but in violation
of treaty stipulations.” 49 Wu asked for the formation of a joint commission to
settle the issues at stake to the satisfaction of both China and the United
States.
But the federal government remained adamant. Blaming the European
press in China for alerting the Chinese to the mistreatment of Chinese in the
United States, the executive offices of the U.S. government regularly rejected
these Chinese requests on the grounds of the priority of the Constitution over
international treaties.
CONCLUSION
Between the 1860s and the 1910s—the periods known as the Gilded Age and
the Progressive Era in American history—over forty million immigrants
66 Chapter 3
from Europe, Asia, and Latin America had contributed to the rapid urbaniza-
tion of the United States and provided much-needed labor for the transforma-
tion of the country from an agrarian to an industrialized society. By 1910, the
United States produced over one-third of the world’s manufacturing prod-
ucts. Chinese immigration became part of the accompanying political and
social problems and, more importantly, part of the movements that promoted
social justice and liberty, on the one hand, and order and efficacy, on the
other. 50
The application of different legal frameworks to different races was a
principle espoused by some prominent figures in the United States and was
publicly practiced, not only in the domestic context but also in the American
government’s dealings with the Qing government over anti-missionary vio-
lence in China, as discussed in the next chapter. In his speech on the Opium
War, President John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) spelled out his position on
employing different laws for different nations:
There is also a Law of Nations between Christian communities, which prevails

between the Europeans and their descendants throughout the globe. . . . But we
have a separate and different Law of Nations for the regulation of our inter-
course with the Indian tribes of our own Continent; another Law of Nations
between us and the woolly headed natives of Africa; another with the Barbary
Powers and the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire . . . and lastly a Law of Nations
with the flowery Land, the celestial Empire, the Mantchoo Tartar Dynasty of
Despotism. 51
Despite criticisms of its efficacy and contradictions, during the late nine-
teenth century the strengthening of U.S. state power was implemented verti-
cally and horizontally through institutional infrastructure such as the legisla-
tive, executive, and judicial offices and organizations, both public and pri-
vate, at the federal, state, and local levels. At the same time, resident Chinese
refused to be driven out, defying immigration policies and rallying support
for their constitutional rights in the United States. Thus the pro-Chinese
lobby was able to draw on these same mechanisms of governance to accom-
plish their objectives. Although fifteen congressional Chinese exclusion acts
were passed between 1882 and 1913, the Chinese diaspora took root with
tenacity and resilience; by 1940 the population had reached over 77,000,
with a dramatically rebalanced male to female ratio of 2.9:1. 52 As Adam
McKeown argued, immigration procedures and exclusion laws were in effect
“an exercise in force, a demonstration” that the U.S. government could ob-
struct the desires of individual Chinese, classify them, detain them, and treat
them like animals. 53 On the other hand, ostensibly at least, immigration
administration and procedures were instituted as a “vehicle of justice, rule of
law, fair play, and modern efficiency.” The checks and balances built into the
American system did not always produce straightforward results or assure

total victory for any party.
FURTHER READING
Chinese immigration and diaspora is the subject of a flourishing scholarly

literature. Current research has moved beyond two well-versed story lines:
one focusing on the push-pull factors driving Chinese emigrants to a strange
land, the other exploring the racist and sinophobic treatment they encoun-
tered in their new homes. In addition to those cited above, the following
works (listed in chronological order) are recommended.
Alexander Saxton, The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chi-
nese Movement in California (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California
Press, 1971); James W. Loewen, The Mississippi Chinese: Between Black
and White, second edition (Prospects Heights, Ill.: Waveland Press, 1988;
first edition in 1971 by Harvard University Press); Delber L. McKee, Chi-
nese Exclusion versus the Open Door Policy, 1900–1906: Clashes over Chi-
na Policy in the Roosevelt Era (Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University
Press, 1977); Sucheng Chan, This Bittersweet Soil: The Chinese in California
Agriculture, 1860–1910 (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press,
1987); Sucheng Chan, ed., Entry Denied: Exclusion and the Chinese Com-
munity in America, 1882–1943 (Philadelphia, Pa.: Temple University Press,
1991); Madeline Y. Hsu, Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home: Transna-
tionalism and Migration between the United States and South China,
1881–1943 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2000); Adam McKe-
own, Chinese Migrant Networks and Cultural Change: Peru, Chicago, Ha-
waii, 1900–1936 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001); Peter H.
Koehn and Xiao-huang Yin, eds., The Expanding Roles of Chinese
Americans in U.S.-China Relations: Transnational Networks and Transpa-
cific Interactions (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 2002); Flemming Christian-
sen, Chinatown, Europe: An Exploration of Overseas Chinese Identity in the
1990s (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003); Mary Ting Yi Lui, The Chinatown
Trunk Mystery: Murder, Miscegenation, and Other Dangerous Encounters in
Turn-of-the-Century New York City (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 2005); Gregor Benton, Chinese Migrants and Internationalism: For-
gotten Histories, 1917–1945 (New York: Routledge, 2007); Ian Welch,
“‘Our Neighbors but Not Our Countrymen’: Christianity and the Chinese in
Nineteenth-Century Victoria (Australia) and California,” in Christianity in
the History of U.S.-China Relations, ed. Dong Wang, a special volume of the
Journal of American-East Asian Relations 13 (November 2008): 149–183;
Philip A. Kuhn, Chinese among Others: Emigration in Modern Times (Lan-
ham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008); Sucheng Chan and Madeline Yuan-
68 Chapter 3
yin Hsu, eds., Chinese Americans and the Politics of Race and Culture
(Philadelphia, Pa.: Temple University Press, 2008); Sascha Auerbach, Race,
Law, and “The Chinese Puzzle” in Imperial Britain (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2009); Gregory R. Nokes, Massacred for Gold: The Chinese in
Hells Canyon (Corvallis, Oreg.: Oregon State University Press, 2009); Him
Mark Lai, Chinese American Transnational Politics, ed. Madeline Y. Hsu
(Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 2010).
Besides Stephen Davies’ East Sails West: The Voyage of the Keying,
1846–1855 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2014), Pacific Cross-
ing: California Gold, Chinese Migration, and the Making of Hong Kong
(Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2013) by Elizabeth Sinn and
Chinese Diaspora Charity and the Cantonese Pacific, 1850–1949 (Hong
Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2020) edited by John Fitzgerald and
Hon-Ming Yip have all contributed to research on Cantonese diaspora, trade,
charity, philanthropy, immigration politics, and networking across the Pacif-
ic Rim. In addition, the 109-minute movie Piccadilly, produced in 1929, is a
helpful historical visual resource; it features characters such as Shosho, the
Chinese scullery maid, played by Anna May Wong (1905–1961), the first
Chinese-American Hollywood movie star; and Valentine Wilmot (Jameson
Thomas), the owner of the popular Piccadilly Club in London. In this social-
ly conscious film, urban modernity and feminine allure are conjoined with
the fear of Chinese immigrants, violence, and racial mixing.
NOTES
1. Judy Yung, Gordon H. Chang, and Him Mark Lai, comps. and eds., Chinese American
Voices: From the Gold Rush to the Present (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California, 2006),
preface.
2. In East Sails West: The Voyage of the Keying, 1846–1855 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong
University Press, 2014), Stephen Davies presents an absorbing tale of the forgotten voyage of
the Keying, a Chinese-built junk, from Hong Kong across the Indian and Atlantic Oceans to
New York and Boston and then onward to Britain. While involved in litigation in 1847, the
Keying’s Chinese crewmen received assistance from W. Daniel Lord, a local attorney, a Chris-
tian named Lin King-chew, and his friend, the high-minded missionary Samuel Wells Williams
who, having spent twelve years in China, was not a “great fan of the British” (p. 126). These
men believed that the Chinese seamen were the victims in the case and British Captain Kellett
the villain.
3. Robert W. Irick, Ch’ing Policy toward the Coolie Trade, 1847–1878 (Taipei: Chinese
Materials Center, 1982); Yen Ching-hwang, Coolies and Mandarins: China’s Protection of
Overseas Chinese during the Late Ch’ing Period (1851–1911) (Singapore: Singapore Univer-
sity Press, 1985).
4. Zhongyang yanjiuyuan jindaishi yanjiusuo (中央研究院近代史研究所), comp., Zhong-
mei guanxi shiliao: Tongzhi chao [中美关系史料, 同治朝 Sources on Sino-American rela-
tions: The reign of Tongzhi] (Taipei: Zhongyang yanjiuyuan jindaishi yanjiusuo, 1968), vol. 1,
document no. 381, p. 311, and vol. 2, document no. 994, p. 887.
5. James A. Michener, Hawaii (New York: Random House, 1987, first edition in 1959),
esp. chap. 4. This brilliant novel narrates the integration of heterogeneous peoples, including
Hakka Chinese, into a composite American society. Michener unfavorably contrasts characters
who think in narrowly racial terms with those who have embraced a more flexible ethnic
paradigm.
6. Daniel Cleveland of San Francisco’s letter to J. Ross Brown, American minister to
China, on July 27, 1868, in Jules Davids, ed., American Diplomatic and Public Papers: The
United States and China (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1979), series II, vol. 13, pp.
1–11.
7. Mary Roberts Coolidge, Chinese Immigration (New York: Henry Holt, 1909), preface.
8. See table 3.1. “Governor’s Special Message,” Daily Alta California 3, no. 115 (April 25,
1852): 2.
9. Charles J. McClain, In Search of Equality: The Chinese Struggle against Discrimination
in Nineteenth-Century America (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1994).
10. Andrew Gyory, Closing the Gate: Race, Politics, and the Chinese Exclusion Act (Chapel
Hill, N.C.: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998).
11. Yung, Chang, and Lai, Chinese American Voices, 225–227.
12. Yen Ching-hwang, The Chinese in Southeast Asia and Beyond: Socioeconomic and
Political Dimensions (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, 2008).
13. The Burlingame Mission of 1868–1870 represented the first voluntary diplomatic initia-
tive on the part of the Qing government. In addition to Burlingame, Zhigang, and Sun, the
mission had an international mix consisting of J. McLeavy Brown, Chinese secretary of the
British legation; E. de Champs, a French official attached to the Chinese imperial Maritime
Customs Service; and a few minor Chinese officials and attachés. Countries the mission visited
included the United States, Britain, France, Belgium, Sweden, Prussia, Denmark, the Nether-
lands, Russia, and Spain. Burlingame was an important Republican and an abolitionist who
stood for liberal racial and cultural ideals that were defeated in the late nineteenth century. The
Qing government considered Burlingame “even-tempered” and “knowledgeable about the Chi-
nese and world affairs.” Zhongyang yanjiuyuan jindaishi yanjiusuo, comp., Zhongmei guanxi
shiliao: Tongzhi chao, vol. 1, document no. 540, p. 478.
14. U.S. Congress, The Statutes at Large, Treaties and Proclamations of the United States
of America (Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, 1863–1869), vol. 16, pp. 739–741.
15. “An Act concerning the Rights of American Citizens in Foreign States,” U.S. Congress,
The Statutes at Large, Treaties and Proclamations of the United States of America (Boston,
Mass.: Little, Brown, 1863–1869), vol. 15, pp. 223–224.
16. William Malloy, ed., Treaties, Conventions, International Acts, Protocols and Agree-
ments between the United States of America and Other Powers, 1776–1909 (Washington, D.C.:
Government Printing Office, 1910), vol. 1, p. 238.
17. U.S. Congress, “An Act to Execute Certain Treaty Stipulations Relating to Chinese,”
47th Congress, Session 1, Ch. 126, May 6, 1882, U.S. Statutes at Large (Washington, D.C.:
Government Printing Office, 1883), vol. 22, pp. 58–60.
18. U.S. Congress, “An Act Supplement to an Act Entitled ‘An Act to Execute Certain
Treaty Stipulations Relating to Chinese,’ Approved on the Sixth Day of May Eighteen Hundred
and Eighty-Two,” 52nd Congress, Session 1, Ch. 1064, October 1, 1888, U.S. Statutes at Large
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1889), vol. 25, pp. 504.
19. U.S. Congress, “An Act to Prohibit the Coming of Chinese Persons into the United
States,” 52nd Congress, Session 1, Ch. 60, May 5, 1892, U.S. Statutes at Large (Washington,
20. U.S. Congress, “An Act Making Appropriations to Supply Deficiencies in the Appropri-
ations for the Fiscal Year Ending June Thirtieth, Nineteen Hundred and Four, and for Prior
Years, and for Other Purposes,” 58th Congress, Session 2, Ch. 1630, April 27, 1904, U.S.
Statutes at Large (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1905), vol. 33, part I, p.
428.
21. https://www.congress.gov/bill/112th-congress/house-resolution/683/text (accessed Feb-
ruary 14, 2021). The Chinese official news media, China Daily, reported on the same resolution
that the United States “apologizes for Chinese Exclusion Act.” https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/
world/2012-06/19/content_15512469.htm (accessed May 31, 2020).
22. John V. A. MacMurray, comp. and ed., Treaties and Agreements with and Concerning
China, 1894–1919 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1921), 9–11.
70 Chapter 3
23. Kitty Calavita, “The Paradoxes of Race, Class, Identity, and ‘Passing’: Enforcing the
Chinese Exclusion Acts, 1882–1910,” Law and Social Inquiry 25, no. 1 (Winter 2000): 1–40.
Samuel Keller, “Congressional Legislation and the Plight of Immigrant Chinese during the Era
of Exclusion 1882–1943,” manuscript written in May 2007.
24. The Chinese Exclusion Case (Chae Chan Ping v. U.S.), 130 U.S. 581 (1889), http://
supreme.justia.com/us/130/581/case.html (accessed July 31, 2010).
25. The Chinese Exclusion Case, 130 U.S. 581 (1889), http://supreme.justia.com/us/130/
581/case.html (accessed July 31, 2010). Louis Henkin, “The Constitution and United States
Sovereignty: A Century of ‘Chinese Exclusion’ and Its Progeny,” Harvard Law Review 100,
no. 4 (February 1987): 853–886.
26. Teemu Ruskola, “Canton Is Not Boston: The Invention of American Imperial Sove-
reignty,” American Quarterly 57, no. 3 (September 2005): 859–884.
27. Chae Chan Ping v. U.S., 130 U.S. 581 (1889).
28. Habeas corpus refers here to a writ (a written court order) that may be issued to bring
one party before a court or judge to grant or deny the release of that party from unlawful
restraint.
29. U.S. vs. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898).
30. William Woodville Rockhill (1854–1914) papers, Houghton Library, Harvard Univer-
sity, bMS Am 2122 (66), Chinese immigration treaty: Letters, notes and memoranda,
1884–1894, folder 1 of 4, no. 376.
31. Letter from John Russell Young to Frederick T. Frelinghuysen, no. 481, July 21, 1884.
William Woodville Rockhill (1854–1914) papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, bMS
Am 2122 (66), Chinese immigration treaty: Letters, notes and memoranda, 1884–1894, folder 1
of 4.
32. Letter from Mr. Dougherty to James Blaine, no. 537, January 1891. William Woodville
Rockhill (1854–1914) papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, bMS Am 2122 (66),
Chinese immigration treaty.
33. Report of a Committee of the Privy Council, April 15, 1891. William Woodville Rock-
hill (1854–1914) papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, bMS Am 2122 (66), Chinese
immigration treaty.
34. Christian G. Fritz, “A Nineteenth Century ‘Habeas Corpus Mill’: The Chinese before the
Federal Courts in California,” American Journal of Legal History 32, no. 4 (October 1988):
347–372.
35. Coolidge, Chinese Immigration, 305.
36. Fritz, “A Nineteenth Century ‘Habeas Corpus Mill.’”
37. Ian Welch, comp., “Anti-Chinese Riots in North America in the 19th Century,” manu-
script, April 2010; Jean Pfaelzer, Driven Out: The Forgotten War against Chinese Americans
(New York: Random House, 2007). For the economic, political, and racial arguments used
against the Chinese in the nineteenth century, see Diana L. Ahmad, The Opium Debate and
Chinese Exclusion Laws in the Nineteenth-Century American West (Reno, Nev.: University of
Nevada Press, 2007).
38. James G. Blaine (1830–1893) was a well-known U.S. politician and advocate of Chinese
exclusion, an attitude exemplified by his anti-Chinese speech made in February 1879. Gyory,
Closing the Gate, chap. 1.
39. [Doc. No. 25], no. 187, Chen Lan Pin of the Chinese legation in Washington to Mr.
Evarts, on November 10, 1880; [Doc. No. 26], enclosure 1, Report of F. A. Bee, Chinese consul
in San Francisco, on December 8, 1880; [Doc. No. 27], no. 188, W. M. Evarts to Chen Lan Pin,
Dec. 30, 1880; [Doc. No. 28], no. 190, Chen Lan Pin to Mr. Evarts, January 21, 1881; [Doc.
No. 29], no. 192, James G. Blaine to Chen Lan Pin, March 25, 1881. Davids, ed., American
Diplomatic and Public Papers, series II, vol. 12, pp. 163–170.
40. See telegraphs, letters, and memorials of Zheng Zaoru (郑藻如) and Zhang Yinhuan (张
荫桓), Chinese ministers in the United States, to the Zongli Yamen (Chinese foreign ministry)
in 1885 in Chen Hansheng (陈翰笙), ed., Huagong chuguo shiliao huibian [华工出国史料汇
编 A comprehensive collection of historical sources on overseas Chinese laborers] (Beijing:
Zhonghua shuju, 1980–1985), series 1, vol. 4, pp. 1333–1360. See also Cheng-tsu Wu, ed.,
Chink! A Documentary History of Anti-Chinese Prejudice in America (New York: World
Publishing, 1972), 152–164; Craig Storti, Incident at Bitter Creek: The Story of the Rock
Springs Massacre (Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1991).
41. Grover Cleveland, “First Annual Message,” December 8, 1885, http://www.presidency.
uscb.edu/ws/?pid=29526.
42. Norman Asing (Sang Yuen), “To His Excellency Gov. Bigler,” Daily Alta California,
May 5, 1852, p. 2; emphasis in original.
43. Charles J. McClain Jr., “The Chinese Struggle for Civil Rights in Nineteenth Century
America: The First Phase, 1850–1870,” California Law Review 72, no. 4 (July 1984): 529–568;
Yucheng Qin, The Diplomacy of Nationalism: The Six Companies and China’s Policy toward
Exclusion (Honolulu, Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, 2009).
44. Letter from Daniel Cleveland of San Francisco to J. Ross Brown, American Minister to
China, dated July 27, 1868, in Davids, ed., American Diplomatic and Public Papers, series II,
vol. 13, p. 1.
45. Letter from Henry D. Paul to W. Q. Gresham on March 24, 1894. William Woodville
Rockhill (1854–1914) papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, bMS Am 2122 (66),
Chinese immigration treaty: Letters, notes and memoranda, 1884–1894, folder 1 of 4.
46. Current Comment, Journal of the American Asiatic Association 6, no. 1 (February
1906): 1. The Qing imperial commission was a part of the Qing government’s tardy attempts at
modernization, Xinzheng (the new policy), during the last years of its life. The Qing court under
the Empress Dowager dispatched a group of five princes and officials to Japan, the United
States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and Italy to study their political systems. Douglas R.
Reynold, China, 1898–1912, the Xinzheng Revolution and Japan (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
47. Zhou Mingqi (周明绮), Yijiu lingwu nian de fanmei aiguo yundong [1905年的反美爱
国运动 The anti-American patriotic movement of 1905] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1962); A
Ying (阿英), Fanmei huagong jinyue wenxueji [反美华工禁约文学集 A collection of writings
on the opposition to the American exclusion acts directed against Chinese laborers] (Beijing:
Zhonghua shuju, 1960); Yang Guobiao (杨国标), Meiguo huaqiaoshi [美国华侨史 A history
of Chinese Americans] (Guangzhou: Guangdong gaodeng jiaoyu chubanshe, 1989); Zhang
Qingsong (张庆松), Meiguo bainian paihua neimu [美国百年排华内幕 The inside story of a
hundred years of American exclusion of the Chinese] (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe,
1998).
48. Yung Wing (Rong Hong, 1828–1912), “Shimei Rong Hong zhi Meiguo Waiwu dachen
qing zhaoyue bude kedai huaren zhaohui” [使美容闳致美国外务大臣请照约不得苛待华人
照会 A diplomatic note from Yung Wing, Chinese deputy minister to the United States, to the
American secretary of state urging the United States not to mistreat Chinese in accordance with
the treaties], in Chen Hansheng, ed., Huagong chuguo shiliao huibian, series 1, vol. 4, p. 1330.
49. Tingfang Wu (1842–1922, Chinese minister to the United States, Spain, Peru, Mexico,
and Cuba), America through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat, reprint (Charleston, S.C.:
BiblioBazaar, 2007, first edition in 1914), 37–41. Yen, Coolies and Mandarins; Yen Ching-
Hwang (颜清湟), Haiwai huarenshi yanjiu [海外华人史研究 A study of the history of the
overseas Chinese] (Singapore: Xinjiapo yazhou yanjiu xuehui, 1992).
50. Charles W. Calhoun, ed., The Gilded Age: Essays on the Origins of Modern America
(Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1996); Allen F. Davis, Spearheads for Reform: The
Social Settlements and the Progressive Movement, 1890–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1967). For influential treatments by contemporaries of these issues, see Edward Bellamy,
Looking Backward, 2000–1887 (New York: Random House, 1951; first edition in 1887 by
Ticknor and Comp.); Frances A. Kellor, Out of Work: A Study of Unemployment (New York:
Putnam, 1915).
51. John Quincy Adams, “J. Q. Adams on the Opium War,” Proceedings of the Massachu-
setts Historical Society 43 (February 1910): 295–325; emphasis in original.
52. Yung, Change, and Lai, Chinese American Voices, 104.
53. Adam McKeown, “Ritualization of Regulation: The Enforcement of Chinese Exclusion
in the United States and China,” American Historical Review 108, no. 2 (April 2003): 377–403.
Chapter Four
American Protestantism
Roots in China
Chapter 3 sheds light on the varied approaches taken to Chinese immigration

in the United States by the early twentieth century. Among those business,
social, and religious groups that aided Chinese migrants in their struggle
against racism, injustice, and exclusion on American soil were the Christian
churches. This chapter shifts the geographical focus to the work and influ-
ence of U.S. Protestant churches in China, which is still an unfinished story:
as an outgrowth of the worldwide evangelical movement, over the past four
decades Christianity has come to form an important part of the Chinese
spiritual landscape with around forty million adherents (about 3 percent of
the entire population), according to official figures. 1 At the time of writing in
January 2021, when U.S.-China relations hit their lowest point since the
establishment of diplomatic relations in 1979, it is of particular importance to
reflect on the human element in the relationship, which is eminently repre-
sented in the study of Christianity in China. How did Christianity—a foreign
religion in origin—take root in China? What kind of impact did the emergent
forms of Chinese Christianity have on China, the United States, and their
peoples? The early encounters between American Protestantism and China
hold some answers.
73
74 Chapter 4
AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA:

THE BACKDROP
Beginning with the earliest plantings of Christian faith in Chinese soil, this
section covers the international and domestic context of the American mis-
sionary movement and its broad impact on Qing China.
The first known contact between the Chinese and Christianity occurred at
the beginning of the Tang dynasty (618–960) when Nestorian missionaries
from Persian Mesopotamia settled in China. In the thirteenth century, two
major Catholic religious orders, the Franciscans and Dominicans, were
founded. In 1289, the Franciscan Friar John of Monte Corvino (1247–1328)
was dispatched via India and Central Asia to Beijing, at the time ruled by the
Yuan Mongols (1279–1368). 2 A new wave of Roman Catholic missions
arrived in the sixteenth century, part of the Jesuit promulgation of Christian-
ity in Asia and Ming China (1368–1644). Over 450 Jesuits, including the
Italian missionary Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), labored in China until the dis-
solution of the Society of Jesus in 1773. The worldwide Catholic missionary
movement was overseen by a special Vatican agency established in the
seventeenth century, the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, giv-
ing Christianity a truly global reach. In China, the Congregation operated
through administrative divisions known as vicariates apostolic, each headed
by a vicar apostolic who held the rank of bishop in the Church’s hierarchy.
The vicariate apostolic was based on provincial boundaries, and each vicari-
ate was entrusted to a particular religious order. 3
By the early nineteenth century, the total number of Catholics in China
was around 200,000 to 250,000. This was the time when a resurgence of
interest in Catholic missions took place in Europe, marked by the revival of
established religious orders as well as the establishment of new congrega-
tions and societies. One noted example was the Society for the Propagation
of the Faith, founded in France in 1822 in order to stimulate support for
global missions. In 1839, there were 57 foreign Catholic priests working in
China, 114 native priests, and an estimated 303,000 converts. 4 Hard on the
heels of their Catholic counterparts, Protestant missionaries in Britain and
later in the United States were infusing new zeal into the international evan-
gelical movement that had arisen from the Evangelical Revival and the First
and Second Great Awakenings at the close of the eighteenth century. These
movements bore fruit in the founding of new Protestant denominations and
transnational institutions, including the Methodist Church (founded in 1784),
the London Missionary Society (1795), the Church Missionary Society
(1799), the British and Foreign Bible Society (1804), the YMCA (1844 in
London), the YWCA (1855), and the Salvation Army (1865). All were clam-
oring for overseas missions.
American Protestantism 75
The arrival in China of Robert Morrison (1782–1834) of the London

Missionary Society in 1807 signified the official beginnings of the Protestant
enterprise in China. The founder of the Anglo-Chinese College in Malacca in
1818, Morrison translated the Old and New Testaments with the aid of
William Milne and compiled the first Chinese-English dictionary.
As elsewhere in the nineteenth century, the rapid growth of Protestant
faith in the United States went hand in hand with industrialization and the
growth of nation-states. This desire to spread the gospel of individual salva-
tion through foreign missions was a significant aspect of social development
in America, particularly in the northeastern United States. Five mission
boards played a key role in the development of foreign missions: the Phila-
delphia Bible Society (1808), the American Board of Commissioners for
Foreign Missions (1810), the American Baptist Board of Foreign Missions
(1814), and the Episcopal and Methodist missions (both founded in 1820). In
addition, the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions—based on a
millenarian revivalism that stressed the urgent need to evangelize the world
before the Second Coming of Christ—energized college graduates for mis-
sionary work overseas. 5 Unlike Hawaii, the Mediterranean, the Near and
Middle East, and South Asia, China did not become a priority for missionary
endeavor until the 1890s. Nevertheless, the American missionary movement
in China was played out on an international scale—comparable to the evan-
gelical revival in other parts of the world.
In contrast with the entrance into China of first Catholic and then British
missionaries, the American Protestant undertaking was a late starter—begin-
ning with the arrival of Elijah C. Bridgman (1801–1861) in Canton in Febru-
ary 1830—but was carried out with considerable energy. Bridgman, a Con-
gregationalist and a graduate of Amherst College and the Andover Theologi-
cal Seminary, was appointed by the American Board of Commissioners for
Foreign Missions to proselytize in China. Until 1847, he was the editor of
The Chinese Repository (1832–1851), a monthly English-language magazine
published in Canton and a valuable source of information for contemporary
researchers. 6 American Catholicism arrived even later, not making an entry
into China until the First World War. The American missionary movement in
China came to an end when the United States and China clashed with each
other in the Korean War in 1951. Chinese Christianity, however, persisted
and increasingly took on an indigenous flavor.
“FLAWED BUT SINCERE SOWERS OF THE SEED” 7:

AMERICAN MISSIONS AND TREATY RIGHTS
In China, as elsewhere in the nineteenth century, the Bible followed the flag.
The way was opened for a considerable expansion of Christian activities in
76 Chapter 4
China by the opium treaties of 1842–1844 (including the Sino-British Treaty

of Nanjing and the Treaty of Wanghia between the United States and China)
and the 1858 Sino-French Treaty of Tianjin.
Although the opium treaties contained no explicit provisions on proselyt-
izing, missionaries were entitled to take up residence, like other foreigners, in
the five treaty ports of Guangzhou (Canton), Xiamen (Amoy), Fuzhou
(Foochow), Ningbo (Ningpo), and Shanghai. Here they enjoyed immunity
from Chinese law under treaty stipulations dealing with extraterritoriality and
most-favored-nation status. Foreign residents continued to lobby and pres-
sure the Chinese and their own governments for increased protection. How-
ever, such conspicuous political favoritism proved to be a liability for mis-
sionaries, particularly in the 1920s when Chinese nationalism was reaching a
peak.
In the 1840s, military conflicts between the Qing and foreign govern-
ments often put American missionaries on the spot and pointed out the
contradictions inherent in the relationship between politics, diplomacy, and
Christian missions. The gathering storm of the Opium War confronted
American missionaries with a moral dilemma, as illustrated in an editorial by
Elijah Bridgman in The Chinese Repository. To Bridgman, the coming Sino-
British clash was a “trial for supremacy,” as “[m]odern improvements, in
sciences and arts, have greatly changed the relations of states and empires.”
Blaming the Qing government for refusing to change and for rejecting Brit-
ish overtures, Bridgman asserted, “The time has come when CHINA MUST
BEND or BREAK [sic].” It was the will of Providence that the restrictions on
foreign contact and the dissemination of Christianity imposed by China be
removed. Although it was right that the Chinese government should strive to
prevent opium—“the deadly charm”—from entering China, the means it
employed were unacceptable. In the end, Bridgman’s position left him am-
bivalent, recognizing Chinese autonomy but seeking a minimal level of inter-
vention from Great Britain when required: “The British government, we are
unwilling to believe, will seek for anything beyond what is just and right.
Accordingly we conclude that, simple redress for injuries sustained, with
ample securities for the future, will be the two grand objects aimed at.” 8
In an article published in 1900, Charles Denby, former U.S. minister to
China, described the protection secured for missionaries under the treaties
China had signed with Britain, the United States, France, and Russia in
1842–1844 and 1858–1860 as “toleration clauses.” “The toleration clauses in
these treaties allow missionaries to reside at all open ports, and to prosecute
their religious and charitable work. They may also travel in every province.” 9
Several articles in the Sino-French Treaty of Tianjin and the Beijing
Convention signed in 1858 and 1860 addressed the issue of Catholic mis-
sions and extended benefits to Protestant endeavors due to the most-favored-
nation provisions. Signed by Baron Gros for France, and Guiliang and Hu-
ashana, Article 13 of the Treaty of Tianjin specifically extended permission

to Catholic missionaries to preach in the interior and mandated protection for
Chinese converts. All previous anti-Christian documents were renounced. In
the Chinese text of the 1860 Beijing Convention—but not in the French text
of the same treaty—it was permitted to the French priests “to rent and pur-
chase land in all the provinces, and to erect buildings thereon at their pleas-
ure.” 10
Most American missionaries supported these treaties, which imposed on
China responsibility for ensuring freedom of religion and its promulgation.
Elijah Bridgman and Peter Parker (1804–1888), for example, assisted Caleb
Cushing in various treaty negotiations, as did the Presbyterian William Alex-
ander Parsons Martin in the talks over the Tianjin Treaty. Parker, a medical
missionary, rendered his first services to the U.S. government in his role as
Chinese secretary and advisor to the Cushing-led mission in 1844. “My most
sanguine hopes have been exceeded in the results of these negotiations, by
which a treaty of peace, amity, and commerce has been concluded between
America and China on terms the most honorable and advantageous to both
nations.” 11
With the protection afforded by the treaties, both Catholic and Protestant
missionary movements experienced unprecedented growth after 1860—al-
though their respective governing bodies did not often see eye to eye. 12 By
1870, there were roughly 250 European Catholic priests active in China.
Fifteen years later, this figure had jumped to 488, and by 1900 it stood at
886.
Differing in numerous respects from centrally organized Catholicism, by
the end of 1851 the Protestant churches had eighteen independent denomina-
tional societies, with a total of 150 missionaries deployed in Hong Kong,
Macau, Malacca, Bangkok, Singapore, Canton, Fuzhou, Amoy, Shanghai,
Ningbo, and other centers in Asia. The missions involved included the Lon-
don Missionary Society, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign
Missions, the American Baptist Missionary Union, the Board of Foreign
Missions of the Presbyterian Church of the United States, and the Methodist
Missionary Society of USA, to name only a few.
The five treaty ports and China’s coastal cities became Protestant strong-
holds from the beginning. American missionaries outnumbered their British
counterparts. Of the 150 missionaries mentioned above, 88 were Americans
and 47 British, the rest coming from the European continent. In China prop-
er, 44 were from the United States and 23 from Britain. 13 The number of
American missionaries neared the 100 mark around 1860. 14 By 1870, 200
American missionaries were stationed in China. The growth of foreign mis-
sions was startling. In 1900 there were 61 missionary societies active in
China, and by 1920 the number had increased to 130. By 1907, among 3,445
Protestant missionaries, 37 percent were from the United States and 52 per-
78 Chapter 4
cent from Britain (a move back in Britain’s favor). By 1920, there were more
than 6,500 Protestant missionaries in China, with close to 350,000 converts
in nineteen provinces. On the Catholic side, it was claimed that in 1920 the
Church had over 2 million believers in the country. 15
Despite attempts to push into the interior and into the countryside, by the
early 1920s Protestantism was pretty much a coastal and urban phenomenon.
Two-thirds of the missionaries and a third of all Chinese Christian workers
lived in cities of over 50,000 inhabitants. However, these cities constituted
only 6 percent of China’s total population of 440 million. 16
THE TAIPING REBELLION

AND AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY
The Taiping Rebellion was, in the words of historian Daniel Bays, “China’s
first indigenous Christian movement,” a distinct religious phenomenon that
piqued the interest of European and American Protestant missionaries in
China. 17 In July 1851, The Chinese Repository gave notice of an anti-Qing
insurgency that went under the name of Taiping: “There is a very general
impression in Canton and its vicinity that they are somehow connected with
foreigners and with Christianity, and the term Shangti Hwui [the God-Wor-
shipper’s Society] is often applied to them.” 18 In August 1853, The Indepen-
dent, a Boston-based newspaper, gave a further glimpse of Taiping—a “very
extraordinary movement”—and of its leaders, who were professing Chris-
tians. 19 Treating the alleged Christian character of the movement with a
pinch of salt, The Independent correspondent nevertheless accurately ob-
served that “strong religious as well as anti-Tartar [Manchu] feelings pre-
vailed” among the rebels.
Continuing for thirteen years, from 1851 to 1864, and causing enormous
devastation, the Taiping Rebellion originated in a poor region of Guangxi
Province in South China. The rebellion—a civil war—was responsible for
the destruction of around twenty million lives and over six hundred cities. In
1863, American metallurgist and mining engineer Raphael Pumpelly charted
a boat up the Yangzi River, noting that “[t]he progress of the rebels was
everywhere marked by destruction, rapine, and murder. Nowhere did they
attempt a reorganization of the industry and society which they had trampled
down.” 20
The Taiping Rebellion was led by Hong Xiuquan from Huaxian, a village
about thirty miles from Canton. 21 After three failed attempts to pass the civil
service examinations in 1837, Hong had experienced a nervous breakdown.
Bedridden for over a month, the hallucinating Hong believed that he had
ascended into heaven where he met an awe-inspiring elderly figure—God in
his later interpretation—who bestowed on him a sword and a seal tied with a
ribbon (signifying power) to subdue devils and teach people to do good

deeds. In his dream, Hong also encountered an “older brother,” whom he
identified as Jesus, to assist him in slaying demons, which he interpreted to
mean the Qing regime. Hong’s personal disillusion with the Qing system, as
well as his exposure to the teachings of the American Baptist missionary
Issachar Roberts and Christian tracts in Chinese—including Quanshi lian-
gyan (Good words to admonish the world), compiled by Liang Afa (Fa),
Robert Morrison’s first Chinese convert—kindled a revolutionary resolve in
him. In this way a religious, militant movement, Bai Shangdi Hui (the God-
Worshippers Society) came to be formed among the economically and so-
cially disadvantaged villagers and miners of Guangxi Province, neighboring
Guangdong.
Numbering one to two million, in early 1851 the Taiping rebels estab-
lished their own government in Jintian, Guangxi, calling it Taiping Tianguo
(the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace) and declaring Hong as their king. In
March 1853, the Taipings took over Nanjing on the Yangzi River as their
capital. With followers taking the Bible as their testament and hostile to
Manchu rule and imperial institutions, Taiping beliefs were a dynamic blend
of Anglo-American Protestantism with anti-government ideas and Chinese
popular religion. To many missionaries and other foreigners, this heterodox
mix originated from their “monstrous misapprehension” of the Old Testa-
ment, which left them “no better than Mormons or Mohammedans.” 22 As
American medical missionary Charles Taylor noted, “[T]he Old Testament is
much more in favor than the new and hence, while the ten commandments
[sic] are the established rule of life, polygamy is lawful and prevalent: and to
destroy enemies is not only lawful, but a religious obligation.” 23 Despite
these deviations in doctrine and practice, the Taipings proved fascinating to
foreigners, particularly the missionaries—who disagreed among themselves
over Sabbatarianism, methods of immersion in the rite of baptism, and
whether the correct term for “God” in Chinese was Shangdi, Shen, or Tian-
zhu.
Initially, the movement enjoyed some diplomatic credibility. The British
governor of Hong Kong, Sir George Bonham, was the first diplomat to visit
the Taiping rebels in Nanjing in April 1853, followed in 1854 by Robert
McLane, American minister to China.
American missionaries were often sympathetic to the insurgents and
made serious attempts to visit them, despite the physical and legal risks
involved. The legal obstacle was the passing by the U.S. Congress on August
11, 1848, of an act explicitly outlawing Americans’ involvement in anti-
Chinese government activities: “That murder and insurrection, or rebellion
against the Chinese government, with intent to subvert the same, shall be
capital offences, punishable with death.” 24 In a clear violation of the
American government’s neutrality, Charles Taylor made two trips to the
80 Chapter 4
Taiping camp in June 1853. He was the first missionary to do so and later
wrote an account of his adventures. The Qing government deployed strong
forces to besiege the insurgents on land and blockade them on the water.
With the aid of a Chinese guide, Taylor at one point passed the government
fleet in the dark.
We were hailed several times and threatened with being fired upon. I had
enjoined perfect silence; but my boatmen, who were very much alarmed,
wished to comply with the command to “come to,” and go up alongside. I,
however, positively forbade it, and said, “let them fire—they are poor marks-
men at best, for it is seldom they can hit an object in the daytime, and it is not
likely they can hit us in this dark night!” 25
In the end, however, the forces arrayed against the Taiping rebels proved too
powerful. These included internal strife and conflicting claims to enjoying
direct access to God among the Taiping leaders, and the emergence of a new
type of Qing army—known as Xiangjun (the Hunan Army, originally a local
militia) and Huaijun (the Anhui Army). These twin forces were led respec-
tively by two great statesmen, Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang, who were
loyalists of the imperial Manchu court and staunch defenders of the Confu-
cian moral order. Their support, together with the intervention of the “Ever-
Victorious Army” under the command of the American Frederick Ward and
the British Charles Gordon, brought the Taiping Rebellion to an end in 1864.
To foreign witnesses, such as Consul Harvey of Ningpo in 1862, the
Taiping Rebellion was doomed in its own self-making by virtue of its own
self-making:
Three months have elapsed since Ningpo fell into the hands of insurgents; and
from the hour of its capture to the moment when I am penning these lines, not
one single step in the direction of a “good government” has been taken by the
Taipings—not any attempt made to organize a political body or commercial
institutions—not a vestige, not a trace of anything approaching to order, or
regularity of action, or consistency of purpose, can be found in any one of their
public acts. . . . It is palpable that a party which, after ten years’ full trial, is
found to produce nothing, and to destroy everything, cannot pretend to last, or
be admitted, even indirectly, into the comity of nations. 26
The Taipings provided a foretaste of the Chinese version of Christian salva-

tion as a mass social movement, although American missionaries for the
most part came to reject this early indigenous “fruit” of their labor on Chi-
nese soil. Historian Kenneth S. Latourette expressed the Western consensus
when he described the Taipings as “a Chinese sect, displaying some interest-
ing results of contact with Christianity, but drawing most of its beliefs and
characteristics from its Chinese environment and the erratic genius of its
leaders.” 27
AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY AS BOTH

A FOREIGN AND CHINESE INSTITUTION
Anti-Christian Violence
The varied, often contradictory experience of Christianity in China involved

both conflict and accommodation. 28 From its beginnings in China, the mis-
sionary movement provoked a countermovement—at times a violent one—
among Chinese elites, officials, and ordinary people. During the seven
decades from 1840 to 1910, there were probably more than 1,500 violent
anti-Christian incidents (jiao’an 教案), disturbances, or riots directed against
missionaries, church property, and Chinese converts. 29
At its heart, the American “missionary problem” had two main causes.
First, Christianity did not (and does not) operate in a spiritual vacuum in
China. Its major rivals were (and still are) traditional Confucianism, Daoism,
Buddhism, Islam, and folk beliefs. 30 Long before the entry of Protestantism
into China, a series of works by elite scholars portrayed Christianity as a
heterodox sect that threatened the moral, political, and social stability of
China. 31 To many, Christianity was in league with the subversive White
Lotus and Taiping rebels. Anti-Christian agitation and scandalmongering fed
off these established cultural and psychological associations. In June 1870,
rumors mushroomed in Tianjin that French Catholic priests—sponsored by
the Oeuvre de la Sainte-Enfance (Society of the Holy Childhood)—were
kidnapping children and putting them in orphanages. There, allegedly, their
eyes were gouged out and their hearts and other body parts were removed to
make grisly medicine. The resulting popular outburst of anti-Christian feel-
ing led to the deaths of twenty foreigners in Tianjin, including the French
consul, two priests, and ten nuns. 32
Other incidents were sparked by foreign clergy insisting on building their
mission stations, churches, and Bible schools at sites considered sacred by
local Chinese or linked with geomancy, prescribing the destiny of the town
or village concerned. 33 The Fuzhou (Foochow, a treaty port) missionary
incident was a typical example. In August 1878, despite repeated peaceful
displays of opposition from locals, the Reverend John R. Wolfe of the
Church Missionary Society went ahead with the construction of a new school
on a site known as Black Boulder Hill, a sacred hill in Fuzhou. Angry
residents from all social classes burned the offending building to the ground,
although with no serious injury or loss of life. Wolfe was proficient in both
written and spoken Chinese—according to Sir Thomas Wade, British minis-
ter to China—but he possessed “an indifference to popular feeling.”
The second barrier for foreign missions was linked to their privileged
position. Since the 1840s, relations between the missionaries and the Chinese
had developed within the legal framework of nonreciprocal treaty rights and
82 Chapter 4
obligations contracted between various foreign countries and China. This

situation had created an inequitable political, socioeconomic, and cultural
environment that had the potential to ignite popular antipathy to the privi-
leged missionaries and their converts in local communities. In response to
acts of violence against the missions and opposition from Chinese officials,
American missionaries demanded that military force be used to protect them.
In May 1895, anti-missionary riots broke out in Chengdu, Sichuan, causing
damage to American, British, Canadian, and French mission property.
Charles Denby, American minister to China (1885–1898), along with the
French and British ministers, had warships rushed to the Yangzi region and
ultimately forced the Qing government to remove Governor Liu Bingzhang
and punish other officials involved. 34
There were also incidents in which Chinese believers in dispute with non-
Christian Chinese resorted for support to Christian clergy who were ready to
demand—and usually succeeded in obtaining—protection, intervention, and
redress for their people from their diplomatic ministers and consuls in Chi-
na. 35 The study by Joseph Tse-Hei Lee shows how “missionary trouble” was
compounded by competition for Chinese converts. One such incident took
place in Kuxi, a village near Canton, and involved Protestant (the American
Baptist Missionary Society) and Catholic (the Paris Foreign Missions) mis-
sionaries. Preexisting communal feuds between clans and within lineages
were translated into violent conflicts between the Baptist and Catholic village
communities. The clergy took sides with their own converts and persuaded
their own governments and the Chinese government to intervene in village
politics. 36
Chinese living in the United States, on the other hand, enjoyed no treaty
protections. As we have seen in the preceding chapter, while insisting on the
supremacy of the U.S. Constitution over its treaty obligations toward China,
American courts and executive officers were inclined to reject the argu-
ment—made by the Qing government and some Chinese residents and their
supporters in the United States—that the American Chinese exclusion laws
were in violation of its treaties with China. At the same time, when American
missionaries were subjected to violence, the U.S. government demanded that
China fulfill its treaty obligations. In June 1869, J. Ross Browne, American
minister to China (1868–1869), broached the missionary troubles in a dis-
patch to Hamilton Fish, secretary of state:
I would simply say, in reference to this question, that either the missionaries
should be protected, in their rights as citizens, or the provision of treaty which
guarantees that protection to them should be annulled. . . . Where is the ameli-
oration to come from? My own belief is that it will come from foreign war, or
the shock of revolution. Retrogression must end sooner or later. No Govern-
ment [Chinese government] can persistently evade its obligations to the world
at large, without final sacrifice of its sovereign power. These outrages upon
missionaries, I have no doubt, will continue till force is interposed to arrest

them. 37
The Boxer Uprising of 1899–1900
The Boxer Uprising was a violent, and ultimately tragic, mass movement
directed against Christians and foreigners and widely supported by impover-
ished peasants during the late nineteenth century. The revolt was sparked by
a potent mix of misery and resentment resulting from natural disasters, ongo-
ing foreign domination, and hostility between Christians and non-Christians
in southwest and northwest Shandong. 38
In 1898, the Yellow River flooded over two thousand villages in Shan-
dong followed by severe drought. The suffering and displacement of the rural
population that resulted from natural disasters provided fertile soil for social
discontent. The escalation in acts of violence directed against Christians in
Shandong also contributed to the explosive growth of the Boxer Movement
in spring 1900. In the Liyuantun Incident of 1897, for instance, the Plum
Flower Boxers—one of the main organizations involved in the Boxer Upris-
ing—and their followers attacked a Catholic church and killed one local
believer in Liyuantun, Guan County. The incident originated from long-
standing friction between missionaries, Christian converts, and non-Christian
villagers led by the local gentry over the erection of a Catholic church on the
site of a village temple in the 1880s.
Another event that exacerbated anti-foreign sentiment in the region was
the Juye Incident: in November 1897, Richard Henle and Francis Xavier
Nies, two German Catholic missionaries of the Society of the Divine Word,
were murdered by bandits. The Big Sword Society, another key organization
in the Boxer Uprising, was allegedly behind the killings. Under pressure
from the German government, the Qing government sentenced two main
suspects to death; fired or demoted local officials including Li Bingheng,
governor of Shandong; rebuilt churches; and compensated the church for
property damage. Germany exploited the opportunity further and forced the
Chinese government into leasing it the coveted Jiaozhou Bay and port of
Qingdao on the Shandong Peninsula. This triggered a scramble for conces-
sions and spheres of influence among the foreign powers in China and
prompted the circulation of the American Open Door notes, as discussed in
chapter 2.
Lacking a unified leadership and believing in supernatural interventions
such as spirit possession and invulnerability to weapons, the Boxers, also
known as the Society of Righteousness and Harmony (Yihetuan), promoted
the practice of martial arts among their followers. Encouraged by conserva-
tive members of the Qing court, displaced Chinese from rural areas began
indiscriminately targeting local Christians and destroying symbols of foreign
84 Chapter 4
influence such as railways and telegraph lines. In summer 1900, swarms of

poor peasants marched on Tianjin and Beijing, launching attacks on foreign-
ers and mission stations in North China. They besieged the foreign legations
in Beijing for fifty-five days (June 20–August 14) and killed foreigners,
including the German minister Baron von Ketteler. In the province of Shanxi
alone, 159 foreign missionaries lost their lives amid the violence—over 80
percent of the foreign missionaries killed that year in the whole of China. 39
In mid-August 1900, a twenty-thousand-strong relief force—half of them
Japanese and the rest Russians, British Indians, French, Germans,
Americans, Italians, and Austrians—arrived in Beijing and crushed the Box-
ers. The “liberation” of Beijing was followed by a military occupation and
accompanied by a reign of terror and plunder. President William McKinley
sent about 3,500 American troops under the command of Colonel Adna
Chaffee, posted from Cuba, to join the coalition. 40
China was to pay a high price for the uprising. On September 7, 1901, the
Boxer Protocol, consisting of twelve articles, was signed by Li Hongzhang
and representatives of eleven nations (Germany, Great Britain, Austria-Hun-
gary, Belgium, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Russia, and the
United States). First, the Qing government agreed to erect monuments to the
memory of the German minister and the over two hundred other Westerners
who had been killed. Second, China was to execute those high officials who
had supported the Boxers. Third, China was to pay an indemnity of 450
million taels (the Qing government’s annual revenue was only 250 million
taels). Fourth, the importation of arms was forbidden. Fifth, the foreign lega-
tion quarters were to be strengthened with fortified garrisons. Sixth, the
Zongli Yamen (the Office of General Management of Foreign Affairs,
founded in 1861) was to become the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This was to
raise the status of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which had been low in
rank compared with other government ministries in China. Seventh, China
agreed to carry out thoroughgoing domestic reforms including reform of its
laws.
The Boxer Uprising and its revengeful suppression sparked mixed reac-
tions in the United States. In 1900, in his annual message to Congress, after
crowing over America’s prosperity, especially the almost $80 million surplus
revenue for the fiscal year, President William McKinley described the Boxer
Uprising as “the dominant question” in American foreign relations. To him
the Boxer trouble lay “deep in the character of the Chinese races and in the
traditions of their Government.” 41 However, the same events were perceived
quite differently by some other Americans. In an article published in the Los
Angeles Times in 1901, the anonymous author expressed strong criticism of
the Western powers:
While attending the coronation the other day—I beg pardon, the inaugura-
tion—of President McKinley, I asked a member of the Committee on Foreign
Affairs what he thought of the position in China. “Barbarians don’t interest
me,” he replied. He there voiced the opinion of millions, both in America and
Europe. This is their mental attitude toward one of the most interesting crises
in modern history. . . . The murder of Baron Von Ketteler and the attack on the
legations were absolutely inexcusable. . . . But the attack on the legations,
horrible as it was, has been avenged ten-fold. The conduct of a great portion of
the allied troops has been so utterly disgraceful to Western civilization that it is
a most disagreeable task to a historian to refer to it, and it is absolutely
impossible to go into a description of details. To an impartial observer, if the
term “barbarian” was to be applied to either side, it might just as fittingly be
applied to the invaders as to the invaded. 42
These sentiments echoed the attitudes of some Chinese contemporaries of the

Boxers, who saw the Boxer Movement as motivated by patriotism—albeit in
backward, xenophobic dress—directed against foreign domination. In 1901,
Liang Qichao commented,
The Boxer Movement was essentially driven by patriotic sentiments, for the
sake of empowering China and resisting foreigners. The movement simply
erupted at the time, lacking any particular men of genius or advanced military
technology. Despite being totally defeated, the movement had its own legiti-
macy. People from all over responded. From now on, the spirit it embodied
will surely strike root in the hearts of the people and spread its influence to the
whole country. 43
Changing China: The American Social Gospel
Despite their severity at particular moments and in particular places, in-

stances of violent confrontation and anti-missionary agitation should not be
taken as representing the full Christian experience in China. Collaboration,
appreciation, and localization (in the sense of the indigenization of the Chris-
tian Gospel) were also integral to the interaction between American Protes-
tantism and Chinese society.
Quite a few American missionaries adjusted themselves to their new en-
vironment. They concerned themselves not only with saving souls but also
with modernizing China by propagating the American way of life, dissemi-
nating science and technology, pursuing education and medical reform, and
involvement in disaster relief work. In support of the Self-Strengthening
Movement of the 1860s under the Tongzhi emperor (r. 1861–1875), Protes-
tant missionaries including John Fryer assisted Qing statesmen Zeng Guo-
fang, Li Hongzhang, and Zuo Zongtang in building modern arsenals at Jiang-
nan and Fuzhou and shipyards, textile mills, coal mines, iron factories, rail-
roads, and telegraph and electric companies. The impact of American mis-
86 Chapter 4
sionaries on Chinese modernization efforts reached a peak during the Hun-

dred Days’ Reform of 1898.
The missionaries also created their own development institutions.
Founded in 1894 by Reverend Gilbert Reid (1857–1927), the Mission among
the Higher Classes of China exerted a significant influence on reform-orient-
ed elites in Beijing. 44 Insofar as it was a modernizing and progressive cultu-
ral force, the American social gospel found a warm reception in local Chi-
nese communities.
A further significant contribution by American Protestant missionaries
was made in the sphere of publishing. In addition to translating and publish-
ing Christian literature in Chinese, they produced books on Western culture
and learning as well as publications for foreign and Chinese readers about
China, the United States, and the world at large. These influential publica-
tions and translations included The Chinese Repository, edited by Elijah C.
Bridgman; Bridgman’s Meilige guo zhilüe (A Brief Account of the United
States of America), published in 1838; Wanguo gongfa, published in 1864 in
Beijing; W. A. P. Martin’s translation of Henry Wheaton’s Elements of Inter-
national Law; and Jiaohui xinbao (The Church Newspaper), a weekly maga-
zine by Young John Allen (1836–1907). 45
In the field of medicine, Peter Parker, a Yale graduate, was the first
American medical missionary dispatched to China. Parker opened the Can-
ton Hospital in 1835, one of the first hospitals in China, and founded the
Medical Missionary Society in China in 1838. Over the forty-four years from
1855 to 1899, as head of the Canton Hospital, John G. Kerr (1824–1901) of
the American Presbyterian Mission treated 740,000 patients and performed
49,000 operations. 46 By 1920, Protestant missions had established over 326
hospitals in 237 Chinese cities. Fujian Province took the lead in the number
of missionary residential centers with thirty-one Christian hospitals, followed
by Guangdong (twenty-seven), Shandong (twenty), Sichuan (twenty), and
Manchuria (twenty). 47 American Protestant missionaries were also involved
in medical education, training some of China’s first modern physicians such
as Ho Kai and Sun Yat-sen. Toleration and mutual appreciation were a social
fact embedded in the interaction between some missionaries and the local
communities they served. Edward Bliss, a medical missionary, was stationed
from 1892 to 1932 in Shaowu—a remote town 250 miles from Fuzhou—
under the auspices of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign
Missions. His years in China transformed him. Writing to his relatives in
Newbury, Massachusetts, he said, “[N]ever since I came here have I seen any
indication that the people don’t want us here.” 48
They [the Chinese] taught him [Bliss] moderation, and they taught him under-
standing. In letters he stopped referring to “the heathen.” It was not that he no
longer cared about whether China became a Christian nation. . . . It was, rather,
that he had acquired so much respect for the Chinese that he could no longer
call them heathen. The term stuck in his throat. They became, instead, Taoist,
Buddhist, or Mohammedan. He had respect for them, first of all, as individu-
als. He healed them, delivered their babies—or lost them—one at a time. Each
Chinese colleague is referred to in his letters as So-and-so Xian, or Mr. So-
and-so. He simply could have used their surnames. He never did. 49
Education was considered the “responsibility of the Christian Church” and

was not limited to its communicant membership. The American Protestant
missions believed that “through the Christian school it is possible to make
distinct contributions not only to the religious training of the younger genera-
tion, but also to the social, economic, and physical welfare of society in
general.” 50 By 1920, the total number of lower primary schools run by mis-
sions was 5,637, compared with 956 higher primary schools and 291 middle
schools; the students enrolled in Protestant primary and middle schools to-
taled almost 200,000. 51
In the realm of higher education, American Protestantism with its strong
social agenda took the lead, outshining their Protestant peers from other
countries and the Catholic missions. Before 1952, there were eighteen Chris-
tian colleges and universities, the majority of which were either founded or
mainly financed by Americans. Those institutions run by Protestant missions
were Canton Christian College (Lingnan University, Lingnan daxue), Fujian
Christian University (Fujian xiehe daxue), Ginling College (Jinling nü wenli
xueyuan), Hangchou University (Zhejiang daxue), Hsiang-Ya Medical Col-
lege (Xiangya yixueyuan, also Yale-in-China, in Changsha), Huachung Uni-
versity (Huazhong daxue), Hwa Nan College (Huanan nü wenli xueyuan),
Shangtung University (Qilu daxue), St. John’s University (Sheng yuehan
daxue), Soochow University (Dongwu daxue), the University of Nanking
(Jinling daxue), the University of Shanghai (Hujiang daxue), the Women’s
Christian Medical College (Shanghai nüzi yixueyuan), West China Union
University (Huaxi xiehe daxue Chengdu, founded in 1911), and Yenching
University (Yanjing daxue). The Catholic institutions were Aurora Univer-
sity (Zhendan daxue), the Catholic University (Furen daxue), and Tsinku
University (Jingu daxue, in Tianjin).
There was no greater index of the changes brought about by American
Protestantism than the increase in the numbers of educated Christian Chinese
women. Established in 1888 by Andrew Happer, an American Presbyterian
missionary, and operating until 1952, Canton Christian College (Lingnan
University) spearheaded coeducation and higher education for women in
China. It was the first Christian college to admit girls to the secondary
grades, in 1903, and the first to open its collegiate courses to females, from
1908 on. Education for women at Lingnan was developed through a combi-
nation of its increasing public profile, especially in the media, and pragma-
88 Chapter 4
tism with roots in both American and Southern Chinese culture. In church
newspapers such as Wanguo gongbao, extensive coverage of women’s rights
and education for women in countries such as England, France, Germany,
India, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Persia, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland,
Turkey, and the United States prepared the ground for the advent of women’s
education in China. 52
What advantages did modern education hold for Chinese women? Liu
Fung Hin, a former Lingnan student (she was also a graduate of Wellesley
College and the Teachers College at Columbia University), argued that high-
er education would equip Chinese women to better follow their vocation as
bridge builders and peacemakers:
The task that the modern woman has before her is not the copying of the West
here and the East there, but rather of creating a new thing through a deeper
appreciation of what is best in both. . . . The woman of China in her eagerness
to follow her western sisters must not forget the legacy that has been handed
down to her. Her duty is to make music and harmony out of the world of
strife. . . . It is the task of the modern woman to extend this influence through-
out society and to fill the whole world with the melody of calm and peace. 53
America’s missionary heritage in China included the sustained promotion of

Chinese culture, religion, society, and antiquities, as well as general China
studies. This occurred within a wide-ranging intellectual context. As I have
pointed out elsewhere, a turning point in Euro-American discourses about the
East was reached between 1870 and the turn of the century, during the
American Gilded Age and for most of the European Belle Époque. The
diverse intellectual interests and ideas that had emerged since the early eight-
eenth century gradually converged in a quest to answer existential questions,
wisdom that could be found neither in existing religious faiths, national
cultures, nor the pan-European classicist tradition. The main branches of
Christianity came under pressure to explain history, defend rituals, and ac-
commodate modern advances in science and other branches of learning. The
exclusive claims to universal truth made by each of the world religions were
questioned. 54
To American missionaries like Gilbert Reid (1857–1927), the study of
Chinese religions, for example, served his proselytizing cause, while the
study of language would serve to justify the aim of Christianity as a universal
fellowship of humanity. Born in Laurel, New York, in 1857, Reid graduated
from Whitestown Seminary in 1875 and the Union Theological Seminary in
1882. He arrived in Shanghai in 1882 to begin mission work and died there in
1927. Reid’s writings provide some of the earliest serious investigations into
understanding China’s people, culture, and language. His work constitutes an
attempt to assess the progress and adapt the strategies of Christian mission-
ary work, an aim exemplified in the statistical reports summarizing the
“progress of mission work in Cathay” appended to his Glances at China

(1892).
Reid wrote about the importance of “adopting the native costume” of the
Mandarins in order to better relate to the local people. For example, the
China Inland Mission and the English Baptist Society, even “Roman Catho-
lic priests, who plainly have given up all ties in their native land,” were all
conforming to local customs and dress. 55 This aspect was treated in greater
detail in his later work, A Christian’s Appreciation of Other Faiths (1921), in
appreciation of Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Catholi-
cism, Unitarianism, etc. “The suggestion is thrown out that if appreciation of
other Faiths is desirable and productive of good, so appreciation of other
nations and peoples—thinking of the good and not the evil—may be the best
way to bring about reconciliation, lasting peace and sure friendship.” 56 Thus,
it would be erroneous to assume that change and influence was a one-way
street—very often it was the American missionaries who intended to change
others who ended up being changed themselves. 57
CONCLUSION
The early history of American Christianity in China was full of contradic-

tions. The widespread anti-Christian agitation discussed in this chapter tells a
tale of confrontation, protest, and resistance. The other, parallel story was
one of appreciation, accommodation, and collaboration. More importantly,
what emerged from the transfer of Christianity to Qing China was an adapted
version of American Protestantism that was in competition with other relig-
ions and beliefs in China for souls and allegiance.
I can find no single example that offers a more nuanced account of the
Christian experience in China than that of John Livingstone Nevius
(1829–1893), an influential American missiologist and Presbyterian mission-
ary who lived in China for forty years.
John Nevius went to China with his wife in 1853 and was first dispatched
to Ningbo. In 1860, the couple moved north to Chefoo (Yantai) and later
Tungchow (Dengzhou), where he died in 1893. Nevius was remembered for
introducing American fruits and vegetables to Shandong. He brought back
from California and New York hundreds of pear, orange, and apple trees and
successfully acclimatized them to their new environment. Nevertheless, for
him, improving material life for Chinese came second to spreading the Gos-
pel. For four decades, Nevius devoted the first four or five months of each
year to making his pastoral rounds in rural Shandong, counseling native
evangelists, establishing mission stations, appointing elders and teachers,
teaching the catechism, and baptizing converts. From June to late August, the
Neviuses would open up their home to train thirty to fifty Chinese communi-
90 Chapter 4
cants in theology and Bible studies. Then, for the remainder of the year,
Nevius returned to his sixty mission stations to preach.
Between 1885 and 1886, he published eight letters in the Chinese Record-
er describing his localized version of mission work, 58 which I have else-
where named the Nevius model. The key components of the Nevius model
were the principles of self-support, self-propagation, and self-government for
the local Chinese church. All the chapels under his guidance were erected
and sustained by local believers, and all evangelistic groups were led by
unpaid workers; native pastors were not to be financed by foreign funds.
Nevius explained his understanding of the contextualization of Christianity
in typically down-to-earth terms:
The purpose of our mission is to save people who are lost. Yet not all people
are alike; the differences between them are great. Some are rich and some
poor. Some have great wisdom, whereas others are not so wise and under-
standing. . . . Some are learned scholars, while others are common peasants.
Some are happy folks, others worry a great deal. . . . Therefore, when we seek
to do the work of evangelism we must take note of the situation and particular
context in which we find each separate people and adapt a method which will
suit the particular opportunity they represent. 59
FURTHER READING
Useful bibliographical references include Charles W. Hayford, American

China Missions: An Introductory Bibliography (April 23, 2003), http://www.
library.yale.edu/div/MissionsResources.htm; Xiaoxin Wu, ed., Christianity
in China: A Scholars’ Guide to Resources in the Libraries and Archives of
the United States (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 2008); R. Gary Tiedemann,
Reference Guide to Christian Missionary Societies in China: From the Six-
teenth to the Twentieth Century (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 2008); R.
Gary Tiedemann, ed., Handbook of Christianity in China (Leiden: Brill,
2009), vol. 2; Philip Schaff (1819–1893), History of the Christian Church
(first edition in 1858–1890), e-version 8 vols. in one. For primary and secon-
dary sources for Christianity from the late sixteen century to about the 1840s,
see Ad Dudink and Nicolas Standaert, “Chinese Christian Texts Database”
(CCT-Database), https://www.arts.kuleuven.be/sinology/cct (accessed Feb-
ruary 1, 2021). A rich array of relevant resources can be found in R. G.
Tiedemann, Reference Guide to Missionary Societies in China: From the
16th to the 20th Centuries (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2009), at https://
missiology.org.uk/ and The China Christianity Studies Group website, https:/
/www.chinachristianitystudies.org (accessed February 1, 2021).
The most authoritative general study of the subject is Daniel H. Bays, A
New History of Christianity in China (Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell,
2012). For individual portraits of some important American missionaries, see

Jonathan D. Spence, To Change China: Western Advisers in China,
1620–1960 (reprint New York: Penguin, 2002; first edition in 1969). Other
recommended studies include Joseph Ho, Developing Mission: Photography,
Filmmaking, and American Missionaries in Modern China (Cornell, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press, 2021); Larry Clinton Thompson, William Scott
Ament and the Boxer Rebellion: Heroism, Hubris and the “Ideal Mission-
ary” (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2009); Alvyn Austin, China’s Millions:
The China Inland Mission and Late Qing Society, 1832–1905 (Grand Rapids,
Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 2007); Lawrence D. Kessler, The Jiangyin
Mission Station: An American Missionary Community in China, 1895–1951
(Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1996); Charles Ew-
ing and Bessie Ewing, Death Throes of a Dynasty: Letters and Diaries of
Charles and Bessie Ewing, Missionaries to China, ed. E. G. Ruoff (Kent,
Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1990); Eva Jane Price, China Journal
1889–1900: An American Missionary Family during the Boxer Rebellion:
With the Letters and Diaries of Eva Jane Price and Her Family (New York:
Scribner, 1989); William R. Hutchison, Errand to the World: American Prot-
estant Thought and Foreign Missions (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago
Press, 1987); Charles W. Hayford, “Chinese and American Characteristics:
Arthur H. Smith and the Respectable Middle Class View of China,” in Chris-
tianity in China: Early Protestant Missionary Writings, ed. Suzanne W. Bar-
nett and John K. Fairbank (Cambridge, Mass.: East Asian Research Center,
Harvard University Press, 1985), 153–207; and Irwin T. Hyatt Jr., Our Or-
dered Lives Confess: Three Nineteenth-Century American Missionaries in
East Shantung (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976).
NOTES
1. China has over ninety million Communist party members. The Economist, September
15, 2020, https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/09/15/protestant-christianity-is-
booming-in-china.
2. A translation of John of Monte Corvino’s report from Beijing in 1305 can be found at
https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/corvino1.asp (accessed February 1, 2021).
3. Nicolas Standaert, ed., Handbook of Christianity in China: 635–1800 (Leiden: Brill,
2001), vol. 1; Samuel Hugh Moffett, A History of Christianity in Asia (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis
Books, 1998), 2 vols.
4. Charles Denby, “Toleration in China,” The Independent, September 27, 1900.
5. Nathan D. Showalter, The End of a Crusade: The Student Volunteer Movement for
Foreign Missions and the Great War (Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 1998). Murray A.
Rubinstein, The Origins of the Anglo-American Missionary Enterprise in China, 1807–1840
(Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 1996).
6. Fred W. Drake, “Protestant Geography in China: E. C. Bridgman’s Portrayal of the
West,” in Christianity in China: Early Protestant Missionary Writings, ed. Suzanne W. Barnett
and John K. Fairbank (Cambridge, Mass.: East Asian Research Center, Harvard University
Press, 1985), 89–106; Michael C. Lazich, E. C. Bridgman (1801–1861): America’s First Mis-
sionary to China (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2000).
92 Chapter 4
7. Daniel H. Bays, “From Foreign Mission to Chinese Church,” Christian History & Biog-
raphy, no. 98 (Spring 2008): 6–13.
8. Elijah C. Bridgman, “Foreign Relations with China: Retrospect of the Past: Questions at
Issue; Further Prospects and Desiderata,” Chinese Repository 9, no. 1 (May 1840): 1–9; em-
phasis in original. Murray A. Rubinstein, “The Wars They Wanted: American Missionaries’
Use of The Chinese Repository before the Opium War,” American Neptune 48, no. 4 (Fall
1988): 271–282. Stuart Creighton Miller, “Ends and Means: Missionary Justification of Force
in Nineteenth Century China,” in The Missionary Enterprise in China and America, ed. John K.
Fairbank (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974), 249–282.
9. Charles Denby, “Toleration in China,” The Independent, September 27, 1900.
10. For the Chinese and French versions of the treaty, see Wang Tieya, Zhongwai jiu
yuezhang huibian [Compilation of former treaties and conventions between China and foreign
countries 中外旧约章汇编] (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 1982; first edition in 1957), vol. 1, pp.
146–148, and William Frederick Mayers, Treaties between the Empires of China and Foreign
Powers, reprint (Taipei: Ch’eng-wen Publishing, 1966; first edition in 1877), 72–75.
11. George B. Stevens, The Life, Letters, and Journals of the Rev. and Hon. Peter Parker,
M.D.: Missionary, Physician, Diplomatist, the Father of Medical Missions and Founder of the
Ophthalmic Hospital in Canton (Boston, Mass.: Congregational Sunday-School and Publishing
Society, 1896), 252. See also Edward Vose Gulick, Peter Parker and the Opening of China
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973). Obviously, Parker’s view of the first
treaty between the United States and China as favorable to both countries was not shared by the
Chinese.
12. Bob Whyte, Unfinished Encounter: China and Christianity (London: Fount Paperbacks,
1988).
13. Article I, “List of Protestant Missionaries to the Chinese, with the Present Position of
Those Now among Them,” Chinese Repository 20, nos. 8–12 (August–December 1851):
514–545.
14. John B. Littell, “Missionaries and Politics in China—the Taiping Rebellion,” Political-
Science Quarterly 43, no. 4 (December 1928): 566–599.
15. China Continuation Committee, The Christian Occupation of China: A General Survey
of the Numerical Strength and Geographical Distribution of the Christian Forces in China
(Shanghai: China Continuation Committee, 1922), 307, 403.
16. China Continuation Committee, The Christian Occupation of China, 33–35.
17. Daniel H. Bays, A New History of Christianity in China (Malden, Mass.: Wiley Black-
well, 2012), 53.
18. Article 11, Chinese Repository, vol. 20, no. 7 (July 1851): 497–498.
19. Agricola, “The Civil War and ‘Christianity’ in China,” The Independent, August 5,
1853.
20. Raphael Pumpelly, Across America and Asia: Notes of a Five Year Journey around the
World and of Residence in Arizona, Japan, and China (New York: Leypoldt and Holt, 1870), 2
vols., p. 217.
21. Xia Chuntao (夏春涛), Taiping tianguo zongjiao [太平天国宗教 The Taiping religion]
(Nanjing: Nanjing daxue chubanshe, 1992); Mao Jiaqi (茅家琦), Taiping tianguo duiwai
guanxi shi [太平天国对外关系史 The foreign relations of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom]
(Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1984); Zhongguo shehui kexueyuan jindaishi yanjiusuo, comp.,
Taipingjun beifa xiliao xuanbian [太平军北伐资料选编 Selected material on the northern
expedition of the Taipings] (Jinan: Qilu shushe, 1984); Thomas H. Reilly, The Taiping Heaven-
ly Kingdom: Rebellion and the Blasphemy of Empire (Seattle, Wash.: University of Washing-
ton Press, 2004); Jonathan Spence, God’s Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of
Hong Xiuquan (New York: Norton, 1996); Paul A. Cohen, “Christian Missions and Their
Impact to 1900,” in The Cambridge History of China, ed. Denis Twitchett and John K. Fair-
bank (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), vol. 10, pp. 543–90.
22. Robert McLane’s (American minister to China) report in Prescott Clarke and J. S.
Gregory, comps., Western Reports on the Taiping: A Selection of Documents (Honolulu, Ha-
waii: University Press of Hawaii, 1982), 131–137. Eugene P. Boardman, “Christian Influence
upon the Ideology of the Taiping Rebellion,” Far Eastern Quarterly 10, no. 2 (February 1951):
115–124. In a narrative of a visit to the Taipings in the company of Robert McLane in 1854,
Reverend M. S. Culbertson concluded, “The chief difference between the old [Qing imperial
government] and the new [Taiping] doctrine appears to be this, that the old Emperor claimed
supremacy as the ‘Son of Heaven’; the new Ruler, as the ‘Brother of Jesus,’” in Clarke and
Gregory, Western Reports on the Taiping, 140.
23. Christian Advocate 28 (September 22, 1853): 151. Littell, “Missionaries and Politics in
China—the Taiping Rebellion.” The Christian Advocate was published by the Methodist Epis-
copal Church starting in 1826.
24. George Minot, ed., Statutes at Large and Treaties of the United States of America from
December 1, 1845, to March 3, 1851 (Boston, Mass.: Charles C. Little and James Brown,
1851), vol. 9, pp. 276–278. Later, on December 5, 1854, participation in rebellion against the
Chinese government was made a “high misdemeanor,” punishable by a fine of no more than
US$10,000 or imprisonment for no more than three years.
25. Charles Taylor, Five Years in China with an Account of the Great Rebellion, and a
Description of St. Helena (New York: Derby and Jackson, 1860), chap. 26, 335.
26. Pumpley, Across America and Asia, vol. 2, Appendix I, “Extract from Report of Consul
Harvey, of Ningpo, to Sir F. Bruce, on the Rebellion, 1862,” 428.
27. Kenneth S. Latourette, A History of Christian Missions in China (New York: Macmil-
lan, 1929), 298.
28. Daniel H. Bays, ed., Christianity in China: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present
(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1996); Dong Wang, Managing God’s Higher
Learning: U.S.-China Cultural Encounter and Canton Christian College (Lingnan University),
1888–1952 (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007); Eugenio Menegon, Ancestors, Vir-
gins, and Friars: Christianity as a Local Religion in Late Imperial China (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Asia Center, 2010).
29. Some have put the number of anti-missionary incidents at over four hundred. Gu Wei-
min (顾为民), Jidujiao yu jindai Zhongguao shehui [基督教与近代中国社会 Christianity and
modern Chinese society] (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1996), 192.
30. North China Herald, The Anti-Foreign Riots in China in 1891, with an Appendix
(Shanghai: North China Herald, 1892). Also see the Chinese translation of part 1 by Wang
Dong (王栋), “Menggu shijian” [蒙古事件 The Mongolian Incident], Jindaishi ziliao 82 (No-
vember 1992): 159–171.
31. Examples are found in Poxie ji [破邪集 An anthology of writings aimed at rooting out
heterodoxy], with a preface dated 1640; it comprises about sixty essays and other pieces that
question Christian teaching. In 1724, Emperor Yongzhen listed Christianity as a forbidden sect.
Paul A. Cohen, “The Anti-Christian Tradition in China,” Journal of Asian Studies 20, no. 2
(February 1961): 169–180; Paul A. Cohen, China and Christianity: The Missionary Movement
and the Growth of Chinese Antiforeignism, 1860–1870 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univer-
sity, 1963); Wang Dong (王栋), “Daoxian jingshi pai Jidujiao guan shuping” [道咸经世派基
督教观述评 The anti-Christian sentiments of the Statecraft Scholars during the Daoxian peri-
od], Beifang luncong 2 (1990): 91–94.
32. Henrietta Harrison, “‘A Penny for the Little Chinese’: The French Holy Childhood
Association in China, 1843–1951,” American Historical Review 113, no. 1 (February 2008):
72–92; Liu Haiyan (刘海岩), “Youguan Tianjin jiao’an de jige wenti” [有关天津教案的几个
问题 A few questions about the Tianjin missionary incident], in Sichuan sheng zhexue shehui
kexue lianhehui and Sichuan sheng jindai jiao’an shi yanjiuhui, Jindai Zhongguo jiao’an yanjiu
[近代中国教案研究 A study of missionary incidents in modern China] (Chengdu: Sichuan-
sheng shehui kexueyuan chubanshe, 1987), 224–236; John K. Fairbank, “Patterns behind the
Tientsin Massacre,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 20, nos. 3–4 (December 1957):
480–511.
33. James E. Kirby Jr., “The Foochow Anti-Missionary Riot—August 30, 1878,” Journal of
Asian Studies 25, no. 4 (August 1966): 665–678; Shen Chunsheng (申春生), “Fuzhou Wushi
shan jiao’an” [福州乌石山教案 The Fuzhou missionary incident], in Qi Qizhang and Wang
Ruhui, eds., Wanqing jiao’an jishi, 142–148.
34. Wang Ruhui (王如绘), “Chengdu jiao’an” [成都教案 The Chengdu missionary inci-
dent], in Qi Qizhang and Wang Ruhui, eds., Wanqing jiao’an jishi, 249–257; George E.
94 Chapter 4
Paulsen, “The Szechwan Riots of 1895 and American ‘Missionary Diplomacy,’” Journal of
Asian Studies 28, no. 2 (February 1969): 285–298.
35. R. Gary Tiedemann, “Protestant ‘Missionary Cases’ (jiao’an) in Shandong Province,
1860–1900,” Ching Feng 8, nos. 1–2 (2007): 153–195; Wang Dong (王栋), “Lun shijiu shiji
xia banye Jidujiao (Xinjiao) zai Shandong de chuanbo” [论十九世纪下半叶基督教(新教)在
山东的传播 On the spread of Christianity (Protestantism) in Shandong in the latter half of the
nineteenth century], MA thesis, Shandong University, 1987.
36. Joseph Tse-Hei Lee, “The Lord of Heaven versus Jesus Christ: Christian Sectarian
Violence in Late-Nineteenth-Century South China,” Positions 8, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 77–99;
Tiedemann, ed., Handbook of Christianity in China, vol. 2, pp. 302–337.
37. J. Ross Browne to Hamilton Fish, June 15, 1869, document no. 1, in Jules Davids, ed.,
American Diplomatic and Public Papers: The United States and China, series II, The United
States, China, and Imperial Rivalries, 1861–1893, vol. 14, Antiforeignism in China, pp. 3–8.
38. Robert Bickers and R. G. Tiedemann, eds., The Boxers, China, and the World (Lanham,
Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007); Diana Preston, Besieged in Peking: The Story of the 1900
Boxer Rising (London: Constable, 1999); Paul A. Cohen, History in Three Keys: The Boxers as
Event, Experience, and Myth (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997); Joseph W. Eshe-
rick, The Origins of the Boxer Uprising (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1987);
Xu Xudian (徐绪典), ed., Yihetuan yundong shi yanjiu luncong [义和团运动史研究论丛 Es-
says on the history of the Boxer Movement] (Jinan: Shandong daxue lishixi, 1982); Lu Yao (路
遥) and Cheng Xiao (程歗), Yihetuan yundong shi yanjiu [A study of the history of the Boxer
Movement] (Jinan: Qilu shushe, 1988); Su Weizhi (苏位智) and Liu Tianlu (刘天路), eds.,
Yihetuan yanjiu yibainian [义和团研究一百年 One hundred years of Boxer studies] (Jinan:
Qilu shushe, 2000); Su Weizhi and Liu Tianlu, eds., Yihetuan yundong yibai zhounian guoji
xueshu taolunhui lunwenji [义和团运动一百周年国际学术讨论会论文集 Collected essays
presented at the international symposium on the centennial of the Boxer Movement] (Jinan:
Shandong daxue, 2002).
39. This resulted largely from the support given the Boxers by Yuxian, the anti-foreign
governor of Shanxi. R. G. Tiedemann, “Baptism of Fire: China’s Christians and the Boxer
Uprising of 1900,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research (January 2000): 7–12.
40. Michael H. Hunt, “The Forgotten Occupation: Peking, 1900–1901,” Pacific Historical
Review 48, no. 4 (1979): 501–529. The cartoon reproduced as the cover image of the present
book alludes to the events of 1900 in Beijing. Credit also due to Jeff Wasserstrom.
41. Message of the president, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States
with the Annual Message of the President, Transmitted to Congress December 3, 1900 (Wash-
ington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1902), vii–li.
42. Author unknown, “The War of the Civilizations in the Far East,” Los Angeles Times,
April 21, 1901.
43. Liang Qichao, Yinbingshi heji [饮冰室合集 Collected works of Liang Qichao] (Beijing:
Zhonghua shuju, 1989), Yinbingshi wenji, no. 6, “Mieguo xinfa lun” [灭国新法论 A new way
of extirpating a nation-state employed by Western countries], 32–47.
44. Tsou Mingteh, “Christian Missionary as Confucian Intellectual: Gilbert Reid
(1857–1927) and the Reform Movement in the Late Qing,” in Bays, ed., Christianity in China,
73–90.
45. Jiaohui xinbao (教会新报) was later known successively as Wanguo gongbao, The
Global Magazine, 1875–1883, and Review of the Times, 1889–1907. Adrian A. Bennett and
Kwang-Ching Liu, “Christianity in Chinese Idiom: Young J. Allen and the Early Chiao-hui
hsin-pao, 1860–1870,” in Barnett and Fairbank, eds., Christianity in China, 159–196.
46. Gu Weimin, Jidujiao yu jindai Zhongguo shehui, 249.
47. China Continuation Committee, The Christian Occupation of China, 305.
48. Edward Bliss Jr., Beyond the Stone Arches: An American Missionary Doctor in China,
1892–1932 (New York: Wiley, 2001), 73. For the latest research on the mutual appreciation
experienced between medical missionaries and Chinese, see Hu Cheng (胡成), “Heyi xinxi:
Zhongguo Jidujiao yiliao chuanjiaoshi yu difang shehui (1835–1911)” [何以心系:中国基督教
医疗传教士与地方社会 (1835–1911) I left my heart in China: Chinese Protestant medical
missionaries and local society], Jindaishi yanjiu 178, no. 4 (July 2010): 16–33.
49. Bliss Jr., Beyond the Stone Arches, 68.

52. Material in this section is drawn from Dong Wang, Managing God’s Higher Learning,
chap. 4. For other relevant studies of women and Christian education in China, see Jane Hunter,
The Gospel of Gentility: American Women Missionaries in Turn-of-the-Century China (New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1984); Pui-lan Kwok, Chinese Women and Christianity,
1860–1927 (Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1992); Gael Graham, Gender, Culture, and Chris-
tianity: American Protestant Mission Schools in China, 1880–1930 (New York: Peter Lang,
1995).
53. Liu Fung Ling, “The Epic Woman of China,” Ling Naam: The News Bulletin of Canton
Christian College 1, no. 1 (August 1924).
54. Dong Wang, Longmen’s Stone Buddhas and Cultural Heritage: When Antiquity Met
Modernity in China (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2020), 100–103.
55. Gilbert Reid, Glances at China (London: The Religious Tract Society, 1892), 116–119.
Galen Ford kindly provided this reference.
56. Gilbert Reid, A Christian’s Appreciation of Other Faiths: A Study of the Best in the
World’s Greatest Religions (Chicago, Ill.: The Open Court Publishing Company, 1921), 8.
57. More examples can be found in David A. Hollinger, Protestants Abroad: How Mission-
aries Tried to Change the World but Changed America (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 2017); Lara Jaishree Netting, A Perpetual Fire: John C. Ferguson and His Quest for
Chinese Art and Culture (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2013); Lewis C. Walm-
sley, Bishop in Honan: Mission and Museum in the Life of William C. White (Toronto: Univer-
sity of Toronto Press, 1974).
58. John Nevius, “Principles and Methods Applicable to Station Work,” Chinese Recorder
16, nos. 10 and 11 (November and December 1885): 421–424, 461–467; “Methods of Mission
Work,” 17, nos. 1–3, no. 5, nos. 7–8 (January–March, May, July–August 1886): 24–31, 55–64,
102–112, 165–178, 252–260, 297–305. Wang Dong (王栋), “Ni Weisi chuanjiao fangfa” [倪维
思传教方法 Nevius’ missionary approach], Shijie zongjiao ziliao 2 (1991): 15–21.
59. Ni Weisi (John Nevius), Xuanjiao zhigui [宣教指规 Manual of evangelization] (Shang-
hai: Meihua shuju, 1862). Samuel H. Chao, “John L. Nevius (1829–1893) and the Contextual-
ization of the Gospel in 19th Century China: A Case Study,” Asia Journal of Theology 2, no. 2
(1988): 294–311.
Part II
The United States and China in the Era

of World Wars and Revolutions,
1912–1970
Chapter Five
Revolutions, Nationalism,
and Internationalization
During the early twentieth century, the United States and China embarked on
different national programs and used differing strategies to cope with new
world situations. Although their relationship became strategically important,
it was neither a partnership nor a rivalry. A web of attitudinal, legal, and
cultural ties has also left their imprint to the present day. American-Chinese
relations were tested and transformed in the turmoil of World War I, the
Great Depression, and World War II. Japan, a cooperative member of the
international community in the 1920s, became an expansionist rival of the
United States and invaded China, starting with the seizure of Manchuria in
1931 and culminating in full-scale aggression in 1937. In response, the Unit-
ed States offered China no more than moral support until the Japanese bomb-
ing of America’s Pearl Harbor in December 1941.
Three developments are key to understanding the Sino-American rela-
tionship between World War I and 1931. The first was China’s pursuit of
equitable treatment as an equal nation-state on the world stage in the era of
revolutions and nationalism. The continuing demand for treaty revisions and
cancelations was an integral part of this quest. Second, the voice of America
was increasingly felt in China, set against the influence of Japan, Russia,
Germany, Britain, and other European powers. Progressive and revolutionary
Chinese thus found themselves in a position to assess competing foreign
models of modernization. The third development was the increased visibility
of China on the U.S. domestic political horizon. Due to space considerations,
I will leave the discussion of this last aspect to a later chapter.
99
100 Chapter 5
THE UNITED STATES AND THE

BEIJING GOVERNMENT (1912–1928)
American-Chinese relations were strengthened in the tumultuous years of

wars, revolutions, nationalism, anti-imperialism, and internationalization be-
tween 1912 and 1928. Paradoxically, the two countries were brought closer
as a result of their divergent stages of national development as well as
through the adoption of particular geopolitical strategies. Abhorrent of vio-
lent revolutions, the United States became involved in Chinese politics with
caution. The Beijing government (1912–1928, the first Republic of China)
conducted its foreign relations within the strictures of the established treaty
regime. It also worked to enhance China’s international status and set its
relations with foreign nations on an equal footing by seeking legal justifica-
tion for revising and abolishing the unequal treaties through diplomatic
means. The American government’s promotion of the United States as the
guardian of world peace and democracy, in place of the “colonial and imperi-
alist diplomacy” of the European powers, had given many Chinese leaders
hope that such ideals could be implemented. 1
The lessons learned from the experience of the first Republic of China in
parliamentary government have important implications for the history of
American-Chinese relations and also for advocates of democracy and civil
society in China today. In 1911, a revolution toppled Manchu rule, marking
the demise of the Chinese dynastic system, in place since 221 BCE, and
ushering in the ultimately failed experiment in republican government and
constitutional monarchy. 2 On October 10, a mutiny initiated by a group of
anti-Manchu, revolution-minded New Army officers broke out in Wuchang
(modern Wuhan) in Hubei Province on the Yangzi River. With the support of
the provincial assembly, rebels seized the city, declaring Hubei Province
independent of the Qing monarchy. By the end of the year, a number of
provinces in central and south China had endorsed the view that China
should become a republic under the provisional presidency of Sun Yat-sen
(1866–1925), founder of the Nationalist Party (Guomindang). The Qing
Manchu court in Beijing appealed to Yuan Shikai (1859–1916), a leading
Qing politician and general. 3 Sun’s provisional government opened negotia-
tions with Yuan—who was favored by the United States, Britain, and other
foreign powers after a period of cautious neutrality. Expressing his opposi-
tion to this “prolonged” period of neutrality, William J. Calhoun—American
minister to China (1909–1913)—asserted, “If the Powers had supported
Yuan when first suggested I believe he would have ended revolution by this
time. Continued neutrality only encourages disorder.” 4
Opposition to the regime did not fade away. Yuan agreed to make the
Qing emperor, a young boy, abdicate in February 1912 on condition that he,
Yuan, become president of the new Republic of China. In March, Yuan took
Revolutions, Nationalism, and Internationalization 101
office in Beijing, and he was formally reelected in 1913. Yuan was respected
by some foreigners—especially Frank J. Goodnow, Yuan’s American advis-
or; William W. Rockhill, the mastermind of the U.S. Open Door doctrine;
and Sir John Jordan, the British minister to Beijing—as a progressive, realis-
tic, and skillful politician. Between 1912 and 1916, Yuan ruled China, first as
president and then as emperor. However, his death in 1916 threatened China
once again with disintegration. Until 1928 the Beijing administration was the
sole government recognized by the foreign powers, but it exercised only
symbolic authority. Real power rested in the hands of warlords and two
modern political parties, Sun Yat-sen’s Nationalist Party (GMD) and the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In the course of the sixteen years of its life,
the Beijing government—the first republic—produced seven heads of state
and forty-six cabinets riven by various political and military factions and
challenged by the GMD and GMD-CCP governments in Canton (Guang-
zhou). The GMD and CCP forged an ephemeral alliance in 1924, but this
broke up abruptly three years later. In 1928, GMD Nationalist forces occu-
pied Beijing, and the first Chinese experience with constitutional government
came to an end. Between 1928 and 1937, the GMD continued to maintain the
Republic of China in Nanjing while at the same time attempting to root out
its rivals—in particular the CCP—and appealed to the United States and
other powers for interference in the face of Japanese aggression.
The GMD and CCP were responsible for shaping the Chinese political
landscape from the early twentieth century. Both parties espoused the nation-
alistic view of history in relation to moving China into the modern world but
differed over tactics, intellectual and cultural allegiances, and, last but not
least, over the leadership and beneficiaries of the revolution. The Nationalist
Party grew out of anti-Manchu revolutionary organizations including the
United League created by Sun Yat-sen and his followers in 1905 in Tokyo.
The Nationalists aimed to overthrow the Manchu Qing regime and to restore
Han leadership by establishing a republic, freeing China from foreign en-
croachment, and equalizing land ownership. 5 In 1912, Sun transformed the
party into the GMD, an organization wielding considerable political clout
and posing a threat in the Parliament to Yuan. In contrast, the CCP was
formed under the influence of Soviet Russia. The first CCP Congress was
organized in secret on July 1, 1921, in Shanghai by a small group of young
nationalistic, radical intellectuals—including Li Dazhao, Chen Duxiu, and
Mao Zedong—convinced by Marxist and Leninist ideology and rhetoric
about the world Communist revolution, class struggle, and anti-imperialism. 6
In the United States, the domestic and international conditions proved to
be a source of inspiration to many Chinese who were exposed to the other
models (Russian, Japanese, German, British, etc.) of development as well.
The end of the Gilded Age (circa 1876–1896, from the presidency of Ruther-
ford B. Hayes to that of Benjamin Harrison) brought about an increased
102 Chapter 5
consciousness of national identity and a confidence in the projection of the

American system around the globe. Opulence, urbanization, technological
advances, mass participation, immigration, poverty, labor unrest, the unequal
distribution of wealth, and pressure for social reform and state intervention
all became integral parts of the national development mix in the United
States. 7 William McKinley’s election in 1897 marked not only the end of the
economic depression that had begun in 1893—dogged by a 20 percent unem-
ployment rate—but also the birth of the modern American presidency, char-
acterized by presidents who played an active and potent role in domestic life
and foreign affairs. Progressivism aiming at social justice through govern-
ment actions continued into the Woodrow Wilson administration
(1913–1921). National development that had taken root in the United States
during the preceding decades was consolidated under Wilson’s leadership,
confirming the nation’s position as a major world manufacturer and global
power. The United States produced over one-third of the total world industri-
al output in 1913 and 42 percent by 1926, illustrating its growing economic
might. 8 Significantly, over a century later, this large share of global manufac-
turing output has been gradually overtaken by China. 9
In the first Republic of China, American support was much coveted by
competing political forces, 10 and Yuan Shikai’s new regime in Beijing was
especially “chagrined by the failure of the United States to recognize their
new Government.” 11 The American legation in Beijing suggested that the
United States might harm its own interests if it continued to withhold recog-
nition of the Republic of China until the other powers (including Great Brit-
ain) all agreed. The delay in recognition would “merely promote the aggres-
sive designs” of other nations such as Japan and Russia who had territorial,
economic, and judicial ambitions in China. Additional grounds for recogni-
tion were also provided to the State Department. First, although the Chinese
people “are too ignorant to understand the meaning of the word ‘republic’. . .
[they] are making no resistance to the new order.” Second, there was no rival
contending with the Republic of China for the governance of China. Eventu-
ally, in April 1914, President Wilson guardedly recognized Yuan Shikai’s
new government. 12
In 1915, an editorial note in The Independent, an American newspaper,
offered a glimpse of the Chinese leader as optimistically portrayed by the
American press:
As an actual ruler of over three hundred millions of people at a time when the
country is passing thru the most critical period in its history, President Yuan
Shih-K’ai occupies a position of responsibility rarely if ever equaled in the
history of the world. He had carried thru the delicate transition from an auto-
cratic to a republican form of government; he has met the peril of domestic
rebellion and a threatened foreign war with a tact and firmness that has
aroused the admiration even of his enemies. 13
On the basis of an interview with a journalist, William Francis Mannix, given

at 1 a.m. in Yuan’s private quarters in the Forbidden City in Beijing, The
Independent commented wryly that “Chinese officialdom clings tenaciously
to the night for the transaction of most affairs.” At pains to present the
Chinese president in a favorable light, the editorial went on to report that,
when Yuan was shown a copy of The Independent containing his picture, “he
inspected it closely and smiled so broadly that his unmistakably Rooseveltian
teeth could be accurately counted.” 14 Yuan told Mannix that China wel-
comed foreign merchants and traders, who “will be given fullest protection in
the prosecution of all their legitimate enterprises.” Yuan expressed a meas-
ured view of the United States, asserting that “while America was the only
country of the world which denied admittance to our countrymen, it was also
the only nation which stood like the Great Wall between China and dismem-
berment.”
As events turned out, World War I stimulated relations between China
and the United States. In June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the
Austrian and Hungarian thrones, and his wife, Sophie, were assassinated by
ultranationalist Serbian revolutionaries during a state visit to the Bosnian
capital of Sarajevo. Austria declared war on Serbia. Soon Germany, Aus-
tria’s ally among the Central Powers, turned the war on the Balkans into the
Great War by attacking its enemies, Belgium and France, which were in a
military alliance with Russia and Britain (the Allies). Both the Beijing
government and the Woodrow Wilson administration made an effort to pre-
serve their neutral status in Europe’s conflict and in the Far East. In August
1914, the Chinese legation in Washington sent a memo of neutrality to the
U.S. government, which—as a neutral country too—was in broad agreement
that the neutralization of Chinese treaty ports, respect for China’s neutrality,
and the preservation of the status quo in China were “most important to
American interests.” 15
However, events were soon to force the United States to revise its neutral
stance. In February 1917, Germany resumed its policy of unrestricted subma-
rine warfare, sinking a total of ten American commercial liners as they ap-
proached Britain and European countries controlled by the enemies of Ger-
many. In April, the U.S. Congress voted in support of President Wilson to
declare war on Germany and the other Central Powers, for the first time
breaking the “Great Rule” laid down by George Washington mandating non-
entanglement in European affairs. 16
Wilson injected a new vision into America’s mission to the world. In his
words, the “idea of America is to serve humanity,” and the United States was
to strive “for the elevation of the spirit of the human race,”
For that is the only distinction that America has. Other nations have been
strong, other nations have piled wealth as high as the sky, but they have come
104 Chapter 5
into disgrace because they used their force and their wealth for the oppression
of mankind and their own aggrandizement; and America will not bring glory
to herself, but disgrace, by following the beaten paths of history. We must
strike out upon new paths. 17
Despite later failures, the “new paths” envisaged by Wilson essentially re-
ferred to the need for the United States to set a global agenda as an emerging
world leader. On January 8, 1918, Wilson addressed a joint session of Con-
gress on the conditions of a peace that would make the world “fit and safe to
live in,” a peace program widely promoted as the Fourteen Points. 18 De-
nouncing the use of force and self-serving aggression, Wilson espoused the
principles of self-determination, equality among nations, open diplomacy (no
secret treaties), and the creation of an international organization, the League
of Nations, as the “new things” essential to the transformation of world
politics.
Wilson’s crusading sentiments electrified Chinese elites and senior
government officials. In part, the predilection for Western democracy and
science among many educated Chinese at the time resonated with them. In
part also, they were an aspect of the American government’s propaganda
campaign for Wilsonian democracy and self-determination in China and
around the globe. 19 Chen Duxiu—one of the nation’s most prolific public
essayists and the founding leader of the CCP—called President Wilson “the
first good person in today’s world.” 20 Wellington Koo, then Chinese minister
to the United States, telegraphed Beijing urging it to go to war against the
Central Powers, a step China indeed took in August 1917. 21 Internal discord
over China’s entry into the war, however, exacerbated tensions between
President Li Yuanhong, the Parliament (where an anti-war clique was led by
the Nationalist Party), the cabinet (with a prowar faction headed by Premier/
General Duan Qirui), and the dujuns—military governors or warlords who
denounced Li for yielding to the Parliament and dismissing Duan. In June
1917, under intense pressure from the warlords, Li decided to dissolve the
Parliament. The Nationalist Party MPs fled to Canton and set up an autono-
mous military government that challenged the legitimacy of the Beijing
government. The rift that opened up between North and South China and the
continuous warfare among the warlords in the North became a source of
embarrassment and uncertainty for China. These political developments were
closely documented by Paul S. Reinsch, American minister to China. 22 On
November 11, 1918, the Allied and German delegates signed an armistice on
terms established by the Allies, paving the way for the “Big Four”—Prime
Minister David Lloyd George of Britain, Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando of
Italy, Premier Georges Clemenceau of France, and President Woodrow Wil-
son of the United States—to make a peace settlement. The Chinese Beijing
government was invited to participate in the Paris Peace Conference as one

of the victorious powers.
The Chinese representatives included some young, rising diplomats and
politicians such as Sao-ke Alfred Sze (1876–1958), W. W. Yen (1876–1950),
C. T. Wang (1882–1961), and Wellington Koo (1888–1985), all four of
whom graduated from American universities before serving in ministerial
and ambassadorial posts, first for the Beijing government (1912–1928) and
then the Nationalist government (1928–1949). This phenomenon pointed to
the changing tempo of America’s influence in its competition with other
powers for allegiance among Chinese leaders and elites.
In Versailles, the Chinese delegates took the opportunity to apply princi-
ples of international law to China’s grievances about two major issues. First
and foremost was the Shandong question: China demanded the restoration of
territory leased to Germany and the rights it held in Shandong Province,
which was as important to China as Alsace-Lorraine was to France. 23 In
addition, China requested the termination of the treaties and agreements that
had allowed Japan to acquire all of Germany’s former privileges in Shan-
dong. Second, the so-called “Questions for Readjustment” (also known as the
“Seven Aspirations”) were submitted by China to the conference. The seven
questions included the renunciation of spheres of influence by foreign pow-
ers in China, the withdrawal of foreign troops and police, the dismantling of
foreign post and telegraph offices, the abolition of consular jurisdiction, the
relinquishment of leased territories, and the restitution of tariff autonomy.
In contrast to China’s expectations, it was the League of Nations that lay
at the heart of the American agenda in Paris. Ignoring most of Wilson’s
peace aspirations, the Treaty of Versailles did however include a covenant
mandating the League of Nations in exchange for Wilson’s acquiescence in
the colonial claims of other Allied powers. The peace treaty was signed by all
the negotiating countries with the single exception of China, which protested
against the arbitrary settlement of the Shandong question. The Chinese dele-
gation had received seven thousand telegrams calling on them not to put their
signatures on the treaty. Japan, too, felt aggrieved as a result of its failed
attempt to insert a racial equality clause into the peace settlement. On the
other hand, Japan succeeded in pressing the Allied powers to recognize its
wartime seizure of Shandong and its claim to special rights in China on the
basis of a number of secret agreements—the “Twenty-One Demands” of
1915 and the exchange of diplomatic notes between China and Japan in
September 1918. As far as China’s “Questions for Readjustment” were con-
cerned, they were deemed important but beyond the scope of the conference.
The ending of the war failed to solve the problems that had led to it—the
breakdown of the nineteenth-century diplomacy of imperialism and the ab-
sence of a new world order to replace the old system.
106 Chapter 5
The U.S. Senate, led by Republican senator Henry Cabot Lodge, declined
to ratify the Treaty of Versailles; many lawmakers feared that the League of
Nations would restrict the United States from taking independent action in
international matters. Intense disappointment and resentment toward Wilson
was felt among the Chinese, the British, and the Japanese, for example, as
well as at home, but for very different reasons. Paul S. Reinsch, American
minister to China from 1913 to 1919 and strongly pro-China, was candidly
critical of Wilson’s compliance with Japan:
President Wilson tried to make himself and others believe that with the accep-
tance of the Treaty and Covenant, the Shantung [Shandong] question would be
solved through fulfillment by Japan of its promise “to restore Shantung Penin-
sula to China with full sovereignty,” reserving only economic rights. This was
his primary misconception. The ownership by a foreign government of a trunk
railway reaching from a first-class port [Qingdao] to the heart of China could
not be correctly termed an economic right. 24
Reinsch rejected Wilson’s fear that “Japanese delegates might follow the
lead of the Italians and leave the Conference” and his belief that sacrifices
must be made to accommodate them as “unfounded.” “I had seen indications
enough, of which I had told the Government, that . . . [s]he [Japan] would
never forgo the first-class status bestowed by the arrangements of the Peace
Conference.” Chen Duxiu, who had earlier praised President Wilson as the
savior of an unjust world (see above), denounced power politics in disillu-
sionment on receiving the news from Paris. “Every country focuses on its
own national rights. So much for universal principles, perpetual peace, Presi-
dent Wilson’s Fourteen Points—they all became worthless, empty words!” 25
To some extent, the “Wilson blame” was engendered by Wilson’s political
enemies in the United States. America’s failure to ratify the peace treaty
largely reflected the considerable disagreement between and within the exec-
utive and legislative branches of the U.S. government. As was so often the
case, what American presidents had promised overseas or to foreign govern-
ments would not necessarily receive endorsement at home.
Back in China, when news of the Versailles decision reached Beijing,
three thousand students took to the streets on May 4, 1919—an anti-Japanese
protest that rapidly turned into a nationwide campaign, the May 4th Move-
ment, provoking a fiery outburst of anti-imperialist and nationalist agitation
that continued well into the 1920s. Chinese leaders and elites continued to
weigh the merits of different roads to national wealth and strength, and the
Russian Bolshevik model of violent revolution was considered alongside
American-style democracy and personal freedom.
THE NATIONALIST REVOLUTION

AND AMERICAN PATRONAGE
In the decade following the Paris Peace Conference, American-Chinese rela-

tions were dominated by Chinese domestic politics and Japan’s ambitions in
East Asia. America’s recognition of the Nationalist government in Nanjing,
led by Chiang Kai-shek, which replaced the Beijing government in 1928,
symbolized the measured American involvement in China—now outstrip-
ping Britain and in competition with the Soviet Union and Japan. The align-
ment of the United States with one political party in particular, the National-
ist Party, has left an enduring legacy to this day.
China’s grievances about its international position were again presented
at the Washington Conference of 1921–1922. The conference was intended
to establish a new world order and constituted a meaningful step forward
from the unpopular Versailles Treaty of 1919. Although it never joined the
League of Nations created by its own president, and although many
Americans wanted to avoid foreign entanglements and stay focused on do-
mestic issues, the United States remained engaged and in fact increased its
cooperation with many international agencies and conferences, including
those run by the League. In 1921, for instance, President Warren G. Harding
(presidency 1921–1923) and Secretary of State (1921–1925) Charles E.
Hughes initiated an international conference calling on the major naval pow-
ers of Britain, France, Italy, and Japan, and other interested nations (Bel-
gium, China, the Netherlands, and Portugal, but not the Soviet Union) to
address the issues of multinational cooperation, arms reduction, and security
issues in the Asia-Pacific region. At the Washington Conference on Naval
Disarmament of 1921–1922, two separate committees were formed—one the
Committee on the Limitation of Armament, the other handling “Pacific and
Far Eastern Questions.” The conference produced a series of treaties and
agreements that instituted the “Washington Conference system,” the first
international cooperative framework of its kind. The Four-Power Pact signed
in 1921 dissolved the Anglo-Japanese alliance of 1902, committing the Unit-
ed States, Britain, Japan, and France to consultation in the case of any crisis
in East Asia. Under the Five-Power Pact, the signatories agreed, for the first
time in history, to reduce the tonnage of new battleships to a fixed ratio of 5
for the United States and Britain, 3 for Japan, and 1.67 for France and Italy.
A mixture of war weariness, fears of another arms race, faltering economies,
parsimonious electorates, constraints on military spending, and other factors
led the three major players, the United States, Britain, and Japan, to accept
this rebalancing of international power in a cooperative spirit.
Adopting an approach similar to their stance at the Paris Conference, the
Chinese representatives at the Washington Conference, Sao-ke Alfred Sze,
Wellington Koo, and Wang Chonghui, described the old treaty regime as
108 Chapter 5
unjust, imposed by the strong upon the weak. Sze presented a statement that
set out ten general principles to be followed in determining questions relating
to China—respect for its territorial integrity; removal of existing limitations
on China’s political, jurisdictional, and administrative freedoms; application
of the Open Door policy to the whole of China; and the establishment of
procedures for the peaceful settlement of international disputes in the Pacific
and Far East regions. 26 On the other hand, the Chinese representatives of-
fered to make the abolition of the existing treaty system conditional on assu-
rances of political stability and juridical reform. Approving these principles
in the Nine-Power Treaty signed in February 1922, the United States, Bel-
gium, Britain, China, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, and Portugal all
agreed to support policies to “stabilize conditions in the Far East, to safe-
guard the rights and interests of China, and to promote intercourse between
China and the other Powers upon the basis of equality of opportunity.” 27 This
collective commitment to the peace and stability of the Asia-Pacific region
came at a time when China was spiraling down into internal political disarray
and military conflict. From the end of 1921 to 1922, the Beijing government
had ten cabinets in office, the longest of which did not last more than three
months, and the war between the military Zhili clique (led by Cao Kun) and
the Fengtian group (headed by Zhang Zuolin) was still in progress. The issue
of Chinese tariff autonomy was left for a future international meeting, the
Special Conference on Tariffs, to resolve. China and Japan settled the Shan-
dong dispute in Washington through the mediation of Charles Hughes and
Arthur Balfour, the head of the British delegation. Japan agreed to return the
former German leased territory in Shandong Province that it had taken over
during World War I. 28
In October 1925, the Special Conference on Tariffs opened in Beijing,
with the original nine powers at the Washington Conference and the four
adhering powers of Denmark, Norway, Spain, and Sweden in attendance.
The American delegation, in tune with their counterparts, recognized the
principle that, as a sovereign state, China had the inherent right to tariff
autonomy and that this should be embedded in a formal treaty. 29 Neverthe-
less, although tariff autonomy was a theoretical desideratum, China’s internal
divisions and anti-imperialist rhetoric hindered its realization. Hostilities be-
tween the warlord alliances of Wu Peifu and Zhang Zuolin, on the one hand,
and Feng Yuxiang, on the other, escalated in the Beijing area. In a cable to
the U.S. secretary of state, John MacMurray, American minister to China
(1925–1929), commented on the “unreal world” of the conference table:
You cannot imagine the curious adaption of one’s mind that is necessary, in
order to discuss at one meeting [the Special Conference on Tariffs] the busi-
ness of realizing for China its national aspirations toward tariff autonomy and
unrestricted sovereignty, and ten minutes later having to discuss whether or
not we should telegraph the latest phase of the military situation [in China]
which seems to make it impossible that the administration with which we are
dealing can continue for more than a few weeks or even a few days. 30
In many ways a parallel to the politicization of the ratification of the Ver-

sailles Treaty in the United States, the unequal treaty issues came into focus
at a time of intense anti-imperialist and pronationalist sentiment when many
Chinese—who felt long oppressed by foreign powers—sought ways to vent
their anger. Ventures involving foreign countries or Chinese nationals work-
ing with foreigners were often the targets of large-scale outbursts of violence.
In protest over America’s collaboration with the Beijing government, Eugene
Chen—the acting minister for foreign affairs of the Nationalist authority in
Canton—charged that the American government was “moved to apply its
‘evolutionary’ policy to the revolutionary facts of the Chinese situation.” 31
However, the rapid pace of developments within the nationalist camp during
1925–1927 ultimately produced conciliation and cooperation between the
United States and the Nationalist regime founded in Nanjing in 1928.
Between 1924 and 1927, the GMD and the CCP, acting out of strategic
mutual needs, forged the United Front alliance, which agreed to pursue a
twofold revolution—anti-warlordism (national unification) and anti-imperi-
alism (abolition of the unequal treaties)—through class struggle and violent
action. These moves were directly linked to the activities of the radical
Soviet Bolsheviks who had seized power in Russia in October 1917. 32
Vladimir Lenin, the Soviet leader, urged that China liberate itself from
the shackles of Western exploitation and become a part of the world Commu-
nist revolution. In order to achieve independence and freedom, semi-colonial
and “backward” countries must “oust the imperialist powers and smash their
own ruling class which compromises with those powers.” 33 For radicals of
all stamps, Lenin’s theories of a worldwide revolution, nationalist agitation,
and the formation of united political fronts provided sound diagnoses of—
and political solutions to—the problems facing China. In his eulogy of Le-
nin, Sun Yat-sen called him a “national friend and people’s mentor.” 34 In the
words of Chiang Kai-shek, the appeal of the Soviet Bolsheviks to China,
“where a sub-colonial state had resulted from a series of unequal treaties
imposed upon her,” lay in their promise of “a short cut to Utopia by a world
revolution of the masses [against imperialism and capitalism].” 35
Guided by Soviet Russia and its ideologically based tactics, the Chinese
nationalist revolution found its full expression in mass mobilization. To fur-
ther its own interests and stimulate revolution overseas, Soviet Russia and
the Comintern—the Communist International, 1919–1943, led by the Soviet
Union—dispatched young cadres to make contact with and finance various
political groups in China, including the CCP, Sun Yat-sen’s Nationalist Par-
ty, the Feng Yuxiang army, and the Beijing government. Comintern advisors,
110 Chapter 5
such as Hendricus Sneevliet (known under the pseudonym Maring) and Mi-
chael Borodin, offered political, financial, and military support to Sun Yat-
sen and his Canton military government, which was embroiled with other
military forces in South China.
At the same time, the Russians proposed that the minuscule CCP (which
had only 432 members in 1923 and was far outnumbered by the GMD, which
allegedly had over 200,000 members) should ally itself to the GMD without
relinquishing its own separate membership. Thus the reorganized GMD
brought peasants and laborers into the nationalist revolution. The Bolshevik
advisors’ chief contribution to the Chinese Nationalist Party was to teach
GMD politicians how to secure mass support. 36 The Communist members of
the GMD began to propagandize actively among the peasantry in the coun-
tryside. Mao Zedong, later to become the CCP’s leader, was the head of the
party’s Propaganda Bureau. In July 1926, GMD and Communist forces
launched their joint Northern Expedition, declaring their intent to eliminate
the warlords in North China and to do away with the unequal treaties as soon
as possible, in studied opposition to the Beijing government’s policy of grad-
ualism and diplomacy. The GMD-CCP coalition—the United Front—was
strained and precarious at best. The radical (that is, GMD leftists, Commu-
nists, and Borodin’s clique against Chiang Kai-shek) and conservative
(GMD rightists, Chiang’s faction) wings of the nationalist revolution clashed
over issues of power and control, military strategy, and the use of violent
labor organizations to seize foreign concessions in Wuhan and Shanghai. In
April 1927, Chiang and his supporters, notably the underworld Green Gang,
carried out a bloody purge of labor activists and Communists in Shanghai—
an event that turned the CCP into a fugitive party.
Having disposed of the GMD-CCP alliance, Chiang continued military
unification, and at the end of 1928, Manchurian warlord Zhang Xueliang
pledged allegiance to the Nationalist regime. The unequal treaties issue was
central to the agenda of the new Chiang government inaugurated in Nanjing
in April 1927. Beginning in mid-1927, Chiang reversed his anti-negotiation,
anti-revision, and anti-gradualist stance to one of negotiation and cooperation
with the powers, especially the United States, Britain, and Japan, on the
issues of tariff autonomy and abolition of the unequal treaties—a policy
pursued by the Beijing government that had been derided by the GMD only a
short time before. Chiang’s change of approach to foreign powers indicated
that he was now willing to pursue a more “moderate” course than his Com-
munist rivals.
Along with his other strategic moves toward Japan and the United States,
Chiang’s handling of the “Nanjing Incident” indicated that he was the Chi-
nese leader the United States could work with best. On March 24, 1927,
Nationalist troops entered Nanjing. Foreign consulates and residences were
attacked in the accompanying looting allegedly committed by retreating
Shandong and Zhili warlord soldiers. Three Britons and one resident each of
American, French, Italian, and Japanese citizenship were killed. In retalia-
tion, the British and American naval ships Noa and Preston shelled National-
ist soldiers attempting to storm the Standard Oil compound where over fifty
British and Americans were sheltering. Exploiting his diplomatic links, espe-
cially with Japan, Chiang Kai-shek convinced Frank B. Kellogg, secretary of
state (1925–1929) under President Calvin Coolidge (presidency 1923–1929),
that he “was strongly opposed to these outrages . . . and that he [Chiang]
believed that the outrages at Nanking [Nanjing] were caused by the radicals
among the Cantonese who were trying to discredit Chiang Kai-shek.” 37 John
MacMurray’s proposal to threaten the Nanjing regime with sanctions was
met with disapproval by Kellogg: “It would weaken the moderate leaders if
demands were pressed at this time and would perhaps drive them to the side
of the extremists. . . . We should not be hurried into action . . . which may not
be effective in any event, as it is doubtful whether the Kuomintang [Guomin-
dang] leaders could, divided as they are, meet the demands even if they were
disposed to do so.” 38 Anxious to settle the matter, the Nanjing government
accepted full responsibility for the incident, expressed its profound regret,
and offered compensation for injury and property damage incurred by
foreign residents. By the end of 1927, the U.S. government had accepted the
settlement and also made it clear that it would be prepared to take up the
question of treaty revision.
In a statement made on June 15, 1928, the Nanjing government an-
nounced that China was at last unified and that the civil wars were over. The
time was ripe for taking immediate steps “in accordance with legitimate and
diplomatic procedures, to negotiate new treaties with friendly countries on
the basis of equality and mutual respect.” 39 The United States was the first to
proceed with a new treaty. On June 11, having still not formally recognized
the new government, Frank Kellogg agreed to discuss the question of tariffs
with Wu Chaoshu, the GMD minister to Washington. Shortly afterward,
Kellogg pressed MacMurray to commence negotiations with the Nationalist
authorities for revision of the tariff provisions in treaties between the United
States and China: “Undoubtedly we are now in de facto relationship with the
Nanking Government and negotiating with them for a treaty would at least be
recognition of that status.” 40 After a few days of meetings between MacMur-
ray and T. V. Soong, the finance minister of the Nanjing government, a new
treaty was agreed on July 25, 1928. It contained two articles only, virtual
recognition of the Nanjing regime as the sole government of China accorded
by the United States. The United States recognized China’s right of tariff
autonomy on condition that it would continue to enjoy most-favored-nation
status, guaranteeing America the same treatment accorded to other countries
by China. Eleven nations followed suit with similar treaties; they included
Germany (August 1928), Norway (November 1928), the Netherlands (No-
112 Chapter 5
vember 1928), Sweden (December 1928), Britain (December 1928), France

(December 1928), and Japan (May 1930). The question of the relinquishment
of extraterritorial rights was left unsettled until 1943.
CONCLUSION
As the 1920s drew to a close, U.S.-Chinese relations had weathered the

storms of revolution, nationalism, anti-imperialism, and regime change. The
collapse of the dynastic system in 1912 and the introduction of a new form of
government ushered in two decades of political fluidity and instability in
China that nevertheless offered opportunities for new international contacts
and alliances. Limited American patronage was obtained by both the Beijing
and Nanjing governments, which set their respective sights on improving
China’s international position, especially in relation to the cancelation of the
“old” treaty rights and privileges in China granted to foreign powers. In this,
the Beijing and Nanjing governments enjoyed a measure of success. In both
the United States and China, administrations sought less confrontational
pathways within new domestic and international environments. Representing
a country politically divided and militarily and economically disadvantaged,
the diplomats of the Beijing government continued to lay China’s grievances
before international conferences and organizations, notably the Paris Peace
Conference, the Washington Conference, and the Special Tariff Conference.
Their commitment to legal gradualism—at odds with the violent radicalism
of the CCP and the Nationalist Party—emphasized collaboration with the
United States and other contractual powers. Although the regime change in
China brought about in 1928 by Chiang Kai-shek—newly married to Ma-
dame Soong Mayling, a Methodist and a Wellesley graduate—fell in Ameri-
ca’s favor, Chiang was not swayed by the U.S. model of democratic govern-
ance. Despite his heavy-handedness in foreign relations, Chiang appointed
many of the former Beijing government’s key diplomats such as Wellington
Koo, Chonghui Wang, W. W. Yen, and Sao-ke Alfred Sze, who all had
American ties. To some degree, these appointments suggest that the new
regime was keen to make friendly overtures to the United States.
In keeping with its increased but measured involvement in Chinese and
world affairs, the United States assumed a cautious, independent role in
cooperating with other countries to reduce international conflicts and “keep
China from becoming a hostile agent of Soviet Russia against western pow-
ers, including the United States.” 41 In response to the growing nationalist
movement and Russian and Japanese influence in China, the United States
outflanked other interested parties by being the first to sign a treaty with
China in 1928 granting China tariff autonomy, an important step appreciated
by the Nanjing authorities. This strategic move laid the foundations—legal,
political, attitudinal, and cultural—for the friendly relationship between the

United States and Nationalist China in the years ahead, as chapters 6 and 7
explain.
FURTHER READING
Dorothy Borg’s American Policy and the Chinese Revolution, 1925–1928

(New York: Macmillan, 1947) is a classic study of U.S. policy toward China
in the age of revolution and nationalism; Shinkichi Etō’s chapter, “China’s
International Relations 1911–1931,” in The Cambridge History of China,
vol. 13, part 2, ed. John King Fairbank and Albert Feuerwerker (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986), 74–115, focuses on major diplomatic
events and developments, particularly Japan’s and the Soviet Union’s influ-
ence on a divided China from the fall of the Qing to the Nationalist revolu-
tion. For an annotated bibliography of Chinese foreign relations during the
first half of the twentieth century, see Dong Wang, “China and the World,
1900–1949,” in Oxford Bibliographies in Chinese Studies, ed. Tim Wright
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).
Focusing on the unequal treaties, a key dimension of modern and contem-
porary China, Dong Wang’s China’s Unequal Treaties: Narrating National
History (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2005) offers the first study of the
evolving language of the unequal treaties, as well as their legal, moral, and
polemical uses, in various historical contexts from 1842 to the twenty-first
century. Wang illuminates how various Chinese political entities have de-
fined and redefined the past using the framework of the unequal treaties.
William C. Kirby’s Germany and Republican China (Stanford, Calif.: Stan-
ford University Press, 1984) is a rich study of the political, military, econom-
ic, and ideological interaction between Germany and Republican China from
1927 to 1937. Kirby suggests that substantial economic ties, military plan-
ning, national reconstruction, and Chinese admiration for the German way of
life and governance contributed to an equal partnership between the two
countries. The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern
China (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 2009) by Jay Taylor offers an
absorbing account of Chiang Kai-shek and Republican China’s international
relations.
For different approaches to Wilsonianism, China, and World War I, see
Russell H. Fifield, Woodrow Wilson and the Far East: The Diplomacy of the
Shantung Question (New York: Crowell, 1952); George W. Egerton, “Brit-
ain and the ‘Great Betrayal’: Anglo-American Relations and the Struggle for
United States Ratification of the Treaty of Versailles, 1919–1920,” Histori-
cal Journal 21, no. 4 (December 1978): 885–911; David Steigerwald, “The
Reclamation of Woodrow Wilson,” Diplomatic History 23, no. 1 (Winter
114 Chapter 5
1999): 79–99; Bruce A. Elleman, Wilson and China: A Revised History of

the Shandong Question (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 2002); and Guoqi Xu,
China and the Great War: China’s Pursuit of a New National Identity and
Internationalization (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005). On the
Chinese Labor Corps, early research commissioned by the U.S. government
can be found in Ta Chen, Chinese Migrations, with Special Reference to
Labor Conditions (Taipei: Ch’eng-Wen Publishing Company, 1967, first edi-
tion in 1923). A widely consulted book on the May 4th Movement is Tse-
tsung Chow’s The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern
China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960).
On the Washington Conference, as well as the bilateral relationship in the
1920s, see Rodger Dingman, Power in the Pacific: The Origins of Naval
Arms Control (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1976); Akira Iriye,
After Imperialism: The Search for a New Order in the Far East, 1921–1931
(Chicago, Ill.: Imprint Publications, 1990, reprint, first edition in 1965); Erik
Goldstein and John H. Maurer, The Washington Conference, 1921–22: Naval
Rivalry, East Asian Stability and the Road to Pearl Harbor (London: Frank
Cass, 1994); and the chapters by Harumi Goto-Shibata and Joseph A. Maiolo
in Antony Best, ed., The International History of East Asia, 1900–1968:
Trade, Ideology and the Quest for Order (London: Routledge, 2010), 57–80.
NOTES
1. Hans Schmidt, “Democracy for China: American Propaganda and the May Fourth
Movement,” Diplomatic History 22, no. 1 (December 1998): 1–28.
2. Zhongguo renmin zhengzhi xieshang huiyi quanguo weiyuanhui wenshi ziliao weiuan-
hui [中国人民政治协商会议全国委员会文史资料委员会], ed., Xinhai geming qinli ji [辛亥
革命亲历记 Firsthand accounts of the 1911 Revolution] (Beijing: Zhongguo wenshi chuban-
she, 2001); James E. Sheridan, China in Disintegration: The Republican Era in Chinese Histo-
ry, 1912–1949 (New York: Free Press, 1975); Hsi-sheng Ch’i, Warlord Politics in China,
1916–1928 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1976); Edward McCord, The Power of
the Gun: The Emergence of Modern Chinese Warlords (Berkeley, Calif.: University of Califor-
nia Press, 1993); Peter Zarrow, China in War and Revolution 1895–1949 (London: Routledge,
2005), chaps. 2–4.
3. As Imperial Commissioner in Korea (1882–1894), Yuan rapidly became indispensable
to Empress Dowager Cixi and the Qing regime. From 1895 to 1899, Yuan presided over the
training of a modern Chinese army stationed near Tianjin, which later became his power base
and reinforced his position in the Qing court. On Li’s death in 1901, he succeeded the powerful
Li Hongzhang (1823–1901) as viceroy of Zhili, a crucial post in north China at the time. Until
1909, Yuan also held other high offices such as foreign minister. Ernest P. Young, The Presi-
dency of Yuan Shih-k’ai (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 1977); Patrick
Fuliang Shan, Yuan Shikai: A Reappraisal (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press,
2018).
4. See William J. Calhoun’s various telegrams to the Department of State between Novem-
ber 1911 and January 1912, Records of the Department of State Relating to International
Affairs of China, 1910–1929, microfilm no. 329, roll 7, 893.00 Political Affairs, vols. 1–2,
893.00/351 1/2-633, National Archives.
5. In the late nineteenth century, the Manchus—as ruling, non-Han Chinese ethnic minor-
ities—were fervently blamed for all the illnesses of China where the majority of the population
was Han Chinese. According to Sun’s revolutionary platform, the first revolutionary stage
would be a military dictatorship, which would be followed by a period of single-party rule, or
“political tutelage,” and eventually by the introduction of democracy.
6. Wang Qisheng (王奇生), Geming yu fan geming: Shehui wenhua shiye xia de Minguo
zhengzhi [革命与反革命:社会文化视野下的民国政治 Revolution and counterrevolution:
Politics in the first Republic of China from the viewpoint of society and culture] (Beijing:
Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2010); Chen Yung-fa (陈永发), Zhongguo gongchan gem-
ing qishinian [中国共产革命七十年 The seventy years of the Chinese Communist revolution],
revised ed. (Taipei: Lianjing, 2001), chap. 1; Yang Kuisong (杨奎松), Zhonggong yu Mosike
de guanxi (1920–1960) [中共与莫斯科的关系 The Chinese Communist Party’s relations with
Moscow] (Hong Kong: Haixiao chuban shiye youxian gongsi, 1997).
7. Stefan Link and Noam Maggor, “The United States as a Developing Nation: Revisiting
the Peculiarities of American History,” Past and Present, no. 246 (February 2020): 270–306.
8. Douglas Steeple and David O. Whitten, Democracy in Desperation: The Depression of
1893 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1998); Michael McGerr, A Fierce Discontent: The
Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870–1920 (New York: Free Press,
2003); David A. Moss, When All Else Fails: Government as the Ultimate Risk Manager
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002); Shelton Stromquist, Re-inventing “The
People”: The Progressive Movement, the Class Problem, and the Origins of Modern Liberal-
ism (Champaign, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 2006).
9. https://www.statista.com/chart/20858/top-10-countries-by-share-of-global-manufactur-
ing-output/ (accessed February 6, 2021).
10. While in the United States, Sun Yat-sen requested a secret meeting with Philander C.
Knox, secretary of state (1909–1913), in Washington but was met with a firm refusal.
11. The American chargé d’affaires (E. T. Williams) to the secretary of state, March 18,
1913, in U.S. Department of State, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United
States with the Address of the President to Congress December 2, 1913 [FRUS hereafter]
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1913), 98. Tao Wenzhao, “The United States
and the Chinese Revolution,” in Sino-American Relations since 1900, ed. Priscilla Roberts
(Hong Kong: Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong Press, 1991), 205–219.
12. The American chargé d’affaires (E. T. Williams) to the secretary of state, March 18,
1913, in FRUS, 1913, 96–98, 116–118.
13. Yuan Shih-K’ai, “The Chinese Republic Reports Progress,” The Independent, July 26,
1915.
14. Yuan, “The Chinese Republic Reports Progress.”
15. U.S. Department of State, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States:
The Lansing Papers, 1914–1920 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1939), vol.
1, p. 3.
16. Walter A. McDougall, Promised Land, Crusader State (Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mif-
flin, 1997); Robert A. Pastor, ed., A Century’s Journey: How the Great Powers Shape the
World (New York: Basic Books, 1999).
17. Woodrow Wilson, “Annapolis Commencement,” June 5, 1914, http://www.presidency.
ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=65380 (accessed November 28, 2010).
18. Woodrow Wilson, “Address to a Joint Session of Congress on the Conditions of Peace,”
January 8, 1918, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=65405 (accessed November 28,
2010). David Steigerwald, Wilsonian Idealism in America (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University
Press, 1994); Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International
Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
19. George Creel, How We Advertised America: The First Telling of the Amazing Story of
the Committee on Public Information That Carried the Gospel of Americanism to Every Corner
of the Globe (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1920).
20. Zhi Yan (Chen Duxiu’s alias), Meizhou pinglun, no. 1 (December 22, 1918), foreword.
21. Wellington Koo, The Wellington Koo Memoir, the Chinese Oral History Project, New
York, Columbia University, 1978, part II, microfilm reel 1, “The Paris Conference.”
116 Chapter 5
22. Paul S. Reinsch to secretary of state, May 30, 1917, file no. 893.00/2579; June 2, 1917,
file no. 893.00/2581, Records of the Department of State Relating to International Affairs of
China, 1910–1929, microfilm no. 329.
23. Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World (New York:
Random House, 2002), chap. 24. The dispute over Shandong grew directly out of the European
war. Shortly after the outbreak of World War I, the Beijing government proclaimed its neutral-
ity on August 14, 1914. Two weeks afterward, Japan informed the Chinese government that
Japan had gone to war with Germany and demanded the withdrawal of German forces and
equipment from Chinese and Japanese waters and the handover, no later than September 15, of
the entire leased territory of Jiaozhou to the Japanese government. In early September 1914,
about twenty thousand Japanese troops landed at Longkou, a port 150 miles north of Qingdao.
By the end of September, the Japanese forces had occupied the Jiaozhou Bay and Qingdao.
24. Paul S. Reinsch, An American Diplomat in China (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page
and Comp., 1922), part IV.
25. Chen Duxiu, “Liangge hehui dou wuyong” [两个和会都无用 The two peace confer-
ences have proved equally useless], Meizhou pinglun, no. 20 (May 4, 1919).
26. Zhongguo shehuikexueyuan jindaishisuo (中国社会科学院近代史所), comp. and ed.,
Miji lucun [秘笈录存 Compilation of telegrams between the Beijing government and the
Chinese delegates at the Paris Peace Conference and Washington Conference] (Beijing: Zhong-
guo shehui kexue chubanshe, 1984); Wang Yunsheng (王芸生), Liushi nianlai Zhongguo yu
Riben [六十年来中国与日本 China and Japan over the past sixty years] (Beijing: Sanlian
chubanshe, 1981), vols. 6 and 7; Beijing zhengfu waijiaobu (北京政府外交部), Waijiao wen-
du: Huashengdun huiyi an [外交文牍:华盛顿会议案 Diplomatic correspondence: The Wash-
ington Conference] (Beijing: Waijiaobu, 1923).
27. Treaty between the United States of America, the British Empire, China, France, Italy,
Japan, the Netherlands, and Portugal, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/tr22-01.asp (ac-
cessed December 1, 2010).
28. Sadao Asada, “Japan’s Special Interests and the Washington Conference, 1921–1922,”
American Historical Review 67, no. 1 (October 1961): 62–70.
29. Yi Ming (佚名), ed., Guanshui tebie huiyi yishi lu [关税特别会议议事录 Proceedings
of the Special Conference on Tariffs] (Taipei: Wenhai chubanshe, 1970, reprint); Stanley F.
Wright, China’s Struggle for Tariff Autonomy: 1843–1938 (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1938).
30. John MacMurray’s telegram to the U.S. secretary of state on August 1, 1925, Records of
the Department of State Relating to Political Relations between China and other States,
1910–1929, no. 793.00/114, microfilm no. 341, roll 1, National Archives.
31. Henry George W. Woodhead, ed., The China Year Book, 1926–1927 (Tianjin: Tientsin
Press, 1928–29), 1146. The 1966 movie The Sand Pebbles reflects the emotionally charged
decade of nationalism and revolution in China through the story of the fictional USS San Pablo
patrolling the Yangzi River.
32. Dong Wang, “Redeeming ‘A Century of National Ignominy’: Nationalism and Party
Rivalry over the Unequal Treaties, 1928–1947,” Twentieth-Century China 30, no. 2 (April
2005): 72–100; Dong Wang, “The Discourse of Unequal Treaties in Modern China,” Pacific
Affairs 76, no. 3 (November 2003): 399–425. To counter the Russian Bolshevik Revolution, the
United States cooperated with British, French, and Japanese forces in an anti-Bolshevik cam-
paign in Russia. Wilson dispatched two American expeditions totalling some fifteen thousand
troops to Russia to stem the growth of Bolshevism, but without success. Victor M. Fic, The
Collapse of American Policy in Russia and Siberia, 1918 (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1995); Donald E. Davis and Eugene P. Trani, The First Cold War: The Legacy of
Woodrow Wilson in U.S.-Soviet Relations (Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri Press,
2002); Paul E. Dunscomb, Japan’s Siberian Intervention, 1918–1922 (New York: Lexington
Books, 2011).
33. Zhongguo shehui kexueyuan (中国社会科学院), trans., Gongchan guoji youguan
zhongguo geming de wenxian, 1919–1928 [共产国际有关中国革命的文献, 1919–1928 The
Comintern documents on the Chinese revolution] (Beijing: Zhongguo shehuikexue chubanshe,
1980), vol. 1, pp. 15–32.
34. Guangdong shehui kexueyuan (广东社会科学院) et al., eds., Sun Zhongshan quanji [孙
中山全集 Collected works of Sun Zhongshan] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1986), vol. 9, p. 509.
35. Chiang Kai-shek, Soviet Russia in China: A Summing-up at Seventy (New York: Farrar,
Straus and Cudahy, 1957), 5.
36. For Soviet relations with China during the 1920s, see Huang Xiurong (黄修荣), Gong-
chan guoji he Zhongguo geming guanxishi [共产国际和中国革命关系史 The history of the
Comintern and the Chinese revolution], 2 vols. (Beijing: Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao
chubanshe, 1989); Yang Yunruo (杨云若) and Yang Kuisong (杨奎松), Gongchan guoji he
Zhongguo geming [共产国际和中国革命 Comintern and the Chinese revolution] (Shanghai:
Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1988); C. Martin Wilbur, The Nationalist Revolution in China,
1923–1928 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); C. Martin Wilbur and Julie Lien-
ying How, Missionaries of Revolution: Soviet Advisers and Nationalist China, 1920–1927
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989); Daniel N. Jacobs, Borodin: Stalin’s Man
in China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981); Alexander Pantsov, The Bolshe-
viks and the Chinese Revolution, 1919–1927 (Honolulu, Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press,
2000).
37. Telegram from Charles MacVeagh, American ambassador to Japan, to John MacMurray
on March 28, 1927, in FRUS, 1927, vol. 2, p. 164.
38. Telegraph from Frank Kellogg to John MacMurray on April 20, 1927, in FRUS, 1927,
vol. 2, pp. 203–204.
39. “Guomin zhengfu feichu jiuyue xuanyan” [国民政府废除旧约宣言 The Nationalist
government’s manifesto on the nullification of treaties], Di’er lishi dang’anguan (第二历史档
案馆), comp., Zhonghua minguoshi dang’an ziliao huibian [中华民国史档案资料汇编 Col-
lected archival sources on the history of the Republic of China] (Nanjing: Jiangsu guji chuban-
she, 1991), vol. 5, part 1, waijiao, pp. 33–34.
40. Kellogg’s telegram to MacMurray, June 23, 1928, no. 711.933/13, National Archives,
Records of the Department of State Relating to Political Relations between China and Other
States, 1910–1929, microfilm no. 339, roll 1.
41. MacMurray’s telegram to Kellogg on March 29, 1927, in FRUS, 1927, vol. 2, pp.
167–168.
Chapter Six
The Pacific War and Red China
Two overarching changes in the geopolitical climate shaped American-Chi-

nese relations in the 1930s and 1940s. The first was the ascendency of Japan,
which was challenged by the rise of Chinese nationalism and the United
States in the Asia- and Indo-Pacific. In 1931, the Japanese military con-
ducted a coup in Manchuria, northeast China, leading to the establishment of
the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo and mounting tensions between the
United States and Japan, the two competing imperial powers in the region.
The outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, which the United
States watched with concern but refused to join, paved the way for the
Pacific War. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 sealed the alliance
between the United States and China. The fall of Japan in 1945 compounded
the nationalist movement and the Cold War in Asia. The second significant
change was the success of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under Mao
Zedong in mainland China. Although the United States sided with the Guo-
mindang (GMD, the Nationalist Party) government against the CCP, the
Japanese invasion of China opened the door for Mao’s Communists to even-
tually take power by appealing to nationalism and encouraging social revolu-
tion.
Some previous studies have treated the topic of America’s “loss of Chi-
na” to the Communists by focusing on American attitudes and policies and
debating who was to blame without taking into account the limited alterna-
tives available at the time and the lessons learned by each side. While helpful
up to a point, the traditional approach downplays the positive achievements
of this period, such as the unprecedented cooperation between Nationalist
China and the United States on the diplomatic, economic, military, and cultu-
ral levels. While these decades reveal the roots of the conflict that divided the
United States and the People’s Republic of China after 1949, when viewed in
119
120 Chapter 6
a long-term perspective they also indicate that their embattled relationship

drew them closer together. 1
THE MANCHURIAN INCIDENT, THE PACIFIC WAR,

AND THE SINO-AMERICAN ALLIANCE
The Geopolitical Clash between Japan and the United States

and Attempts at Reconciliation
Suspicion of Japan’s political penetration of China was a constant element in

American strategic thinking in the early twentieth century. U.S.-Japanese
relations in the East Asian region were largely determined by a tangled web
of cooperation and conflict surrounding China. 2 The United States and Japan
were competitors for China’s intellectual and economic resources, and vested
interests were at stake. For instance, in 1922, China had over half a billion
dollars of debt either unsecured or inadequately secured—the two nations
most affected by China’s “virtual bankruptcy” were Japan and the United
States. 3 The direct tensions between the United States and Japan, on the other
hand, were concentrated on two issues: Would Japan extend its Manchurian
enterprise to other parts of China? And would the United States acquiesce in
Japan’s dominance in China and accept Japan as the hegemon in the Asia-
Pacific? 4
Japan’s aggressive behavior in East Asia originated in a number of fac-
tors, operating both inside and outside the region. Within a single generation,
efforts at modernization undertaken during the reign of Emperor Meiji
(1868–1912) had transformed Japan into the only industrialized nation in
Asia—a superpower in today’s terms. The independence from China of
neighboring Korea, Taiwan, Manchuria, and Mongolia was considered es-
sential to Japan’s national security—the rationale argued by Japan for the
Russo-Japanese War of 1905 and the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945.
Japan was also smarting from the failures of the Western powers to treat it as
an equal on issues important to Japan, a slight summed up by the omission of
a racial equality clause in the Paris peace settlement following World War I.
Both the Japanese army and navy felt frustrated by international treaties that
they considered left them at a disadvantage and by the conciliatory noninter-
ference policy of their foreign minister, Shidehara Kijūrō (1924–1927,
1929–1931), toward China and the Soviet Union. In the United States, overt
discrimination against Japanese and other Asians, such as checks on immi-
gration and naturalization, the prohibition of landholding, racial segregation
in schools, and personal violence against Japanese in California, also fostered
resentment. In America, politics and anti-Asian immigration sentiment cul-
minated in the Immigration Act of 1924, which denied many Asians the right
to enter the United States and become citizens. 5
The Pacific War and Red China 121
From America’s perspective, Japan’s territorial ambitions lay at the root

of the troubled relations between the two nations. However, the Roosevelt
(1901–1909) and Taft (1909–1913) administrations at times favored Japan
over China, resulting in several attempts at formal reconciliation. In Novem-
ber 1908, Takahira Kogorō, Japanese ambassador to the United States, ex-
changed a series of notes—known as the Root-Takahira Agreement—with
Secretary of State Elihu Root (1905–1909). Both sides agreed to respect the
other’s sphere of influence in the Asia-Pacific, especially with regard to
China:
The policy of both governments, uninfluenced by any aggressive tendencies, is

directed to the maintenance of the existing status quo in the region above
mentioned and to the defense of the principle of equal opportunity for com-
merce and industry in China. . . . They are accordingly firmly resolved recipro-
cally to respect the territorial possessions belonging to each other in said
region. . . . They are also determined to preserve the common interests of all
powers in China by supporting by all pacific means at their disposal the inde-
pendence and integrity of China and the principles of equal opportunity for
commerce and industry of all nations in that Empire. 6
The undefined nature of the “status quo” in the Pacific in the Root-Takahira
Agreement was further obscured in the Lansing-Ishii Agreement concluded
by Robert Lansing, President Woodrow Wilson’s secretary of state
(1915–1920), and Ishii Kikujirō, ambassador extraordinary and plenipotenti-
ary of Japan on special mission, on November 2, 1917, in Washington.
Touted at the time by some as the “augury for the peace of the world,” this
agreement was full of ambiguous and contradictory terms, for which Japan
and the United States had their own separate interpretations. 7 On the one
hand, the United States recognized that Japan had “special interests in Chi-
na,” particularly in Manchuria. On the other hand, both countries declared
that they would always “adhere to the principle of the so-called ‘open door’
or equal opportunity for commerce and industry in China.” However, Japan’s
belief that “the survival of the Japanese Empire, and ultimately of the Japa-
nese people, depended on their special interests in Manchuria and Mongolia”
was as firm as ever. The United States later discovered that many Japanese
understood “equal opportunity” to mean throwing open China’s resources for
exploitation by Japan alone, rather than being shared among all the national
interests in China—in contradiction to America’s understanding of the same
phrase. The dissolution of the Anglo-Japanese alliance, Japan’s adherence to
the 1922 Nine-Power Treaty, and its participation in the League of Nations
and other international organizations were also conditional on respect for
Japan’s larger interests, particularly in Manchuria and Inner Mongolia. 8
122 Chapter 6
Japanese Aggression in China and the Sino-American Alliance
At the end of the 1920s, there was a widespread conviction in Japan that the
nation’s security depended on two key measures: countering the Russian
threat and mitigating Japan’s economic difficulties. As a result of the Great
Depression, Japanese exports to the United States and China dropped be-
tween 40 and 50 percent in 1929–1930. The world economic cataclysm
shook Japan’s confidence in the Western powers and the collective commit-
ment to regional stability established by the Washington Conference system.
Economic turmoil exacerbated domestic unrest and violence directed against
politicians and industrialists in Japan. Manchuria was linked to the survival
of Japan. The Japanese army became apprehensive over an upsurge in Chi-
nese nationalism as Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek embarked on unify-
ing China and gained the allegiance of Zhang Xueliang, a powerful Manchu-
rian warlord.
At home, jingoism and militarism worked together to undermine Japan’s
civilian government. The agenda was set by the Japanese Kwantung Army
stationed in south Manchuria, which constantly ratcheted up expectations
that the civilian government was powerless to quash. The upshot of this
agitation was the Mukden Incident, the result of a plot hatched by Ishiwara
Kanji and Itagaki Seishirō, two officers of the Kwantung Army. On the night
of September 18, 1931, Japanese soldiers blew up a section of the line in the
South Manchurian Railway zone near Liutiaohu Village north of Mukden, a
trophy from the 1905 Russo-Japanese War controlled by the Kwantung
Army. Nelson T. Johnson, American minister to China (1929–1941), re-
ported that at 10 p.m. that night, “a squad of Japanese soldiers, having left
Japanese barracks and gone southeast of Mukden City, were firing with rifles
at the east camp, arsenal and city and with artillery at the rate of one shell a
minute. . . . Japanese soldiers had apparently run amuck, Japanese consular
authorities being powerless.” 9 Despite lacking approval from its own govern-
ment, the Japanese army used this incident to create a pretext for military
operations. By the end of 1931, Japanese troops had completed the occupa-
tion of South Manchuria and in March 1932 established the territory of
Manchukuo, a self-proclaimed independent state lying outside Chinese sove-
reignty. On May 15, 1932, Japanese prime minister and foreign minister
Inukai Tsuyoshi, the moderate successor to Shidehara Kijūrō who was
viewed by the radical faction as “soft” on China, was assassinated by chau-
vinistic nationalists for his attempts to curb the growing power of the army.
Following this outrage, Japan’s civilian leadership eventually succumbed to
the militarists. 10
Two days after the Mukden Incident, Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist
government—preoccupied with extermination campaigns against the Chi-
nese Communists and thus largely ineffectual against the Japanese invad-
ers—lodged a complaint against Japan with the League of Nations, seeking

intervention. The response of the United States was cautious and noncommit-
tal, leaving China and the League of Nations holding the baby: 11 the United
States referred the matter back to the League while maintaining its neutrality
and a posture of nonrecognition of Japan’s annexation of the territory. In
early January 1932, Henry L. Stimson, secretary of state (1929–1933) under
President Herbert C. Hoover (1929–1933), offered the Chinese minister “our
entire sympathy with the general objective of the League, while not running
any risk of crossing wires with their work.” 12 At the same time, concerned by
Japan’s intensified military operations in China, Stimson sent a diplomatic
note to all governments with interests in Manchuria, confirming, “The
American Government continues confident that the work of the neutral com-
mission recently authorized by the Council of the League of Nations will
facilitate an ultimate solution of the difficulties now existing between China
and Japan.” In stronger terms, the United States declared that it
cannot admit the legality of any situation de facto nor does it intend to recog-
nize any treaty or agreement entered into between those Governments, or
agents thereof, which may impair the treaty rights of the United States or its
citizens in China, including those which relate to the sovereignty, the indepen-
dence, or the territorial and administrative integrity of the Republic of China,
or to the international policy relative to China, commonly known as the open
door policy. 13
In October 1931, a draft resolution of the League of Nations called on Japan

to withdraw its forces to the South Manchurian Railway zone and for China
to make arrangements for taking back the territory. In defiance of the
League’s call, the Japanese advanced on Shanghai on January 28, 1932.
Despite the League’s prevarication in appointing a commission—headed by
the Earl of Lytton—to investigate the dispute (in which the United States and
Russia refused to participate), the resulting Lytton Report found that the
Japanese military actions during and after the “Mukden Incident” of 1931
had not been taken in self-defense and that the creation of Manchukuo—a
Japanese puppet state—did not reflect a genuine movement for indepen-
dence.
However, the report satisfied neither China nor Japan. The Japanese
(Matsuoka Yosuke) and Chinese representatives (Wellington Koo) on the
League each defended their own positions. In February 1933, the internation-
al body approved the Lytton Report, declaring nonrecognition of Manchukuo
and condemning Japanese military operations but without imposing sanc-
tions or taking action against Japan. In protest, Japan withdrew from the
League. On the other side, Chiang Kai-shek’s hopes for the intervention of
the Western powers in halting Japan’s hegemonic ambitions received a major
check. The Hoover-Stimson approach involving a collective solution to the
124 Chapter 6
Sino-Japanese conflict failed to work. This policy direction was virtually

abandoned during the rest of the decade under the presidency of Franklin
Roosevelt (1933–1945), although in April 1934, Secretary of State Cordell
Hull (1933–1944) issued a vague, timid statement asserting that relations
between the three powers were still governed by multilateral treaties and
obligations in force since the Washington Conference of 1921–1922.
After Manchuria, Japan slipped gradually into the quagmire of a war in
China that was neither anticipated nor rationally planned, nor indeed win-
nable. In the three years between 1933 and 1936, Japan sent its forces south
and west, taking control of China’s Rehe Province and Eastern Chahar in
Inner Mongolia and demanding the independence of five provinces (Hebei,
Shandong, Shanxi, Chahar, and Suiyuan) in north China from the Nationalist
government. Japanese aggression provoked fervent anti-Japanese boycotts,
demonstrations, and strikes in Shanghai, Beijing, and other cities. Domestic
pressure and external threats drew Chiang into a series of responses that
fluctuated between negotiation, resistance to Japan, and suppression of inter-
nal opposition. The Tanggu Truce of 1933 and the He Yingqin-Umezu
Yoshijirō Agreement of 1935 between China and Japan gave de facto recog-
nition to Manchukuo and Japan’s control of parts of north China. 14 These
agreements were met with violent opposition from the masses toward Japan
and the Nationalist government alike.
Chiang’s attempts at appeasement could only buy off the Japanese tempo-
rarily. On July 7, 1937, another clash—the Marco Polo Bridge Incident—
touched off a full-scale conflict, the Sino-Japanese War, known to the Chi-
nese as the War of Resistance (1937–1945). 15 On December 13, 1937, Japa-
nese forces overran Nanjing, the Chinese capital, forcing the Nationalist
government to relocate to Chongqing. In Nanjing, Japanese soldiers indis-
criminately slaughtered tens of thousands of Chinese civilians, an atrocity
known to history as the Nanjing Massacre.
By the end of 1938, however, even the fall of major cities such as Nanj-
ing, Wuhan, and Canton and Japanese control of the railway network had
failed to force Chiang to surrender or to bring the war to a speedy end, as
Japan assumed would happen. Rather, Japan had become mired in a war
ranging over vast land areas that it had no ability to exit. Despite this, some
historians have criticized China for its alleged limited military response to
Japanese aggression. Some downplay the fact that Chinese forces pinned
down a million Japanese troops and argue that Japan was defeated only
because of American intervention. Others have argued that, because the pri-
mary aim of both Chiang Kai-shek and Communist leader Mao Zedong was
to eliminate the other, both were at pains to keep their best forces away from
the Japanese army. 16
For its part, the United States did not approve Japan’s attempts to estab-
lish the Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere, a new Asia-Pacific order,
in violation of the Open Door principle, but neither did it take effective steps
to deter it throughout the 1930s. Roosevelt’s first administration allowed
circumstances and unfolding events to determine the course of American
action and reaction on an ad hoc basis. Roosevelt, however, did move cau-
tiously to strengthen the American navy by doubling funds for new vessels
including two aircraft carriers. Between 1938 and 1941, the United States
gradually abrogated the trade treaty with Japan and banned the sale of war
supplies—aircraft, metal alloys, fuel oil, and scrap iron—to Japan while still
engaging in high-level talks. By the end of 1941, military confrontation
between the United States and Japan had become inevitable. To the United
States, Japan’s expansion into Southeast Asia seeking raw materials was a
direct threat to its long-standing national interests in the region; to Japan,
asking it to pull its troops out of China was ludicrous.
Chiang Kai-shek’s anti-Communist stance and the exigencies of wartime,
spurred by Japan’s sudden attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, made
the United States and China allies. Nevertheless, Roosevelt still followed a
“Europe First” policy, and while he acknowledged China as a “great power”
(daguo 大国), it was largely a symbolic gesture. On the other hand, the
United States helped China achieve its long-sought goal of abolishing extra-
territoriality, an act with enormous significance for the Chinese to the present
day. On January 11, 1943, the Sino-American Treaty for the Relinquishment
of Extraterritorial Rights in China and the Regulation of Related Matters was
concluded in Washington by Wei Daoming, Chinese ambassador to the Unit-
ed States, and Cordell Hull. On the same day, in Chongqing, T. V. Soong,
Chinese foreign minister, and Horace J. Seymour, British ambassador to
China, signed a corresponding treaty.
American support for China’s enhanced international status was exhibited
by two further events in 1943. The Roosevelt administration insisted that
China be a signatory, along with Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United
States, of the Declaration of Four Nations on General Security signed in
Moscow on October 30, 1943—an instrument that eventually led to China’s
permanent seat on the Security Council of the United Nations. At the Cairo
Conference held at the end of 1943, Chiang, along with his wife Madame
Soong, met with Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, the British prime minis-
ter. Roosevelt and Chiang agreed on postwar decolonization and a unified,
reformed Chinese government that would include the Communists. The re-
sulting Cairo Declaration stated that Japanese-held Manchuria, Formosa
(Taiwan), and the Pescadores should all be restored to China. 17 Chiang was
euphoric about his Cairo “victory” and being treated as an “equal” by Roose-
velt. Roosevelt, however, quickly reverted to the Europe First strategy, which
both Stalin and Churchill demanded.
The Sino-American alliance created different implications and expecta-
tions for both sides. Whereas the United States intended to use China as a
126 Chapter 6
bulwark against Japan’s ambitions in Asia, Chiang Kai-shek was more inter-
ested in translating America’s declared abhorrence of Communism into mili-
tary and economic aid to use against Mao’s forces. The United States was
faced with an intricate geopolitical and moral dilemma, poised between sup-
porting the inefficient, unpopular Nationalist government and making over-
tures to the ascendant CCP. To compound the already strained relationship,
the Nationalists’ military failures, particularly during the major 1944 cam-
paign known as Operation Ichigo, weakened Chiang’s prestige in American
eyes. In July 1944, President Roosevelt issued Chiang an ultimatum that
General Joseph W. Stilwell be placed in overall command of Chinese and
American forces in China. From the Chinese perspective, the U.S. demand
was high-handed, and Chiang resisted it in defense of Chinese sovereignty.
In October, however, Chiang and Stilwell found each other irreconcilable,
and Stilwell was recalled at Chiang’s insistence.
THE “RED STAR OVER CHINA” AND THE “LOSS OF CHINA”
By the end of the 1940s, attempts to forestall the demise of the Nationalist
Party were widely seen as futile. For a “can-do” nation like the United States,
America’s “loss of China” and China’s corresponding “loss of America” in
the final showdown between the GMD and CCP produced a ripple effect of
shock, denial, and finally some recognition of the United States’ own limits.
Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek: The Struggle between the

Chinese Communist Party and the Nationalist Party
The Chinese Communist revolution has been a “story in progress” for a

century—a rocky progression from “seizing power through revolution,” to
“continuing revolution,” to “farewell, revolution.” 18 What irresistible force
was responsible for drawing millions of Chinese into the Communist orbit
and, in the process, alienating the U.S. government?
As we saw in the last chapter, Chiang Kai-shek’s coup of April 12, 1927,
ended his collaboration with the CCP, marking his rejection of the principles
of class struggle and wealth redistribution—a platform that the CCP contin-
ued to uphold well into the twentieth century. Between 1930 and 1935,
Chiang waged five military campaigns aimed at suppressing the Commu-
nists. He almost succeeded. In 1934–1935, CCP troops were forced to flee
for about six thousand miles across China from their rural Soviet bases in
Jiangxi to Shaanxi in northwest China—giving rise to the legend of the Long
March—where they established their headquarters in Yan’an (Yenan). How-
ever, Japanese aggression was to change the fate of both Nationalists and
Communists. As Secretary of State Henry Stimson observed in March 1932,
“the trend of events in China was proceeding in the direction of eliminating
Communism until these recent difficulties with Japan. The present occupa-
tion in China by Japanese troops, however, renewed the danger of anarchy in
China.” 19
The Japanese invasion was also responsible for forging the second GMD-
CCP alliance or United Front. The Xi’an Incident of 1936 acted as one
catalyst. On December 12, 1936, Chiang Kai-shek was put under house arrest
during a visit to Xi’an, the capital of Shaanxi Province, by one of his own
generals, Zhang Xueliang, who was in secret contact with the CCP. Opposed
to Chiang’s strategy of ridding China of the Communists as a preliminary to
ousting Japanese forces, Zhang had decided to kidnap his leader in order to
force him to collaborate with the Communists—although secret peace talks
between the GMD, CCP, and Stalin’s agent in China were already under way
without Zhang’s knowledge. 20
While the progressive elements of Chiang’s nationalism had since gained
some prominence, Chiang sat on the fence when it came to deciding issues of
resistance to Japan, on the one hand, or peace negotiations and diplomatic
appeasement on the other. Secret contacts and negotiations with the Japanese
were pursued intermittently, although Chiang stood his ground and did not
surrender to Japan until he was sure that his allies were coming to the res-
cue. 21 It seems that Chiang was in a no-win situation: “When, after 1937,
Chiang’s troops did most of the fighting against the Japanese, they were
blamed for defeat. When Communist guerrillas engaged the enemy with far
less effect, they were lauded by public opinion as heroes.” 22
Mao successfully exploited differences between himself and his National-
ist rival. During the Sino-Japanese War, Mao had discredited Chiang as an
“old-timer” and a traitor—the man who had sold out China to Japan—even
though Chiang portrayed himself as the heir to the unfinished mission of Sun
Yat-sen, the father of the Republic of China. Although Chiang was no dema-
gogue, “improvement of the people’s livelihood” was, in his own words, “of
prime importance.” And the “foundation of the people’s livelihood is eco-
nomic reconstruction, which is a prerequisite for all the other phases of
reconstruction.” 23 Chiang respected evolution, private property rights, and
traditional customs, a stance that held little appeal to radical revolutionaries.
In contrast, Mao developed the concept—later characterized as Maoist
Thought—that the people were the real force of history. He held that China’s
peasant class, forming 70 percent of the population, were oppressed by the
landowners—only 10 percent—who charged the peasants high interest rates
and taxes and by imperialists who exploited the peasants through unfair
trading practices. Hence, the need for social revolution was pressing. Mao’s
radical social theories made sense to the poor and were successfully applied,
with pragmatic elasticity, to land redistribution (granting all peasants a small
plot of land), reductions in rent and interest, and the national “democratic”
movement.
128 Chapter 6
Following Japan’s defeat in the world war, the tables were turned in favor
of the Communists. The CCP’s swift and unexpected conquest of China
within three momentous years (1946–1949) was, to a great extent, attributed
to Mao Zedong (1893–1976), the paramount leader and theorist of the Com-
munist Revolution. In the initial stages of the civil war (April 1946–June
1947), the strategy adopted by Mao’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) was
characterized as “buying time in exchange for territory.” Mao traded space
for time with the Nationalists by surrendering territory—including his revo-
lutionary base in Yan’an in March 1947—but kept the resistance going and
launched selective attacks on Chiang’s troops. Within a year, Mao took the
offensive, and the war shifted in the PLA’s favor. Beginning in autumn 1948,
the CCP successfully launched three military campaigns in Manchuria and in
northern and central China and mobilized over 5 million farmers and militia
to provide military supplies and services. The CCP eliminated about 1.5
million Nationalist troops who were better equipped and had initially enjoyed
a 3:1 superiority in numbers. In April 1949, Mao’s army entered Nanjing, the
Nationalist capital, forcing Chiang to flee south to Taiwan. 24
Some American observers were keenly aware of the historical legitimacy
of the Communists. In 1946, two journalists from Time, Theodore H. White
and Annalee Jacoby, gave their own eyewitness analysis of the civil war and
its outcome:
When Chiang tried to fight the Japanese and preserve the old fabric at the same
time, he was not only unable to defeat the Japanese but powerless to preserve
his own authority. His historic enemy, the Communists, grew from an army of
85,000 to an army of a million, from the governors of 1,500,000 peasants to
the masters of 90,000,000. The Communists used no magic; they knew the
changes the people wanted, and they sponsored these changes. Both parties
lied, cheated, and broke agreements; but the Communists had the people with
them, and with the people they made their own new justice. 25
The “China Mud” (1941–1945)
Economic bankruptcy and ineffectual efforts to resist Japanese forces left the
Nationalist government vulnerable to criticism. As World War II came to an
end in China, the CCP was in a stronger position than before. The United
States embarked on an impossible mission of mediation between the two
political rivals, Chiang and Mao. The few impossible options doomed the
mediation: the United States withdrew its support for Chiang; Chiang carried
out reforms to enhance his standing with the Chinese people; the United
States sided with the Communists; and, finally, the American government
disengaged from the China theater. An echelon of American advisors in
China—including Joseph W. Stilwell, Patrick Hurley, George C. Marshall,
Albert C. Wedemeyer, and John Leighton Stuart—personified the endeavor
as well as the limits of American influence in China in the midst of a domes-

tic Chinese revolution. 26
In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, the Roosevelt administration increased
its military aid to China and dispatched General Joseph W. Stilwell and
Claire Chennault’s American Volunteer Group (“Flying Tigers”) to advise
Chiang’s infantry forces and operate clandestine air strikes against Japan. 27
In directing Allied operations in China, Stilwell clashed with Chiang over
military and political matters. On his arrival in China in 1942, Stilwell’s
objectives were twofold. First, he believed the infantry should be given prior-
ity over other forces because ground tactics were the most likely to be effec-
tive in combating the Japanese and keeping Allied supply lines open through
Southeast Asia. Second, Stilwell favored training and outfitting Communist
troops to create a large and efficient coalition army. For his part, Chiang
preferred the air assault strategy of Claire Chennault and neglected the Bur-
ma theater while maintaining full control over GMD forces.
Based on a study of Chiang’s diary in the Hoover Institution of Stanford
University (available since 2006), Wang Jianlang has charted the loss of
mutual trust between Chiang and the United States on a number of fronts: the
Chiang-Stilwell feud; the Anglo-American war strategy of “Europe First and
Asia Second”; Chiang’s suspicion of Sun Ke—Sun Yatsen’s son—as his
successor, favored by the United States and Britain; and the decisions about a
new world order made at the 1943 Cairo Conference and the Yalta Confer-
ence of 1945. It has also been argued that Chiang successfully resisted
American influence and maintained China’s independence while seizing the
opportunity to transform China into a global political power. 28
Assessments of Stilwell’s role have, as expected, been various. Barbara
Tuchman’s acclaimed biography portrayed the general as a true American
hero charged with combating the Japanese in China, whose efforts were
undermined by an underhanded autocrat with self-seeking motives. By
contrast, Chin-tung Liang, a refugee from Communist China and a professor
at St. John’s University, blamed Stilwell for being subversive and obstructive
and for working only for American and British interests. 29
On the other hand, Mao consciously made peace overtures to the United
States, Russia, and even Chiang in order to weaken his rival and limit
American aid to the Nationalist government. 30 The Dixie Mission (July
1944–March 1947), staffed by the U.S. Army Observation Group, was an
American undertaking—the fruit of efforts by both Mao and the U.S. side to
establish relations—aimed at observing the political and military scope of the
Communist movement in its own territory. Led by Colonel David D. Barrett,
the mission team consisted of eighteen American military and diplomatic
officers, many of whom, including John S. Service (1909–1999) and John P.
Davies (1908–1999), were accused of having Communist sympathies during
the McCarthyist witch hunts of the early 1950s.
130 Chapter 6
The Communists treated the Dixie Mission with strategic pragmatism.

The party recognized the significance of this visit from American military
personnel and foreign reporters as the “beginnings of real external interaction
with our new democratic China,” which would do a “service” for the party. A
communiqué from the party’s Central Committee stated, “Therefore we
should not treat their visit and observations as something merely ordinary.
Rather, we should view it as aiding our international publicity efforts and as
the start of our diplomatic work.” 31 This aspect of the party’s activities was
admittedly only in its infancy: “Diplomatic efforts are the most unfamiliar
dimension of our work. Our comrades, especially high-level cadres, should
give attention to and study this task.” 32
This favorable exposure to the American media, the State Department,
and U.S. academics had won the sympathy of influential young Americans
such as Edgar Snow, John S. Service, and Theodore White. They were con-
vinced that the Communists were the wave of the future in China, although
they were critical of the CCP’s governance skills, an assessment that was to
prove disastrously prophetic. According to White, “Their [the CCP leaders’]
ignorance of the outside world was sometimes shocking. They knew little of
high finance, protocol, or Western administration; their understanding of
industry, Western engineering, and international commerce was primitive.” 33
The failed efforts to arrive at a peaceful settlement in China by General
Patrick J. Hurley (ambassador to China, November 1944–November 1945)
heightened America’s inability to control both the form and content of its
relationship with warring Chinese political forces on its own geopolitical
terms. Hurley arrived in Chongqing, the GMD’s wartime capital, in Septem-
ber 1944, initially as the personal representative of the president to China.
Negotiations had been under way between the GMD and CCP for the consol-
idation of all Chinese military forces and the formation of a coalition govern-
ment. Hurley took the initiative by flying to Yan’an for talks with Mao
Zedong and helped formulate a five-point draft agreement whereby the Com-
munists would not hand over command of their troops to the Nationalists
before the GMD’s one-party rule was abolished and a reorganized govern-
ment was formed that would represent all parties. Rejecting this offer and
alleging that the CCP’s real purpose was to overthrow the Nationalist Party
and establish its own form of single-party rule, the Nationalist government
proposed a counter three-point plan for peace.
In the ensuing months, Hurley brought together rival party leaders, in-
cluding Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai representing the CCP and Chiang Kai-
shek and Wang Shijie for the GMD, for settlement negotiations. However,
Hurley, who sided with Chiang in the Stilwell-Chiang dispute, pushed for a
coalition government under Nationalist control. Both the Communists and
State Department personnel in China saw him as biased toward Chiang.
Hurley’s critics at the American embassy in Chongqing continued to argue
for military and political cooperation with the CCP. Furious and frustrated,
Hurley tendered his resignation to President Harry Truman (1945–1953) in
November 1945, setting off a politically charged debate in the United States.
In his resignation letter, Hurley openly accused his subordinates of Commu-
nist leanings:
Our professional diplomats continuously advised the Communists that my

efforts in preventing the collapse of the National Government did not represent
the policy of the United States. These same professionals openly advised the
Communist armed party to decline unification of the Chinese Communist
Army with the National Army unless the Chinese Communists were given
control. 34
China in the Balance (1945–1949)
As the China question was debated and politicized in Congress, a new mis-
sion led by General of the Army George C. Marshall—President Truman’s
special representative in China with the personal rank of ambassador—was
announced in December 1945. The Marshall mission was hobbled from the
outset by its contradictory objectives, as the government’s instructions to him
show. The United States must side with Chiang, even if he proved obdurate,
lest a disintegrating China and Soviet dominance in Manchuria thwart the
“major purpose of our war in the Pacific.” “The existence of autonomous
armies such as that of the Communist army is inconsistent with, and actually
makes impossible, political unity in China.” It was in the United States’
interests that Chiang end the conflict with the Communists, democratize his
government, and maintain peace and unity—by broadening “the bases of that
Government . . . to include other political elements in the country”—because
the United States could not support Chiang by “military intervention in an
internecine struggle.” “With the institution of a broadly representative
government, autonomous armies should be eliminated as such and all armed
forces in China integrated effectively into the Chinese National army.” 35
Unlike Hurley, Marshall was involved in extensive discussions with Truman;
James F. Byrnes (secretary of state, 1945–1947); the State Department; and
high-level army, navy, and air force commanders to try and develop a clear
American policy toward China.
Compounding the contradictions inherent in the U.S. position, the deep-
seated divisions between the Nationalist and Communist parties, as well as
the Russians, all hindered the mediation efforts of Marshall, who personally
believed that the “Communist group will block all progress in negotiations as
far as they can, as the delay is to their advantage.” 36 A cease-fire between the
GMD and the CCP was reached in January 1946 and lasted intermittently for
barely a year. The parties were unable to agree on the composition of even
small committees to discuss the reorganization of the State Council to form a
132 Chapter 6
joint government that would end the GMD’s one-party rule. In November
1946, the Nationalist-dominated National Assembly was convened, and the
Communists immediately demanded its dissolution.
In early December 1946, the CCP broke off all negotiations. However,
Marshall still held out some hope for a political solution. He believed that the
liberals in the Nationalist government and in the minority parties could unite
and work under Chiang. He was “anxious to get started on something differ-
ent.” 37 This was not to happen. In January 1947, President Truman recalled
Marshall and shortly afterward appointed him as secretary of state.
Meanwhile, the Nationalist and Communist parties turned their attention
to Manchuria, both eager to exploit a power vacuum created by the with-
drawal of Japanese forces following Japan’s surrender on August 15, 1945.
Viewing Manchuria as part of its own sphere of influence, as determined in
the peace settlements at the Yalta Conference, the Soviet Union was irritated
by the GMD’s use of American warships and airplanes to transfer its troops
to Manchurian ports to reestablish a military and civilian administration in
the territory. Fearing American influence in Manchuria, in October 1945 the
Russians refused permission to land in Port Arthur and Dalian to Nationalist
forces arriving from remote southwestern China. When Chiang’s army was
permitted to enter the cities of Yingkou and Hulu Dao in Liaoning Province,
they found themselves besieged by CCP forces that had spent the war years
in Manchuria. Finally, the Nationalist troops were forced to reroute to Qin-
huang Dao and enter the Three Northeastern Provinces overland. As a result
of a lack of cooperation from the Soviets, GMD forces lost four to five
valuable weeks in the race to take over former Japanese-occupied territory.
This delay gave the CCP a crucial edge as it rushed its cadres and troops to
Manchuria to develop base areas. 38 On June 25, 1947, the GMD Foreign
Ministry reported that Port Arthur and Dalian were still not under the control
of the Nationalist government and demanded that Russia fulfill its obliga-
tions under the 1945 Sino-Russian Treaty of Friendship and Alliance. 39 In
seeking a resolution to China’s political fate, John Leighton Stuart (ambassa-
dor to China, 1946–1949) found himself caught on the horns of the same
dilemma as Marshall. While Stuart was pro-Chiang, he supported a demo-
cratic, united government inclusive of all Chinese.
I greatly desired to see him [Chiang] lead the party in a revival of the original
revolutionary reform when its leaders really had a high patriotic motive and
were heroic in exposing themselves to danger with no thought of self in their
desire to establish Chinese independence with a democratic form of govern-
ment. . . . The reform movement should be inward in correcting the flagrant
abuses which were destroying confidence both in China and abroad, and posi-
tive in creating socialized legislation that would bring economic benefits to the
common people. 40
The Nationalists were increasingly frustrated with Marshall and Stuart, both
for insisting on democratic reforms and for failing to give them unlimited
supplies of American aid, while the Communists were outraged by the mas-
sive quantities of American aid granted to Chiang in the midst of their media-
tion efforts. On August 7, 1946, Stuart wrote to Secretary of State Byrnes
about his conversations with Chiang Kai-shek and the Communists’ chief
negotiator, Zhou Enlai, that “we at least know how irreconcilable are the
attitudes of the two parties.” 41 On July 4, 1947, the State Council dominated
by the Nationalists proclaimed the CCP to be in open rebellion against the
government, and the GMD was henceforth determined to devote consider-
able resources to suppressing the Communist insurgents.
But Chiang’s administration was in crisis. By spring 1947, runaway infla-
tion, spreading student demonstrations, rice riots, and labor strikes were
widespread across China—all manifestations of Chiang’s loss of control. The
GMD’s response to the money shortage was to print more banknotes. From
September 1945 to February 1947, wholesale prices increased thirtyfold, and
then from September 1948 to February 1949, they shot up more than 385
times. A 171-pound bag of rice sold for 6.7 million Chinese yuan in June
1948 had escalated to 63 million yuan two months later.
In July 1947, Truman sent Lieutenant General Albert C. Wedemeyer to
China on a fact-finding tour. Following a month of interviews with (and the
collation of written submissions from) Chinese and foreigners living in Nanj-
ing, Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin, Shenyang (Mukden), Guangzhou (Canton),
and Hankou, Wedemeyer made some very frank observations on the short-
comings of the Nationalist government, words that reportedly made the pres-
ident of the Examination Yuan (the body that oversaw the civil service), Dai
Jitao, weep on one occasion. Wedemeyer recommended that the China quag-
mire should be removed from American mediation and referred to the United
Nations. In his report to Truman, Wedemeyer summed up the dilemma faced
by the United States:
On one side is the Kuomintang [Guomindang], whose reactionary leadership,

repression and corruption have caused a loss of popular faith in the Govern-
ment [Nationalists]. On the other side, bound ideologically to the Soviet Un-
ion, are the Chinese Communists, whose eventual aim is admittedly a Commu-
nist state in China . . . inimical to the interests of the United States, in view of
their openly expressed hostility and active opposition to those principles which
the United States regards as vital to the peace of the world. 42
However, the situation was taken out of everyone’s hands when the National-
ist regime was decisively defeated in its civil war with the Communists
during 1946–1949. 43 Manchuria had been the first major battleground as the
two factions struggled for dominance following the end of the Second World
War. Both sides were well prepared for armed combat. Adapting to new
134 Chapter 6
developments and learning valuable strategic lessons from internal problems,

setbacks, and defeats, the Communist PLA shifted their operational strategy
from a guerrilla struggle in rural areas to an effective combination of mobile
and base warfare, concentrating on cities and railways while consolidating
their Manchurian rural base areas. 44
As we have seen, by fall 1948 the Communists were poised to launch
strategic offensives in Manchuria and in north and central China, known as
the Three Military Campaigns (Liaoshen, Huaihai, and Pingjin). 45 Lin Biao,
the commander of the Communist army in Manchuria, carried out several
decisive attacks and took control of major cities including Changchun and
Mukden (Shenyang). Within fifty days or so, Lin’s forces had eliminated
around 470,000 Nationalist troops and reversed the Nationalist advance. In
Henan and Jiangsu provinces, Deng Xiaoping, Liu Bocheng, and Su Yu
waged a number of offensives from November 1948 to January 1949 that
succeeded in wiping out a GMD army of over half a million men. Within two
months, key cities including Tianjin and Beijing fell to the Communists, with
an additional 520,000 GMD troops defeated. On April 24, 1949, the Commu-
nists crossed the Yangzi and swept into Nanjing; the following morning,
soldiers broke into Ambassador Stuart’s bedroom in the American embassy.
The remnants of the beaten GMD retreated to Taiwan. On October 1, 1949,
in Beijing, Mao Zedong announced the birth of the People’s Republic of
China.
In this chapter, I have outlined the various American attempts at handling
the delicate, unfolding situation in China during these two volatile decades.
On the CCP side, the need to learn the fundamentals of diplomatic engage-
ment with the United States and other “imperialists,” in both overt and covert
ways, determined the direction of the party’s foreign policy, especially from
1946 onward. 46 Diplomatic niceties, however, were not always observed. In
November 1948, Angus I. Ward, American consul-general, and his staff in
Mukden refused to follow the Communist authorities’ order to turn in their
radio transmitters. They were detained in isolation, put on trial on spy
charges, and finally deported in December 1949. 47
A reading of American diplomats’ dispatches from the field suggests the
indifferent, uncooperative attitude shown by their international counterparts
toward the indignities to which the United States was subjected, as in the
Ward Incident. In January 1949, Stuart sent the following notes to the secre-
tary of state:
While expressing sympathy and concern British and French Ambassadors [Sir
Ralph Stevenson and Jacques Meyrier] still refuse to cooperate in joint state-
ment which we believe occasion warrants. It is apparent that these local repre-
sentatives are quite content to ride along on the coattails of US without appear-
ing to take any positive action which might compromise future dealings them-
selves or their nationals in CCP-occupied China. . . . In our opinion attitude

adopted by Chinese Communists toward American Consulate General in Muk-
den, not to speak of more neutral British and French Consulate Generals there,
is little short of blackmail. It is among most convincing evidence yet that
Chinese Communist leaders are basically British [sic] bigots out of Bolshevik
mold. 48
Nine months later, the American consul-general in Shanghai, Walter McCo-

naughy, confirmed Stuart’s views. From casual conversations with Nanjing
diplomats about to embark on British evacuation ships he had gained the
impression that, despite their experiences, they would “recommend unreserv-
edly to their Government that recognition be accorded [to Communist China]
in the not distant future.” Regarding the ongoing difficulties experienced by
American consulates in China, McConaughy commented, “It was disturbing
to note their casual and even cavalier attitude toward indignities we have
suffered at hands of Communists, particularly detention of our consular staff
at Mukden.” 49
Despite this diplomatic friction, the Communists arguably left the door
open for political and diplomatic contacts with the United States. During his
remaining time in China in May–July 1949, Stuart reported on the initiatives
the Communists were taking to gain recognition by the United States. Ac-
cording to Stuart’s notes, Huang Hua—chief of the Aliens Affairs Office,
Nanking Military Control Council, an alumnus of Yenching University (Stu-
art was Yenching’s former president) and a classmate of Philip Fugh (Stu-
art’s secretary)—approached Stuart and remarked amiably that “it would be
up to USA, when time came, to make first move in establishment relations
with People’s Democratic Government . . . on terms of equality and mutual
benefit.” 50 Huang Hua let it be known that Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai
would personally welcome Stuart to Beijing if he wished to visit Yenching
University. The U.S. government rejected the offer, and Stuart left China for
good on August 2, 1949. 51
CONCLUSION
During the 1930s and 1940s, American-Chinese relations developed under

four broad rubrics. First, during these two decades the political landscape in
China was dominated by a complex series of interactions—first between the
independent warlords, the Nationalist and Chinese Communist parties, and
foreign powers (chiefly Japan, the United States, Germany, Britain, and the
Soviet Union) and later between the Nationalists, the Communists, the World
War II Allies, and the major Cold War rivals, the United States and the
Soviet Union.
136 Chapter 6
Second, revolution, nationalism, and anti-imperialism were at work as

major forces of change in China and other parts of Asia. As the relationship
between the United States and Nationalist China continued to strengthen and
evolve, the Chinese Communists became the historical agent of change.
Third, American foreign policy was aimed at maintaining a regional and
global balance of power that suited its own interests in the Asia-Pacific. The
strength of U.S. influence in China rested on its ability to control the bilateral
relationship so that China continued to serve the American interests in the
region. This was the contingent process behind America’s “gain of China.”
Never before had the United States wielded so much power in China. Rival
nationalist leaders—in particular Chiang and Mao—resisted, ignored, and
ultimately upset American designs for China. However, America’s unwill-
ingness to use military force to intervene in the Chinese civil war and its
inability to abandon the unattainable goal of establishing a progressive, anti-
Communist Chiang government led ultimately to the disappointment of the
United States.
Fourth, the political rhetoric surrounding the question of “how China was
lost”—or the “China question” in broader terms—dominated Sino-American
relations and has become a permanent feature of American politics that ebbs
and flows in response to the political climate. 52 The politicization of the
China issue intensified following the open rift between Patrick Hurley and
the American Foreign Service staff in China. Republican senators including
Styles Bridges of New Hampshire and Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan fell
into line with Hurley, forming the so-called conservative “China lobby.”
They pressed for increased aid and support for Chiang against the threat of
Communism. Democrats such as Tom Connally of Texas—a supporter of a
quiet disassociation from Chiang—battled with Republicans at congressional
hearings. Espionage charges were made against Judith Coplon of the Justice
Department, allegedly a Communist, and German physicist Klaus Fuchs,
who had confessed to atomic espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union, as
well as China specialists such as John Carter Vincent, John S. Service, and
John P. Davies. These indictments laid the groundwork for the rise of
McCarthyism in the 1950s. 53
The impassioned reactions to the publication of the China White Paper in
August 1949 were another instance of the Rashomon effect regarding China.
Dean Acheson, Truman’s secretary of state (1949–1953), blamed Chiang and
the Chinese themselves for the “ominous result of the civil war in China”
because it was “beyond the control of the government of the United
States.” 54 Furious critics responded that “America’s misguided or calculated
failure to give Chiang Kai-shek the help he needed to beat the Chinese
Communists was leading to Russian control of Asia.” 55
America’s entanglement with China during these two decades and the
heated debates and rhetoric it produced could also be accounted for by in-
creased cultural, social, religious, and economic encounters between the two
countries—a theme to be explored further in chapter 8.
FURTHER READING
Dorothy Borg and Shumpei Okamoto, eds., Pearl Harbor as History (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1973) is an important study of U.S.-East
Asian relations in the 1930s. Tsou Tang’s America’s Failure in China,
1941–50 (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1963) is a classic ac-
count of America’s wartime diplomacy in China. John Van Antwerp Mac-
Murray, How the Peace Was Lost: The 1935 Memorandum “Developments
Affecting American Policy in the Far East,” ed. Arthur Waldron (Stanford,
Calif.: Hoover Institution, 1992) illuminates former American minister to
China John MacMurray’s perspective on the Sino-Japanese conflict. Mac-
Murray saw Bolshevism and the USSR as greater dangers than Japan and
advocated a lenient policy toward Japanese involvement in China. A very
different historical witness account of the Eighth Route Army, fighting the
Japanese in 1937–1938, can be found in China Fights Back: An American
Woman with the Eighth Route Army (London: Victor Gollancz, 1938), by
Agnes Smedley (1892–1950, a triple agent who worked for the Soviets, the
Chinese Communists, and the Indian nationalists). Other useful works in-
clude Parks M. Coble, Facing Japan: Chinese Politics and Japanese Imperi-
alism, 1931–1937 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991) and
Sun Youli, China and the Origins of the Pacific War, 1931–1941 (New
York: St. Martin’s, 1993).
For Chinese, Japanese, Russian, British, and American involvement in
and views on the war in Asia, see Akira Iriye and Warren Cohen, eds.,
American, Chinese, and Japanese Perspectives on Wartime Asia, 1931–1949
(Wilmington, Del.: SR Books, 1990); Anthony Best, British Intelligence and
the Japanese Challenge in Asia, 1911–1941 (New York: Macmillan, 2002);
John Garver, Chinese-Soviet Relations 1937–1945: The Diplomacy of Chi-
nese Nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); and Odd Arne
Westad, Cold War and Revolution: Soviet-American Rivalry and the Origins
of the Chinese Civil War, 1944–1946 (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1993), and Decisive Encounters: The Chinese Civil War, 1946–1950
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003). Kevin Peraino’s A Force So
Swift: Mao, Truman, and the Birth of Modern China, 1949 (New York:
Crown, 2018) brings to life the political history of U.S.-Chinese relations
from the perspective of 1949. Organized month by month and theme by
theme, its twenty-four chapters chronicle the twelve months of the Truman
administration’s response to the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
138 Chapter 6
Japanese-occupied Manchuria and competing Chinese and Japanese na-

tionalisms are studied in Prasenjit Duara, Sovereignty and Authenticity: Man-
chukuo and the East Asian Modern (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield,
2003); and Rana Mitter, The Manchurian Myth: Nationalism, Resistance,
and Collaboration in Modern China (Berkeley, Calif.: University of Califor-
nia Press, 2000). Joshua Fogel, ed., The Nanjing Massacre in History and
Historiography (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2000) ex-
amines the Nanjing Massacre as an event and the various interpretations it
has elicited.
Lynne Joiner’s The Honorable Survivor: Mao’s China, McCarthy’s
America, and the Persecution of John S. Service (Annapolis, Md.: Naval
Institute Press, 2009) tells a moving story of John S. Service, a wartime
foreign service officer in China who advocated establishing ties with the
Chinese Communists. John Paton Davies Jr., China Hand: An Autobiogra-
phy (Philadelphia, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012) is a gripping
personal account of Chinese history and American diplomacy from the 1930s
to the 1950s by an American diplomat and a victim of the McCarthy hysteria.
For a useful research guide to a fascinating group of nearly two hundred
foreigners who visited or lived in Communist-controlled areas of China be-
fore 1949, see Daniel H. Bays, ed., Margaret Stanley, Foreigners in Areas of
China under Communist Jurisdiction before 1949: Biographical Notes and a
Comprehensive Bibliography of the Yenan Hui (Lawrence, Kans.: Center for
East Asian Studies, University of Kansas, 1987).
Works in Chinese on the victory of the Chinese Communists in 1949 are
abundant. Among the most useful are Wang Chaoguang (汪朝光),
1945–1949: Guogong zhengzheng yu Zhongguo mingyun [1945–1949: 国共
政争与中国命运 The political conflict between the GMD and CCP and
China’s destiny] (Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2010); Yang
Kuisong (杨奎松), Shiqu de jihui? Kangzhan qianhou Guogong tanpan shilu
[失去的机会? 抗战前后国共谈判实录 A lost opportunity? A true account
of the negotiations between the GMD and CCP before and after the War of
Resistance] (Beijing: Xinxing chubanshe, 2010); Yang Kuisong, “Zhongjian
didai” de geming: Guoji da beijing xia kan Zhonggong chenggong zhidao
[“中间地带”的革命: 国际大背景下看中共成功之道 The “mid-zone” revo-
lution: Tracing the CCP’s path to success within a broad international con-
text] (Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin chubanshe, 2010).
NOTES
1. Nancy Tucker, “Continuing Controversies in the Literature of U.S.-China Relations

since 1945,” in Pacific Passage: The Study of American-East Asian Relations on the Eve of the
Twenty-First Century, ed. Warren I. Cohen (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996),
213–246.
2. Walter LaFeber, The Clash: U.S.-Japanese Relations throughout History (New York:
Norton, 1997); Michael H. Hunt, Frontier Defense and the Open Door: Manchuria in Chinese-
American Relations, 1895–1911 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1973).
3. Interview with Charles Hodges, “China’s Salvation at Stake, He Says,” New York Times,
October 1, 1922, p. 45.
4. These questions were much debated at the time; see Paul S. Reinsch, An American
Diplomat in China (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page and Comp., 1922), 307–316.
5. This is also known as the Johnson-Reed Act, https://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-
1936/immigration-act (accessed February 8, 2021).
6. The Root-Takahira Exchange of Notes, 1908, Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace, The Imperial Japanese Mission 1917: A Record of the Reception throughout the United
States of the Special Mission Headed by Viscount Ishii (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endow-
ment for International Peace, 1918), publication no. 15, appendix A.
7. The Lansing-Ishii Exchange of Notes, 1917, Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace, The Imperial Japanese Mission 1917, publication no. 15, Appendix B.
8. Thomas W. Burkman, Japan and the League of Nations: Empire and World Order,
1914–1938 (Honolulu, Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, 2007).
9. The minister in China (Johnson) to the secretary of state, September 19, 1931, in U.S.
Department of State, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States [FRUS
hereafter], Japan: 1931–1941 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1943), vol. 1,
p. 1.
10. Louis Young, Japan’s Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperial-
ism (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1998); Dorothy Borg, The United States
and the Far Eastern Crisis of 1933–1938: From the Manchurian Incident through the Initial
Stage of the Undeclared Sino-Japanese War (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1964); James B. Crowley, Japan’s Quest for Autonomy: National Security and Foreign Policy,
1930–1938 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1966).
11. Memorandum by the secretary of state, September 22, 1931; the minister in China
(Johnson) to the secretary of state, September 19, 1931, in FRUS, Japan: 1931–1941, vol. 1,
pp. 5–9.
12. “Dongsheng shibian” [东省事变 The Manchurian Incident], November 1932–February
1933, Waijiaobu dang’an [外交部档案 Archives of the Foreign Ministry], file no. 020-010112-
0020, deposited at Academia Historica in Taipei.
13. Telegram, the secretary of state to the consul-general at Nanking (Peck), and memo by
the secretary of state, both dated January 7, 1932, U.S. Department of State, FRUS, 1932: The
Far East (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1932), vol. 3, pp. 7–9.
14. He Yingqin (1890–1987) was the acting chairman of the Beiping (Beijing) Military
Council, and Umezu Yoshijirō (1882–1949) was a commander of the Japanese army.
15. The Marco Polo Bridge is located in Wanping County, south of Beijing.
16. Edward L. Dreyer, China at War, 1901–1949 (London: Longman, 1995). For different
assessments of Chinese and Japanese military performance, see Ger Teitler and Kurt W. Radt-
ke, eds., A Dutch Spy in China: Reports on the First Phase of the Sino-Japanese War
(1937–1939) (Leiden: Brill, 1999); Hans van de Ven, ed., Warfare in Chinese History (Leiden:
Brill, 2000); Dick Wilson, When Tigers Fight: The Story of the Sino-Japanese War, 1937–1945
(New York: Viking, 1982).
17. U.S. Department of State, United States Relations with China with Special Reference to
the Period 1944–1949 (Washington, D.C.: Department of State, 1949), 37.
18. Chen Yung-fa (陈永发), Zhongguo gongchan geming qishinian [中国共产革命七十年
Seventy years of the Chinese Communist revolution], revised edition (Taipei: Lianjing, 2001),
xvi.
19. Memorandum by the secretary of state, March 11, 1932, in FRUS, 1932: The Far East
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1932), vol. 3, pp. 566–567.
20. Jay Taylor, The Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China
(Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 2009), chap. 3.
21. David P. Barrett and Lawrence N. Shyu, eds., Chinese Collaboration with Japan,
1932–1945: The Limits of Accommodation (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2001);
140 Chapter 6
So Wai Chor, “The Making of the Guomindang’s Japan Policy, 1932–1937: The Roles of
Chiang Kai-Shek and Wang Jingwei,” Modern China 28, no. 2 (April 2002): 213–252; Wu
Jingping (吴景平), “1938 nian Guomindang dui Ri hezhan taidu shuping: Yi Jiang Jieshi riji
wei zhongxin de kaocha” [1938 年国民党对日和战态度述评一以蒋介石日记为中心的考察
An assessment of the Nationalist Party’s dual stance of appeasement and resistance to Japan in
1938, based on the diary of Chiang Kai-shek], Minguo dang’an (民国档案), no. 3 (2010):
114–126; Shen Yu (沈予), “Lun Kangri zhanzheng shiqi Rijiang de ‘heping’ jiaoshe” [论抗日
战争时期日蒋的”和平”交涉 On the “peace” negotiations between Japan and Chiang during
the War of Resistance], Lishi yanjiu, no. 2 (1993): 108–127.
22. David M. Gordon, “Historiographical Essay: The China-Japan War, 1931–1945,” Jour-
nal of Military History 70, no. 1 (January 2006): 137–182.
23. Chiang Kai-shek, Zhongguo zhi mingyun [中国之命运 China’s destiny] (Chongqing:
Zhengzhong shuju, 1943), chaps. 5 and 6.
24. Timothy Cheek, ed., A Critical Introduction to Mao (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2010); Timothy Cheek, Mao Zedong and China’s Revolution: A Brief History with
Documents (Boston, Mass.: Bedford, 2002); Ross Terrill, Mao: A Biography (Stanford, Calif.:
Stanford University Press, 1999; first edition in 1980 by Harper and Row); Jonathan Spence,
Mao Zedong (New York: Penguin, 1999).
25. Theodore H. White and Annalee Jacoby, Thunder out of China (New York: William
Sloane Associates, 1946), introduction.
26. Barbara W. Tuchman, Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911–45 (New
York: Bantam, 1972, first edition in 1971), foreword.
27. For the tensions between Stilwell, Chennault, Roosevelt, and Chiang, see Edward Fish-
er, The Chancy War: Winning in China, Burma, and India in World War II (New York: Orion
Books, 1991); Guangqiu Xu, “The Issue of U.S. Air Support for China during the Second
World War, 1942–1945,” Journal of Contemporary History 36 (July 2001): 459–484.
28. Tao Wenzhao (陶文钊), Zhongmei guanxishi (1911–1949) [中美关系史 Sino-American
relations] (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 2004), vol. 1, chap. 6; Wang Jianlang (王建
朗), “Xinren de liushi: Cong Jiang Jieshi riji kan Kangzhan houqi de Zhongmei guanxi” [信任
的流失: 从蒋介石日记看抗日后期的中美关系 The loss of trust: Sino-American relations in
the later phases of the Anti-Japanese War as seen through the diary of Chiang Kai-shek],
Jindaishi yanjiu, no. 3 (2009): 49–62; Wang Jianlang, “Daguo yishi yu daguo zuowei: Kang-
zhan houqi de Zhongguo guoji jiaose dingwei yu waijiao nuli” [大国意识与大国作为: 抗战后
期的中国国际角色定位与外交努力 Great power awareness and actions: The establishment
of China’s international status and diplomatic efforts in the later phases of the War of Resis-
tance], Lishi yanjiu, no. 6 (2008): 124–137.
29. Tuchman, Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911–45; Chin-tung Liang,
General Stilwell in China, 1942–1945: The Full Story (New York: St. John’s University Press,
1972); Hans van de Ven, “Stilwell in the Stocks: The Chinese Nationalists and the Allied
Powers in the Second World War,” Asian Affairs 34, no. 3 (November 2003): 243–259.
30. Mao Zedong, “He Meiguo jizhe An’na Luyisi Sitelang de tanhua” [和美国记者安娜.路
易斯.斯特朗的谈话 An interview with American journalist Anna Louise Strong in August
1946], in Mao Zedong xuanji (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1966), vol. 4, pp. 1135–1140.
31. “Zhonggong zhongyang guanyu waijiao gongzuo de zhishi,” (dated August 18, 1944)
[中共中央关于外交工作的指示 Directives of the Central Committee of the Chinese Commu-
nist Party relating to diplomatic matters] in Zhongyang dang’anguan (中央档案馆), ed.,
Zhonggong zhongyang wenjian xuanji [中共中央文件选集 Selected documents of the Central
Committee of the Chinese Communist Party] (Beijing: Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chu-
banshe, 1989–1992), vol. 14, http://cpc.people.com.cn/GB/64184/64186/66645/index.html (ac-
cessed February 20, 2011); John S. Service, The Ameriasia Papers: Problems in the History of
U.S.-China Relations (Berkeley, Calif.: Center for Chinese Studies, University of California,
1971); David D. Barrett, Dixie Mission: The United States Army Observer Group in Yenan,
1944 (Berkeley, Calif.: Center for Chinese Studies, University of California, 1979); Joseph W.
Esherick, Lost Chance in China: The World War II Dispatches of John S. Service (New York:
Random House, 1974); Zi Zhongyun (资中筠), Meiguo duihua zhengce de yuanqi he fazhan
(1945–1950) [美国对华政策的缘起和发展 The origins and development of American policy

toward China] (Chongqing: Chongqing chubanshe, 1987).
32. “Zhonggong zhongyang guanyu waijiao gongzuo de zhishi.”
33. White and Jacoby, Thunder out of China, 229; Edgar Snow, Red Star over China, first
revised and enlarged edition (New York: Grove Press, 1973); S. Bernard Thomas, Season of
High Adventure: Edgar Snow in China (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1996).
34. “The Ambassador to China (Hurley) to President Truman,” in the U.S. Department of
State, ed., United States Relations with China with Special Reference to the Period 1944–1949,
581–584.
35. “The Marshall Mission: Instructions to General of the Army George C. Marshall regard-
ing United States Policy toward China; First Conferences in China,” in FRUS, Diplomatic
Papers, 1945; The Far East, China (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1945),
vol. 7, pp. 745–828.
36. “Memorandum by General of the Army George C. Marshall to Fleet Admiral William
D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy,” November 30,
1945, in FRUS, Diplomatic Papers, 1945; The Far East, China, 748.
37. Roger B. Jeans, ed., The Marshall Mission to China, 1945–1947: The Letters and Diary
of Colonel John Hart Caughey (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011), 35.
38. At Yalta in the Crimea, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin reached secret agreements. In
return for its entry into the Asian theater within three months after the war in Europe was over,
the Soviets were granted the Kurile Islands, the southern half of Sakhalin, and railroads and
port facilities in North Korea, Manchuria, and Outer Mongolia. Suzanne Pepper, “The KMT-
CCP Conflict 1945–1949,” in The Cambridge History of China: Republican China 1912–1949,
ed. Denis Twitchett and John K. Fairbank (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986),
vol. 13, pp. 723–729; Zhongguo lishi di’er dang’anguan, ed., Zhonghua minguoshi dang’an
ziliao huibian, vol. 5, part 3, waijiao, pp. 698, 706–708; Dong Wang, “Redeeming ‘A Century
of National Ignominy’: Nationalism and Party Rivalry over the Unequal Treaties, 1928–1947,”
Twentieth-Century China 30, no. 2 (April 2005): 72–100.
39. For secret negotiations in Moscow between Nationalist China and the Soviet Union, see
Xiaoyuan Liu, A Partnership for Disorder: China, the United States, and Their Policies for the
Postwar Disposition of the Japanese Empire, 1941–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1996). Liu argues that the Yalta-Moscow system provided American and Russian sup-
port for the Nationalist regime to continue to rule China but modified the Cairo decisions by
“reducing China’s territories and external sovereignty” (p. 285).
40. Stuart to the secretary of state (James F. Byrnes), 893.00/3-347, March 3, 1947; Stuart to
the secretary of state about his conversations with Chiang at Kuling Mountain, 893.00/7-2146,
July 21, 1946, in Kenneth W. Rea and John C. Brewer, eds., The Forgotten Ambassador: The
Reports of John Leighton Stuart, 1946–1949 (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1981), 2–6, 65.
John Leighton Stuart, Fifty Years in China: The Memoirs of John Leighton Stuart, Missionary
and Ambassador (New York: Random House, 1954). FRUS, 1946, vol. 10, pp. 1, 205, 537,
580.
41. Stuart to the secretary of state, 893.00/8-746, August 7, 1946; 893.00/8-3046, August
30, 1946; 893.00/11-1346, November 13, 1946, in Rea and Brewer, eds., The Forgotten Am-
bassador, 7–13, 38.
42. Report to President Truman by Lieutenant General Albert C. Wedemeyer, U.S. Army,
September 17, 1947, pp. 764–814.
43. Both Chiang and Stuart underestimated the military prowess of the CCP, as did Mao
himself. In September–October 1948, Mao predicted that “it will probably take us five years
(counting from July 1946) to wipe out the GMD.” Mao’s telegraph to Lin Biao and Luo
Ronghuan, “Guanyu Liaoshen zhanyi de zuozhan fangzhen” [关于辽沈战役的作战方针 On
the operational tactics used in the Liaoshen campaign], Mao Zedong xuanji, vol. 4, p. 1277.
44. Victor Shiu Chiang Cheng, “Imaging China’s Madrid in Manchuria: The Communist
Military Strategy at the Onset of the Chinese Civil War, 1945–1946,” Modern China 31, no. 1
(January 2005): 72–114; Harold M. Tanner, “Guerrilla, Mobile, and Base Warfare in Commu-
nist Military Operations in Manchuria, 1945–1947,” Journal of Military History 67, no. 4
(October 2003): 1177–1222; Steven I. Levine, Anvil of Victory: The Communist Revolution in
142 Chapter 6
Manchuria, 1945–1948 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987); Donald G. Gillin and
Ramon H. Myers, eds., Last Chance in Manchuria: The Diary of Chang Kia-ngau (Stanford,
Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1989); Xu Yan (徐焰), Kangri zhanzheng shengli qianxi zhi
shengli hou wodang zhanlüe fangzhen de zhuanbian [抗日战争胜利前夕至胜利后我党战略
方针的转变 The transformation of CCP strategy from the eve to the aftermath of victory in the
War of Resistance], in Zhongguo geming bowuguan dangshi yanjiushi (中国革命博物馆党史
研究室), ed., Dangshi yanjiu ziliao (Chengdu: Sichuan renmin chubanshe, 1987), vol. 7.
45. Harold M. Tanner, Where Chiang Kai-shek Lost China: The Liao-Shen Campaign, 1948
(Bloomington, Ind.: University of Indiana Press, 2015).
46. See Mao Zedong’s report on March 5, 1949, at the 2nd meeting of the 7th plenary
session of the Central Committee in Xibaipo. The CCP regarded this meeting as a key compo-
nent of its strategy in the lead-up to its final victory in October 1949. Mao Zedong xuanji, vol.
4, pp. 1362–1377.
47. Chen Jian, “The Ward Case and the Emergence of Sino-American Confrontation,
1948–1950,” Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, no. 30 (July 1993): 149–170; Chen Jian,
Mao’s China and the Cold War (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2001),
chap. 2; “National Affairs: The Frontiersman,” Time 67, no. 14 (April 2, 1956). For detailed
reports, see FRUS, 1948 and 1949, The Far East: China, 2 vols. for each year.
48. Stuart to the secretary of state, January 12 and January 5, 1949, FRUS, 1949, vol. 8, The
Far East: China, 933–935.
49. McConaughy to the secretary of state, October 21, 1949, FRUS, 1949, vol. 9, The Far
East, China, 137.
50. Stuart to the secretary of state, 893.00B/5-1149, May 11, 1949; 893.00 B/5-1449, May
14, 1949; 711.93/6-849, June 8, 1949; 123 Stuart J. Leighton, June 30, 1949, in Rea and
Brewer, eds., The Forgotten Ambassador, 322–334.
51. According to Warren I. Cohen’s interview with Huang Hua in 1986, Huang countered
Stuart’s report that Mao and Zhou initiated a possible meeting with Stuart. Huang claimed that
the Communists did not reach out to the United States. Warren I. Cohen, “Conversations with
Chinese Friends: Zhou Enlai’s Associates Reflect on Chinese-American Relations in the 1940s
and the Korean War,” Diplomatic History 11, no. 3 (July 1987): 283–289; Michael M. Sheng,
“Chinese Communist Policy toward the United States and the Myth of the ‘Lost Chance’
1948–1950,” Modern Asian Studies 28, no. 3 (July 1994): 475–502.
52. Kenneth S. Chern, “Politics of American China Policy, 1945: Roots of the Cold War in
Asia,” Political Science Quarterly 91, no. 4 (Winter 1976–1977): 631–647.
53. Lyman P. Van Slyke, introduction, in U.S. Department of State, The China White Paper
August 1949 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1967), originally issued as United
States Relations with China with Special Reference to the Period 1944–1949, published in
August 1949.
54. Dean Acheson, letter of transmittal, in U.S. Department of State, The China White Paper
August 1949.
55. Dorothy Borg and Waldo Heinrichs, eds., Uncertain Years: Chinese-American Rela-
tions, 1947–1950 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980); Nancy B. Tucker, Patterns in
the Dust: Chinese-American Relations and the Recognition Controversy, 1949–1950 (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1983).
Chapter Seven
Deterrence and Negotiation

American-Chinese Relations at the Height of the Cold
War
This chapter sheds new light on the deep conflicts as well as the positive
dynamics in Sino-American relations in the 1950s and 1960s. Some scholars
refer to these years as the “great interregnum” because formal diplomatic
relations were not reestablished until 1979. American support for the Guo-
mindang (GMD) in the Chinese civil war and its military involvement in the
Korean War, combined with Chinese advocacy of Third World revolutions,
fed political and ideological competition. At the same time—behind the
scenes—both nations were feeling their way toward some kind of equilib-
rium. Key issues during this period include U.S. recognition of the People’s
Republic of China (PRC), China’s representation in the United Nations, the
Korean and Vietnam wars, and continuing geopolitical maneuverings—span-
ning the spectrum from hostility to negotiation—between the two countries.
Three points are worth noting. First, while American-Chinese relations
were publicly contentious, the leaders of both countries, following the armis-
tice in the U.S.-Korean War, sought ways of easing the tensions between
them behind closed doors. No fewer than 136 bilateral ambassadorial ex-
changes punctuated the decade and a half between August 1955 and February
1970. In 1973 the PRC and the United States established liaison offices in
each other’s capitals. 1 Despite the overt atmosphere of hostility, the two
nations maintained channels of communication at various levels—official
and unofficial, direct and indirect. 2
Second, the Taiwan issue—the “One China” or the “Two Chinas” ques-
tion 3—was a stumbling block to good relations, resulting from America’s
long-standing commitment to Taiwan (Formosa) and, opposing this stance,
143
144 Chapter 7
mainland China’s consistent claim that the island territory was integral to its
sovereignty as accorded by the Cairo Declaration of 1943. 4 Due to interna-
tional and domestic developments in the 1950s, the Taiwan question posed a
formidable obstacle to the normalization and improvement of relations be-
tween the United States and China. In negotiations of the 1950s, the United
States sought repudiation of force in the Taiwan Strait by both mainland
China and Taiwan, while China insisted on negotiating directly with Chiang
Kai-shek and approached Taiwan as an issue of sovereign rights, an internal
rather than an international matter.
The third proposition is that the road leading to the rapprochement
achieved in 1971 was a slow but ongoing process that transformed both
sides. A wide variety of views on whether the United States should recognize
the PRC had been expressed within government policy-making circles, as
well as by intellectuals, businessmen, and ordinary Americans. 5 The Chinese
by contrast showed a consensus, at least on the surface, adhering to their One
China policy while asserting that the “Chinese people did not want to pick a
fight with the United States and the Chinese government was willing to sit
down and negotiate with the American government.” 6 In the 1950s and
1960s, American pluralism and the Chinese capacity to make policy adjust-
ments gradually created the foundations for the final diplomatic break-
through. Thus the rapprochement that occurred during the Nixon presidency
(1969–1974)—driven as it was by a rebalancing of global geopolitics—did
not happen just overnight.
THE POST–WORLD WAR II SETTING
Sino-American relations turned sour after both countries decided to retreat

within their respective Cold War camps. As America sought global domi-
nance after World War II, new Communist China took a defensive but firm
stance on resisting the hegemonic ambitions of the United States. 7 Commu-
nist China opted for membership in the Soviet-led Communist bloc. Anti-
Americanism manifested itself in mainland Chinese efforts to deter Ameri-
ca’s isolation of China and unite the “mid-zone” countries—including Brit-
ain, France, Japan, and the newly independent Asian and African nations that
retained a nonaligned position rather than simply acting as the “poodles” of
Washington or Moscow.
Chinese Communist leaders, in their own words, were in no rush to pro-
cure American and others’ recognition of the People’s Republic. Instead,
their priority was to rid China of American influence in order to both consoli-
date their new regime and boost the Chinese revolutionary spirit. 8 In 1949,
the People’s Liberation Army reached nearly 5.5 million, and military expen-
diture accounted for almost 40 percent of the PRC government’s budget.
Deterrence and Negotiation 145
With an additional 3.5 million public servants to support, the government felt
that it was bearing a special burden, the “burden of victory,” while Taiwan,
Tibet, and Hainan “were still awaiting liberation.” 9 Zhou Enlai
(1898–1976)—premier of the People’s Republic for over a quarter of a cen-
tury (1949–1976), with key concurrent positions including foreign minister
(1949–1958)—was resolute in asserting that China must maintain political
independence and economic self-sufficiency. “The American imperialists
have imposed embargoes on us, which have caused great difficulties. We,
however, must not succumb to American imperialism.” 10
On the other side of the Pacific, convinced that the “cold war is in fact a
real war,” the United States did not hesitate to assume the mantle of leader-
ship as the “center of power in the free world.” 11 In two National Security
Council reports approved by President Harry Truman (presidency
1945–1953) in November and December 1949 (NSC 48/2 and NSC 58/2),
the U.S. government set out a strategic plan aimed—if not in so many
words—at countering the Soviet influence in China and other countries. 12 A
further report (NSC 68), approved by Truman in mid-April 1950, was vague
on exactly how the United States was to stop the spread of Communism,
although it was clear about the threat to the security of the United States
posed by the Soviet Union that possessed “armed forces far in excess of
those necessary to defend its national territory.” 13 The report continued: “The
issues that face us are momentous, involving the fulfillment or destruction
not only of this Republic but of civilization itself.”
RECOGNITION AND REPRESENTATION OF

THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA
Although both Congress and the American public were opposed to recogniz-
ing the People’s Republic of China, the Truman administration was not
overtly intransigent. The American government’s efforts to reach a consen-
sus with its allies over the issue proved futile. Britain recognized Communist
China in January 1950 because of its plans to retain Hong Kong as a colony,
its considerable investments in China, and the prorecognition views of its
Asian Commonwealth partners. 14 Nevertheless, the PRC did not establish
full diplomatic relations with Britain until 1972, in response to British sup-
port in the face of an American call for the postponement of the debate on
China’s representation in the United Nations. 15 Countries that established
diplomatic relations with China earlier than the United States (1979) in-
cluded the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, the Democratic Re-
public of Korea, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Mongolia, the Democratic Repub-
lic of Germany, and Albania (all in 1949); Vietnam, Sweden, Denmark, and
Finland (1950); Norway (1954); France (1964); Canada and Italy (1970); the
146 Chapter 7
United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, Australia, and New Zealand (1972); and
Spain (1973). 16
As part of its military, economic, and diplomatic efforts to secure the
containment of Communism in Asia, the United States was determined to
keep the PRC out of the United Nations where the Taiwanese Nationalists
held a seat as a founding member. But, again, the United States failed to rally
its allies to the cause. In an attempt to reconcile America’s differences with
Britain, in April 1951 the secretary of state, Dean Acheson, proposed a
moratorium to postpone discussion of the representation question while the
war in Korea continued. Britain proved unwilling to support this measure,
particularly when Anthony Eden took over as prime minister. In October
1971, the UN General Assembly voted, by seventy-six to thirty-five, in favor
of admitting the PRC and expelling Taiwan (the Republic of China). Not
only did Britain vote for Communist China to be represented in the United
Nations, but it also did not support an American-sponsored “important ques-
tion” resolution designed to maintain Taiwan’s membership in the interna-
tional body. 17
THE KOREAN WAR
Characterized by Bruce Cumings as a conflict “mostly forgotten or unknown

in the United States,” 18 the Korean War was the only direct military clash
between the United States and the People’s Republic of China. Over thirty-
three thousand Americans died during the Korean War, and Chinese casual-
ties might have been close to one million. 19 From the outset, the Korean War
was both a civil war and an international war, inextricably complicated by
big power politics.
Korea had been a Japanese colony from 1910 to 1945 and, during the
Pacific War, became an integral part of Japan’s imperial war machine. In the
Cairo Declaration of December 1, 1943, the leaders of the Three Great Al-
lies, President Roosevelt, Chiang Kai-shek, and British prime minister Wins-
ton Churchill—“mindful of the enslavement of the people of Korea”—
agreed they were “determined that in due course Korea shall become free and
independent.” 20 But the reality was not so easy. In 1945, the foreign minis-
ters of the United States, the Soviet Union, and Britain met in Moscow to
form a Joint Commission, consisting of representatives of the U.S. command
in southern Korea and the Soviet command in northern Korea, to draw up
plans for the restoration of Korea as an independent state based on democrat-
ic principles. Soon, however, the United States and the Soviet Union were in
a deadlock, unable to agree on how to set up a provisional democratic
government that would meet the various demands of client parties and organ-
izations in their own zones on either side of the 38th Parallel that divided the
Korean Peninsula into two. 21
Dismissing Soviet opposition, the United States referred the Korean prob-
lem to the United Nations to recommend elections for March 1948. 22 By
June 1949, the Soviets and Americans had each withdrawn most of their
troops and had named their preferred persons—Kim Il Sung, leader of the
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in the north, and Syngman Rhee,
head of the Republic of Korea in the south. Both sides pushed for military
unification of the peninsula and sought endorsement from Russia and the
United States to this end. By the end of 1949, Kim Il Sung had made forty-
nine such requests to Stalin. 23 Pleas to his northern neighbor went unheeded.
While agreeing to unification through military means in principle, China
argued that a period of three to five years was needed for peaceful recon-
struction. 24 And although Syngman Rhee threatened to march north, there is
no evidence that the Americans were in collusion with him. 25
Despite the lack of overt big power support, on Sunday, June 25, 1950,
North Korean troops crossed the 38th Parallel and launched an armed attack
on the Republic of Korea. The U.S. government was quick to utilize the new
interstate apparatus provided by the United Nations to respond to the crisis,
although it had not been its practice to take joint action with other interested
powers before the outbreak of the Pacific War in 1941. Dean G. Acheson
(secretary of state under Truman, 1949–1953) requested the UN Security
Council to convene without delay. On the same day, the Security Council
passed a resolution condemning the North’s attack as a breach of peace and
called for the immediate cessation of hostilities, the withdrawal of North
Korean forces above the 38th Parallel, and the assistance of member states in
executing the resolution. President Truman denounced North Korea’s unpro-
voked aggression as constituting “threats to the peace of the world” 26 and
ordered U.S. air and sea forces to come to the aid of South Korean troops
within two days, without seeking the approval of Congress. In July, the UN
Security Council passed two further resolutions requesting the United States
to designate the commander of the UN joint forces to be used to compel the
North Koreans to withdraw behind the 38th Parallel. 27 Commanded by Pacif-
ic War veteran General Douglas MacArthur, the United Nations Forces com-
prised around 1.1 million troops from sixteen countries, the bulk of which
were drawn from South Korea and the United States, which each contributed
around half a million personnel.
In the first two months following their attack, North Korean troops took
control of over 90 percent of South Korean territory and cornered the UN
forces in the Pusan area in the southeast of the peninsula. In mid-September
1950, General MacArthur successfully carried out an amphibious landing at
Inchon, which cut off the North Korean supply lines and turned the military
situation decisively in favor of the South. Within two weeks, American
148 Chapter 7
troops had retaken South Korea, including the capital Seoul, and North Kore-
an forces retreated to the 38th Parallel.
On the basis of a report by the National Security Council (NSC 81/1), 28
the U.S. government decided to change tack and invade North Korea—a
move that, in hindsight, commentators have perceived as a fatal mistake. 29 At
the end of September 1950, George Marshall, secretary of defense
(1950–1951), authorized MacArthur to cross the 38th Parallel and attack
North Korean forces. The U.S. military response was intended to be re-
stricted in its scope and was particularly sensitive to encroaching on Soviet
and Chinese territory. Marshall’s directive provided that under no circum-
stances should MacArthur’s forces “cross the Manchurian or USSR borders
of Korea and, as a matter of policy, no non-Korean ground forces will be
used in the northeast provinces bordering the Soviet Union or in the area
along the Manchurian border.” 30 In separate messages, Marshall heaped
praise on MacArthur for giving inspiration to the freedom-loving peoples of
the world and encouraged him to present the world with a grand military fait
accompli. “We want you to feel unhampered tactically and strategically to
proceed north of 38th parallel,” Marshall instructed. “Announcement above
referred to may precipitate embarrassment in UN where evident desire is not
to be confronted with necessity of a vote on passage of 38th parallel, rather to
find you have found it militarily necessary to do so.” 31
In early October, American troops crossed the border zone, making the
decisive transition from defensive to offensive operations. The People’s Re-
public had earlier indicated that it was open to diplomatic negotiations pro-
vided that the United States stopped at the 38th Parallel. In a conversation
with the Indian ambassador to China, Kavalam Madhava Panikkar
(1895–1963), Zhou Enlai stated that “American forces are intent on crossing
the 38th to expand the war. If American forces indeed do so, we cannot sit
still; rather, we will have to intervene,” and asked Panikkar to convey this
message to the British and American governments. 32 Similar warnings from
the Chinese had been received by the United States through various channels,
but the American government did not take the poorly equipped Communists
seriously and was determined to take over North Korea by force. In Korea,
MacArthur, who was inclined to make his own policy decisions, exacerbated
the military and political situation. He disobeyed instructions by ordering
American air forces to bomb the Chinese Manchurian border region. 33 In
response, on October 8, Chairman Mao Zedong ordered the Chinese People’s
Volunteer Army to enter Korea under the command of Peng Dehuai. 34 On
October 19—the same day that American forces occupied Pyongyang—
250,000 Chinese troops crossed the Yalu River on the Chinese–Korean bor-
der undetected. One week later, the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army
clashed openly with American forces, a turn of events that shocked the Unit-
ed States.
Between October 1950 and June 1951, Chinese troops launched five
counterattacks and pushed the Americans back south of the 38th Parallel.
Chastened by these military reversals, most of Truman’s national security
team believed that the United States should avoid being drawn into a war in
China and that America should cut its losses and withdraw from North Korea
as soon as possible. “Our great objective . . . must be to hold an area, to
terminate the fighting, to turn over some areas to the Republic of Korea, and
to get out so that we can get ahead with building up our own strength, and
building up the strength of Europe.” Dean Acheson took the same line: “We
don’t want to beat China in Korea—we can’t. We don’t want to beat China
any place—we can’t. . . . It would bleed us dry.” 35 In early December, the
National Security Council agreed to negotiate a cease-fire with mainland
China. 36 The nation’s feelings were running in the same direction: a national
poll revealed that 77 percent of Americans felt that the United States should
not start an all-out war with the People’s Republic of China. And half of the
American people regarded that the United States had made a mistake in
going into the war in Korea. 37
In April 1951, Truman replaced the bellicose, insubordinate MacArthur,
who openly challenged an American back-down, with the more compliant
General Matthew B. Ridgway. MacArthur had wanted to extend the military
conflict on the peninsula to China and give Asia a higher containment prior-
ity than Europe in the fight against Communism. On July 10, Sino-American
peace negotiations began in Kaesong, Korea, and lasted over two years amid
continued fighting. Both sides exploited the military situation with a view to
giving them advantages at the armistice negotiation table. Protracted fighting
along the 38th Parallel between the United States and China proved very
costly and in many ways resembled the Western Front during World War I. 38
For forty-two days in October and November 1952, the U.S. 8th Army be-
came bogged down during the Battle of Triangle Hill—or Operation Show-
down—fought over an area of 1.4 square miles; total casualties on both sides
exceeded twenty thousand. In November 1952, a new president, Dwight D.
Eisenhower (presidency 1953–1961), was elected, promising to bring the
protracted war to a swift end. An armistice was concluded, and on July 27,
1953, arrangements for a four-kilometer demilitarized zone along the 38th
Parallel, and for the exchange of prisoners of war, were finally agreed in the
“truce village” of Panmunjom.
The Korean War had different consequences for the United States and
mainland China in both domestic and international contexts. First, although
failing to defeat the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army in North Korea, the
United States was able to make a successful withdrawal from the peninsula,
establishing the demilitarized zone that has endured to this day. Despite its
poor showing on the battlefield, the United States ended the Korean War
150 Chapter 7
with a firm hold on East Asia, a permanent armed force on the peninsula, and
an increase in the defense budget from $13 billion to $54 billion.
Second, the war created a political atmosphere that made it difficult for
any American politician to significantly improve the relationship with the
PRC, characterized in the West as the aggressor, over the following two
decades. In addition, the exigencies of American domestic politics required
that the United States maintain at least some support for the Chiang Kai-shek
government on Taiwan.
Third, the tenacious Chinese resistance to American military intervention
in Korea was driven by a deep commitment to justice and national self-
defense and underpinned by Communist ideology 39—a “great victory,” in
President Xi Jinping’s words in 2020 on the seventieth anniversary of the
Chinese People’s Volunteer Army’s entry into Korea. The Korean War sig-
nified the “ultimate end of an age that lasted several hundred years when
Western aggressors could simply conquer a country as long as they installed
a few canons on an Eastern coast.” 40 As part of the global Third World
movement that emphasized decolonization, nationalism, and nonalignment,
Communist China had boosted its domestic morale and international stand-
ing through the conflict “under the leadership of the Chinese Communist
Party,” an official position that continues to be held in mainland China.
TAIWAN
This section traces the convoluted disputes between America, mainland Chi-
na, and the Nationalist Chinese in “Fortress Taiwan” over the status of the
island. The three sides’ position on the Taiwan question originated in the
Korean War, when President Truman’s use of naval power in the Taiwan
Strait to create a buffer zone between the Communists and the Nationalists
only served to stoke fears on the mainland of continued U.S. aggression.
Taiwan has provided a major source of acrimony in Sino-American relations
since the 1950s.
A large island across the Taiwan Strait from China’s Fujian Province,
Taiwan is today recognized by only fifteen small states as an independent
nation, the Republic of China. It was a Japanese colony until 1945 when
Japan was defeated in World War II. Taiwan has no seat in the United
Nations or other major international organizations. At the end of 1943, as we
have seen, Roosevelt, Chiang Kai-shek, and Churchill met in Cairo and
agreed to return Taiwan to the Republic of China, led by Chiang. In the Cairo
Communiqué, the Allies agreed that “all the territories Japan has stolen from
the Chinese, such as Manchuria, Formosa, and the Pescadores, shall be re-
stored to the Republic of China.” 41
From the outset, Truman and his secretary of state Dean Acheson insisted
that Taiwan be part of China and that, with a civil war raging in China
between Nationalist and Communist forces, the United States would avoid
getting involved “militarily in any way on the Island of Formosa.” In January
1950, Truman declared that the United States “has no predatory designs on
Formosa, or on any other Chinese territory. . . . The United States Govern-
ment will not pursue a course which will lead to involvement in the civil
conflict in China. . . . Similarly, the United States Government will not
provide military aid or advice to Chinese forces on Formosa.” 42
At the outbreak of war in Korea in June 1950, President Truman dis-
patched the 7th U.S. Fleet to the Taiwan Strait. The conventional interpreta-
tion of Truman’s move—in response to North Korea’s invasion of the
South—is that it was intended to shield Formosa from possible attack by
Communist China. As one scholar puts it, “Previously the United States had
kept the Nationalist Chinese remnant on Formosa at arm’s length. Now it
would be embraced. One of Truman’s first acts after North Korea’s attack
was ordering the Seventh Fleet to cover Formosa.” 43 However, Truman
made it clear that America’s interest was in preserving the status quo, not
only in Taiwan but also on the mainland:
Accordingly, I have ordered the Seventh Fleet to prevent any attack on Formo-
sa. As a corollary of this action, I am calling upon the Chinese Government on
Formosa to cease all air and sea operations against the mainland. The Seventh
Fleet will see that this is done. The determination of the future status of
Formosa must await the restoration of security in the Pacific, a peace settle-
ment with Japan, or consideration by the United Nations. 44
The British interpretation of Truman’s statement, made in a note by the

minister of state for foreign affairs in 1955, preserved these nuances: “On
27th June, 1950, at the time of the invasion of South Korea, the President of
the United States (Mr. Truman) made a declaration which, among other
things, said that the 7th Fleet had been instructed to protect Formosa but it
had also been told to ensure that there were no attacks from Formosa on the
mainland.” 45
However, mainland China did not seem interested in acknowledging the
intent behind Truman’s “double shield” put in place to neutralize the Taiwan
region. In response to Truman’s declaration, Zhou Enlai made a statement
calling for a halt to “America’s new aggression in the East”:
After instigating the Syngman Rhee puppet regime in South Korea to provoke
the Korean civil war, American President Truman made a declaration on June
27. He declared that the American government has decided to use force to stop
us from liberating Taiwan. The American 7th Fleet has already been ordered to
move into the waters around Taiwan. . . . This is military aggression against
152 Chapter 7
Chinese territory, and an outright violation of the United Nations Charter. . . .

There is no way of altering the fact that Taiwan belongs to China; this is not
only an historical fact, but it has also been recognized in the Cairo Declaration,
the Potsdam Declaration, and in the arrangements made following Japan’s
surrender. 46
Zhou went on: “For us, the Korean question is not merely a question about
Korea. The Taiwan issue is intimately related to it. American imperialism
treats us as an enemy. It has extended its national defense line to the Taiwan
Strait.” 47
Tensions increased another notch in February 1953 when, in retaliation
for mainland China’s refusal to accept the armistice proposals to end the
Korean War, Eisenhower changed American policy on the “neutralization”
of the Taiwan region. He declared that the “Seventh Fleet no longer be
employed to shield Communist China.” 48 Despite the undetermined legal
status of Taiwan in American eyes—whether it was part of China or an
independent nation-state (a situation further complicated by the Nationalist
Party’s flight to the island in 1949)—the Nationalist government on Taiwan
proved useful to American efforts to contain and isolate Communist China. 49
Chiang Kai-shek, outspoken about his desire to return to mainland China by
force of arms, and his allies in Congress exerted considerable pressure on the
Eisenhower administration to sign a mutual defense treaty. 50
In the fall of 1954 and again in 1958, two major crises arose over a
handful of tiny islands (including Quemoy and Matsu) off China’s Fujian
coast—occupied by Nationalist forces, but within mainland Chinese territori-
al waters—when mainland China began shelling them. Although these off-
shore islands were of no military value in the eyes of most Americans, the
Nationalists insisted on American protection, and many Americans, includ-
ing Eisenhower, were convinced that Chiang’s anti-Communist resolve
would be fatally undermined if the United States abandoned the islands. 51 On
December 2, 1954, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles (1953–1959) signed
a mutual security treaty with Taiwan—even though he was considering “neu-
tralizing” the territory through the UN Security Council. In January 1955,
Eisenhower stated that, for the United States and other free nations, Formosa
and the neighboring Pescadores “in the island chain of the Western Pacific”
constituted the “geographical backbone of their security structure in that
ocean.” 52 Two days later, Congress authorized the president to “employ the
Armed Forces of the United States as he deems necessary for the specific
purpose of securing and protecting Formosa and the Pescadores against
armed attack.” 53 However, the United States failed to gain the support of the
British government for any military venture, Britain making it clear that
these offshore islands formed part of the territory of mainland China.
The first Taiwan crisis was brought to an end in April 1955 when, at the
Bandung Conference in Indonesia, Zhou Enlai expressed his willingness to
enter into bilateral talks with the United States. 54 Meanwhile, the United
States sent two representatives, Admiral Arthur Radford and Walter Robert-
son, to Taiwan on a mission to persuade the Nationalists to evacuate the
offshore islands, which would form the springboard for any invasion of the
mainland. The Nationalist government remained unconvinced. In August
1955, the Sino-American ambassadorial talks began in Geneva. The
Americans came to the negotiation table with the aim of securing the renun-
ciation of force in the Formosa Strait, while the Chinese—sticking to their
claim to Taiwan—were aiming to secure American withdrawal from the
region. The notion of “Two Chinas” put forward by the American side—the
coexistence of the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China—
was rejected out of hand by the governments on both sides of the strait, each
of which clung to the idea that Taiwan should be part of China—their own
version of the “One China” concept. 55
Chiang Kai-shek’s first priority was to maneuver the Americans into
making a further military and economic commitment toward the realization
of his goal of retaking mainland China by armed force. 56 Nevertheless, in an
exchange of notes signed on December 10, 1954, Chiang’s government
agreed that Taiwan would not invade mainland China, or draw the United
States into a war, without prior agreement with America. 57
In 1958, the Nationalists turned up the heat by sending planes over Beij-
ing and other major mainland cities to drop propaganda leaflets attacking the
Communist Party. By the summer of 1958, Nationalist forces in the disputed
offshore islands of Quemoy and Matsu had reached one hundred thousand—
one-third of Taiwan’s total ground forces. In response to this provocation,
beginning on August 23, 1958, mainland China subjected Quemoy to heavy
artillery bombardment for seven weeks. Although the United States had no
wish to expand the conflict, the use of atomic weapons was seriously consid-
ered as a possible American response to mainland attacks on the disputed
islands. 58 In terms of potential military action, the 1958 crisis was something
of a “guessing game” for both the United States and mainland China. 59 Both
sides were concerned to avoid direct military conflict and not to “engage in a
level of military effort which is likely to provoke a general war.” 60 In the
end, the standoff petered out. For its part, the United States was at last able to
get Chiang to renounce the use of force in his plans for returning to the
mainland. Mainland China announced a pause in its artillery bombardment
and later stopped shelling on even-numbered days and might bomb Quemoy
on odd-numbered days. Mao Zedong explained this deliberate tactic that had
irritated the Americans:
154 Chapter 7
[O]n some occasions China deliberately makes a loud noise, as for example
around Quemoy and Matsu. . . . Consider what could be accomplished by
firing some blank shells within those Chinese territorial waters. Not so long
ago the United States 7th Fleet in the Taiwan Strait was deemed insufficient to
reply to the shell. The US also dispatched part of its 6th Fleet in this direction
and brought over part of the Navy from San Francisco. Arrived here, they had
found nothing to do, so it seemed that China could order the American forces
to march here, to march there. . . . Of course when Navy men are warm and
have full bellies they must be given something to do. But how was it that
shooting off empty guns at home could be called aggression, while those who
actually intervened with arms and bombs and burned people of other lands
were not aggressors? 61
The Taiwan question illustrated the complex array of forces at work in the
region in the 1950s. While the United States drew itself into the conflict,
albeit unwillingly, it found that it could not easily push Chiang Kai-shek or
Mao Zedong around. At home, the political climate that viewed mainland
China as a threat to American national security became entrenched as the
United States strengthened its geopolitical hold on East Asia. On the other
hand, between 1955 and 1970, a total of 136 meetings took place in Geneva
and Warsaw between the United States and mainland China at the ambassa-
dorial level, keeping the door open for communication. 62 At the same time,
Chiang defied American efforts to reduce the Nationalists’ military presence
on the offshore islands.
THE VIETNAM WAR AND SINO-AMERICAN

RELATIONS IN THE 1960S
During the 1960s, American-Chinese relations were set against the backdrop
of America’s escalating war in Vietnam and, on China’s side, domestic tur-
bulence and an open split with the Soviet Union. 63 During this decade, the
United States was absorbed in expanding its presence and promoting its
values in Asia. The People’s Republic of China was plunged into political
and social turmoil, largely the result of the Great Leap Forward of
1958–1959 and the Cultural Revolution (1966–1969, more broadly
1966–1976). 64 Strategically, each side viewed the other as the enemy while
privately hoping for a relaxation in the relationship.
In terms of Taiwan, the Lyndon B. Johnson administration (1963–1969)
continued the U.S. policy of discouraging Chiang from considering military
or paramilitary operations against the mainland. Instead, the United States
encouraged Taiwan to rely more on political and psychological efforts in
seeking to undermine Communist control of mainland China. 65 While recog-
nition of the People’s Republic of China was regarded by American policy
makers as only a matter of time, politically it was seen as a poisoned chalice.
President John F. Kennedy called for further cultural and economic contact
with mainland China. 66 Dean Rusk—secretary of state (1961–1969) in the
Kennedy and Johnson administrations—and his subordinates Chester Bowles
(undersecretary of state), Adlai Stevenson (ambassador to the UN), and Lew-
is W. Douglas (former American ambassador to Britain) were all strong
advocates of a relaxation in American policy toward mainland China. The
Council on Foreign Relations, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Ford
Foundation took the same line. 67 The political price to be paid, however,
would have been too high for immediate action, as the transcript of a guarded
telephone conversation between President Johnson and Senator Richard Rus-
sell on January 15, 1964, suggests. Commenting on France’s imminent rec-
ognition of mainland China, Russell said, “The time’s going to come when
we might well—can’t talk about it now—the time’s going to come when
we’re going to have to recognize them.” Johnson replied, “Yeah, I think so—
don’t think there’s any question about it.” 68
As with Taiwan, America’s self-appointed role as the watchdog of the
“free world” in Asia led it to become inexorably drawn into the developing
conflict in Indochina. The collapse of the Japanese colonial empire in South-
east Asia following World War II had fatally undermined the efforts of its
Dutch, French, and British predecessors. The United States found the process
of “liquidating colonial regimes and replacing them by new and stable inde-
pendent governments” a difficult one; French Indochina was the “toughest
case.” In 1950, the American government recognized the Bao Dai regime,
the French puppet government based in Saigon in southern Vietnam, and
gave France over $2 billion to help support it. Even with substantial
American support, the French Indochinese states—Tonkin, Annam, Cochin
China, Laos, and Cambodia—were unable to defeat the Democratic Republic
of Vietnam, founded by militant Communist nationalists (the Vietcong) in
September 1945 and led by Ho Chi Minh, a leading opponent of the French
colonial presence. In 1954, Dien Bien Phu, a fortress city in northern Viet-
nam, fell to the Communists with assistance from mainland China—a fatal
blow to France, leading to its retreat from Vietnam. The United States de-
cided to move in to fill the vacuum, reasoning that if Southeast Asia “fell to
Communist control, this would enormously add to the momentum and power
of the expansionist Communist regimes in Communist China and North Viet-
Nam and thus to the threat to the whole free-world position in the Pacific.” 69
At the Geneva Conference of 1954, where the Soviet Union, Britain,
France, the United States, China, and the two Vietnamese governments par-
ticipated, the bulk of Indochina was divided along the 17th Parallel pending
elections to be held in 1956 that were intended to reunify Vietnam. However,
the United States was unwilling to sign an agreement that “other parties—for
very different reasons—were keen to conclude, but which, from the
American point of view, might amount to enshrining French military defeat
156 Chapter 7
in a dishonorable document.” 70 In the end, the United States signed a state-

ment of intent not to violate the Geneva Accords. However, with American
concurrence, South Vietnam refused to hold elections because the Commu-
nists were expected to win.
Following Bao Dai’s retirement, the Eisenhower administration sup-
ported the unpopular Ngo Dinh Diem while at the same time insisting on
political reform. The U.S. government staged the overthrow and killing of
the noncompliant Ngo in 1963, but this failed to solve the Vietnam problem.
The Kennedy administration increased American military involvement in the
country, including sending sixteen thousand advisors, but failed to turn the
tide. Johnson cautiously committed U.S. air and ground forces to South
Vietnam and bombed North Vietnam for the first time in August 1964.
Congress then passed the Tonkin Gulf resolution, authorizing the president to
use force in the region. By 1968, over half a million American forces had
been dispatched to Vietnam, with over three hundred thousand South Korean
soldiers also fighting in the Vietnam War from 1964 to 1973.
At the same time, Johnson was eager to negotiate with the Vietcong in
Hanoi in order to avoid a wider conflict. In Henry Kissinger’s view, “John-
son opted for halfway measures which staked America’s international posi-
tion without achieving goals.” 71 The fall of Saigon in 1975 brought the
Vietnam War to an end, with the North claiming victory.
The United States and mainland China publicly treated each other as
strategic enemies, and they were very close to hostile contact in Indochina.
The success of China’s first nuclear test on October 16, 1964 failed to under-
mine Johnson’s resolve: “The United States reaffirms its defense commit-
ments in Asia. Even if Communist China should eventually develop an effec-
tive nuclear capability, that capability would have no effect upon the readi-
ness of the United States to respond to requests from Asian nations for help
in dealing with Communist Chinese aggression.” 72 Beijing provided North
Vietnam with moral support and supplied nearly all the arms and ammuni-
tion that reached anti-American forces in South Vietnam between 1962 and
1966. On the other hand, mainland China gave public assurances that China
would not initiate a war with the United States in Vietnam unless the United
States extended the war onto Chinese territory. “Fighting beyond one’s bor-
ders was criminal. Why should the Chinese do that?” Mao Zedong comment-
ed. 73
The deterioration of Sino-Soviet relations that began in 1956—when the
Soviet 20th Party Congress was held—was one of the key external factors
influencing mainland China to seek a more positive relationship with the
United States. In 1972, Zhou Enlai told Richard Nixon,
We came apart then because of ideology, and because it was unfair at that time
to write off all of Stalin’s achievements at one stroke. . . . Anyway we must
recognize that he (Stalin) made contributions in the Second World War. Even
our American friends recognize this. . . . It was utter nonsense for him
[Khrushchev] to claim that it was not Stalin, but he, Khrushchev, who led the
battle. 74
Long in the brewing, the Sino-Soviet split partly lay in the paternalistic
attitude of the Soviet Union toward China—evident in such terms as “teach-
er,” “father,” or “big brother” and in the defiant response of Mao Zedong
who loathed being characterized as a “student,” “son,” or “little brother” by
the Soviet bloc. Five elements mainly contributed to the collapse of the Sino-
Soviet alliance by the end of the 1960s, despite their efforts to confine and
repair the rupture within the Communist camp.
First, mainland China was dissatisfied with the Soviet leader Nikita
Khrushchev who failed to support China’s embryonic nuclear program, de-
nying China’s requests for assistance in 1954–1956. Disputes over Soviet aid
projects and bilateral trade also played a role. Second, Mao Zedong refused
to go along with the de-Stalinization program carried out by Khrushchev
after the death of Stalin. Mao viewed Stalin as a great Marxist leader al-
though Stalin had made serious mistakes. To the Chinese Communist Party,
the Soviet Union’s policy of revisionism and complete denial of Stalin’s
achievements had derailed the world Communist revolution.
Third, the Soviet Union and mainland China diverged in their stance
toward the United States, Taiwan, Vietnam, Albania, India, and a number of
other countries and were unwilling to coordinate their policies toward them.
Fourth, although in 1964 Leonid Brezhnev ousted Khrushchev, Brezhnev’s
policies were the same as those of his former boss in the eyes of the Chinese.
Fifth, the two Communist powers engaged in a direct military conflict over
their long-disputed borders in 1969. 75
While still in the throes of the Sino-Soviet breakup, mainland China was
gripped by a period of domestic anarchy and turmoil—the Great Proletarian
Cultural Revolution—that left the United States and other China watchers in
a state of bewilderment. 76 At best, the Cultural Revolution can be described
as a social convulsion. Beginning on May 16, 1966, Mao launched an inten-
sive attack on the political establishment aimed at waging a violent class
struggle and completing the revolution under socialism. 77 He called for the
eradication of the “four olds”—old customs, old habits, old culture, and old
thinking. Bands of high school students—the Red Guards—were urged to
take to the streets to take over government bodies, universities, and other
organizations and not to hang back from carrying out personal assaults and
other violent acts against those seen as class enemies. Lacking a cohesive
economic and social vision, neither Mao nor his Communist followers had
any real idea of where the nation should be heading.
158 Chapter 7
At the end of the Cultural Revolution, the People’s Republic of China—

with only CNY 76 per capita income (less than US$10)—found itself twenty
years behind Taiwan, Hong Kong, and South Korea, which, in terms of
living standards, had all begun the 1950s on par with mainland China. 78 In
Life, Ma Sicong (1912–1987), China’s foremost violinist and composer, told
Americans about the violence and sheer madness at the height of the Cultural
Revolution: “Someone dumped a bucket of paste over me and rammed a tall
dunce cap labeled ‘Cow Demon’ on my head. . . . We were paraded. All the
way people hit out at us and spit upon us. I recognized the distorted faces of
my own students.” 79
CONCLUSION
By the end of the 1960s, both the United States and China had come to the
realization that they needed to work together, within their own limits, ready
to enter a new phase of their relationship.
The defining character of American-Chinese relations in the 1950s and
1960s was the American-led crusade against Communism that attempted to
set the ground rules for the governance of China and other parts of the world.
For the first decade, mainland China conducted its foreign relations within
the coalition headed by the Soviet Union, seen by the United States as a
threat to an American-led international order.
At home, the American public had adopted a mindset that, in the main,
perceived Communist China in negative terms. The “loss of China” was a
scar seared into the national memory. 80 Americans found little solace in the
“gain” of Japan from its postwar occupation of that country (1945–1953),
used as an anchor hold for containing Communism in Asia.
Holding two-thirds of the world’s gold reserves and producing half of the
world’s goods, the United States emerged from World War II as the world’s
leading power. By 1957, American gross national product per capita was
over US$2,500, 81 whereas mainland China could muster no more than
US$10. Despite this imbalance in national wealth, the United States had
recognized that there were limits to the projection of its power abroad. Dif-
ferences among the United States and important allies such as Britain and
France in dealing with the new Communist state helped mainland China find
a place in the postwar world order. 82 On the other hand, the Sino-Soviet feud
and a turbulent domestic situation prompted China to moderate its approach
to America. 83
Mainland China learned to play the game by exacerbating the differences
between the United States and its allies. Through military and diplomatic
channels, Mao’s China countered the American world order and gradually
projected itself as an important player in world affairs. The Geneva Confer-
ence of April 1954 and the 1955 Bandung Conference were major steps in
this direction. At Geneva—through the good offices of Russian foreign min-
ister Vyacheslav M. Molotov—Zhou Enlai, British foreign secretary Antho-
ny Eden, and French prime minister Pierre Mendes discovered many shared
viewpoints on Korea and Indochina. In Bandung, delegates from twenty-nine
African and Asian states convened to form a neutral bloc outside the
American-Soviet framework. Led by India’s Jawaharlal Nehru, Egypt’s Ga-
mal Abdul Nasser, and Yugoslavia’s Josip Broz Tito, this fledgling non-
aligned movement was actively supported by mainland China through fund-
ing for economic development and championing of the Five Principles of
equitable international relations. 84
Scholars have increasingly recognized that American policy toward
Mao’s China in the 1960s was not a simple continuation of the antagonism
that marked the preceding decade. 85 Although the political will necessary for
reconciliation did not yet exist in the 1960s, the thawing of Sino-American
relations that began in 1972 grew not only out of the rebalancing of the
Washington-Moscow-Beijing strategic relationship but was also the result of
sustained efforts by a host of national and international players to secure a
more productive approach to the bilateral relationship 86—seeking and ex-
ploiting areas of agreement rather than fostering antagonisms.
The change in the atmosphere was abundantly evident in a declassified
document signed by Dean Rusk, secretary of state (1961–1969), on February
18, 1968:
[I]t must be perfectly clear to anyone who has looked at this history of last 18
years that USG [the U.S. government] does not doubt existence of Communist
China. We fought against its soldiers in Korea. We have negotiated with its
representatives in international conferences in Geneva twice. We have main-
tained regular bilateral contact with it on an Ambassadorial level for 14 years,
first in Geneva and now in Warsaw. Territory controlled and administered by
Peking is well known to Government of US and when matters arise which
pertain to this area and involve interests of US or American citizens, obviously
our approach is to Chinese Communist authorities. This is reality and it is fully
acknowledged by this Government. . . . We are convinced that no war is
inevitable. Seen in terms of national interests of our two countries, there [is] no
fundamental reason why United States and Communist China should come
into conflict and every reason for us both to exert every effort to avert such a
disaster. 87
FURTHER READING
Further material on China’s foreign relations and the United States can be
found in Jerome Alan Cohen, ed., The Dynamics of China’s Foreign Rela-
tions (Cambridge, Mass.: East Asian Research Center, Harvard University,
160 Chapter 7
1973); Nancy Bernkopf Tucker, Patterns in the Dust: Chinese-American

Relations and the Recognition Controversy, 1949–1950 (New York: Colum-
bia University Press, 1983) and The China Threat: Memories, Myths, and
Realities in the 1950s (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012); Harry
Harding and Yuan Ming, eds., Sino-American Relations 1945–1955: A Joint
Assessment of a Critical Decade (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Research,
1989); John Garver, The Sino-American Alliance: Nationalist China and
American Cold War Strategy in Asia (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1997);
Jian Chen, Mao’s China and the Cold War (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of
North Carolina Press, 2001); Shu Guang Zhang, Economic Cold War: Ameri-
ca’s Embargo against China and the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1949–1963 (Stan-
ford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2001); and Simei Qing, From Allies
to Enemies: Visions of Modernity, Identity, and U.S.-China Diplomacy,
1945–1960 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007). Two stud-
ies explore Nationalist China’s global outreach in the Philippines and India
and the Chinese diaspora during the Cold War: Chien-Wen Kung, Diasporic
Cold Warriors: Nationalist China, Anticommunism, and the Philippine Chi-
nese, 1930s–1970s (Cornell, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2021) and
Grace C. Huang, Chiang Kai-shek’s Politics of Shame and Humiliation:
Constructing a National Narrative, Identity, and Legacy in China (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2021).
Additional studies of the Korean War and the Taiwan Strait crises include
Philip West, ed., Remembering the “Forgotten War:” The Korean War
through Literature and Art (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 2000); J. H. Ka-
licki, The Pattern of Sino-American Crises: Political and Military Interac-
tions in the 1950s, reissue edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2010; first edition in 1975); Nancy Bernkopf Tucker, Strait Talk: United
States-Taiwan Relations and the Crisis with China (Cambridge, Mass.: Har-
vard University Press, 2011); and Shu Guang Zhang, Deterrence and Strate-
gic Culture: Chinese-American Confrontations, 1949–58 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cor-
nell University Press, 1992). In addition to the works on John S. Service and
Edgar Snow cited in the notes to chapters 6 and 7, the McCarthyite purges
and “China Lobby” politics in the United States are treated in Robert P.
Newman, Owen Lattimore and the “Loss” of China (Berkeley, Calif.: Uni-
versity of California Press, 1992); Gary May, China Scapegoat: The Diplo-
matic Ordeal of John Carter Vincent (Washington, D.C.: New Republic
Books, 1979); and Stanley D. Bachrack, The Committee of One Million:
“China Lobby” Politics, 1953–1971 (New York: Columbia University Press,
1976).
For American-Chinese relations in the 1960s, see Noam Kochavi, A Con-
flict Perpetuated: China Policy during the Kennedy Years (Westport, Conn.:
Praeger, 2002), and Warren I. Cohen and Nancy B. Tucker, eds., Lyndon
Johnson Confronts the World: American Foreign Policy, 1963–1968 (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Leonard A. Kusnitz, Public

Opinion and Foreign Policy: America’s China Policy, 1949–1979 (Westport,
Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1984), is a useful book on public opinion of China
in the United States. The role of Congress in Sino-American relations is
discussed in Guangqiu Xu, Congress and the U.S.-China Relationship,
1949–1979 (Akron, Ohio: Akron University Press, 2007). Hugo Meijer’s
Trading with the Enemy: The Making of US Export Control Policy toward
the People’s Republic of China (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016)
examines how the United States has handled its potentially conflicting na-
tional security and economic interests in its relationship with mainland Chi-
na. Meijer investigates a strategically sensitive yet underexplored facet of
American-Chinese relations, that is, American export control policy on mili-
tary-related technology transfers to China since 1979.
NOTES
1. Yafeng Xia, Negotiating with the Enemy: U.S.-China Talks during the Cold War,
1949–1972 (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2006). Wang Bingnan (王炳南),
Zhongmei huitan jiunian huigu [中美会谈九年回顾 Recollections of nine years of Sino-
American talks] (Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 1985).
2. Evelyn Goh, “Competing Images and American Official Reconsiderations of China
Policy, 1961–1968,” Journal of American-East Asian Relations 10, nos. 1–2 (Spring–Summer
2001): 53–92.
3. The “One China” concept refers to international recognition of either the People’s Re-
public of China (mainland China) or the Republic of China (Taiwan). “Two Chinas” refers to
international recognition of both the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China.
4. For a legal approach to the Taiwan controversy, see Christopher J. Carolan, “The ‘Re-
public of Taiwan’: A Legal-Historical Justification for a Taiwanese Declaration of Indepen-
dence,” New York University Law Review 75 (May 2000): 429–468; Frank S. T. Hsiao and
Lawrence R. Sullivan, “The Chinese Communist Party and the Status of Taiwan, 1928–1943,”
Pacific Affairs 52, no. 3 (Autumn 1979): 446–467.
5. Priscilla Roberts, “William L. Clayton and the Recognition of China, 1945–1966: More
Speculations on the ‘Lost Chances in China,’” Journal of American-East Asian Relations 7,
nos. 1–2 (Spring–Summer 1998): 5–37.
6. Zhou Enlai’s announcement on relaxing tensions in the Far East, especially with regard
to Taiwan, was made at the Africa-Asia Bandung Conference on April 23, 1955, in Zhou Enlai,
Zhou Enlai xuanji [周恩来文选 Selected works of Zhou Enlai] (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe,
1984), vol. 2, p. 476.
7. Christian F. Ostermann, ed., Inside China’s Cold War, Cold War International History
Project Bulletin, no. 16 (Fall 2007/Winter 2008); Yafeng Xia, “The Study of Cold War Interna-
tional History in China: A Review of the Last Twenty Years,” Journal of Cold War Studies 10,
no. 1 (Winter 2008): 81–115.
8. Mao Zedong, Mao Zedong xuanji [毛泽东选集 Selected works of Mao Zedong] (Beij-
ing: Renmin chubanshe, 1966), vol. 4, p. 1373. Yang Kuisong (杨奎松), “Huade shijian yu xin
Zhongguo dui Meiguo zhengce de queli” [华德事件与新中国对美国政策的确立 The Ward
Incident and the formulation of new China’s policy toward the United States], Lishi yanjiu 5
(1994): 104–118.
9. Zhonggong zhongyang wenxian yanjiushi, ed., Zhou Enlai xuanji (Beijing: Renmin
chubanshe, 1980), vol. 1, pp. 1–14. Zhonggong zhongyang wenxian yanjiushi, comp., Zhou
Enlai nianpu (1949–76) [周恩来年谱 A Chronology of Zhou Enlai] (Beijing: Zhongyang
wenxian chubanshe, 1997), vol. 1, pp. 12–13.
162 Chapter 7
10. Zhonggong zhongyang wenxian yanjiushi, Zhou Enlai xuanji, vol. 2, p. 10. J. Wilczyn-
ski, “Strategic Embargo in Perspective,” Soviet Studies 19, no. 1 (1967): 74–86.
11. “A Report to the National Security Council by the Executive Secretary (Lay),” NSC-68,
April 14, 1950, in Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States [FRUS], 1950:
National Security Affairs; Foreign Economic Policy, ed. S. Everett Gleason and Fredrick
Aandahl (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1950), vol. 1, pp. 234–292.
12. NSC 58/2, “United States Policy toward the Soviet Satellite States in Eastern Europe,”
December 8, 1949, FRUS, 1949, vol. 5, pp. 42–54. NSC 48/2, “The Position of the United
States with Respect to Asia,” December 30, 1949, FRUS, 1949, vol. 7, p. 1219. John Lewis
Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy
during the Cold War, revised and expanded edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005),
chaps. 3–4.
13. “A Report to the National Security Council by the Executive Secretary (Lay),” NSC-68.
14. Dan Halvorson, Commonwealth Responsibility and Cold War Solidarity: Australia in
Asia, 1944–74 (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 2019).
15. Wang Jianlang, “Xin Zhongguo chengli chunian Yingguo guanyu Zhongguo Lianheguo
daibiaoquan wenti de zhengce yanbian” [新中国成立初年英国关于中国联合国代表权问题
的政策演变 The Evolution of British policy on the Chinese representation question in the UN
in the early years of new China], Zhongguo shehui kexue 3 (2000): 179–190; Warren I. Cohen,
“Ambassador Philip D. Sprouse on the Question of Recognition of the People’s Republic of
China in 1949 and 1950 (Document),” Diplomatic History 2, no. 2 (Spring 1978): 213–217.
16. Dong Wang, “China’s Trade Relations with the United States in Perspective,” Journal of
Current Chinese Affairs 39, no. 3 (November 2010): 165–210.
17. Victor S. Kaufman, “‘Chirep’: The Anglo-American Dispute over Chinese Representa-
tion in the United Nations, 1950–71,” English Historical Review 115, no. 461 (April 2000):
354–377.
18. Bruce Cumings, Dominion from Sea to Sea: Pacific Ascendancy and American Power
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009), 340.
19. There is no agreement on the numbers of Chinese or American troops killed (figures for
the latter have been put variously at 33,629, nearly 50,000, and 54,000). Roderick MacFarqu-
har, ed., Sino-American Relations, 1949–71: Documented and Introduced by Roderick Mac-
Farquhar (New York: Praeger, 1972), 82; Michael Hunt, The American Ascendancy: How the
United States Gained and Wielded Global Dominance (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North
Carolina Press, 2007), chap. 6.
20. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., ed., The Dynamics of World Power: A Documentary History
of United States Foreign Policy 1945–1973, vol. 4, The Far East, ed. Russeli Buhite (New
York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1973), 7.
21. Central Intelligence Group, “The Situation in Korea,” Office of Reports and Estimates 5/
1, January 3, 1947, President’s Secretary’s Files, Truman Papers, Truman Library.
22. “General Assembly Resolution on the Independence of Korea,” November 17, 1947, in
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., ed., The Dynamics of World Power, vol. 4, pp. 347–350.
23. Katheryn Weathersby, “New Findings on the Korean War,” Cold War International
History Project Bulletin, no. 3 (Fall 1993): 1, 14–18.
24. Kim Tong-kil (金东吉), “Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun Chaoxianshi guiguo wenti xin-
tan” [中国人民解放军朝鲜师归国问题新探 A reexamination of the return to North Korea of
the Korean divisions of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army], in Wang Jianlang (王建朗)
and Luan Jinghe (栾景河), eds., Jindai Zhongguo, Dongya yu shijie [近代中国、东亚与世界
Modern China, East Asia, and the world] (Beijing: Shehui kexue chubanshe, 2008), vol. 2, pp.
942–965.
25. Bruce Cumings, The Korean War: A History (New York: Modern Library, 2010), chap.
1; Edward Friedman and Mark Selden, eds., America’s Asia: Dissenting Essays on Asian-
American Relations (New York: Vintage, 1971).
26. “Statement by President on the Violation of the 38th Parallel in Korea on June 26,
1950,” Public Papers of the Presidents: Harry S. Truman, 172, Truman Library, http://
www.trumanlibrary.org/publicpapers/index.php?pid=799&st=&st1= (accessed April 8, 2011).
27. http://www.un.org/documents/sc/res/1950/scres50.htm (accessed May 8, 2011).
28. National Security Council Report 81, “United States Courses of Action with respect to
Korea,” September 1, 1950, the Korean War and Its Origins, 1945–1953, Documents, Truman
Library, http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collectionskorea/large/documents/
pdfs/ki-17-1.pdf (accessed May 8, 2011).
29. William L. O’Neill, American High: The Years of Confidence, 1945–1960 (New York:
Free Press, 1989), chap. 5. Hunt, The American Ascendancy, chap. 5.
30. George C. Marshall to Harry S. Truman, with Attached Directive to Commander of
United Nations Forces in Korea, September 27, 1950, Truman Library, http://www.
trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/korea/large/documents/pdfs/ki-18-3.pdf (ac-
cessed May 8, 2011).
31. Department of the Army Staff Message Center, Outgoing Classified Message, Septem-
ber 29, 1950, Truman Library, http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/
korea/large/documents/pdfs/ki-22-19.pdf (accessed May 8, 2011).
32. “Meijun ru yueguo Sanba xian, women yaoguan” [美军如越过三八线, 我们要管 If
American forces cross the 38th Parallel, we will intervene], October 3, 1950, Zhonghua renmin
gongheguo waijiaobu (中华人民共和国外交部) and Zhonggong zhongyang wenxian yanjiu-
shi (中共中央文献研究室), comp., Zhou Enlai waijiao wenxuan [周恩来外交文选 Selected
works of Zhou Enlai on diplomacy] (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 2000), 25–27.
33. Hong Xuezhi (洪学智), Kangmei yuanchao zhanzheng huiyi [抗美援朝战争回忆 Me-
moirs of the anti-American Korean War], second edition (Beijing: Jiefangjun wenyi chubanshe,
1991), chap. 2. Warren I. Cohen, “Conversations with Chinese Friends: Zhou Enlai’s Asso-
ciates Reflect on Chinese-American Relations in the 1940s and the Korean War,” Diplomatic
History 11, no. 3 (July 1987): 283–289.
34. Nie Rongzhen (聂荣臻), Nie Rongzhen huiyilu [聂荣臻回忆录 Memoirs of Nie Rong-
zhen] (Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe, 2007), chap. 23. Peng Dehuai zhuan bianxie zu (彭德怀
传编写组), Peng Dehuai zhuan [彭德怀传 The biography of Peng Dehuai] (Beijing: Dangdai
Zhongguo chubanshe, 2006), chaps. 20–22.
35. Minutes of the National Security Council Meeting with Harry S. Truman, November 28,
1950, Truman Library, http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/studycollections/korea/large/
documents/pdfs/ci-2-11.pdf (accessed May 9, 2011).
36. Minutes of National Security Council Meeting, December 11, 1950, and “United States
Position Regarding a Cease-Fire in Korea,” National Security Report no. 95, December 13,
1950, Truman Library, http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/korea/
large/documents/pdfs/ci-4-9.pdf.
37. George H. Gallup, The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1935–1971, vol. 2, 1949–1958
(New York: Random House, 1972), 968.
38. Xu Yan (徐焰), Diyi ci jiaoliang: Kangmei yuanchao zhanzheng de lishi huigu yu fansi
[第一次较量:抗美援朝战争的历史回顾与反思 The first showdown: Reflections on the anti-
American Korean War] (Beijing: Zhongguo guangbo dianshi chubanshe, 1990); Junshi kexuey-
uan lishi yanjiubu (军事科学院历史研究部), Zhongguo renmin zhiyuanjun kangmei yuanchao
zhanshi [中国人民志愿军抗美援朝战史 A history of the Chinese People’s Voluntary Army in
the anti-American Korean War] (Beijing: Junshi kexue chubanshe, 1988); Li Qingshan (李庆
山), Zhiyuanjun yuanchao jishi [志愿军援朝纪实 A true account of the People’s Volunteer
Army in Korea] (Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe, 2008).
39. On the influence of the Sino-Soviet alliance on China’s role in the Korean War, see
Chen Jian, China’s Road to the Korean War: The Making of the Sino-American Confrontation
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1994).
40. Xi Jinping (习近平), “Zai jinian Zhongguo Renmin Zhiyuanjun kangmei yuanchao
chuguo zuozhang qishi zhounian dahuishang de jianghua” [在纪念中国人民志愿军抗美援朝
出国作战70周年大会上的讲话 Speech commemorating the seventieth anniversary of the
combat dispatch of the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army overseas], October 23, 2020, http://
cpc.people.com.cn/n1/2020/1023/c64094-31904195.html.
41. FRUS, The Conference at Cairo and Tehran, 1943 (Washington, D.C.: Government
Printing Office, 1943), 448–449.
164 Chapter 7
42. Harry S. Truman’s news conference at the White House on January 5, 1950, Public
Papers of the Presidents: Harry S. Truman, Truman Library, http://www.trumanlibrary.org/
publicpapers/index.php?pid=574&st=news+conference&st1= (accessed August 25, 2012).
43. O’Neill, American High, chap. 5. Another example is, “He [Truman] sent the Seventh
Fleet to protect Taiwan from invasion and substantially increased military aid to fight Commu-
nist insurgencies in the Philippines and Indochina.” Michael Schaller, The United States and
China: Into the Twenty-First Century, third edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002),
128.
44. Statement by the president on the situation in Korea on June 27, 1950, Truman Library,
Public Papers of the Presidents: Harry S. Truman, 173; emphasis added.
45. “The Formosa Strait: Note by the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs,” September 24,
1958, C. (58) 192, CAB/129/94, the National Archives, UK.
46. “Guanyu meiguo wuzhuang qinlüe Zhongguo lingtu Taiwan de shengming” [关于美国
武装侵略中国领土台湾的声明 A statement on the American military invasion of the Chinese
territory of Taiwan], Zhonghua renmin gongheguo waijiaobu, Zhou Enlai waijiao wenxuan,
18–19.
47. “Kangmei yuanchao, baowei heping” [抗美援朝, 保卫和平 Resist America and assist
Korea, preserve peace], October 24, 1950, in Zhonggong zhongyang wenxian yanjiushi, Zhou
Enlai xuanji, vol. 2, pp. 50–54.
48. U.S. Department of State, American Foreign Policy 1950–1955: Basic Documents
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1957–58), vol. 2, p. 2475. FRUS, 1952–54,
vol. 14, p. 140.
49. John W. Garver, Foreign Relations of the People’s Republic of China (Upper Saddle
River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1993), 50–51.
50. Nancy Bernkopf Tucker, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the United States, 1945–1992 (New
York: Twayne Publishers, 1994), chap. 3. “Mutual Defense Treaty Between the United States
and the Republic of China of December 2, 1954,” https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/
chin001.asp (accessed June 22, 2020).
51. “The Formosa Strait: Note by the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs,” September 24,
1958, C. (58) 192, CAB/129/94, the National Archives, UK.
52. Schlesinger Jr., ed., Dynamics of World Power, vol. 4, pp. 210–213.
53. Schlesinger Jr., ed., Dynamics of World Power, vol. 4, pp. 213–214.
54. For two contrasting interpretations of the Taiwan crises, see Tucker, Taiwan, Hong
Kong, and the United States, 1945–1992, chap. 3, and Tao Wenzhao, ed., Zhongmei guanxishi
(1949–1972) (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1999), chap. 4.
55. Zhou Enlai (周恩来), “Jianjue fandui zhizao ‘liangge Zhongguo’ de yinmou” [坚决反
对制造“两个中国”的阴谋 Fiercely opposing the “Two-China” conspiracy], January 5, 1955,
in Zhou Enlai waijiao wenxuan, 94–105.
56. Appu K. Soman, “‘Who’s Daddy’ in the Taiwan Strait? The Offshore Islands Crisis of
1958,” Journal of American-East Asian Relations 3, no. 4 (Winter 1994): 373–398.
57. U.S. Department of State, John P. Glennon, ed., FRUS, 1952–54: China and Japan
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1952–1954), vol. 14, part 1, pp. 870–880.
58. Memorandum of Conference with the President, August 14, 1958, Dwight D. Eisenhow-
er (DDE) Papers as President, DDE Diaries, Box 35, the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential
Library.
59. Zhou Enlai, “Taiwan haixia xingshi he women de zhengce” [台湾海峡形势和我们的政
策 The Taiwan Strait situation and our policy], October 5, 1958, in Zhou Enlai waijiao wenxu-
an, vol. 2, pp. 262–267. Edgar Snow, “Interview with Mao Zedong,” New Republic 52 (Febru-
ary 27, 1965): 17–23.
60. Comments by John Foster Dulles at a news conference, Schlesinger Jr., ed., The Dynam-
ics of World Power, vol. 4, pp. 254–155.
61. Snow, “Interview with Mao Zedong.”
62. Zhang Baijia (章百家) and Jia Qingguo (贾庆国), “Duikang zhong de fangxiangpan,
huanchongqi he ceshiyi: Cong Zhongguo jiaodu kan Zhongmei dashiji huitan” [对抗中的方向
盘、缓冲器和测试仪: 从中国角度看中美大使级会谈 Sino-American ambassadorial talks
seen from the Chinese perspective], Dangdai Zhongguoshi yanjiu, no. 1 (2000): 40–51; Steven
M. Goldstein, “Dialogue of the Deaf? The Sino-American Ambassadorial-Level Talks,

1955–1970,” in Reexamining the Cold War: U.S.-China Diplomacy, 1954–1973, ed. Robert S.
Ross and Jiang Changbin (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2001),
200–237.
63. Robert D. Schulzinger, “The Johnson Administration, China, and the Vietnam War”;
Rosemary Foot, “Redefinitions: The Domestic Context of America’s China Policy in the
1960s”; Li Jie, “Changes in China’s Domestic Situation in the 1960s and Sino-American
Relations,” all in Ross and Jiang, eds., Re-examining the Cold War, 238–320.
64. Victor S. Kaufman, “A Response to Chaos: The United States, the Great Leap Forward,
and the Cultural Revolution, 1961–1968,” Journal of American-East Asian Relations 7, nos.
1–2 (Spring–Summer 1998): 73–92. Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals, Mao’s
Last Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006).
65. FRUS, 1964–1968, vol. 30, China, ed. Harriet Dashiell Schwar (Washington, D.C.:
Government Printing Office, 1998), 86–94.
66. John F. Kennedy, “A Democrat Looks at Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs 36, no. 1
(October 1957): 44–59.
67. Priscilla Roberts, “William L. Clayton and the Recognition of China, 1945–1966,” in
Truman’s Two-China Policy, ed. June M. Grasso (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1987).
68. Recordings and Transcripts, Recording of a Telephone Conversation between Johnson
and Russell, January 15, 1964, Tape F64.06, PNO 1, Special Files, Lyndon B. Johnson Library.
69. Richard P. Stebbins, ed., Documents on American Foreign Relations 1965 (New York:
Harper and Row, 1966), 120–134.
70. Paul Wingrove, introduction, “Russian Documents on the 1954 Geneva Conference,”
and Document no. 3, “From the Journal of Molotov: Secret Memorandum of Conversation at
Dinner in Honor of Mendes-France, French Prime Minister and Foreign Minister,” July 10,
1954, in Cold War International History Project Bulletin, no. 16 (Fall 2007/Winter 2008):
85–91.
71. Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), chap. 26.
72. Statement by President Lyndon B. Johnson, in Schlesinger Jr., ed., The Dynamics of
World Power, 282–283.
73. Snow, “Interview with Mao Zedong.” Zhou Enlai (周恩来), “Zhongguo jianjue zhichi
Yuenan renmin de kangmei zhanzheng” [中国人民坚决支持越南人民的抗美战争 The Chi-
nese people are resolved to support the Vietnamese people’s anti-American war], April 2,
1965; “Guanyu Zhongguo dui Meiguo zhengce de sijuhua” [关于中国对美国政策的四句话
Four points regarding China’s policy toward the U.S.], April 10, 1966, in Zhou Enlai waijiao
wenxuan, 436–444, 460–461.
74. Memorandum of Conversation between President Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, et
al., and Prime Minister Zhou Enlai, Qiao Guanhua, et al., February 23, 1972, in Beijing,
National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials Project, White House Special Files, Presi-
dent’s Office Files, box 87, Memorandum for the President Beginning February 20, 1972, http:/
/www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB106/NZ-2.pdf (accessed May 30, 2011).
75. Lorenz M. Lüthi, The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World (Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008). Liu Xiao (刘晓), Chushi Sulian banian [出使苏联八
年 Eight years as ambassador to the Soviet Union] (Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi ziliao chuban-
she, 1986). Li Yueran (李越然), Waijiao wutai shang de xin Zhongguo lingxiu [外交舞台上的
新中国领袖 New Chinese leaders on the diplomatic stage] (Beijing: Waiyu jiaoxue yu yanjiu,
1999). Yang Kuisong (杨奎松), Zhonggong yu Mosike de guanxi (1920–1960) [中共与莫斯科
的关系 The Chinese Communist Party’s relations with Moscow] (Hong Kong: Haixiao chuban
shiye youxian gongsi, 1997), chap. 5 and conclusion. Niu Jun, “1962: The Eve of the Left Turn
in China’s Foreign Policy,” Cold War International History Project, Woodrow Wilson Interna-
tional Center for Scholars, working paper no. 48, October 2005.
76. CIA report, January 19, 1967, Harriet Dashiell Schwar, ed., FRUS, 1964–1968,
503–507.
77. Xi Xuan (席宣) and Jin Chunming (金春明), “Wenhua dageming” jianshi [“文化大革
命”简史 A brief history of the “Cultural Revolution”], expanded edition (Beijing: Zhonggong
dangshi chubanshe, 2006).
166 Chapter 7
78. Chen Yung-fa (陈永发), Zhongguo gongchan geming qishi nian [中国共产革命七十年
The seventy years of the Chinese Communist Revolution], revised edition (Taipei: Lianjing,
2001), vol. 2, chap. 9.
79. Ma Sitson, “In the Hands of the Red Guard Torture and Degradation,” Life (June 2,
1967), p. 22.
80. Barbara W. Tuchman, “If Mao Had Come to Washington: An Essay in Alternatives,”
Foreign Affairs 51, no. 1 (October 1972): 44–64; James Claude Thomson et al., Sentimental
Imperialists: The American Experience in East Asia, second edition (New York: Harper and
Row, 1985), 218–219.
81. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to
1957 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1960), 139.
82. Dong Wang, review of Anthony Best, ed., The International History of East Asia,
1900–1968: Trade, Ideology and the Quest for Order (London: Routledge, 2010), http://
geschichte-transnational.clio-online.net/rezensionen/2011-1-182.
83. Tao, ed., Zhongmei guanxishi (1949–1972), chap. 7 by Niu Jun.
84. The Five Principles are mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sove-
reignty, mutual nonaggression, mutual noninterference in each other’s internal affairs, equality
and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence. Dong Wang, China’s Unequal Treaties: Narrat-
ing National History (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), 127. Chen Jian and Shen
Zhihua, “The Geneva Conference of 1954,” and documents, Cold War International History
Project Bulletin, no. 16 (Fall 2007/Winter 2008): 7–14.
85. Rosemary Foot, The Practice of Power: US Relations with China since 1949 (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1995); Evelyn Goh, Constructing the U.S. Rapprochement with China,
1961–1974: From “Red Menace” to “Tacit Ally” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2005).
86. A. M. Halpern, ed., Policies toward China: Views from Six Continents (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1965), 490–494.
87. “Telegram from the Department of State to the Embassy in the Republic of China,”
February 13, 1968, FRUS, 1964–1968, vol. 30, China, ed. Harriet Dashiell Schwar, 638–641.
Chapter Eight
Facing East and West

Agents of Encounter
In addition to state-to-state diplomacy, a variety of cultural, religious, eco-

nomic, industrial, and social forces also shaped American-Chinese relations
through the flow of goods, peoples, and ideas—agents of encounter, both
tangible and intangible. What did Chinese and Americans learn from their
interactions in the period marked by two world wars and the Cold War?
Three broad observations will help explain the persistence of a reservoir of
human ties between the two nations, even though both countries did not have
diplomatic relations for nearly thirty years after the founding of the People’s
Republic.
First, American learning—values, ideals, and institutions, as well as inno-
vations and manufacturing—both inspired and assisted many American-
trained Chinese from varying backgrounds to embark on their future careers,
in the belief that China should learn from the American model. Second, for
many Americans—representing diverse sectors of American society and
working in China as missionaries, educators, and journalists, for example—
their Chinese experience not only gave them knowledge of the East but also
raised their consciousness with respect to both countries. 1 Third, despite the
lack of diplomatic relations during the 1950s and 1960s, China and the
United States continued to play a substantial role in each other’s religious,
cultural, social, and public life—whether in the area of Hollywood fantasies,
the American Civil Rights Movement, or in the political exploitation of
African American activists and their take on class struggle and anti-racism by
Communist China.
167
168 Chapter 8
TRAINED IN THE UNITED STATES:

V. K. WELLINGTON KOO (1887–1985)
The trend for Chinese nationals to study in the United States began in 1872
with Yung Wing (1828–1912), who escorted thirty young men to study mili-
tary science, shipbuilding, and navigation in the United States under the
auspices of the Qing government. 2 In 1895, China’s military defeat by Ja-
pan—which had undergone a rapid modernization of technology and politi-
cal institutions following the 1868 Meiji Restoration—further convinced
many Chinese of the superiority of Western civilization and the need to
introduce Western technological advances on a large scale. Several govern-
ment decrees encouraged students to study abroad and promised rapid pro-
motion to those who returned and made contributions to Chinese national
well-being.
In the United States, a series of landmark political decisions paved the
way for a stream of young Chinese students who later became notable figures
in their homeland. In May 1908, the U.S. Congress passed a resolution re-
turning to China the bulk of the unexpended Boxer Indemnity Fund, totaling
about US$12,000,000, to be used by the Qing government to sponsor Chi-
nese students to study in America. 3 In 1911, Tsing Hua College was founded
in Beijing as a preparatory institution for students intending to enter U.S.
universities and colleges. In May 1924, a resolution was passed in Congress
providing for the remission to China of the remainder of the Boxer Indemnity
Fund to help develop educational and cultural projects.
Commenting on the hundreds of Chinese students in the United States, a
remark made in 1909 by W. W. Yen (1876–1950), a graduate of the Univer-
sity of Virginia and a key diplomat and politician in Republican China, was
to prove uncannily prophetic: “The influence of such young men, the future
leaders of China, over their country’s predilections and policies will be enor-
mous.” 4 One member of this elite power base in the making was Soong
Mayling (1898–2003), a graduate of Wellesley College and well known as a
China lobbyist in the United States. 5 Her marriage to Chiang Kai-shek in
1927 secured him important American, Protestant connections and was fea-
tured in Time magazine and the weekly cinema newsreel, watched by mil-
lions, celebrating all things “made in the USA.” Madame Chiang’s brother,
T. V. Soong (1894–1971), a Harvard and Columbia graduate—finance min-
ister (1928–1933), minister of foreign affairs (1942–1945), premier
(1945–1947) of the Nanjing government—was a key member of the influen-
tial China Lobby, a network of groups in the United States that favored
Taiwan in opposition to Mao’s China. 6
The story of Wellington Koo—China’s most celebrated diplomat of mod-
ern times—is no less revealing about the extent of American influence in
China and vice versa. In 1900, Koo entered St. John’s University in Shang-
Facing East and West 169
hai. He recollected that “the atmosphere both inside and outside the college
was then filled with talk of reform”—constitutional and social reform as well
as the establishment of modern schools founded largely on Western learning
and technology. 7 In 1904, Koo traveled to the United States together with a
group of students on government scholarships.
After a year’s preparatory study at Cook Academy, in Montour Falls,
New York, Koo matriculated in liberal arts at Columbia University. He re-
ceived an MA in 1909 and a PhD in 1912 in political science and internation-
al law under John Bassett Moore (1860–1947), an eminent jurist specializing
in international law. Responding to a call by Tang Shaoyi, premier of the
new Chinese Republic, and with the encouragement of Moore, Koo left for
China where he first worked as English secretary to President Yuan Shikai.
Koo’s diplomatic and interpersonal skills made him stand out among his
peers, and his services were retained by successive governments. In 1915,
just three years after launching his career, Koo was promoted to the position
of Chinese minister to the United States.
Following World War I, Koo was a leading member of the Chinese dele-
gation to the Paris Conference and the Washington Conference. In the after-
math of the Mukden Incident of 1931, as minister to France, Koo represented
Nationalist China on the Lytton Commission of Inquiry and later at the
League of Nations in Geneva, where he solicited support for China against
Japan’s invasion of Manchuria. In 1943, as Chinese ambassador to the Court
of St. James’s in London, Koo negotiated two important treaties with Britain
and the United States dealing with the relinquishment of extraterritoriality.
After retiring from his post as the Nationalist government’s ambassador to
Washington in 1956, he was elected an international judge at the Hague, a
position he held until 1966. 8
Koo’s years in America convinced him of the value of international law
as a medium for resolving international disputes and promoting world peace.
The author of many authoritative books on international law and diplomacy,
including the eight-volume Digest of International Law (1906), Moore was
Koo’s sponsor and leading advisor and taught him the fundamental skills and
tactics of diplomacy. 9 According to Moore, diplomacy was essentially a kind
of warfare waged in peacetime with different weapons. For him, a diplomat
must study the situations of the contracting parties with great care, always
urging reconciliation and compromise for the sake of reaching agreement.
Koo incorporated Moore’s ideas in his doctoral dissertation on Sino-foreign
cooperation and compromise in relation to the free flow of commerce and
China’s desire to recover its jurisdictional rights. Koo underscored the injus-
tice and inequality imposed on China as a sovereign nation and reciprocity as
a leading principle in international law. 10 Koo and other Chinese diplomats
challenged the legality of China’s unequal treaties in international law, par-
ticularly at the Paris Peace Conference and Washington Conference, as I
170 Chapter 8
have argued in other places. 11 Just before the Paris Peace Conference, Moore
advised Koo (at that time China’s minister to Washington) that, despite the
divisions between the foreign-recognized Beijing government and the Can-
ton Nationalist authorities, China should preserve the facade of unity. As it
turned out, the Chinese did dispatch a nominally united delegation represent-
ing both governments to Paris. 12
Unlike many anti-imperialist activists, Koo was committed to improving
China’s international position through international law and diplomatic nego-
tiations. This approach, as detailed in the previous chapter, mirrored the
burgeoning interest in international law and foreign relations—alongside the
promotion of the foreign service—as a professional career among American
academics and diplomats in the fifteen years before World War I. With
backing from figures such as Archibald C. Coolidge, John B. Moore, Lewis
Einstein, and Paul S. Reinsch (minister to China), great hopes were held for
the role of international law in regulating international competition and pow-
er politics, thus making the world a more peaceful and predictable place. 13
As a skilled professional diplomat, Wellington Koo showed what could
be achieved when the respective cultural contributions of the United States
and China were combined and harmonized. Commenting on Koo’s trouncing
of the Japanese delegation in Paris over the return of Shandong to China,
Robert Lansing, secretary of state (1915–1920), wrote,
In a note on the meeting I recorded that “He [Koo] simply overwhelmed the
Japanese with his argument.” I believe that that opinion was common to all
those who heard the two presentations [Japanese and Koo’s]. In fact it made
such an impression on the Japanese themselves, that one of the delegates
called upon me the following day and attempted to offset the effect by declar-
ing that the United States, since it had not promised to support Japan’s conten-
tion, would be blamed if Kiao-chow [Jiaozhou, part of Shandong] would be
[sic] returned directly to China. 14
GROWING UP IN CHINA:
PEARL S. BUCK (1892–1973)
Drawing on the experiences of the first forty years of her life, Pearl S. Buck
was the most popular and most translated American writer on China. Her
career as a writer was full of irony and paradox. She was the first woman to
win the Pulitzer Prize in 1932 and the first American female laureate to hold
the Nobel Prize in literature, which she won in 1938 for her realistic portrayal
of Chinese peasants and rural life in novels including The Good Earth, Sons,
and A House Divided. Despite these achievements, she languished in obscur-
ity for decades. There were two main reasons for the “lack of respect” she
received. First, she focused on China and women, both of which were con-
sidered “marginal” subjects in American literary tradition. Second, she alien-

ated both ends of the political spectrum: the absence of Christian sentiment
in her novels and her civil rights activities irritated the right, while her anti-
Communist stance exasperated the left. Throughout her life, Buck devoted
herself to furthering the mutual understanding of East and West, yet her
books, celebrated in the West for her grasp of the “real” China, were dispar-
aged by Chinese of varying political and cultural complexions who criticized
her treatment of Chinese people as superficial and offensive. The Guomin-
dang government refused to attend her Nobel Prize award ceremony, and the
People’s Republic denied her visa application in 1972 following President
Nixon’s historic visit to China. Only in the late 1990s did Pearl Buck become
“rehabilitated” and begin to attract renewed interest in the United States and
China. 15
A further irony was the stir that Buck generated in the Christian commu-
nity. Born to Presbyterian missionary parents (Absalom and Carie Syden-
stricker), once married to a missionary agriculturist (John Lossing Buck), and
a missionary herself, she questioned the misrepresentation by some mission-
aries of the Christian message in China. In the thick of the anti-Christian
movement and the Nationalist revolution of the 1920s, she called for an
intellectual and spiritual overhaul of the missionary enterprise. In articles in
the Chinese Recorder in 1927 and Harper’s Monthly in 1933, Buck openly
criticized the narrowness and racism of many Christian missions. Uncom-
fortable as it was for many American Christians, Buck raised doubts about
the unquestioned assumptions of many missionaries and their supporters
about China—the wretched dwellings, the naked children, the bound feet,
and the placid souls awaiting redemption from the West. “I have seen him
[the missionary] so filled with arrogance in his own beliefs, so sure that all
truth was with him and him only, that my heart has knelt with a humble one
before the shrine of Buddha rather than before the God of that missionary, if
that God could be true.” 16
To Buck, many missionaries failed to appreciate the simple—but very
different—logic of life in China: “this foreign missionary has, it is true, too
often seen only what he allowed himself to see.” Her exemplary missionary
was blind to “the sunshine pouring in, even into the hovel, the placid little
daily round carried on there in great contentment and good humor, the merry
laughter of glistening little brown persons rolling in the dust and acutely
happy in their freedom, the pride of the mother in her small feet, and the joy
in life of the smiling, philosophical father, idling in the sunshine of the
threshold.” 17 And the missionaries had failed even to follow Christ’s teach-
ing:
We have approached these foreign countries not in the spirit in which Christ
approached men. We have come too often in lordliness and consciousness of
172 Chapter 8
race superiority. We have glorified in our own minds the conditions in our
countries. It is true that in our loneliness home looked very sweet and good.
But that is no excuse for failing to see the grave faults in our own civiliza-
tions. . . . When we took upon ourselves that vow to a higher loyalty, why did
we not see that Christ’s loyalty was to humanity and make ours that also? 18
Buck’s scathing candidness about missions and missionaries was an expres-

sion of her spiritual ideals—principles that transcended race and nation and
promoted “the highest trained intelligence, the keenest sympathies, the most
delicate perceptions, the most profound moral and spiritual convictions.” In
sum, Buck was a product of the liberal rethinking of Christianity in China
inside and outside the church in both the United States and China. These
dynamics continued into the Cold War era, where “literacy reform, nonsec-
tarian scholarship, community development, human rights, civil rights, anti-
poverty campaigns, and various sorts of philanthropy served as successor
projects for missionary-connected Americans, many of whom migrated out
of the faith and became post-Protestants.” 19
In the history of American Christianity in China, no single year was
marked by greater irony than 1922, when the publication of The Christian
Occupation of China—a work that symbolized the “peak of missionary self-
confidence”—coincided with the outbreak of what became known as the
Anti-Christian Movement, which lasted five years to 1927. 20 On February
26, 1922, in reaction to the announcement that the World Student Christian
Federation’s eleventh conference would be held in Beijing, a group of stu-
dents from Shanghai founded the Anti-Christian Student Federation (ACSF).
Imbued with the Bolshevik revolutionary worldview and its theory of class
struggle, the ACSF manifesto—published in the Socialist Youth League’s
magazine Xianqu (Vanguard) on March 9—linked Christianity to the West-
ern capitalist exploitation of China. Anti-religious sentiments were again
dominant in the manifesto issued two days later by the Grand Anti-religion
Federation, organized by Beijing’s intelligentsia. These events ignited a war
against Christianity in China. 21 During the period 1922–1927, Chinese critics
castigated Christianity as a foreign import and the vanguard of imperialism.
Chinese yearning for independence, as Thomas F. Millard—a long-time
China Coast journalist and founder of Millard’s Weekly—put it,
is a logical outcome of progress and must have been expected. It follows

closely in the wake of the similar movement in Japan and reflected in other
Asiatic countries and beyond doubt is the manifestation of the development of
nationalistic consciousness among Asiatics. . . . The existing “anti-foreign”
troubles here have given definite proof that the body of Chinese Christians are
in complete sympathy with the national aspirations of New China. 22
Although there were large numbers of missionaries in the field and many
professed Chinese Christians, some reports, echoing Pearl Buck, spoke of the
“shallow hold” of Christianity on the Chinese mind, especially among intel-
lectuals. “How has foreign influence and the teaching and the example of
foreigners in China affected the political institutions and practices of the
country?” one commentator asked skeptically. Others reflected soberly on
the influence of the missions and Chinese Christianity amid the intellectual
ferment and social turbulence of the times. The Reverend James M. Yard, a
Methodist missionary in Shanghai, noted gravely, “We are seeing weakness
that we were not aware of and we are being roused mentally and spiritually
by the great upheaval.” 23
Adding to the anti-religious forces at work in China, the Restoring Educa-
tional Rights Movement of 1924 formed the second phase of the Anti-Chris-
tian Movement; it was aimed at Christian colleges and schools and sought to
incorporate stronger anti-imperialist and nationalist elements. 24 Despite this
“most severe setback” for Christianity in China, some American newspaper
commentators called for patience and persistence. Like Millard, others es-
poused the naturalization of Christianity in China: “China can well be left to
interpret the Gospel in its own way. Maybe they can do a better job than we
can.” 25
With its intellectual precedents in imperial Ming and Qing China, the
Anti-Christian Movement of 1922–1927 formulated its assault on Christian-
ity not just in anti-religious polemic, but in anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist,
and nationalistic terms. 26 For Chinese Christians, the movement confronted
them with two vital questions: How should Christians address the relation-
ship between the Christian faith and imperialism? And was there a biblical
justification for the proactive involvement of Christians in nationalist en-
deavors and social reform? Riding the wave of self-examination both within
and outside the Christian community across the Pacific, Pearl Buck ad-
dressed these questions by looking at the other side of the same coin.
MAVERICK VOICES: EDGAR SNOW (1905–1972)

AND CHEN XUJING (CH’EN SU-CHING, 1903–1967)
American views of China have very often reflected the divisions within
American society itself: “There were competing images, with varying de-
grees of correspondence to reality, which were used as weapons in struggles
among different segments of American society to gain hegemony over one
another by defining their society’s relationship to a dimly understood Oth-
er.” 27 The perceptions of China nurtured by Pearl Buck were a far cry from
the first account in English of Mao Zedong and other Communist leaders
written by Edgar Snow, the plucky journalist who first ventured into the
174 Chapter 8
Chinese Communist Party’s base in Yan’an in 1936. A very different per-

spective is provided by Chen Xujing, a fine scholar and educator with exper-
tise in sociology, political science, cultural studies, and history. Chen had
gained a PhD from the University of Illinois in 1928 and went on to cham-
pion the total Americanization and Westernization (quanpan xihua 全盘西
化) of Chinese higher education and culture.
During the 1930s and 1940s, American media tycoon Henry R. Luce—a
missionary child who grew up in China and a passionate promoter of Ameri-
ca’s leading role in world affairs—was, unlike Pearl Buck, an enthusiastic
supporter of Chiang Kai-shek, whom he saw as a natural ally of America.
Primarily through Time and Life magazines, Luce fostered an image of Chi-
ang as the authentic popular leader of China, dedicated to bringing Christian-
ity, democracy, and modernity to the nation. 28 In the cinema, the American
wartime film The Battle of China, directed by Frank Capra and Anatole
Litvak, also fueled the U.S. infatuation with Chiang Kai-shek, treating him in
almost hagiographical terms.
However, this favorable image of Chiang did not go unchallenged. Many
Chinese and some Americans living in China did little to conceal their dis-
content with the Nationalist leader. Even in the Luce media stable, the doings
of Mao and the Chinese Communists were paraded before American policy
makers and ordinary readers. More than forty rare photographs of Commu-
nist troops, taken by Edgar Snow, were published in the January and Febru-
ary 1937 issues of Life, along with a positive commentary:
Their leaders were Mao Tse-tung [Mao Zedong] as Chairman and Chu Teh
[Zhu De], as field commander. Able commanders flocked to them. These men,
unlike most Chinese warlords, could not be bribed. It took Chiang nearly four
years to dislodge them. In 1934 they slipped past his lines and headed for the
Chinese Northwest, in a great 7,000-mile circle of flight. In the course of this
“Heroic Trek,” the Communist army of 100,000 avidly battled with Chiang’s
troops. But once they had reached the Northwest, the Chinese Communists
were in a strategically perfect spot. They rapidly extended their influence over
an area with a population of some 20,000,000 people. 29
In the February 1937 issue of Life, the Chinese Communists were presented
as a decisive force in Chinese politics, in the context of the 1936 Xi’an
Incident and the second United Front between Chiang and Mao:
On Jan. 18 [1937] Chang’s [Zhang Xueliang] allies in Sian [Xi’an], scene of

the kidnapping, “rebelled” against Generalissimo Chiang, invited the nearby
Communist agents to come to Sian and propagandize their troops. On Jan. 19,
they gave field command of all Sian troops to P’eng Teh-huai [Peng Dehuai],
Communist commander . . . and gave the Communist armies $250,000 and
sorely needed arms. A Communist spokesman for P’eng announced: “We are
not anti-foreign nor antireligious, only anti-Japanese. If Chiang Kai-shek will
declare himself against the Japanese, we will obey him. We want all parties to
be represented in a parliament or congress and want a democratic constitution.
If our suggestion is complied with, we will drop Sovietism. Our armies have
been fought for ten years in many provinces but we are not yet exterminated.
Instead we are stronger than ever.” This cock’s crow by no means meant that
the Communists were willing to be absorbed in Chiang’s armies. It was in fact
accompanied by demands for arms and money gifts from Chiang. 30
Born in Kansas City, Missouri, and a journalism graduate from the Univer-
sity of Missouri, Edgar Snow worked as a writer and journalist in China from
1928 to 1941. In 1936, he broke through the Nationalist government’s block-
ade and spent four months (June–October) in the Communist-controlled zone
in Northwest China. Snow gave a detailed historical account of the rise of the
Chinese Communist movement in his newspaper reports and in his book Red
Star over China, first published in 1937. 31 Based on personal interviews,
although criticized at home for being too credulous, Red Star over China is
still the most gripping account of the early years of the Chinese Communist
Party. In his book, Snow concluded presciently that the “movement for social
revolution in China . . . would not only continue to mature; in one mutation
or another it would eventually win, simply because . . . the basic conditions
which had given it birth carried within themselves the dynamic necessity for
its triumph.” 32
The Snow story had a bitter sequel back in the United States. In the early
1950s, tolerance of dissenting views and independent inquiry fell prey to the
“Red Scare” and demagogic McCarthyism, inflicting deep and lasting
wounds on all parties involved. Because Snow had been the first to report
what the Chinese Communists had said and done, he, like many other
American “China hands,” became the target of allegations that he was “un-
American” and “pro-Communist.” Renewed interest in Snow in the 1980s on
both sides of the Pacific once again mirrored the constantly changing nature
of the relationship and the political and cultural contradictions inherent in it.
On the Chinese side, Chen Xujing, displaying a maverick spirit similar to
Snow’s, was the first to propose that thoroughgoing Westernization was the
solution to China’s problems. A native of Hainan and a former student in the
United States and Germany, Chen was on the faculty of Nankai University in
Tianjin for ten years before taking up a teaching post and later the presidency
(1948–1952) at Lingnan University in Canton. 33
Together with the Warring States and Weijin periods, the early twentieth
century has been categorized as the third major phase of cultural pluralization
in Chinese history. These decades witnessed heated debates about the direc-
tion of Chinese educational reforms and their likely impact on the relation-
ship between tradition and modernity and between East and West. Guang-
dong educator Xu Chongqing (1888–1969, president of Yat-sen University
in 1931–1932 and 1940–1941) advocated education as a means of increasing
176 Chapter 8
social productivity: “the correlation between education and society is equiva-

lent to the relationship between education and production.” 34
In contrast with Chinese tradition, which separated manual labor from
education, Xu’s concept was centered on production as the core of the new
educational system. Another educator from Guangdong, Lin Liru
(1889–1977, president of Canton Normal College, 1922–1927, and of Beij-
ing Normal University, 1950–1952) called for the development of normal
schools based on two educational principles, popularization and moderniza-
tion. 35 Pondering the future of education in China, a third educator, Chen
Qingzhi, proposed a three-tier system: basic education, education for produc-
tion, and advanced study. Chen’s system was intended to orient both primary
and secondary education toward practical labor and production for national
needs. He believed that universities should be replaced by specialized techni-
cal higher institutions and that research institutions should be reserved for an
elite group able to engage in scholarly work. 36 Socialist educator Jiang Qi
rejected foreign educational models and instead advocated specialized pro-
grams at primary, secondary, and tertiary levels. 37
Standing in the forefront of these debates on Chinese and Western culture
in the 1920s and 1930s, Chen Xujing stated that his ultimate aim was to find
a way out for Chinese culture. He wrote, “[T]o save China from its present
threat of extinction, we have to be thoroughly Westernized. Wholesale West-
ernization, however, will involve a complete break with the cultural monopo-
ly enjoyed by Chinese tradition in order to provide individuals with the
opportunities they need to fulfill their potential.” 38 As a part of this Western-
ization process, Chen suggested that Chinese education, as an integral com-
ponent of the culture, must be thoroughly modernized to avoid the danger of
a regressive return to traditional ways. “Since 1872, when the first batch of
government-sponsored students was sent to the U.S., all so-called education-
al modernization movements have become mired in the quagmire of superfi-
ciality.” Chen pointed to the pitfalls in China’s previous experience with
sending students overseas:
Since the Chinese authorities did not want students studying abroad to forget
their own culture, they built comfortable quarters to accommodate them.
Hence, except for going to classes and on special occasions, Chinese students
on government bursaries read Chinese classics, spoke Chinese, and made Chi-
nese friends—their life in America was much the same as in China. . . . As a
consequence, these Chinese students missed the opportunity to observe the
true spirit of education and life in the West. 39
Having witnessed for himself the prosperity and advanced state of American
and European societies, Chen Xujing expressed his confidence in Western
capitalist civilization: China “must utilize American learning to become
more like America.” Despite his cultural radicalism, Chen’s aim was to save
China—to save it from itself. 40 His work also focused on fundamental issues
in higher education, advocating the acquisition of knowledge for its own
sake. After the establishment of the People’s Republic, Chen gradually fell
out of favor with the government and shifted his energies to academic re-
search on various topics including Southeast Asian history. During the Cultu-
ral Revolution, he was branded as an “American-imperialist spy,” and he
died of a heart attack in 1967.
CHINA IN THE AMERICAN IMAGINATION AND THE

CHINESE RESPONSE AT THE HEIGHT OF THE COLD WAR
The character portraits sketched above illustrate how a diverse set of person-
alities—each with their own areas of expertise—and particular circumstances
shaped the rich array of encounters between Americans and Chinese who had
lived on each other’s soil. Wellington Koo and Chen Xujing’s American
experience helped mold their convictions that in the fields of international
law, education, and culture, Western practices should be utilized to the fullest
extent in China’s national interests. In the case of Pearl Buck and Edgar
Snow, by contrast, the complex and subtle realities of China challenged
superficial idealism and exclusive claims to truth made by some
Americans—the truth about life, about progress, about China, and about
humanity itself. To Buck and Snow, the encounter with China stimulated
soul searching on issues confronting Americans from all walks of life—such
as race, nationalism, revolution, imperialism, justice, equality, and free-
dom—that ultimately changed America.
In all these interactions, however, the balance of forces was never equal.
In 1929, when the Nationalist Nanjing government had only just come to
power, half of the sixty or so foreign advisors already working for the GMD
regime were Americans. It would have been inconceivable for a comparable
number of Chinese nationals to have been hired as advisors by any U.S.
government.
This imbalance was also manifested in trade figures. Between 1868 and
1945, the total volume of China’s international trade increased more than
threefold, from US$193.9 million to $709.4 million. 41 Within the same peri-
od, the value of America’s foreign trade grew over nineteen times, from
US$748 million to $14,377 million (over $14 billion). In 1945, China’s total
international export and import trade was just over 2 percent of that of the
United States. As a net creditor on international accounts, the United States
held no more than 7 percent of foreign investments in China by 1930—
constituting only about 1 percent of total U.S. overseas investments ($17.2
billion) at the time—far behind British and Japanese holdings ($1.2 billion
and $1.1 billion, respectively) in China. 42 However, America’s wartime alli-
178 Chapter 8
ance with China substantially changed the situation. Before World War I,
trade between the United States and China accounted for around 10 percent
of China’s total trade with all countries; by the end of World War II in 1945,
the ratio was about 60 percent—a clear indication that political relations were
an important driver in the process whereby the United States overtook Brit-
ain and Japan in the Chinese market. 43
As one of the earliest agents of encounter between the United States and
China, Christianity sheds further light on the complexities of the bilateral
relationship, especially in the emerging Cold War culture at the dawn of
Communist domination in China.
First, the burgeoning diversity of Chinese Protestantism in the four
decades from the 1910s to the 1940s was a phenomenon little known to the
American public. Alongside the institutionalized denominational churches—
the direct offspring of missionary efforts—independent and sectarian Chi-
nese-led churches, with names like the True Jesus Church, the Jesus Family,
and the “Little Flock,” were flourishing. Theologically, the situation was
equally diverse. In China as elsewhere, conservative fundamentalists and
liberal modernists drew their own lines between the “social gospel” and
individual salvation. 44 A dynamic pluralism, corresponding to the major cur-
rents in world Christianity, defined the landscape of Protestantism in China
prior to 1949.
A particular irony is found in the fact that the post-1949 official Protes-
tant church, which had developed from the Three-Self Patriotic Movement
(TSPM, the three selves being “self-supporting,” “self-governing,” and “self-
propagating”), 45 was not the creation of the Chinese Communist Party but
had grown out of the American missions and the theological, social, and
political divisions among Chinese Christians.
Before the Communist defeat of Chiang Kai-shek, a group of educated
Chinese Christian leaders who adopted a liberal theology and who supported
a national independence and reformist approach had already spoken positive-
ly of socialist revolution and the Communist worldview. 46 Influential figures
such as Y. T. Wu (Wu Yaozong, 1893–1979) and K. H. Ting (Ding Guang-
xun, 1915–2012) advocated integrating Gospel values with Chinese circum-
stances and the revolutionary movement in the 1940s. In 1948, Wu identified
the lack of understanding of the Chinese revolution as a “present-day trage-
dy” for Chinese Christianity:
There are many blind people who think that the expression “class struggle” is
just a deceitful slogan of one political party, they do not recognize that the
existence of classes is a historical fact. They do not grieve over the existence
of classes, nor think how to abolish them, but only resent those who do. . . .
Capitalism can no longer meet the needs of our time; it only creates economic
inequality and imperialism. 47
Wu called on Christians to relate their faith to the reality of contemporary

China and bow to the spirit of the Anti-Christian Movement of the 1920s:
“Now over twenty years have passed, and as we look back we cannot but
admit that the charges had a good deal of truth in them. If our thinking had
remained the same as Western Christian thinking, we should indeed have
become unconscious tools of imperialism and cultural aggression.” 48
Such denunciations of Christianity’s association with imperialism and
capitalism drew fire from within the Christian camp. In China, leading Cath-
olics were at odds with some of their Protestant counterparts on the question
of self-governance, self-support, and self-propagation. A Catholic pamphlet,
titled “Tianzhu jiao Zhongguo quanti zhujiao xuanyan” [The manifesto of all
China’s Catholic bishops], stated that the pope—rather than the head of
state—held supreme authority over the Catholic faithful and that no external
agency could undermine the structure and solidarity of the Roman Catholic
Church. 49
In seeking to explain the rapid growth of Chinese Protestantism in the
1980s and early 1990s, Alan Hunter and Kim-kwong Chan argued that the
TSPM and the China Christian Council (CCC) “essentially maintains a
church tradition inherited from western missionaries. Urban-based, its con-
gregations are relatively [well] educated, and its intellectual environment
increasingly modern and rationalistic.” 50
Second, the “loss of China” by the United States not only intensified the
climate of fear about the international situation and perceptions of the Chi-
nese Communist Party as a ruthless tyranny, but it also boomeranged, fueling
frustration and anger over America’s record of racism and religious conflict
around the world, promoting solidarity with (and fantasies about) Mao’s
China among Western intellectuals and radicals and in the Black commu-
nity. 51
This in turn motivated the Truman administration to make limited im-
provements on human rights and race relations in the United States—but not
enough for Black Americans, who had long felt oppressed. One writer com-
mented in the Chicago Defender:
The communists were able to do with China in a few years what America was
unable to do in a century. . . . Race prejudice in America has been Russia’s
theme song among the other nations of the world. You understand, we call
ourselves Christians. But the American’s [sic] idea of Christianity carries a
limited approach. If you are White, then you are Heaven-bound; but if you are
colored there is no space allotted to you in the American concept of Christian-
ity. . . . We are profuse with words but are short on deeds. 52
Both the China scare and the nostalgia for the bygone American involvement
in China (including the missionary presence) were reflected in an array of
Hollywood China-themed movies, featuring Hollywood superstars such as
180 Chapter 8
Ingrid Bergman in The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958), Humphrey Bogart
in The Left Hand of God (1955), Frank Sinatra and Laurence Harvey in The
Manchurian Candidate (1962), Charlton Heston in 55 Days in Peking
(1963), and Steve McQueen and Candace Bergman in The Sand Pebbles
(1966).
On another front, the engagement of Mao’s China with African American
activists was an important chapter in Sino-American relations. The issues of
race, racism, and social justice were weaponized by all sides during the
turbulent 1960s, while the People’s Republic promoted its own international
agenda and global ambitions in solidarity with people of color and the Third
World. Echoing earlier Chinese observations on America’s racial problems,
Mao’s China became an inspiration for violent revolution, global unrest, and
social movements targeting imperialism, colonialism, white supremacy, and
exploitative capitalism. 53
Key Asian and African American activists and writers, including W. E. B.
Du Bois (1868–1963), Robert F. Williams (1925–1996), Vicki Garvin, Huey
P. Newton, Frank Chin, Yuri Kochiyama, and Eldridge Cleaver, nurtured
connections with Mao Zedong, Ho Chih Min (the Vietnamese Communist
leader), Ernesto “Che” Guevara (the Argentinian Marxist revolutionary,
1928–1967), Frantz Omar Fanon (1925–1961, a writer from the French colo-
ny of Martinique), and Fidel Castro during the Eisenhower (1953–1961),
Kennedy (1961–1963), and Johnson (1963–1969) administrations. 54
In 1958–1959 Du Bois traveled around the world with his second wife,
Shirley Graham, visiting Russia and China. In China, he was celebrated as a
“worthy representative of the American people.” On February 23, 1959,
while in Beijing, the Chinese government staged a grand gala to celebrate Du
Bois’ ninety-first birthday. Vice Premier Chen Yi and Guo Moruo (chairman
of the China Peace Committee) hosted the event. Du Bois commented ap-
provingly on conditions in China in a speech to one thousand people at
Peking University: “Behold a people, the most populous nation on this an-
cient earth which has burst its shackles, not by boasting and strutting, not by
lying about its history and its conquests, but by patience and long suffering,
by hard, backbreaking labor.” 55
Both Mao’s China and revolutionary African American organizations,
including the Revolutionary Action Movement and the Black Panther Party,
explicitly linked Black and Asian struggles to a global anti-capitalist, anti-
imperialist, and feminist movement. 56 In August 1963, at the request of
Robert F. Williams in exile in Cuba, Mao Zedong announced a widely noted
statement to “offer resolute support for the Afro-Americans in their struggle
against racial discrimination and for freedom and equal rights.” “There are
more than nineteen million Afro-Americans in the United States,” Mao stat-
ed. This 11 percent of the U.S. population, however, “are enslaved, op-
pressed, and discriminated against—such is their position in society.”
The overwhelming majority are deprived of their right to vote. In general, only
the most backbreaking and despised jobs are open to them. Their average
wages are barely a third or a half of the white people. . . . Afro-Americans are
often arrested, beaten up, or murdered at will by the U.S. authorities at various
levels and by members of the Ku Klux Klan and other racists. . . . The speedy
development of the struggle of the Afro-Americans is a manifestation of
sharpening class struggle and sharpening national struggle within the United
States; it has been causing increasing anxiety among U.S. ruling circles. 57
These developments suggest that, during its first two decades, the People’s
Republic was far from feeling isolated in the atmosphere created by the Cold
War, anti-racism, anti-imperialist, and anti-colonial activism. Despite the
nonrecognition of the People’s Republic of China at the diplomatic level, the
America and China cards were dealt out in a variety of contexts—in interna-
tional politics, the American politics of race, the civil rights movement, and
in Hollywood, as well as in the European radical imagination. These situa-
tions showed that the United States and China continued to loom large in
each other’s domestic and global relations even before the diplomatic break-
through of President Richard Nixon’s trip to China in 1972, the subject of the
next chapter.
FURTHER READING
Chinese students in the United States are discussed in Qingjia Edward Wang,
“Guests from the Open Door: The Reception of Chinese Students into the
United States, 1900s–1920s,” Journal of American-East Asian Relations 3,
no. 1 (Spring 1994): 55–75; Stacey Bieler, “Patriots” or “Traitors”? A
History of American-Educated Chinese Students (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E.
Sharpe, 2004); and Weili Ye, Seeking Modernity in China’s Name: Chinese
Students in the United States, 1900–1927 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univer-
sity Press, 2001).
For further information on cultural, social, economic, and technological
relations between the United States and China, see James C. Thomson Jr.,
While China Faced West: American Reformers in Nationalist China,
1928–37 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969); James Reed,
The Missionary Mind and American East Asian Policy, 1911–1915 (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1983);
Randall E. Stross, The Stubborn Earth: American Agriculturalists on Chi-
nese Soil, 1898–1937 (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press,
1986); R. David Arkush and Leo E. Lee, eds., Land without Ghosts: Chinese
Impressions of America from the Mid-Nineteenth Century to the Present
(Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1989); Charles W. Hayford,
To the People: James Yen and Village China (New York: Columbia Univer-
182 Chapter 8
sity Press, 1990); Yu-ming Shaw, An American Missionary in China: John

Leighton Stuart and Chinese-American Relations (Cambridge, Mass.: Coun-
cil on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1992); Robert Edwin Herz-
stein, Henry R. Luce, Time, and the American Crusade in Asia (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2005); Gregory Crouch, China’s Wings: War,
Intrigue, Romance, and Adventure in the Middle Kingdom during the Golden
Age of Flight (New York: Bantam Books, 2012); Guoqi Xu, Chinese and
Americans: A Shared History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
2014); and Terry Lautz, John Birch: A Life (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2015).
In the text, although I was unable to make room to further explicate
economic relations between the United States and the Republic of China, I
have found the works below enlightening. Yu-Kwei Cheng, Foreign Trade
and Industrial Development of China: A Historical and Integrated Analysis
through 1948 (Washington, D.C.: University Press of Washington, D.C.,
1956); Peter Schran, “Minor Significance of Commercial Relations between
the United States and China, 1850–1931,” and Mira Wilkins, “The Impacts
of American Multinational Enterprise on American-Chinese Economic Rela-
tions, 1786–1949,” both in America’s China Trade in Historical Perspective:
The Chinese and American Performance, ed. Ernest R. May and John K.
Fairbank (Cambridge, Mass.: Committee on American-East Asian Relations,
Harvard University, 1986), 237–292; Tomoko Shiroyama, China during the
Great Depression: Market, State, and the World Economy, 1929–1937
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2008); Parks M. Coble
Jr., The Shanghai Capitalists and the Nationalist Government, 1927–1937
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986; first edition in 1980);
Morris Bian, The Making of the State Enterprise System in Modern China:
The Dynamics of Institutional Change (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 2005).
On foreigners in China and Afro-Asian connections during the Cold War,
see Anne-Marie Brady, Making the Foreign Serve China: Managing
Foreigners in the People’s Republic (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield,
2003); Fred Ho and Bill V. Mullen, eds., Afro Asia: Revolutionary Political
& Cultural Connections between African Americans & Asian Americans
(Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2008); Robeson Taj Frazier, The
East Is Black: Cold War China in the Black Radical Imagination (Durham,
N.C.: Duke University Press, 2014); a counter historical witness account can
be found in Emmanuel John Hevi, “An African Student in Red China,”
Harper’s Magazine no. 1 (January 1964): 63–71.
NOTES
1. David Hollinger, Protestants Abroad: How Missionaries Tried to Change the World but
Changed America (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2017).
2. Yung Wing, born in Guangdong Province in South China, was brought to the United
States by an American missionary, Samuel Robbins Brown, at the age of sixteen. Following his
graduation from Yale University in 1854, Yung returned to China to promote study overseas.
Yung Wing, My Life in China and America (New York: Henry Holt, 1909).
3. For the various self-interested American proposals to use the Boxer indemnity funds, see
Richard H. Werking, “The Boxer Indemnity Remission and the Hunt Thesis,” Diplomatic
History 2, no. 1 (January 1978): 103–106; Michael H. Hunt, “The American Remission of the
Boxer Indemnity: A Reappraisal,” Journal of Asian Studies 31, no. 3 (May 1972): 539–559.
4. W. W. Yen, “China and the United States,” Chinese Students’ Monthly 5, no. 2 (Decem-
ber 1909): 59.
5. Dong Wang, “The China Divide: A Revisit,” Diplomatic History 43, no. 2 (April 2019):
394–396. Laura Tyson Li, Madame Chiang Kai-shek: China’s Eternal First Lady (New York:
Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006).
6. Stanley D. Bachrack, The Committee of One Million: “China Lobby” Politics,
1953–1971 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976); Forrest Davis and Robert A. Hunt-
er, The Red China Lobby (New York: Fleet, 1963); Ross Y. Koen, ed., The China Lobby in
American Politics (New York: Octagon Books, 1974); Jeffrey Crean, “‘Nixon Is With Us on
China’: Raging against the Dying of the Lobby,” Journal of American-East Asian Relations 26,
no. 4 (2019): 368–396.
7. Wellington Koo, The Wellington Koo Memoir, microfilm reel 1, under “Reform Senti-
ment at St. John’s University, Shanghai, 1900–1904.”
8. Hui-lan Koo (Madame Wellington Koo), Hui-lan Koo: An Autobiography (New York:
Dial Press, 1945) and No Feast Lasts Forever (New York: Quadrangle, 1975). Stephen G.
Craft, V. K. Wellington Koo and the Emergence of Modern China (Lexington, Ky.: University
Press of Kentucky, 2004); Jonathan Clements, Wellington Koo: China, Makers of the Modern
World (London: Haus Publishing, 2008).
9. Moore’s other important works include The Principles of American Diplomacy (New
York: Harper and Brothers, 1918); The Collected Papers of John Bassett Moore (New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 1944).
10. Wellington Koo, The Status of Aliens in China (PhD dissertation, Columbia University,
1912), 355.
11. Dong Wang, China’s Unequal Treaties: Narrating National History (Lanham, Md.:
Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), chap. 2.
12. Wunsz King, Cong bali hehui dao guolian [从巴黎和会到国联 From the Paris Peace
Conference to the League of Nations] (Taipei: Zhuanji wenxue chubanshe, 1967), 4.
13. Robert D. Schulzinger, The Making of the Diplomatic Mind: The Training, Outlook, and
Style of United States Foreign Service Officers, 1908–1931 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan
14. Robert Lansing, The Peace Negotiations: A Personal Narrative (Boston, Mass.: Hough-
ton Mifflin, 1921), 253.
15. James Thomson, “Why Doesn’t Pearl Buck Get Respect?” Philadelphia Inquirer (July
24, 1992), A15; Peter J. Conn, Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1996); Kang Liang, Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Bridge across the Pacific
(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1997); Gao Xiongya, Pearl S. Buck’s Chinese Women
Characters (Cranbury, N.J.: Associated University Press, 2000); Hilary Spurling, Pearl Buck in
China: Journey to The Good Earth (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010).
16. Pearl S. Buck, “Is There a Case for Foreign Missions?” Harper’s Monthly (January
1933): 143–155.
17. Pearl S. Buck, “Is There a Place for the Foreign Missionary?” Chinese Recorder 58
(February 1927): 100–107.
18. Buck, “Is There a Place for the Foreign Missionary?”
19. Hollinger, Protestants Abroad, 93.
184 Chapter 8
20. Bob Whyte, Unfinished Encounter: China and Christianity (Harrisburg, Pa.: Morehouse
Publishing, 1988), 151. The section below is drawn from Dong Wang, “Portraying Chinese
Christianity: The American Press and U.S.-China Relations since the 1920s,” Journal of
American-East Asian Relations 13 (November 2008): 81–119.
21. Yang Tianhong, Jidujiao yu minguo zhishi fenzi [基督教与民国知识分子 Christianity
and the intelligentsia in the Republic of China] (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 2005). Jessie
Gregory Lutz, Chinese Politics and Christian Missions: The Anti-Christian Movements of
1920–28 (Notre Dame, Ind.: Cross Cultural Publications, Cross Roads Books, 1988).
22. Thomas F. Millard, “Chinese Christians among Disaffected,” New York Times, Septem-
ber 8, 1925, p. 6.
23. “Preachers See Good in Chinese Upheaval,” New York Times, July 5, 1925, p. 8.
24. Yang, Jidujiao yu minguo zhishi fenzi, 235–249.
25. “Christian Revival in China Reported: Dr. T. W. Mitchell, Missionary, Lays Renewed
Interest to Communist Persecution,” New York Times, March 24, 1930, p. 19.
26. “Chinese Christians See Gain in Turmoil,” New York Times, February 13, 1927, p. 16.
27. Richard Madsen’s review of American Images of China, 1931–1949 by T. Christopher
Jesperson in the Journal of American History 83, no. 4 (March 1997): 1463–1464.
28. T. Christopher Jesperson, American Images of China 1931–1949 (Stanford, Calif.: Stan-
ford University Press, 1996).
29. Edgar Snow, in Life, February 1, 1937.
30. Snow, Life, February 1, 1937.
31. S. Bernard Thomas, Season of High Adventure: Edgar Snow in China (Berkeley, Calif.:
University of California Press, 1996); John Maxwell Hamilton, Edgar Snow: A Biography
(Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1988).
32. Edgar Snow, Red Star over China, revised and enlarged edition (New York: Grove,
1968; first edition published in 1937 by Random House), 409.
33. The section on Chen Xujing is drawn from Dong Wang, “Circulating American Higher
Education: The Case of Lingnan University (1888–1951),” Journal of American-East Asian
Relations 9, nos. 3–4 (delayed fall–winter 2000 issue; back issue appeared in 2006): 147–167.
34. Xu Chongqing (许崇清), Xu Chongqing wenji [许崇清文集 Collected works of Xu
Chongqing], ed. Xu Xihui (Guangzhou: Guangdong jiaoyu chubanshe, 2004), 164.
35. Ou Chu (欧初), Minguo shiqi de jiaoyu [民国时期的教育 Education in Republican
China] (Guangzhou: Guangdong renmin chubanshe, 1996), 67–80.
36. Chen Qingzhi (陈青之), Zhongguo jiaoyushi [中国教育史 A history of education in
China] (Shanghai: Shanghai shangwu yinshu guan, 1936), 794–810.
37. Ruth Hayhoe, ed., Education and Modernization: The Chinese Experience (Oxford:
Pergamon Press, 1992), 58–59.
38. Chen Xujing (陈序经), Zhongguo wenhua de chulu [中国文化的出路 The future of
Chinese culture] (Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1934).
39. Yang Shen (杨深), ed., Zuochu Dongfang: Chen Xujing wenhua lunzhu jiyao [走出东
方:陈序经文化论著辑要 Going beyond the East: A collection of Chen Xujing’s works on
culture] (Beijing: Zhongguo guangbo dianshi chubanshe, 1995), 204–213.
40. Chen Xujing, Dongxi wenhua guan [东西文化观 A personal view of the cultures of East
and West], Lingnan xuebao [岭南学报 Lingnan journal], vol. 5, nos. 1–4 (July, August, and
December 1936).
41. Wang Xi (汪熙) and Hu Hanjun (胡涵钧), “Zhongmei maoyi de lishi, xianzhuang he
qianjing” [中美贸易的历史、现状和前景 Sino-American trade—past, present, and future
prospects], in Gu Yunshen (顾云深), Shi Yuanhua (石源华), and Jin Guangyao (金光耀), eds.,
Jianzhi wanglai: bainian Zhongmei jingji guanxi de huigu yu qianzhan [鉴知往来: 百年来中
美经济关系的回顾与前瞻 Looking back and forward: A century of Sino-American economic
relations] (Shanghai: Fundan daxue chubanshe, 1999), 11–21.
42. Bureau of the Census with the Cooperation of the Social Science Research Council,
Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1957 (Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Government Printing Office, 1960), 565; Michael H. Hunt, “Americans in the China Market:
Economic Opportunities and Economic Nationalism, 1890s–1931,” Business History Review
51, no. 3 (Autumn 1977): 277–307.
43. Yang Yuqing (杨雨青), “Kangri zhanzheng shiqi Zhongmei jingji guanxi yanjiu shup-
ing” [抗日战争时期中美经济关系研究述评 A bibliographic assessment of the study of Sino-
American economic relations during the Anti-Japanese War], Lishi yanjiu, no. 3 (2006):
167–175. For the political influence of Britain and the United States on the Beijing government
finances (1912–1928), see Roberta Allbert Dayer, Bankers and Diplomats in China 1917–1925
(London: Frank Cass, 1981). Also see the further reading section at the end of this chapter.
44. China had become an important mission battlefield for conservative fundamentalist and
liberal modernist Protestants. Fundamentalist missionaries stressed the unerring authority of the
Bible and the supernatural dimension of the Gospel “in response to the modernists’ advocacy of
higher criticism and their humanistic re-interpretation of the scripture.” Chinese fundamental-
ists also “insisted on the central place of preaching in mission work and the priority of evangel-
ism over social service. Furthermore, fundamentalist missionaries rejected the liberal mission-
aries’ conciliatory and cooperative approach to non-Christian religions, and firmly stood for the
uniqueness and finality of Christ.” Kevin Xiyi Yao, The Fundamentalist Movement among
Protestant Missionaries in China, 1920–1937 (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America,
2003), 281–282. Alan Hunter and Kim-kwong Chan, Protestantism in Contemporary China
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 119–135; Lian Xi, The Conversion of Mis-
sionaries: Liberalism in American Protestant Missions in China, 1907–1932 (University Park,
Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997).
45. The early shapers of the self-reliant indigenous church included Henry Venn
(1796–1873), Rufus Anderson (1796–1880), and John Livingstone Nevius (1829–1893). Ne-
vius and his impact on Christianity in China are discussed in chapter 4 of this book.
46. Yihua Xu, “‘Patriotic’ Protestants: The Making of an Official Church,” in God and
Caesar in China, ed. Jason Kindopp and Carol Lee Hamrin (Washington, D.C.: Brookings
Institution Press), 107–121.
47. Y. T. Wu (Wu Yaozong), “The Present Day Tragedy of Christianity,” in National
Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., comp., Documents of the Three-Self Move-
ment: Source Materials for the Study of the Protestant Church in Communist China (New
York: National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, 1963), 1–5. K. H. Ting (Ding
Guangxun), Christian Witness in China Today (Kyoto: Doshisha University Press, 1985).
48. Wu, “The Present Day Tragedy of Christianity.”
49. This pamphlet bears an additional title, “Tianzhu jiao duiyu ziyang zichuan zizhi yun-
dong de guandian; Tianzhu jiao Zhongguo quanti zhujiao xuanyan” [天主教对于自养、自
传、自治运动的观点: 天主教中国全体主教宣言 Catholics’ views on the movement for self-
support, self-propagation, and self-governance: The manifesto of all China’s Catholic bishops],
date unknown, Rongzeng dang 32, document donated by Rong Mengyuan and held at the
Institute of Modern History, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. This was a
key document (circulated in 1950–1951 in my judgment) in the Catholic resistance against the
Chinese government drive for an “Independent Catholic Church,” led by Archbishop Antonio
Riberi (1897–1967), Nuncio to China (1946–1958), and Bishop Gaetano Mignani
(1882–1973), vicar apostolic of Ji’an in Jiangxi. In a circular letter to all the bishops in China,
Archbishop Riberi stated that the Catholic religion was “superpolitical, indivisible by national
boundaries or political differences. . . . And the so-called Independent Catholic Church . . . is
simply a schismatic church and not the true and one Catholic Church.” See “Catholics in
China,” Time, July 2, 1951, http://www.time.com/printout/0,8816,815075,00.html, and “Pray
for China,” Time, September 17, 1951, http://www.time.com/magazine/article/0,9171,
815470,00.html.
50. Hunter and Chan, Protestantism in Contemporary China, 138.
51. Richard Wolin, French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution, and the Legacy of the
1960s: The Wind from the East, second edition (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
2018, first edition in 2010).
52. A N [sic] Fields, “Billions of Dollars Can’t Stem Onward March of Communism,”
Chicago Defender, February 18, 1950, p. 7.
53. Ruodi Duan, “Solidarity in Three Acts: Narrating US Black Freedom Movements in
China, 1961–66,” Modern Asian Studies 53, no. 5 (2019): 1351–1380.
186 Chapter 8
54. Nico Slate, ed., Black Power beyond Borders: The Global Dimensions of the Black
Power Movement (New York: Palgrave, 2012); Carol Anderson, Bourgeois Radicals: The
NAACP and the Struggle for Colonial Liberation (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2014); Judy Wu, Radicals on the Road: Internationalism, Orientalism, and Feminism During
the Vietnam Era (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2013); Matthew D. Johnson, “From
Peace to the Panthers: PRC Engagement with African American Transnational Networks,
1949–1979,” Past & Present 218, Supplement 8 (2013): 233–257.
55. W. E. B. Du Bois, “China and Africa,” Peking Review 9 (March 3, 1959): 11.
56. Benjamin R. Young, “Imagining Revolutionary Feminism: Communist Asia and the
Women of the Black Panther Party,” Souls (2019): 1–17, https://doi.org/10.1080/10999949.
2019.1647126.
57. Mao Zedong, “Huyu shijie renmin lianhe qilai fandui Meiguo diguozhiyi de zhongzu
qishi, zhichi Meiguo heiren fandui zhongzu qishi de douzheng de shengming” [呼吁世界人民
联合起来反对美国帝国主义的种族歧视、支持美国黑人反对种族歧视的斗争的声明
Statement urging the peoples of the world to unite against racial discrimination by American
imperialism, supporting Afro-Americans in their struggle against racial discrimination], Ren-
min ribao, August 9, 1963; Ho and Mullen, Afro Asia, 91–93.
Part III
Rapprochement, the United States

as the Benchmark Setter, and the
China Challenge, 1970–Present
Chapter Nine
Renewing the Bilateral

Relationship, 1970–1989
Strategic opportunities for détente were created by both the United States and
China during the early 1970s—although some commentators contend that
America made excessive concessions at the expense of Taiwan and over-
looked the needs of the Chiang Kai-shek government as well as the will of its
citizens on the island. 1 On the American side, President Richard Nixon (pres-
idency 1969–1974) was assisted by Henry Kissinger, his national security
advisor (1969–1975). China was led by Chairman Mao Zedong and Premier
Zhou Enlai at the turn of the 1960s–1970s. During this period, making mean-
ingful contact was anything but a straightforward endeavor. While harsh
words continued to be uttered in public forums throughout the 1960s, U.S.-
Chinese relations were quietly improving, slowly building toward the diplo-
matic breakthrough that occurred in 1972.
The controversial normalization of Sino-American relations was a gradu-
al process, taking three American administrations and two generations of
Chinese leaders under Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping (1904–1997) to
bring it to completion. Attempts at reconciliation had to compete with Chi-
na’s anti-American and anti-Russian revolutionary radicalism and America’s
anti-Communist ideology, directed chiefly at China. 2 On the other hand, the
improvement in relations during the 1970s and 1980s also grew out of Chi-
na’s renewed, century-long search for a strong, unified nation and from
America’s conscious efforts to redefine its role in a changing, diversified
world.
189
190 Chapter 9
NIXON’S “RACE IN ASIA” AND

MAO’S “AMERICAN GAME”
Given the overt antagonism between the United States and the People’s
Republic of China (PRC), stretching over more than two decades, how are
we to account for President Nixon’s visit to China in 1972 and the warming
of relations that followed? What lay behind the tactics adopted by both sides?
The leaders of both nations were prompted to cultivate a new kind of
geopolitical strategy toward each other by a number of developments—the
emergence of a new power structure in the world, and in East Asia in particu-
lar, and the changing domestic situation in both countries. 3 The need for a
new orientation in bilateral affairs had been systematically discussed among
policy makers and elites on both sides throughout the 1960s and early
1970s—a significant political and diplomatic factor that served to counter-
balance the populist anti-Communist and anti-imperialist rhetoric of the
times.
Reorienting U.S. Foreign Policy
In 1967, to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Russian Revolution, a group

of reflective articles was published in the semiofficial magazine Foreign
Affairs in the United States against the backdrop of a widened American
military involvement in Vietnam, the changing nature of the “great conten-
tion” between the United States and the Soviet Union, and the demise of the
Sino-Soviet alliance. For historian Arthur Schlesinger, “the once implacable
struggle” between America and Russia had “lost its familiar clarity of out-
line.”
As the Cold War has begun to lose its purity of definition, as the moral
absolutes of the fifties become the moralistic clichés of the sixties, some have
begun to ask whether the appalling risks which humanity ran during the Cold
War were, after all, necessary and inevitable; whether more restrained and
rational policies might not have guided the energies of man from the perils of
conflict into the potentialities of collaboration. 4
Schlesinger’s unspoken assumption was that the same considerations may

well apply to America’s relationship with its other great antagonist in the
East. In China, in just a couple of years, Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution
had gutted the machinery of government, and China’s foreign relations appa-
ratus had ground to a halt. Senior statesmen such as Liu Shaoqi (1898–1969),
president of the PRC (1959–1968), and Deng Xiaoping (1904–1997) were
vilified and persecuted. 5 Despite the extreme violence witnessed during the
Cultural Revolution, American commentator Robert Elegant concluded that
after devoting the first two-thirds of the twentieth century to sweeping de-
Renewing the Bilateral Relationship, 1970–1989 191
struction, the Chinese people “appear ready to give themselves again to the
great work of construction” 6—the rebuilding of a political system as well as
the reinstatement of moral values. “It would be excessively optimistic to
declare definitely that China is now coming to the adjustment with the out-
side world . . . which she has sought by so many different roads for the past
century and a half. It would be excessively cynical not to recognize that she
is moving in that direction.” 7
For Richard Nixon in 1967, Vietnam was driving Americans to distrac-
tion. As he wrote in the same issue of Foreign Affairs, other nations must
recognize that “the role of the United States as world policeman is likely to
be limited in the future.” As an anchor and partner in the Pacific community,
the United States should avoid a heavy-handed paternalism and must disen-
gage its combat forces from Southeast Asia.
[America] must recognize that a highly sophisticated, highly advanced politi-

cal system, which required many centuries to develop in the West, may not be
best for other nations which have far different traditions and are still in an
earlier stage of development. What matters is that these governments are con-
sciously, deliberately and programmatically developing in the direction of
greater liberty, greater abundance, broader choice and increased popular in-
volvement in the processes of government. 8
In Nixon’s view, the United States needed to capitalize on the rapid econom-
ic development recorded by Japan—which had sustained an average growth
rate of 9 percent per year since 1950—Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, South
Korea, Singapore, and Malaysia by encouraging these nations to play an
independent economic and political role. 9 However, four giants would play
key roles in Asia’s future—India, Japan, China, and the United States. In his
article, Nixon sketched out a set of measures—both long and short range—
designed to meet the danger of China as Asia’s “most immediate threat.” In
the short term, China must be persuaded that “its interests can be served only
by accepting the basic rules of international civility.” In the long term, it
meant “pulling China back into the world community—but as a great and
progressing nation, not as the epicenter of world revolution.” “The struggle
for influence in the Third World is a three-way race among Moscow, Peking
and the West. . . . In this race we cannot afford to wait for others to act, and
then merely react. And the race in Asia is already under way.” 10
Putting the Chinese “House” Back in Order
For its part, the Chinese approach to managing Sino-American rapproche-

ment was equally a tactical one. In his 1969 inaugural address, Nixon had
lauded the ideals of peacemaking, negotiation, and the possibility of an open
world, “in which no people, great or small, will live in angry isolation.” 11 It
192 Chapter 9
seemed to have cut no ice in Beijing. Maintaining its posture of adamant

opposition to the world’s two superpowers (the United States and the Soviet
Union), mainland China kept up the war of words, denouncing Nixon’s
speech as the shameful confession of a nation driven to the wall in Vietnam
and condemning the Soviet Union’s softened stance toward the United States
as “shameless claque.” 12
Despite this public polemic, however, two major considerations deter-
mined China’s shifting assessment of the world situation in 1969–1970. The
first involved the question of whether the United States was indeed China’s
most dangerous antagonist, from both the perspective of world revolution
and China’s national security. In the first half of 1969, the answer was still
yes. The examples of Taiwan and the Korean and Vietnam wars all showed
that America still posed a serious military threat to mainland China. In Janu-
ary 1966, Zhou Enlai stated that American imperialism was the main target
of the united front of the international socialist movement because the United
States was spearheading military aggression and wanted to control the world
on its own. Russia had been duped into supporting America’s hegemonic
ambitions. “[American] imperialism and [Soviet] revisionism are both reac-
tionary ideologies in essence, but they vary in their origins and forms of
development. The Soviet Union wants to cooperate with the United States.
Although they both desire to dominate the world, the Soviet Union is a de
facto accomplice of America and they are in effect America’s shock
troops.” 13
Nevertheless, beginning in the latter half of 1969 and against the back-
ground of possibly over four thousand Sino-Russian border skirmishes be-
tween 1964 and 1969, the Chinese leadership was inclining to the view that
the Soviet Union was a more dangerous threat to China than the United
States was. A Soviet military attack on China was even a distinct possibility.
The second determinant was the Chinese concern over the possibility of
collusion between America and Russia, at a time when China was ill pre-
pared to deal with a two-pronged attack from its two chief foes. 14 China’s
diplomacy was in transition at the turn of the 1960s–1970s. The three chaotic
years of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1969) had left its foreign affairs
apparatus in a virtual state of paralysis. During this time, Premier
(1954–1976) Zhou Enlai had barely managed to arrange a single state visit.
The country had been unable to dispatch any diplomatic personnel since their
mass recall in 1967. With the sole exception of Ambassador Huang Hua in
Egypt, all other ambassadorial posts abroad were vacant. 15 China was on the
back foot. At the 9th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in
April 1969, the political report—given by Lin Biao, Mao Zedong’s newly
designated successor, an appointment that was affirmed and written into the
revised CCP constitution 16—concluded that the American imperialists and
the “Soviet social revisionist imperialists” were collaborating with each other
in the oppression of national liberation movements and in pursuing wars of

aggression against China, Communism, and the peoples of the world. In the
second half of 1969, Chinese policy makers were engaged in a close study of
the world situation while making efforts to put the nation’s diplomatic appa-
ratus back in action. Between July and September 1969, a group of four
leading military figures and statesmen—Chen Yi, Ye Jianying, Xu Xiang-
qian, and Nie Rongzhen—concluded that the probability of the United States
and the Soviet Union launching full-scale war against China was not very
high and that while the areas of conflict between China and Russia outnum-
bered those between the United States and China, they were fewer than those
between the United States and the Soviet Union. At the top level of govern-
ment, Mao and Zhou were slowly showing some signs of response to Nix-
on’s signal for détente. 17
Building on Nixon’s initiative, America was eager to placate Chinese
fears as to its intentions. In his face-to-face conversations with them in Beij-
ing in February 1972, Henry Kissinger sought to reassure the Chinese leader-
ship that America had no intentions of “ganging up” with Russia against
China, despite appearances to the contrary: “We understand that part of the
Soviet strategy is to create the impression that they and we are establishing a
two-power directory over the world. And therefore they have started negotia-
tions on a whole range of topics, some of very secondary importance, espe-
cially since my visit to Peking last July.” 18
Kissinger assured the Chinese that the United States would “do nothing
that looks to us as if it could be collusion against you [China].” “Our policy
is . . . to take your views very seriously.” 19
THE NIXON/KISSINGER–MAO/ZHOU INITIATIVE
Upon taking office in 1969, Nixon began implementing his strategic foreign
relations policies, albeit in a variety of understated and measured forms. In
May 1969, he made the secret decision to “move generously to liberalize”
American trade policy toward the Soviet Union and other Eastern European
countries whenever there was sufficient improvement in America’s overall
relations with them. Then, in June, he took steps to remove the restraints
imposed by the Foreign Assets Control regulations on foreign subsidiaries of
U.S. firms relating to nonstrategic transactions with China. This move al-
lowed Americans traveling or residing abroad to purchase Chinese goods in
limited quantities for noncommercial import into the United States and per-
mitted general licenses for the export of food, agricultural equipment, chemi-
cal fertilizer, and pharmaceuticals. The ultimate goal of these measures was
to facilitate the gradual development of balanced trade. 20
194 Chapter 9
Diplomatic approaches were made indirectly and cautiously. In August,

on a visit to Pakistan, Nixon met with Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan—the
Pakistan president and a friend of China—and indicated that the United
States would welcome an accommodation with mainland China. He asked if
Yahya Khan would convey an important, but not urgent, message to Zhou
Enlai “at some natural and appropriate time” and “in a low-key factual
way.” 21 In response, Yahya Khan conveyed to Nixon China’s concerns that
“China feels surrounded by hostile forces—India, the Soviet Union and the
United States in Southeast Asia. China seeks no territory or war but will fight
with no holds barred if war is thrust upon it.” 22 Yahya Khan passed on
Nixon’s reconciliatory message, which assured China that the United States
had no interest in joining the Soviet Union to form an Asian collective
security system against China. In September, Zhou Enlai and Vice Premier
Li Xiannian met with a Romanian delegation in Beijing and learned through
them that Nixon was interested in normalizing Sino-American relations. In
mid-November and early December, Nixon and Kissinger informed the Chi-
nese—again via Pakistan, and through the American ambassador to Po-
land—of their wish to establish secret contacts at the highest level. Zhou
Enlai alerted Mao to Nixon and Kissinger’s approach. In December, the
Chinese ambassador to Poland invited his U.S. counterpart to visit the Chi-
nese embassy in Warsaw. 23
In January and February 1970, the 135th and 136th ambassadorial talks
between the United States and China resumed in Warsaw after a two-year
hiatus. The American invasion of Cambodia in March–June 1970 created a
potential hitch, prompting fierce criticism from mainland China, which sup-
ported Cambodia’s exiled Sihanouk government. However, China’s new
stance of openness to the world was not to be hindered, and diplomatic
relations were established with Canada, Italy, and a handful of other coun-
tries. By the end of 1970, Mao and Zhou had signaled their willingness to
talk with Nixon in person. 24
Although Nixon understood that American public opinion was still op-
posed to any rapprochement with Communist China, 25 his formulation of
America’s new role in a changed world—self-defined as the “Nixon Doc-
trine”—was explicitly spelled out to Congress on February 25, 1971:
“Around the globe, East and West, the rigid bipolar world of the 1940s and
1950s has given way to the fluidity of a new era of multilateral diplomacy.” 26
In American eyes, the problem of the PRC was twofold. In economic terms,
China was lagging behind. With a population of 750 million—eight times
greater than that of Japan—and possessing much greater resources, mainland
China’s GDP was only 40 percent that of Japan.
Another “unresolved problem” was the continuing animosity between the
United States and China in the geopolitical arena. Integrating China into the
international system was an important challenge, and the United States
understood that this process would have to begin with the opening of bilater-
al dialogue. The American ping-pong team visited the country in April, fol-
lowed by Nixon’s easing of trade and travel restrictions to China. Taken
together, these initiatives created a welcome diversion from Vietnam. At the
end of May, once again using President Yahya Khan as an intermediary,
Zhou Enlai signaled China’s willingness to receive a visit from Henry Kis-
singer in Beijing, reaffirming that the main obstacle to improved Sino-
American relations was the withdrawal of American forces from Taiwan and
the Taiwan Strait. 27
On July 9, 1971, Kissinger made a top-secret visit to Beijing followed by
a further visit in October, laying the groundwork for Nixon. On July 15,
Nixon publicly announced his forthcoming visit to Beijing as a “journey for
peace”—labeled the “Beijing Primary” by the media in light of the forthcom-
ing elections. In October 1971, United Nations General Assembly Resolution
2758 brought China onto the Security Council in place of the Republic of
China in Taiwan. Following a quarter of a century of marginalization, chiefly
promoted by the United States, mainland China assumed its position as a
major political power on the international stage. 28
The dynamic cooperation between the two sides—led by Nixon and Kis-
singer, and Mao and Zhou, respectively—during this short but crucial period
can be summarized under four major heads. First, the United States and
China had each taken energetic steps toward establishing mutual confidence
while maintaining a veil of secrecy over their initiatives. Working behind the
scenes, both sides succeeded in partially clearing the obstacles left over from
two decades that had seen little contact.
Despite Nixon’s previous public disclosure of his strategies toward main-
land China, both short and long term, his presidential visit to China in the
final week of February 1972 still stunned most observers. At the same time,
the political fuel provided by past contacts and mutual knowledge and inter-
est—however minuscule—remained a flickering ember that had never died
away completely. A report in Life magazine conveyed the sense of separa-
tion, distance, and awe felt by American observers and participants alike at
the grand banquet given for Nixon by Zhou Enlai:
Seated way off there at one of them [the tables] was right-wing columnist
William Buckley, staring at the gigantic U.S. and China flags side by side on
the backdrop. He seemed in mild shock to find himself there, just then, in such
company. . . . Even farther in the distance was Nixon, trying his chopsticks on
shark’s fin in three shreds, up on the stage of this cavernous hall taking back
everything he had said about the old adversary China for the last 20 years,
loping from table to table, clinking, bowing slightly, toasting the prime minis-
ter while the central band of the People’s Liberation Army played America the
Beautiful. 29
196 Chapter 9
Second, the United States offered mainland China some tangible “stakes” in
a future relationship. Kissinger and Nixon pressed the theme that the United
States was not working with the Soviet Union against China. They were
meticulous in keeping the Chinese informed of any American negotiations
with Russia that concerned China. Detailed top-secret intelligence informa-
tion on Russia’s military deployments near its borders with China was shared
with the Chinese leaders. 30 American assurances went further. In his conver-
sations with Zhou Enlai, Nixon promised that “the U.S. would oppose any
attempt by the Soviet Union to engage in an aggressive action against China.
This we would do because we believe it is in our interest, and in the interest
of preserving peace as well, world peace.” 31
The Shanghai Joint Communiqué, issued on February 28, 1972, was the
outcome of the first American presidential visit to a country with which it
had had no diplomatic relations. It can be seen as the initial cornerstone laid
down in the rebuilding of postwar Sino-American relations. Both sides iden-
tified the common ground on which they could work. They recognized the
potential significance of their bilateral relationship for regional and world
peace and agreed that it should be firmly based on the principles of “respect
for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states, non-aggression
against other states, non-interference in the internal affairs of other states,
equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence.” Both sides agreed
that trade as well as people-to-people contacts and exchanges were mutually
beneficial and should be facilitated. They were also candid about their “long-
standing serious disputes” over Taiwan and disagreement on other issues. 32
The talks were dominated by the Taiwan question. The Chinese side reaf-
firmed its firm position on “One China,” a nation that included Taiwan:
The Taiwan question is a crucial question obstructing the normalization of

relations between China and the United States; the Government of the Peo-
ple’s Republic of China is the sole legal government of China; Taiwan is a
province of China which has long been returned to the motherland; the libera-
tion of Taiwan is China’s internal affair in which no other country has the right
to interfere; and all U.S. forces and military installations must be withdrawn
from Taiwan. 33
The U.S. side expressed its willingness to compromise on the Taiwan issue,
and the Chinese, while remaining firm on the issue, showed flexibility in
refraining from setting definite deadlines for the withdrawal of American
forces from the territory. The American delegation acknowledged that Chi-
nese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait wanted one China and that Taiwan
was a part of China. The U.S. government did not challenge this position,
asserting that the Taiwan question should be settled by the Chinese them-
selves. America’s “ultimate objective” was to withdraw all U.S. forces and
military installations from the island. Addressing Chinese concerns over Ja-
pan’s expansion in the Pacific, Nixon stated that the United States “[has] not
and will not support any Taiwan independence movement” and that the Unit-
ed States would “discourage Japan from moving into Taiwan as our
[American] presence becomes less, and also discourage Japan from support-
ing a Taiwan independence movement.” 34 In May 1973, Sino-American liai-
son offices were opened in both Beijing and Washington, headed by senior
diplomats David Bruce and Huang Hua, respectively.
In many ways, the clandestine Nixon/Kissinger–Mao/Zhou initiative cor-
responded with the changing pulse of domestic 35 and world affairs, outwitted
the China Lobby in the United States, and set Sino-American relations in a
hopeful direction. By contrast, Chiang Kai-shek (1887–1975), leader of Tai-
wan, failed to offer an effective alternative to pressuring the UN member
states into choosing either the one China represented by Taiwan or the one
China represented by mainland China in 1971. 36 On the other hand, as a
result of political constraints at both the domestic and global levels, both
sides lacked a realistic timetable for putting the bilateral relationship onto a
new plane.
THE FORD ADMINISTRATION (1974–1977)

AND AMERICAN-CHINESE RELATIONS
Despite the 1972 Nixon “bombshell” that shook the world, the development
of U.S.-Chinese relations did not follow a straight course. Official diplomatic
relations did not become a reality until January 1, 1979—this step had been
pushed aside by American and Chinese domestic politics, the Taiwan issue,
and other priorities between 1973 and 1977.
Both Nixon and Mao had other geopolitical objectives in mind. Alongside
the rhetoric promoting a new, diverse, multipolar world, the Nixon adminis-
tration remained unchanged in treating mainland China as a potential source
of threat, a guiding principle of American military planning for Asia from
August 1973:
U.S. forces should be planned so that U.S. and Allied forces would be capable
of conducting a combined conventional defense against a joint PRC/Commu-
nist ally attack in either Northeast or Southeast Asia as well as a non-PRC
attack in the other Asian theater. . . . This does not preclude early use of
tactical nuclear weapons in the event of a major PRC attack . . . improvements
in Allied capabilities to enhance a joint U.S./Allied defense will be planned as
a lower priority goal. . . . U.S. planning for the next five years should include
Asian baseline deployments at essentially current levels in Korea, Japan/Oki-
nawa, and the Philippines. . . . There will be no increases in forces or manpow-
er on Taiwan without prior Presidential approval. 37
198 Chapter 9
The Mutual Defense Treaty of 1954 between the United States and Taiwan
and the seeming relaxation of American-Russian tensions were also a barrier
to improved relations with China. In June 1973, Zhou Enlai expressed his
concerns to David Bruce over Russian leader Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev’s forth-
coming visit to the United States and the signing of two arms limitation
agreements—the Basic Principles of Negotiations on Strategic Arms Limita-
tion and the Agreement between the United States of America and the Union
of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Prevention of Nuclear War. 38 In 1974, a
rehabilitated Deng Xiaoping—substituting for Zhou Enlai who was being
treated for liver cancer—told Kissinger in Beijing that diplomatic relations
between the United States and Taiwan must be severed and that the Mutual
Defense Treaty between the United States and Taiwan must be rescinded.
The Taiwan question should be solved by the Chinese themselves, in their
own way. 39
In 1973, the internal political struggles racking China served only to
compound the obstacles to the normalization of Sino-American relations. On
September 13, 1971, Lin Biao—Mao’s designated heir at the 9th Congress of
the CCP in 1969—died in a mysterious plane crash after being accused of
plotting against Mao. Lin’s downfall strengthened the hand of Zhou and a
group of senior military leaders—Marshals Chen Yi, Ye Jianying, Xu Xiang-
qian, and Nie Rongzhen—in foreign affairs and aided the gradual rehabilita-
tion of formerly influential cadres persecuted in the Cultural Revolution. The
restoration of order, however, proved temporary. In June 1973, Mao ex-
pressed his displeasure with Zhou for allegedly taking his instructions less
than seriously and for his overcautious approach to the question of
American-Soviet collusion in Zhou’s published report on the Nixon and
Brezhnev summit.
At the same time, Mao was playing one political rival off against another.
The Gang of Four—the ultra-leftist clique led by Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing,
along with Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and Wang Hongwen—was pro-
moted at the CCP’s 10th Congress, where Wang was elected vice chairman
of the Party, an important position next to Zhou, making him an obvious heir
to Mao. In November–December 1973, Mao again expressed his dissatisfac-
tion with Zhou for his handling of talks with Kissinger and for his “careless-
ness” in being duped by the Americans. His snubbing of Zhou ultimately led
to Mao’s decision to entrust Deng Xiaoping with the daily management of
the Chinese government in early 1974, a move opposed by Jiang Qing. At the
end of 1975, however, Deng was purged once again. The Gang of Four was
riding high, and Mao’s failing health and indecisiveness had some serious
repercussions. Political instability in China had left Zhou and Deng in a
vulnerable position when it came to moving U.S.-Chinese relations for-
ward. 40 For example, there was little dialogue and communication between
the Chinese leaders and David Bruce and his successor George H. W. Bush
during their tenure at the Beijing Liaison Office. As Donald Anderson, a

political officer stationed there from 1973 to 1975, recalled, “[I]t was a time
when the power struggle in Beijing was very intense, so no one was going to
stick their neck out.” 41
The situation was not helped by Mao’s view of the United States and
China as fundamentally incommensurable. In opposition to American and
Soviet hegemonism, Mao Zedong put forward the “three world” division
theory. In February 1974, in a meeting with Zambian president Kenneth
Kaunda, Mao proposed that the United States and the Soviet Union consti-
tuted the “First World”; that Japan, Europe, Canada, and Australia belonged
to the Second World; and that the Third World comprised Asia (except for
Japan), all of Africa, and Latin America. In political and economic terms,
China was thus lumped in with some of the world’s poorest countries, find-
ing itself in a situation in which, according to the World Bank, over 65
percent of its population was living below the poverty line in 1978—a figure
that had fallen dramatically to 0.6 percent by 2019. 42
Nevertheless, the obstacles faced by the relationship came from both
sides. In August 1974, the Watergate crisis forced President Nixon (presiden-
cy, 1969–1974) to resign from office; he was succeeded by Gerald R. Ford
(presidency 1974–1977), who in September 1974 pardoned him in what was
seen in the United States as a highly controversial move. 43 In his address to a
joint session of Congress on August 12, 1974, Ford pledged to bring inflation
under control as his first priority, but he also reaffirmed American commit-
ment to the principles of the Shanghai Communiqué. 44 However, by 1975
U.S.-Chinese relations had backtracked. Both sides were wrangling over a
series of incidents including the cancelation of the visit by a Chinese artists’
delegation and America’s support of the Dalai Lama and other exiled Tibetan
leaders. On a visit to China in October 1975, Henry Kissinger (secretary of
state, 1973–1977) received the cold shoulder from Mao and Zhou, who were
both very ill.
Although Ford’s visit to China in December 1975 failed to move
American-Chinese relations forward to any real degree, at least the relation-
ship did not deteriorate. However, the finalization of normalized relations,
which Kissinger, Ford, and Deng Xiaoping had lobbied for, simply lost mo-
mentum. While the welcome and farewell toasts given by Deng and Ford
affirmed the principles of the Shanghai Communiqué, both parties lacked the
commitment to work together to make further progress. According to infor-
mation released by the Chinese authorities, at the state banquet held for Ford,
Deng warned of the threat to peace posed by global hegemonies and the rise
of the Third World as an important international force that should not be
ignored. 45
The “quiet” years in U.S.-Chinese relations (1972–1978) were the prod-
uct of a variety of factors, both international and domestic—the Watergate
200 Chapter 9
scandal; serious differences over America’s commitment to Taiwan and

mainland China’s weighing up of peaceful measures or military force to
resolve the Taiwan issue; political instability and opposition within mainland
China; the deaths of the Chinese leaders, Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, in
1976; and the U.S.-Soviet détente, together with China’s consequently weak
bargaining position. All these events had a bearing on the shape and timing
of the eventual normalization of relations. 46
MOVING FORWARD: NORMALIZATION

AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
The diplomatic relationship between China and the United States was not
normalized until January 1, 1979—trailing behind around one hundred other
countries that had already recognized the PRC. The factor that eventually
made formal recognition of China a reality was America’s change in stance
toward the Soviet Union. In 1977–1978 the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan,
the appearance of Soviet combat troops in Cuba, and its other activities
around the Mediterranean littoral and in Africa undermined U.S.-Soviet
cooperation. The American government was concerned that the Soviets
might be heading for superiority, rather than parity, in military terms. China
was taking a tough position against the expansion of Soviet influence, espe-
cially regarding the latter’s ally Vietnam. Sino-Vietnamese relations wors-
ened substantially as Vietnam continued to threaten Cambodia, a menace
taken seriously by China. 47 Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia at the end of
1978 triggered a Chinese reaction, and war broke out on February 17, 1979.
These geopolitical changes in Asia created a new incentive for moving Sino-
American relations forward, in combination with more favorable domestic
political environments in both countries. However, this opportunity was
undercut by multiple political clashes over Taiwan in particular—represented
in the American political system by disagreements over the issue between the
White House and Congress. 48
In 1977, James Earl Carter Jr. (Jimmy Carter) took office as president
(presidency 1977–1980). Meanwhile, a rehabilitated Deng Xiaoping had re-
turned to power once again. Sino-American relations took a fresh turn as
China embarked on a new path in the quest for national wealth and interna-
tional advantage. Aware of the need to put its economy on a stronger footing,
China was now eager to seek diplomatic relations with the United States and
to get American help in industrializing its backward economy. Efforts and
adjustments on the part of both new Chinese and American governments led
slowly to the establishment of full diplomatic relations.
The normalization negotiations were driven by a mutual mistrust of the
Soviet Union and a desire to resolve the Taiwan question. Particularly for the
latter reason, they were conducted in secret, as Carter’s predecessors had

done. James Lilley (American ambassador to China, 1989–1991) wrote of
Carter’s national security advisor (1977–1981) that “[Zbigniew] Brzezinski’s
proprietary handling of the matter shut out virtually all government agen-
cies.” 49 One major reason for the administration’s caution was Taiwan and
its longtime friends in Congress. A small group of Carter’s staff were giv-
en—albeit highly restricted—access to records of the many hours of conver-
sation between Kissinger and Zhou and Mao, which they studied to ascertain
the best way of handling the negotiations. Carter did not want Congress to
“know too far in advance” what direction the talks might take. 50 The Chinese
compromised on the issue of American arms sales to Taiwan, leaving it for
future negotiation. 51 However, the United States agreed to break its diplo-
matic relations with Taiwan on short notice, which, in the view of many
observers, was too high a price to pay for normalization and hurt both Ameri-
ca and Taiwan. 52
On December 15, 1978, Carter made a public announcement that the
United States would henceforth recognize “One China”—the People’s Re-
public of China—as the sole legal government of China and that it would
withdraw its embassy and military forces from Taiwan, effective January 1,
1979. In response, Congress challenged the president’s prerogatives and
weighed in on the side of Taiwan, passing the Taiwan Relations Act in April
1979. 53 Among other measures, the act committed the United States to the
security of Taiwan, without specifying under what circumstances, and to
providing Taiwan with “arms of a defensive character.” There was still one
further obstacle to reckon with. In 1980, during his presidential campaign,
Ronald Reagan (presidency 1981–1989) vowed to reestablish diplomatic re-
lations with “the Republic of China,” meaning Taiwan. The Chinese were
inflamed with resentment over this apparent double-dealing. 54 Tensions grew
over America’s continuing arms sales to Taiwan, a constant source of con-
flict between the two nations and evident in the passing of the U.S. Taiwan
Assurance Act of 2019. At the same time, mainland China and the United
States were engaged, with twists and turns, in high levels of military ex-
change in weapon sales, military transport, communications, and other areas
until June 1989 when the Tiananmen Incident occurred. Between 1980 and
1987, on the world arms market China ranked fifth in the value of weapons
delivered to the Third World (mostly the Middle East, Africa, and Asia),
behind only the Soviet Union, the United States, France, and the United
Kingdom. 55
The conflict over Taiwan aside, the breakthrough in relations aroused
feelings of euphoria and elicited expressions of mutual admiration in China
and the United States. On January 28, 1979, Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping,
the de facto leader of China, began a weeklong visit to the United States—the
first official visit by a top Chinese Communist leader since 1949. There was
202 Chapter 9
a “fierce scramble” for invitations to the state dinner held on January 29.
“People will kill for a ticket to the state dinner,” declared one businessman.
“If we invited everyone who claims an undeniable right to come, we’d have
to hold the damn thing in the Capital Center [the nineteen-thousand-seat
Washington sports arena],” sighed one senior White House official. 56 Vocal
in condemning Soviet hegemonism and commending a Sino-American alli-
ance against the Soviet Union, Deng appealed to America and Western Eu-
rope for assistance in modernizing China, including its backward military.
U.S.-Chinese relations rebalanced toward military cooperation, arms sales to
China, and the rollout of an intelligence surveillance project known as the
Chestnut program, all aimed at countering the Soviet Union in Angola, Af-
ghanistan, Vietnam, and other hot spots. 57
In the end, both China and the United States compromised on normaliza-
tion. The Carter administration acknowledged the Chinese position that there
was only one China and that Taiwan was part of China. And Deng Xiaoping
acceded to the American request that China seek a peaceful resolution of the
Taiwan issue. Moving away from its previous confrontational approach,
mainland China expressed a willingness to negotiate peacefully with Taiwan
over the question of unification and agreed that “the Taiwan authorities as a
local government” would maintain their own armed forces and system of
governance, “but it must be within the context of one China.” 58 Deng also
agreed that the United States would give Taiwan a year’s notice of these
changes and that the defense treaty between the United States and Taiwan
would remain in place through 1979. Among other factors driven by Cold
War geopolitics and domestic reform, one important motive driving Deng’s
willingness to compromise on Taiwan was the need “to clear the American
flank before addressing the issue of Vietnamese imperialism and the occupa-
tion of Cambodia.” 59
ADJUSTMENT AND REORIENTATION IN THE 1980S
The 1980s witnessed strategic adjustments and adaptations in both America’s

China policy and China’s America policy. The Reagan and Deng leaderships
proved sufficiently flexible to accommodate ideology to practical reality and
to change policy direction as their respective ideologies evolved. Both lead-
ers are credited for their success in maintaining relative stability in the rela-
tionship during the first decade of formal diplomatic relations.
After taking office, Ronald Reagan—a staunch conservative Republican
carrying a good deal of ideological baggage on the China question—was
gradually convinced by his secretary of state, the forceful Alexander M. Haig
Jr., to retreat from his “Two Chinas” or “One China, Two Governments”
rhetoric that could have seriously undermined America’s China policy. 60
American arms sales to Taiwan continued to be controversial: the Chinese

wanted them stopped, but the Americans saw their continuation as vital to
helping defend Taiwan. Intense negotiations took place in Beijing. The two
sides failed to reach a satisfactory agreement, and the third joint communiqué
issued in August 1982 reflected a compromise on the issue. In the communi-
qué, China permitted the United States to sell weapons to Taiwan (the only
country allowed to do so), and the United States agreed to the gradual dimi-
nution of arms sales to Taiwan; they would be kept at the existing level until
a final solution was agreed. 61
In 1982, China began a process of systematically reorienting and consoli-
dating its approach to the outside world, distancing the United States, and
relaxing tensions with the Soviet Union. 62 This shift in foreign policy re-
flected mainland China’s domestic political red lines that framed its econom-
ic reforms and opening to the world. In 1979, Deng Xiaoping announced the
Four Cardinal Principles that would guide the country’s domestic develop-
ment and external relations—the socialist path, the democratic dictatorship
of the people, the leadership of the Communist Party, and Marxism-Leninism
and Mao Zedong Thought. According to Deng, the nation’s vision must
remain a socialist one, the political system should not recognize classes that
were not represented by the Chinese people, the Communist Party must
remain in power, and the Chinese brand of Marxism must persist. On the
global stage, such a shift was introduced with the clear understanding that the
core task of China’s foreign policy was to create a peaceful international
environment for economic development. Making China an affluent country
was the first national priority. “Everything depends on whether we can get
our own affairs in order,” Deng Xiaoping explained. 63 Independence, non-
alignment, and multilateralism became the consistently declared objectives
of Chinese foreign policy. 64
In September 1982, Hu Yaobang—Deng’s handpicked successor and
general secretary of the CCP (who in 1987 was forced to resign after advo-
cating greater freedom of speech and popular representation)—declared at
the 12th CCP Congress that China would pursue an independent course in
relation to the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, on
the basis of its own national interests. Hu also expressed China’s willingness
to normalize relations with the Soviet Union as long as the Soviets took
concrete measures to remove the threat posed by their military activities to
China’s security. This position was reaffirmed at the fifth meeting of the 5th
National People’s Congress in December 1982. 65 On the domestic front,
starting in October 1983 when the 2nd Plenary Session of the 12th Central
Committee of the CCP was convened, Deng launched a relatively small-
scale, nonviolent ideological movement, “Anti-spiritual Pollution and Anti-
bourgeois Liberalization,” to reaffirm that the red lines drawn in 1982 could
not be crossed. 66 In 1985, three years after the death of the Soviet leader
204 Chapter 9
Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982), Mikhail Gorbachev came to power, ushering

in dramatic economic and social reforms. As part of the Soviet Union’s own
reorientation process, the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan and
a substantial reduction in military deployments along the Soviet–Chinese
borders helped promote a rapprochement in Sino-Soviet relations in
1985–1986. 67
From both the American and Chinese perspectives, the five years follow-
ing the signing of their 1982 communiqué was a relatively stable, even
“golden” period. 68 As James Lilley commented, “For the first time in a long
while, the State Department and the White House were in agreement on
China policy.” 69 Frequent high-level visits to both capitals—by President
Reagan, President Li Xiannian, and Vice President George H. W. Bush,
among others—helped maintain a progressive trend in the bilateral relation-
ship.
CONCLUSION
During the 1970s and 1980s, the United States and mainland China slowly
found positive ways of working with each other. This process itself suggests
that Cold War studies, especially in relation to China, ought to be moved
beyond the 1950s and 1960s—where they have been conventionally
stalled—and deep into the 1970s and 1980s. 70
Both the American and Chinese leaderships and their political elites were
broadly in favor of a reasonably amicable bilateral relationship. At the turn of
the 1960s–1970s, mainland China was quietly embarking on rectifying the
wrongs of the Cultural Revolution, putting its own house back in order, and
rebuilding a strong nation-state while working to shape an international envi-
ronment in which China could flourish. Premier Zhou Enlai, who neverthe-
less deferred to Mao’s authority, even discussed the “excesses” of the Cultu-
ral Revolution with Henry Kissinger. Zhou said that “he was hesitant to
discuss mistakes but that the Chairman [Mao], with his greater inner
strength, was free in admitting past errors.” 71 In the Chinese view, it was the
open, dynamic character of the relationship—driven less by ideology than by
national interest—that had set in motion the historic, complex process of
normalization. 72
The progressive American approach was perhaps best exemplified by A.
Doak Barnett, an influential, visionary scholar who was well known for
working behind the scenes in Congress and the executive branch to improve
relations between China and the United States. In 1970, Barnett asserted that
the “China threat” had been exaggerated for twenty years and that America
needed to take a more relaxed approach to the issue. A “new configuration of
power” was emerging in East Asia, marking a fundamental shift from the
bipolar pattern of the 1950s to a quadrilateral structure made up of Russia,

America, China, and Japan. The demise of the Sino-Soviet alliance and their
occasional border clashes had served to intensify Russia’s competition with
the Chinese as well as the Americans throughout East Asia and the Third
World. As a result of these developments, the United States should “adjust its
policies toward China” and “continue to probe”—to Moscow’s discomfort—
the possibilities for lessening tensions and expanding contacts with China.
The United States should not “align with Moscow in any general policy of
hostile pressure against Peking and should avoid both the act and appearance
of any anti-Chinese ‘collusion.’” 73 According to Barnett, the normalization
of Sino-American relations and the removal of restrictions on nonstrategic
trade with China was the right course, one that should not be inhibited by the
“kinds of restrictions from Congressional and public opinion that existed
some years ago.” 74
What had threatened to derail relations at times was that in the 1980s both
sides had problems accommodating each other’s systems of government and
political culture. The Chinese government found it irritating that often
American presidents made promises—on the Taiwan issue, for instance—
that Congress then failed to carry out. The struggle over the control of
foreign policy between the American executive and legislative branches was
embedded in the Constitution. The American political system did not always
provide tidy results with regard to China, as well as other countries; it de-
pended on the open exchange of views in debate and on bargaining and
compromise. 75 In the United States, where “Anti-Communism has condi-
tioned our foreign and military policy for too long,” 76 the “return” of Chi-
na—following two decades of estrangement—was approached in a sentimen-
tal manner or with inflated expectations. These cultural and political assump-
tions were to be tested in the Tiananmen crisis of 1989 and the end of the
Cold War—subjects to be discussed in the next chapter. 77
FURTHER READING
Useful primary sources and firsthand historical accounts can be found in

Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, vol. 17, China, 1969–72
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 2007), and the Association
for Diplomatic Studies and Training, “China: Country Reader,” https://adst.
org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/China.pdf (accessed February 12, 2020).
Kin-ming Liu, ed., My First Trip to China: Scholars, Diplomats, and Jour-
nalists Reflect on Their First Encounters with China (Hong Kong: East
Slope, 2013) contains recollections by some “old” leftist scholars about their
visit to Mao’s China in 1972–1973 and their disillusion with it. Documentar-
ies and witness accounts of President Nixon’s 1972 visit to China can be
206 Chapter 9
accessed in the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, “Nixon in China (The

Film),” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cfsI4ZjTbU (accessed Decem-
ber 27, 2020); USC U.S.-China Institute, November 2010, “The Inside Story
of Richard Nixon’s 1972 Journey to China,” https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=kQXK0Qifnw4 (accessed February 15, 2021). Relevant Doones-
bury cartoon strips add to these resources.
Important studies of U.S.-Chinese relations during the 1970s–1980s in-
clude Harry Harding, A Fragile Relationship: The United States and China
since 1972 (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1992); Henry Kissing-
er, On China (New York: Penguin, 2011); Robert S. Ross, Negotiating
Cooperation: The United States and China, 1969–1989 (Stanford, Calif.:
Stanford University Press, 1997); James H. Mann, About Face: A History of
America’s Curious Relationship with China, from Nixon to Clinton (New
York: Knopf, 1998); Margaret MacMillan, Nixon and Mao: The Week That
Changed the World (New York: Random House, 2007); Hugo Meijer, Trad-
ing with the Enemy: The Making of US Export Control Policy toward the
People’s Republic of China (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016); and
Julian Gewirtz, Unlikely Partners: Chinese Reformers, Western Economists,
and the Making of Global China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 2017).
Useful primary source material can also be found in Scott Kennedy, Chi-
na Cross Talk: The American Debate over China Policy since Normaliza-
tion: A Reader (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003); William Burr,
ed., The Kissinger Transcripts: The Top Secret Talks with Beijing and Mos-
cow (New York: New Press, 1998); Nicholas Platt, China Boys: How U.S.
Relations with the PRC Began and Grew. A Personal Memoir (Round Top,
N.Y.: Vellum, 2010); Cyrus Vance, Hard Choice: Critical Years in Ameri-
ca’s Foreign Policy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983); and Jeffrey A.
Engel, ed., The China Diary of George H. W. Bush: The Making of a Global
President (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008).
Supplementary studies in Chinese include Wei Shiyan (魏史言), Nike-
song fanghua [尼克松访华 Nixon’s visit to China], vol. 3 of Xin Zhongguo
waijiao fengyun [新中国外交风云 New China’s diplomatic experience]
(Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 1994); and Li Tiecheng (李铁城) and Qian
Wenrong (钱文荣), eds., Lianheguo kuangjia xia de Zhongmei guanxi [联合
国框架下的中美关系 U.S.-Chinese relations within the framework of the
United Nations] (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 2006).
NOTES
1. Critical of America’s secret diplomacy and lack of integrity toward Chiang Kai-shek’s
Taiwan, Nancy Bernkopt Tucker (1948–2012) wrote, “There were two stories of Sino-
American relations in the 1960s and 1970s, the oft-told tale of normalization with the People’s
Republic of China and the less-noted saga of friction with, and final abandonment of, the
Republic of China”; see her article “Taiwan Expendable? Nixon and Kissinger Go to China,”
The Journal of American History 92, no. 1 (June 2005): 109–135. For a personal record of this
crisis from Taiwanese perspectives, see James C. H. Shen (1909–2007, the Ambassador of the
Republic of China 1971–1978), The U.S. and Free China: How the U.S. Sold Out its Ally
(Washington, D.C.: Acropolis Books, 1983).
2. Both the American and Chinese leaders understood that their own national domestic
politics and public opinion needed to be accommodated in their foreign policy rhetoric, a tactic
summarized as “firing empty guns” or “empty words” by Mao and Zhou. Memorandum of
conversation between Nixon and Zhou Enlai in Beijing, February 22, 1972, National Archives,
Nixon Presidential Materials Project, White House Special Files, President’s Office Files, box
87, Memorandum for the President Beginning February 20, 1972, http://www.gwu.edu/
~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB106/NZ-1.pdf (accessed May 30, 2011); also see William Burr’s
introduction at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB106/index2.htm (accessed
May 30, 2011). Henry A. Kissinger’s memo to Richard Nixon, November 11, 1972 [sic, 1971],
“My October China Visit: Discussions of the Issues,” National Archives, RG59, State Depart-
ment Top Secret Subject-Numeric Files, 1970–1973, POL 7 Kissinger, http://www.gwu.edu/
~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB70/doc20.pdf (accessed July 6, 2012).
3. Harry Schwartz, “The Moscow-Peking-Washington Triangle,” Annals of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 414, USA-USSR: Agenda for Communication
(July 1974): 41–50. Lorenz M. Lüthi, The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008).
4. Arthur Schlesinger, “Origins of the Cold War,” Foreign Affairs 46, no. 1 (October
1967): 22–52.
5. David Shambaugh, ed., Deng Xiaoping: Portrait of a Chinese Statesman (Oxford: Cla-
rendon Press, 1995); Ezra F. Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 2011). Melvin Gurtov, “The Foreign Ministry and Foreign Af-
fairs in China’s ‘Cultural Revolution,’” memorandum, RM-5934-PR, March 1969, RAND.
6. Robert S. Elegant, “China’s New Phase,” Foreign Affairs 46, no. 1 (October 1967):
137–150.
7. Schlesinger, “Origins of the Cold War.”
8. Richard M. Nixon, “Asia after Viet Nam,” Foreign Affairs 46, no. 1 (October 1967):
111–125.
9. Nixon, “Asia after Viet Nam”; Donald W. White, The American Century: The Rise and
Decline of the United States as a World Power (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press,
1996), 419.
10. Nixon, “Asia after Viet Nam.”
11. John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters, American Presidency Project, http://www.
presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=1941 (accessed May 27, 2011).
12. Editorial, “Zoutou wulu de zigongzhuang” [走投无路的自供状 A personal confession
made in an impasse], Renmin ribao, January 28, 1969.
13. Zhou Enlai’s speech at the fourth diplomatic personnel meeting at the Chinese Ministry
of Foreign Affairs, January 1966, in Wang Yongqin (王永钦), “1966–1976 nian Zhong Mei Su
guanxi jishi” [1966–1976 年的中美苏关系纪事 A chronicle of China-U.S.USSR relations,
1966–1976], part 1, Dangdai Zhongguoshi yanjiu, no. 4 (1997): 112–126.
14. Niu Jun (牛军), “1969 nian Zhongsu bianjie chongtu yu Zhongguo waijiao zhanlue de
tiaozheng” [1969 年中苏边界冲突与中国外交战略的调整 The Sino-Soviet border conflict in
1969 and the adjustment of China’s diplomatic strategy], Dangdai Zhongguo yanjiu 1 (1999):
66–77. Winston Lord’s memorandum for Henry A. Kissinger on Kissinger’s conversations on
July 9, 1971, in Beijing with Zhou Enlai, July 29, 1971. National Archives, Nixon Presidential
Materials Project, NSC files, box 1033, China HAK Memcons, July 1971, http://www.gwu.
edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB145/09.pdf (accessed May 29, 2011); also see William
Bur’s introduction at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB145/index.htm (ac-
cessed May 29, 2011). Danhui Li and Yafeng Xia, Mao and the Sino-Soviet Split, 1959–1973:
A New History (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2018).
208 Chapter 9
15. Jin Chongji (金冲及), ed., Zhou Enlai zhuan [周恩来传 A biography of Zhou Enlai]
(Beijing: Zhonggong zhongyang wenxian yanjiushi, 1998), vol. 4, chap. 71.
16. http://dangjian.people.com.cn/n/2014/0723/c117092-25329738.html (accessed February
14, 2021); Qiu Jin, The Culture of Power: The Lin Biao Incident in the Cultural Revolution
(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999).
17. Zhonggong zhongyang wenxian yanjiushi, comp., Zhou Enlai nianpu (1949–1976) [周
恩来年谱 A chronology of Zhou Enlai] (Beijing: Zhongyan wenxian chubanshe, 1997), vol. 3,
pp. 274–342. Xiong Xianghui (熊向晖, 1919–2005, assistant to Zhou Enlai during the Kissing-
er and Nixon visits to China), Lishi de zhujiao: Huiyi Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai ji si laoshuai
[历史的注脚: 回忆毛泽东、周恩来及四老帅 Footnotes of history: Reflections on Mao Ze-
dong, Zhou Enlai, and the four marshals] (Beijing: Zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe, 1995),
173–204.
18. Memorandum of conversation between Henry Kissinger, John Holdridge, Winston
Lord, Jonathan Howe, Ye Jianying, Qiao Guanhua, Zhang Wenjin, etc., on February 23, 1972,
in Beijing, p. 14. National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials Projects, NSC files, HAK
office files, box 92, Dr. Kissinger’s meetings in the PRC during the presidential visit February
1972, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB145/10.pdf (accessed May 29,
2011).
in Beijing, p. 14.
20. East-West Trade, Relaxation of Economic Controls against China, National Security
Memorandum 15 and 17, May 28 and June 26, 1969, Nixon Library, http://nixon.archives.gov/
virtuallibrary/documents/nsdm/nsdm_015.pdf and http://nixon.archives.gov/virtuallibrary/
documents/nsdm/nsdm_017.pdf (both accessed May 27, 2011).
21. Memorandum of conversation participated in by Agha Hilaly, Pakistan ambassador to
the United States, and Harold H. Saunders, National Security Council staff, on August 28,
1969. Nixon Presidential Materials Project, National Security Files, box 1032, cookies II, http:/
/www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB145/02.pdf (accessed May 29, 2011).
22. Memorandum of conversation participated in by Agha Hilaly, Pakistan ambassador to
the United States, and Harold H. Saunders, National Security Council staff, on August 28,
1969.
23. Wang, “1966–1976 nian Zhong Mei Su guanxi jishi.”
24. Wang Yongqin, “1966–1976 nian Zhong Mei Su guanxi jishi,” part 2, Dangdai Zhong-
guoshi yanjiu 5 (1997): 110–127.
25. The radical intellectual movements of the 1960s in the United States, which included
opposing the Vietnam War and opening diplomatic relations with mainland China, promoted
by organizations such as the American Friends Service Committee, the National Committee on
U.S.-China Relations, the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars, and the Ford Foundation,
helped create a favorable atmosphere for the ultimate easing of U.S.-Chinese relations in the
1970s. See Richard Madsen’s “The Academic China Specialist,” in American Studies of Con-
temporary China, ed. David L. Shambaugh (London: Routledge, 2015; first edition in 1993 by
M. E. Sharpe), 163–174; and Madsen, China and the American Dream: A Moral Inquiry
(Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1995), chap. 2 and 158–161.
presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/print.php?pid=3324 (accessed June 4, 2011). Nixon and Kissinger tele-
phone conversation (Telecon), April 14, 1971, Henry A. Kissinger Telephone Conversation
Transcripts (Telecons), Nixon Presidential Materials Project, National Archives II, College
Park, Md., box 29, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB145/05.pdf (accessed
May 29, 2011).
27. Message from Zhou Enlai to Nixon on May 29, 1971, National Archives, Nixon Presi-
dential Materials Project, NSC files, box 1031, Exchanges Leading up to HAK Trip to China,
December 1969–July 1971 (1), http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB145/06.pdf
(accessed May 29, 2011).
28. For an eyewitness account of many key events between the 1930s and 1970s, see Xiong
Xianghui (People’s Republic of China’s first chief representative to the United Nations), Wode
qingbao yu waijiao shengya [我的情报与外交生涯 My careers in espionage and diplomacy],

expanded edition (Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe, 2006; first edition in 1999).
29. Hugh Sidey, “A President Wrapped in an Enigma,” Life 72, no. 8 (March 3, 1972): 12.
in Beijing. Kissinger’s memo of his meeting with Huang Zhen, the Chinese Ambassador to
France, in Paris to Nixon on August 16, 1971, National Security Archive, RG59, Records of the
Policy Planning Staff, Director’s Files (Winston Lord), 1969–1977, box 330, China Exchanges
July–October 20, 1971, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB70/doc2.pdf (ac-
cessed July 6, 2012).
31. Memorandum of Conversation between Nixon and Zhou Enlai in Beijing, February 23,
1972, National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials Project, White House Special Files,
President’s Office Files, box 87, Memorandum for the President Beginning February 20, 1972,
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB106/NZ-2.pdf (accessed May 30, 2011).
32. http://usinfo.state.gov/eap/Archive_Index/joint_communique_1972.html (accessed
March 25, 2007). Hongqi, no. 3 (1972): 5–7 published the Chinese version of the 1972 Joint
Communiqué in its entirety without any editorial.
33. http://usinfo.state.gov/eap/Archive_Index/joint_communique_1972.html (accessed Ma-
rch 25, 2007).
34. Memorandum of conversation between Nixon and Zhou Enlai in Beijing, February 22,
1972. This point was repeated by both Nixon and Zhou in their February 24 meeting; see
Memorandum of Conversation, National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials Project, White
House Special Files, President’s Office Files, box 87, Memorandum for the President Begin-
ning February 20, 1972, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB106/NZ-3.pdf (ac-
35. On the question of mainland China’s joining the United Nations, U.S. public support for
its entry rose from 7 percent in 1954 to 54 percent in 1971, whereas British support over a
similar period remained constant at about 50 percent. Connie de Boer, “The Polls: Changing
Attitudes and Policies toward China,” Public Opinion Quarterly 44, no. 2 (Summer 1980):
267–273.
36. To Ambassador (1971–1978) James C. H. Shen, Taiwan’s expulsion from the United
Nations in 1971 violated the UN Charter and the organization’s own founding principles. Shen,
The U.S. & Free China, 6.
37. U.S. Strategy and Forces for Asia, National Security Memorandum 230, August 9, 1973,
Nixon Library, http://nixon.archives.gov/virtuallibrary/documents/nsdm/nsdm_230.pdf (ac-
38. Li Jie, “China’s Domestic Politics and the Normalization of Sino-U.S. Relations,
1969–1979,” in Normalization of U.S.-China Relations: An International History, ed. William
C. Kirby, Robert S. Ross, and Gong Li (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center,
2005), 56–89.
39. Huang Hua (黄华), Qinli yu jianwen: Huang Hua huiyi lu [亲历与见闻: 黄华回忆录
Witnessing and experiencing at first hand: The memoirs of Huang Hua] (Beijing: Shijie zhishi
chubanshe, 2007). According to John S. Service, while in Beijing, Henry Kissinger asked
Service, who had also been invited to visit China in 1971, whether the Chinese “were serious
about Taiwan.” Service responded, “We have to recognize Chinese sovereignty, and that means
we have to break off diplomatic relations with Taiwan.” See the Association for Diplomatic
Studies and Training, “China: Country Reader,” 265–266.
40. Gong Li (宫力), Kuayue honggou: 1969–1979 nian Zhongmei guanxi de yanbian [跨越
鸿沟: 1969–1979 年中美关系的演变 Overcoming the chasm: The evolution of U.S.-Chinese
relations, 1969–1979] (Zhengzhou: Henan renmin chubanshe, 1992).
41. Nancy Bernkopf Tucker, ed., China Confidential: American Diplomats and Sino-
American Relations, 1945–1996 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), chap. 5.
42. Wang Yongqin, “1966–1976 nian Zhong Mei Su guanxi jishi,” part 4, Dangdai Zhong-
guoshi yanjiu 1 (1998): 103–118. Chen Mingxian (陈明显), ed., Zhonghua renmin gongheguo
zhengzhi zhidushi [中华人民共和国政治制度史 A history of the political system of the Peo-
ple’s Republic of China] (Tianjin: Nankai daxue chubanshe, 1998), chap. 8. World Bank,
210 Chapter 9
Development Research Center of the State Council, People’s Republic of China, China 2030.
Building a Modern, Harmonious, and Creative Society (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2013),
4.
43. “President Gerald R. Ford’s Proclamation 4311, Granting a Pardon to Richard Nixon,”
September 8, 1974, https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/speeches/740061.asp (ac-
cessed February 16, 2021).
presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/print.php?pid=4694 (accessed May 27, 2011).
45. Renmin ribao, December 2 and 5, 1975. In the three meetings between Deng and Ford
held on December 1–5, 1975, Deng underscored the common ground between China and the
United States, emphasizing that both nations were opposed to the hegemonic activities of other
countries and interest groups. He stressed that the leaders of both nations should therefore stay
in close contact and exchange ideas despite their different positions on international issues. See
Zhongyang wenxian yanjiushi (中央文献研究室), ed., Deng Xiaoping nianpu: 1975–1997 [邓
小平年谱 A chronology of Deng Xiaoping] (Beijing: Zhonggong zhongyang wenxian chuban-
she, 2004), vol. 1, pp. 134–135.
46. Patrick Tyler echoed the thoughts of many contemporary commentators when he noted
that “[t]he psychology of war and deterrence in the Taiwan Strait was never thoroughly ex-
plored by Ford or Kissinger. To them, it was Vietnam all over again. They simply were not
willing to take the risk [of breaking with Taiwan].” Patrick Tyler, A Great Wall: Six Presidents
and China, an Investigative History (New York: PublicAffairs, 1999), 191–225.
47. Memorandum of conversation between Deng Xiaoping and Zbigniew Brzezinski
(1928–2017), May 25, 1978, Declassified Documents Reference System (Farmington Hills,
Mich.: Gale, 2011), document no. CK3100155890.
48. Deng Xiaoping’s interview with Earl W. Foell, Christian Science Monitor, December 3,
1980, p. B1. Robert S. Ross, “International Bargaining and Domestic Politics: U.S. China
Relations since 1972,” World Politics 38, no. 2 (January 1986): 255–287; Gong Li (宫力),
Deng Xiaoping yu Meiguo [邓小平与美国 Deng Xiaoping and the United States] (Beijing:
Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe, 2004).
49. James Lilley with Jeffrey Lilley, China Hands: Nine Decades of Adventure, Espionage,
and Diplomacy in Asia (New York: PublicAffairs, 2004), 210. In his book The Grand Chess-
board: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives (New York: Basic Books, 1997),
13 e-version, Zbigniew Brzezinski noted that “Russia and China are powers that resent this
American hegemony. In early 1996, they jointly stated as much in the course of a visit to
Beijing by Russia’s President Boris Yeltsin.” It is “U.S.-China relations that will determine in
large measure the degree of stability or instability in the Far East and, more generally, in
Eurasia. Admittedly, how the Taiwan issue is handled will influence and in some circumstances
could even determine the evolution of U.S.-China relations. But, except for its impact on those
relations, the status of Taiwan itself is not a central international concern.” Brzezinski, The
Geostrategic Triad: Living with China, Europe and Russia (Washington, D.C.: Center for
Strategic and International Studies, 2000), 9–10 e-version.
50. Tucker, ed., China Confidential, 325.
51. Wang Taiping (王泰平), Zhonghua renmin gongheguo waijiaoshi [中华人民共和国外
交史 A diplomatic history of the People’s Republic of China] (Beijing: Shijie zhishi chuban-
she, 1999), vol. 3, p. 380.
52. John Pomfret, The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China,
1776 to the Present (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2016), 487.
53. United States Code, Title 22: Foreign Relations and Intercourse, Chapter 48: Taiwan
Relations, http://uscode.house.gov/download/pls/22C48.txt (accessed June 24, 2011).
54. Huang Hua (黄华), “Zhongmei ‘Bayiqi gongbao’ douzheng shimo” [中美《八一七公
报》斗争始末 The struggle over the Sino-American Communiqué of August 17], Lishi kuan-
dai (September 2010): 93–97.
55. During the decade 1979–1989, the U.S.-Chinese military relationship “moved from the
‘strategic alliance’ expectations of the initial years, through the complete inactivity of the
subsequent two years, to four years of steady development, and then one year of ‘minimum
momentum.’” Eden Y. Woon, “Chinese Arms Sales and U.S.-China Military Relations,” Asian
Survey 29, no. 6 (June 1989): 601–618, 610. In 1977, A. Doak Barnett called for avoidance of
“precipitous steps” in military technology or hardware sales to mainland China. The United
States “should not itself engage in direct sales of purely military technology or hardware to
Peking. We need not completely close the door to sales in the future of technology and
hardware useful primarily for passive defense systems. But all in all, the issues in this field are
so complex and sensitive that precipitous steps should be avoided.” Barnett, “Military-Security
Relations between China and the United States,” Foreign Affairs 55, no. 3 (April 1977):
584–597.
56. Cover story, “Teng’s Great Leap Outward,” Time, February 5, 1979, p. 26.
57. Tyler, A Great Wall, 284–285.
58. Hedley Donavan’s interview with Deng Xiaoping, Time, February 5, 1979, p. 35. Mi-
chael D. Swaine, “Chinese Decision-Making Regarding Taiwan, 1979–2000,” in The Making
of Chinese Foreign and Security Policy in the Era of Reform, ed. David M. Lampton (Stanford,
Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2001), 289–336.
59. Tucker, ed., China Confidential, 342–347.
60. Deng Xiaoping (邓小平), January 4, 1981, Deng Xiaoping wenxuan [邓小平文选 Se-
lected works of Deng Xiaoping], second edition (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1994; first edi-
tion in 1983), vol. 2, pp. 375–378.
61. http://usinfo.state.gov/eap/Archive_Index/joint_communique_1982.html (accessed Ma-
rch 27, 2007). Huang Hua, “Zhongmei ‘Baiyiqi gongbao’ douzheng shimo.” Tucker, ed., China
Confidential, 359–370. Author unknown, “Risky Balancing Act,” Los Angeles Times, January
22, 1981, p. C10.
62. Zhang Baijia (章百家), “Zhongyu shidai, chaoyue shidai: Zhou Enlai yu Zhongguo
waijiao” [忠于时代, 超越时代: 周恩来与中国外交 Loyal to his time, and transcending his
time: Zhou Enlai and Chinese diplomacy], Zhonggong dangshi yanjiu, no. 4 (2008): 52–60.
Tao Wenzhao (陶文钊), ed., Zhongmei guanxishi (1949–1972) [中美关系史 A history of Sino-
American relations (1949–1972)] (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 2004), vol. 2, chap.
8.
63. Deng, August 21, 1982, Deng Xiaoping wenxuan, 415–417. Deng, January 16, 1980,
Deng Xiaoping wenxuan, 239–273.
64. Li Lanqing, Breaking Through: The Birth of China’s Opening-Up Policy (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2010).
65. Renmin ribao, September 5 and 8, and December 6, 1982.
66. Deng, October 12, 1983, Deng Xiaoping wenxuan, vol. 3, pp. 39–44, 196; http://news.
cntv.cn/china/20120519/106252_1.shtml?isappinstalled=0 (accessed February 18, 2021). See
also the official documents of the 6th Plenary Session of the 12th Central Committee of the
Chinese Communist Party held in September 1986, http://cpc.people.com.cn/GB/64162/64168/
64565/index.html (accessed February 18, 2021).
67. U.S. Department of State, compiled, American Foreign Policy: Current Documents,
1986 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1987).
68. Tao Wenzhao, Zhongmei guanxishi (1972–2000) (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chuban-
she, 2004), vol. 3, chap. 5, p. 168. Ni Shixiong (倪世雄), Jiejiao yiyan zhong, xiangqi qianli
zhi: Yige Zhongguo xuezhe yanli de Zhongmei jianjiao sanshi nian [结交一言重, 相期千里至:
一个中国学者眼里的中美建交30年 Keeping one’s word regardless of the obstacles: The thir-
tieth anniversary of the U.S. and China diplomatic relations seen through the eyes of a Chinese
scholar] (Shanghai: Fudan chubanshe, 2009), chap. 1.
69. Lilley, China Hands, 250.
70. David Shambaugh, “Studies of China’s Foreign and Security Policies in the United
States,” in China Watching: Perspectives from Europe, Japan and the United States, ed. Robert
Ash, David Shambaugh, and Seiichiro Takagi (London: Routledge, 2007), 213–240.
71. Kissinger’s memo to Nixon, “Your Encounter with the Chinese,” February 5, 1972,
National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials Project, HAK Office files, box 13, China,
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB70/doc27.pdf (accessed May 30, 2011).
72. Qian Qichen (钱其琛), “Qingshan zhe buzhu, bijing dongliu qu: Jinian Zhongmei
Shanghai gongbao fabiao sanshi zhounian” [青山遮不住, 毕竟东流去: 纪念中美上海公报发
表三十周年 High mountains cannot hold the river back from flowing east: Commemorating
212 Chapter 9
the thirtieth anniversary of the announcement of the Sino-American Communiqué], Qiushi

zazhi [求是杂志 Seeking the truth magazine] 4 (2002): 4–9. Zhang Baijia (章百家), “Cong
‘Yibiandao’ dao ‘Quanfangwei’: Dui wushi nian lai Zhongguo waijiao geju yanjin de sikao”
[从“一边倒”到“全方位”: 对50年来中国外交格局演进的思考 From “Leaning to One Side”
to “Multidirectional”: Thoughts on the evolution of China’s diplomatic framework over the last
fifty years], Zhonggong dangshi yanjiu 1 (2000): 21–37.
73. A. Doak Barnett, “The New Multipolar Balance in East Asia: Implications for United
States Policy,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 390 (July
1970): 73–86.
74. Barnett, “The New Multipolar Balance in East Asia.”
75. Stephen E. Ambrose, “The Presidency and Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs 70, no. 5
(Winter 1991): 120–137. The Commission on the Bicentennial of the United States Constitu-
tion, The Constitution of the United States with Index and the Declaration of Independence,
eighteenth edition (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1992).
76. Barbara W. Tuchman, Notes from China (New York: Collier Books, 1972), 73–74.
77. For a bird’s-eye assessment of the U.S. approach to China over the past half century, see
Dong Wang, “How Did U.S.-China Relations Get to Where They Are?” The European Institute
for Chinese Studies (Paris), newsletter, January 2021, http://www.eurics.eu/upload/document/
20210203020235_eurics-january2021.pdf.
Chapter Ten
The China Market and the Allure

of the United States
Official and unofficial exchanges—in a wide spectrum of areas other than

politics—helped rebuild relations between the United States and China. The
late 1970s and 1980s witnessed China’s historic domestic reforms, a new
openness to the West (albeit within the Chinese Communist Party–prescribed
ideological limits), and a growing stature on the international stage. Overall,
this was a time of hope and optimism, despite the anti-Western ideological
and political currents encouraged by China at home and partially covered in
chapter 9. 1 Nevertheless, both nations were struggling with issues arising
from differences in their respective political, economic, and social systems,
as well as their national values—issues that often led to conflict in a variety
of international contexts.
AN OVERVIEW: GROWTH DYNAMICS

AND W. ARTHUR LEWIS IN CHINA
Poverty and the demographic boom of the 1960s and 1970s paved the way
for China to become a global development engine. 2 China could deliver an
inexhaustible flow of low-wage workers fleeing from poverty and under
social and family obligations to remit their scant earnings to their families in
the countryside. This surfeit of cheap and willing hands facilitated unprece-
dented infrastructural and urban expansion. Domestic migrants worked in
rural and urban sweatshops processing goods for export; entered the labor
force in new, advanced factories; and were formed into mobile work teams
that built new freeways, harbors, and high-speed rail lines. Simultaneously,
213
214 Chapter 10
China expanded and reshaped high-level education in engineering and the

sciences to facilitate its needed growth in technological sophistication.
The pressures felt in the United States, Europe, and Oceania for further
technological development, along with the growing cost of unskilled labor in
these countries, dovetailed with the availability of cheap Chinese labor. Glo-
bal value chains and trade liberalization were structured so that Chinese
workers formed a cost-effective alternative to the further automation of mass
production for American, European, and Oceanic domestic markets, while
the competitive logistics sector was able to rapidly reduce per-unit costs for
freight. These developments boosted China’s international trade and created
surpluses that were fed back into the Chinese economy.
In terms of China’s economic development, Sir W. Arthur Lewis
(1915–1991), Nobel laureate in economics and professor of political econo-
my at Princeton University, proved to be a key figure. His ideas of develop-
mental dualism and the pathways to modernization for developing counties
were naturalized and reinvented in mainland China, with huge influence. 3
Lewis’ theory of economic dualism, a two-sector model of structural change,
explains the dynamics of resource transfer from low- to high-productivity
activities in the process of economic transformation from traditional rural
agriculture to modern urban industry, as in the case of China.
Dualism (eryuan lun) is central to neoclassical development economics.
In the transition to industrialization an imbalance occurs between the tradi-
tional and modern sectors of the economy. This imbalance is based on the
“unlimited supply of labor from the agricultural sector,” meaning that indus-
trialization can develop in a low-wage environment. In the early 1980s, Lew-
is’ theories about coexisting rural and urban economies were taken up and
recast in China.
However, the development of the Chinese economy since 1949 posed a
serious challenge to the neoclassicist school. The flow of resources between
agriculture and industry did not take place in the marketplace but as a conse-
quence of excessive state control. Prices and quotas were mostly fixed by
direct state intervention, labor recruitment, and migration, all of which were
heavily regulated by the Chinese state. 4 In spite of this situation, it did not
deter the Chinese leadership in the 1980s from borrowing the Lewis model in
an attempt to resolve China’s long-standing dualism—the segregation of the
nation’s cities from its agricultural countryside.
Illustrating further complexity, Wu Chengming, a Chinese economic his-
torian, pointed out that the traditional agricultural sector in Lewis’ prescrip-
tion was too passive and that China had been frustrated by its failure to
release its surplus agricultural labor to the cities. Wu argued that the parallel
development between large state-owned modern industries and township en-
terprises and other forms of corporate ventures was China’s authentic road to
dual economic development. 5
The China Market and the Allure of the United States 215
In October 1971, mainland China took over the China seat in the United
Nations and set out to influence global policy making. One major way of
doing this was to engage with the processes already set in motion by the UN
on development and the environment. During the 1960s, long-term problems
such as resource exploitation, pollution, food security, poverty, desertifica-
tion, and population growth were framed as global concerns for the United
Nations to address. A series of goal-setting conferences and reporting ses-
sions became important vectors for sustainable development. The Chinese
leadership formed a top-level committee to lead China’s efforts in this area
and mobilized large groups of mainly natural scientists to participate in these
processes, joining the emerging global communities seeking solutions to
these problems. In the early and mid-1970s these activities laid the founda-
tions for a natural sciences–led and technological perspective on social and
political development issues in a period still dominated by narrow dogma-
tism and the refusal to deal with the real causes of poverty.
The old ways of thinking persisted until 1978 when, on the eve of Deng
Xiaoping’s reforms, science and technology were at last freed of dogma, and
philosopher Hu Fuming revived the concept of “practice as the sole criterion
of truth.” 6 Already before the reforms got underway, academics from the
Academy of Sciences, students and junior university staff, as well as senior
officials in several ministries and commissions were starting to build a new,
cross-cutting expertise. 7 China’s active participation in the UN processes and
international collaborations thus stimulated a new intellectual ferment that
strengthened China’s international role and also inspired fresh ideas to deal
with domestic development issues.
By 1978 Marxism-Leninism’s claims to scientific socialism made it ideo-
logically safe to incorporate natural sciences and technology into mainstream
political practice; science, therefore, was part of the “material basis” of soci-
ety, a “force of production,” and scientists (seen as intellectuals) were a
progressive force in society. 8 The leadership generation that took shape
under Deng Xiaoping’s de facto leadership was largely men trained in engi-
neering, people not primarily interested in dogma and struggle but who in-
stead envisioned large-scale, systematic approaches to massive tasks, whose
blueprints changed during the processes involved and who believed in evi-
dence-based, technical, cybernetic, and coordinated projects. Interestingly,
there was a strong interrelationship between the large-scale social engineer-
ing projects and the creation of popular incentives embraced during the re-
form period, on the one hand, and the aims and values embraced by large
international organizations, on the other—even though many Western devel-
opment experts, in particular during the Agenda 21 process, 9 called for the
“empowerment of the disenfranchised” and harbored a deep skepticism of
powerful states and big corporations, whom they saw as enemies or exploit-
ers of the poor. The World Health Organization, the United Nations Develop-
216 Chapter 10
ment Programme, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and other

international organizations collaborated closely in Chinese development in-
itiatives.
The precursors to these international collaboration efforts included over-
seas-based programs—for example, the building of the Tanzam Railway in
Africa, 10 which started operations in 1975—yet it was not until the late
2000s and 2010s that China’s international development collaboration pro-
jects were articulated as a major policy area. Infrastructural projects, devel-
opment zones, seaports, and so on were initiated with little obvious strategic
coordination until the National Reform and Development Commission began
to publish guidelines and facilitate increasing coordination, culminating in
the leadership formulating strategies for the Belt and Road Initiative.
The international orientation of China’s approach to development issues
was a two-way street. China both gained from and contributed to internation-
al scientific and technical knowledge and development practices. From the
early 1980s, China invested in detailed research on and surveys of scarce and
threatened environmental resources—soil, forests, water—amid its own re-
form-driven and highly polluting and predatory economic growth. It also
quickly set in motion massive anti-poverty schemes.
We can observe three general practices that emerged during this period.
First, observers of China’s reforms gave considerable attention to the notion
of gradual development, often in rhetorical contrast to the “big bang” reform
strategy of the USSR. Second, there was a strong emphasis on large-scale
infrastructure as the core of development programs. And third, this period
was marked by major leaps in technology, as well as the evolution of very
diverse and dynamic private and public corporations, some of which rapidly
rose to become massive transnational corporations, side by side with a vi-
brant community of business startups and micro-enterprises.
The notion of gradual development was introduced by Deng Xiaoping,
who urged that some sectors should be allowed to “get rich first,” a major
break with the egalitarianism of the past. This new approach involved a
change of planning from China’s steady-state bureaucracy to a concatenation
of technical expansions coordinated in large-scale projects. The old State
Development Commission was transformed into the National Development
and Reform Commission. For a period of fifteen years (1982–1997) the
commission was worked in tandem with the Commission for Reform of the
Economic System, whose sole task was to execute a thoroughgoing reform of
China’s planning system, to introduce the market exchange of goods, to
abolish the large industrial ministries, and to reform the state-owned enter-
prise sector, so that each enterprise would become an equal player (respon-
sible for its own profits and losses) in the market. State planning would be
rigorously focused on target setting, funding regimes, and tenders.
THE FIRST DECADE, 1971–1980:

FRAMEWORK BUILDING
A Social and Economic Note 11
The year 1972 marked the end of a long freeze in contacts between the
United States and the People’s Republic of China. During the preceding
twenty-two years of hostility (1949–1971), only 1,500 Americans had
traveled to mainland China. 12 By the end of 1987, however, 300,000
American citizens had visited China, and over 30,000 Chinese students and
visiting scholars were living in the United States. 13
China’s “return” to the United States after a long hiatus created a sense of
disorientation and generated fragmented impressions of the “new” China
among “old” China hands. “China again—and one wonders where to begin,
how to thread the memory from past to present,” wrote Theodore White, a
journalist who had visited Yan’an (the center of the Chinese Communist
revolution) in 1944 on the first official American mission to the Chinese
Communists, and who again found himself in China during President Nix-
on’s visit in 1972. 14 White found Mao Zedong’s ubiquitous presence “diffi-
cult to adjust to”:
There is no easy way of describing it—this is no classic tyranny or dictatorship

but a presence that overpowers and smothers. From it there is no escape, no
crevice, for private thought. . . . He [Mao] is there: his picture hanging ten feet
high at every airport. On every street, above factory, apartment block, govern-
ment hall, in red and white by day, in flaring light by night, the same five
characters: “Mao Chu Hsi Wan Sui” (Long Live Mao Tse-tung). 15
The acclaimed author Barbara W. Tuchman made a six-week trip to China in

July–August 1972, one of the first generation of American visitors since the
diplomatic thaw. Tuchman was able to observe the “new” China in both a
positive and negative light: “In a country where misery and want were the
foundation of the social structure, famine was periodic, death from starvation
common, disease pervasive, thievery normal, and graft and corruption taken
for granted, the elimination of these conditions in Communist China is so
striking that negative aspects of the new rule fade in relative importance.” 16
Yet, similar to Theodore White, Tuchman found what she described as the
country’s “mental monotone” troubling: “All thought, all ideas past, present,
and future, not to mention the historic record, are twisted, manipulated,
rolled out, and flattened into one, expressed in half a dozen slogans dinned
incessantly and insistently into the heads of the public.” 17
In the realm of the economy, China was almost totally insulated from the
outside world in 1971 when Nixon announced his upcoming visit to China.
As a New York Times reporter wrote, “The news of President Nixon’s com-
218 Chapter 10
ing trip to Communist China, sensational as it is politically, produced virtual-

ly no effect on the stock market.” 18 China was a “puzzle” to be pieced
together, as a major fiscal initiative would soon illustrate. On August 15,
1971, in an attempt to redress inflation and unemployment, the Nixon admin-
istration devalued the U.S. dollar by 8 percent by imposing a system of wage
and price controls and fixing the exchange rates for American currency. As a
result, “one country after another began to float its currency against the
dollar.” 19 A few days later, James Reston filed this report from Shanghai:
The “dollar crisis” was no crisis in China. Even here in this commercial capital
of the People’s Republic there was no public evidence that anybody was
paying the slightest attention to Washington’s “new economic policy.” . . .
Two days after President Nixon devalued the old greenback and sent a hiccup
through all the banks and stock exchanges of Europe, I cashed $500 worth of
American travelers checks at the old exchange rate in Peking. No problem. No
questions asked. And even a day later, the banks here in Shanghai were still
paying out on cabled dollars from New York as if nothing had happened. 20
Indeed, today we tend to forget that in 1971 China was one of the poorest
countries in the world, marginal to global trade. In 1955, China accounted for
4.7 percent of global GDP; by 1978 it was only 1 percent. “While others had
moved on, China had gone back,” wrote Li Lanqing, Chinese vice premier
(1993, 1997–2003). “As China’s leaders came to terms with the poverty of
their people and the yawning gap between them and the West the enormous-
ness of the task and the ‘race against time’ to develop, as Deng Xiaoping
called it, became clear.” 21
The decade 1971–1980 witnessed rapid institutional growth and the lift-
ing of some of the barriers to the flow of goods, technology, and people.
Already in 1971–1972, China’s international trade and its trade with the
United States were increasing by levels of 20 percent per year. In March
1971, the State Department eased restrictions on U.S. citizens visiting China,
and the following month American table tennis players toured the country in
what became known as “ping-pong diplomacy.” On April 14, the Nixon
administration announced five measures aimed at removing restrictions on
commerce and travel between the United States and China. Under this initia-
tive, the United States would expedite visas for visitors from the People’s
Republic. In the other direction, U.S. currency controls were to be relaxed,
allowing American citizens to remit money to Chinese citizens or organiza-
tions without prior Treasury approval.
There was also limited liberalization of commercial activity. Restrictions
were to be lifted “on American oil companies providing fuel to ships or
aircraft proceeding to and from China except on Chinese-owned or Chinese-
chartered carriers bound to or from North Vietnam, North Korea, or Cuba.” 22
The New York Times reported, “A list of ‘non-strategic’ goods will be drafted
and U.S. companies will be allowed to export these items directly to main-
land China without prior government permission. Selected direct imports
from there will be authorized in the future. . . . American carriers will be
allowed to haul Chinese cargo between non-Chinese ports.” 23 Then on June
10, following these carefully calibrated measures, Nixon officially ended the
trade embargo, removing the legal barriers that had hindered significant eco-
nomic interaction between the United States and China since 1950.
While taking note of the geopolitical sea change, the American media
remained wary about the prospects for bilateral trade. Some newspapers
characterized the China market as illusory, given that the gross national
product of a nation with five times its population constituted only about 7
percent that of the United States. A headline in the Wall Street Journal could
hardly have been more explicit: “Illusory Market: Trade with China, Long a
Dream of Americans, Remains Only a Mirage; Peking Policy Limits Im-
ports; China’s Potential Exports Unlikely to Spur Demand; Want to Buy Any
Pig Bristle?” Its author made no attempt to conceal his sarcasm: “Since the
U.S. embargo on China trade was lifted last June, trade has totaled about $5
million; all of this has been through third parties because the Chinese still
refuse to deal directly with American firms. From this tiny level, trade has
nowhere to go but up.” 24
A more temperate journalistic assessment expressed a widely held view:
“In straight economic terms, it is difficult to see United States trade with
Communist China amounting to a great deal for years to come.” 25 An editori-
al in the New York Times commented,
In the short run, there are fairly narrow constraints on how much trade can take
place bilaterally between China and the United States. Chinese economic ca-
pacities are extremely limited—per capita income is about $120 a year. Total
Chinese exports are only about one-tenth those of Japan. . . . There are many
goods China would like to import from the United States, such as locomotives,
industrial chemicals, fertilizers, construction equipment, steel mills, machine
tools, wheat—which this country can produce in abundance. But China’s abil-
ity to pay is tightly bound by her narrow export list. . . . Since June [1971]
when trade with China was opened, total American imports from that country
have amounted to a mere $5 million. 26
Many Americans believed that China would be unable to “finance any great
increase of imports until it can begin to earn enough foreign exchange by
increasing its own exports.” 27 Hence, the growth of Sino-American econom-
ic relations would likely depend on U.S. “willingness to extend export credits
or other forms of aid to China.” 28
In February 1972, Nixon decided to upgrade China from Country Group
Z of the Commodity Control List to Country Group Y and to eliminate the
Foreign Assets Control requirement that subsidiaries of American firms in
220 Chapter 10
CoCom (the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls) 29

countries had to obtain a Treasury license, in addition to a host country
license, for the export of strategic goods to the People’s Republic of China,
and to rescind the requirement that subsidiaries of American firms abroad
obtain prior Treasury licensing for the export of foreign technology to main-
land China. 30 In 1973, Nixon decided that the United States should approve
the export of eight state-of-the-art inertial navigational systems (INS) to be
included on four Boeing 707 aircraft, in addition to the INS required for three
Anglo-French Concorde aircraft sold to mainland China. 31
With full diplomatic relations established, the United States and Chinese
governments set out to clear the remaining legislative and administrative
hurdles and move trade relations forward. On May 11, 1979, Michael Blu-
menthal, the U.S. secretary of the treasury, and Zhang Jinfu, the Chinese
finance minister, reached a settlement on the US$280 million worth of claims
and assets resulting from the reciprocal confiscation of assets and property
that had followed the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950. 32 The next twelve
months saw a wide range of developments encouraging the full normaliza-
tion of trade relations including a bilateral trade agreement; the opening of
the first American law firm (Coudert Brothers of New York City) in main-
land China since 1950; U.S. assistance with Chinese hydroelectric power
development, consumer goods manufacturing, and petroleum production and
transportation; export-import bank credits; approval for expanded arms sales
to China; and a Chinese commitment to exporting scarce strategic materials.
Most importantly, on January 24, 1980, Congress passed a trade agree-
ment conferring most-favored-nation (MFN) status on China. This measure
exempted Chinese exports to the United States from the high tariff rates
stipulated by the Smoot-Hawley Act of June 1930. Enacted at the start of the
Great Depression, this piece of legislation epitomized American protection-
ism and was subsequently used to distinguish friends from foes among its
trading partners.
Despite this move, China’s MFN trade status, which was not granted
permanently and unconditionally, created new legal and political impedi-
ments to Sino-American trade relations that were not removed until 2001.
Under U.S. law, the normalizing of trade relationships placed the People’s
Republic of China within the purview of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment
contained in Title IV of the 1974 Trade Act. Regarded as the most important
human rights legislation ever passed by the U.S. Congress, the Jackson-
Vanik Amendment links trade benefits with the human rights policies of
Communist (or former Communist) countries and was originally directed at
Russian restrictions on Jewish emigration to the United States. Not only does
it deny preferential trade relations to offending nations but “such a country
shall not participate in any program of the Government of the United States
which extends credits or credit guarantees or investment guarantees, directly
or indirectly.” 33 The U.S. president has the authority to waive the application
of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment to a particular country, and Congress must
review his semiannual reports on that country’s continued compliance in
upholding rights to freedom of emigration. 34 Therefore, the Jackson-Vanik
Amendment provided the legal grounds for the annual congressional renewal
of China’s MFN status until 2001 when China joined the World Trade Or-
ganization (WTO), whose rules prohibit members from imposing such trade
restrictions on other members.
Tables 10.1 and 10.2, compiled from U.S. and Chinese sources, respec-
tively, present trade data for the first decade of renewed commercial activity
between the two countries. They show continued growth, but at quite low
levels, with a hiccup from 1975 to 1977, with respect to U.S. exports to
China. Although, with the exception of 1979 and 1980, the two sets of
figures rarely agree with each other, their differences were marginal com-
pared with the considerable divergence that began in the mid-1980s. Espe-
cially noteworthy is the fact that, during this period, America’s trade with
China never amounted to more than 1 percent of total U.S. world trade—a
situation very like U.S. trade relations with China in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. Overall, during this period the United States sold more
than it bought from China. By the end of the decade, however, the total
business conducted between the two nations was doubling each year, from
US$1.1 billion in 1978 (U.S. figures; Chinese statistics recorded $991.7 mil-
lion), to $2.3 billion in 1979 (Chinese figures: $2.4 billion), to $4.8 billion in
1980.
Following Mao Zedong’s death in 1976, Deng Xiaoping made his way
back into power, removing Mao’s designated successor, Hua Guofeng, and
waging a peaceful revolution—comprising the Four Modernizations of agri-
culture, industry, science and technology, and the military—that began with
the 11th Plenary Session of the 13th CCP Congress held in December
1978. 35 The extraordinary reforms that followed have made China the sec-
ond-largest economy in the world from 2011, and probably the largest in
2021 due to disruptions caused by COVID-19.
In foreign trade, raw materials such as iron and steel (rather than technol-
ogy and industrial equipment) formed the bulk of China’s imports. In 1977,
China spent 22 percent of its foreign exchange on iron and steel, followed by
foodstuffs (17 percent), chemicals (12 percent), transport equipment (9 per-
cent), and textile fibers (7 percent). 36 U.S. exports reflected this: in 1978 the
United States sold China cereals, raw textile fibers and waste, machinery,
fertilizers, and vegetable oils and fats, while the chief items exported by
China were feathers, cotton fabrics, basketwork, fireworks, pig bristles, and
mats and matting screens. 37 This situation also reflected continued American
restrictions on exports of technology and equipment.
222 Chapter 10
These historic trade developments, as well as the lure of the China mar-
ket, generated considerable enthusiasm in the United States:
Within weeks of diplomatic recognition, seminars and conferences on trade

with China proliferated throughout the country (U.S.), playing to packed
houses of several hundred business executives at a time. U.S. Department of
Commerce officials reported an average 350 calls a day and a flood of inquir-
ies in the mail. Teng Hsiao-p’ing’s [Deng Xiaoping’s] pointed interest in
automobiles, petroleum equipment, and aircraft manufacturing plants gave an
additional impetus to the snowballing interest in Chinese markets. 38
Religion and Culture: On Chinese Terms 39
In the religious sphere, the forced termination of American missions in China

in 1949–1951 had left scars on both sides. In the early 1950s, in both the
United States and China, fear of the other country’s baleful influence was
palpable. Christianity became a vehicle for pro-Communists and anti-Com-
munists alike to take a stance on either “Red China” or “free China.”
In May 1950, a document known as The Christian Manifesto was released
by the Chinese government. It stated that the Christian church must unite
behind the new Communist government and disavow the ecclesiastical and
financial influence of foreign imperialism. According to the New York Times,
this calls for the reform of Chinese Christianity—characterized as “the Chi-
Table 10.1. U.S.-Chinese Trade, 1971–1980 (U.S. figures, in millions of current

U.S. dollars)
Year U.S. U.S. Total U.S. Percent of Percent of

Imports Exports to Bilateral Trade Total U.S. Total PRC
from PRC PRC Trade Balance Trade Trade
1971 4.7 0.0 4.7 –4.7 0.0 –
1972 32.2 60.2 92.4 28 0.1 –
1973 63.5 689.1 752.6 625.6 0.5 –
1974 114.4 806.9 921.2 692.5 0.4 –
1975 157.9 303.6 461.6 145.7 0.2 –
1976 201.5 134.4 335.9 –67.1 0.1 –
1977 220.7 171.3 372.1 –29.4 0.1 2.5
1978 324.0 820.7 1,144.6 496.7 0.3 5.4
1979 592.3 1,724.0 2,316.3 1,131.7 0.6 7.9
1980 1,058.3 3,754.4 4,812.7 2,696.1 1.0 12.7
Source: Harry Harding, A Fragile Relationship: The United States and China
since 1972 (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1992), 364.
Table 10.2. U.S.-Chinese Trade, 1971–1980 (Chinese figures, in millions of cur-

rent U.S. dollars)
Year PRC PRC Total China

Exports to U.S. Imports from Bilateral Trade Trade Balance
U.S.
1971 – – –
1972 9.6 3.3 12.9 6.3
1973 39.72 220.66 260.38 –180.94
1974 102.86 372.85 475.71 –269.99
1975 128.88 341.83 470.71 –212.95
1976 156.04 160.64 316.68 –4.6
1977 179.63 114.62 294.25 65.01
1978 270.6 721.1 991.7 –450.5
1979 595.01 1,856.59 2,451.6 –1,261.58
1980 981.06 3,830.21 4,811.27 –2,849.15
Source: Tao Wenzhao (陶文钊 ), ed., Zhongmei guanxishi (1972–2000) [中

美关系史 The history of Sino-America relations (1972–2000)] (Shanghai:
Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 2004), vol. 3, p. 339. Some minor adjustments
have been made to the figures published here, and I have added the China
trade balance column.
nese Communist church-state declaration” by American Protestants—“close-

ly followed a pattern set by Communists in other satellite territories.” 40 The
press also highlighted the cooperation of Protestant leaders such as Y. T. Wu
with the new Chinese government. 41
Today, the official Protestant establishment in the People’s Republic of
China consists of two partly overlapping organizations, the Three-Self Patri-
otic Movement Committee (TSPM, established in 1954) and the China
Christian Council (CCC, founded in 1980), commonly known as the “two
committees.” Although both serve as arms of the state, the TSPM is “more
overtly political,” 42 while the CCC functions in a more pastoral capacity and
deals with foreign relations. Other manifestations of Protestantism in China
include house churches, sectarian groups, and groups of uncertain descent. 43
To ordinary Americans, the Three-Self Patriotic Movement was at the Com-
munist regime’s beck and call.
In June 1950, the Korean War sparked a barrage of news stories that
attested to the mutual fear and hatred between China and the United States.
China’s entry into the war in October was accompanied by a stepping up of
the anti-American campaign in China and by a vigorous drive to eradicate
American influence among Chinese. At the same time, the Committee to
224 Chapter 10
Figure 10.1. U.S. Trade Balance with China, 1971–1980 (Chinese and U.S. fig-
ures, in millions of current U.S. dollars)
Defend America by Aiding Anti-Communist China issued an appeal to Presi-

dent Harry Truman and Secretary of State Dean Acheson “urging the United
States government to ‘remain firm’ in not recognizing the Communist regime
in China.” 44 It was signed by two hundred American clergy, missionaries,
and laymen—many of whom had spent time in East Asia. The statement
asserted that U.S. recognition of the People’s Republic would be a “moral
compromise” and a “political mistake” and would endorse the CCP’s author-
ity in what the New York Times described as “occupied China.”
Pro-Communist missionaries—albeit few and far between—found them-
selves at odds with mainline Christians and other Americans who looked on
the CCP as “Reds” and on Chinese Christians as a persecuted minority. In
late 1950, the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society summoned home
missionary Dryden L. Phelps—who had been stationed in China since
1921—for hailing the restructuring of Christianity in China as the “most
profoundly religious experience I have ever been through. . . . God is work-
ing alongside of these Communists.” 45 Similarly, the Anglican cleric Hewlett
Johnson, dean of Canterbury Cathedral, came under attack for siding with
China over the use of germ warfare by the United States in Korea. 46
The estrangement between the United States and China was aptly
summed up by historian John K. Fairbank: “Since 1950 Washington has
officially sent more men to the moon than it has to China, even though China
is closer, more populous, and the trip less costly and dangerous.” 47 However,
Figure 10.2. U.S. Trade Balance with China, 1972–1990 (U.S. and Chinese fig-
ures, in millions of current U.S. dollars)
attempts to renew direct contact with China were discouraged in Protestant

circles. 48
In 1971, President Nixon’s announcement of his forthcoming visit to
Beijing awoke memories of a bygone missionary era in China, but most
importantly it provided a ray of sunshine. American Protestants reacted to the
thaw in Sino-American relations with a variety of responses, venting long-
smoldering emotions. One fundamentalist group called for a thousand three-
man missionary teams to evangelize every city in China: “Let us be ready to
be first with the message of Christ as this great nation opens its doors to the
outside world again.” 49 But this approach set off alarm bells among some
evangelicals who were aware of the linkage between Christianity and imperi-
alism in China. “There will never be a foreign-dominated church in China
again, and this is good.” 50
Not all Americans lambasted the Chinese Communist Party over the state
of the church in China. In many quarters, Nixon’s state visit to China spurred
self-examination over the mistakes made in the pre-1952 missionary era. A
New York Times piece speculated that official hostility to religion “reflected
a traditional Marxist disdain for Christianity, but it also had its roots deep in
Chinese nationalism. In moving to reorder the church in China, the Commu-
nists were appealing to a widespread sentiment among the people, who had
come to link Christianity with Western imperialism.” 51 In recognition of
common social goals such as the eradication of public prostitution and pover-
ty, other Christian leaders called for a coming to terms with Maoism and
226 Chapter 10
Chinese Communism. Some observers even called for dialogue between

Christianity and Marxism in China. 52
In reaction to Nixon’s historic announcement, some American evangeli-
cal civil rights activists, especially African Americans, again linked the open-
ing of “Red China” with the race issue in the United States. In 1971, Hosea
L. Williams (1926–2000), who had served as Martin Luther King Jr.’s chief
field general and had a record number of eighty-one civil rights arrests,
visited China for four weeks. In a sermon, Williams proclaimed,
I went to China as a Christian, and I have returned as a better Christian.

Recognizing the religious hypocrisy of America, it makes me wonder whether
or not God has decided to entrust the moral regeneration of man into the hands
of the non-believer because the believers have become so corrupt, so sinful
and so evil. 53
THE SECOND DECADE, 1980–1989:

IMPROVEMENTS AND OBSTACLES
Trade
Throughout the 1980s, the normalization of political relations and China’s

economic reforms paved the way for an acceleration of the transfer of goods,
values, ideas, personnel, and technology. These interactions were mutually
beneficial, although from the U.S. point of view, the China trade was still
small beer. Nevertheless, by 1984 the United States had become China’s
third-largest trading partner, trailing only Japan and Hong Kong, then still a
British colony. As America’s fourteenth-largest trading partner, on the other
hand, China accounted for a paltry 1.7 percent of total American foreign
trade in 1988 and 2.2 percent in 1990. 54 While these developments represent-
ed a strengthening of the web of mutual relations, they also planted the seeds
of new issues and conflicts that went on to arouse fierce debate in the 1990s.
For example, the two nations differed on the extent of China’s exports and
the trade imbalance, and the battle over statistical discrepancies in this area is
an ongoing one, recently exacerbated by the trade war during the Trump
administration (2017–2021).
The 1980s witnessed the initial phase of what would turn out to be a
massive and continuing process of economic reform in China. In the late
1970s, the Deng leadership was concerned that China’s chief economic unit
since the 1950s—communal farming—could no longer produce sufficient
grain to feed over one billion Chinese and was moreover undermining the
potential for new agricultural technology. In place of the collective farming
system, the “household responsibility” system was introduced: every village
household was given a piece of land previously held by a commune to
manage for itself. This radical change in land use practices motivated peas-
ants to work hard and seek new avenues of profitability in small rural busi-
nesses.
State-owned heavy industry was also a target of the reforms. Mao Ze-
dong’s planned economy had failed to provide the Chinese people and the
state sector with sufficient services and consumer goods such as bus, railway,
and taxi transport; hotels and catering outlets; repair shops; convenience
stores; and construction materials. These long-neglected areas were opened
up to both state and private investment as China became increasingly geared
toward a market economy. Foreign investment was also courted. By 1987
several special economic zones had been established in coastal areas of
Guangdong and Fujian—sites where foreign firms could set up industries or
joint ventures with Chinese firms and operate with a degree of economic
freedom. This initiative provided China with much-needed foreign capital,
technology, expertise, and ideas.
This Second Revolution, 55 led by Deng Xiaoping, Zhao Ziyang, and Hu
Yaobang, had brought prosperity to more Chinese than at any time since the
founding of the People’s Republic in 1949. The introduction of private farm-
ing, along with a huge bump in prices for agricultural products, spearheaded
the steady advance of the Four Modernizations. The household contract sys-
tem led to a surge in grain output in the period 1978–1984, strengthening
China’s ability to feed 22 percent of the world’s population on only 7 percent
of its arable land. The new policies encouraged the proliferation of village
and township enterprises, which set the stage for further market-led reforms.
In the industrial sector, the central government gradually loosened its control
over state-owned enterprises (20 percent of which recorded losses in 1986)
while permitting dynamic rural industries and joint-stock companies to diver-
sify their industrial production as well as expand market outlets. As competi-
tion increased, profitability criteria began to extend to state-run industries.
Managers were given greater freedom in hiring and firing. 56
Replacing “private” ownership with individual responsibility sidestepped
the fundamental issue that had stymied China’s economic development until
the late 1970s: the fear of a resurgence of “feudalism” and “capitalism,”
allowing individuals to put their own interest above the public interest, had
led to twenty-five years of disastrous inefficiency and production losses.
The restructuring of the domestic economy coincided with China’s open-
ing up to the outside world. Here, the position of Hong Kong as an entrepôt
linking East with West was crucial. The first step in connecting China to
global trade involved harnessing Hong Kong’s trading power in world mar-
kets by encouraging Hong Kong firms to sign export-processing contracts
with businesses in the newly established special economic zones in Guang-
dong and Fujian provinces. Direct international trade grew apace as well. By
the mid-1980s the number of companies engaged in the direct export and
228 Chapter 10
import trade had increased dramatically, and the central government relaxed
controls over local agencies and prioritized revenue creation. The govern-
ment also offered tax incentives to both domestic and foreign investors,
which virtually turned China’s entire littoral into a lucrative export-process-
ing zone. These dual trade reforms resulted in annual growth of around 10
percent in China’s gross national product from 1983 to 1987 and a 15.8
percent annual expansion in international trade. 57 China’s foreign trade al-
most tripled from US$20.6 billion in 1978 to US$60.2 billion in 1985. The
acceleration in China’s international trade was reflected in its trade with the
United States—but here the growth was sevenfold, from about US$1 billion
to over US$7 billion during the same period.
One noteworthy change facilitating U.S.-Chinese economic relations was
the steady liberalizing of controls over American exports of advanced tech-
nology. In 1980, such exports to China were reassigned from category Y (the
Warsaw Treaty countries) to category P (new trading partners with the Unit-
ed States), and then to category V (American allies) in May 1983 under the
Reagan administration (1981–1989). A three-tiered system of export licenses
further streamlined the licensing process, placing 75 percent of export license
applications in a “green zone” under the sole control of the Department of
Commerce.
In the 1980s, the commodities traded between the two countries were
complementary rather than competitive. In contrast to the heavy emphasis on
iron and steel in the 1970s, Chinese imports from the United States diver-
sified to include grain ($699 million in 1988), chemicals and industrial raw
materials ($596 million), fertilizer ($379 million), instruments and communi-
cations and transportation equipment ($905 million), wood products, and
chemical fibers. In the second half of the decade, finished manufactures and
technologically advanced products began to enter the China market. Among
American imports from China, textiles and clothing accounted for more than
40 percent of the total value of Chinese exports to the United States. After
Hong Kong and Macau, the United States was the largest investor in China,
with about $3 billion in assets by 1985.
Following the Chinese economic reforms of the 1980s, U.S. companies
manufacturing consumer goods were increasingly drawn to China. American
companies entered the country by forming joint ventures with a Chinese
company or government agency. Early participants included H. J. Heinz, R.
J. Reynolds Tobacco, Coca-Cola, American Express, American Motors,
AMF Inc., General Foods, Beatrice, Gillette, Pepsi-Cola, Eastman Kodak,
AT&T, Nabisco, and Bell South. By 1985, four Coke bottling plants were
operating in Beijing, Guangzhou, Xiamen, and Zhuhai, and by 2000, Coca-
Cola had invested US$1.2 billion in twenty-three plants, accounting for 70
percent of China’s domestic soft drink market. In spring 1985, the Great
Wall Sheraton Hotel in Beijing became the first internationally managed

corporation in China to accept American Express. 58
The Road to Conflict: The Problem of Retraded Goods
While bilateral trade advanced at a breakneck pace, the two nations differed
on the extent of trade and the trade imbalance, a situation that fueled the
wrangling over statistics that broke out and continues to this day. The most
striking discrepancies in the American and Chinese trade statistics, as illus-
trated in figure 10.2 and tables 10.3 and 10.4, centered on disagreement over
the extent of China’s exports. In 1984, for example, the Los Angeles Times
reported that bilateral trade had reached a record US$6.1 billion, 50.6 percent
higher than in 1983. The Chinese claim of a deficit in this figure was dis-
puted by American data, with U.S. officials “insisting that two-way trade
balanced at 3 billion for each side, whereas China claimed a 1.5 billion trade
deficit. Washington concluded that the numbers were concocted by the Chi-
nese in order to extract concessions from the United States in talks on textiles
and other trade negotiations.” 59 And while official U.S. estimates of Chinese
exports varied to some degree, the figures were relatively consistent on
American exports to China. 60 U.S. statistics show that 1986 was a turning
point, with a US$1.67 billion trade deficit against the United States that not
only made the previous year’s US$9.9 million deficit look paltry but also
kicked off a deep twenty-year trade deficit with the People’s Republic. In
stark contrast, the Chinese figures for 1986 show a more than US$1 billion
deficit against the PRC—one point on the long curve of a trade deficit
stretching from 1973 through 1992. (See figures 10.3 and 12.1.)
While these statistical differences were to lead to escalating frictions in
the future, in the 1980s both sides recognized the rapid growth in their
commercial relationship since the establishment of diplomatic relations in
1979—producing an annual average growth rate of 44 percent. 61 The contro-
versy over the bilateral trade imbalance calls for an analysis of a complex
array of local, regional, and international factors. The disagreements over the
size and causes of the deficit originated in a number of areas: the two sides’
different accounting approaches to reexports to and from China via Hong
Kong, U.S. policy constraints on exports to China, the role of foreign firms in
China, the multinational trade in commercial services, and global outsourc-
ing and capital flows in the increasingly interdependent East Asian and world
economy. Here, we will focus on one of these disputed areas—whether
American exports and imports channeled through Hong Kong should legiti-
mately be considered part of U.S.-China trade.
Hong Kong’s intermediary role in connecting China with the world was
vital to the national economy during the initial three decades of reforms. In
the mid-1980s, over 30 percent of China’s foreign exchange passed through
230 Chapter 10
Figure 10.3. Chinese Exports to the United States, 1981–1990 (U.S. and Chinese
figures, in millions of current U.S. dollars)
Hong Kong. The United States was the largest foreign investor in Hong
Kong with 54 percent of the total, followed by Japan (21 percent) and the
United Kingdom (7 percent). 62 In 1984, the United States was the leading
export market for Hong Kong with about US$7.8 billion worth of exports
and was the colony’s second-largest reexport market, handling trade worth
approximately US$1.5 billion. In 1984, China provided 25 percent of Hong
Kong’s imports (and 45 percent of its food imports), overtaking Japan as the
territory’s leading supplier. In the same year, American exports channeled
through Hong Kong to China amounted to US$375.9 million, while China in
turn exported over US$1,125 million worth of goods through Hong Kong to
the United States. 63 The Chinese insisted that these Hong Kong reexports
account for 50 percent of China’s total exports to the United States that year
(almost one-third in the U.S. statistics).
According to Chinese trade figures, 60 percent of Chinese exports to the
United States were initially consigned to buyers in Hong Kong who resold
them to a third party, who then shipped them to the United States. On top of
this, a further 20 percent of Chinese exports to the United States were reex-
ported via a third country. Although the Chinese accepted that such goods
had originated in China, they argued that the 40 to 100 percent appreciation
accrued through reexport markups should not be computed as China’s direct
imports to the United States. They argued, for example, that the added value
of reexports to the United States in 1992 and 1993, amounting to US$5.23
billion and US$6.3 billion, respectively, should be deducted from Chinese
export figures for those years.
Although U.S. trade statistics did not record goods traded to China via
Hong Kong, they did trace the countries of origin of all imports, including
reexported goods. Similarly, prior to 1993 the Chinese authorities did not
keep an account of the final destinations of goods exported through Hong
Kong—figures that might have compromised the value and volume of Chi-
nese exports to the American market. The differences in accounting practices
suggest that “the discrepancies between official trade figures may be brought
down by as much as three-quarters when adjustments are made.” 64
Clashes of Opinion: Religion, Tibet, and Human Rights
Developments in the 1980s contributed to positive news reporting about

Christianity in China and China’s religious tolerance. American media por-
trayals of Chinese Christianity fostered a sense of hope and desire for recon-
ciliation, although concerns over religious rights, imprisoned Christians, and
the running sore of Tibet tended to converge. Measured criticism of the
Communist handling of indigenous Christianity in the 1980s was followed
by the sharp debate over religious freedom in the U.S. printed press in the
1990s, to be discussed in a later chapter.
During the 1980s, many Americans applauded the revival of religious
practices in China and the opening and restoration of mosques, churches, and
temples, all the fruits of China’s new political liberalism. 65 Encouraged by
the changes taking place in China, on his Asian trip in March 1981, Pope
Table 10.3. U.S.-Chinese Trade, 1981–1990 (U.S. figures, in millions of current

U.S. dollars)
Year U.S. U.S. Total U.S. Percent of Percent of

Imports Exports to Bilateral Trade Total U.S. Total PRC
from PRC PRC Trade Balance Trade Trade
1981 1,865.3 3,602.7 5,468.0 1,737.4 1.1 12.7
1982 2,283.7 2,912.1 5,195.8 628.4 1.1 12.7
1983 2,244.1 2,176.1 4,420.2 –68.0 0.9 10.2
1984 3,064.8 3,004.0 6,068.8 –60.8 1.1 11.8
1985 3,861.7 3,851.7 7,713.4 –9.9 1.4 10.9
1986 4,770.9 3,105.4 7,876.3 –1,665.5 1.3 10.5
1987 6,293.5 3,488.4 9,781.8 –2,805.1 1.4 11.8
1988 8,512.2 5,022.9 13,535.1 –3,489.3 1.7 13.2
1989 11,988.5 5,807.4 17,795.9 –6,181.1 2.1 16.1
1990 15,223.9 4,807.3 20,031.2 –10,416.6 2.2 17.6
Source: Harding, A Fragile Relationship, 364.

232 Chapter 10
Table 10.4. U.S.-Chinese Trade, 1981–1990 (Chinese figures, in millions of cur-

rent U.S. dollars)
Year PRC PRC Total China

Exports to U.S. Imports from Bilateral Trade Trade Balance
U.S.
1981 1,505.79 4,382.53 5,888.32 –2,876.74
1982 1,619.25 3,716.75 5,336.00 –2.097.50
1983 1,720.17 2,321.67 4,041.84 –601.50
1984 2,299.71 3,663.38 5,963.09 –1,363.67
1985 2,651.60 4,373.36 7,024.96 –1,721.76
1986 2,466.43 3,527.09 5,993.25 –1,060.66
1987 2,962.66 3,809.36 6,772.02 –846.70
1988 3,209.96 5,651.93 8,261.89 –2,441.97
1989 4,410.00 7,860.00 12,270.00 –3,450.00
1990 6,580.00 5,190.00 11,770.00 1,390.00
Source: Based on Tao, Zhongmei guanxi shi, vol. 3, pp. 339–340. Figures
adjusted by the present author.
John Paul II expressed a desire to repair the broken ties between the Vatican
and independent Chinese Catholics. The pope urged China “to forget the past
and to emphasize the patriotism of Chinese Catholics.” 66 The loosening of
state control over religion in China, which accompanied the country’s drive
for modernization and national unification, was noted by the media. “Relig-
ious life in China is at the moment a matter of mutual accommodation,”
observed one report in the New York Times. 67 As part of this public relations
campaign, the China Christian Council hosted visits by foreign Christians,
creating a generally positive impression in the outside world. Three
American clergy—Rabbi Arthur Schneier of Park East Synagogue in New
York City, the Reverend Herbert Anderson of the Brick Presbyterian Church
in New York, and the Reverend Donald R. Campion of the U.S. Jesuit
Conference—were members of a delegation that visited China in 1983. They
found that “there has been a substantial growth of religious freedom in China
in the past two years.” 68 During his visit to China, the archbishop of Canter-
bury, Robert Runcie—the first Western church leader officially received by
the Chinese government—gained a similar impression: “Recent legislation
seems to have eased the pressure Christians suffered in China during the
Cultural Revolution.” 69 American evangelist Billy Graham was cautiously
optimistic after his own visit in April 1988. Encouraged by the “limited”
measure of religious freedom and the fact that “thousands of churches have
reopened in recent years,” Graham said that “Christians in China could be
salt and light in Chinese society and could be a great moral and spiritual
force for good in the nation where God has placed them.” 70
Despite this generally positive response from church leaders in the West,
issues such as the Chinese government’s policies toward unregistered
churches and, in particular, religious freedom in Tibet at times received bad
press. One American journalist noted, “Chinese rulers have taken a double-
edged approach in their effort to find a place for religion in the post-Mao
society, on the one hand reopening churches and printing and distributing
Bibles, while insisting that churches be registered with the government and
creating the China Christian Council to oversee the churches.” 71 Pro-inde-
pendence demonstrations and disturbances in Tibet received considerable
attention in the press throughout the 1980s. 72 However, criticism of China’s
handling of Tibet—which alternated between the use of “jackboot tactics and
embarrassed concessions” 73—did not go unchallenged. One New York Times
reader reacted negatively to news coverage of Tibet:
I’ve read and heard much about how Tibetans are oppressed and have no
religious freedom. I won’t comment on the ancient three-to-four-foot drum
made from human skin that hangs in the Potala, the Dalai Lama’s palace. But
there are monks everywhere and praying Tibetans everywhere you look. It’s
also known that in some places the monks themselves torched their temples in
past episodes of defiance. The remaining palaces and residences, of which
there are plenty, have not been maintained by these religious zealots, who now
eagerly accept money to restore and expand them from the same government
they vilify. 74
Another reader responded strongly to media condemnation of China’s re-

strictions on foreign travel to Tibet, which were put in place as a result of
riots that broke out there in 1987 and 1988:
In the United States, minorities are coerced to adopt English in schools. You
speak of human rights violations in China, yet isn’t the forced depletion of
ethnic identity a blatant permanent violation of human rights? . . . The Chinese
government has sealed up Tibet from foreign journalists because many tend to
only report one side of the story. I am free to go to Tibet because I make no
attempt to brainwash the Tibetans into thinking their ethnic and religious
rights have been violated. If you want to report on these topics, look in your
own backyard. 75
CHALLENGES AND IMPLICATIONS
As we have seen, Sino-American rapprochement was initially based primari-

ly on military and security considerations but with no immediate impact on
their respective economies. In the closing years of the 1980s, economic fac-
234 Chapter 10
tors had become more pressing. At the beginning of the Bush administration
in 1989, American direct investment in China stood at US$284 million, and
an estimated 100,000 American jobs were dependent on exports to China
(excluding “service” exports). China had also begun to play a role in the U.S.
Treasury notes and bond market.
Three developments were noteworthy: First, in the 1980s, the growing
involvement of Congress and political lobby groups in making China policy
reduced the power of the executive branch and its ability to engage in the
kind of clandestine diplomacy that had led to the thawing of relations during
the Nixon and Carter years. The annual renewal of China’s MFN status was a
continuing irritant for the Chinese right up until China’s accession to the
WTO in 2001. By law, members of Congress were at liberty to raise any
concerns about China, especially human rights issues, and the president was
obliged to respond. The heated debate over China made an annual spectacle
on Capitol Hill, particularly after 1989, as Congress, the president, the Chi-
nese, and other interest groups wrangled over the issues. The result was that
corporate interests were often in conflict with national interests. In 2005,
James McGregor, former China bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal and
corporate executive, offered his pro-business insights on America’s entan-
gled interests in China: “[T]echnology companies doing business in China
require significant investments in proactive government relations in Wash-
ington. The mission isn’t only to make friends, but to educate officials.” 76
Otherwise, such firms “could find their business short-circuited by political
storms.” 77
Second, the problems experienced by both sides were largely a natural
consequence of the rapid advances in communication between two vastly
different societies. For example, in 1979, the first Chinese joint venture law
came into force, representing a step forward in opening China to foreign
investment. In the following three years, a long list of new organizations and
regulations was created, intended to attract and channel foreign funds. How-
ever, in the first half of the 1980s, the much anticipated “floodgate” failed to
eventuate as far as investment from the United States was concerned.
Chinese concerns were similar. From their perspective, potential prob-
lems were caused by the mutual lack of experience and inadequate under-
standing of each country’s laws, accounting systems, markets, pricing poli-
cies, management systems, fund-raising methods, and the financial situations
of the enterprises concerned. 78
Rapid commercial growth sometimes resulted in a major backlash. As
more and more Chinese textile products entered the American market, China
provoked the ire of the American textile industry and its powerful political
supporters, triggering surging protectionism in the United States. In reaction
to its escalating global trade deficit and increasing pressure from the manu-
facturing sector in the 1980s, the U.S. Congress moved to create legal bar-
riers to Chinese textile imports. Under the Multifiber Agreement and the
Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC) that governed the international
trade in textiles and apparel from 1974 through 2004, developed countries
could unilaterally impose quotas on the quantity and categories of textile
imports from developing countries to prevent disruption of existing markets.
During the seven years from the signing of the first Sino-American agree-
ment on textiles in 1980 to the third accord in 1987, the categories of Chinese
textiles restricted by quotas grew from eight to eighty-seven, and over 85
percent of Chinese exports were put under the quota system. From 1987
through 1991, the period covered by the third agreement, the permitted annu-
al growth rate for Chinese textile exports was 3 percent, dropping from 19
percent in previous years.
The third major development in the late 1980s was surging American
anxiety over its trade deficit with China—just one aspect (but an important
one) of the growing international debt accrued by the United States, rising
from $26 billion in the late 1970s to $126 billion in 1988. The China trade
imbalance, like that with Japan and Taiwan, fed American domestic demands
for counter-protectionist measures as well as calls for the further opening up
of the Chinese market and increasing the transparency of trade rules. 79
It would be fanciful to subscribe to the notion that both sides were critical
to each other’s economies and polity at the time. The example of Taiwan
provides a useful reality check. With a population of a little over 22 million,
Taiwan has a land area of only 35,960 square kilometers, slightly larger than
Belgium. Nevertheless, with US$82 billion in foreign exchange reserves—
the largest in the world in 1992—and a per capita income of US$10,000 a
year, in the 1980s Taiwan ranked sixth among America’s trade partners,
while the United States was Taiwan’s top foreign trader. 80 Some argued that
it was the combination of political shocks, both external (for example, the
Nixon thunderbolt of reconciliation with mainland China) and internal (pop-
ular unrest on Taiwan) and economic difficulties (the 1973 oil crisis), that
forced the ruling Nationalist Party to embark on the democratization of Tai-
wan. 81
As the 1980s came to an end, the promise of the China market and the
allure of the United States gave people hope. Nevertheless, a decade of
sustained improvement in Sino-American relations suffered serious setbacks
sparked by the Tiananmen crisis of 1989. How could this happen?
The realization that free markets and a growing middle class do not auto-
matically give rise to liberal democracies like those “in the countries we
compare ourselves with” has only gradually and belatedly dawned upon the
American public and others in the free world. The main rationale behind the
aid delivered under the Marshall Plan—that economic growth leads to de-
mocracy—proved its worth among the OECD countries and, to an extent,
after the end of the Cold War in the “third wave democracies,” as Samuel
236 Chapter 10
Huntington called them. During the Cold War, this doctrine served as a
convenient pretext for dictators ostensibly awaiting the growth of a mature
middle class against communist encroachment, and it has, until recently with
limited success, informed ideas of political conditionality in development aid
policies.
However, this mechanism had no impact in the People’s Republic, al-
though many seeds of nascent democracy have been identified—for exam-
ple, the June 4th Incident, village committee elections, instances of civic
protest, and what in Chinese political jargon are called “mass incidents.”
Given the growth in China’s middle-income cohort, higher education, white-
collar workers, widespread car ownership, and booming urban lifestyles, the
absence of genuinely multiparty and liberal and representative democracy in
China has been met with incredulity in the United States. Narratives about
totalitarianism, including prison camps, religious persecution, and the up-
grading of the maximum presidential incumbency period from two terms to
life, have only recently come to dominate the political debate once again.
On the other side of the ledger, China’s reform process begun in 1978
had, within about ten years, done away with classical socialist, not to say
Stalinist, forms of economic planning, listed prices, and mandatory produc-
tion quotas. The reforms instituted a market economy, albeit operating under
centralized planning, thus freeing up individual economic potential. State
enterprises were privatized or made autonomous (owned by state-controlled
holding authorities), while private enterprises were allowed to grow very
large. Infrastructural development and new technologies were drivers of
growth but were not driven by demand. To outside observers, China’s econo-
my looked like an illiberal yet “destructive–creative” form of capitalism that
would ultimately break up totalitarian party rule and create a liberal demo-
cratic order in its place. For the Chinese leadership, by contrast, the socialist
political economy they were nurturing constituted a superior, rational, coor-
dinated, and balanced development strategy, a more advanced stage of scien-
tific socialism. Private enterprise both benefited from and was coopted by
state planning; it was redefined by the terminology of “reform and develop-
ment” as one of several modes of ownership that served the goals of national
economic development—goals that were closely integrated with anti-poverty
and human development policies tied to increasingly pro-environmental ob-
jectives.
In the United States, which had experienced Japan’s economic rise some
decades earlier, the belief in the market–democracy nexus prevailed. After
all, Japan’s form of illiberal capitalism—the term is borrowed from Kozo
Yamamura and Wolfgang Streeck—with its combination of centralized state
guidance and large industrial conglomerates, not only seemed to fit within
the global liberal economic order but also encompassed benign democratic
practices.
In these various developments, two conflicting perceptions of “self” and

“other” can be discerned. First, it is free market competition, democratic
norms, and checks and balances versus irrational totalitarianism and state
intervention. Second, it is rational coordination and developmental planning
versus chaotic, rudderless capitalism and a disorderly democracy. Each
ideology predicted the instability and ultimate downfall or reversal of the
other. During the past four decades, interactions between the United
States and China took place under the aegis of these polarized notions—
positions that intensified to become a major source of discord that climaxed
in the aftermath of the 1989 June 4th Incident and again in the late 2010s.
FURTHER READING
Richard Madsen’s China and the American Dream: A Moral Inquiry (Berke-
ley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1995) examines the American
reaction to the 1989 Tiananmen event in terms of the “liberal myth” of China
developed over many years. The evolving images of “China” and the “United
States” as viewed by Americans and Chinese respectively are an important
topic for which there is unfortunately no room in the present text. Besides
further references in the epilogue, useful works on the subject include the
following: 82 Richard Baum, China Watcher: Confessions of a Peking Tom
(Seattle, Wash.: University of Washington Press, 2010); Jing Li, China’s
America: The Chinese View the United States, 1900–2000 (New York: State
University of New York Press, 2011); Sigrid Schmalzer, “Speaking about
China, Learning from China: Amateur China Experts in 1970s America,”
Journal of American-East Asian Relations 16 (2009): 313–352; Hongshan Li
and Zhaohui Hong, eds., Image, Perception, and the Making of U.S.-China
Relations (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1998); David L.
Shambaugh, Beautiful Imperialist: China Perceives America, 1972–1990
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991); Steven W. Mosher, Chi-
na Misperceived: American Illusions and Chinese Reality (New York: Basic
Books, 1990); Paul M. Evans, John Fairbank and the American Understand-
ing of Modern China (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1988); John King Fair-
bank, Chinabound: A Fifty-Year Memoir (New York: Harper and Row,
1982); and Paul Hollander, Political Pilgrims: Travels of Western Intellectu-
als to the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba 1928–1978 (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1981).
In the realm of religion, Xi Lian’s Redeemed by Fire: The Rise of Popular
Christianity in Modern China (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press,
2010) traces the development of independent Chinese Protestant churches
that sought to attract the masses with a strong Pentecostal, apocalyptic, and
premillennial message. Consequently, the naturalization of Protestantism in
238 Chapter 10
China has been achieved through an influential group of leaders including

underground pastors in contemporary China who are closely associated with
the United States. Lian’s latest book, Blood Letters: The Untold Story of Lin
Zhao, A Martyr in Mao’s China (New York: Basic Books, 2018), documents
the extraordinary story of Lin Zhao (1932–1965), one of the Christian hero-
ines who sacrificed a great deal in their fight for a better, democratic, and
more humane China. Blood Letters adds important details to the existing
scholarship on Mao’s China, the individual’s place in an authoritarian soci-
ety, and the ontology of evil seen in theological and ethical terms.
For the movement of ideas and people between the United States and
China, see Cheng Li, Bridging Minds across the Pacific: U.S.-China Educa-
tional Exchanges, 1978–2003 (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2005); Ho-
ward Gardner, To Open Minds: Chinese Clues to the Dilemma of Contempo-
rary American Education (New York: Basic Books, 1989); Rosemary Ma-
honey, The Early Arrival of Dreams: A Year in China (New York: Fawcett
Columbine, 1990); Mark Salzman, Iron and Silk (New York: Random
House, 1986); and Vera Schwarcz, Long Road Home: A China Journal (New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1984). In February 2021, the Wilson
Center released translations of sixty-three Japanese-language documents
from the Diplomatic Archives in Tokyo, Japan, offering new details on Sino-
Japanese relations and the transformation of China’s economy, politics, and
diplomacy in the 1970s and 1980s, https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/
japanese-foreign-ministry-records-china-1974-1986 (accessed February 20,
2021).
While part II of this book reflects on the interactions between Mao’s
China and African American activists and intellectuals, the topic of Chi-
nese–Black American relations during the last two decades of the Cold War
is yet to be fully explored. One example is American boxing in China and the
former world heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali (1942–2016)—a Mus-
lim turned social activist—who visited China in 1979, 1985 and 1993, and
who reportedly struck up a friendship with Deng Xiaoping. Useful publica-
tions in this area include Fu Xipeng (傅溪鹏), “Caifang shijie quawang Ali”
[采访世界拳王阿里 An interview with the world’s king of boxing Ali],
Xinwen jizhe 1 (1985): 12–13; Matthew D. John, “From Peace to the Pan-
thers: PRC Engagement with African-American Transnational Networks,
1949–1979,” Past and Present 218, Suppl. 8 (2013): 233–257; Benjamin
Young, “Imagining Revolutionary Feminism: Communist Asia and the
Women of the Black Panther Party,” Faculty Research & Publications 21
(2019), https://scholar.dsu.edu/anspapers/21 (accessed February 19, 2021);
and Hongshan Li, “Building a Black Bridge: China’s Interaction with
African-American Activists during the Cold War,” Journal of Cold War
Studies 20, no. 3 (Summer 2018): 114–152.
NOTES
1. Deng Xiaoping (邓小平), Deng Xiaoping jianghua shilu: huiyi ju [邓小平讲话实录：

会议篇 Record of Deng Xiaoping’s speeches: conferences] (Beijing: Hongqi chubanshe,
2019), September 1–11, 1982, opening and other remarks at the Twelfth National Congress of
the Chinese Communist Party, e-version, pp. 2565–2781.
2. The two paragraphs below draw on my opinion essay, “How did U.S.-China Relations
Get to Where They are?” European Institute for Chinese Studies, newsletter, no. 8, January
2021, http://www.eurics.eu/upload/document/20210203020235_eurics-january2021.pdf.
3. W. Arthur Lewis, “Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour,” The
Manchester School 22, no. 2 (1954): 139–191; John C. H. Fei and Gustav Ranis, Development
of the Labor Surplus Economy: Theory and Policy (Homewood, Ill.: Irwin, 1964); Ragnar
Nurkse, Problems of Capital Formation in Underdeveloped Countries (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1953); Michael P. Todaro and Stephen C. Smith, Economic Development,
eleventh edition (Boston, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 2012); John W. Mellor, Agricultural Devel-
opment and Economic Transformation: Promoting Growth with Poverty Reduction (New
York: Palgrave, 2017).
4. Flemming Christiansen, “Creative Borrowing: How the Chinese Appropriated Dualism
and Transmuted It,” in Cultural Encounters: China, Japan and the West, ed. Søren Clausen,
Roy Starrs, and Anne Wedell-Wedellsborg (Århus: Århus University Press, 1995), 410–425.
5. Wu Chengming (吴承明), “Lun eryuan jingji” [论二元经济 On the dual economy],
Lishi yanjiu 2 (1994): 96–108; Li Yining (厉以宁), Zhongguo jingji gaige de silu [中国经济改
革的思路 Thoughts on China’s economic reform] (Beijing: Zhongguo zhanwang chubanshe,
1989).
6. http://www.ccdi.gov.cn/yaowen/201811/t20181129_184178.html and https://gaodawei.
wordpress.com/2018/11/30/hu-fuming-author-of-mind-opening-guangming-daily-
commentary-practice-is-the-only-criterion-of-truth/ (accessed October 20, 2020).
7. They were drawn mainly, but not exclusively, from the Commission for Integrated
Survey of Natural Resources under CAS—a story that is to my knowledge yet to be fully told.
Only the Family Planning Commission has been extensively treated, by Susan Greehalgh,
while Joseph Fewsmith has discussed the later stages of the emerging mix of “princeling”
scholars and reformist leaders and bureaucrats.
8. In sharp contrast to the class divisions of the Cultural Revolution that had pilloried
intellectuals as the “stinking ninth category” (Chou laojiu 臭老九) of the reactionary classes.
9. Although these divisions are not very evident in the official summarizing publications
put out by the UN (https://www.un.org/chinese/events/wssd/agenda21.htm), they played an
important role in debates at the time.
10. https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/tanzania/tanzam.htm (accessed October
20, 2020).
11. Some of the material below draws on Dong Wang, “US-China Economic Relations,” in
A Handbook of US-China Relations, ed. Andrew Tan (Surrey: Edward Elgar, 2016), 155–177,
and “China’s Trade Relations with the United States in Perspective,” Journal of Current Chi-
nese Affairs 39, no. 3 (October 2010): 165–210.
12. Qian Qichen (钱其琛), “Qingshan zhe buzhu, bijing dongliu qu: Jinian Zhongmei
Shanghai gongbao fabiao sanshi zhounian” [青山遮不住, 毕竟东流去: 纪念中美上海公报发
表三十周年 High mountains cannot hold the river back from flowing east: Commemorating
the thirtieth anniversary of the announcement of the Sino-American Communiqué], Qiushi
zazhi [求是杂志 Seeking the truth magazine] 4 (2002): 4–9.
13. Liu Liandi (刘连第) and Wang Dawei (汪大为), eds., Zhongmei guanxi de guiji: Jianji-
ao yilai dashi zonglan [中美关系的轨迹: 建交以来大事纵览 The trajectory of U.S.-Chinese
relations: An overview of major events since the establishment of diplomatic relations] (Beij-
ing: Shishi chubanshe, 1995), 262.
14. Theodore H. White, “An Old China Hand in the New China,” Life, March 17, 1972, p.
47.
15. White, “An Old China Hand in the New China,” 50B.
16. Barbara W. Tuchman, Notes from China (New York: Collier Books, 1972), 3.
240 Chapter 10
17. Tuchman, Notes from China, 3.

18. Leonard S. Silk, “Nixon, China and Wall St.: Why Has News of Nixon’s Trip Had No
Effect on the Market?” New York Times, July 21, 1971, pp. 45, 48.
19. Gary M. Walton and Hugh Rockoff, History of the American Economy, eighth edition
(Fort Worth, Tex.: Dayton Press, 1998), 650.
20. James Reston, “China and the Dollar,” New York Times, August 20, 1971, p. 33.
21. Li Lanqing, Breaking Through: The Birth of China’s Opening-Up Policy (New York:
22. Roderick MacFarquhar, ed., Sino-American Relations, 1949–71 (New York: Praeger,
1972), 254.
23. Robert Keatley, “Melting the Ice: U.S. Announces Five More Steps to Spur Commerce
with Red China,” New York Times, April 1, 1971, p. 2.
24. William R. Galeota, “Illusory Market: Trade with China, Long a Dream of Americans,
Remains Only a Mirage,” Wall Street Journal, February 29, 1972, p. 1.
25. “End of an Embargo,” New York Times, June 11, 1971, p. 34. Authors unknown unless
otherwise specified.
26. “The China Trade,” New York Times, February 16, 1972, p. 38.
27. Brendan Jones, “China Trade: Wary Hope,” New York Times, April 18, 1971, p. F1.
28. “The China Trade,” New York Times, February 16, 1972, p. 38.
29. From its establishment in 1950 to its end in 1991, the Coordinating Committee for
Multilateral Export Controls (CoCom) was an informal multilateral organization through which
the United States and its allies attempted to coordinate the national controls they applied to the
export of strategic materials and technology to the Communist world. See Office of Technolo-
gy Assessment, Technology and East-West Trade (Washington, D.C.: Congress, 1979), chaps.
8 and 11.
30. Relaxation of Restrictions on Trade with the People’ s Republic of China, National
Security Decision Memorandum 155, February 17, 1972, Nixon Library, http://nixon.archives.
gov/virtuallibrary/documents/nsdm/nsdm_155.pdf (accessed May 27, 2011).
31. Sale of Inertial Navigation Systems to the People’s Republic of China, National Security
Decision Memorandum 204, February 6, 1973, Nixon Library, http://nixon.archives.gov/
virtuallibrary/documents/nsdm/nsdm_204.pdf (accessed May 27, 2011).
32. Richard T. Devane, “The United States and China: Claims and Assets,” Asian Survey
18, no. 12 (December 1978): 1267–1269; Joseph A. Martellaro, “Some Aspects of Sino-
American Economic Relations: Post-1950,” China Report 18 (July–August 1982): 19–33.
33. http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=browse_usc&docid=Cite:+
19USC2432 (accessed November 23, 2007).
34. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/11/20011113-16.html (accessed No-
vember 23, 2007).
35. Flemming Christiansen and Shirin M. Rai, Chinese Politics and Society: An Introduc-
tion (London: Prentice Hall, 1996), part 3. Flemming Christiansen, “Food Security, Urbaniza-
tion and Social Stability in China,” Journal of Agrarian Change 9, no. 4 (October 2009):
548–575.
36. Bohdan O. Szuprowicz, “China Fever: Scrambling for Shares in a $600 Million Buying
Spree,” Management Review 68, no. 5 (May 1979): 8–16.
37. Paul A. Varg, “Sino-American Relations Past and Present,” Diplomatic History 4, no. 2
(April 1980): 101–112.
38. Szuprowicz, “China Fever.”
39. The material in this section partially draws on Dong Wang, “Portraying Chinese Chris-
tianity: The American Press and U.S.-China Relations since the 1920s,” Journal of American-
East Asian Relations 13 (November 2008): 81–119.
40. “Peiping Launches Christian Reform,” New York Times, September 25, 1950, p. 6.
41. Henry R. Lieberman, “Peiping Executes 2 Chinese Priests,” New York Times, October
21, 1950, p. 4.
42. Jacqueline E. Wenger, “Official vs. Underground Protestant Churches in China: Chal-
lenges for Reconciliation and Social Influence,” Review of Religious Research 46, no. 2 (2004):
169–182.
43. For a comprehensive seventy-four-page report on the divisions in Chinese Protestant-

ism, see Jonathan Walton (Long Term Strategy Group), “Contemporary Chinese Protestantism
and Ongoing Developments in Church-State Relations,” January 2007, manuscript (courtesy of
Daniel Bays).
44. “Clergy Urge U.S. Bar to Communist China,” New York Times, October 2, 1950, p. 5.
45. “Red Letter Causes Missionary Recall,” New York Times, December 20, 1950, p. 7. Dan
L. Thrapp, “Spread of Christianity in China Halted by Reds,” Los Angeles Times, December 1,
1951.
46. “‘Red Dean’ Draws British Fire by Statement Backing Peiping Charges on Germ War-
fare,” New York Times, July 9, 1952, p. 3.
47. John K. Fairbank, “The Time Is Ripe for China to Shift Outward Again,” New York
Times, April 18, 1971, p. E1.
48. George Dugan, “Churchman Cool to Visiting China,” New York Times, January 18,
1957, p. 7.
49. Edward B. Fiske, “China: Still Some Life in the Church,” New York Times, December 5,
1971.
50. Fiske, “China: Still Some Life in the Church.”
51. “Protestants in Peking: A Church Survives,” New York Times, October 14, 1972, p. 5.
52. John B. Sheerin, “The Nixon Visit and Religion in China,” Catholic World 213, no.
1278 (September 1971): 259–260.
53. “Talks of Red China Trip,” Chicago Defender, December 28, 1971, p. 8.
54. Jia Shi, “Future Prospects for Broadening US-China Economic and Trade Cooperation,”
trans. Thomas Apple, Columbia Journal of World Business 20, no. 4 (Winter 1985): 57–58.
Harry Harding, A Fragile Relationship: Reform after Mao (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Insti-
tution, 1987), 145–154.
55. Harry Harding, China’s Second Revolution: Reform after Mao (Washington, D.C.:
Brookings Institution, 1987). Yu Guangyuan, ed., China’s Socialist Modernization (Beijing:
Foreign Languages Press, 1984).
56. Barry Naughton, The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth (Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT Press, 2007), chaps. 4 and 16.
57. Harding, A Fragile Relationship, 145–154.
58. Joseph O. Eatlack Jr. and Roberta Lucker, “Is China Moving from Marx to Mastercard?”
Journal of Consumer Marketing 3, no. 3 (Summer 1986): 5–21.
59. “U.S.-China Trade Hit a Record $6.1 Billion in 1984,” Los Angeles Times, January 23,
1985, p. OC-C2.
60. The figures adopted by David Lampton differ from those quoted above from Harry
Harding. According to Lampton, for example, Chinese exports to the United States from 1981
to 1990 were valued at US$2,062, $2,502, $2,477, $3,381, $4,224, $5,241, $6,910, $9,261,
$12,901, and $16,296 million, respectively. David Lampton, Same Bed, Different Dreams:
Managing U.S.-China Relations, 1989–2000 (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press,
2001), 382.
61. Jia Shi, “Future Prospects for Broadening US-China Economic and Trade Cooperation.”
62. K. C. Mun and T. S. Chan, “The Role of Hong Kong in United States-China Trade,”
Columbia Journal of World Business 21, no. 1 (Spring 1986): 67–73.
63. Mun and Chan, “The Role of Hong Kong in United States-China Trade.”
64. Sarah Y. Tong, “The US-China Trade Imbalance: How Big Is It Really?” China: An
International Journal 3, no. 1 (March 2005): 131–154.
65. Victoria Graham, “More Attending Beijing Mosque,” Los Angeles Times, December 2,
1979, p. H10. Michael Parks, “China Gives Official Blessing to Resurgence of Islam,” Los
Angeles Times, May 27, 1981. Christopher S. Wren, “Islam, after Persecutions, Rebounds in
China,” New York Times, June 15, 1983, p. A1. John Tagliabue, “China’s Catholics Restore a
Church in Peking,” New York Times, December 18, 1985, p. A6.
66. Charles Austin, “China’s Catholics: A Nation unto Itself Moves to Meet the Vatican,”
New York Times, March 29, 1981, p. E7; E. J. Dionne Jr., “Pope Lauds China’s Effort to
Modernize,” New York Times, July 25, 1985, p. A3.
242 Chapter 10
67. Christopher S. Wren, “Religion and China Make Accommodations,” New York Times,
December 20, 1981, p. E18.
68. “American Clergymen Note Growth of Religious Freedom in China,” Associated Press,
July 9, 1983, AM cycle, international news section.
69. “Archbishop Says China Improving Religious Tolerance,” Asian Week (San Francisco)
5, no. 20 (January 13, 1984): 23. Edward A. Gargan, “It’s Good News from China for Billy
Graham,” New York Times, April 17, 1988, p. 4.
70. “Billy Graham Sees Better Future for China’s Christians,” Associated Press, April 29,
1988, PM cycle, international news section.
71. David E. Anderson, “Religion in America; Degree of Religious Freedom in China Still
at Issue,” United Press International, February 17, 1984, BC cycle. William McGurn, “Forbid-
den Tibet Looks Outward,” Wall Street Journal, April 14, 1988, p. 1.
72. Charlene L. Fu, “Young Monks Says [sic] Tibet Must Be Free,” Associated Press,
October 13, 1987, PM cycle.
73. “A Captive Tibet,” Globe and Mail, April 11, 1988. David Holley, “Tension Erupts
during Lhasa’s Great Prayer Festival in Tibet, It’s Butter Sculpture and Bitter Words,” Los
Angeles Times, March 6, 1988, p. 5.
74. Letter to editor, Michele Hoffman, New York Times, August 9, 1988.
75. Teh-han P. Chow, “‘Chinese Gulag’ in Tibet,” Los Angeles Times, March 4, 1988, p. 10.
76. James McGregor, One Billion Customers: Lessons from the Front Lines of Doing Busi-
ness in China (New York: Free Press, 2005), 186.
77. McGregor, One Billion Customers, 188.
78. Rudy Ruggles Jr., “The Environment for American Business Ventures in the People’s
Republic of China,” Columbia Journal of World Business 18, no. 4 (1983): 67–73.
79. Julia Chang Bloch, “Commercial Diplomacy,” in Living with China: U.S./China Rela-
tions in the Twenty-First Century, ed. Ezra F. Vogel (New York: Norton, 1997), 185–216.
80. Nancy Bernkopf Tucker, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the United States, 1945–1992 (New
York: Twayne Publishers, 1994), 168.
81. Hung-Mao Tien and Chyuan-Jeng Shiau, “Taiwan’s Democratization: A Summary,”
World Affairs 155, no. 2 (Fall 1992), “Democracy in Taiwan: Part One,” pp. 58–61.
82. I am indebted to Charles Hayford for most of these references.
Chapter Eleven
Clashes, Cooperation,
and Fluctuations in the Relationship
Three sets of dynamics gave rise to the unsettled and deteriorating relation-
ship between the United States and China between 1989/1990 and 2020.
First, the two powers had weathered a number of major crises, demonstrating
their mutual interest in sustaining stability and peace despite changes in
leadership in both countries and in the ongoing diffusion of global power.
Second, the balance of power between the two nations was rapidly changing.
Although since the end of the Cold War, the United States—the default
superpower for three decades—had often had the upper hand in the relation-
ship, it was now being seriously challenged on all fronts including security,
technology, military and economic affairs, even its national culture, while
China—the world’s newly risen power—was acting to limit America’s re-
gional and international ambitions at an accelerating pace.
Third, following the demise of the Soviet Union, many U.S. policy mak-
ers convinced themselves that there was only one remaining threat: China.
Political irritants continued to disrupt relations between the two countries—
although during the period 2002–2012 the relationship became less turbulent.
But tensions ramped up again by the end of 2011 with President Barack
Obama’s announcement of an increased American security commitment to
the Asia- and Indo-Pacific. Clashes and cooperation between the United
States and China across the globe have created new diplomatic realities for
both countries in the strategic repositioning of both sides during the Xi Jin-
ping (2012/2013–present) and Trump (2017–2021) presidencies. More and
more people outside China came to believe that it was detrimental to conduct
business as usual with a menacing China, whereas China has long considered
the United States to be the major threat to world peace and stability. In a
recent survey conducted in Europe, Europeans expressed their opinion that
243
244 Chapter 11
China will be leading the world within a decade. 1 Following Russia’s annex-
ation of Crimea in 2014 and with Europe marked out as a central “battle-
ground” for the United States, China, and Russia, a contemporary trinity is
emerging in world politics, on the fringes of which Europe is slowly inclin-
ing toward strategic autonomy.
The period 1990–2020 spans five presidencies involving Republicans and
Democrats with very different styles of governance—Presidents George H.
W. Bush (1989–1993), William Jefferson Clinton (1993–2001), George W.
Bush (2001–2009), Barack Obama (2009–2017), and Donald Trump
(2017–2021)—and three generations of Chinese leaders—President Jiang
Zemin and Premier Zhu Rongji (1989–2002), Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao
(2002–2012), Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang (2012/2013–present). By the end of
these three decades, U.S.-Chinese relations had worsened, and both countries
failed to develop the capacity to lift their relationship onto a positive plane.
The most noteworthy change has been the clash on multiple fronts that has
now come to define many elements of the U.S.-Chinese and global relation-
ships, even as the two economies are deeply intertwined. The past thirty
years have witnessed the phenomenon of decoupling and/or coupling (for
example, of human rights concerns from trade); great power rivalry on a
global scale; and the shifting roles of the United States and China in domes-
tic, regional, and global affairs. Economic and financial ties were long con-
sidered the stabilizer, or ballast, in their uneasy relations. But developments
during the past few years have severely challenged, if not altered, the nature
of the world’s most consequential bilateral relationship. With the turbo-
charged juggernaut of the Chinese economy seemingly unstoppable, the
United States has found itself in fierce competition with China in all corners
of the globe.
THE TIANANMEN CRISIS: A WATERSHED
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 presaged the rapid collapse of Communist
regimes in Eastern and Central Europe as well as the dissolution of the Soviet
Union, marking the end of the Cold War only two years later. As the com-
mon threat of the Soviet Union dissipated, China and the United States
drifted into an uneasy relationship in which their growing economic, social,
and cultural ties, before President Donald Trump took office in 2017, often
stood in marked contrast to the “roller-coaster” effect felt in the political
domain.
The gravest challenge to the bilateral relationship since the rapproche-
ment of 1972 originated in the Tiananmen student protests in Beijing in
May–June 1989. This turned out to be a global event that put China under an
Clashes, Cooperation, and Fluctuations in the Relationship 245
unprecedented—and unfavorable—media spotlight. One American study re-

veals the extent of the coverage on television alone:
[T]he evening news shows of the three major networks (ABC, CBS and NBC)
totaled five hundred seventy-seven China stories in the first six months of
1989, by comparison with forty-four stories in all of 1988. There were three
hundred ninety-seven stories in these shows in the month between May 14 and
June 14, 1989, by comparison with three hundred forty-four stories in the ten
years (1972–81) before China was opened to American television coverage. 2
The Tiananmen Incident was long in the brewing. It had strong links with the
democracy movement, symbolized by the Democracy Wall in Beijing, where
a spontaneous popular movement resulted in the pasting up of political pos-
ters (dazibao, big-character posters) in the winter of 1978. 3 Drawing inspira-
tion from a Chinese intellectual tradition of dissent and affecting China’s
major cities, this loosely defined movement expressed a variety of opinions
on Mao Zedong, the Cultural Revolution, and other controversial issues in
the form of commentaries, literary publications, and group actions. Although
prominent activists such as Wei Jingsheng were strong supporters of Western
liberalism, others were critical of American-style democracy. While this lat-
ter group espoused socialism, they insisted that it “must be steeped in popular
democracy, a scientific socialism infused with the boundless vigor of life.” 4
Notwithstanding the diversity exhibited by these activist groups, the newly
consolidated Chinese leadership was irritated by their outspokenness, which
went beyond the bounds of criticism and free speech sanctioned by the Com-
munist Party. Beginning in 1979, the government imprisoned a number of
activists and outlawed unofficial publications, wall posters, and dissident
organizations. Between 1985 and 1987 the suppressed democracy movement
reemerged, but now with the support of a new group—militant university
students—who were dissatisfied with corruption, inflation, the abuse of state
power, the lag between economic and political reform, and the growing gap
between rich and poor. These student demonstrations, however, defied the
boundaries of the limited political participation and sanctioned dissent per-
missible in China. 5
The massive demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing,
less than a mile away from offices and residences of the top Chinese leader-
ship, were triggered by the death on April 15, 1989 of former party general
secretary Hu Yaobang (1915–1989)—who had resigned in January 1987,
allegedly because of his sympathy for dissident student rallies. 6 Initially the
government was reticent about the mass protests, but on April 26 the author-
ities denounced them as “disturbances” organized by a “handful” of subver-
sive individuals. 7 Nevertheless, the Chinese government failed to move
quickly to quell the unrest, “allowing the students, in effect, to get out of
control and pose a direct challenge to their authority.” 8
246 Chapter 11
Hundreds of thousands of students, workers, and other citizens camped

out in the square for over a month. At the time, U.S. diplomatic and intelli-
gence analyses offered warnings about the potential for political and social
disorder posed by the demonstrations and the setback to reform efforts in
China:
Events of the last several months have cast doubt on China’s ability to weather
the social strains that accompany reform and modernization in a backward,
Communist country. . . . Growing social disorder has slowed China’s reform
program by discrediting reform policies and providing ammunition to conser-
vative critics of reform. . . . Further, the party [the Chinese Communist Party,
CCP] no longer commands the moral authority it once did. In our judgment,
the Cultural Revolution has left a legacy of bitterness and disillusionment with
the party and Communist ideology that reformers have not been able to over-
come. 9
In mid-May, the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev visited Beijing, seeking

rapprochement with China. Student demonstrators disrupted the welcome
ceremony, chanting Gorbachev’s name as the symbol of the political changes
they wanted for their own nation. Disagreements became apparent in the
CCP leadership on how to handle the protests; the five members of the
Politburo Standing Committee were locked in an impasse over whether to
resort to force in Beijing. It has been claimed that while Zhao Ziyang, gener-
al secretary of the CCP (1987–1989), and Hu Qili objected to the imposition
of martial law, Li Peng and Yao Yilin supported it, and Qiao Shi abstained
from voting. The final decision was made by a group of elder party statesmen
led by Deng Xiaoping who decided to call on the People’s Liberation Army
(PLA) to restore order. 10
On May 20, Premier Li Peng declared martial law in Beijing in the hope
that these measures would be sufficient to clear the square and resolve the
standoff peacefully. However, many demonstrators continued to occupy the
site. The options available to the government were diminishing. The leader-
ship spent a “considerable amount of time and energy on convincing the
military to agree to—or on negotiating the political price of its involvement
in—the final “use of force” against civilians. Deng allegedly signed the final
order to send troops into the square. 11 On the night of June 3 and in the early
morning of June 4, the PLA forced their way into Beijing and stormed the
square, inflaming the ire of American observers and other protest sympathiz-
ers around the world. At home, many people feared that China might disinte-
grate into a number of states controlled by warlords—a situation similar to
the first Republic of China (1912–1928). In a similar vein, the State Depart-
ment reported at one point that China was experiencing a “descent into
chaos” as various military units engaged in clashes with each other and the
army appeared to be running out of control. 12
Confronted with this situation, the new Bush administration had to per-
form a subtle balancing act. President Bush had to balance his reactions to
the Tiananmen Incident—finding a response that effectively condemned and
punished the actions of the Chinese leadership, but one that did not under-
mine the realpolitik behind the relationship. In the words of a memo from
one presidential advisor, it was important to “prevent Sino-Soviet normaliza-
tion from jeopardizing its [China’s] relationship with US which retains vital
importance as counterbalance to USSR, key element for stability in East
Asia, source of technology/investments.” 13
On top of these considerations, there was a real concern that China was
about to collapse into chaos. At a news conference held on June 5, 1989,
President Bush called for a measured response: “This is not the time for an
emotional response, but for a reasoned, careful action that takes into account
both our long-term interests and recognition of a complex internal situation
in China.” 14 In reaction to the violent crackdown in China, he ordered sus-
pension of all government-to-government sales and commercial exports of
weapons, as well as suspension of bilateral visits between military leaders; he
urged a sympathetic review of requests by Chinese students in the United
States to extend their stay; and he offered humanitarian and medical assis-
tance through the Red Cross to those injured during the army’s assault on the
square. In addition, he ordered a review of other aspects of the bilateral
relationship.
Meanwhile, to keep the lines of communication open, Bush secretly dis-
patched his top aide, National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft
(1989–1993), to visit China in June and again in December 1989 for discus-
sions with Deng Xiaoping and other Chinese leaders. The president’s moder-
ate reaction prompted a hardline response from Congress. Displeased with
the limited sanctions imposed, both parties in Congress passed two pieces of
legislation. The first was the Chinese Student Protection Act of 1992, spon-
sored by Democratic congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, which granted perma-
nent residency to mainland Chinese students who had arrived in the United
States on or before April 11, 1990. The second measure prompted by the
Tiananmen Incident were the sanctions, including arms sales, that were
signed into law in February 1990 by George H. W. Bush, following several
months of bitter negotiations with Congress. In their final form, they in-
cluded waiver provisions authorizing the president to end sanctions if Chi-
na’s progress on human rights warranted such a change, or if it was in the
United States’ national interest to do so. 15
The CCP was steered through the Tiananmen crisis and the power transi-
tion that followed by Deng Xiaoping. The third generation of leadership
represented by Jiang Zemin (1989–2002) and Zhu Rongji took the helm
under Deng’s tutelage. In the wake of the crisis, Deng made a series of
statements that served as guidelines for Chinese foreign affairs officials in
248 Chapter 11
handling the sanctions imposed by the United States and six other countries.
In December 1989, Deng met with Bush’s secret envoy, Brent Scowcroft.
“Your visit at this time is an important sign,” Deng told him. “Despite the
disputes between the United States and China, and despite problems and
disagreements of all kinds, relations between the United States and China
will have to improve ultimately. This is necessary for world peace and stabil-
ity. . . . It is also our common desire.” Deng offered Scowcroft assurances of
goodwill:
China will not threaten the United States, and the United States should not
treat China as an enemy. We have never done anything to harm the United
States. . . . The United States and China should avoid a fight. I do not mean a
military confrontation; rather, I am referring to verbal and rhetorical conflict. I
advise you not to encourage such things. We have said many times that China
cannot emulate the American political system. Americans themselves must
determine whether the American system is good or not, and we do not inter-
fere. . . . For two countries to get along, they should respect each other, and do
their best to accommodate the other party so as to resolve their disputes. . . .
Appropriate, acceptable solutions can be found if both sides make certain
compromises. 16
It is important to understand the background to Deng’s remarks. For Deng,

there were two major international issues—peace and development—that
were yet to be resolved. He believed that China should stand firm in its
opposition to hegemonism and power politics and seek to maintain world
peace through the formation of a new international political and economic
order. It was in China’s interests to maintain good relations with all countries
and strengthen contacts with both the Soviet Union and the United States
without becoming involved in ideological debates. 17 In a meeting in 1990
with Pierre Trudeau (1919–2000), the former Canadian prime minister, Deng
asserted that the seven countries that had imposed sanctions on China in
response to the Tiananmen event had no right to do so, and that China had
the capability to resist any sanctions. “Responsible foreign politicians under-
stand that China cannot slide into chaos. A focus on human rights and peo-
ple’s rights cannot help with this issue.” 18
The Tiananmen crisis proved to be a setback for all sides involved. Inno-
cent lives were lost, and China’s progress toward the rule of law and political
liberalism was pushed back. Chinese activists were persecuted, and a number
of the leading figures sought sanctuary abroad. The Bush administration was
under mounting pressure to punish China more than it had, revealing the
significant differences between the executive and legislative branches on the
issue. For its part, the Chinese government continued to roll out its economic
development program in the face of its tattered reputation and an unfavorable
international environment. The Tiananmen Incident of 1989 has had major
repercussions, for policy making and mutual perceptions in particular, right

up to the present.
MOVING ALONG THE BUMPY ROAD, 1990–2001
As a result of the Tiananmen crisis, American-Chinese relations were severe-

ly strained over the issues of human rights, Taiwan, and numerous other
areas, while leaders in both countries attempted to improve the relationship
and work toward a constructive strategic partnership. The annual renewal of
most-favored-nation (MFN) status for China quickly became a vehicle for
American debate over human rights, tougher economic sanctions, and revo-
cation of China’s MFN position. For its part, China was on the defensive,
constantly reiterating its position on key principles such as the superiority of
national sovereignty over human rights, equality, independence, and democ-
ratization in international affairs. While there were numerous crises and rhe-
torical flash points, under Presidents George H. W. Bush (1989–1993) and
Bill Clinton (1993–2001) and President Jiang Zemin (1989–2002) and Pre-
mier Zhu Rongji, the United States and China avoided direct military con-
frontation.
Following the Tiananmen Incident, China continued with its forward-
looking and growth-oriented policy, essential to the very survival of the
People’s Republic of China (PRC). 19 While it continued “opening up” to the
outside world, it refused to acquiesce to the imposition of foreign sanctions
and the demonization of China. This approach involved tactical flexibility
combined with a firm stand over the defense of national interests such as
China’s claims on Taiwan and Tibet, the furthering of the “China Way”—
socialism with Chinese characteristics—and the fostering of a favorable re-
gional and global environment for the nation’s economic development. 20
Jiang was firm with Richard Nixon on the Tiananmen question: “Dampening
down this year’s political disturbance is our own country’s business. I do not
know why it has caused such a stir in the United States. . . . The ideological
differences between us have contributed to the different viewpoints on this
incident.” 21 In a speech to CCP cadres, Jiang admonished them to remain
vigilant and to be ready to fight because “hostile Western forces want to
‘Westernize’ and ‘divide’ us, to impose their ideas of ‘democracy’ and ‘free-
dom’ on us.” 22
Following the broad lines laid down by Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin
emphasized two new themes. The first urged respect for the political system
and development path chosen by individual nation-states. Without national
sovereignty, there was no way of talking about human rights. 23 A second
element shaping China’s dealings with the outside world during 1990–2001
was a new understanding of security. Jiang asserted that institutions based on
250 Chapter 11
coercion could not lead to peace; the use of force was unable to resolve
disputes or conflicts. Taking shape in the 1990s, China’s new notions of
security involved the fostering of mutual trust, mutual benefits, equality, and
cooperation through dialogue and negotiation. 24
Despite fears that bilateral relations would continue to deteriorate, anxiety
gave way to new hopes when China averted the political chaos that many
commentators predicted. Following a two-year setback (1989–1991), Chi-
na’s transition to a market-oriented economy rolled on, a trend symbolized
by Deng Xiaoping’s “Southern Tour” of Shenzhen and other special econom-
ic zones in South China in early 1992. Deng’s strong endorsement provided
the momentum for a new phase of economic reform. This second phase, led
by Jiang Zemin and Zhu Rongji, rested on regulatory and administrative
restructuring of the banking, taxation, and corporate governance systems, as
well as further exposure to world markets through China’s membership in
the World Trade Organization (WTO). This strong commitment to reform
yielded some significant outcomes, both positive and negative—price stabil-
ity replaced rising inflation; the number of state-owned enterprises (SOEs)
dwindled while private firms increased, hiring twice as many workers as the
SOEs by the end of 2004; and increased market competition sharpened pres-
sure on employers and employees alike, contributing to massive layoffs and
social inequity.
In addition to the Tiananmen crisis, five major crises affected bilateral
relations at the geopolitical level: the American decoupling of human rights
issues from trade with China in 1994 and the general use of economic issues
as a political tool in the post–Cold War era; the 1995–1996 military standoff
in the Taiwan Strait; the American bombing of the Chinese embassy in
Belgrade in 1999; the midair collision between a U.S. spy plane and a Chi-
nese jet fighter in spring 2001; and China’s accession to the WTO in Decem-
ber 2001, to be discussed in the next chapter.
Human Rights
The delinking of human rights issues from the annual extension of China’s
MFN trading status took place in spring 1994. Less than two weeks after his
inauguration in January 1993, with Tiananmen and his campaign trail attacks
on President Bush’s “soft” stance on China now behind him, President Bill
Clinton appointed Winston Lord, former American ambassador to China, to
head the Senior Steering Group charged with advising him on China’s MFN
status. On May 28, 1993, Clinton bypassed Congress and issued Executive
Order 128590, linking the renewal of China’s MFN status to seven condi-
tions tied to human rights issues—free emigration, cessation of exports man-
ufactured by prison labor, observing the UN Declaration of Human Rights,
preserving Tibetan indigenous religion and culture, access to prisons for
international human rights organizations, permitting international radio and

TV broadcasts, and the release of prisoners held on political and religious
grounds. Clinton’s intervention represented a sharp departure from George
H. W. Bush’s position that political democratization would occur as China’s
economic status improved. Nonetheless, a year later, on May 26, 1994, the
Clinton administration reversed this stance and decoupled human rights is-
sues from the MFN. This new approach had the support of the American
business community, which argued that “[t]he only way to undermine the
regime is to infiltrate it.” Trade with China came to be seen as a “moral
crusade,” and business executives asserted that “missionaries and business-
men will work together to change China, unless Congress interferes.” 25
This striking policy turnaround had three major implications. First, Clin-
ton’s rapid reversal of his 1993 executive order raised questions about the
way in which moral issues such as human rights violations should be ad-
dressed in American politics and foreign policy. Second, the China question
became a political football in the United States. The intense debate over
China policy during both terms of the Clinton presidency (1993–2001) in-
volved a wide spectrum of interest groups. On the one hand, the debate
highlighted the checks and balances operating in the presidential prerogative
over foreign affairs and Congress’ role in handling trade issues under the
U.S. constitution. On the other hand, it showed the extent to which bilateral
relations had expanded since 1972, explaining the return of China to
American politics.
Third, this vacillating linkage of human rights to economic interests set
the tone for the roller-coaster ride that was to mark political relations in the
years to come. Since 1995, the United States had sought a resolution con-
demning Beijing’s human rights practices from the UN Human Rights Com-
mission in Geneva but had been defeated, with virtually no support forth-
coming from other countries. On the other hand, as critics and observers
pointed out, in China political dissidents received little sympathy and were
viewed as “stupid” idealists by the majority of Chinese. 26
In 2006, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) was established in
Geneva in place of the discredited Commission on Human Rights, which at
one point had Muammar Qaddafi’s Libya as its chair. But in 2018, on Presi-
dent Trump’s watch, the United States left the organization, citing the
UNHRC’s allegedly unfair treatment of Israel over its human rights record
and its refusal to block countries abusing human rights from joining. In
October 2020, the UN General Assembly elected Bolivia, China, Côte
d’Ivoire, Cuba, France, Gabon, Malawi, Mexico, Nepal, Pakistan, Russia,
Senegal, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and Uzbekistan to the UNHRC,
made up of forty-seven member states, for the 2021–2023 term. As part of
China’s persistent striving for global leadership, this was a win for China
amid a global outcry over its repression of over ten million Uighurs in Xin-
252 Chapter 11
jiang. 27 However, some observers argued that the decision undermined the
UNHRC’s credibility, as some member states, like China and Russia, have a
history of violating human rights and perpetrating atrocities both at home and
abroad. States elected to the UNHRC are expected to demonstrate their com-
mitment to the highest standards of human rights, including their full cooper-
ation with all UN agencies. 28
The Taiwan Crisis
In the assessment of J. Stapleton Roy, American ambassador to China

(1991–1995), for nearly six decades Taiwan had constituted a major obstacle
to improved relations; it “has bedeviled U.S. foreign policy in East Asia,
complicated the U.S. relationship with the PRC, and generated domestic
passions of unusual intensity.” 29 From America’s viewpoint, the rise of na-
tive Taiwanese nationalism was such that Taiwan’s leaders were no longer
predictable or trustworthy and that the Taiwan issue compromised American
national interests and threatened to suck the United States into armed conflict
in the Taiwan Strait. 30 Also, in the mid-1990s the Taiwan crisis, like the
human rights question, exposed the divergence between the White House and
Congress on the right way to handle China. To generations of Chinese lead-
ers, Taiwan has been the “most important and sensitive issue” in bilateral
relations. 31 They have viewed the U.S. Congress as the source of unneces-
sary trouble between China and the United States. Congress has been vari-
ously described as the “instigator,” the “backstage boss,” and the “behind-
the-scenes patron” of the American approach to the Taiwan issue. 32 The
Chinese were bitterly opposed to the ideas expressed by Taiwanese politi-
cians such as Lee Teng-hui, who argued that Taiwan needed to expand its
national footprint and solidify its identity as a democratic, economically
developed, independent sovereign state on the world stage. 33
The military tensions between Taiwan and mainland China in 1995–1996
originated in the shifting dynamics of politics in Taiwan during the 1980s,
which overturned the status quo on the island. As a result of political liberal-
ization introduced by the ruling Nationalist Party (Guomindang, GMD), the
long-suppressed Taiwanese independence movement and associated organ-
izations formed the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in 1986, and had
grown powerful enough to challenge the Nationalist Party’s political domi-
nance. In 1988, Lee Teng-hui—a native Taiwanese Hakka—rose to power as
the leader of the GMD and president of Taiwan (1988–2000), following the
death of Chiang Ching-kuo, the son of Chiang Kai-shek.
Lee managed Taiwan’s relations with both China and the United States
through the ambivalent use of both sticks and carrots. First, under Lee’s
presidency, economic, political, and cultural contacts with the mainland had
substantially increased. Lee abandoned the Nationalist Party’s long-standing
attachment to “One China” ruled by the GMD—not the CCP. In contrast to

his predecessors, Lee accepted the reality of the Communist regime in main-
land China and lifted some of the remaining travel restrictions across the
Taiwan Strait. Between 1990 and 1995, Lee conducted secret talks with the
mainland authorities. In 1992 and again in 1998, Koo Chen-fu, chairman of
Taiwan’s Straits Exchange Foundation, and Wang Daohan, chairman of the
mainland-based Association for Relations across the Taiwan Strait, met in
Singapore, where they launched the Wang-Koo summit that symbolized the
effort being made by both sides toward peaceful relations.
Second, and in partial contradiction to his first position, Lee attempted to
establish the popular sovereignty of the government of Taiwan—the Repub-
lic of China—as an equal entity within a divided “China” where the PRC
formed the other equal part. In 1996, the first direct election for president in
Taiwanese history was held. In order to gain votes from native Taiwanese
electors against the increasing popularity of the pro-independence DPP, Lee
risked antagonizing mainland China by moving closer to a formal declaration
of independence. 34 However, the Chinese government refused to consider
the prospect of “Two Chinas” in any form; variations such as “One China,
One Taiwan” or “one state, two governments” were also rejected as possible
options. 35
Third, Lee attempted to reverse Taiwan’s marginal status and raise its
formal profile on the world stage. Following the Tiananmen Incident, high-
level private visits increased in frequency between the United States and
Taiwan. Taiwan was also campaigning for representation in the United Na-
tions. Since 1979, the U.S. government had been committed to the decisions
incorporated in three communiqués with mainland China and so could not
receive visits from Taiwanese leaders in their official capacity. In 1995, Lee
pressed the United States for a work visa so he could give a reunion speech at
his alma mater, Cornell University. With the second-strongest lobby in Con-
gress after Israel, Taiwan pressured Capitol Hill to grant Lee a visa; his case
received overwhelming support in a Congress impressed by Taiwan’s
progress on democracy and human rights. In June, Lee made a personal visit
to Cornell. The Clinton administration found itself in an awkward position
but was assured by Taiwan’s representative in Washington that Lee’s Cornell
speech would be nonpolitical. However, in his speech, Lee severely embar-
rassed the United States by referring to Taiwan as “the Republic of China on
Taiwan” at least fifteen times. In retaliation, China withdrew its ambassador
from Washington and refused to accept the credentials of the new American
ambassador to China.
Tensions continued to mount. In July 1995, China began military exer-
cises in the Strait region, firing six targeted missiles into the waters north of
Taiwan, followed by live firing exercises and missile tests in the Eastern Sea
in August and October. However, these intimidating displays of force failed
254 Chapter 11
to stem the rising influence of pro-independence groups in Taiwan. Then in

March 1996, prior to elections in Taiwan, the Chinese military exercises
resumed, and this time with artillery fire bracketing the island to home in on
chosen targets. On March 8, four missiles landed inside the target area west
of Kaohsiung—the second-largest city in southwest Taiwan, facing the Tai-
wan Strait—and east of Keelung, a port city on the northeast tip of the island.
These exercises shook the island in every sense: support for independence
declined and Taiwan’s stock market fell sharply. The open independence
candidate, Peng Ming-min, failed in his bid for the presidency, with only
around 21 percent of the vote.
Military tensions in the Taiwan Strait escalated, drawing in the U.S.
Navy. While holding discussions with high-level Chinese officials, the Clin-
ton administration dispatched two aircraft carriers, the USS Independence
and the Nimitz, together with their accompanying battle escorts, to the one-
hundred-mile zone east of the Strait. The Chinese responded by deploying
nuclear submarines, the American warships retired one hundred miles away,
China ended the exercise “ahead of schedule,” 36 and the United States with-
drew its fighting forces. The crisis was over. In Taiwan, the Nationalist Party
candidate Lee Teng-hui won the elections held at the end of March—the
least bad choice for China compared with the other parties, especially Peng
Ming-min, the Progressive Democratic Party candidate, who had cam-
paigned against trade with China and the “One China” policy.
To all three parties involved, the crisis of 1995–1996 had shown that the
threat of direct military confrontation was dangerously real. Nevertheless,
there was still room for compromise. The United States had no core interests
that would lead it to seek conflict with China at that time—it did not want to
be dragged into war with mainland China by Taiwan. For its part, many then
believed that Taiwan had been doing what it had done since the days of
Chiang Kai-shek—playing the “America card” to achieve its strategic goals.
While China was willing to negotiate with Taiwan, it was intransigent on the
question of the island being integral to its territory, a principle that put the
legitimacy of the CCP at stake. Further complicating the issue, Taiwan had
grown more dependent on the China market for export, investment, and
tourism opportunities. 37
The Embassy Bombing of 1999 and the Midair Collision of 2001
In 1997 and 1998, bilateral relations were settling into a relatively stable
pattern. President Clinton and President Jiang Zemin expressed their joint
commitment to building the relationship “from a long-term perspective on
the basis of the principles of the three China-U.S. joint communiqués.” 38
Jiang’s visit to the United States in October 1997—the first by a Chinese
leader in twelve years—and Clinton’s trip to China in June 1998 were char-
acterized by the Chinese government as a “milestone,” a “solid step” toward

building a constructive strategic partnership for the twenty-first century, and
by U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright as a “dramatic step forward” in
encouraging China to “define its own interests in ways that are compatible”
with American aspirations in the region. 39 Their joint statement provided a
framework for a constructive strategic partnership, to be achieved not just
through high-level dialogue and official consultations but also through “in-
creasing cooperation” in a host of areas—clean energy projects; technology
transfers; the promotion of biodiversity, trade, and peaceful uses of nuclear
energy; managing climate change and desertification; combating internation-
al organized crime, narcotics trafficking, people smuggling, counterfeiting,
and money laundering; consultation on military (especially maritime) safety
to avoid accidents, misunderstandings, and miscalculations; humanitarian as-
sistance and disaster relief; new applications of science and technology; the
use of space for earth science research and other practical applications; and
educational and cultural exchanges. 40
However, things were not all smooth sailing. The optimistic tone of
progress and engagement embodied by the joint communiqué was undercut
by bitter wrangling over a host of intertwined issues including human rights,
political prisoners, religious freedom, China’s one-child policy, repression of
the Falun Gong (an anti-government religious cult), the Cox Committee re-
port on alleged technology leaks to China, and the allegations of spying
brought against former Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee. Also there was the
bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in May 1999.
In March 1999, the United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organiza-
tion (NATO) allies decided to bomb the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to
force its president, Slobodan Milošević (1941–2006), to stop the “ethnic
cleansing” of Albanians by Serb forces in the country’s Kosovo Province.
China and Russia did not support the NATO intervention. On May 7,
American B-2 bombers from a base in Missouri dropped five precision-
guided two-thousand-pound munitions on the Chinese embassy in Belgrade,
Serbia—causing severe damage to the building, killing three Chinese jour-
nalists, and injuring more than twenty staff. In China, students as well as
ordinary citizens were outraged, rejecting Washington’s explanation that the
bombing was a mistake resulting from the use of outdated maps. 41 During
May 8–11, massive anti-American demonstrations erupted in major cities—
including Beijing, Shanghai, Canton, Shenyang, and Chengdu—until the
Chinese government intervened and called for order. Between May 8 and 14,
the American ambassador to China James Sasser (1995–1999), CIA director
George Tenet, Secretary of Defense William Cohen, Madeleine Albright,
and President Clinton all contacted the Chinese authorities to express their
regrets and apologies. The Chinese remained furious over what they per-
ceived as the casual, insincere, and inadequate American response to the
256 Chapter 11
incident. However, on May 11, the Chinese media began reporting the earlier
American condolences and apologies. On July 30, the United States an-
nounced that it would pay out $4.5 million in compensation to the families of
the Chinese killed and injured. In December, Washington agreed to pay a
further $28 million for damage to property, while Beijing agreed to pay out
$2.87 million to the American embassy and U.S. consulates in China for
damage caused by protest actions.
However, less than six months later, relations hit a low point once again.
Beginning in 2000, the American air force stepped up its reconnaissance
activities off the coast of China, with planes flying four to five times a week
within international airspace but only fifty miles from the Chinese mainland.
The PLA responded by intercepting U.S. reconnaissance flights. This was
not the first time that the two sides had been at loggerheads over this issue.
On April 1, 2001, an American navy EP-3E Aries II airplane on a routine
surveillance mission collided with an intercepting Chinese F-8 fighter jet that
was tailgating it over the South China Sea. The midair collision killed the
Chinese pilot; the damaged U.S. spy plane made an emergency landing on
Hainan Island in China, and its twenty-four crew were detained in China for
eleven days. China demanded an apology and held the United States respon-
sible for the incident for several reasons. First, the American plane had
veered suddenly into the Chinese jet and had landed on Chinese soil without
permission. Second, the United States had violated the UN Convention on
the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS, 1982), to which China, but not the United
States, was a signatory. Articles 55–75 of UNCLOS provide for the sove-
reign rights and jurisdiction of a coastal state party over its exclusive eco-
nomic zone, particularly its rights to maintain peace, security, and good order
in the waters of the zone (extending two hundred miles from the Chinese
coastline). According to Article 301, the American military intrusion posed a
threat to the national security of China. 42
Third, the U.S. aircraft had violated the 1944 Chicago Convention on
International Civil Aviation signed by both the United States and China.
Article 3 stipulates that “no military airplanes shall land on the territory of a
contracting party without authorization.” 43 Finally, in Chinese eyes the inci-
dent had been inevitable in the light of the frequency of U.S. reconnaissance
flights and the fact that they flew too close to the Chinese coast.
For Chinese observers, the roots of the incident were to be sought in
American post–Cold War hegemonism. The initial reaction by the United
States in words and actions did little to placate China’s sense of outrage. On
April 2, President George W. Bush stated, “Our priorities are the prompt and
safe return of the crew, and the return of the aircraft without further damag-
ing or tampering. . . . Failure of the Chinese government to react promptly to
our request is inconsistent with standard diplomatic practice, and with the
expressed desire of both our countries for better relations.” 44 The Pentagon
ordered three American navy destroyers to monitor the situation in the South
China Sea, a step that did nothing to mitigate the developing crisis. 45
However, this hardline stance was soon to change. Eleven days later, on
April 12, Joseph W. Prueher, American ambassador to China (1999–2001),
sent a letter to Tang Jiaxuan, Chinese minister of foreign affairs
(1998–2003), stating that President George W. Bush and Secretary of State
Colin L. Powell were “very sorry” for the loss of the Chinese pilot, Wang
Wei, and that “the entering of China’s airspace and the landing did not have
verbal clearance.” In response, the twenty-four detained crewmen were re-
leased to the United States. Following the release of the crew, the Pentagon
rejected the claim that the EP-3 had veered into the Chinese fighter—it had
been flying straight and level until struck by the Chinese aircraft. It asserted
that military reconnaissance flights beyond the borders of a state’s sovereign
territory had been going on for decades and were nothing out of the ordinary.
They were permissible under international law, and emergency landings
were necessary when an aircraft was in distress. 46 After months of negotia-
tions, on July 3, the EP-3 plane was dismantled and returned to the United
States. However, the Chinese declined to take up the modest American offer
of compensation for the emergency landing.
DEVELOPMENTS DURING 2001–2020:

A CONFIDENT CHINA AND AMERICAN ANXIETIES
Trends in U.S.-Chinese Relations, 2001–2012
The geopolitical relationship between the United States and China in the first
decade of the twenty-first century incorporated three major elements. First,
American involvement with China represented the kind of Protestant ideal-
ism that sought to change the world as well as to get China to conform to the
American way. For its part, the CCP had improved its capacity for govern-
ance by significantly raising living standards for China’s 1.34 billion people.
Facing the common threat posed by terrorism, the global financial meltdown,
and sovereign debt that on average had exceeded 100 percent of GDP among
industrialized countries, both nations worked together through high-level
contacts, strategic dialogue, and institutionalized exchanges at bilateral, re-
gional, and global levels.
Second, threatening this positive outlook, a spirit of wariness and anxiety
developed on both sides and especially over time in the United States—as
evidenced in their strategic and military preparations and, in the United
States, in the polemics of the “China threat.” In China, this attitude was
mirrored in the discourse of new American imperialism. While the United
States kept up the pressure on China for democratic change, the China model
appealed to some observers as an alternative to the economic, moral, and
258 Chapter 11
“democratic” decline shown in the “sunset club” (the developed world). 47

Taken together, these factors fueled the growth of an updated version of Cold
War and nationalistic thinking as well as tactics on both sides. However,
while the China question remained a live political issue and consensus (in
view of early 2021) in the United States, it was not as inflammatory as it had
been in the 1990s, at least on the surface.
Third, both countries sought to prepare for a faltering in bilateral relations
by nurturing good relationships with and diverting resources to other coun-
tries and by revitalizing existing regional and global security architecture or
by developing new structures. Against this background, the United States and
China continued their efforts to maintain a stable relationship, albeit one
constrained by constant but in general manageable irritants. While this ap-
proach succeeded in maintaining the peace, it failed to tap the full potential
of a real geopartnership in the aftermath of 9/11.
The terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001, and the
response that followed redefined the relationship between the United States
and the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims. 48 These events also had consequences
for U.S.-Chinese relations, resulting in some significant shifts in American
attitudes toward China. Prior to the 9/11 attacks, a series of statements by
President George W. Bush (2001–2009) and others were widely interpreted
as targeting China as a major strategic rival rather than a strategic partner—a
public stance different from that taken by the Clinton administration. 49 The
2001 Quadrennial Defense Review Report—largely prepared before Septem-
ber 11 but released on September 30—implicitly identified China as a poten-
tial “military competitor” in the Asia-Pacific and a future challenger to
American interests in the region:
Although the United States will not face a peer competitor in the near future,
the potential exists for regional powers to develop sufficient capabilities to
threaten stability in regions critical to U.S. interests. . . . The possibility exists
that a military competitor with a formidable resource base will emerge in the
region. The East Asian littoral—from the Bay of Bengal to the Sea of Japan—
represents a particularly challenging area. 50
In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, however, President Bush quickly sought
to reassure China: “Our ties are mature, respectful and important to both our
nations and to the world.” 51 Within a year, the American and Chinese heads
of state had met three times, a phenomenon unprecedented in their relation-
ship. Between October 2001 and February 2002, Bush made two visits to
China to meet with President Jiang Zemin in the wake of a string of crises.
These two summits were followed by a third between Bush and Jiang in
October 2002 at Bush’s Prairie Chapel Ranch in Crawford, Texas. 52 Both
leaders agreed to ease tensions and move toward a constructive relationship
of collaboration, particularly on the nuclear issue that had newly surfaced on
the Korean Peninsula. Consultations took place on mechanisms to combat

terrorism, including the formation of a counterterrorism coalition; the Six-
Party Talks on North Korea and a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula; curbing the
spread of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; food and energy security;
climate change; and world health.
Despite these signs of progress and collaboration, the “National Security
Strategy of the United States of America”—released in September 2002—
sent mixed messages about the complex bilateral relationship. First and fore-
most, it made clear that America “seeks a constructive relationship with
China” and welcomed “the emergence of a strong, peaceful, and prosperous
China.” Second, the report placed Sino-American trade relations within the
new post-9/11 strategic coalition framework. However, in the list of U.S.
friends and allies in the “war against terror,” China ranked not only after
Canada, the European countries, Japan, and Australia, but also after Russia
and India. Ominously, the report warned that “[i]n pursuing advanced mili-
tary capabilities that can threaten its neighbors in the Asia-Pacific region,
China is following an outdated path that, in the end, will hamper its own
pursuit of national greatness.” 53 Not surprisingly, the Chinese found the re-
port disturbing: “Although in recent years Beijing has refrained from iden-
tifying Washington as an adversary or criticizing its ‘hegemonism,’ . . . many
Chinese still view the United States as a major threat to their nation’s secur-
ity and domestic stability.” 54
From 2003, the PRC’s fourth-generation leadership—President Hu Jintao
and Premier Wen Jiabao—built on the gains achieved in earlier phases of
market reform to deliver economic benefits to a larger slice of the population,
particularly those living in rural areas. Rectifying the imbalance between
economic development and social progress and coordinating development
between the cities and the countryside were issues that remained high on
China’s domestic agenda. Externally, maintaining a low-profile, indepen-
dent, and nonaggressive foreign policy and encouraging a favorable interna-
tional and regional environment were at the core of the Chinese approach to
dealing with U.S. pressure, or the “America threat.” In a speech celebrating
the 110th anniversary of Mao Zedong’s birthday, Hu Jintao explained that, in
the spirit of mutual respect, China sought common ground with the United
States while seeking to set aside their differences. He stated that China “ad-
vocates the democratization of international relations and the diversification
of development models, opposes the various forms of hegemonism and pow-
er politics, opposes terrorism in all its forms, and seeks to advance the estab-
lishment of an international political and economic new order that is fair and
reasonable.” 55
The notion of China’s peaceful rise and harmonious coexistence with
other countries was promoted by the Hu–Wen administration in the face of
the American-inspired rhetoric of the China threat and the China challenge.
260 Chapter 11
Senior Chinese leaders used national and international forums to express

their views on democracy and China’s peaceful character. In December
2003, Wen Jiabao visited the United States, the first visit by a Chinese head
of state since the transition of power at the 16th Congress of the CCP. Before
beginning his trip, he explained in an interview with the Washington Post
that political reform “has to be done in an orderly fashion and in a well-
organized manner.” According to Wen, four items were at the top of the
democratization agenda for the Chinese government:
First of all, we should develop democracy to safeguard people’s democratic

rights and to respect and protect their human rights. Secondly, we should
improve on the legal system through better legislation, better administration
according to law, and greater judicial reform. Thirdly, we should run the
country according to law, making our socialist democracy more institutional-
ized, standardized and proceduralized, and in this way we can make sure that it
will not change because of changes in the leadership and changes in the views
and focus of attention of leaders. Fourth, we must strengthen supervision, and
we should make sure that the government is placed under the supervision of
the people. We have to develop democracy and strengthen supervision. Only
in this way can we make sure the government will not relent in its efforts, and
this would help avoid a situation whereby the government would be a fail-
ure. 56
In an article in Foreign Affairs, Zheng Bijian, a leading Party theorist who

had participated in the drafting of the core reports of all CCP central commit-
tee meetings after 1982, explained China’s grand strategy for its “peaceful
rise”:
China will not follow the path of Germany leading up to World War I or those
of Germany and Japan leading up to World War II, when these countries
violently plundered resources and pursued hegemony. Neither will China fol-
low the path of the great powers vying for global domination during the Cold
War. Instead, China will transcend ideological differences to strive for peace,
development, and cooperation with all countries of the world. 57
The relatively steady development in American-Chinese relations continued

until about 2014–2016, particularly on the questions of Northeast Asian se-
curity and Taiwan. At the urging of the United States, China has gradually
shifted its role in Northeast Asia from a cautious onlooker during the first
nuclear crisis in 1993 and 1994, then to a host for multilateral negotiations,
and finally to that of mediator. It has worked with the United States, the
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), the Republic of Ko-
rea (South Korea), Japan, and Russia to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula.
Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula
In 1968, North and South Korea signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation
of Nuclear Weapons, and the North withdrew from the treaty in January
2003. Since the discovery by American intelligence of its secret program to
enrich uranium for nuclear weapons (and North Korea’s admission of its
activity in 2002), 58 China had shared its opposition to any possibilities of
nuclearization with the United States, although North Korea’s national stabil-
ity has carried more weight in Chinese strategic assessments. The result was
the Six-Party Talks between North Korea, the United States, China, South
Korea, Japan, and Russia, four rounds of which were held between August
2003 and July 2005. In these discussions, China was caught in a deadlock
between the American insistence on a complete cessation of all nuclear-
related activity in North Korea (in exchange for favors granted to the North)
and North Korea’s demands for advanced economic aid and security guaran-
tees. In contrast to America, China, as North Korea’s most important trade
partner, was opposed to sanctions because it wanted to avoid the collapse of
North Korea—China’s only formal ally—and the accompanying political,
economic, and social consequences.
In November 2005, North Korea abandoned the fifth round of the Six-
Party Talks—which was swiftly followed by the announcement of its first
successful underground nuclear test in 2006—until their resumption in De-
cember (2006) and February 2007. The sixth round of talks took place in
March 2007 but was discontinued in April 2009 following North Korea’s
launch of a satellite, a second nuclear test, further missile tests, and the
resulting condemnation of these acts by the United States and the UN Secur-
ity Council. 59 While China was given credit for being instrumental in bring-
ing Washington and Pyongyang to the negotiating table—resulting in two
joint statements by the six parties in September 2005 and February 2007—
the issues raised by North Korea’s nuclear program were far from being
resolved. Although a framework for international discussions was laid out, it
was compromised by the sinking of the South Korean navy vessel Cheonan
in disputed waters in March 2010, skirmishes between the two Koreas on
Yeonpyeong Island the following November, the death of Kim Jung Il (b.
1941, Supreme Leader 1994–2011) in December 2011, and the installation of
his successor Kim Jong Un—part of the third generation of the ruling Kim
family in North Korea since Kim Il Sung (b. 1912, founding leader,
1948–1994) took the reins of power after World War II. 60
Tensions built up again when North Korea successfully tested what it
claimed to be its first hydrogen bomb and the Hwasong-15 intercontinental
ballistic missile in late 2017. China was called on to use its leverage to
achieve a diplomatic solution. In March 2018, Kim went to Beijing for con-
sultations with President Xi Jinping, Kim’s allegedly first foreign visit since
262 Chapter 11
taking office at the end of 2011, where he stated his commitment to denucle-
arization.
A diplomatic breakthrough looked possible in June 2018 when President
Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un held their much publicized Singapore Sum-
mit, although no agreement came out of this first-ever meeting between the
leaders of North Korea and the United States. They signed a joint statement
pledging to security guarantees for North Korea, new cooperative bilateral
relations that would officially end the Korean War, the denuclearization of
the Korean Peninsula, the recovery of American soldiers’ remains, and fol-
low-up negotiations between high-level officials. Immediately after the sum-
mit, President Trump announced that the U.S. military would discontinue
“provocative” joint military exercises with South Korea and stated that he
wished to bring U.S. soldiers based there back home at some point in the
future. 61
Having taken the first historic step in Singapore, the two leaders met for a
second round of negotiations in Hanoi, Vietnam, in February 2019, but the
talks eventually broke down. A few months later in June, Kim, South Korean
president Moon Jae-in, and President Trump met again in the Korean Demil-
itarized Zone, but there was no further progress. In October 2019, the North
broke off working-level talks with the Americans in Stockholm. While North
Korea sought further concessions on security and sanctions relief from the
United States, the latter demanded the complete and verifiable dismantling of
North Korea’s nuclear arsenal and program. This standoff will continue to
overshadow future nuclear negotiations on the peninsula.
TAIWAN-U.S.-CHINESE RELATIONS: THE MA YING-JEOU

(2008–2016) AND TSAI ING-WEN YEARS (2016–PRESENT)
On the Taiwan question, developments during the first decade or so of the

twenty-first century showed that the United States was capable of accommo-
dating China’s core interests. Although veiled in his “pro-Taiwan” campaign
rhetoric, President George W. Bush sought to address China’s concerns over
the issue. In 2000, Chen Shui-bian, the DPP candidate, won the presidential
election in Taiwan. A staunch native Taiwanese nationalist, Chen had public-
ly promoted the independence of Taiwan as a totally separate sovereign
entity from the PRC—an open challenge to the accepted formula of “One
China and Taiwan as part of China,” a principle fiercely upheld by mainland
China since its founding in 1949. To China, such a declaration of indepen-
dence would be a formula for war. 62
In 2002 and 2003, to help his reelection chances, Chen announced plans
to hold a referendum on the sovereignty issue and draft a new constitution
that would make Taiwan completely independent. However, American sup-
port for these proposals was not forthcoming. In December 2003, in the
presence of Wen Jiabao, President George W. Bush publicly chastised Chen
for provoking China over the issue. During a visit to China in April 2004,
Vice President Richard (Dick) Cheney reaffirmed America’s opposition to
Taiwan independence and continued adherence to the One China “principle.”
His use of the term “principle”—rather than the expected “policy”—did not
go unnoticed in China. Following his reelection and ignoring the signals
emanating from the White House, Chen asserted that he now had the “man-
date” to make Taiwan independent. In response, James Kelley, American
assistant secretary of state for East Asia, stated that it would be a misunder-
standing to assume that the United States would protect Taiwan under any
circumstances. In May 2005, Taiwan’s political opposition leaders Lien Zhan
and James Song, defeated by Chen in the presidential election of 2004, were
invited to visit mainland China as part of a united front strategy. In a tele-
phone conversation, Bush reassured Hu Jintao that the American government
would not change its position on One China. 63 In the 2008 presidential elec-
tion, the people of Taiwan gave the Nationalist Party candidate, Ma Ying-
jeou (presidency 2008–2016), decisive support against Chen Shui-bian, who
was later sentenced and served a jail term for corruption. However, President
Ma’s eight years in office proved volatile. Having received the largest share
of the popular vote in Taiwanese history in 2008, Ma also recorded the
lowest approval rating of just over 9 percent in September 2013, the result of
infighting, economic recession, the administration’s China policy, and other
factors.
Up until 2012, Presidents Hu, Xi, and Ma’s nonconfrontational approach
toward each other had helped stabilize the cross-strait situation. The existing
network of economic and cultural links across the Strait culminated in the
signing of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement in 2010 and
continued to foster economic interdependence between Taiwan and mainland
China. In 2019, China was Taiwan’s largest trade partner, accounting for
24.3 percent of the latter’s total trade volume, while the United States, its
second-largest trade partner, had half this share at 12.3 percent ($104.7 bil-
lion). In 2016, there were over one million Taiwanese working and living in
mainland China (Taiwan’s population was 23.6 million in 2019). 64 Neverthe-
less, to many younger people in Taiwan, expanded cross-strait trade, bilateral
investment, and cultural and people-to-people ties forged during Ma’s two
terms had disadvantaged Taiwan in favor of a belligerent China, which had
increasingly pressured Ma to accede to China’s unification accord.
Ma has been criticized for his one-sided policy toward mainland China,
advocating the “1992 consensus” (see chapter 9, Wang-Koo negotiations) as
his party’s basis for constructive dialogue and exchange that many saw as
indistinguishable from China’s “deceiving” formula of “one country, two
systems.” President Ma’s cross-strait rapprochement policy faltered in the
264 Chapter 11
face of massive protests, the occupation of the legislature by young rioters in

March 2014, and legislative failures in passing the Cross-Strait Services
Trade Agreement with China. 65
In November 2015, both leaders across the Taiwan Strait, President Ma
and President Xi Jinping, held a historic summit in Singapore, the first meet-
ing of its kind since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949 between the
CCP and the Nationalist Party (GMD, KMT). Yet despite the KMT’s warm-
ing relations with the PRC, mainland China has not renounced the use of
military force to thwart Taiwan’s independence or bring about unification
with Taiwan. 66
The presidential elections held in January 2016 saw the resurgence of the
DPP. Independence advocate Tsai Ing-wen defeated Eric Chu, the KMT
candidate, and came into office bringing new dynamics to cross-strait rela-
tions. President Tsai Ing-wen (2016–present) rejected the “1992 consensus,”
arguing that Taiwanese public opinion had shifted over the last few decades
and was now endorsing a distinctive Taiwanese rather than an exclusive
Chinese identity across party and ethnic lines. But these views did not stop
her party, the DPP, from suffering a massive loss to the KMT in local elec-
tions held in November 2018. Just over a year later, however, Tsai won a
landslide victory in the national elections held in January 2020. Her strategic
gamble of resisting economic dependence on China had paid off, aided by
America’s global pushbacks against China. Taipei insisted that any Beijing
proposal aimed at peaceful reunification would be nothing but a deceitful
charade. The ongoing volatility reveals the extent of Taiwan’s “China prob-
lem”—parallel to the plight of Hong Kong to many people.
Over the last two decades, Taiwan’s China problem has chiefly consisted
of three interwoven factors—economic interests, national identity, and U.S.-
Chinese relations (including the Hong Kong question; see below). In Taiwan,
the combined effect of these three variables has provided major headaches
for presidents and local politicians and for trade, investment, and political
relations with China. The contradiction in Taiwan’s trade policy toward Chi-
na pits liberalization and globalization (whereby Taiwan seeks economic
integration with a dynamic neighbor with a shared culture) against restriction
and protectionism, whereby domestic forces in Taiwan, especially young
people and unskilled workers, who “were losing out from interdependence
with China would predictably try to exert political pressure to limit those
losses through protectionism. . . . As the need to integrate with the interna-
tional economy grows, so does the desire to maintain a distinctive identity
with one’s own values.” 67
During the past five years or so, China’s rapidly growing power on all
fronts has drawn old allies, Taiwan and the United States, closer, along with
Hong Kong—the British colonial gateway to the mainland before 1997. Chi-
na’s crackdown on mass demonstrations in Hong Kong that are demanding
independence for the territory, the enactment of the Law of the People’s
Republic of China on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong
Special Administrative Region in June 2020, 68 and other decisions by Presi-
dent Xi have reaffirmed the determination of most Taiwanese to defend their
own democracy and values. Taiwan’s statehood politics of identity, together
with Tsai’s refusal to kowtow to Beijing, helped boost Tsai’s win over the
KMT candidate in 2019/2020. Isolated in the international community by
PRC pressure since 1971, Taiwan has felt intimated by and vulnerable to
economic and political infiltration from the mainland. This has naturally
increased Taiwan’s security dependence on the United States, which shares
the same existential China threat with Taiwan, in turn creating more room for
the United States to counter the PRC in the Asia-Indo-Pacific region.
The U.S. Taiwan Assurance Act of 2019 should have come as no surprise
to the leadership in Beijing. Taiwan’s attachment to the United States has
been woven into the fabric of American policy making. Furthermore, the
American political ideals of self-determination, freedom, “standing up for the
little guy,” and supporting liberation movements against undemocratic totali-
tarian oppressors still constitute a powerful political platform in the United
States, despite its flaws and questionable rhetoric. For Washington to com-
pletely abandon Taiwan, it would be as likely as it abandoning Israel or
South Korea—almost nil. Taiwan is a valuable American chess piece in its
global strategy. Both the political and military strategy embraced by U.S.
foreign policy is to maintain its established and secure alliances across the
globe through organizations such as NATO and the United States Africa
Command, headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany (founded in 2007). Even
more significant, as of 2019 the largest permanent deployment of U.S. com-
bat troops was not in the Middle East or Europe but in Japan, highlighting the
thriving and robust U.S. commitment to its Asia- and Indo-Pacific sphere of
influence and specifically the East and South China Seas. 69
The Taiwan question has been so critical to U.S.-Chinese relations essen-
tially because the PRC claims the entire territory as its own and denounces
the ruling government in Taipei as a rebel faction illegitimately supported by
the United States. Furthermore, the civil war of the late 1940s that culminat-
ed in the founding of the PRC in 1949 was never militarily resolved and only
curtailed through diplomatic means. As a result, an active military zone,
similar to the demilitarized zone on the Korean Peninsula, has been main-
tained in the Taiwan Straits since 1949.
In its opening clauses, the 2019 Taiwan Assurance Act cites growing
concerns about China’s military and the situation it poses: “The People’s
Republic of China is currently engaged in a comprehensive military modern-
ization campaign to enhance the power-projection capabilities of the PLA
and its ability to conduct joint operations, which is shifting the military
balance of power across the Taiwan Strait.” 70 The background to the act is
266 Chapter 11
the extraordinarily complex and increasingly volatile tango that has been
stepped out between Beijing and Washington over the issue of Taiwan since
1949. Polls and statistics from 2019–2020 show that, for many outside Chi-
na, Taiwan is a de facto independent state and that the majority of Taiwanese
identify with democratic ideals and reject reunification with the mainland. 71
Continuing American arms sales to Taiwan under legal provisions have
elicited furious protests from China and have frequently triggered the suspen-
sion of military-to-military contacts with the United States. The Trump ad-
ministration pushed for larger arms sales including jet-propelled missiles that
could reach distant targets in mainland China. 72 Taiwan is the most sensitive
powder keg in modern U.S.-Chinese relations. While the final outcome of the
tense situation remains to be determined, most observers are predicting a
violent conclusion. 73
A Reflection: The Obama (2009–2017) and Trump Presidencies

(2017–2021)
The danger of direct military confrontation between China and the United
States—the world’s two largest militaries 74—had gradually increased by the
beginning of President Obama’s second term in early 2013 and intensified
during Trump’s presidency, which ended in January 2021. 75 How did U.S.-
Chinese relations get to this state as of early January 2021?
When President Richard Nixon departed for China on February 17, 1972,
his brief speech on the White House South Lawn voiced the hope that the
difficult negotiations awaiting him in the PRC would allow succeeding gen-
erations to grow up in a world of peace. With the words “We came in peace
for all mankind,” President Nixon echoed the inscription left on the moon by
American astronauts. Nixon’s visit was the first significant step on a narrow,
stony track that after a decade or so began to broaden and eventually after
twenty years emerged as a busy freeway, seemingly expanding endlessly into
the vast horizon of world peace. However, as the American generation of the
early 1970s began to gray in the late 2010s, they found themselves locked in
fierce competition with China on all fronts, while angry words were hurled
from both sides of the Pacific against the backdrop of a major pandemic
ravaging the world.
Although current events are still too close to draw considered historical
explanations, it is appropriate here to explore how the United States and
China arrived at their present relationship, on the eve of President Joe Bid-
en’s inauguration. As China continues to expand its economic, political, and
cultural influence around the globe, one fact—painful for many to admit—is
that over the past half century the American approach to China has not been
successful. Besides growth dynamics, development dogmas, and false as-
sumptions that I discussed in chapter 10, two additional angles of explanation
below—strategic repositioning and American and Chinese presidents—are

intended to clarify how and why this situation arose. I shall further detail the
economic and cultural ramifications in chapter 12.
I. Strategic Repositioning
In China’s rapid economic development, access to China’s growing market

was made easier for foreign players who were willing to share intellectual
property rights with their Chinese counterparts. Local and central govern-
ment investment was coordinated to further infrastructure projects, expand
education and vocational training, advance scientific and technological de-
velopment, and speed up urbanization. The huge domestic migrant popula-
tion and the off-shoring of foreign smartphone technology manufacturing to
China gave Chinese high-tech firms a head start in mobile telephony and
messaging, as well as online shopping, logistics, credits, payments, and pub-
lic services. These developments consolidated China’s technological ad-
vances in official news and information services, mass surveillance, and
social credits. In order to maximize state control and the coordination of its
national development goals, China introduced a firewall, as well as systems
that monitor and censor online activities and bar foreign suppliers that fail to
abide by strict political protocols.
In the 1980s and 1990s, overseas investment by Chinese private and state
enterprises was patchy and uncoordinated but was increasingly given a more
strategic direction by the Chinese state in the 2000s–2010s, especially in
order to secure raw materials and consolidate markets. Seeking to gain a
greater share in logistics, China began to bring together resources, invest-
ments, and projects under the umbrella of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI),
a massively ambitious project designed to create new worldwide multilateral
collaboration frameworks. Because infrastructure often creates physical real-
ities and results in development on the ground, and because investment
funds, with appropriate diplomatic support, tend to focus minds and resolve
local impasses, the BRI has enjoyed many successes. While Chinese firms
and officials dispelled a good deal of local resistance and resentment as the
BRI unfolded, China, in the view of many, strategically created a new net-
work of dependencies and shifted the balance of power beyond its own
borders.
During Barack Obama’s presidency, American observers noted that the
BRI was exacerbating an ever greater U.S. dependency on Chinese imports,
as well as the trade imbalance, and American and global mergers and acqui-
sitions originating from Chinese SOEs. Observers were also disquieted that
China was systematically appropriating U.S. patents, designs, and blueprints,
thus constituting a security threat. Shying away from measures that could
upset vested American interests and destabilize the WTO and other global
268 Chapter 11
institutions, during the climate change negotiations of 2009–2010, President

Obama challenged China’s plans to count CO2 emissions only as a propor-
tion of its constantly growing GDP. This was a first attempt to arouse inter-
national concerns over China’s global role. As military strategies were refo-
cused to address the China challenge, President Obama sought accordingly to
pivot from the Middle East to China. However, conditions in the Middle East
and the extensive business dealings with China enjoyed by some U.S. politi-
cians and their families, among other factors, held him back. On the other
hand, America’s frequent complaints about China’s behavior merely
strengthened China’s resolve to have a greater say in the unfolding world
order.
China has followed up its BRI with several measures designed to secure
its international sea lanes. The Chinese navy, for example, has been actively
combatting piracy in the Bay of Aden along the Somalian coast and has
established a naval base in Djibuti, in addition to naval facilities in Gwadar
(Pakistan), in the Seychelles, and potentially in other ports tied to the BRI.
Completing rail links to seaports in Pakistan and Myanmar, and through
Thailand and Malaysia to Singapore, as well as securing commercial use of
the sea lane north of Siberia, en route to Europe, highlight China’s strategic
vulnerability in the area around the Malacca Strait, the main shipping chan-
nel between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. In response, China has de-
clared the South China Sea national sea territory and has established naval
structures and bases there, a claim contested by both neighboring states and
the United States. A territorial dispute with Japan over the Diaoyu/Senkaku
Islands similarly reflects China’s defense needs. Although fisheries rights
and the potential for mineral and oil extraction may play a role, these claims
should primarily be understood as important building blocks shoring up Chi-
na’s naval defense strategy.
Other concerns loom large in the strategic counter-thinking of the United
States and its partners in NATO. As a result of global warming, the sea lane
north of Siberia is set to become a much faster freight transit route from
China to Europe and the North American East Coast, sparking unease that
China will expand its presence in the Arctic and North Atlantic Region, with
or without Russian support. The multiple Eurasian rail freight routes inaugu-
rated under the BRI, linking Chinese cities with the likes of Duisburg, Rot-
terdam, and London, have been instrumental in creating direct and more
rapid trade between China and Western Europe at a time when the intra-
European rail and road infrastructure connecting the western and eastern
parts of Europe are still undeveloped. Chinese efforts to build a BRI route
from Piraeus to Tallinn, linking Eastern European destinations from south to
north, have met practical cross-border setbacks and may not be realized to
their full extent. Nevertheless, behind these plans is a Chinese-led initiative,
Cooperation between China and Central and Eastern European Countries,
often referred to as “17+1,” that involves large-scale infrastructural develop-

ment with substantial participation of the Chinese state. This assortment of
EU and non-EU members, NATO and non-NATO countries, as well as non-
aligned states understandably touches off alarms in NATO and the EU inso-
far as it affects established collaboration, blurs allegiances, and thus ultimate-
ly impacts the scope of action presently enjoyed by the United States.
II. American and Chinese Presidents
To many observers, President Donald Trump’s tenure upset established inter-

national relationships and unleashed tensions that had built up in many con-
texts, including U.S.-Chinese relations. His acerbic and unconventional style
of leadership came across as impulsive, ill tempered, and devoid of political
rationality, although some commentators point out that he achieved many of
the goals he set in 2016. Here, I shall do no more than trace some simple
patterns that may help explain the changes President Trump brought to Sino-
American relations.
As already hinted above, Obama’s anxieties and ambivalence toward Chi-
na were woven into myriad commitments and vested interests and reflected
his awareness of possible Chinese sanctions and other counteractions that
would impact severely on affected American nationals and companies. This
limited his scope of action to the occasional show of military strength and the
bringing of legal cases under international law or under alien tort and other
global jurisdiction clauses in U.S. courts, in addition to diplomatic reprisals,
symbolic embargoes, and similar tit-for-tat moves. In short, President Oba-
ma’s preferred alternative was business as usual, even if the cost of doing
nothing was high. Any volte-face would have constituted an embarrassing
concession that America’s China policy had relied on false assumptions.
President Xi Jinping’s rise to power in 2012–2013 coincided with China’s
more pronounced ambitions for a global strategy, an early example of which
was the consultation between Xi and Obama over how to deal with North
Korea. Symbolic gestures such as China’s offer to build a “new type of great
power relationship” with the United States were met with discomfort and
even outright derision across the Pacific.
President Trump’s inauguration in 2017 saw him assume a radically dif-
ferent stance toward China from his predecessor, which was marked by the
speech given by Vice President Mike Pence at the Hudson Institute in Octo-
ber 2018. 76 He adopted an idiosyncratic style of “disruptive innovation” that
aimed to upset the status quo and diplomatic predictability. Trump managed
to undo the dispute resolution mechanisms of the WTO; made a play for
mineral-rich Kvanefjeld, Greenland, that China also had its eyes on; blocked
Huawei and other Chinese technology firms from taking part in building
communications infrastructure in the United States and allied countries; in-
270 Chapter 11
itiated a trade war against China; and forced China to close its Houston
consulate. Rhetorically, Trump exploited the COVID-19 crisis to the fullest
in order to blacken the reputation of the Chinese government, attacking Chi-
na for procrastinating in its response and for lying about the scale and sever-
ity of the epidemic and accusing the WHO of colluding with China. These
accusations enraged the Chinese authorities, exposing China’s limited capac-
ity to act swiftly and responsibly in a pandemic, as cadres, fearful of the
consequences to their careers, sought to hide and contain any signs of trou-
ble, often failing to alert the responsible authorities—and, in the case of
Wuhan, silencing whistle-blowing physician Li Wenliang.
China’s response reflected its increasing assertiveness: “wolf warrior”
diplomacy was used to counter foreign attacks, supported by displays of
public outrage, in order to uphold China’s “national interests and dignity,”
while petty retaliations, anti-foreign rallies, and factitious counter-arguments
were commonplace, only serving to give credence to Trump’s rhetoric.
Trampling notions of formal propriety and respect for the facts, Trump suc-
cessfully upset China’s ability to pursue its development program. However,
President Xi made a major comeback in December 2020 with his declaration
at the UN that China would be carbon neutral by 2060, a pledge that gained
worldwide acclaim but little reaction from President Trump—indicating that
the pressure from China was on.
The race to develop a COVID-19 vaccine has been likened to the race to
put a man on the moon. The United States and China are now locked in a
head-to-head contest to inoculate their populations. So far, results from both
sides have been promising. The positive gains that all mankind might achieve
are underlined by the geopolitics of the epidemic. The global importance of
pharmaceutical companies—whether located in Australia, China, Europe, In-
dia, Russia, the United States, or other parts of the globe—indicates that
U.S.-Chinese relations are part of a larger picture that is unfolding before our
eyes. In an age of division and disorientation, can President Joe Biden bring
calm and a new sense of hope to U.S.-Chinese relations? Only time will tell.
FURTHER READING
One recent research trend examines the activities of China and the United
States in other parts of the world. Examples are: David M. Lampton, Selina
Ho, and Cheng-Chwee Kwik, Rivers of Iron: Railroads and Chinese Power
in Southeast Asia (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2020);
David Shambaugh, Where Great Powers Meet: America and China in South-
east Asia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020); Zenel Garcia, China’s
Military Modernization, Japan’s Normalization and the South China Sea
Territorial Disputes (Cham: Palgrave, 2019); Tom Miller, China’s Asian
Dream: Empire Building along the New Silk Road (London: Zed Books,
2017); Andrew C. Mertha, Brothers in Arms: Chinese Aid to the Khmer
Rouge, 1975–1979 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2014); Harry G.
Broadman, Africa’s Silk Road: China and India’s New Economic Frontier
(Washington, D.C.: The International Bank for Reconstruction and Develop-
ment/The World Bank, 2007).
The “Indo-Pacific,” with about 60 percent of the world population, was
until the late 2010s mainly a concept in marine biology—defining habitats of
sea creatures. The term gained some importance in Australian politics in the
late 1960s and early 1970s when the issue of national security became acute
as Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War and the alliance with the
United States gave rise to geopolitical concerns. A major source is Harry
G. Gelber, “Australia as an Indo-Pacific Power,” Current History (April
1970): 223–228; and Jeffrey Grey and Jeff Doyle, “Australia and Vietnam
War. A Select Bibliography,” Vietnam Generation 3, no. 2 (1991), Article
11, https://digitalcommons.lasalle.edu/vietnamgeneration/vol3/iss2/11. For a
recent overview, see Brendan Taylor, “Contested Concept: Unpacking Aus-
tralia’s Indo-Pacific Debate,” Asian Politics & Policy 12, no. 1 (January
2020): 71–83, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/aspp.12512.
The concept came to the forefront of the geopolitics debate—for example,
in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (or Quad)—in the wake of President
Obama’s Pivot to Asia policy announcement. See Michael McDevitt, China
as a Twenty-First-Century Naval Power (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute
Press, 2020); and Timothy Doyle and Dennis Rumley, The Rise and the
Return of the Indo-Pacific (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). For a
Chinese take on the concept, see Cuiping Zhu, ed., Annual Report on the
Development of the Indian Ocean Region (2018): Indo-Pacific: Concept Def-
inition and Strategic Implementation (Beijing: Social Sciences Academic
Press and Springer, 2018).
David M. Lampton’s Same Bed, Different Dreams: Managing U.S.-China
Relations, 1989–2000 (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press,
2001) and his edited The Making of Chinese Foreign and Security Policy in
the Era of Reform, 1978–2000 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press,
2001) are excellent works on the period from the 1980s to 2000. Other
recommended books include Robert Suettinger, Beyond Tiananmen: The
Politics of U.S.-China Relations (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution,
2003); Jean A. Garrison, Making China Policy: From Nixon to G. W. Bush
(Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2005); Christopher Marsh and
June Teufel Dreyer, eds., U.S.-China Relations in the Twenty-First Century:
Policies, Prospects, and Possibilities (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books,
2003); Suisheng Zhao, ed., China and the United States: Cooperation and
Competition in Northeast Asia (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); Ge-
rald Curtis, Ryosei Kokubun, and Wang Jisi, eds., Getting the Triangle
272 Chapter 11
Straight: Managing China-Japan-US Relations (Tokyo: Japan Center for

International Exchange, 2010); and H. R. McMaster, Battlegrounds: The
Fight to Defend the Free World (New York: Harper, 2020).
The Great Wall and the Empty Fortress by Andrew Nathan and Robert S.
Ross (New York: Norton, 1997) is a comprehensive survey of the security
issues surrounding China’s post–Cold War foreign relations and an effective
antidote to the “China threat” discourse prevalent in the United States. For
additional readings on China-Taiwan-U.S. relations, see Alan M. Wachman,
Why Taiwan? Geostrategic Rationales for China’s Territorial Integrity
(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2007); Jonathan Manthorpe,
Forbidden Nation: A History of Taiwan (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2002); Edward Friedman, ed., China’s Rise, Taiwan’s Dilemmas and Inter-
national Peace (London: Routledge, 2006); and John F. Copper, Taiwan:
Nation-State or Province?, fifth edition (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press,
2009).
The following publications in Chinese give a range of Chinese views
about America: Qian Qichen (钱其琛), Waijiao shiji [外交十记 Ten diplo-
matic episodes] (Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2003); Su Ge (苏格), Mei-
guo duihua zhengce yu Taiwan wenti [美国对华政策与台湾问题 America’s
China policy and the Taiwan question] (Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe,
1998); Sun Zhe (孙哲), Meiguo xue: Zhongguo dui Meiguo zhengzhi waijiao
yanjiu, 1979–2006 [美国学: 中国对美国政治外交研究 American studies:
Chinese writings on American politics and foreign relations] (Shanghai:
Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 2008); Zhongguo shehui kexueyuan heping fa-
zhan yanjiusuo (中国社会科学院和平发展研究所), ed., Aobama zhengfu
neiwai zhengce tiaozheng yu Zhongmei guanxi [奥巴马政府内外政策调整
与中美关系 The adjustment of domestic and foreign policies during the
Obama administration and Sino-American relations] (Beijing: Zhongguo
shehui kexue chubanshe, 2015); Xie Fuzhan (谢伏瞻), ed., Zhongguo shehui
kexueyuan guoji xingshi baogao 2020 [中国社会科学院国际形势报告
2020 Report on the international situation by the Chinese Academy of Social
Sciences] (Beijing: Shehu kexue wenxian chubansh, 2020); Yan Xuetong (阎
学通), trans. Li Peizhi (李佩芝, wife), Daguo lingdaoli [大国领导力 Lead-
ership and the rise of great powers] (Beijing: Zhongxin chubanjituan, 2020).
NOTES
1. Kinling Lo, “Europeans Believe China Will Overtake US in a Decade, Despite Biden
Presidency,” South China Morning Post, January 20, 2021, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/
diplomacy/article/3118474/europeans-believe-china-will-overtake-us-decade-despite-biden.
Xinhua, “Economic Watch: China Moves Fast to Become World Leader in Transport,” Decem-
ber 22, 2020, http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-12/22/c_139610910.htm.
2. Michael Berlin, Ross Terrill, and Akira Iriye, “Tiananmen Two Years Later—How Did
the Media Perform? A Study of American Media Coverage of the Beijing Spring of 1989,”
draft, for the Joan Shorenstein Barone Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, John F.
Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, August 20, 1991, p. 13.
3. Flemming Christiansen and Shirin Rai, Chinese Politics and Society (London: Prentice
Hall, 1996), 142–148.
4. 0538 (Xu Wenli’s alias), “Zaitan Meiguo shi ‘minzhu de leyuan ma’?” [再谈美国是”民
主的乐园吗”? More on whether the United States is a “democratic paradise”?] Siwu luntan [四
五论坛 April 5th forum], no. 9 (May 1979): 15–19.
5. Han Minzhu, ed., Cries for Democracy: Writings and Speeches from the 1989 Chinese
Democracy Movement (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990). Documents 1–6,
cables from the American Embassy in Beijing to Department of State and IPAC daily intelli-
gence summary, November 21, 1985–January 17, 1987. The U.S. “Tiananmen Papers,” http://
www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB16/documents/index.html#d2 (accessed May 29,
2011). CIA, “China: Potential for Political Crisis,” summary, February 9, 1989, http://www2.
gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB47/index2.html.
6. The visit to China by Japanese prime minster Nakasone Yasuhiro (1918–2019) in No-
vember 1986 confirmed fissures, as discussed in chapter 10, in the top levels of the CCP
between Hu Yaobang and Deng Xiaoping over China’s democratization, freedom, generational
change in the CCP leadership, and other issues. https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/new-
evidence-hu-yaobangs-fall-and-japan-china-relations-1980s-prime-minister-nakasone, https://
digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/219977 (accessed February 20, 2021).
7. Editorial, “Bixu qizhi xianmingde fandui dongluan” [必须旗帜鲜明地反对动乱 We
must take a clear stand and oppose the disturbances], Renmin ribao, April 26, 1989, p. 1. For an
analysis of three competing narratives about the Tiananmen Incident from the viewpoint of
protesters, the Chinese government, and the Bush administration, see Randolph Kluver, “Rhe-
torical Trajectories of Tiananmen Square,” Diplomatic History 34, no. 1 (January 2010):
71–94.
8. Nancy Bernkopf Tucker, ed., China Confidential: American Diplomats and Sino-
American Relations, 1945–1996 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 443. Flem-
ming Christiansen, “The 1989 Student Demonstrations and the Limits of the Chinese Political
Bargaining Machine: An Essay,” China Information 4, no. 1 (Summer 1989): 17–27.
9. Document 9, CIA intelligence assessment, “Perspectives on Growing Social Tension in
China,” May 1989, http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB47/index2.html.
10. Andrew J. Nathan and Perry Link, The Tiananmen Papers (New York: PublicAffairs,
2001).
11. CIA research paper, “The Road to the Tiananmen Crackdown: An Analytic Chronology
of Chinese Leadership Decision Making,” September 1989, http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/
NSAEBB/NSAEBB47/index2.html.
12. Document 19, “Secretary of State’s Morning Summary for June 6, 1989, China: Descent
into Chaos,” http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB47/index2.html (accessed
May 29, 2011).
13. Memo from James A. Baker III to the President, “Your China Visit,” February 25–27,
1989, http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB47/index2.html.
14. The President’s News Conference, June 5, 1989, John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters,
American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=17103 (accessed July
21, 2011).
15. Section 902 of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Years 1990 and 1991
(P.L. 101-246; 22 U.S.C. 2151 note). Dianne E. Rennack, “China: Economic Sanctions,”
Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, May 18, 2005.
16. Deng Xiaoping (邓小平), “Zhongmei guanxi zhonggui yao hao qilai caixing” [中美关
系终归要好起来才行 U.S.-Chinese relations will have to ultimately improve], December 10,
1989, Deng Xiaoping wenxuan [邓小平文选 Selected works of Deng Xiaoping], reprint (Beij-
ing: Renmin chubanshe, 2008; first edition in 1993), vol. 3, pp. 350–351.
17. Deng Xiaoping, “Guoji xingshi yu jingji wenti” [国际形势与经济问题 The internation-
al situation and economic questions], March 3, 1990, Deng Xiaoping wenxuan, vol. 3, pp.
353–356.
274 Chapter 11
18. Deng Xiaoping, “Zhongguo yongyuan bu yunxu bieguo ganshe neizheng” [中国永远不
允许别国干涉内政 China would never allow other countries to interfere in its internal affairs],
July 11, 1990, Deng Xiaoping wenxuan, vol. 3, pp. 359–361.
19. Jiang Zemin’s conversation with the American president’s special envoy, Brent Scow-
croft, national security advisor, “Fazhan Zhongmei guanxi yao xiangqian kan” [发展中美关系
要向前看 The development of U.S.-Chinese relations needs to be forward-looking], in Jiang
Zemin wenxuan [江泽民文选 Selected works of Jiang Zemin] (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe,
2006), vol. 1, pp. 84–86.
20. Jiang Zemin, “Guoji xingshi he junshi zhanlüe fangzhen” [国际形势和军事战略方针
The international situation and military strategic guidelines], January 13, 1993, in Jiang Zemin
wenxuan, vol. 1, pp. 278–294.
21. Jiang Zemin’s conversation with former president Richard Nixon in Beijing on October
31, 1989, “Zhongguo renmin lilai shi jiang minzu qijie de” [中国人民历来是讲民族气节的
The Chinese people have always been concerned about national dignity], Jiang Zemin wenxu-
an, vol. 1, pp. 70–73.
22. Jiang Zemin, “Lingdao ganbu yiding yao jiang zhengzhi” [领导干部一定要讲政治
Leaders must deal with politics], September 27, 1995, in Zhonggong zhongyang xuanchuanbu,
ed., Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin lun sixiang zhengzhi gongzuo [毛泽东邓小平
江泽民论思想政治工作 Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and Jiang Zemin on political work]
(Beijing: Xuexi chubanshe, 2000), 234–236.
23. Jiang Zemin’s speech at the UN head of the state summit on September 12, 2000, http://
www.investchina.org.cn/chinese/2000/Sep/5068.htm (accessed July 15, 2011).
24. http://big5.xinhuanet.com/gate/big5/news.xinhuanet.com/zhengfu/2002-08/06/con-
tent_512599.htm (accessed July 15, 2011). Jiang Zemin, “Dui Yatai jingji hezuo de yuanze
jianyi” [对亚太经济合作的原则建议 Suggested principles for economic collaboration in the
Asia-Pacific], November 15, 1994, in Jiang Zemin wenxuan, vol. 1, pp. 413–417.
25. Joseph Kahn, “Executives Make Trade with China a Moral Issue,” New York Times,
February 13, 2000, http://www.nytimes.com/2000/02/13/us/executives-make-trade-with-china-
a-moral-issue.html?pagewanted=print&src=pm (accessed December 14, 2011).
26. Erik Eckholm, “In China, So Many Liberties, So Little Freedom,” New York Times,
January 3, 1999, Section 4, p. 1.
27. Bruce A. Elleman and S.C. M. Paine, Modern China: Continuity and Change, 1644 to
the Present, second edition (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), 515.
28. Sean Roberts, The War on the Uyghurs: China’s Internal Campaign against a Muslim
Minority (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2020); Wilson Center, https://
digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/collection/491/local-nationalism-in-xinjiang-1957-1958.
29. J. Stapleton Roy’s praise of Nancy Bernkopf Tucker, ed., Strait Talk: United States-
Taiwan Relations and the Crisis with China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
2009).
30. Tucker, China Confidential, 473.
31. Interview with Wen Jiabao by Leonard Downie Jr., executive editor of the Washington
Post, on November 21, 2003, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6641-
2003Nov22?language=printer (accessed July 16, 2011).
32. Sun Zhe (孙哲), Meiguo Guohui yu Zhongmei guanxi: Anli yu fenxi [美国国会与中美
关系: 案例与分析 The American Congress and U.S.-Chinese relations: Case studies and anal-
ysis] (Beijing: Shishi chubanshe, 2004). Li Qingsi (李庆四), Meiguo Guohui yu Meiguo duihua
zhengce [美国国会与美国对华政策 The American Congress and American China policy]
(Beijing: Dangdai shijie chubanshe, 2002).
33. Lee Teng-hui, “Always in My Heart,” speech at Cornell University in June 1995, http://
www.news.cornell.edu/campus/Lee/Lee_Speech.html (accessed July 22, 2011).
34. Richard Bush, “Lee Teng-hui and ‘Separatism,’” in Dangerous Strait: The U.S.-Taiwan-
China Crisis, ed. Nancy Bernkopf Tucker (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005),
70–92.
35. Jiang Zemin, “Wei cujin zuguo tongyi daye de wancheng er jixu fendou” [为促进祖国
统一大业的完成而继续奋斗 Continue to strive to accomplish the great cause of the unifica-
tion of the motherland], January 13, 1995, Jiang Zemin wenxuan, vol. 1, pp. 418–424.
36. Xiong Zhiyong (熊志勇), Bainian Zhongmei guanxi [百年中美关系 A century of Sino-
U.S. relations] (Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2006), 363.
37. Christopher M. Dent, “Taiwan and the New Regional Political Economy of East Asia,”
China Quarterly, no. 182 (June 2005): 385–406. For a different view of the economic integra-
tion between Taiwan and China, see T. J. Cheng, “China-Taiwan Economic Linkage: Between
Insulation and Superconductivity,” in Tucker, ed., Dangerous Strait, 93–130.
38. “China-US Joint Statement,” October 29, 1997, http://www.china-embassy.org/eng/
zmgx/zysj/jzxfm/t36249.htm.
39. Editorial, Renmin ribao, November 3, 1997, June 18, 1998. Liu Liandi (刘连第), ed.,
Zhongmei guanxi de guiji: 1993–2000 nian dashi zonglan [中美关系的轨迹: 1993 年–2000
年大事纵览 The contours of U.S.-Chinese relations: An overview of major events from 1993
to 2000] (Beijing: Shishi chubanshe, 2001), 186–189. Madeleine Albright, “U.S. Commitment
to Security and Prosperity in Asia,” June 27, 1998, U.S. Department of State Dispatch (August
1998): 1–9.
40. “China-US Joint Statement,” October 29, 1997.
41. The Chinese embassy in Belgrade allegedly was the largest Chinese diplomatic mission
in the world at the time. Some observers noted that NATO’s Belgrade bombing was a calculat-
ed act, as the embassy was being used to help build Serbia’s military capability and transmit
Serbian military communications. https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/oct/17/balkans,
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/1999/12/chin-d01.html (accessed February 20, 2021).
42. United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, December 10, 1982, 1833 UNTS
397, 21 ILM 1261 (1982).
43. The Convention on International Civil Aviation, December 7, 1944, 61 Stat. 1180, 15
UNTS 295.
44. “Statement by the President on American Plane and Crew in China,” April 2, 2011,
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/04/200104022.html.
45. Michael D. Swaine and Zhang Tuosheng, with Danielle F. S. Cohen, eds., Managing
Sino-American Crisis: Case Studies and Analysis (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, 2007).
46. “Secretary Rumsfeld Briefs on EP-3 Collision,” April 13, 2001, http://www.defense.
gov/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=1066.
47. Stephen Sackur’s interview with Angel Gurria, secretary-general of the Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) on BBC HARDtalk, July 6, 2011. Howard
W. French, “Letter from Shanghai: Behind the U.S. Decline of Influence in China,” Interna-
tional Herald Tribune, Asia Pacific, March 22, 2006, http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/03/22/
news/letter.php.
48. Peter Warren Singer, “America, Islam, and the 9-11 War,” Current History: A Journal
of Contemporary Trends 105, no. 695 (December 2006): 415–422.
49. Wu Xinbo, “The Promise and Limitations of a Sino-U.S. Partnership,” Washington
Quarterly 27, no. 4 (Autumn 2004): 115–126. Tony Karon, “Bush China Policy Defaults to
Engagement,” Time, July 31, 2001, http://www.time.com/time/columnist/karon/article/
0,9565,169585,00.html. Jing-dong Yuan, “Bush’s Hawks Circle over Policy,” Op-Ed, South
China Morning Post, July 24, 2002, Section: News, p. 14, http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/other/
bushhawk.htm.
50. “2001 Quadrennial Defense Review Report,” http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/pdfs/
qdr2001.pdf (accessed January 8, 2008).
51. Office of the Press Secretary, White House, “President Bush Meets with Chinese Presi-
dent Jiang Zemin,” February 21, 2002, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/02/
20020221-7.html.
52. Remarks by Presidents Bush and Jiang at the press conference, October 25, 2002, http://
georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021025.html. Mike Allen and
Karen DeYoung, “Bush Seeks China’s Aid to Oppose N. Korea,” Washington Post, October
26, 2002, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/10/
AR2009111009772_pf.html. Editorial, “Xin shiji xin xingshi xin xingdong: Relie zhuhe Jiang
Zemin zhuxi chufang yuanman chenggong” [新世纪, 新形势, 新行动: 热烈祝贺江泽民主席
276 Chapter 11
出访圆满成功 New century, new situation, and new actions: Warmly celebrate the success of
President Jiang Zemin’s visit], Renmin ribao, October 30, 2002.
53. “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” September 2002, pp.
25–28, http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.pdf.
54. Wang Jisi, “China’s Search for Stability with America,” Foreign Affairs 84, no. 5
(September/October 2005): 39–48.
55. Hu Jintao’s speech on the 110th anniversary of Mao Zedong’s birthday, http://
news.xinhuanet.com/newscenter/2003-12/26/content_1250092.htm (accessed July 16, 2011).
Post, on November 21, 2003.
57. Zheng Bijian, “China’s ‘Peaceful Rise’ to Great-Power Status,” Foreign Affairs 84, no.
5 (September/October 2005): 18–24.
58. Kesley Davenport, “Chronology of U.S.-North Korean Nuclear and Missile Diploma-
cy,” July 2020, https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/dprkchron.
59. Zhongguo guoji wenti yanjiu suo (中国国际问题研究所), Guoji xingshi he Zhongguo
waijiao lanpishu (2009/2010) [国际形势和中国外交蓝皮书 The bluebook of the international
situation and China’s foreign affairs positions (2009/2010)] (Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe,
2010), chap. 7. Jae Ho Chung, “China’s Ascendancy and the Korean Peninsula: From Interest
Reevaluation to Strategic Realignment?” in Power Shift: China and Asia’s New Dynamics, ed.
David Shambaugh (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2005), 151–169.
60. “Joint Statement of the Fourth Round of the Six-Party Talks,” Beijing, September 19,
2005, http://www.state.gov/p/eap/regional/c15455.htm. “Initial Actions for the Implementation
of the Joint Statement,” February 13, 2007, Beijing, http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/zxxx/
t297463.htm. Jayshree Bajoria and Carin Zissis, “The SixParty Talks on North Korea’s Nuclear
Program,” http://www.cfr.org/proliferation/six-party-talks-north-koreas-nuclear-program/
p13593 (all three files accessed July 17, 2011).
61. Park Hahnkyu, “Trust But Verify: Donald Trump, Kim Jong Un and a Denuclearising
North Korea after the Singapore Summit,” East Asian Policy 10 (July 2018): 5–18; Seung-Ho
Joo, “North Korea under Kim Jong-un: The Beginning of the End of a Peculiar Dynasty,”
Pacific Focus 27, no. 1 (2012): 1–9.
62. Richard C. Bush, Untying the Knot: Making Peace in the Taiwan Strait (Washington,
D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2005). Nancy Bernkopf Tucker, ed., Dangerous Strait: The U.S.-
Taiwan-China Crisis (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005).
63. Renmin ribao, overseas ed., May 6, 2005. Thomas J. Christensen (Deputy Assistant
Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs), “A Strong and Moderate Taiwan,” speech given
to the U.S.–Taiwan Business Council, September 11, 2007, Annapolis, Maryland, https://shar.
es/abPrlP.
64. https://www.trade.gov/knowledge-product/taiwan-market-overview (accessed February
22, 2021).
65. Kharis Templeman, Yun-han Chu, and Larry Diamond, eds., Dynamics of Democracy in
Taiwan: The Ma Ying-Jeou Years (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2020); Jason
Pan, “Reliance on China Makes Taiwan Vulnerable: Clinton,” Taipei Times, June 25, 2014,
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2014/06/25/2003593606.
66. Dean P. Chen, US-China Rivalry and Taiwan’s Mainland Policy: Security, Nationalism,
and the 1992 Consensus (Cham: Palgrave, 2017).
67. Syaru Shirley Lin, Taiwan’s China Dilemma: Contested Identities and Multiple Inter-
ests in Taiwan’s Cross-Strait Economic Policy (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press,
2016), preface, xx.
68. Carrie Lam, “Promulgation of National Law 2020,” June 30, 2020, https://www.gld.gov.
hk/egazette/pdf/20202444e/es220202444136.pdf. Michael C. Davis, Making Hong Kong Chi-
na: The Rollback of Human Rights and the Rule of Law (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Association for
Asian Studies, 2021).
69. Some of the ideas in this paragraph were inspired by my graduate student Galen Ford.
70. S.878, The Taiwan Assurance Act of 2019, https://trackbill.com/bill/us-congress-senate-
bill-878-taiwan-assurance-act-of-2019/1732558/ (accessed June 21, 2020).
71. Huang Tzu-ti, “Poll Shows Highest Ever Support for Taiwan Independence,” June 22,
2020, https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3951560. Galen Ford contributed to the writ-
ing of the above three paragraphs.
72. Edward Wong, “U.S. Pushes Large Arms Sale to Taiwan, Including Missiles That Can
Hit China,” September 17, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/17/us/politics/us-arms-
sale-taiwan-china.html; https://www.dsca.mil/sites/default/files/mas/Taiwan_20-87.pdfIn.
73. David Axe, “If China Invades Taiwan, Taipei Plans to Throw a Thousand Tanks at the
Beachhead,” December 9, 2020, https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2020/12/09/if-china-
invades-taiwan-taipei-plans-to-throw-a-thousand-tanks-at-the-beachhead/?sh=4b88f8c86f933;
Ian Easton, “China’s Top Five War Plans,” January 6, 2019, https://project2049.net/2019/01/
06/chinas-top-five-war-plans/.
74. For a summary of bilateral military relations, see Congressional Research Service,
“U.S.-China Military-to-Military Relations,” January 4, 2021, https://www.everycrsreport.
com/reports/IF11712.html. As noted above, the United States and China engaged in high-level
military cooperation before the June 4, 1989 Incident. Following the further setback of the
midair collision incident of 2001, military contacts between the United States and China were
sporadic and were closely linked with geopolitical variables such as American arms sales to
Taiwan and the U.S. and Chinese treatments of Tibet and the Dalai Lama. At meetings in 2007
between Robert Gates, President Bush’s secretary of defense; Cao Gangchuan, the Chinese
minister of national defense; and President Hu Jintao in Beijing, both sides agreed to establish a
hotline between their defense ministers, to foster regular military dialogue and exchanges at all
levels, to share military archives to help locate American military personnel listed as missing
during the Korean War, and to conduct joint exercises and training for humanitarian projects.
75. Mark Magnier, “US Must Be Ready for Military Clash with China, Pentagon Official
Chad Sbragia Says,” South China Morning Post, February 21, 2020, https://www.scmp.com/
print/news/china/military/article/3051683/us-must-gird-possible-military-clash-china-
pentagon-official; James Johnson, The US-China Military and Defense Relationship during the
Obama Presidency (Cham: Palgrave, 2018). Matthew Kroenig, The Return of Great Power
Rivalry: Democracy Versus Autocracy from the Ancient World to the U.S. and China (Oxford:
76. “Remarks by Vice President Pence on the Administration’s Policy toward China,” Octo-
ber 4, 2018, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-vice-pre; U.S. Depart-
ment of Defense, “Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy of the United States:
Sharpening the American Military’s Competitive Edge,” https://dod.defense.gov/Portals/1/
Documents/pubs/2018-National-Defense-Strategy-Summary.pdf (accessed February 23, 2021).
Chapter Twelve
The Race
Changing Dynamics in the Economic,
Social, and Cultural Arenas
From the late 1970s, a major mismatch emerged from the American-Chinese
encounter—the gap between the two nations’ fluctuating political and mili-
tary relations, on the one hand, and their expanded ties in the areas of trade,
society, religion, and culture, on the other. By the mid-2010s, relations had
been soured by a deep frustration built up over many years: contrary to what
many Americans had predicted, economic convergence—China’s endeavor
to catch up with advanced countries like the United States—and increasing
social and cultural interchange had failed to bring both countries closer in
terms of security and democratic principles. 1
Economic and financial ties between the United States and China were
long considered the cornerstone in their rocky relationship. But develop-
ments during the past few years have severely challenged, if not completely
altered, this balance. With the Chinese economy rolling relentlessly forward,
the United States found itself in fierce competition with China in all parts of
the world by the late 2010s.
How did this state of affairs come about? What is the underlying nature of
the China challenge? Will the twenty-first century be the China Century that
will transform even entrenched Western ways of life? In chapter 11, we
discussed American counter-strategies to deal with the threats posed by Chi-
na, particularly by the Obama and Trump administrations, as well as issues
related to intellectual property rights in the introduction. In what follows, we
examine additional aspects of the changing dynamics of China’s internation-
al relations, a subject crucial to explain the dynamics in U.S.-Chinese trade
and cultural relations over the past three decades.
279
280 Chapter 12
CHINA’S INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
At the end of World War II, China was among the Allied powers that had
defeated the Axis powers of Germany, Italy, and Japan and brought to an end
the militarism, mass enslavement, and genocide inflicted on the world by
Fascism. While Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union had
led the alliance, China and France were counted among the victorious nations
and were awarded permanent seats on the newly established United Nations
Security Council. Following the Chinese civil war (1946–1949), the defeated
Nationalist Republic of China government had escaped to Taipei and contin-
ued, under America’s protection, to occupy the China seat in the United
Nations, while the People’s Republic of China (PRC) chiefly focused its
international attention on the unaligned countries and states that gained inde-
pendence from colonial empires in the postwar period. This situation
changed fundamentally in 1971 when the United States initiated a rapproche-
ment with Mao’s China in order to protect its forces at the height of the
Vietnam War. As explained in chapter 9, the PRC took over the China seat in
the UN and set out to influence global policy making.
As we have seen in chapter 10, an important focus of the People’s Repub-
lic in the United Nations was to assume a role in the processes of develop-
ment and environment. This engagement has not only benefited China with
global expertise on demographic growth, food security, human development,
and project planning and financing, but also ensured that the PRC contributes
to building global expertise. China’s all-pervasive state planning system al-
lowed it to maximize the effect of international programs for its own devel-
opment with, on balance, a general recognition of efficiency and reliability
when compared with other parts of the world. China proved, despite its thin
foundation in the 1970s, able to grips with excessive population growth,
huge environmental crises, and wide-spread poverty, even though many de-
velopmental issues remain in the country. In close collaboration with interna-
tional organizations, like the Food and Agriculture Organization, the United
Nations Development Programme, the World Health Organization, the
World Food Programme, the World Bank, and the international Monetary
Fund, China does reap the fruits of its persistent engagement with the United
Nations development processes: it has written global development goals into
its own planning and put its stamp on global climate change policies. Be-
sides, China gained an advanced position in photovoltaic and wind energy, e-
mobility, public transport, and mobile communication. 2 Although these
achievements do not add up to sustainability in a strict sense, they serve to
underpin China’s international standing, an image and example that the Chi-
nese leadership does not hesitate to project internationally. 3 Therefore, the
choice for the United States is whether to counter Xi Jinping’s attempt to
The Race 281
steal the development and climate change show, like President Trump did, or
whether to take the lead, as President Joe Biden intends to.
Also as explained in chapter 10, there was a strong liaison between Chi-
na’s large-scale social engineering projects and the creation of popular incen-
tives, on the one hand, and the aims and values embraced by large interna-
tional organizations such as the United Nations, on the other. This overlap,
not infrequently ignored by many China analysts, culminated in China’s Belt
and Road Initiative in 2013 (see below).
If we look, for example, at rural living standards in the 1980s and 1990s,
China’s central government used income and comprehensive development
indicators at county level to identify the poorest and wealthiest counties, and
towns and townships were similarly categorized at the provincial level. At
the same time, counties investigated the status of villages within their pur-
view, and townships and towns identified needy households. Anti-poverty
projects typically offered food, clothes, and agricultural inputs as remunera-
tion in kind in return for work on local infrastructure projects including
roads, telephone communication, electricity, and safe drinking water.
Utilizing similar packages, other schemes aimed to improve agricultural
land use by supporting new technologies, agricultural infrastructures, and
changes in cropping patterns. Characteristic of such package projects was the
matching funding shared by central and local state-run bodies and benefici-
ary households, whether this consisted of grants, interest-free loans, or inter-
est-bearing credits. Unlike anti-poverty programs, however, such schemes
sought the fastest and most efficient ways of producing outcomes; this was
achieved by encouraging the top performers to become models to emulate
and by removing minor obstacles first, slowly advancing toward solving the
most difficult problems last. Given the hierarchy of program packaging and
matching funding involved, the geographical rollout of policy was planned to
avoid serious imbalances across jurisdictions. Leadership committees for
large programs, policy coordination across jurisdictions, and integration of
planning targets across authorities, plus nationwide competitions and the
choice of models to be imitated, aimed to increase efficiency in incremental
development, breaking the inefficient patterns that had characterized steady-
state planning before 1978.
In other words, during the reform era, China’s domestic development
strategies adopted and further expanded what it had learned from internation-
al development practices. Indeed, some large-scale programs in China imper-
ceptibly integrated the International Monetary Fund and World Bank funding
models and practices from the political center down to the villages and indi-
vidual households, creating new development paths that have also been em-
ployed in other parts of the world.
Furthermore, what began as technologically oriented program manage-
ment increasingly prompted the leadership to embrace sociological and eco-
282 Chapter 12
nomic approaches to change so that “technical fixes” were replaced with

what in the early 2000s was called “human-centered” development aimed at
creating a harmonious society, under President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen
Jiabao (2002–2012). This approach was adopted in order to remedy and
preclude unsettling outcomes such as those experienced in the early imple-
mentation of the national birth planning policy. The idea of enabling devel-
opment through infrastructure and learning from imported models was an
important response to the general critique of Third World development re-
gimes where “local knowledge” was often overruled by “outside expertise”
and where external funding was often diverted for other purposes.
As the West debated how to handle China’s rise over the past twenty
years, China learned its way and is now perceived as having developed an
overarching global strategy, particularly since the inauguration of the Xi
Jingping and Li Keqiang administration in 2013, in comparison with the
United States and other advanced countries. The One Belt, One Road initia-
tive (the Belt and Road Initiative, BRI) was first outlined by President Xi
Jinping in his speech “Promote People-to-People Friendship and Create a
Better Future” at Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan in September 2013. 4
The BRI focuses on infrastructure investment in Eurasian, Southeast Asian,
and African countries. Commentators agree that China’s international influ-
ence stems chiefly from its economic strength—it is the largest trader in the
world, a major global creditor, a major host of foreign direct investment, and
a foreign investor in a wide range of developing countries in Asia, Africa,
and Latin and South America. China’s export trade strategies and labor prac-
tices are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and it is increasingly outsourc-
ing unskilled work to Africa and other countries.
The Quest for Technological Advancement
The rise of Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought in China was pred-
icated theoretically on embracing the highest levels of industrial and techno-
logical progress. This course was pursued in China in the 1950s with the help
of the Soviet Union; for a short period in the early 1970s, China imported
advanced large-scale technology from abroad—for the Baoshan Steel in
Shanghai and Jinling Petrochemical works in Nanjing, for instance. From the
1980s, first the special economic zones (SEZs) and, later, much wider inter-
national collaboration introduced new technologies to China. The rapid ex-
pansion of higher education since 1983 has given a massive boost to domes-
tic natural science and engineering expertise. In the 1980s, technological
research institutes emerged as high-tech industrial companies—spawning
Zhongguancun in Beijing as China’s Silicon Valley—delivering China a
growing, highly dynamic tech sector at a time when digital technology was
taking off at an international level. This was not just driven from above—
The Race 283
ministries and research institutes experienced huge pressure to rationalize

their new development tasks, encompassing anything from digitizing data-
bases using satellite imagery, to improving the communication infrastructure.
From a situation at the start of China’s reforms in 1979—where photo-
copying machines were extremely rare, large parts of rural China lacked
telephone lines, and international telephone connections were restricted to a
few hundred dedicated offices across the country—China rapidly adopted the
use of computers and mobile phones. Even more importantly, the early culti-
vation of Chinese expertise, the SEZs, and flexible labor resources combined
to make China an attractive manufacturing site for advanced digital technolo-
gies. Apple, Samsung, Nokia, Microsoft, and many other tech companies
developed dependence on China for manufacturing hardware, writing pro-
gramming code, and retailing their products. Some spin-off companies, like
Foxconn (registered in Taiwan), acted as intermediaries in this process. 5
Large Chinese companies—Tencent, Alibaba, Huawei, and others—
emerged on the crest of this wave, opening up China’s huge domestic mar-
ket. This technological leap, which included the development of photovoltaic
electricity, high-speed rail services, and electric automobility as well as com-
munications, meant that China was able to build new infrastructures from
scratch. Most high-speed trains in service today run on new tracks and from
new stations that have never seen steam or diesel-electric trains, and land-
line phone accounts ceased to be the object of fraud due to monopolies and
scarce supply when mobile phones swept onto the market.
State planning—largely concerned with managing program tenders and
loan and investment packages—anticipated the future balance of demands
and set conditions to enable mutually reinforcing development: access to
expertise, parts, and raw materials went hand in hand with increasing interna-
tional integration. Mining for rare earth elements and copper became just as
important as the importing of machine tools and microprocessors. At the
same time, China became the world’s factory, just like the United States at
the turn of the twentieth century—producing everything from very low-tech
to high-tech products for export. From the mid-1980s, the manufacturing and
processing industries underwent successive phases of technological upgrad-
ing—from clothes, shoes, and toys to cars, mobile phones, computers, and
television sets—with growing demand for constantly upgraded skills, domes-
tic infrastructure, and services.
Achieving Development through the Belt and Road Initiative
The incomes created through export processing were immense, a significant

part of China’s long-term boom. This was accompanied by a rapid expansion
of maritime container and airborne transport in the 1980s–2000s, and new
ports and airports were built. The cargo transport industry played off price
284 Chapter 12
against timeliness—as long as goods were either “cheap bulk” or “high-

value/low volume,” all was well. Yet by the 2010s, technological upgrading
and a change in the profile of goods to be shipped called for faster transport
lines, and China began preparing for international freight transport on both
existing and new tracks through Central Asia to Europe. China also began to
invest in seaport facilities and associated rail links in Asia, the Near East, and
Europe in order to solve bottleneck problems.
At the same time, China’s long-standing geostrategic Achilles heel was
becoming increasingly uncomfortable: the main sea lane to Europe relies on
the Straits of Malacca, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Suez Canal. Therefore,
the construction of alternative overland rail links from China to the Bay of
Bengal and to the Arabian Sea and through Thailand and Malaysia to Singa-
pore became a priority. China also developed seaborne transport routes via
the East Siberian and Barents Seas.
Since the early 2010s, China’s economic commitments overseas have
increasingly been coordinated and have been given the name One Belt, One
Road, indicating the multiple dimensions of land and sea transport, as well as
engagement with development initiatives en route. China helped create sev-
eral new mainly international financial institutions—for example, the Silk
Road Fund, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and the New Develop-
ment Bank—in support of such developments, while using the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization and the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and
South Africa) framework as venues for discussing related development is-
sues.
China’s international development initiatives in various parts of the world
have been very different from each other. In Europe, the building of new rail
connections from Piraeus in Greece to Tallinn in Estonia revealed a major
weakness in the EU’s freight infrastructure that had been neglected for sever-
al decades. Japan has entered into active competition with China to help
build rail infrastructure, for instance, in Indonesia. In India, China’s econom-
ic achievements—for example, in mobile technologies and expansion of
infrastructure—have been carefully observed and are being emulated locally.
In Africa, the influence is on multiple levels, ranging from large extraction
(mining) companies to the activity of large groups of Chinese petty traders
and entrepreneurs, as well as the provision of online/mobile services and
other technologies.
Many PRC citizens live and work in the Russian Far East, Central Asia,
Africa, and elsewhere. Their presence is not a reflection of high levels of
technology in itself; indeed, many were working precariously in physically
demanding sectors and in one sense are not easy to distinguish from China’s
internal rural migrants. The question is: How can low-tech individuals be
harbingers of high-tech solutions? When we consider how China’s rural
migrants took on all the hard physical tasks necessitated by high-tech solu-
The Race 285
tions, it is clear that they made those innovations possible. Thus, China’s
army of delivery workers make online shopping possible; the large numbers
of “dislocated people” living far from their hometowns are a ready market
for mobile phones, not to mention online payments and new forms of insu-
rance—they are the spawning pond from which innovative solutions may
continue to spring.
Some Final Observations
Before discussing U.S.-Chinese trade relations in the period 1990–2020 in

the next section, I shall share some final thoughts on China’s international
development. If we look at contemporary China since 1979, growth was
achieved by organizations and individuals seeking the best solutions for
themselves under their particular circumstances, each responsible for their
own gains and losses. 6 Technological and economic advances sprang from
collective coordination and goal keeping and adherence to a small number of
core political constraints, red lines not to be transgressed. In this process, not
only did the political leadership remain loyal to Marxism-Leninism and the
Mao Zedong Thought, but it was committed to interpret it to gain better
outcomes for future development, seeking to balance competing interests
with an eye to the future. From the perspective of the Chinese central govern-
ment, while the eight United Nations Millennium Development Goals are
important, 7 so is the need for individuals in China to take responsibility for
their own livelihood and to acquire the skills and create the conditions for a
new, shared destiny (see the introduction).
In line with tradition, in October 2020 the Chinese Communist Party
(CCP) launched a new five-year plan at the 5th Plenary Session of the 19th
Central Committee National Congress. The 13th five-year plan was wound
up and the 14th five-year plan came into effect. The five-year plan sets the
frame for annual plans and so tends to be rather abstract. It is rolled out
through an administrative process of forward goal setting in all state jurisdic-
tions (and party branches) and is coordinated in a complex hierarchy of local
plans.
China’s five-year plans tend to look fifteen years ahead and set out ab-
stract five-year goals that are then meant to materialize in a single five-year
plan that seeks to coordinate policies that have relatively specific targets for
major projects, standards setting, and financial packages relevant to various
government jurisdictions and bodies. The 14th five-year plan covers
2021–2025, looking ahead to 2035 in some instances. Its goals broadly coin-
cide with the UN development goals and the Paris Accord on climate
change. 8 The PRC National Development and Reform Commission, which
drafted the plan, has not only included the international goals in the wording
of the document but also is known to have integrated and coordinated them
286 Chapter 12
in all local plans and modeled possible scenarios, in line with the UN Millen-
nium Development Goals, although few measurable targets are specified. 9 In
general, the main focus of the 14th five-year plan is on strengthening and
integrating the economy, technology, and China’s social welfare system.
U.S-CHINESE TRADE PERFORMANCE, 1990–2020
This section charts the broad contours of American-Chinese trade relations

between 1990 and 2020 in an interlocking Asian and world economy, a
period concluding when the war on COVID-19 was still raging. China over-
took Mexico as America’s second-largest trading partner in 2005 and re-
tained that position, with Canada as the largest U.S. trade partner, until
2014. 10 But for four consecutive years, 2015–2018, and again in 2020, in the
U.S. books, China became the largest trading country with the United States,
with Canada and Mexico in second and third places, respectively. In 2019,
China dropped to third place once more, with Mexico and Canada becoming
America’s largest and second-largest trade partners—one effect of President
Trump’s tougher policy, especially the trade war with China since 2018 (see
chapter 11). 11
In 2010, China became the world’s second-largest economy, with some
observers stating that the two countries even then formed the most important
bilateral economic and financial relationship in the world. 12 Nevertheless,
early 2011 data showed that the U.S. economy (with a GDP of US$14,624
billion) was well over twice the size of China’s ($5,745 billion) and that the
U.S. GDP per capita (US$47,132) was eleven times that of China ($4,283). 13
Ten years later, the gap had shrunk, especially when the coronavirus had hit
the United States the hardest of any country, with over half of a million
COVID-19 deaths recorded in early 2021. In 2020, the U.S. GDP contracted
to US$20.93 trillion, whereas China claimed that its GDP had expanded to
about 14.7 trillion—leaving the country positioned, in the view of some
analysts, to overtake the United States as the largest economy in the world by
2028. 14
For over four decades, national, bilateral, and transnational institutions
and governance produced a number of major bilateral mechanisms, including
the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, U.S.-China Track II Eco-
nomic Dialogue, the U.S.-China Defense talks, the U.S.-China Human
Rights Dialogue, and the U.S.-China Track II Dialogue on the Rule of Law &
Human Rights. However, the second term of the Obama presidency marked
the beginning of a general downward trend for both countries, as explained in
chapter 11.
In 2020, with a trade war and COVID-19 in progress, 15 the U.S.-Chinese
trade volume in goods totaled $560 billion ($589 billion according to PRC
The Race 287
statistics, for the first time the Chinese figure of its exports in goods to
America exceeded the U.S. figure), 16 down from an estimated $634.8 billion
in 2019 ($541.2 billion on the Chinese books, down 14.6 percent from
2018). 17 American exports to China in 2020 were about $124.6 billion and
imports from China were 435.4 billion, with a deficit of $310.8 billion—
almost the same as in 2019 (goods and services deficit $308.8 billion) due to
COVID-19 supply issues—whereas in 2019, total U.S. exports to China were
$163 billion and imports $471.8 billion. As of 2019, China was the United
States’ largest supplier of imports of goods, and China was the United States’
third biggest export destination, in the American statistics. 18 According to
Chinese figures, in 2020 the United States was China’s third-largest trading
partner behind the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN, ten
member states) and the European Union (EU, twenty-seven member states),
two of the world’s largest trading blocs. 19 Foreign direct investment between
both countries in 2020 dropped to the lowest point since 2009.
In 2018, the United States recorded that U.S. exports to China were $156
billion, with a partner share of 7.31 percent, and imports from China were
$479.7 billion; the Chinese statistics for the same year agreed closely with
these American figures in goods ($155.1 billion and $633.5 billion, respec-
tively). 20 In 2017, U.S. exports were $154.4 billion, with a partner share of
8.38 percent, and imports $430.3 billion, with a partner share of 19.1 percent;
in 2016, the figures were $135.1 exports, with a partner share of 8.51 percent,
and at an imports low of $385.7 billion. In 2015, American exports to China
were $148.7, with a partner share of 8.85 percent, and imports from China
were approximately $410 billion; while in 2014 exports were $160.1 billion,
with a partner share of 8.17 percent, and imports accounted for around
$397.1 billion. 21
U.S. goods imports from China accounted for 18.1 percent of overall U.S.
imports in goods in 2019, with a $345.0 billion deficit with China in goods, a
17.6 percent decrease ($73.7 billion) from 2018. The top import categories
(two-digit HS) were electrical machinery, machinery, furniture and bedding,
toys and sports equipment, and plastics.
The United States had a services trade surplus of $36.4 billion with China
in 2019, down 4.1 percent from 2018. In investment, U.S. foreign direct
investment in China (stock) was $116.2 billion in 2019—a 6.3 percent in-
crease from 2018—led by manufacturing, the wholesale trade, and finance
and insurance. China’s foreign direct investment in the United States (stock)
was $37.7 billion in 2019, up 12.3 percent from 2018, led by the wholesale
trade, manufacturing, and depository institutions. 22
In 2014, the U.S.-Chinese total trade volume in goods stood at US$ 590.5
billion, 14.9 percent of the American trade with the world in goods. Compar-
able figures were at US$562 (2013) and $536.2 billion (2012) on the U.S.
books and US$555 billion (2014), $520.9 (2013), and $484.7 billion (2012)
288 Chapter 12
in Chinese figures. 23 Back in 1991, the figure stood at US$25.6 billion and in
1972 at a mere US$4.7 million. According to one source, by the end of 2014,
with a population of 1.36 billion, over four times larger than America’s (321
million), 24 China overtook the United States as the world’s leading economy
(worth US$17.6 trillion), while the U.S. economy was US$17.4 trillion in the
International Monetary Fund’s estimate. 25 However, measured by GDP per
capita, China (US$6807) still lagged well behind the United States
(US$53,042) as of 2015. 26
In terms of international credit service, China’s foreign exchange reserves
reached close to US$4 trillion in 2015 and $3.21 trillion in early 2021, the
largest in the world. 27 At the end of 2020, China was the second-largest
foreign banker to the United States, holding about US$1.07 trillion worth of
debt, compared to $1.25 trillion for Japan as the largest American creditor. 28
This was down from US$1.26 trillion in American treasury bonds as of May
2015, more than 7 percent of the United States’ total debt, compared to 1.22
trillion for Japan as the second-largest American creditor.
The U.S.-China trade in services has developed its own dynamics, differ-
ing from their trade in goods. The U.S. advantage in commercial services has
remained. As the world’s largest importer and exporter of commercial ser-
vices from the 1970s, the United States ran a total surplus of $64 billion in
2003. In 2011, the surplus was $186 billion, with $976 billion worth of trade
in services, and in 2014 the surplus was over $233 billion, with a total trade
volume of $1188 billion in services. 29 By contrast, China has been a net
importer of commercial services, particularly since joining the World Trade
Organization (WTO) in 2001. China’s trade deficit in commercial services
reached US$9 billion in 2003, snowballed to $55 billion in 2011 (with total
imports of $237 billion), and tripled to $159.9 billion in 2014, in only three
years. 30 China’s trade in services had expanded to an unprecedented level of
more than US$600 billion in volume in 2014, with a 59.5 percent increase in
financial, communications, computer, and data-processing services—a re-
flection of China’s industrial restructuring and modernization of commercial
services. 31
In May 2015, as its export-driven economy continued to develop, Chinese
Premier Li Keqiang announced a state-led industrial strategy, “Made in Chi-
na 2025,” to “save the nation through quality,” transforming China from a
world factory of cheap products to a nation moving up the value-added chain,
like Japan and Singapore in the 1970s–1980s. 32 This move would be sus-
tained by innovative technologies in the areas of artificial intelligence, robot-
ics, computers and other electrical equipment, medical devices, agricultural
and transport machinery, new-energy vehicles, advanced railways, aviation
and maritime vessels, new-generation IT, and other high-standard goods and
services. 33
The Race 289
China’s strategy for quality development, “Made in China 2025,” has

been coupled with the twin goals of the CCP, known as the Two Centenaries
(Liangge Yibainian 两个一百年). First proposed in 1997 at the 15th Nation-
al Congress of the CCP but not widely publicized until President Xi Jinping
took office in 2012/2013, the Two Centenaries refer to the twin centennial
anniversaries of the founding of the CCP in 2021 and the PRC in 2049. To
the CCP, 2021 and 2049 will mark the two turning points when China will
become a moderately well-off country, with incomes doubled from 2010 and
again when the building of “a rich, strong, democratic, civilized, harmonious,
and beautiful modernized socialist country” 34 will be completed, marking the
“medium-term objectives for realizing the Chinese dream of rejuvenating the
Chinese nation.” 35
In the knowledge economy, China still lags behind the United States. For
instance, the number of Chinese students in the United States during
2007–2012 increased to a quarter of a million, whereas in 2013 there were
only around 20,000 American students studying in China, a figure that
scarcely increased (20,996) in 2018, according to China’s Ministry of Educa-
tion, with South Korea ranking first and the United States fifth among send-
ing countries. 36 However, according to American figures, there were 11,613
American students studying in China in 2017/2018, while the number of
Chinese students in the United States in the same year was over 350,000. 37
During the same period, the United States and China have rebalanced
their bilateral economic relations to accommodate a changing strategic envi-
ronment on a global scale. Since it entered the WTO in 2001, China’s export
and import trade with its other partners has increased more rapidly than its
trade with the United States. In 2014, China’s fastest trade growth was with
the European Union (a 9.9 percent increase from 2013), followed by the
United States with a growth rate of 6.6 percent from 2013. China’s markets
in the ASEAN bloc, India, Russia, Africa, and mid-Eastern Europe, have
continued to enlarge at a rapid pace.
Both the United States and China have significantly strengthened their
participation in large multilateral and bilateral economic and security forums
and frameworks in the Asia-Pacific and other regions. 38 Since 2011, the
American “pivot” and its new economic initiative in the Indo-Pacific also
promise increased business opportunities, which is paralleled by expanded
cooperation between China and Russia, Europe, Central and Southeast Asia,
Africa, Latin America, and other places. These initiatives are in part a re-
sponse to the Doha Development Agenda (Doha Round) of negotiation, now
in its fourteenth year, which has failed to produce tangible means of facilitat-
ing free trade, particularly for developing countries.
A multicentered global trading system is emerging beyond the WTO.
Both the United States and China are competing through their own separate
trading blocs, a phenomenon called the “Spaghetti Bowl.” The United States
290 Chapter 12
has been conducting Free Trade Agreement (FTA) negotiations with the
European Union, and concluded its Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotia-
tions with Pacific nations (including Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan,
Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States, Viet-
nam, and South Korea), to the exclusion of China and the disapproval of the
U.S. Congress. The twelve TPP members are seeking to set new rules, prefe-
rential trade agreements, for economic exchange that reflects the realities of
commerce in the twenty-first century, including regulations for goods, trade
in services, investment, technical cooperation, competition, intellectual prop-
erty, data flows, and high standards in areas such as labor and the environ-
ment.
Another large regional free trade forum was also underway, the Regional
Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). Widely considered a suc-
cessful initiative by China, the RCEP was signed in November 2020 by ten
ASEAN members (Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar,
Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam), plus five of their FTA partners: China,
Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand (but not India). The fifteen
member countries account for about 30 percent of the world’s population
(2.2 billion people) and 30 percent of global GDP ($26.2 trillion) as of 2020,
making it the biggest trade bloc in history.
In October 2013, China announced its interest in participating in the
twenty-three-country (including EU) negotiations for a Trade in Services
Agreement outside the WTO framework, as well as for a revised Information
Technology Agreement. In December 2020, after seven years of negotia-
tions, the European Union signed the China-EU Comprehensive Agreement
on Investment (CAI). Critical of this deal that was designed to satisfy China
and German corporate interests, many observers have expressed skepticism
about how the CAI will solve the problems of asymmetry (imbalances) in
trade and investments between China, the EU, and the United States. 39
China has signed bilateral FTAs with two dozen countries across many
regions including Chile, Costa Rica, Hong Kong, Iceland, New Zealand,
Peru, Taiwan, Australia, and ten ASEAN member states. In June 2010, China
and Taiwan signed a historic free-trade agreement, the Economic Co-opera-
tion Framework Agreement (ECFA). This was in line with increased cooper-
ation spurred by the 2008 global financial meltdown. As we saw in chapter
11, while the China-Taiwan ECFA has strengthened ties and reduced the
potential for cross-strait tensions, the 2016 and 2020 elections in Taiwan,
together with the deteriorating situation in Hong Kong, have created a good
deal of uncertainty about the future.
The financial crisis of 2008 had structural and institutional effects on
trade and financial relations between China and the United States. In reaction
to the post-2008 economic downturn and the sovereign debt and Euro crises,
advocates of a new world economic order have called for a rebalancing of
The Race 291
global demand. Many observers are convinced that the Chinese renminbi
(RMB) must become the monetary standard in international markets as an
alternative to the American dollar for two major reasons: the United States is
simply spending its way out of the crisis, and internationalization is a neces-
sary step toward the furthering of China’s economic reform process. Through
swap agreements with foreign central banks, the People’s Bank of China has
been promoting trade invoicing, settlement, and bond issues in RMB, and the
trend is gaining momentum in Asia and Britain. In September 2013, the
Shanghai Free Trade Zone (FTZ) was established to carry out reform and
innovation in investment, trade, finance, postfilling supervision, and RMB
convertibility. Critics have been disappointed at China’s lack of progress in
financial reforms. On the other hand, in the space of a year, the Shanghai
FTZ expanded from around 29 to over 120 square kilometers to provide
more space for pilot reforms in the FTZ Bonded Area, Lujiazui Financial
Area, Jinqiao Export Processing Zone, and Zhangjiang High Tech Park,
while other FTZs were introduced in Guangdong, Tainjin, Fujian, and other
places. Some scholars argue that China is slowly chipping away at the domi-
nance of the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency, thus creating the structures and
providing the expertise for a gradual expansion of its role in global finance. 40
Trade data from the period presented in tables 12.1 and 12.2 reveal four
significant trends. First, and most generally, economic factors have played an
important role in both countries, appropriate to the level of bilateral trade and
investment. At the beginning of the 1990s, the total volume of bilateral trade
was less than 3 percent of total U.S. trade; it would grow to over 14 percent
by 2010, 16.3 percent in 2017, and 14.9 percent in 2020 (table 12.1). Be-
tween 1990 and 2020, China’s trade with the United States has varied be-
tween 10.5 and 17 percent of China’s total international trade volume accord-
ing to Chinese figures (table 12.2).
Second, there has been a tremendous increase in the level of trade be-
tween the two countries since 1971 when it stood at a mere US$4.7 million, 41
but the statistics from both countries often show substantial disagreement—
although the statistics gap has narrowed over the past several years (figure
12.1). In China’s list, the United States was its largest trade partner, and the
total trade volume between the two countries was US$385.3 billion in 2010
and $446.7 billion in 2011. 42 But according to U.S. statistics, the trade vol-
ume between the two countries had risen to US$458.8 billion in 2010 and
$503.2 billion in 2011 (of which $273.1 billion and $295.5 billion, respec-
tively, was a trade deficit run by America). 43
Third, between 2001 (China’s joining of WTO) and 2012/2013, with the
exception of 2009 (global financial crisis of 2008), China’s international
export trade has increased more rapidly than its trade with the United States.
In other words, China’s fastest trade growth during those years occurred in
the rest of the world (Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin and
292 Chapter 12
South America) rather than in North America. Yet figure 12.2 also reveals
volatility in China’s exports to the world and the United States according to
Chinese figures from 2014–2020. These phenomena reflect both China’s
outward-oriented growth pattern and the American attempt to break up with
China geo-economically. It underscores China’s effort to avoid dependence
on the U.S. market by diversifying its partnerships as a hedge against uncer-
tainty, but the U.S.-Chinese economic decoupling has been compounded by
COVID-19 in 2019–2020.
The same principle of diversifying trade partners applies to Germany, the
United States, and other democratic countries in their trade with China: for
example, in September 2020, during the reshuffling and reset prompted by
COVID-19, Germany announced a new blueprint for its relations with Asia,
calling for diversity in its focus on the region. Germany’s China policy in the
Merkel years manifested a gradual shift toward economic cooperation with
the ASEAN countries, especially Indonesia and other Southeast Asian coun-
tries. This was interpreted as an effort to lessen its dependence on China, a
move that would slowly show its consequences for German businesses. 44
Fourth, according to the American figures, from 1995 to 2020, the United
States ran a trade deficit with China, snowballing from US$33.8 billion in
1995 to US$295.4 billion in 2011 and to $310.8 billion in 2020—a more than
ninefold increase over twenty-five years. However, the American statistics
also illustrate further evidence of instability in the economic relationship. For
instance, between a 10.9 percent growth in exports to China in 1998 and a
24.4 percent increase in 2000, U.S. exports fell by 8 percent in 1999; sand-
wiched between a 22.3 percent increase in U.S. imports from China in 2000
and 22.4 percent in 2002, a figure of only 2.2 percent was recorded in 2001.
American concerns about China’s attitude toward foreign investment and
business are certainly legitimate. China has grown more protective of its own
national brands and products, a reality easily gleaned from the booming use
of UnionPay, Alipay, and WeChat payment mechanisms, in direct competi-
tion with foreign credit cards, for example. Within a short period China has
moved from a low-profile posture to an active and assertive pursuit of global
status. As things stand in early 2021, China will continue to grow, and it has
been asking the United States to do the same by opening up its markets,
especially in finance and banking, in the push for a U.S.-China Bilateral
Investment Treaty. Presidents Obama, Trump, and Biden have found China
challenging to work with. Nonetheless, the United States and China can work
together if they want to. 45
The Race 293
CHINA’S ENTRY INTO THE WTO
During the past three decades, in both countries, domestic politics as well as
security considerations figured largely in influencing such economic matters
as sanctions, most-favored-nation status, and negotiations over China’s ap-
plication for membership in the WTO. Alongside these larger issues, trade
relations continued on a relatively steady course, despite the vagaries of
politics, until around 2016. But retaliation and the weaponization of trade
have become more characteristic of China’s post-2010 policy toward the
United States, the EU, Australia, and other American allies. For instance, as a
consequence of the global financial crisis and the ensuing Euro crisis be-
tween early 2009 and mid-2010, German exports to China increased by 70
percent, making China the sixth most important export destination for Ger-
many. In 2018, China was the third largest, causing Germany more vulner-
able to pressures from China, as in the case of the solar panel dispute in 2012,
the anti-subsidy and EU investigation that followed, and the Chinese coun-
ter-investigation.
As we saw in the preceding chapter, the imposition of sanctions on China
as a result of the 1989 Tiananmen Incident and the linking and delinking of
China’s most-favored-nation status with its human rights record during the
Clinton administration in the early 1990s illustrate how economic issues have
provided the United States with a lever to obtain concessions from China in
the political sphere, but the United States has been gradually losing this
advantage. The cover story of the October 1990 issue of The Atlantic re-
flected the dampened enthusiasm for trade in the immediate aftermath of the
Tiananmen storm: “American business in China in the eighties fell victim to
the naïve optimism with which it contemplated the vast ‘China market.’” To
these critics, the China market was a chimera: “U.S.-China bilateral trade
totaled $18 billion in 1989, scarcely half of U.S. trade with Taiwan, and
today direct U.S. investment in China amounts to less than half of one per-
cent of direct U.S. investment worldwide. And these days Eastern Europe
would seem to provide business with far more fertile ground.” 46
The atmosphere could not have been more different a short decade later.
Together with the Chinese government, the United States was the prime
mover in China’s accession to the WTO on December 11, 2001. Although
the WTO came into being on January 1, 1995, its predecessor, the General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), dates back to 1948. China was one
of the original signatories of the GATT. In 1971, the GATT revoked Tai-
wan’s membership in line with the UN’s recognition of the PRC as the only
legitimate government of China and invited China to join the organization. In
the opinion of Long Yongtu, chief Chinese WTO negotiator, readmission
should have been a relatively straightforward process at the time. However,
China regarded the GATT through ideological lenses as “a rich countries’
294 Chapter 12
Figure 12.1. U.S. Trade Balance with China, 1991–2020 (Chinese and U.S. fig-
ures, in billions of US dollars). Sources: Annual Statistical Reports on National
Economy and Social Development of the People’s Republic of China (中中华人民共
和国年度国民经济和社会发展统计公报) published on the National Bureau of Statis-
tics (NBS) website, http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/tjgb/ndtjgb/ and U.S. Internation-
al Trade Data (Trade in Goods with China) published by the U.S. Department of
Commerce on the United States Census Bureau Website, https://www.census.
gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html (accessed March 3, 2021).
club,” mainly composed of developed nations, and decided not to join in the
early 1970s. In 1986, China formally applied to rejoin the GATT; the Chi-
nese leadership, now committed to the process of reform and “opening up,”
were afraid that being outside the organization might inflict enormous finan-
cial losses (for example, in the textile industry) on China. 47
Originally set up to regulate international trade in commodities, over the
years the role of the GATT has evolved through several rounds of negotia-
tions aimed at settling trade disputes. The last and largest of these was the
Uruguay Round from 1986 to 1994, which led to the birth of the WTO in
1995. Reflecting changes in world trade, the WTO extended its purview to
trade in services and intellectual property. 48 Legally, WTO agreements and
other instruments constitute binding rules intended to help exporters and
importers trade as efficiently as possible. Beginning in 2001 the WTO hosted
a new round of trade negotiations, the Doha Development Round, which
collapsed in July 2006, and again in 2007 and 2008. Since then, there have
been efforts to restore negotiations, but the revival of the Doha Round re-
mains uncertain given the flourishing of bilateral and regional trade agree-
ments as an alternative.
It took fifteen years of negotiations (1986–2001) for China to become the
143rd member of the WTO. The first six years were spent debating whether
The Race 295
Figure 12.2. Comparison of Growth in China’s Exports to the World and to the
United States, 2001–2020 (percent annual growth). Sources: Annual Statistical
Reports on National Economy and Social Development of the People’s Republic
中华人民共和国年度国民经济和社会发展统计公报) published on the Na-
of China (中
tional Bureau of Statistics (NBS) website, http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/tjgb/
ndtjgb/ (accessed March 3, 2021).
China was indeed developing a market economy—the Chinese negotiating

team explained little more beyond asserting that China was developing a
system combining market forces with a planned economy. Progress was
made in 1992 when, during his “Southern Tour” of the nation’s SEZs, Deng
Xiaoping announced that China under socialism could adopt the market
economy structure. 49
Compared with the talks held with thirty or so other countries, China’s
negotiations with the United States were arduously protracted. The Chinese,
who felt that the American negotiators were domineering, dug their heels in.
The WTO talks were suspended in 1989 in the wake of the Tiananmen
Incident and were not resumed for over two years when senior Chinese
leaders became personally involved in the process, aware that membership in
the WTO would function as an important tool to break through Western
sanctions and deterrence. 50 The Sino-American negotiators considered trade
issues relating to over four thousand classes of merchandise, in addition to
access to the Chinese banking, insurance, and telecommunication industries.
While China was eager to be part of the WTO, it wanted to join it as a
developing country and insisted that the balance between obligations and
rights be respected, especially by developed member states. “The developed
countries, as the initiators and the biggest beneficiaries of globalization and
liberalization, ought to shoulder even more international responsibilities and
obligations and create conditions for the developing countries to actively
296 Chapter 12
Table 12.1. U.S.-Chinese Trade, 1991–2020 (U.S. figures, in billions of current

U.S. dollars)
Year U.S Imports U.S Exports Total U.S.- U.S.-China/ Percent of

from PRC/ to PRC/ China/U.S.- U.S.- World Total U.S.
World World World Trade Trade Trade
Balance
1991 19.0/488.2 6.3/421.9 25.6/910.1 –12.7/–66.3 2.8
1992 25.7/532.7 7.4/448.2 33.1/980.9 –18.3/84.5 3.4
1993 31.5/580.7 8.8/465.1 40.3/1,045.8 –22.8/–115.6 3.9
1994 38.8/663.3 9.3/512.6 48.1/1,175.9 –29.5/–150.6 4.1
1995 45.6/743.5 11.8/584.7 57.4/1,328.2 –33.8/–158.8 4.3
1996 51.5/795.3 12.0/625.1 63.5/1,420.4 –39.5/–170.2 4.5
1997 62.6/869.7 12.8/689.2 75.4/1,558.9 –49.8/–180.5 4.8
1998 71.2/911.9 14.3/682.1 85.8/1,594.0 –56.9/–229.8 5.4
1999 81.8/1,024.6 13.1/695.8 94.9/1,719.6 –68.7/–328.8 5.5
2000 100.01/ 16.3/781.9 116.3/ –83.7/–436.1 5.8
1,218.0 1,999.9
2001 102.3/1,141.0 19.2/729.1 121.5/ –83.0/–411.9 6.5
1,870.1
2002 125.2/1,161.4 22.1/693.1 147.3/ –103.1/ 7.9
1,854.5 –468.3
2003 152.4/1,257.1 28.4/724.8 180.8/ –124.0/ 9.1
1,981.9 –532.4
2004 196.7/1,469.7 34.7/818.8 231.4/ –162.0/ 10.1
2,288.5 –650.9
2005 243.5/1,673.5 41.8/906.0 285.3/ –201.6/ 11.1
2,579.5 –767.5
2006 287.8/1,854.0 55.2/1,037.0 343/2,891.0 –232.5/ 11.9
–817.3
2007 321.5/1,957.0 65.2/1,148.2 386.7/ –256.3/ 12.5
3,105.2 –808.7
2008 337.8/2,103.6 71.5/1,287.4 409.2/ –266.3/ 12.1
3,391.0 –816.2
2009 296.4/1,558.1 69.6/1,056.9 366.0/ –226.8/ 14
2,615.0 –501.3
2010 364.9/1,913.2 91.9/1,278.3 458.8/ –273.1/ 14.4
3,191.5 –634.9
2011 399.3/2,207.8 103.9/ 503.2/ –295.4/ 13.6
1,480.4 3,688.3 –727.4
The Race 297
2012 425.6/2,275.2 110.6/ 536.2/ –315.0/ 14.0

1,547.3 3,822.5 –727.9
2013 440.4/2,268.0 121.7/ 562.2/ –318.7/ 14.6
1,578.5 3,846.5 –689.5
2014 468.5/1,621.9 123.7/ 592.1/ –344.8/ 14.9
2,356.4 3,978.2 –734.5
2015 483.2/1,503.3 115.9/ 599.1/ –367.3/ 16
2,248.8 3,752.1 –745.5
2016 462.4/1,451.5 115.6/ 578.0/ –346.8/ 15.9
2,186.8 3,638.2 –735.3
2017 505.2/1,547.2 130.0/ 635.2/ –375.2/ 16.3
2,339.6 3,886.8 –792.4
2018 539.2/1,665.7 120.3/ 659.5/ –419.0/ 15.7
2,537.7 4,203.4 –872.0
2019 451.7/1,643.2 106.4/ 558.1/ –345.2/ 13.5
2,497.5 4,140.7 –854.4
2020 435.4/1,431.6 124.6/ 560.1/ –310.8/ 14.9
2,336.6 3,768.2 –905.0
Source: Mainly U.S. International Trade Data (Trade in Goods with China)
published by the U.S. Department of Commerce on the United States Census
Bureau website, https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html
(accessed March 3, 2021). These figures have been rounded and totaled by
the present author.
participate in the process of globalization and liberalization and fully inte-

grate into the world economy.” 51
By the time Premier Zhu Rongji visited the United States in April 1999,
China was offering serious concessions in the areas of agricultural tariffs,
market access, and service industries. The proffered terms were well received
by the U.S. WTO negotiators and the American business community. Never-
theless, anticipating opposition from Congress and from labor and human
rights groups, at the last minute President Clinton veered away from an
agreement with China during Premier Zhu’s visit. Realizing his political
misjudgment, Clinton quickly did another about-face and contacted Zhu,
who was still in the United States, urging that the Chinese team stay on for
further talks. Zhu responded that they could discuss the WTO again in Beij-
ing. 52
The embassy bombing incident in May 1999 pushed U.S.-Chinese rela-
tions into a corner. At the time, anti-American sentiment was running high in
China. Terms such as “unequal treaties,” “national heroes,” and “traitors”
were being bandied about and were applied to the WTO talks and the Chi-
298 Chapter 12
nese negotiators. A report in Hong Kong’s Wen Wei Po newspaper asserted

that membership would simply open China up to exploitation by foreign
business interests once again:
[I]f China cannot “join the WTO” as a developing country, and if there is no
balance on the rights and obligations of joining, that means China’s national
interests will be compromised. If an “unequal treaty” is signed against China’s
will, China can do little to expand its export market, but rather must open all
its markets to foreign businessmen. Such a treaty is senseless for China; it only
means an unbearable bitter pill. 53
Despite such misgivings, the leaders of both countries saw the potential of
WTO membership for improving their relationship. President Jiang Zemin
and the Politburo made the political decision to push trade negotiations with
the United States, and Zhu Rongji himself participated directly in the final
round. Representatives of both countries, led by Charlene Barshefsky and Shi
Guangsheng, met at 4:30 a.m. on November 15, 1999, and an agreement was
signed the same day. The biggest hurdle to China’s WTO membership was
cleared, and negotiations with other countries were completed over the fol-
lowing two years. Following 9/11 and the ensuing “war on terror,” when
push came to shove, the George W. Bush administration gave the green light
to China’s accession: on December 11, 2001, China officially became a
member of the WTO.
China’s joining the WTO was seen, by and large, to be a win-win situa-
tion for China, the United States, and the world as a whole during the early
years, although opinions began to shift with the deterioration of U.S.-Chinese
relations around 2014/2015. It prompted China to implement a new round of
economic reforms aimed at increased prosperity, liberalization of trade, and
integration into the global community. The financial sector was liberalized
by allowing foreign banks to compete on the domestic market. China’s WTO
commitments included lower tariffs and nondiscriminatory trading rights for
both domestic and foreign private firms. The average tariff rate was reduced
from 43 percent in 1992 to 17 percent in 1999 and to under 10 percent by
2004. China also lowered average agricultural tariffs to 15 percent. Many
imports are now exempt from tariffs, and in fact many goods enter the coun-
try duty free. As a result, in 2006 actual tariffs levied relative to the value of
imports were a mere 2 percent. 54 Recently, however, the United States has
aggressively revived its long-standing opposition to China’s state-sponsored
economic policy, which it sees as distorting free and open markets. Many
observers in democratic societies view China as predatory, taking advantage
of open, transparent global financial systems to the detriment of the United
States, the WTO, and other international organizations. 55
China’s membership in the WTO has contributed to major growth in its
own international trade and investment, matched by the widening scope and
The Race 299
Table 12.2. U.S.-Chinese Trade, 1991–2020 (Chinese figures, in billions of cur-

rent U.S. dollars)
Year PRC Exports PRC Imports Total China- China Trade Percent of
to U.S./World from U.S./ U.S./China- Balance with Total PRC
World World Trade U.S./World Trade
1991 6.2/71.9 8.0/63.8 14.2/135.7 –1.8/8.1 10.5
1992 8.6/84.9 8.9/80.6 17.5/165.5 –0.3/4.4 10.6
1993 17.0/91.7 10.7/104.0 27.7/195.7 6.28/–12.2 14.2
1994 21.5/121.0 14.0/115.6 35.4/236.6 7.5/5.4 15.0
1995 24.7/148.8 16.1/132.1 40.8/280.9 8.6/16.7 14.5
1996 26.7/151.1 16.2/138.8 42.9/289.9 10.5/12.3 14.8
1997 32.7/182.7 16.3/142.4 49.0/325.2 16.4/40.4 15.1
1998 38.0/183.7 17.0/140.2 55.0/323.9 21.0/43.5 17.0
1999 41.9/194.9 19.5/165.7 61.4/360.6 22.4/29.2 17.0
2000 52.1/249.2 22.4/225.1 74.5/474.3 29.7/24.1 15.7
2001 54.3/266.2 26.2/243.6 80.5/509.8 28.1/22.6 15.8
2002 69.9/325.6 27.2/295.2 97.2/620.8 42.7/30.4 15.7
2003 92.5/438.2 33.9/412.8 126.3/851.0 58.6/25.4 14.8
2004 125.0/593.3 44.7/561.2 169.6/ 80.3/32.1 14.7
1,154.6
2005 162.9/762.0 48.6/660.0 211.5/ 114.3/102.0 14.8
1,422.0
2006 203.4/969.0 59.2/791.5 262.7/ 144.2/177.5 14.9
1,760.4
2007 232.7/1,218.0 69.4/955.8 302.1/ 163.3/295.5 13.9
2,173.8
2008 248.4/1,428.6 81.1/1,133.1 329.5/ 167.3/295.5 12.9
2,561.7
2009 220.8/1,201.7 77.4/1,005.6 298.2/ 143.4/196.1 13.5
2,207.3
2010 283.3/1,577.9 102.0/ 385.3/ 181.3/183.1 13.0
1,394.8 2,972.8
2011 324.5/1,898.6 122.2/ 446.7/ 202.3/155.1 12.3
1,743.5 3,642.0
2012 351.8/2,048.9 132.9/ 484.7/ 218.9/231.1 12.5
1,817.8 3,866.8
2013 368.4/2,209.6 152.5/ 520.9/ 215.9/259.2 12.5
1,950.4 4,160.0
300 Chapter 12
2014 396.0/2,342.6 158.9/ 554.9/ 237.1/382.4 12.9

1,960.2 4,302.8
2015 408.1/2,267.4 148.3/ 556.4/ 259.8/590.2 14.1
1,667.2 3,944.7
2016 382.6/2,084.2 133.8/ 516.4/ 248.8/504.6 14.1
1,579.6 3,663.8
2017 431.1/2,271.1 154.5/ 585.6/ 276.6/425.4 14.2
1,845.7 4,116.8
2018 477.5/2,480.8 154.0/ 631.6/ 323.5/352.1 13.7
2,2128.6 4,609.4
2019 418.5/2,498.4 122.6/ 541.0/ 295.9/423.0 11.8
2,075.4 4,573.9
2020 453.4/2,599.3 135.1/ 588.5/ 318.3/537.7 12.6
2,061.6 4,660.9
Source: Mainly the Annual Statistical Reports on National Economy and

Social Development of the People’s Republic of China (中华人民共和国年
度国民经济和社会发展统计公报) published on the National Bureau of Sta-
tistics (NBS) website, http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/tjgb/ndtjgb/ (accessed
March 3, 2021).
increasing sophistication of commercial operations both in China and over-

seas. In the space of thirty years, China has emerged from relative insignifi-
cance to become, in 2005, the world’s third-largest trading nation after the
United States and Germany and the largest global trading country consecu-
tively each year from 2013–2017 (with the exception of 2016). 56 In 1978, the
total value of China’s trade was US$20 billion, and it stood at thirtieth among
world trading nations—in 2005 this figure had rocketed to $1.4 trillion and in
2019 had quadrupled in value to US$4.58 trillion. 57
During the first ten years since China’s admission, the volume of Chi-
nese-American trade increased from US$80.5 billion to $385.3 billion on the
Chinese books, or from $121.5 billion to $458.8 billion according to the U.S.
figures. To look at this from another angle, American exports to China in-
creased by 81 percent in the three years after China joined the WTO, com-
pared with 34 percent in the three previous years. Similarly, American im-
ports from China rose by 92 percent in the three years following China’s
WTO entry; they had risen by just 46 percent—exactly half this figure—in
the three previous years.
As the business environment improved, American entrepreneurs spared
no time in exploring new opportunities. The draw of the China market was
felt across the board by the American business sector until the second decade
of the twenty-first century. In 2004, Walmart was America’s largest corpora-
tion, with revenues making up 2 percent of the nation’s GDP. Of Walmart’s
The Race 301
six thousand suppliers, 80 percent were in China. 58 In 2011, the American-

based company Starwood Hotels & Resorts built one hotel in China every
two weeks, and China represented 30 percent of its worldwide growth. De-
spite American companies enjoying these advantages in earlier times, China
has been accused of violating the WTO principles and especially the three
core goals—revenue, restriction, and reciprocity—inherent in American
trade policy:
While all three have been important throughout history, US trade policy can be
divided into three eras in which one of them has taken priority. In the first era,
from the establishment of the federal government until the Civil War, revenue
was the key objective of trade policy. In the second era, from the Civil War
until the Great Depression, the restriction of imports to protect domestic pro-
ducers was the primary goal of trade policy. In the third era, from the Great
Depression to the present, reciprocal trade agreements to reduce tariff and non-
tariff barriers to trade have been the main priority. 59
In light of these principles, America’s frustration with China’s poor compli-

ance with WTO rules and “unfair and distortive politics and practices” was
canvassed in one U.S. trade report, which lamented that
China has continued to embrace a state-led, mercantilist approach to the econ-

omy and trade. . . . China’s non-market economic system and the industrial
policies that flow from it have systematically distorted critical sectors of the
global economy such as steel and aluminum, devastating markets in the United
States and other industrialized countries. China also continues to block valu-
able sectors of its economy from foreign competition, particularly services
sectors. At the same time, China’s industrial policies are increasingly respon-
sible for displacing companies in new, emerging sectors of the global econo-
my, as the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party powerfully
intervene on behalf of China’s domestic industries. Companies in economies
disciplined by the market cannot effectively compete with both Chinese com-
panies and the Chinese state. 60
One sector that illustrates these complex themes is the Chinese automobile
industry, which many feared would collapse when foreign competitors
swarmed in following China’s successful WTO bid. To meet WTO require-
ments, China reduced its tariff on car imports from 200 percent to 25 percent
and scrapped the import quota on automobiles in 2005. Despite price cuts on
imported cars, auto sales soared at home, and China began to tap export
markets in developing countries such as Iran and Vietnam. Some 43,000
Chinese-made vehicles were exported in 2003, and auto exports surged to
173,000 units in 2005. 61 In 2007, Chery Automobile, the largest Chinese
auto exporter, and the Chrysler Group, the third-largest car manufacturer in
the United States, signed a cooperation agreement in Beijing. But Chinese
302 Chapter 12
automobile producers, including the native brand Geely Automotive, ex-

ported no more than around 4 percent of their total production in 2014. The
United States, by comparison, exported 18 percent of all new vehicles pro-
duced in the same year. Around 2016, GM began selling its vehicles made in
Shandong Province in the U.S. market, followed by Ford in 2017. In 2017,
China produced 29 million motor vehicles propped up by large state subsi-
dies and domestic consumption markets, but with limited sales in overseas
markets. 62 That being said, Geely expanded abroad lately with high-end
initiatives, transforming London’s famous black diesel taxis (Hackney car-
riages) into slick electric vehicles, and with green technical and business
model innovations to Sweden’s legendary Volvo cars.
Frictions remain in spite of the enhanced economic cooperation over the
past twenty years. Trade imbalances, state protectionism, intellectual proper-
ty rights, industrial policy, investment environment, and negative impacts on
U.S. labor markets are America’s main concerns. China, on the other hand,
expects fair business and investment opportunities on the American and
world markets. 63
As China expands its global outreach, both countries have attached great
political importance to trade relations. From the Chinese government’s
standpoint, bilateral trade has been important for its modernization program,
although China’s economic strategies are often driven more by political than
economic considerations. For its part, the U.S. government has regularly
subjected economic activity involving China to security and moral con-
straints. The restrengthening of the U.S. military presence in the Asia-Pacific
was a strategic decision. It was made public in November 2011 by President
Obama and has been seen as a “muscular” approach to China by some of
America’s allies including Australia, Japan, and India and the Quadrilateral
Security Dialogue (also known as Quad or Asian NATO). The turn of
American security and economic policy toward Asia during the Obama and
Trump years was also done with an eye toward increased business opportu-
nities and the rise of India in the Indo-Pacific.
“PROSELYTIZING” AMERICA AND “CULTURAL CHINA”
Shifting the focus to religion, society, and culture, this section investigates
U.S.-Chinese relations from another angle. It sheds further light on a crucial
global relationship that is warm and lively in some aspects but lukewarm and
even icy in others. A composite of ideological and cultural forces have, since
the 1990s, been absorbed into a sharpened moral crusade that pitted
American politics and values against those of China. This represented a
major shift away from America’s “softness” on human rights abuses in China
during the previous decade; in the 1980s, while courting China for strategic
The Race 303
reasons, the U.S. government did not hesitate to condemn political repression
in the Soviet Union and South Africa. In the 2000s, China’s response to
hardened American criticism has been the promotion of “Cultural China”—a
loose phrase for the concerted official efforts at spreading Chinese civiliza-
tion and influence overseas, although it also reflects China’s renewed confi-
dence in the efficacy of the Chinese way in the contemporary world.
“Proselytizing” America: Human Rights, Religion, and Politics
Support for human rights—in close association with religious freedom, inde-
pendence for Tibet, and the mistreatment of its Xinjiang Uyghurs in the case
of China—has remained an important component of American foreign poli-
cy. 64 More than just policy questions, they have proven to be controversial,
emotional, and sentimental issues for Chinese and American officials and
ordinary citizens alike. While the renewed controversy over China in the
United States in the 1990s was triggered by the Tiananmen crisis of 1989, it
continued to play a role in defining the political and cultural predicaments of
the bilateral relationship.
An amalgam of highly contentious issues—trade, advanced technology
exports, human rights, religion, Tibet, and China’s one-child policy—lay in
the eye of the storm when President Bill Clinton visited China in late June
1998. Although condemnation of China in the United States in the post-
Tiananmen 1990s did not necessarily translate into coordinated action, these
issues provided the American executive branch, Congress, Christian lobby-
ists, human rights advocates, and business corporations—bodies linked by a
murky enmeshment of interests—plenty of political ammunition. 65
In 1996, American Christian groups, including the National Association
of Evangelicals—allegedly numbering more than ten million Christians in
forty-seven denominations—launched a mass movement that framed perse-
cution of Christians as a global concern. The movement aimed at moralizing
American foreign policy, urging the U.S. federal government to respond to
anti-Christian actions in countries such as China, North Korea, Vietnam,
Cuba, Sudan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, and Algeria. 66 In response
to this pressure, in November 1996 President Clinton appointed a twenty-
member advisory committee on religious freedom abroad to the secretary of
state. In July 1997, the U.S. State Department released its first comprehen-
sive report on the global persecution of Christians, directing sharp criticisms
at China in particular.
As religious and human rights activists in the United States honed their
rhetoric against the Chinese government, they garnered support for legisla-
tion such as the International Religious Freedom Act (the Nickles-Lieberman
bill) of 1998. 67 This act reflected the growing efforts by evangelical Chris-
tians at shaping politics, foreign policy, and public life in America since the
304 Chapter 12
Reagan years (1981–1989). The new China bashers of the 1990s were well
on the way to linking the persecution of Christianity with the “free Tibet”
movement, demanding that the U.S. government take a tough stance on the
Chinese state.
Congressional opponents called Clinton’s intended visit a “tragedy” and a
“disaster.” Over 150 lawmakers urged him not to go. 68 China’s control over
religion was “totally unacceptable and ought to be condemned,” exclaimed
Chris Smith, a Republican representative from New Jersey. 69 “Can religion
and communism peacefully coexist?” asked one online news report, high-
lighting the fissure between officially approved churches and underground
worshipers. 70
Nevertheless, Americans were far from unanimous in their criticisms of
China. A 1997 piece in the Christian Science Monitor downplayed the issue:
“Most Christians who monitor the situation in China closely say they have
not detected any special crackdown of late. Comparisons with the 1966 to
1969 Cultural Revolution, when all religion was banned and churches closed
or turned into warehouses, are considered absurd.” 71
The business sector—China’s chief advocate in the United States—in-
cluding many Fortune 500 companies, frowned on turning the campaign
against China into a political football. According to Jeffrey Goldberg, the
American business community discerned “distinctly political, and not hu-
manitarian, motivations behind the evangelical right’s interest in China.” 72
When asked about his attitude to human rights violations in China, Philip M.
Condit, chairman and CEO of the Boeing Company, responded: “They are
the same ones that I have about human rights violations in the United
States. . . . I happened to be in China during the Rodney King beating. Now,
there is a whole bunch of background that goes along with that. But watching
that on CNN in China, their perspective was, ‘What was that about?’” 73 Not
surprisingly, more than two decades later in 2020, China has used the same
rhetorical language, this time drawn from the Black Lives Matter movement,
to counter criticism of China’s own treatment of ethnic minorities, especially
in Xinjiang and Tibet.
In February 2002 and November 2005, President George W. Bush made
two trips to China. He openly criticized the Chinese government for control-
ling the practice and promotion of Christianity, indicating the kind of
American idealism that sought to change the world as well as get China to
conform to the American way.
Perceived as one of the most pro-evangelical presidents in recent
American history, George W. Bush expanded the federal government’s in-
volvement with religion. China’s progress in the areas of religion and social
freedom was outrun by American expectations.
In contrast to his predecessor, President Bush was more than willing to
use strong rhetoric against the Chinese government. Bush prefaced his talks
The Race 305
with Chinese president Jiang Zemin by stating that he hoped that “as a
president of a great nation, Jiang would understand the important role of
religion in an individual’s life.” 74 By contrast, before his 1998 China trip,
Clinton had argued for a conciliatory understanding of China’s “historical
nightmares” to avoid criticizing China too harshly. Clinton’s attitude to the
Chinese president was almost playful; the New York Times reported that he
had spent “‘a lot of time’ coaching Mr. Jiang [Zemin] during his trip to
Washington last year on how to handle their joint news conference. . . . Mr.
Clinton said he had told Mr. Jiang, ‘You’ve got to learn how to smile when
they hit you right between the eyes.’ I said, ‘That’s the way we do it over
here.’” 75
During his 2005 visit, while Bush affirmed that the Gangwashi Church,
one of the officially authorized churches in Beijing, was “a real church,” he
explicitly called for more religious freedom. 76 By contrast, on his visit, Clin-
ton had joined in worship at the Chongwenmen Church in Beijing, another
official church. In public, Clinton’s comments about the state of Protestant-
ism in China were guarded: “I believe our faith calls upon us to seek unity
with people across the world of different races and backgrounds and
creeds.” 77
Compared with his two immediate predecessors, President Obama’s visit
to China in mid-November 2009 was low key and less fractious (although he
was unhappy about being censored during his visit), leaving both Chinese
dissidents and American China activists disappointed. 78 Obama steered clear
of public meetings with political activists and lawyers while in Beijing, de-
spite numerous requests that he promote the United States as the protector of
universal values on the trip. His skirting of sensitive issues of human rights
led some reporters to joke that Obama’s trip “had driven the homeless from
Beijing and brought more censorship to China.” 79 The American press com-
mented that, in many ways, Obama had assumed the role of “profligate
spender coming to pay his respects to his banker.” 80
Repeated American criticism has encouraged the Chinese state to develop
a legal framework to increase its control over its domestic religious affairs.
Through the Regulations on Religious Affairs passed in 2005, to give one
example, the state strengthened its management of religious bodies across all
sectors of society. 81 Flourishing religious activity has given the Chinese
government the ammunition needed to justify the imposition of strict param-
eters managed by state agencies. To defend their actions, Chinese officials
have employed the same language of human rights and the rule of law as
their critics. In response to a question by a senior American journalist about
political reform, Premier Wen Jiabao brought up the issue of freedom of
religion without prompting: “[F]reedom of religious beliefs is actually writ-
ten into China’s constitution. . . . Since the beginning of reform and opening
306 Chapter 12
up, one religious site has been either newly built or restored every three
days.” 82
“Cultural China” (Wenhua Zhongguo 文化中国)

and Its Predicaments
Since the beginning of the new millennium, the notion of “Cultural China”
has gained currency both inside and outside the nation as the “third pillar” of
Chinese diplomacy, next to economic and political diplomacy. 83 Guided by
the government, Cultural China is both internally and externally driven. Do-
mestically, it is integral to the national program for cultural rejuvenation and
the promotion of traditional national learning especially under President Xi
Jinping’s watch. As sociologist Richard Madsen has observed, the Chinese
government has been pushing to “sinicize” all aspects of Chinese life. In the
case of religion, sinicization might mean “the imposition of a particular
version of a putative ‘traditional’ culture” constructed and propagated to
meet the agenda of a powerful modern state. 84
In his keynote report to the 17th National Congress of the Central Com-
mittee of the Communist Party of China, President and General Secretary Hu
Jintao outlined the party’s goals for cultural and international development:
“The great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation will definitely be accompanied
by the thriving of Chinese culture.” 85 On the international front, the Cultural
China ideology took shape as China became frustrated with the misalignment
between its self-image as a peace-loving, harmonious nation and its image in
the United States and other countries as authoritarian, autocratic, militaristic,
and obstructive. For the Chinese government, public diplomacy became a
favored route for promoting China to the catbird seat in the court of interna-
tional opinion. 86 Rewriting China’s past is a process blended with cultural
inventions, shaped by local experiences, and permeated by contemporary
concerns. In contemporary China, this process has been clearly articulated in
a piece by President Xi Jinping titled “Strengthening Cultural Self-Confi-
dence and Building a Strong Socialist Country of Culture.” 87
Among many of the projects associated with it, two important aspects of
Cultural China include the preservation of Chinese heritage and the establish-
ment of branches of the Confucius Institute throughout the world. 88 Over the
past forty years, China’s flourishing cultural industry has added a substantial
number of locations to UNESCO’s World Heritage sites. Following its ad-
mission to the World Heritage Convention in 1985, China dramatically in-
creased its listed sites from thirty-seven in 2009 to fifty-five in August 2019,
climbing within a single decade from third place in 2009 to first equal with
Italy (forty-one in 2009 and fifty-five in 2019) among the 167 state parties
that owned WHL properties. 89 China is also proud of its significant role in
the drafting of the Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural
The Race 307
Heritage adopted in 2003 and the Convention on the Protection and Promo-
tion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions in 2005.
The Confucius Institute, a nonprofit government organization headquar-
tered in Beijing, represents another strategic investment in the cultural indus-
try both inside and outside of China. Within just six years of the opening of
the first institute in Maryland in 2004, seventy Confucius Institutes have
been planted in the United States, taking the grand total to 322 in ninety-one
countries and regions in five continents in 2010, and 530 in dozens of coun-
tries in six continents in 2019. The institute teaches Chinese language and
culture, administers the Chinese Proficiency Test overseas, and hosts interna-
tional visits and cultural events. 90 But it has encountered wide opposition
outside China, seen as a “foreign mission” of the Chinese government and
embodiment of suppression of academic freedom. 91
This is also a convenient place to mention an important intercultural
phenomenon, the Chinese-American educational exchange programs that
since 1978 have facilitated a high volume of people-to-people contact. In
2009, China regained its place as the largest supplier—outstripping India—
of students (nearly 130,000 that year) who have gone to the United States for
study purposes. In 2010, U.S. educational institutions admitted over 150,000
mainland Chinese students. In the same year, China ranked as the fifth-
largest destination for American students (over 13,000) wanting to study
abroad. Between 2001 and 2010, over 800,000 Chinese students traveled to
the United States to study, with over half a million in the last five years of the
decade. 92 What does this human capital investment bring to American-Chi-
nese relations? The asymmetrical flow of personnel itself mirrors the imbal-
ance of power in the relationship, even after taking into account the popula-
tion ratio between the two nations (1.4 billion versus 0.3 billion). Although
during the past twenty years both countries have grown progressively more
open to each other in some areas, the Trump administration voiced increasing
concerns over national security and intellectual property theft, cybersecurity,
campus espionage, and other wide-ranging and complex issues thrown up by
educational exchange programs. 93
Have these varied cultural and educational encounters helped improve
American views of China? The findings of a study about the impact of the
2008 Beijing Olympics on American attitudes toward China are revealing.
An academic survey conducted in the United States in August 2008, the
month the Olympics took place, indicated that Americans viewed China
more negatively than before. China’s successful hosting of and competition
in the games appeared to have heightened American anxieties about the
China threat—in addition to other factors such as the scandals involving
underage Chinese gymnasts and lip-synching by a child singing star at the
opening ceremony. 94 Since President Trump came into office in January
2017, these negative attitudes to China have been mirrored in twelve devel-
308 Chapter 12
oped countries—Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Ja-

pan, the Netherlands, South Korea, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the
United States—as revealed by polls conducted between June and August
2020 by the Pew Research Center. 95 The majority of respondents viewed
China unfavorably and, while 70 to 84 percent had no faith in President Xi to
do the right thing for the world, they showed even less trust in President
Trump.
Finally, the incongruities inherent in U.S.-Chinese relations are no better
illustrated than by the fate of the Bible in contemporary China, where the
Christian scriptures first became the object of commercial mass production,
were then caught in the U.S.-China trade war, and finally have been sub-
jected to publication only in a censored version approved by the CCP. Since
its founding in 1986, the Amity Printing Company in Nanjing has printed
over fifty million copies of the Bible in seventy-five languages and (as of
2008) exported Bibles to more than sixty countries, leading the Los Angeles
Times to assert that “a booming Bible industry is on its way to turning the
world’s biggest atheist nation into the world’s largest producer of the Good
Book.” 96 However, recent developments have added new challenges to U.S.-
Chinese relations through China’s ongoing repression and sinicization of
Christianity.
According to the Associated Press, the Economist, and other Western
news media, 2018 saw some strong moves against Christianity, including the
systematic burning of Bibles, destroying of crosses, the forced closing of
churches, the replacement of images of Jesus with Chairman Mao and Presi-
dent Xi’s portrait, and forcing of converts to renounce their faith. Believers
(including thirty-eight million Protestants) who refused to comply with these
measures would lose their social benefits and face other penalties. 97 Mean-
while, the Bible supply chain (dominated by China’s Amity Printing) meant
that American Christians relied on a “state which represses Christianity for
their Bibles.” In 2018/2019, when President Trump was waging his trade war
against China, America’s Bible publishers, religious ministries, and clergy—
who had outsourced Bible printing to China and who opposed the added
tariffs on Bibles printed in and imported from China—“found themselves
alongside Beijing vociferously lobbying Washington against the measure.” 98
American and Chinese Intellectuals on the State

of the Relationship
Despite their increasingly comprehensive links, both countries have grown

increasingly wary of each other. There has been a continuing war of words,
especially over Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Tibet, Taiwan, human rights, and the
status of the Spratly Islands. 99 Are Chinese and American security interests
The Race 309
really incompatible? Can the two countries break out of the fluctuating,
polarized cycle into which the relationship has been thrown for so long?
In the United States, a wide range of writers—alarmists, pragmatists, and
optimists—have offered their opinions on the relationship. These books in-
clude Richard Bernstein and Ross Munro’s The Coming Conflict with China,
Michel Oksenberg and Elizabeth Economy’s Shaping U.S.-China Relations:
A Long Term Strategy, and Fareed Zakaria’s The Post-American World. 100 In
2010, David Shambaugh argued that American strategy toward China needed
to be reset. The United States should learn from China and regard China as a
genuine working partner, Congress needs to reeducate itself about China and
stop its ill-informed hectoring, both militaries need to pursue real coopera-
tion, America should immediately institute a moratorium on arms sales to
Taiwan in exchange for the withdrawal of Chinese missiles and fighters
deployed across the Taiwan Strait, and the American media should report
fairly on the complex realities of China. 101 Less than five years later in 2015,
Shambaugh opened his article, “The Coming Chinese Crackup,” published in
the Wall Street Journal, with a prediction that “[t]he endgame of communist
rule in China has begun, and Xi Jinping’s ruthless measures are only bringing
the country to a breaking point.” 102
In her 2018 book The Third Revolution, China expert Elizabeth C. Econo-
my points to a powerful set of political and economic reforms that President
Xi Jinping has unleashed: the centralization of power under one person (him-
self); the expansion of the CCP’s role in Chinese political, social, and eco-
nomic life; and the construction of a virtual wall of regulations to control
more closely the exchange of ideas and capital between China and the out-
side world—including fighting corruption, managing the Internet, reforming
the state-owned enterprise sector, improving the country’s capacity for inno-
vation, enhancing air quality, and elevating China’s presence on the global
stage. 103
Two books, published in 2018 and 2015, respectively, reflected a wide-
spread mood among American intellectuals and policy makers as geopolitical
and economic relations between the United States and China deteriorated in
2016–2019. They are Chinese Influence & American Interests: Promoting
Constructive Vigilance: Report of the Working Group on Chinese Influence
Activities in the United States by Larry Diamond and Orville Schell and other
well-known scholars and The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret
Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower. 104 Whereas the for-
mer is a collective report on Chinese infiltration of the United States in
nearly all areas of society and the economy, the latter is an alarmist and
understandably angry book by Michael Pillsbury, a longtime China watcher
and an important figure in shaping President Donald J. Trump’s China poli-
cy. In line with a speech given by Vice President Mike Pence in October
2018 at the Hudson Institute, Pillsbury sees the PRC as an outright deceiver
310 Chapter 12
and cunning competitor, which has made clandestine but strenuous efforts to
replace the United States as the global hegemon over the past century.
On the Chinese side, defiant, alarmist publications have gained enormous
popularity in reaction to the frequent bilateral crises and the continuing “Chi-
na threat” polemic in the United States. Two significant examples are the
multiauthored Zhongguo keyi shuobu [China can still say no], which sold
three million copies on its publication in 1996, and the revised edition,
Zhongguo bugaoxing [China is unhappy], published thirteen years later. 105
Fang Ning’s best-selling studies argue that the bilateral relationship follows
the pattern of American deterrence and repression, regardless of the level of
subservience adopted by China. 106 Other commentators have argued that the
new American imperialism has five components—military dominance, polit-
ical power, cultural imperialism, the imposition of democratic ideology, and
preemptive military action. 107 As of 2011, Song Hongbin’s Huobi zhanzheng
[The currency war] has sold over two million copies since its first appearance
in 2007. Another popular writer, Dai Xu, argued that the United States has
“encircled” China through strategic military bases, deployment of anti-mis-
sile systems, joint military exercises, and alliances with China’s neigh-
bors. 108
More moderate, but still critical, voices have also emerged. Yan Xuetong
of Tsinghua University commented in 2007 that cooperation between the
United States and China “is based on their frictions and conflicts, just like 35
years ago. . . . What they are trying to do is to seek common interests from
frictions and conflicts.” This conflict is “structural” in character and has
made it impossible for the two countries to become real strategic partners
because the United States “does not want to see China rise to become the
most powerful country in the world.” 109 China should demand that the Unit-
ed States follow its own counsel when it called on China to become a “re-
sponsible stake-holder.” Chinese are becoming increasingly critical of the
Chinese government’s America policy; the time has come for the “teacher-
student relationship,” whereby Beijing takes its lead from Washington, to be
transformed into a mature peer-to-peer relationship. 110
According to another Chinese scholar, Yuan Peng, the continuing friction
in bilateral relations is the consequence of two main factors. First, the rela-
tive shift in the balance of national power between the two countries over the
past two decades—coincident with the transformation of the international
system under powerful globalizing trends—has created a false impression of
the comprehensive strategic rivalry between the United States and China.
Second, complex changes in the geopolitical environment, together with the
domestic political and social situation in both nations, have affected their
strategic judgment. Americans have adopted a defensive attitude in the after-
math of the 9/11 attacks, the costly and unpopular Iraq War, and the 2008
financial tsunami. As a result, the conventional public rhetoric used by the
The Race 311
Chinese leadership has been interpreted as aggressive and assertive. On the

Chinese side, China’s successful hosting of the 2008 Olympics and the 2010
Shanghai Expo boosted its domestic morale and international influence. Chi-
na’s diplomatic and military sectors have gained more confidence and have
taken a firmer stand on defending national core interests. Under these chang-
ing circumstances, Chinese tolerance of American criticism has visibly less-
ened. Chinese feel that “it is time to square off with the U.S.” 111
Chinese use of the Western press and the open system that the freedom of
press reflects to its own advantage was seen in a rebuttal piece by Hua
Shengdun (literally meaning Washington) in the Washington Post aimed at
discrediting David Shambaugh’s predictions about the end of the CCP under
President Xi by citing the views of other China hands in the United States. 112
As China’s importance in global affairs has increased, so has the confidence
shown by loyalist intellectuals in “China’s wisdom” (Zhongguo zhihui 中国
智慧) “to construct and develop a new kind of great power relations” (as
proposed by China in 2012/2013) with the United States. 113 But, according to
Jin Cairong, “diplomatic practices over the last three years indicate that the
American implementation of the important concept of a new kind of great
power relationship still has much room for improvement.” For these com-
mentators, the United States is “finding it hard to accept [China’s] emphasis
on equality in [China’s concept of] a novel kind of great power relations. . . .
President Xi’s 2015 visit to the United States helped stabilize and advance
the bilateral relationship in the complex environment of international politics
and U.S.–Chinese relations.” 114
CONCLUSION
Compared with the period 1990 to 2000, the first two decades of the twenty-
first century saw the overall capacity of the bilateral relationship expand at
all levels, most notably in communications and crisis management. Although
both countries have benefited when they have pooled their power and re-
sources, it will take considerable time and effort to cultivate a relationship
that brings peace and hope to the Asia-Indo-Pacific and other parts of the
world.
Since the 1980s, China has shifted its world outlook from linking the
progress of humanity with the decline and eventual demise of capitalism to
connecting the development and prosperity of China with a stable and peace-
ful international environment. And China has given the United States due
credit for helping steer this transformation in outlook.
The two countries have quarreled, often bitterly, but for the most part they
have managed their uneasy relationship in a rational manner. Restraint has
been evident on both sides. As relations between China and the United States
312 Chapter 12
face the gravest challenge since the rapprochement of 1972, the twin dis-
courses of China and the United States are intersecting and reinforcing each
other in their own spheres of influence and persuasion. But they have not
helped reassure many Americans who harbor anxieties about China and fears
for the challenged global leadership of the United States, nor have they
helped many Chinese overcome their deep-seated sense of injustice when
considering China’s place in world affairs. This is a perilous state of affairs.
In sociological theory, when a group finds itself in conflict with an external
group, it reinforces its internal solidarity, which in turn strengthens its lead-
ers and makes them more authoritarian. 115
FURTHER READING
Based on oral interviews, Sang Ye’s China Candid: The People on the Peo-
ple’s Republic, ed. Geremie R. Barmé with Miriam Lang (Berkeley, Calif.:
University of California Press, 2006) is packed with witty commentary by
ordinary Chinese from a wide range of backgrounds about contemporary
China and its opening up to the United States and the wider world. This book
forms a sharp contrast with Perry Link’s Evening Chats in Beijing: Probing
China’s Predicament (New York: Norton, 1992), which presents, through
the pen of an American academic, the responses of some Chinese intellectu-
als to the dilemmas inherent in Chinese history, society, and Deng Xiaop-
ing’s reforms at the time of the 1989 Tiananmen crisis.
Other useful works include Ren Jiantao (任剑涛), Zhongguo de xiandai
guojia goujian [中国的现代国家构建 The construction of the modern state
in China] (Hong Kong: Hong Kong City University Press, 2019), 2 vols.;
Kai-Fu Lee, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley and the New World
Order (Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018); Graham T. Alli-
son, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?
(Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017); Paola Voci and Luo Hui,
Screening China’s Soft Power (London: Taylor and Francis, 2017); Grant
Wacker, One Soul at a Time: The Story of Billy Graham (Grand Rapids,
Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2019); and Richard Madsen, ed.,
The Sinicization of Chinese Religions: From Above and Below (Leiden: Brill,
2021).
For China’s engagement with America and other countries over the past
thirty years, see Tom Miller, China’s Asian Dream: Empire Building Along
the New Silk Road (London: Zed Books, 2017); Robert S. Ross, Øystein
Tunsjø, and Zhang Tuosheng, eds., US-China-EU Relations: Managing the
New World Order (London: Routledge, 2010); Elizabeth Economy and
Michel Oksenberg, eds., China Joins the World: Progress and Prospects
(New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1999); and David Zweig,
The Race 313
Internationalizing China: Domestic Interest and Global Linkages (Ithaca,

N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2002). They are usefully read together with
Michael H. Hunt, Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy (New Haven, Conn.:
Yale University Press, 1987); William R. Keylor, A World of Nations: The
International Order since 1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003);
Joseph S. Nye Jr., The Paradox of American Power: Why the World’s Only
Superpower Can’t Go It Alone (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002);
and David M. Lampton, The Three Faces of Chinese Power: Might, Money,
and Minds (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2008). David
Shambaugh, Where Great Powers Meet: America and China in Southeast
Asia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), discusses “soft” U.S.-China
competition on all fronts, together with other players including Europe, the
largest investor in Southeast Asia. He argues that suspicion of China is
endemic in the region, that China is an uneven power and its power is
exaggerated, and that the BRI is welcomed by most countries in Southeast
Asia. Shambaugh concludes that while China is experiencing pushbacks, the
United States needs a stronger presence in Southeast Asia, where America’s
investment was twice that of China in 2018.
NOTES
1. Economic convergence is a component of the neoclassical concept about economic

growth known as the Robert Solow-Trevor Swan model. The model holds that, in the long run,
poor countries will eventually catch up or converge with rich nations in production output and
per capita income and that each economy has its own growth ceiling to its GDP, dependent on
variables such as the level of technological innovation, the rate of savings, labor levels and
depreciation, and the adequacy of state management. Robert M. Solow, “A Contribution to the
Theory of Economic Growth,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 70, no. 1 (February 1956):
65–94; Trevor W. Swan, “Economic Growth and Capital Accumulation,” Economic Record 32,
no. 63 (November 1956): 334–361.
2. http://www.ccdi.gov.cn/yaowen/201811/t20181129_184178.html (accessed December
2, 2020).
3. Another related aspect is the Third Front, the top-secret military industrial complex built
in the mountains of inland China during the Cold War. Covell F. Meyskens, Mao’s Third
Front: The The Militarization of Cold War China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2020).
4. The full text in Chinese can be seen at http://www.chinanews.com/gn/2013/09-07/
5257748.shtml (accessed September 10, 2020). For the English version, see https://www.
fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjdt_665385/zyjh_665391/t1078088.shtml (accessed February 27,
2021).
5. For the human cost of Chinese and global capitalism in high-tech industries, see Jenny
Chan, Mark Selden, and Pun Ngai, Dying for an iPhone: Apple, Foxconn, and the Lives of
China’s Workers (Chicago, Ill.: Pluto Press/Haymarket Books, 2020).
6. Dong Wang and Flemming Christiansen, “The Pursuit of New Citizenship by Peri-
Urban Residents in China: Status, Rights, and Individual Choice,” China Information 34, no. 2
(July 2020): 250–269.
7. The eight Millennium Development Goals for 2015 are (1) Eradicate extreme poverty
and hunger; (2) Achieve universal primary education; (3) Promote gender equality and empow-
er women; (4) Reduce child mortality; (5) Improve maternal health; (6) Combat HIV/AIDS,
314 Chapter 12
malaria, and other diseases; (7) Ensure environmental sustainability; and (8) Develop a global
partnership for development. The World Bank, http://www5.worldbank.org/mdgs/; the UN
post-2015 agendas (seventeen goals), https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-
development-goals/ (both accessed March 11, 2021).
8. See https://sdgs.un.org/goals and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Agreement (both
accessed December 2, 2020).
9. “Zhongguo Gongchandang di shijiu jie zhongyang weiyuanhui di wuci quanti huiyi
gongbao” [中国共产党第十九届中央委员会第五次全体会议公报The communiqué of the
fifth plenary session of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China], October
30, 2020, http://china.cnr.cn/news/20201030/t20201030_525313950.shtml; Renmin ribao, No-
vember 4, 2020, http://politics.people.com.cn/n1/2020/1104/c1001-31917678.html.
10. https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/highlights/top/top1412yr.html (accessed
March 2, 2021).
11. https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/highlights/top/top2012yr.html (accessed
March 2, 2021).
12. Zhongguo guoji wenti yanjiusuo (中国国际问题研究所), Guoji xingshi he Zhongguo
waijiao lanpishu (2009/2010) [国际形势和中国外交蓝皮书 The bluebook of the international
situation and China’s foreign affairs] (Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2010), chap. 18.
13. The US-China Business Council, April 2011, “China and the US Economy: Advancing
a Winning Trade Agenda, a Guide for the 112th Congress,” p. 12, https:/www.uschina.org/info/
trade-agenda/uscbc-trade-agenda-report.pdf (accessed July 29, 2011).
14. Evelyn Cheng and Yen Nee Lee, “New Chart Shows China Could Overtake the U.S. as
the World’s Largest Economy Earlier than Expected,” February 1, 2021, https://www.cnbc.
com/2021/02/01/new-chart-shows-china-gdp-could-overtake-us-sooner-as-covid-took-its-toll.
html.
15. For the text of the Economic and Trade Agreement between the Government of the
United States of America and the Government of the People’s Republic Of China (“Phase One
agreement”) signed on January 15, 2020, see https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/files/
agreements/phase%20one%20agreement/Economic_And_Trade_Agreement_Between_The_
United_States_And_China_Text.pdf (accessed February 28, 2021).
16. All figures are U.S. statistics unless specified. https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/
balance/c5700.html (accessed February 28, 2021). The Chinese figure came from the PRC
Ministry of Commerce, January 19, 2021, http://www.mofcom.gov.cn/article/i/jyjl/l/202101/
20210103032258.shtml.
17. E’guo Weixing tongxunshe (俄国卫星通讯社 Russian Sputnik news), January 14,
2020, http://sputniknews.cn/economics/202001141030443429/.
18. Accounting for a decreased share of 6 percent in overall American exports, U.S. goods
exports to China in 2019 were $106.4 billion, down 11.5 percent ($13.8 billion) from 2018 but
up 53.2 percent from 2009. In 2019, U.S. exports to China were up 455 percent from 2001 (pre-
WTO accession). U.S. goods imports from China totaled $451.7 billion in 2019, down 16.2
percent ($87.6 billion) from 2018 but up 52.4 percent from 2009. In 2019, U.S. goods imports
from China were up 342 percent from 2001 (pre-WTO accession).
19. The Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China, January 19, 2021, http://
www.mofcom.gov.cn/article/i/jyjl/l/202101/20210103032258.shtml.
20. For the Chinese statistics, see the PRC Ministry of Commerce, May 2, 2019, http://
www.mofcom.gov.cn/article/i/dxfw/nbgz/201905/20190502859509.shtml.
21. For the U.S. figures, see https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/china-mongolia-taiwan/
peoples-republic-china and https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/country/CHN/
startyear/2014/endyear/2018/tradeflow/Export/partner/USA/indicator/XPRT-TRD-VL# (both
accessed February 28, 2021).
22. The American side’s trade figures came from the Office of the United States Trade
Representative, https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/china-mongolia-taiwan/peoples-republic-
china (accessed February 28, 2021).
23. For U.S. figures, see https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html#2015
and https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c0004.html (both accessed June 21, 2015).
Chinese statistics can be found at http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/zxfb/201402/t20140224_514970.
The Race 315
html and http://us.mofcom.gov.cn/article/ztdy/201503/20150300911236.shtml (both accessed

June 21, 2015). Dong Wang, “US-China Economic Relations,” in A Handbook of US-China
Relations, ed. Andrew Tan (Surrey: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2016), 155–177.
24. The 2015 figure makes the United States the third most populous country in the world
following India.
25. Ben Carter, “Is China’s Economy Really the Largest in the World?” BBC News Maga-
zine, December 16, 2014, http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30483762.
26. The World Bank, GDP Per Capita (Current US$), available at http://data.worldbank.org/
indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD (accessed June 21, 2015).
27. Guojia tongjiju (国家统计局 National Bureau of Statistics of China), “Zhonghua ren-
min gongheguo 2020 nian guomin jingji he shehui fazhan tongji gongbao” [中华人民共和国
2020 年国民经济和社会发展统计公报 Bulletin of national economic and social development
statistics of the People’s Republic of China Year 2020], February 28, 2021, https://mp.weixin.
qq.com/s/8jyxgTdnQCwfGwSciyHdDw.
28. U.S. Department of the Treasury, “Major Foreign Holders of Treasury Securities,”
https://ticdata.treasury.gov/Publish/mfh.txt (accessed March 1, 2021).
29. U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. International Trade in
Goods and Services, released in June 2015, available at http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/
Press-Release/2014pr/final_revisions/final.pdf (accessed July 4, 2015).
30. The World Trade Organization, International Trade Statistics 2012, p. 29, available at
http://www.wto.org/english/res_e/booksp_e/anrep_e/world_trade_report12_e.pdf (accessed
March 6, 2013). The 2014 figure came from Zhonghua renmin gongheguo tongjiju (National
Bureau of Statistics of the People’s Republic of China), announced in February 2015, available
at http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/zxfb/201502/t20150226_685799.html (accessed June 21, 2015).
31. Commercial services include a large variety of trade-related activities such as mainte-
nance and repair services, transport, travel, information services, computer, banking, account-
ing, insurance and education, legal counsel, management consulting, royalties and license fees,
telecommunications, transportation and travel, and government goods and services.
32. Li Lanqing (former vice premier of China), Breaking Through: The Birth of China’s
Opening-Up Policy (Beijing: Waiyu jiaoxue yu yanjiu chubanshe, 2009), 56.
33. U.S. Chamber of Commerce, “Made in China 2025: Global Ambitions Built on Local
Protections,” 2017, https://www.uschamber.com/sites/default/files/final_made_in_china_
2025_report_full.pdf (accessed March 3, 2021).
34. Xi Jinping, opening speech at the 19th National Congress of the CCP, October 19, 2017,
http://cpc.people.com.cn/19th/n1/2017/1019/c414305-29595241.html.
35. Chen Yuxiang (陈宇翔) and Zeng Xihui (曾喜辉), “‘Liangge Yibainian’ de luoji shen-
cheng yu xianshi biran” [两个一百年的逻辑生成与现实必然 The logical origins of the Two
Centenaries and its unavoidable reality], Renmin wang, March 7, 2018, http://theory.people.
com.cn/n1/2018/0307/c40531-29853392.html.
36. The Chinese Ministry of Education, http://en.moe.gov.cn/documents/reports/201904/
t20190418_378692.html (accessed March 3, 2020); Xi Jinping, “Goujian Zhongmei xinxing
daguo guanxi” [构建中美新型大国关系 Constructing a new kind of U.S.-Chinese relations
between major powers], remarks made in June 2013 during Xi’s meeting with President Barack
Obama. Zhonggong Zhongyang wenxian yanjiushi, comp., Shibada yilai zhongyao wenxian
xuanbian [Selected documents of the Central Committee since the 18th Congress of the Chi-
nese Communist Party] (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 2014), 305–306. According
to President Xi, the number of Chinese students in the United States in 2013 was 190,000,
whereas the American figure was 274,439. Statista, https://www.statista.com/statistics/372900/
number-of-chinese-students-that-study-in-the-us/ (accessed February 10, 2021).
37. https://www.statista.com/statistics/374169/china-number-of-students-from-the-us/ and
https://www.statista.com/statistics/233880/international-students-in-the-us-by-country-of-
origin/ (both accessed February 10, 2021).
38. Asia Pacific multilateral institutions include the Association of South East Asian Na-
tions (ASEAN) Regional Forum (1994), ASEAN Political-Security Community (APSC, 2003),
Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Leaders’ Meeting (1993, APEC), East Asia Summit (2005,
a leader’s forum comprising eighteen members, including the ten ASEAN members, China,
316 Chapter 12
Japan, South Korea, United States, Russia, India, Australia, and New Zealand), ASEAN De-
fence Ministers Meeting Plus (ADMM, 2010), Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO,
2001, an outgrowth of the Shanghai Five, that is, China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan, with the addition of Uzbekistan), Shangri-La Dialogue (2001), South Asian Associ-
ation for Regional Cooperation (SAARC, 1980, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the
Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka), Six Party Talks (2003), and BRICS (Brazil, Russia,
India, China, and South Africa). More see David A. Lynch, Trade and Globalization: An
Introduction to Regional Trade Agreements (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010).
39. James Carafano, Arvind Gupta, and Jeff M. Smith, “The Pitfalls of the China-EU Com-
prehensive Agreement on Investment,” The Diplomat, January 22, 2021, https://thediplomat.
com/2021/01/the-pitfalls-of-the-china-eu-comprehensive-agreement-on-investment/ (accessed
March 1, 2021).
40. Gregory T. Chin, “Understanding Currency Policy and Central Banking in China,” The
Journal of Asian Studies 72, no. 3 (August 2013): 519–538.
41. This estimate is based on figures in Harry Harding’s A Fragile Relationship: The United
States and China (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1992), 99, where the 1971 figure is
set at US$4.7 million, and Tao Wenzhao’s Zhongmei guanxishi [中美关系史 A history of
Sino-American relations] (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 2004), vol. 3, 1972–2000, p.
339, where the figure is set at zero.
42. The PRC General Administration of Customs, China’s Customs Statistics, “US-China
Trade Statistics and China’s World Trade Statistics,” US-China Business Council, http://
www.uschina.org/statisticss/tradetable.html (accessed July 29, 2011, and July 18, 2012).
43. U.S. Census Bureau, Foreign Trade Statistics, http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/top/
index.html#top_partners (accessed December 2, 2007, and July 29, 2011). The US-China Busi-
ness Council, April 2011, “China and the US Economy,” 5.
44. DW News, “Germany Announces Shift in Approach to China Relations,” September 3,
2020, https://youtu.be/DeuZZoC4ICg.
45. Dong Wang, “As eleiçõesnos Estados Unidos e as relações comerciais com a China”
[The U.S. Presidential Elections and Sino-American Trade Relations], Pontes, International
Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development, Brazil, vol. 12, no. 8 (October 2016): 16–19.
46. Lynn Chu, “The Chimera of the China Market,” The Atlantic 266, no. 4 (October 1990):
56–64.
47. Li, Breaking Through, 374–384.
48. http://wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/tif_e/fact1_e.htm (accessed April 23, 2007).
49. Zhang Shengqiu (张盛秋), “Long Yongtu yu jiaru Shimao zuzhi” [龙永图与加入世贸
组织 Long Yongtu and the WTO accession], in Zhang Shengen (张神根) and Duanmu qinghua
(端木清华), comps., Gaige kaifang sanshi nian zhongda juece shimo, 1978–2008 [改革开放三
十年重大决策始末 A comprehensive study of important policymaking over 30 years of re-
form] (Chengdu: Sichuan renmin chubanshe, 2008), 317–322.
50. Long Yongtu, “‘Rushi’ tanpan shi zheyang wanchengde” [“入世”谈判是这样完成的
How the WTO talks were completed], in Wang Gang (王刚), Lu Lin (鲁林), and Jin Baochen
(金宝辰), eds., Zhongguo Gongchandang lishi koushu shilu, 1978–2000 [中国共产党历史口
述实录 An oral history of the Chinese Communist Party, 1978–2000] (Jinan: Jinan chubanshe,
2002), 436–450.
51. Chinese UN envoy Huang Xueqi’s speech at the UN second committee, November 13,
1999, Summary of World Broadcasts, November 15, 1999, FE/3692 G/1and G/2.
52. Long Yongtu, “‘Rushi’ tanpan shi zheyang wanchengde.”
53. Author unknown, “Selected Documents on the China-US Agreement on the WTO,”
China Report 36, no. 2 (2000): 293–321.
54. Nicholas R. Lardy, “The Only Way Is Up,” Beijing Review 50, no. 16 (April 19, 2007):
18–19.
55. United States Trade Representative, “2019 Report to Congress On China’s WTO Com-
pliance,” March 2020, https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/2019_Report_on_China%E2%80%
99s_WTO_Compliance.pdf (accessed February 28, 2021).
56. https://www.cls.cn/detail/223513 and https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=159409114-
2394937963&wfr=spider&for=pc (both accessed March 2, 2021).
The Race 317
57. Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo Shangwubu (中华人民共和国商务部 Ministry of Com-

merce of the People’s Republic of China), “2019 nian 12 yue jinchukou jianyao qingkuang”
[2019 年12月进出口简要情况 Briefing on the imports and exports from December 2019],
January 17, 2020, http://www.mofcom.gov.cn/article/tongjiziliao/cf/202001/20200102931150.
shtml.
58. Fareed Zakaria, “China’s Century,” Newsweek, May 9, 2005, pp. 28–29.
59. Douglas A. Irwin, Clashing over Commerce: A History of U.S. Trade Policy (Chicago,
Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 2017), intro., 2.
60. U.S. Trade Representative, “2019 Report to Congress on China’s WTO Compliance,”
March 2020, pp. 4–5.
61. Yunyun Liu, “Growing Pains or Growing Gains,” Beijing Review, December 21, 2006,
pp. 32–34.
62. U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, Staff Research Report, Bart
Carfagno and Michelle Ker, “Trends in Trade: U.S.-China Goods Trade, 2012–2017,” July 19,
2018, https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/Research/Trends%20in%20Trade%20Staff%
20Report.pdf (accessed March 3, 2021).
63. See the People’s Daily’s interview on February 15, 2012, with Gao Hucheng, China
international trade representative and vice commerce minister, http://english.mofcom.gov.cn/
aarticle/newsrelease/significantnews/201202/20120207966357.html (accessed July 19, 2012).
64. WikiLeaks, December 21, 2009, cable, Reference ID: 09BEIJING3416, released on
December 9, 2010. Michael Wines, “Leaked Cables Offer Glimpses into Relations of U.S. and
China,” New York Times, September 4, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/05/world/asia/
05china.html.
65. Donald D. A. Schaefer, “U.S. Foreign Policies of Presidents Bush and Clinton: The
Influence of China’s Most Favored Nation Status upon Human Rights Issues,” Social Science
Journal 35, no. 3 (July 1998): 407–415. David Skidmore and William Gates, “After Tianan-
men: The Struggle over U.S. Policy toward China in the Bush Administration,” Presidential
Studies Quarterly 27, no. 3 (Summer 1997): 514–526.
66. Peter Steinfels, “Evangelicals Lobby for Oppressed Christians,” and “Evangelicals Ask
Government to Fight Persecution of Christians,” New York Times, January 23 and September
15, 1996. Jeffrey Goldberg, “Washington Discovers Christian Persecution,” New York Times,
December 21, 1997.
67. Carol Lee Hamrin, “Advancing Religious Freedom in a Global China: Conclusions,” in
God and Caesar in China: Policy Implications of Church-State Tensions, ed. Jason Kindopp
and Carol Lee Hamrin (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2004), 165–185. Xu
Yihua, “Meiguo ‘1998 nian guoji zongjiao ziyoufa’” [美国 “1998 年国际宗教自由法” The
U.S. International Religious Freedom Act of 1998], in Xu Yihua, ed., Zongjiao yu Meiguo
shehui [宗教与美国社会 Religion and American society] (Beijing: Shishi chubanshe, 2004),
vol. 2, pp. 515–546.
68. Ann Scott Tyson, “Clinton vs. Nixon: Changed US Views on Trip to China,” Christian
Science Monitor, June 24, 1998, p. 3.
69. Erik Eckholm, “Wary Flock: A Special Report; China’s Churches: Glad, and Bitter,
Tidings,” New York Times, June 17, 1998, p. A1.
70. Rebecca Mackinnon, “Chinese Christians a Small but Growing Minority,” http:// www.
cnn.com/WORLD/asiapcf/9806/27/china.christians (accessed April 2, 2008).
71. Todd Crowell, “China’s Crusade against Christians: No Change,” Christian Science
Monitor, October 31, 1997, p. 6, 1c.
72. Goldberg, “Washington Discovers Christian Persecution.”
73. Goldberg, “Washington Discovers Christian Persecution.” Goldberg’s report neglected
to mention that, under normal circumstances, Chinese have had no access to CNN, BBC, CBS,
ABC, NBC, Google, and most of other Western television channels, search engines, and apps
for decades.
74. Todd Hertz, “Bush: ‘I’m One of Them,’” Christianity Today, February 2002, http://
www.ctlibrary.com/ct/2002/februaryweb-only/2-25-31.0.html (accessed February 4, 2007).
75. Elaine Sciolino, “Clinton Argues for ‘Flexibility’ over Sanctions,” New York Times,
April 28, 1998, p. A1.
318 Chapter 12
76. “President Attends Church Service at Gangwashi Church in Beijing, China,” November
20, 2005, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/11/print/20051120-5.html (accessed
February 4, 2007).
77. Erick Eckholm, “Clinton in China: Christians; Protestants, Delighted, Feel Clinton’s
Visit Moves the Cause Onward,” New York Times, June 29, 1998, p. A8.
78. Elizabeth Lynch, “The Obama Visit to China: What the U.S. Press Missed,” Huffington
Post, November 23, 2009, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elizabeth-lynch/the-obama-visit-to-
china_b_367459.html.
79. Michael Wines and Sharon LaFraniere, “During Visit, Obama Skirts Chinese Political
Sensitivities,” New York Times, November 18, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/18/
world/asia/18prexy.html?pagewanted=print (accessed July 29, 2011).
80. Helene Cooper, Michael Wines, and David E. Sanger, “China’s Role as Lender Alters
Obama’s Visit,” New York Times, November 15, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/
world/asia/15china.html.
81. For the full text of the regulations in Chinese and English, see http://www.china.com.
cn/chinese/PI-c/732332.htm and http://www.amityfoundation.org/cms/user/3/docs/decree
_426.pdf (both accessed August 7, 2011).
Post on November 21, 2003, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6641-
2003Nov22?language=printer.
83. Cai Wu (蔡武), Gaige kaifang sanshi nian Zhongguo wenhua de fazhan [改革开放三
十年中国文化的发展 China’s cultural development over thirty years of reform and opening
up] (Beijing: Waiwen chubanshe, 2009), 37–68.
Modernity in China (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2020), intro.
85. Beijing Review, “Charting Roadmap for China: Special Report, 17th CPC Congress,”
Beijing Review 50, no. 43 (October 11, 2007).
86. Lü Hong (吕鸿) and Zheng Hong (郑红), “Jixinge duihua Zhao Qizheng: Zui zhengui
de bushi gaolou dasha, ershi gonggong waijiao” [基辛格对话赵启正: 最珍贵的不是高楼大
厦,而是公共外交 A dialogue between Henry Kissinger and Zhao Qizheng: The most valued
assets are not skyscrapers but public diplomacy], Renmin wang, March 22, 2011, http://world.
people.com.cn/GB/14203342.html#.
87. Xi Jinping, “Jianding wenhua zixin, jianshe shehui zhuyi wenhua qiangguo,” [坚定文化
自信，建设社会主义文化强国], June 15, 2019, http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/leaders/
2019-06/15/c_1124627379.htm.
88. Dong Wang, “Internationalizing Heritage: UNESCO and China’s Longmen Grottoes,”
China Information 24, no. 2 (July 2010): 123–147; Dong Wang, “Restructuring Governance in
Contemporary Urban China: Perspectives on State and Society,” Journal of Contemporary
China 20, no. 72 (November 2011): 723–733.
89. Spain ranks as the second country with the most WHL sites—thirty-nine in 2009 and
forty-eight in 2019—and Germany ranks third, with forty-six sites as of August 2019.
UNESCO, World Heritage Convention, et al., “World Heritage, 2008–09.” For August 2019
statistics, see https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/stat#s2 (accessed August 13, 2019).
90. http://www.hanban.org (accessed January 26, 2012).
91. BBC New, “US Labels Confucius Institute a Chinese ‘Foreign Mission,’” August 14,
2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53773776.
92. Data gathered from the Institute of International Education, Open Doors Data, http://
www.iie.org/en/Research-and-Publications/Open-Doors (accessed January 26, 2012).
93. Catherine Elton, “City of Spies,” Boston, May 21, 2020, https://www.bostonmagazine.
com/news/2020/05/21/chinese-espionage/. The issues and problems around educational ex-
changes are further discussed in David Zweig, Chen Changgui, and Stanley Rosen, “Globaliza-
tion and Transnational Human Capital: Overseas and Returnee Scholars to China,” China
Quarterly 179 (September 2004): 735–757; Tricia Coverdale-Jones and Paul Rastall, eds.,
Internationalizing the University: The Chinese Context (New York: Palgrave, 2009).
The Race 319
94. Peter Hays Gries, H. Michael Crowson, and Todd Sandel, “The Olympic Effect on
American Attitudes towards China: Beyond Personality, Ideology, and Media Exposure,” Jour-
nal of Contemporary China 19, no. 64 (2010): 213–231.
95. Laura Silva, Kat Devlin, and Christine Huang, “Unfavorable Views of China Reach
Historic Highs in Many Countries,” October 6, 2020, Pew Research Center, https://www.
pewresearch.org/global/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/10/PG_2020.10.06_Global-Views-
China_FINAL.pdf.
96. Ching-Ching Ni, “Bibles Are Big Business in China,” Los Angeles Times, June 21,
2008, http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-bible22-2008jun22,0,2725020.
story.
97. Christopher Bodeen, the Associated Press, “Group: Officials Destroying Crosses, Burn-
ing Bibles in China,” September 10, 2018, https://apnews.com/article/
c09b2ee4b71540c8a7fd6178820c5970.
98. Nina Shea, “China’s Threat to Bible,” First Things, December 22, 2020, https://www.
firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2020/12/chinas-threat-to-the-bible.
99. For a summary of the views of liberal optimists, liberal pessimists, and liberal construc-
tivists in relation to those of realist optimists, realist pessimists, and realist constructivists in the
United States, see Aaron L. Friedberg, “The Future of U.S.-China Relations: Is Conflict Inevi-
table?” International Security 30, no. 2 (Fall 2005): 7–45. Aaron L. Friedberg, “Are We Ready
for China?” Commentary (October 2007): 39–43, and A Contest for Supremacy: China, Ameri-
ca, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia (New York: Norton, 2011).
100. Richard Bernstein and Ross H. Munro, The Coming Conflict with China (New York:
Vintage, 1998; first edition by Knopf in 1997); Michel Oksenberg and Elizabeth Economy,
Shaping U.S.-China Relations: A Long-Term Strategy (New York: Council on Foreign Rela-
tions, 1997); Fareed Zakaria, The Post-American World (New York: Norton, 2009; first edition
in 2008).
101. David Shambaugh, “A New China Requires a New US Strategy,” Current History 109,
no. 728 (September 2010): 219–226.
102. David Shambaugh, “The Coming Chinese Crackup,” The Wall Street Journal, March 6,
2015, https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-coming-chinese-crack-up-1425659198.
103. Elizabeth Economy, The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New Chinese State (Ox-
ford: Oxford University Press, 2018).
104. Larry Diamond, Orville Schell, et al. Chinese Influence & American Interests: Promot-
ing Constructive Vigilance, Report of the Working Group on Chinese Influence Activities in the
United States (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 2018). Michael Pillsbury, The Hun-
dred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower
(New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2015).
105. Song Qiang (宋强), Zhang Cangcang (张藏藏), et al., Zhongguo keyi shuobu: Lengzhan
houshidai de zhengzhi yu qinggan jueze [中国可以说不: 冷战后时代的政治与情感抉择 Chi-
na can say no: Politics and sentiment in the post–Cold War era] (Beijing: Zhonghua gongshang
lianhe chubanshe, 1996). Song Xiaojun (宋晓军), Wang Xiaodong (王小东), et al., Zhongguo
bugaoxing: da shidai, da mubiao ji women de neiyou waihuan [中国不高兴: 大时代、大目标
及我们的内忧外患 China is unhappy: Broad picture, grand strategy, domestic concerns and
external threats] (Nanjing: Jiangsu renmin chubanshe, 2009).
106. Fang Ning (房宁), Chengzhang de Zhongguo: Dangdai Zhongguo qingnian de guojia
minzu yishi yanjiu [成长的中国: 当代中国青年的国家民族意识研究 Growing China: A
study of national consciousness among contemporary Chinese youth] (Beijing: Remin chuban-
she, 2002). Fang Ning, Xin Diguo zhuyi shidai yu Zhongguo zhanlüe [新帝国主义时代与中国
战略 The age of new imperialism and China’s counterstrategy] (Beijing: Beijing chubanshe,
2003).
107. Song Hongbin (宋鸿兵), Huobi zhanzheng [货币战争 The currency war] (Beijing:
Zhongxin chubanshe, 2007). Lang Xianping of the Chinese University of Hong Kong has
advised Chinese government agencies and private enterprise alike that, in the “new imperialist”
era, China must strive to become a rule maker in the international competition game. Lang
Xianping (郎咸平), Lang Xianping shuo: Xin Diguo zhuyi zai Zhongguo [郎咸平说:新帝国主
义在中国 Lang Xianping on new imperialism in China], eighth printing (Beijing: Dongfang
320 Chapter 12
chubanshe, 2011; first edition in January 2010); its sequel appeared four months afterward in
May 2010, Lang Xianping shuo: Xin Diguo zhuyi zai Zhongguo 2 [郎咸平说:新帝国主义在中
国2 Lang Xianping on new imperialism in China 2] (Beijing: Dongfang chubanshe, 2010).
108. Dai Xu (戴旭), C xing baowei: Neiyou waihuan xia de Zhongguo tuwei [C形包围: 内忧
外患下的中国突围 The C-shaped encirclement: China’s way out of its domestic problems and
the foreign threat] (Shanghai: Wenhui chubanshe, 2010).
109. Yan Wei, “Relations in Transition,” interview with Yan Xuetong, director of the Insti-
tute of International Studies of Tsinghua University, Beijing Review (February 22, 2007), 16.
110. Yan Wei, “Relations in Transition.”
111. Yuan Peng (袁鹏), “Zhongmei guanxi zhuanyuan, Meiguo ying xianxing” [中美关系转
圜, 美国应先行 To improve U.S.-Chinese relations, the United States ought to make the first
move], Huanqiu shibao [环球时报], no. 2243, August 23, 2010.
112. Hua Shengdun, “Shambaugh China Essay Rebuffed,” The Washington Post, March 13,
2015, http://chinawatch.washingtonpost.com/2015/03/shambaugh-china-essay-rebuffed-2/.
113. Jin Canrong (金灿荣) et al., Zhongguo zhihui: Shibada yilai Zhongguo waijiao [中国智
慧: 十八大以来中国外交 China’s wisdom: Chinese diplomacy since the 18th National Con-
gress of the Chinese Communist Party] (Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe, 2017).
114. Jin, Zhongguo zhihui, chap. 4, sec. 2.
115. Georg Simmel, Georg Simmel on Individuality and Social Forms (Chicago, Ill.: Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 1972).
Epilogue
If we do not want to die together in war, we must learn to live together in

peace. 1
—President Harry Truman (1884–1972) in 1945
Now if a man will weigh, as it were in a pair of balances, the commodities of

war on the one side and the incommodities on the other side, he shall find that
unjust peace is far better than righteous war. Why had we rather have war than
peace?
—Desiderius Erasmus (d. 1536) 2
This survey of U.S.-Chinese relations bridges historical studies and contem-

porary concerns of international relations. My account of American-Chinese
relations begins with private commerce in 1784—relatively minuscule in
terms of global geopolitics and the world economy—and concludes with the
conviction that peaceful coexistence and nonmilitary competition between
the world’s two economic powerhouses is in the interests of the United
States, China, and indeed the world in the twenty-first century. What lessons
and legacies can their shared past offer to help improve their current bad
relationship?
Over the past 240 years, the United States has rapidly developed from
thirteen former British colonies into a strong, self-conscious nation-state, and
then into an empire-nation that has a privileged position in international
political, financial, and military institutions. China, on the other hand, has
transformed itself from a decaying empire into a staunch defender of its
national sovereignty—although it has had only a limited part to play in the
postwar construction of the international order.
China’s historic catch-up over the past forty years has boosted its cultural
confidence and sense of place in the world, following two centuries of dynas-
321
322 Epilogue
tic decline and constant revolutions. But China has yet to earn respect for a
political system that has been openly disdained by Americans and others. 3
The Chinese people are yet to make skeptics believe that they are a peaceful
nation with no military designs on other countries or plans for world domina-
tion. 4 As I pointed out in chapter 12, in 2020 global polls indicated that
favorable opinions of China had plummeted to a record low of less than 20
percent. While it is commendable to be aware of and respect the differences
between countries and cultures, it is not good to be paranoid or to lose
confidence in democracy and America’s enduring influence on so many
aspects of modern society and culture around the world.
In 1980, when China’s economic reconstruction had just begun, the U.S.
population stood at 235 million and its gross domestic product (GDP) per
capita was over US$25,000 (in 2005 dollars). China’s population at the time
was over 900 million and its GDP per capita was around $220. Thirty years
later, American GDP per capita (with 0.3 billion people) was more than ten
times that of China (around 1.4 billion people), and the American economy
was nearly 2.5 times larger than China’s in 2011 figures. As of December
2019, although the economic gulf between the two nations had been signifi-
cantly reduced, China’s GDP per capita stood at US$8,254.30 (in constant
2010 U.S. dollars), still ranking below more than seventy-five other coun-
tries. By contrast, America’s GDP per capita was US$55,809, about 6.76
times higher than China’s, in the same year. 5
In the new millennium, along with climate change, public health, and
other issues, the state of the U.S.-China relationship has become a global
concern, through which each side’s relations with other countries and trading
blocs are seen. Many critics point out that, psychologically, the United States
needs to adapt to a richer, stronger China, if only because for a long time
many Americans have harbored warm feelings toward China. Others have
noted that the United States needs an external enemy to stay focused and that
it has a near-pathological need to maintain “absolute security at all costs.” 6
Some suggest that the United States should fix its domestic problems in order
to compete with China more effectively, 7 just as China had done in the
period 1972–2012, albeit starting from a much more disadvantaged position.
In today’s complex and diverse world, not only is direct military confronta-
tion totally inappropriate to the kind of competition in which the United
States and China are engaged, but also it would fail to bring cost-effective
benefits to either of the countries involved or humanity as a whole.
Drawing on his personal experience as an architect of American-Chinese
rapprochement and a scholar of international diplomacy, Henry Kissinger
spoke in 2011 of the necessity of avoiding a military solution to the Sino-
U.S. conflict in the twenty-first century. He described this as the “great
challenge of our time”:
Epilogue 323
The foreign policy of Moscow followed an imperialist tradition. The expan-

sion of its power was always to some extent linked to asserting military might.
By contrast, China has historically asserted its influence through some sort of
cultural imperialism. China’s influence on its neighbors did not depend on the
threat of invasion. Containing China’s power, therefore, does not primarily
mean military containment. It means creating foreign policy frameworks. It is
a totally different type of containment. . . . America continues to believe in its
exceptional status, its exceptionalism—basically like China does. Two differ-
ent kinds of exceptionalism stand face to face in the form of the U.S.A. and
China. American exceptionalism is missionary. The Chinese exceptionalism is
culturally influential, but does not seek to convert people. 8
The final revisions for the present study were completed in central Paris and
northwest Germany in February and early March 2021, at a time when CO-
VID-19 has killed 2.59 million people worldwide, with over half a million
COVID-related deaths in the United States and 116 million cases of infec-
tion. 9 After nearly one and half years, the war on the pandemic still contin-
ues, paralleling the race for vaccinations around the globe. Judging by the
shifting labels applied to communist China—from yesterday’s “strategic
competitor, then revised to global adversary, and now as an ‘Authoritarian
Adversary,’” within a month of the power transfer from Donald J. Trump to
Joe Biden on January 20, 2021—this was also a time when U.S.-Chinese
relations continued to fluctuate. 10
At this point, it may be helpful to be reminded that various remedies,
including “hot” wars, have been offered for the ills engendered by Sino-
American interactions. They include a range of hard and soft tactics that can
be employed simultaneously or on a case-by-case basis: reciprocity, assisting
the rise of India, world peace through the rule of law, 11 cultivating sensitivity
to and accommodating each other’s needs and concerns, second-guessing the
motives of one’s opponent in order to make smart deals, 12 creating additional
leverage, and learning effective and efficient ways of doing things from
China and other countries.
Fluctuation is a law of nature, and thus far no civilization, no country or
people have succeeded in dominating the human family for very long. The
United Nations has 193 member states plus two nonmember observers, the
Holy See and Palestine—not just the United States and China. Both the
“weapons of the weak” and the imperial watchword “speak softly and carry a
big stick” have been wielded throughout world history. 13
In the 1871 Treaty of Washington, the United States and Great Britain—
America’s longtime archrival and perceived national threat—gradually im-
proved their strained relations through international arbitration. During the
same period, in the course of America’s rapid rise to global power within a
generation following the Civil War (1861–1865), the United States was often
approached by other countries to mediate in conflicts, both military and
324 Epilogue
nonmilitary, in the Asia- and Indo-Pacific region. Remembering these histor-

ical precedents, it might also be useful to know that positive labels—in
relation to such attributes as neutrality, brokering, independence and nonen-
tanglement—have often switched owners. Finally, given criticism of China’s
lack of democracy, would that nation be more or less “scary” if China and its
people were able to reach their full potential?
FURTHER READING 14
John King Fairbank—doyen of American China scholars—reshaped the

study of U.S.-Chinese relations through his emphasis on educating
Americans about China. His single-authored volume The United States and
China offers a corrective to studies such as those by Tyler Dennett and
Alfred Whitney Griswold, which focus on American high diplomacy in East
Asia. But this new emphasis has created its own set of predicaments. Its title
notwithstanding, Fairbank’s work devotes half of its 632 pages to Chinese
history, politics, and society before turning to the American approaches to
China. His book also omitted discussion of Chinese experiences of and per-
spectives on the relationship:
Tyler Dennett, Americans in East Asia: A Critical Study of United States Policy in the Far East
in the Nineteenth Century, reprint (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1963; first edition in 1922
by Macmillan).
Alfred Whitney Griswold, The Far Eastern Policy of the United States (New Haven, Conn.:
Yale University Press, 1966; first edition in 1938 by Harcourt, Brace).
John K. Fairbank, The United States and China, fourth edition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1983; first edition in 1948).
There are several other useful general studies of the subject. Primarily
grounded in English-language sources, Americanist Michael Schaller’s sur-
vey is succinct but focuses on American-Chinese relations during the
1930s–1970s. While Warren I. Cohen places American policy toward China
in a broad international setting, his main concern is “the response of
American statesmen who sought to devise an East Asian policy consistent
with the ideals and interests of their people” (preface to the first edition).
Understandably, Cohen’s paradigm of “American-response-to-China” does
not pretend to cover the Chinese side of the relationship. Robert Sutter’s
book represents a contemporary social sciences approach, with most of the
volume devoted to analyzing fluctuations in issues of security, the economy,
the environment, Taiwan, and human rights since 1989. Sutter concludes that
“the twists and turns in US-China relations . . . argue for caution in predicting
the future direction of the relationship. Powerful elements of convergence
and divergence have long characterized US-China relations” (p. 265).
Epilogue 325
The Hundred-Year Marathon is an important book—though many schol-

ars dislike it. Authored by a longtime China watcher and a key figure in
shaping President Donald J. Trump’s China policy, it has also been translated
and read by Chinese elites and CCP leaders. Published just before the radi-
cally new American consensus on China that came to a head during President
Trump’s tenure (2017–2021) and acknowledging few academic works on the
subject, over nearly 700 pages John Pomfret examines the bilateral relation-
ship with journalistic vividness and absorbing detail, concluding that “Chi-
na’s relationship with America is not as dysfunctional as it often seems. And
China deserves more praise than it often gets” (p. 635). See:
Michael Schaller, The United States and China: Into the Twenty-First Century, fourth edition
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015; first edition in 1979).
Warren I. Cohen, America’s Response to China: A History of Sino-American Relations, fifth
edition (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010; first edition in 1971).
Robert Sutter, U.S.-Chinese Relations: Perilous Past, Uncertain Present, third edition (Lan-
ham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018; first edition in 2010).
Michael Pillsbury, The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America
as the Global Superpower (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2015).
John Pomfret, The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to
the Present (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2016).
Complementing the general works in English discussed above, a list of texts

in Chinese would start with vol. 1 of Tao Wenzhao (陶文钊), Zhongmei
guanxi shi [中美关系史 A history of Sino-American relations], second re-
vised edition (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 2016, vol. 1,
1911–1949; cowritten with five other authors, vol. 2, 1949–1972; vol. 3,
1972–2000; first edition in 1993–2004). Drawing on original research, this
three-volume study highlights Chinese viewpoints on important issues, par-
ticularly the political and geo-economic aspects of the bilateral relationship.
In the concluding section of vol. 3, “Towards a new type of great power
relations” (Zouxiang xinxing daguo guoxi 走向新型大国关系), written in
June 2014, Tao shares his subtle perspectives on the overall direction of
U.S.-Chinese relations, as well as his desire for a nonconflictual and noncon-
frontational relationship.
Two useful single-volume works are Xiang Liling’s (项立岭) Zhongmei
guanxi shi quanbian [中美关系史全编 A comprehensive history of U.S.-
China relations] (Shanghai: Huadong shifan daxue, 2002) and Xiong Zhi-
yong’s (熊志勇) Bainian Zhongmei guanxi [百年中美关系 A century of
Sino-U.S. relations] (Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2006). Other works
include the brief study by Wang Xi (1920–2016, 汪熙, a pioneering PRC
scholar of the history of U.S.-Chinese relations), Qin Ling (秦岭), and Gu
Ning (顾宁), Meiguo haijun yu Zhongmei guanxi [美国海军与中美关系
American navy and Sino-American relations] (Shanghai: Fudan chubanshe,
2013). This work gives attention to pre-PRC Sino-American relations. 15
326 Epilogue
Supplementing these studies, annotated bibliographical guides can also be

found in Charles W. Hayford, ed., Draft Bibliography of American-East
Asian Relations, a special volume of the Journal of American-East Asian
Relations 8, nos. 1–4 (1999, published in 2002); Warren I. Cohen, ed., Pacif-
ic Passage: The Study of East Asian Relations on the Eve of the Twenty-First
Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996) and New Frontiers in
American-East Asian Relations: Essays Presented to Dorothy Borg (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1983); Akira Iriye’s Across the Pacific:
An Inner History of American–East Asian Relations, revised edition (Chica-
go, Ill.: Imprint Publications, 1992; first edition in 1967), 395–408; and
Ernest R. May and James C. Thomson Jr., eds., American-East Asian Rela-
tions: A Survey (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972). An
extensive bibliography of studies in Chinese, English, and Japanese is pub-
lished in 150 nian Zhongmei guanxishi lunzhu mulu (1823–1990), ed. Wang
Xi (汪熙) and Tajiri Tōru (田尻利), (150年中美关系史论著目录 A bibliog-
raphy of works on the history of Sino-American relations over the last 150
years) (Shanghai: Fudan daxue chubanshe, 2005), 603 pp.
On the American history side, the two-volume American Foreign Rela-
tions: A History, seventh edition (Florence, Ky.: Wadsworth Publishing,
2009) by Thomas Paterson et al. provides a point of entry. As does the four-
volume New Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2013), edited by Warren I. Cohen with contri-
butions by William Weeks, Walter LaFeber, Akira Iriye, and Cohen himself.
For further references on the historiography of American foreign relations,
see Michael H. Hunt’s The American Ascendancy: How the United States
Gained and Wielded Global Dominance (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of
North Carolina Press, 2007), 357–385; and Alan McPherson, ed., The Society
for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) Guide: An Annotated
Bibliography of American Foreign Relations since 1600 (Leiden: Brill,
2017), online, https://brill.com/view/db/shaf?language=en. Frank Costigliola
and Michael J. Hogan, eds., Explaining the History of American Foreign
Relations, third edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016) sur-
veys research trends and analytical approaches to U.S. foreign affairs. 16
NOTES
1. President Harry Truman (1884–1972, presidency 1945–1953), speech at the United

Nations General Assembly, April 25, 1945, https://2009-2017.state.gov/p/io/potusunga/
207325.htm (accessed March 6, 2021).
2. Desiderius Erasmus, Against War (Boston, Mass.: Merrymount Press, 1907), 54, https://
www.gutenberg.org/files/39487/39487-h/39487-h.htm (accessed September 9, 2020).
3. Ramon H. Myers, Michel C. Oksenberg, and David Shambaugh, eds., Making China
Policy: Lessons from the Bush and Clinton Administrations (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Little-
field, 2001).
Epilogue 327
4. Michael McDevitt, China as a Twenty-First-Century Naval Power: Theory Practice and

Implications (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2020).
5. The World Bank, https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/gdp-per-capita (accessed
March 6, 2021).
6. Walter A. McDougall, Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with
the World since 1776 (Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 1998). David C. Unger, The Emergen-
cy State: America’s Pursuit of Absolute Security at All Costs (New York: Penguin, 2012).
7. Sarah Zhang, quoting Chas Freeman, “China-US Relations: ‘Let’s Fix Our Own Nation-
al Messes Before Competing with Beijing,’ Says Former Diplomat,” South China Morning
Post, February 25, 2021, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3123089/china-
us-relations-lets-fix-our-own-national-messes-competing.
8. Henry Kissinger’s interview with Matthias Nass, “Der Anfang einer neuen Zeit” [The
beginning of a new age], Die Zeit, no. 22 (May 26, 2011): 23.
9. Johns Hopkins University and Medicine, https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html (March
7, 2021).
10. Readers’ posts on Zhang, quoting Chas Freeman, “China-US Relations.”
11. James Taylor Ranney, World Peace through Law: Replacing War with the Global Rule
of Law (London: Routledge, 2018).
Modernity in China (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2020), particularly epilogue.
13. Wang, Longmen’s Stone Buddhas, chap. 7; James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak:
Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985).
14. In formulating my ideas and analysis for this revised edition, I have also benefited from
the following sources: “Online Resources: International Relations Theory” (with attention to
realism, liberalism, English School, constructivism, Marxism, critical theory, poststructuralism,
feminism, postcolonialism, queer theory, and securitization theory) at https://www.e-ir.info/
online-resources-international-relations-theory/ (accessed September 28, 2020); Andrew Link-
later, “Towards a Sociology of Global Morals with an ‘Emancipatory Intent,’” 135–150, and
Richard Devetak, “Between Kant and Pufendorf: Humanitarian Intervention, Statist Anti-Cos-
mopolitanism and Critical International Theory,” 151–174, in Review of International Studies
33 (April 2007); Nicholas Rengger and Ben Thirkell-White, eds., special issue, Critical Inter-
national Relations Theory after 25 Years (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
15. The number of published books in Chinese on the subject (Zhongmei guanxi 中美关系)
is surprisingly limited, considering the more than forty thousand hits (of mostly opinion essays
and articles) I made at CNKI, a key information and publishing database in China. This
partially reflects China’s academic assessment system, which gives greater weight to article
publications in journals, magazines, newspapers, and other venues, a system carefully managed
by the PRC government.
16. For research on U.S.-Chinese relations through the lens of mutual images, see Oliver
Turner, American Images of China: Identity, Power, Policy (London: Routledge, 2014); Naomi
Greene, From Fu Manchu to Kung Fu Panda: Images of China in American Film (Honolulu,
Hawaii: University of Hawaii, 2014).
Bibliography
Abramowitz, Morton, and Stephen Bosworth. “America Confronts the Asian Century.” Cur-
rent History 105, no. 690 (2006): 147–152.
Aldridge, Alfred Owen. The Dragon and the Eagle: The Presence of China in the American
Enlightenment. Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, 1993.
Alford, William P. To Steal a Book Is an Elegant Offense: Intellectual Property Law in Chinese
Civilization. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1997.
Allison, Graham T. Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?
Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017.
Ambrose, Stephen E. “The Presidency and Foreign Policy.” Foreign Affairs 70, no. 5 (Winter
1991): 120–137.
Asada, Sadao. “Japan’s Special Interests and the Washington Conference, 1921–1922.”
American Historical Review 67, no. 1 (October 1961): 62–70.
Atkins, Martyn. Informal Empire in Crisis: British Diplomacy and the Chinese Customs Suc-
cession, 1927–1929. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995.
Atwell, Pamela. British Mandarins and Chinese Reformers: The British Administration of
Weihaiwei (1898–1930) and the Territory’s Return to Chinese Rule. Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1985.
Auerbach, Sascha. Race, Law, and “the Chinese Puzzle” in Imperial Britain. New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
Bachrack, Stanley D. The Committee of One Million: “China Lobby” Politics, 1953 – 1971.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1976.
Bailey, Thomas A. A Diplomatic History of the American People. Tenth edition. Englewood
Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1980.
Barnett, A. Doak. The Making of Foreign Policy in China: Structure and Process. Boulder,
Colo.: Westview Press, 1985.
———. “The New Multipolar Balance in East Asia: Implications for United States Policy.”
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, no. 390 (July 1970):
73–86.
Barnett, Susan Wilson, and John King Fairbank, eds. Christianity in China: Early Protestant
Missionary Writings. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985.
Barrett, David D. Dixie Mission: The United States Army Observer Group in Yenan, 1944.
Berkeley, Calif.: Center for Chinese Studies, University of California, 1979.
Barrett, David P., and Lawrence N. Shyu, eds. Chinese Collaboration with Japan, 1932–1945:
The Limits of Accommodation. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2001.
329
330 Bibliography
Bates, M. Searle. “The Theology of American Missionaries in China, 1900–1950.” In The

Missionary Enterprise in China and America, edited by John King Fairbank. Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974.
Baum, Richard. China Watcher: Confessions of a Peking Tom. Seattle, Wash.: University of
Washington Press, 2010.
Bays, Daniel H. China Enters the Twentieth Century: Chang Chih-Tung and the Issues of a
New Age, 1895–1909. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 2016. First edition
in 1978.
———. A New History of Christianity in China. Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.
Bays, Daniel H., and Margaret Stanley, eds. Foreigners in Areas of China under Communist
Jurisdiction before 1949: Biographical Notes and a Comprehensive Bibliography of the
Yenan Hui. Lawrence, Kans.: Center for East Asian Studies, University of Kansas, 1987.
Beck, Ulrich. Cosmopolitan Vision. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007.
———. The Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1992.
Beeching, Jack. The Chinese Opium Wars. San Diego, Calif.: Harvest/HBJ Book, 1975.
Benton, Gregor. Chinese Migrants and Internationalism: Forgotten Histories, 1917–1945.
New York: Routledge, 2007.
Berger, Peter L., and Samuel P. Huntington. Many Globalizations: Cultural Diversity in the
Contemporary World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Bergsten, C. Fred, Bates Gill, Nicholas R. Lardy, and Derek Mitchell. China: The Balance
Sheet; What the World Needs to Know Now About the Emerging Superpower. New York:
PublicAffairs, 2006.
Bernstein, Richard, and Ross H. Munro. The Coming Conflict with China. New York: Vintage,
1998. First edition in 1997 by Knopf.
Best, Antony, ed. The International History of East Asia, 1900–1968: Trade, Ideology and the
Quest for Order. London: Routledge, 2010.
Bian, Morris. The Making of the State Enterprise System in Modern China: The Dynamics of
Institutional Change. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005.
Bickers, Robert, and R. G. Tiedemann, eds. The Boxers, China, and the World. Lanham, Md.:
Rowman & Littlefield, 2007.
Bliss, Edward, Jr. Beyond the Stone Arches: An American Missionary Doctor in China,
1892–1932. New York: Wiley, 2001.
Boardman, Eugene P. “Christian Influence Upon the Ideology of the Taiping Rebellion.” Far
Eastern Quarterly 10, no. 2 (February 1951): 115–124.
Borg, Dorothy. American Policy and the Chinese Revolution, 1925–1928. New York: Macmil-
lan, 1947.
———. The United States and the Far Eastern Crisis of 1933–1938: From the Manchurian
Incident through the Initial Stage of the Undeclared Sino-Japanese War. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1964.
Borg, Dorothy, and Waldo Heinrichs, eds. Uncertain Years: Chinese-American Relations,
1947–1950. New York: Columbia University Press, 1980.
Brady, Anne-Marie. Making the Foreign Serve China: Managing Foreigners in the People’s
Republic. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003.
Brinkley, Alan. The Unfinished Nation: A Brief, Interactive History of the American People.
New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005.
Brook, Timothy. Collaboration: Japanese Agents and Local Elites in Wartime China. Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005.
———. Great State: China and the World. London: Profile Books, 2019.
Brook, Timothy, and Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, eds. Opium Regimes: China, Britain, and
Japan, 1839–1952. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2000.
Brzezinski, Zbigniew. The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imper-
atives. New York: Basic Books, 1997.
Buck, Pearl S. “Is There a Place for the Foreign Missionary?” Chinese Recorder 58 (February
1927): 100–107.
Burr, William, ed. The Kissinger Transcripts: The Top Secret Talks with Beijing and Moscow.
New York: New Press, 1998.
Bibliography 331
Bush, Richard C. Untying the Knot: Making Peace in the Taiwan Strait. Washington, D.C.:
Brookings Institution, 2005.
Butterfield, Fox. “A Missionary View of the Chinese Communists (1936–1939).” In American
Missionaries in China: Papers from Harvard Seminars, edited by Kwang-Ching Liu,
249–301. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966.
Calavita, Kitty. “The Paradoxes of Race, Class, Identity, and ‘Passing’: Enforcing the Chinese
Exclusion Acts, 1882–1910.” Law and Social Inquiry 25, no. 1 (Winter 2000): 1–40.
Calhoun, Charles W., ed. The Gilded Age: Essays on the Origins of Modern America. Wilm-
ington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1996.
Canrong, Jin (金灿荣), et al. Zhongguo zhihui: Shibada yilai Zhongguo waijiao [中国智慧: 十
八大以来中国外交 China’s wisdom [sic]: Chinese diplomacy since the 18th National Con-
gress of the Chinese Communist Party]. Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe, 2017.
Carpenter, Francis Ross. The Old China Trade: Americans in Canton, 1784–1843. New York:
Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1976.
Champlin, Peggy. Raphael Pumpelly: Gentleman Geologist of the Gilded Age. Tuscaloosa,
Ala.: University of Alabama Press, 1994.
Chan, Jenny, Mark Selden, and Pun Ngai. Dying for an iPhone: Apple, Foxconn, and the Lives
of China’s Workers. Chicago, Ill.: Pluto Press/Haymarket Books, 2020.
Chan, Sucheng, ed. Entry Denied: Exclusion and the Chinese Community in America,
1882–1943. Philadelphia, Pa.: Temple University Press, 1991.
———. This Bittersweet Soil: The Chinese in California Agriculture, 1860–1910. Berkeley,
Calif.: University of California Press, 1987.
Chan, Sucheng, and Madeline Yuan-yin Hsu, eds. Chinese Americans and the Politics of Race
and Culture. Philadelphia, Pa.: Temple University Press, 2008.
Cheek, Timothy, ed. A Critical Introduction to Mao. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2010.
———. Mao Zedong and China’s Revolutions: A Brief History with Documents. Boston,
Mass.: Bedford, 2002.
Ch’en, Kuo-Tung. The Insolvency of the Chinese Hong Merchants, 1760–1843. Taipei: Insti-
tute of Economics, Academia Sinica, 1990.
Chen, Dean P. US-China Rivalry and Taiwan’s Mainland Policy: Security, Nationalism, and
the 1992 Consensus. Cham: Palgrave, 2017.
Chen, Hansheng (陈翰笙), ed. Huagong chuguo shiliao huibian [华工出国史料汇编 A com-
prehensive collection of historical sources on overseas Chinese laborers]. 10 vols. Beijing:
Zhonghua shuju, 1980–1985.
Chen, Helen. “Chinese Immigration into the United States: An Analysis of Changes in Immi-
gration Policies.” PhD dissertation, Brandeis University, 1980.
Chen, Jiagui (陈佳贵), and Li Yang (李扬), eds. 2011 nian Zhongguo jingji xingshi fenxi yu
yuce [2011年中国经济形势分析与预测 The Chinese economy: An analysis and forecast
for 2011]. Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2010.
Chen, Jian. China’s Road to the Korean War: The Making of the Sino-American Confrontation.
———. Mao’s China and the Cold War. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press,
2001.
———. “The Ward Case and the Emergence of Sino-American Confrontation, 1948–1950.”
Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, no. 30 (July 1993): 149–170.
Chen, Yung-fa (陈永发). Zhongguo g ongchan g eming qishi nian [中国共产革命七十年 The
seventy years of the Chinese Communist Revolution]. Revised edition. Taipei: Lianjing,
2001.
Cheng, Hang-Sheng. “Comments on Xianquan Xu’s Chapter.” In China, the United States, and
the Global Economy, edited by Shuxun Chen and Charles Wolf, Jr. Santa Monica, Calif.:
RAND, 2001.
Cheong, Weng Eang. The Hong Merchants of Canton: Chinese Merchants in Sino-Western
Trade. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 1997.
Chern, Kenneth S. “Politics of American China Policy, 1945: Roots of the Cold War in Asia.”
Political Science Quarterly 91, no. 4 (Winter 1976–1977): 631–647.
332 Bibliography
China Continuation Committee. The Christian Occupation of China: A General Survey of the
Numerical Strength and Geographical Distribution of the Christian Forces in China.
Shanghai: China Continuation Committee, 1922.
Chow, Tse-tsung. The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern China. Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960.
Christensen, Thomas J. “A ‘Lost Chance’ for What? Rethinking the Origins of U.S. PRC
Confrontation.” Journal of American-East Asian Relations 4, no. 3 (Fall 1995): 249–278.
Christiansen, Flemming. “The 1989 Student Demonstrations and the Limits of the Chinese
Political Bargaining Machine: An Essay.” China Information 4, no. 1 (Summer 1989):
17–27.
———. “Creative Borrowing: How the Chinese Appropriated Dualism and Transmuted It.” In
Cultural Encounters: China, Japan and the West, edited by Søren Clausen, Roy Starrs, and
Anne Wedell-Wedellsborg, 410–425. Århus: Århus University Press, 1995.
Christiansen, Flemming, and Shirin M. Rai. Chinese Politics and Society: An Introduction.
London: Prentice Hall, 1996.
Clarke, Prescott, and J. S. Gregory, comps. Western Reports on the Taiping: A Selection of
Documents. Honolulu, Hawaii: University Press of Hawaii, 1982.
Coble, Parks M., Jr. Facing Japan: Chinese Politics and Japanese Imperialism, 1931–1937.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991.
———. The Shanghai Capitalists and the Nationalist Government, 1927–1937. Second edi-
tion. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986. First edition in 1980.
Cohen, Jerome Alan, ed. The Dynamics of China’s Foreign Relations. Cambridge, Mass.: East
Asian Research Center, Harvard University, 1973.
Cohen, Paul A. “The Anti-Christian Tradition in China.” Journal of Asian Studies 20, no. 2
(February 1961): 169–180.
———. China and Christianity: The Missionary Movement and the Growth of Chinese Anti-
Foreignism, 1860–1870. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963.
———. China Unbound: Evolving Perspectives on the Chinese Past. New York: Routledge-
Curzon, 2003.
———. History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1997.
Cohen, Warren I. “Ambassador Philip D. Sprouse on the Question of Recognition of the
People’s Republic of China in 1949 and 1950 (Document).” Diplomatic History 2, no. 2
(Spring 1978): 213–217.
———. America’s Response to China: A History of Sino-American Relations. Fifth edition.
New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. First edition in 1971.
———, ed. The Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations: America in the Age of
Soviet Power. Vol. 4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
———. “Conversations with Chinese Friends: Zhou Enlai’s Associates Reflect on Chinese-
American Relations in the 1940s and the Korean War.” Diplomatic History 11, no. 3 (July
1987): 283–289.
———. East Asia at the Center: Four Thousand Years of Engagement with the World. New
York: Columbia University Press, 2000.
———, gen. ed. The New Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations. 4 vols. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
———, ed. New Frontiers in American-East Asian Relations: Essays Presented to Dorothy
Borg. New York: Columbia University, 1983.
———. Pacific Passage: The Study of American-East Asian Relations on the Eve of the
Twenty-First Century. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.
Cohen, Warren I., and Nancy B. Tucker, eds. Lyndon Johnson Confronts the World: American
Foreign Policy, 1963–1968. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Conn, Peter J. Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1996.
Coolidge, Mary Robert. Chinese Immigration. New York: Henry Holt, 1909.
Cooney, Kevin. Japan’s Foreign Policy since 1945. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 2007.
Bibliography 333
Copper, John F. Taiwan: Nation-State or Province? Fifth edition. Boulder, Colo.: Westview
Press, 2009.
Craft, Stephen G. V. K. Wellington Koo and the Emergence of Modern China. Lexington, Ky.:
University Press of Kentucky, 2004.
Crean, Jeffrey. “‘Nixon Is with Us on China’: Raging against the Dying of the Lobby.” Journal
of American-East Asian Relations 26, no. 4 (2019): 368–396.
Crouch, Archie R., et al., ed. Christianity in China: A Scholar’s Guide to Resources in the
Libraries and Archives of the United States. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1989.
Crouch, Gregory. China’s Wings: War, Intrigue, Roman, and Adventure in the Middle King-
dom during the Golden Age of Flight. New York: Bantam Books, 2012.
Cumings, Bruce. Dominion from Sea to Sea: Pacific Ascendancy and American Power. New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009.
———. The Korean War: A History. New York: Modern Library, 2010.
Curtis, Gerald, Ryosei Kokubun, and Wang Jisi, eds. Getting the Triangle Straight: Managing
China-Japan-US Relations. Tokyo: Japan Center for International Exchange, 2010.
Cushing, Caleb. The Treaty of Washington: Its Negotiation, Execution, and the Discussions
Relating Thereto. New York: Harper, 1873.
Dai, Xu (戴旭). C xing baowei: Neiyou waihuan xia de Zhongguo tuwei [C形包围: 内忧外患
下的中国突围 The C-Shaped encirclement: China’s way out of its domestic problems and
the foreign threat]. Shanghai: Wenhui chubanshe, 2010.
Davids, Jules, ed. American Diplomatic and Public Papers: The United States and China.
Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1973.
Davies, John Paton, Jr. China Hand: An Autobiography. Philadelphia, Pa.: University of Penn-
sylvania Press, 2012.
Davies, Stephen. East Sails West: The Voyage of the Keying, 1846–1855. Hong Kong: Hong
Kong University Press, 2014.
Davis, Donald E., and Eugene P. Trani. The First Cold War: The Legacy of Woodrow Wilson in
U.S.-Soviet Relations. Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri Press, 2002.
Davis, Forrest, and Robert A. Hunter. The Red China Lobby. New York: Fleet, 1963.
Davis, Michael C. Making Hong Kong China: The Rollback of Human Rights and the Rule of
Law. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Association for Asian Studies, 2021.
Dayer, Roberta Allbert. Bankers and Diplomats in China 1917–1925. London: Frank Cass,
1981.
De Tocqueville, Alexis. Democracy in America and Two Essays on America. Translated by
Gerald E. Bevan. New York: Penguin Books, 2003. First edition in French 1835–1840.
Deng, Xiaoping (邓小平). Deng Xiaoping jianghua shilu: huiyi ju [邓小平讲话实录: 会议篇
Record of Deng Xiaoping’s speeches: conferences]. Beijing: Hongqi chubanshe, 2019.
Deng, Yong, and Fei-ling Wang, eds. In the Eyes of the Dragon: China Views the World.
Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999.
Dennett, Tyler. Americans in East Asia: A Critical Study of United States Policy in the Far
East in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1963. First edition in 1922 by
Macmillan.
Dingman, Rodger. Power in the Pacific: The Origins of Naval Arms Control. Chicago, Ill.:
University of Chicago Press, 1976.
Downs, Jacques M. “American Merchants and the China Opium Trade, 1800–1840.” Business
History Review 42 (Winter 1968): 418–422.
———. The Golden Ghetto: The American Commercial Community at Canton and the Shap-
ing of American China Policy, 1784–1844. Bethlehem, Pa.: Lehigh University Press, 1997.
Doyle, Timonthy, and Dennis Rumley. The Rise and the Return of the Indo-Pacific. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2019.
Duan, Ruodi. “Solidarity in Three Acts: Narrating US Black Freedom Movements in China,
1961–66.” Modern Asian Studies 53, no. 5 (2019): 1351–1380.
Duara, Prasenjit. Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern. Lan-
ham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003.
Dudden, Arthur Power. The American Pacific: From the Old China Trade to the Present. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
334 Bibliography
Dulles, Foster Rhea. The Old China Trade. Cambridge, Mass.: Riverside Press, 1930.
Economy, Elizabeth, and Michel Oksenberg, eds. China Joins the World: Progress and Pros-
pects. New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1999.
Egerton, George W. “Britain and the ‘Great Betrayal’: Anglo-American Relations and the
Struggle for United States Ratification of the Treaty of Versailles, 1919–1920.” Historical
Journal 21, no. 4 (December 1978): 885–911.
Elegant, Robert S. “China’s New Phase.” Foreign Affairs 46, no. 1 (October 1967): 137–150.
Elleman, Bruce A., and S. C. M. Paine. Modern China: Continuity and Change, 1644 to the
Present. Second edition. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019.
Eng, Robert Y. Economic Imperialism in China: Silk Production and Exports, 1861–1932.
Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1986.
Engel, Jeffrey A., ed. The China Diary of George H. W. Bush: The Making of a Global
President. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008.
Eperjesi, John. “The American Asiatic Association and the Imperialist Imaginary of the
American Public.” Boundary 2 28, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 195–219.
Erasmus, Desiderius. Against War. Boston, Mass.: Merrymount Press, 1907.
Esherick, Joseph W. Lost Chance in China: The World War II Dispatches of John S. Service.
New York: Random House, 1974.
———. The Origins of the Boxer Uprising. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press,
1987.
———. “Ten Theses on the Chinese Revolution.” Modern China 21, no. 1 (January 1995):
44–76.
Esherick, Joseph W., Hasan Kayali, and Eric Van Young, eds. Empire to Nation: Historical
Perspectives on the Making of the Modern World. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield,
2006.
Etō, Shinkichi. “China’s International Relations 1911–1931.” In The Cambridge History of
China, edited by John King Fairbank and Albert Feuerwerker, 74–115. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1986.
Evans, Paul M. John Fairbank and the American Understanding of Modern China. New York:
Blackwell, 1988.
Ewell, Judith. Venezuela and the United States: From Monroe’s Hemisphere to Petroleum’s
Empire. Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 1996.
Fairbank, John K. “‘American China Policy’ to 1898: A Misconception.” Pacific Historical
Review 39, no. 4 (November 1970): 409–420.
———. Chinabound: A Fifty-Year Memoir. New York: Harper & Row, 1982.
———. Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast: The Opening of the Treaty Ports,
1842–1854. Second edition. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1969. First edition
in 1953 by Harvard University Press.
———. The United States and China. Fourth and enlarged ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1983. First edition in 1948.
Faligot, Roger. Chinese Spies: From Chairman Mao to Xi Jinping. Translated by Natasha
Lehre. Brunswick: Scribe Publications, 2019. First edition in French Les services secrets
chinois in 2008.
Fang, Ning (房宁). Chengzhang de Zhongguo: Dangdai Zhongguo qingnian de guojia minzu
yishi yanjiu [成长的中国:当代中国青年的国家民族意识研究 Growing China: A study of
national consciousness among contemporary Chinese youth]. Beijing: Renmin chubanshe,
2002.
———. Xin Diguo zhuyi shidai yu Zhongguo zhanlüe [新帝国主义时代与中国战略 The age
of new imperialism and China’s counter-strategy]. Beijing: Beijing chubanshe, 2003.
Fewsmith, Joseph. China since Tiananmen: From Deng Xiaoping to Hu Jintao. Second edition.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. First edition in 2001.
Fic, Victor M. The Collapse of American Policy in Russia and Siberia, 1918. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1995.
Fine, Gary Alan, and Bin Xu. “Honest Brokers: The Politics of Expertise in the ‘Who Lost
China?’ Debate.” Social Problems 58, no. 4 (2011): 593–614.
Bibliography 335
Fineman, Howard. The Thirteen American Arguments: Enduring Debates That Define and
Inspire Our Country. New York: Random House, 2008.
Fishback, Price, et al. Government and the American Economy: A New History. Chicago, Ill.:
Fogel, Joshua, ed. The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography. Berkeley, Calif.:
University of California Press, 2000.
Foot, Rosemary. China, the UN, and Human Protection: Beliefs, Power, Image. Oxford: Ox-
ford University Press, 2020.
———. The Practice of Power: US Relations with China since 1949. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1995.
———. “Strategy, Politics, and World Order Perspectives: Comparing the EU and US Ap-
proaches to China’s Resurgence.” In US-China-EU Relations: Managing the New World
Order, edited by Robert Ross, Øystein Tunsjø, and Zhang Tuosheng, 212–232. London:
Routledge, 2010.
Forbes, Robert B. Personal Reminiscences. Second edition. Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown,
1882. First edition in 1876.
Frazier, Robeson Taj. The East Is Black: Cold War China in the Black Radical Imagination.
Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2014.
Friedberg, Aaron L. A Contest for Supremacy: China, America, and the Struggle for Mastery in
Asia. New York: Norton, 2011.
———. “The Future of U.S.-China Relations: Is Conflict Inevitable?” International Security
30, no. 2 (Fall 2005): 7–45.
Friedman, Edward, ed. China’s Rise, Taiwan’s Dilemmas and International Peace. London:
Routledge, 2006.
Friedman, Edward, and Mark Selden, eds. America’s Asia: Dissenting Essays on Asian-
American Relations. New York: Vintage, 1971.
Fritz, Christian G. “A Nineteenth Century ‘Habeas Corpus Mill’: The Chinese before the
Federal Courts in California.” American Journal of Legal History 32, no. 4 (October 1988):
347–372.
Gaddis, John Lewis. Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National
Security Policy during the Cold War. Revised and expanded edition. Oxford: Oxford Uni-
Garrison, Jean A. Making China Policy: From Nixon to G. W. Bush. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne
Rienner Publishers, 2005.
Garver, John W. Chinese-Soviet Relations, 1937–1945: The Diplomacy of Chinese National-
ism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
———. Foreign Relations of the People’s Republic of China. Upper Saddle River, N.J.:
Prentice Hall, 1993.
———. The Sino-American Alliance: Nationalist China and American Cold War Strategy in
Asia. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1997.
Gewirtz, Julian. Unlikely Partners: Chinese Reformers, Western Economists, and the Making
of Global China. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2017.
Gittings, John. The World and China, 1922–1972. London: Eyre Methuen, 1974.
Goh, Evelyn. “Competing Images and American Official Reconsiderations of China Policy,
1961–1968.” Journal of American-East Asian Relations 10, nos. 1–2 (Spring–Summer
2001): 53–92.
———. Constructing the U.S. Rapprochement with China, 1961–1974: From “Red Menace”
to “Tacit Ally.” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Goldberg, Jeffrey. “Washington Discovers Christian Persecution.” New York Times, December
21, 1997.
Goldstein, Jonathan. Stephen Girard’s Trade with China, 1787–1824: The Norms Versus the
Profits of Trade. Portland, Maine: MerwinAsia, 2011.
Goldstein, Steven. “Dialogue of the Deaf? The Sino-American Ambassadorial-Level Talks,
1955–1970.” In Re-Examining the Cold War: U.S.-China Diplomacy, 1954–1973, edited by
Robert S. Ross and Jiang Changbin, 200–237. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia
Center, 2001.
336 Bibliography
Gong, Li (宫力). Deng Xiaoping yu Meiguo [邓小平与美国 Deng Xiaoping and the United
States]. Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe, 2004.
———. Kuayue honggou: 1969–1979 nian Zhongmei guanxi de yanbian [跨越鸿沟:
1969–1979 年中美关系的演变 Overcoming the chasm: The evolution of U.S.-Chinese re-
lations, 1969–1979]. Zhengzhou: Henan renmin chubanshe, 1992.
Gordon, David M. “Historiographical Essay: The China-Japan War, 1931–1945.” Journal of
Military History 70, no. 1 (January 2006): 137–182.
Greene, Naomi. From Fu Manchu to Kung Fu Panda: Images of China in American Film.
Honolulu, Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, 2014.
Gries, Peter Hays, H. Michael Crowson, and Todd Sandel. “The Olympic Effect on American
Attitudes towards China: Beyond Personality, Ideology, and Media Exposure.” Journal of
Contemporary China 19, no. 64 (2010): 213–231.
Griswold, Alfred Whitney. The Far Eastern Policy of the United States. Second edition. New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1966. First edition in 1938 by Harcourt, Brace.
Gu, Weimin (顾为民). Jidujiao yu jindai Zhongguao shehui [基督教与近代中国社会 Chris-
tianity and modern Chinese society]. Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1996.
Gu, Yunshen (顾云深), Shi Yuanhua (石源华), and Jin Guangyao (金光耀), eds. Jianzhi
wanglai: Bainian Zhongmei jingji guanxi de huigu yu qianzhan [鉴知往来: 百年来中美经
济关系的回顾与前瞻 Looking back and forward: A century of Sino-American economic
relations]. Shanghai: Fuda daxue chubanshe, 1999.
Guan, Kwa Chong. “The Maritime Silk Road: History of an Idea.” Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre
Working Paper, no. 23 (October 2016). https://www.iseas.edu.sg/images/pdf/nscwps23.pdf.
Guarneri, Carl. America in the World: United States History in Global Context. New York:
McGraw-Hill, 2007.
Gyory, Andrew. Closing the Gate: Race, Politics, and the Chinese Exclusion Act. Chapel Hill,
N.C.: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998.
Haddad, John Rogers. The Romance of China: Excursions to China in U.S. Culture,
Halpern, A. M., ed. Policies toward China: Views from Six Continents. New York: McGraw-
Hill, 1965.
Halvorson, Dan. Commonwealth Responsibility and Cold War Solidarity: Australia in Asia,
1944–74. Canberra: Australian National University Press, 2019.
Hamashita, Takeshi, Mark Selden, and Linda Grove. China, East Asia and the Global Econo-
my: Regional and Historical Perspectives. New York: Routledge, 2008.
Hamilton, John Maxwell. Edgar Snow: A Biography. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University
Press, 1988.
Han, Minzhu, ed. Cries for Democracy: Writings and Speeches from the 1989 Chinese Democ-
racy Movement. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990.
Han, Yugui (韩玉贵). Lengzhan hou de Zhongmei guanxi [冷战后的中美关系 Sino-American
relations in the post–Cold War era]. Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2007.
Harcourt, Freda. “Black Gold: P&O and the Opium Trade, 1847–1914.” International Journal
of Maritime History 6, no. 1 (June 1994): 1–83.
Harding, Harry. China’s Second Revolution: Reform after Mao. Washington, D.C.: Brookings
Institution, 1987.
———. A Fragile Relationship: The United States and China since 1972. Washington, D.C.:
Brookings Institution, 1992.
Harding, Harry, and Yuan Ming, eds. Sino-American Relations, 1945–1955: A Joint Assess-
ment of a Critical Decade. Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Research Inc., 1989.
Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri. Empire. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
2000.
Harrison, Henrietta. “‘A Penny for the Little Chinese’: The French Holy Childhood Associa-
tion in China, 1843–1951.” The American Historical Review 113, no. 1 (February 2008):
72–92.
Hayford, Charles W. “American China Missions: An Introductory Bibliography.” http://www.
library.yale.edu/div/ChinaMissionsBibliog.pdf. Accessed August 22, 2012.
Bibliography 337
———. Draft Bibliography of American-East Asian Relations. Chicago, Ill.: Imprint Publica-
tions and Journal of American-East Asian Relations, 2002.
———. To the People: James Yen and Village China. New York: Columbia University Press,
1990.
Henkin, Louis. “The Constitution and United States Sovereignty: A Century of ‘Chinese Exclu-
sion’ and Its Progeny.” Harvard Law Review 100, no. 4 (February 1987): 853–886.
Herring, George C. From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2011.
Herzstein, Robert Edwin. Henry R. Luce, Time, and the American Crusade in Asia. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Ho, Fred, and Bill V. Mullen, eds. Afro Asia: Revolutionary Political & Cultural Connections
between African Americans & Asian Americans. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press,
2008.
Hoe, Susanna, and Derek Roebuck. The Taking of Hong Kong: Charles and Clara Elliot in
China Waters. Surrey: Curzon Press, 1999.
Hoffman, Bruce. “From the War on Terror to Global Counterinsurgency.” Current History: A
Journal of Contemporary Trends 105, no. 695 (December 2006): 423–429.
Hoffman, Elizabeth Cobbs, and Jon Gjerde, eds. Major Problems in American History: Docu-
ments and Essays. 2 vols. Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 2007.
Hogan, Michael J., and Thomas G. Paterson, eds. Explaining the History of American Foreign
Relations. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Hollander, Paul. Political Pilgrims: Travels of Western Intellectuals to the Soviet Union, Chi-
na, and Cuba, 1928–1978. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981.
Hollinger, David A. Protestants Abroad: How Missionaries Tried to Change the World but
Changed America. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2017.
Hong, Pingfan. “China’s Economic Prospects and Sino-US Economic Relations.” China &
World Economy 14, no. 2 (2006): 45–55.
Howse, Robert. “Comment: China—Measures Affecting the Protection and Enforcement of
Intellectual Property Rights.” World Trade Review 10, no. 1 (2011): 87–93.
Hsu, Madeline Y. Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home: Transnationalism and Migration
between the United States and South China, 1882–1943. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univer-
sity Press, 2000.
Huang, Grace C. Chiang Kai-Shek’s Politics of Shame and Humiliation: Constructing a Na-
tional Narrative, Identity, and Legacy in China. Manuscript. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Asia Center, 2021.
Huang, Hua (黄华). Qinli yu Jianwen: Huang Hua huiyi lu [亲历与见闻: 黄华回忆录 Wit-
nessing and experiencing at firsthand: The memoirs of Huang Hua]. Beijing: Shijie zhishi
chubanshe, 2007.
Hudson, Michael. Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of U.S. World Domi-
nance. London: Pluto Press, 2003. First edition in 1972.
———. Trade, Development and Foreign Debt: How Trade and Development Concentrate
Economic Power in the Hands of Dominant Nations. Unknown: ISLET, 2009. First edition
in 1992 by Pluto Press.
Hunt, Michael H. The American Ascendancy: How the United States Gained and Wielded
Global Dominance. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.
———. “The American Remission of the Boxer Indemnity: A Reappraisal.” Journal of Asian
Studies 31, no. 3 (May 1972): 539–559.
———. “Americans in the China Market: Economic Opportunities and Economic Nationalism,
1890s–1931.” Business History Review 51, no. 3 (Autumn 1977): 277–307.
———. “The Forgotten Occupation: Peking, 1900–1901.” Pacific Historical Review 48, no. 4
(1979): 501–529.
———. Frontier Defense and the Open Door: Manchuria in Chinese-American Relations,
1895–1911. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1973.
———. The Genesis of Chinese Communist Foreign Policy. New York: Columbia University
Press, 1996.
———. Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1987.
338 Bibliography
———. The Making of a Special Relationship: The United States and China to 1914. New
York: Columbia University Press, 1983.
Hunt, Michael H., and Steven I. Levine. Arc of Empire: America’s Wars in Asia from the
Philippines to Vietnam. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2012.
Hunter, Alan, and Kim-kwong Chan. Protestantism in Contemporary China. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1993.
Hunter, William C. The “Fan Kwae” at Canton before Treaty Days: 1825–1844. Taipei:
Ch’eng-wen Pub. Co., 1965. Reprint of 1882 edition by Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. in
London.
Huntington, Samuel P. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1996.
Ikei, Masaru. “Japan’s Response to the Chinese Revolution of 1911.” Journal of Asian Studies
25, no. 2 (1966): 213–227.
Irick, Robert W. Ch’ing Policy toward the Coolie Trade, 1847–1878. Taipei: Chinese Materials
Center, 1982.
Iriye, Akira. Across the Pacific: An Inner History of American-East Asian Relations. Revised
edition. Chicago, Ill.: Imprint Publications, 1992. First edition in 1967 by Harcourt, Brace
and World.
———. After Imperialism: The Search for a New Order in the Far East, 1921–1931. Reprint.
Chicago, Ill.: Imprint Publications, 1990. First edition in 1965 by Harvard University Press.
———. The Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations. Vol. 3, The Globalizing of
America, 1913–1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
———. “Japanese Aggression and China’s International Position, 1931–1949.” In The Cam-
bridge History of China, edited by John King Fairbank and Albert Feuerwerker, 492–546.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Iriye, Akira, and Warren Cohen, eds. American, Chinese, and Japanese Perspectives on War-
time Asia, 1931–1949. Wilmington, Del.: SR Books, 1990.
Irwin, Douglas A. Clashing over Commerce: A History of U.S. Trade Policy. Chicago, Ill.:
Isaacs, Harold R. Scratches on Our Minds: American Views of China and India. New York:
John Day Company, 1958.
Israel, Jerry. Progressivism and the Open Door: America and China, 1905–1921. Pittsburgh,
Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971.
Jacobs, Daniel N. Borodin: Stalin’s Man in China. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1981.
Jeans, Roger B., ed. The Marshall Mission to China, 1945–1947: The Letters and Diary of
Colonel John Hart Caughey. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011.
Jia, Shi. “Future Prospects for Broadening US-China Economic and Trade Cooperation.” Co-
lumbia Journal of World Business 20, no. 4 (Winter 1985): 57–58.
Jin, Chongji (金冲及), ed. Zhou Enlai zhuan [周恩来传 A biography of Zhou Enlai]. Beijing:
Zhonggong zhongyang wenxian yanjiushi, 1998.
Jin, Qiu. The Culture of Power: The Lin Biao Incident in the Cultural Revolution. Stanford,
Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999.
Johnson, James. The US-China Military and Defense Relationship during the Obama Presiden-
cy. Cham: Palgrave, 2018.
Johnston, Alastair Iain. “Is China a Status Quo Power?” International Security 27, no. 4 (2003):
5–56.
Joiner, Lynne. The Honorable Survivor: Mao’s China, McCarthy’s America, and the Persecu-
tion of John S. Service. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2009.
Kaufman, Victor S. “‘Chirep’: The Anglo-American Dispute over Chinese Representation in
the United Nations, 1950–71.” English Historical Review 115, no. 461 (April 2000):
354–377.
———. “A Response to Chaos: The United States, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural
Revolution, 1961–1968.” Journal of American-East Asian Relations 7, no. 1–2
(Spring–Summer 1998): 73–92.
Bibliography 339
Keliher, Macabe. “Anglo-American Rivalry and the Origins of U.S. China Policy.” Diplomatic
History 31, no. 2 (April 2007): 227–257.
Kennedy, John F. “A Democrat Looks at Foreign Policy.” Foreign Affairs 36, no. 1 (October
1957): 44–59.
Kennedy, Scott. China Cross Talk: The American Debate over China Policy since Normaliza-
tion: A Reader. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003.
Keohane, Robert O., and Joseph S. Nye. Power and Interdependence. Fourth edition. Boston,
Mass.: Longman, 2011.
Keylor, William R. A World of Nations: The International Order since 1945. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2003.
Kim, Samuel S., ed. China and the World: Chinese Foreign Policy Faces the New Millennium.
Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1998.
Kirby, James E., Jr. “The Foochow Anti-Missionary Riot—August 30, 1878.” Journal of Asian
Studies 25, no. 4 (August 1966): 665–678.
Kirby, William C. “Chinese-American Relations in Comparative Perspective, 1900–1949.” In
Pacific Passage: The Study of American-East Asian Relations on the Eve of the Twenty-
First Century, edited by Warren I. Cohen, 163–189. New York: Columbia University Press,
1996.
———. “Engineering China: Birth of the Developmental State, 1928–1937.” In Becoming
Chinese: Passages to Modernity and Beyond, edited by Wen-Hsin Yeh, 137–160. Berkeley,
———. Germany and Republican China. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1984.
———. “The Internationalization of China: Foreign Relations at Home and Abroad in the
Republican Era.” China Quarterly 150 (June 1997): 433–458.
Kirby, William C., Robert S. Ross, and Gong Li, eds. Normalization of U.S.-China Relations:
An International History. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2006.
Kissinger, Henry. “The Future of U.S.-Chinese Relations.” Foreign Affairs 91, no. 2 (March
2012). http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137245/henry-a-kissinger/the-future-of-us-
chinese-relations.
———. On China. New York: Penguin, 2011.
Kluver, Randolph. “Rhetorical Trajectories of Tiananmen Square.” Diplomatic History 34, no.
1 (January 2010): 71–94.
Kochavi, Noam. A Conflict Perpetuated: China Policy during the Kennedy Years. Westport,
Conn.: Praeger, 2002.
Koen, Ross Y., ed. The China Lobby in American Politics. New York: Octagon Books, 1974.
Koo, Wellington. The Wellington Koo Memoir, the Chinese Oral History Project. New York,
Columbia University, 1978.
Koshiro, Yukiko. “Eurasian Eclipse: Japan’s End Game in World War II.” American Historical
Review 109, no. 2 (April 2004): 417–444.
Kroenig, Matthew. The Return of Great Power Rivalry: Democracy versus Autocracy from the
Ancient World to the U.S. and China. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.
Kuhn, Philip A. Chinese among Others: Emigration in Modern Times. Lanham, Md.: Rowman
& Littlefield, 2008.
Kung, Chien-Wen. Diasporic Cold Warriors: Nationalist China, Anticommunism, and the
Philippine Chinese, 1930s–1970s. Manuscript. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2021.
Kusnitz, Leonard A. Public Opinion and Foreign Policy: America’s China Policy, 1949–1979.
Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1984.
LaFeber, Walter. The Clash: U.S.-Japanese Relations throughout History. New York: Norton,
1997.
Lai, Him Mark. Becoming Chinese American: A History of Communities and Institutions.
Walnut Creek, Calif.: AltaMira, 2004.
———. Chinese American Transnational Politics. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press,
2010.
———. A History Reclaimed: An Annotated Bibliography of Chinese Language Materials on
the Chinese in America. Los Angeles, Calif.: Asian American Studies Center, University of
California at Los Angeles, 1986.
340 Bibliography
Lampton, David M. “The China Fantasy, Fantasy.” China Quarterly 191 (September 2007):
745–749.
———. The Making of Chinese Foreign and Security Policy in the Era of Reform, 1978–2000.
Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2001.
———. Same Bed, Different Dreams: Managing U.S.-China Relations, 1989–2000. Berkeley,
———. The Three Faces of Chinese Power: Might, Money, and Minds. Berkeley, Calif.:
University of California Press, 2008.
Lang, Xianping (郎咸平). Lang Xianping shuo: Xin diguo zhuyi zai Zhongguo [郎咸平说: 新
帝国主义在中国 Lang Xianping on New Imperialism in China]. Eighth printing. Beijing:
Dongfang chubanshe, 2011. First edition in January 2010.
———. Lang Xianping shuo: Xin Diguo zhuyi zai Zhongguo 2 [郎咸平说: 新帝国主义在中国
2 Lang Xianping on new imperialism in China 2]. Beijing: Dongfang chubanshe, 2010.
Latourette, Kenneth Scott. The History of Early Relations between the United States and
China, 1784–1844. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1917.
Lautz, Terry. John Birch: A Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Lazich, Michael C. “American Missionaries and the Opium Trade in Nineteenth-Century Chi-
na.” Journal of World History 17, no. 2 (June 2006): 197–223.
———. E. C. Bridgman (1801–1861): America’s First Missionary to China. Lewiston, N.Y.:
Edwin Mellen Press, 2000.
Lee, Joseph Tse-Hei. “The Lord of Heaven versus Jesus Christ: Christian Sectarian Violence in
Late-Nineteenth-Century South China.” Positions 8, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 77–99.
Lee, Kai-Fu. AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley and the New World Order. Boston, Mass.:
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018.
Leng, Tse-Kang. “State and Business in the Era of Globalization: The Case of Cross-Strait
Linkages in the Computer Industry.” China Journal, no. 53 (January 2005): 63–79.
Levi, Werner. Modern China’s Foreign Policy. Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota
Press, 1953.
Li, Cheng, ed. Bridging Minds across the Pacific: U.S.-China Educational Exchange. Lanham,
Md.: Lexington Books, 2005.
Li, Hongshan, and Zhaohui Hong, eds. Image, Perception, and the Making of U.S.-China
Relations. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1998.
Li, Jing. China’s America: The Chinese View the United States, 1900–2000. New York: State
University of New York Press, 2011.
Li, Lanqing. Breaking Through: The Birth of China’s Opening-Up Policy. New York: Oxford
Li, Laura Tyson. Madame Chiang Kai-shek: China’s Eternal First Lady. New York: Atlantic
Monthly Press, 2006.
Li, Qingsi (李庆四). Meiguo guohui yu Meiguo duihua zhengce [美国国会与美国对华政策
The American Congress and American China policy]. Beijing: Dangdai shijie chubanshe,
2002.
Li, Tiecheng (李铁城), and Qian Wenrong (钱文荣), eds. Lianheguo kuangjia xia de Zhongmei
guanxi [联合国框架下的中美关系 U.S.-Chinese relations within the framework of the
United Nations]. Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 2006.
Liang, Chin-tung. General Stilwell in China, 1942–1945: The Full Story. New York: St. John’s
Liang, Kang. Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Bridge across the Pacific. Westport, Conn.: Green-
wood Press, 1997.
Lieberthal, Kenneth. Governing China: From Revolution through Reform. Second edition.
New York: Norton, 2004. First edition in 1995.
Lilley, James, with Jeffrey Lilley. China Hands: Nine Decades of Adventure, Espionage, and
Diplomacy in Asia. New York: PublicAffairs, 2004.
Ling, Jinzhu (凌金铸). Zhishi chanquan yu Zhongmei guanxi: 1989–1996 [知识产权与中美
关系 Intellectual property rights and Sino-American relations: 1989–1996]. Shanghai:
Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 2007.
Bibliography 341
Link, Perry. Evening Chats in Beijing: Probing China’s Predicament. New York: Norton,
1992.
Link, Stefan, and Noam Maggor. “The United States as a Developing Nation: Revisiting the
Peculiarities of American History.” Past and Present, no. 246 (February 2020): 270–306.
Littell, John B. “Missionaries and Politics in China—the Taiping Rebellion.” Political Science
Quarterly 43, no. 4 (December 1928): 566–599.
Lu, Kin-ming ed. My First Trip to China: Scholars, Diplomats, and Journalists Reflect on
Their First Encounters with China. Hong Kong: East Slope, 2013.
Liu, Liandi (刘连第), comp. and ed. Zhongmei guanxi de guiji: 1993–2000 nian dashi zonglan
[中美关系的轨迹: 1993年–2000年大事纵览 The contours of U.S.-China relations: An
overview of major events from 1993 to 2000]. Beijing: Shishi chubanshe, 2001.
Liu, Liandi (刘连第), and Wang Dawei (汪大为), eds. Zhongmei guanxi de guiji: jianjiao yilai
dashi zonglan [中美关系的轨迹: 建交以来大事纵览 The trajectory of U.S.-China rela-
tions: An overview of major events since the establishment of diplomatic relations]. Beijing:
Shishi chubanshe, 1995.
Liu, Xiao (刘晓). Chushi Sulian banian [出使苏联八年 Eight years as Ambassador to the
Soviet Union]. Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi ziliao, 1986.
Liu, Xiaoyuan. A Partnership for Disorder: China, the United States, and Their Policies for the
Postwar Disposition of the Japanese Empire, 1941–1945. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1996.
Lodwick, Kathleen. The Chinese Recorder Index: A Guide to Christian Missions in Asia,
1867–1941. Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1986.
Long, Norman. Development Sociology: Actor Perspective. London: Routledge, 2001.
Lüthi, Lorenz M. The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World. Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 2008.
MacFarquhar, Roderick, ed. Sino-American Relations, 1949–71: Documented and Introduced
by Roderick Macfarquhar. New York: Praeger, 1972.
MacFarquhar, Roderick, and Michael Schoenhals. Mao’s Last Revolution. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 2006.
MacMillan, Margaret. Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World. New York: Random
House, 2002.
Madison, James, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay. The Federalist Papers. Lexington, Ky.:
Tribeca Books, 2011. First edition October 1787–May 1788.
Madsen, Richard. China and the American Dream: A Moral Inquiry. Berkeley, Calif.: Univer-
sity of California Press, 1995.
———, ed. The Sinicization of Chinese Religions: From Above and Below. Leiden: Brill,
2021.
Mahoney, Rosemary. The Early Arrival of Dreams: A Year in China. New York: Fawcett
Columbine, 1990.
Mann, James. About Face: A History of America’s Curious Relationship with China, from
Nixon to Clinton. New York: Knopf, 1999.
Manthorpe, Jonathan. Forbidden Nation: A History of Taiwan. New York: Palgrave Macmil-
lan, 2002.
Manuel, Paul Christopher, Lawrence C. Reardon, and Clyde Wilcox, eds. The Catholic Church
and the Nation-State: Comparative Perspectives. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University
Press, 2006.
Marsh, Christopher, and June Teufel Dreyer, eds. U.S.-China Relations in the Twenty-First
Century: Policies, Prospects, and Possibilities. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2003.
Marshall, Joshua Micah. “Remaking the World: Bush and the Neoconservatives.” Foreign
Affairs 82, no. 6 (November/December 2003): 142–146.
Martellaro, Joseph A. “Some Aspects of Sino-American Economic Relations: Post 1950.”
China Report 18 (July–August 1982): 19–33.
May, Ernest R., and John K. Fairbank, eds. America’s China Trade in Historical Perspective:
The Chinese and American Performance. Cambridge, Mass.: Committee on American-East
Asian Relations, Harvard University, 1986.
342 Bibliography
May, Ernest R., and James C. Thomson Jr., eds. American-East Asian Relations: A Survey.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972.
May, Gary. China Scapegoat: The Diplomatic Ordeal of John Carter Vincent. Washington,
D.C.: New Republic Books, 1979.
McClain, Charles J., Jr. “The Chinese Struggle for Civil Rights in Nineteenth Century Ameri-
ca: The First Phase, 1850–1870.” California Law Review 72, no. 4 (1984): 529–568.
———. In Search of Equality: The Chinese Struggle against Discrimination in Nineteenth-
Century America. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1994.
McCord, Edward. The Power of the Gun: The Emergence of Modern Chinese Warlords. Berke-
ley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1993.
McDevitt, Michael. China as a Twenty-First-Century Naval Power: Theory Practice and Im-
plications. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2020.
McDougall, Derek. Asia Pacific in World Politics. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2007.
McDougall, Walter A. Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the
World since 1776. Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 1998.
McGregor, James. One Billion Customers: Lessons from the Front Lines of Doing Business in
China. New York: Free Press, 2005.
McKee, Delber L. Chinese Exclusion versus the Open Door Policy, 1900–1906: Clashes over
China Policy in the Roosevelt Era. Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, 1977.
McKeown, Adam. Chinese Migrant Networks and Cultural Change: Peru, Chicago, Hawaii,
1900–1936. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.
———. “Ritualization of Regulation: The Enforcement of Chinese Exclusion in the United
States and China.” American Historical Review 108, no. 2 (April 2003): 377–403.
McMaster, H. R. Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World. New York: Harper,
2020.
Meijer, Hugo. Trading with the Enemy: The Making of US Export Control Policy toward the
People’s Republic of China. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
Menegon, Eugenio. Ancestors, Virgins, and Friars: Christianity as a Local Religion in Late
Imperial China. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2010.
Mertha, Andrew C. The Politics of Piracy: Intellectual Property in Contemporary China.
Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2005.
———. Brothers in Arms: Chinese Aid to the Khmer Rouge, 1975–1979. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
Meyskens, Covell F. Mao’s Third Front: The Militarization of Cold War China. Cambridge:
University of Cambridge Press, 2020.
Michener, James A. Hawaii. New York: Random House, 1987. First edition 1959.
Miller, Stewart. Unwelcome Immigrant: American Images of the Chinese, 1875–1882. Berke-
ley, Calif.: University of California, 1969.
Miller, Tom. China’s Asian Dream: Empire Building Along the New Silk Road. London: Zed
Books, 2017.
Mitter, Rana. The Manchurian Myth: Nationalism, Resistance, and Collaboration in Modern
China. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2000.
Morse, Hosea Ballou. The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China, 1634 to
1833. 5 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1926–1929.
———. The International Relations of the Chinese Empire. 3 vols. New York: Longmans,
Green, 1918. Reprint by University of Hawaii Press in 2004.
Mun, K. C., and T. S. Chan. “The Role of Hong Kong in United States-China Trade.” Colum-
bia Journal of World Business 21, no. 1 (Spring 1986): 67–73.
Myers, Ramon H., Michel C. Oksenberg, and David Shambaugh. Making China Policy: Les-
sons from the Bush and Clinton Administrations. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield,
2001.
Nash, Gary B., et al., ed. The American People: Creating a Nation and a Society. New York:
Pearson Education, 2004.
Nass, Matthias. Interview with Henry Kissinger, “Der Anfang Einer Neuen Zeit [The beginning
of a new age].” Die Zeit, May 26, 2011, 23.
Bibliography 343
Nathan, Andrew, and Robert S. Ross. The Great Wall and the Empty Fortress. New York:
Norton, 1997.
Nathan, Andrew J., and Perry Link. The Tiananmen Papers. New York: PublicAffairs, 2001.
Naughton, Barry. The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press, 2007.
Netting, Lara Jaishree. A Perpetual Fire: John C. Ferguson and His Quest for Chinese Art and
Culture. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2013.
Newman, Robert P. Owen Lattimore and the “Loss” of China. Berkeley, Calif.: University of
California Press, 1992.
Ni, Shixiong (倪世雄). Jiejiao yiyan zhong, xiangqi qianli zhi: Yige Zhongguo xuezhe yan-
zhong de Zhongmei jianjiao sanshi nian [结交一言重, 相期千里至: 一个中国学者眼中的
中美建交三十年 Keeping one’s word regardless of the obstacles: The thirtieth anniversary
of U.S.-China diplomatic relations as seen through the eyes of a Chinese scholar]. Shanghai:
Fudan daxue chubanshe, 2009.
Nie, Rongzhen (聂荣臻). Nie Rongzhen huiyilu [聂荣臻回忆录 Memoirs of Nie Rongzhen].
Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe, 2007.
Niu, Dayong (牛大勇). “Yingguo yu duihua Menhu Kaifang zhengce de qiyuan” [英国与对华
门户开放政策的起源 Great Britain and the origins of the Open Door policy]. Lishi yanjiu,
no. 4 (1990): 21–35.
Niu, Jun (牛军). “1962: The Eve of the Left Turn in China’s Foreign Policy.” Cold War
International History Project, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, working
paper no. 48, October 2005.
———. “1969 nian Zhongsu bianjie chongtu yu Zhongguo waijiao zhanlue de tiaozheng”
[1969 年中苏边界冲突与中国外交战略的调整 The Sino-Russian border conflict in 1969
and the adjustment of China’s diplomatic strategy]. Dangdai Zhongguo yanjiu, no. 1 (1999):
66–77.
Nixon, Richard M. “Asia after Viet Nam.” Foreign Affairs 46, no. 1 (October 1967): 111–125.
Nokes, Gregory R. Massacred for Gold: The Chinese in Hells Canyon. Corvallis, Oreg.: Ore-
gon State University Press, 2009.
Nolan, Peter. Is China Buying the World? Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012.
Novak, William. “The Myth of the ‘Weak’ American State.” American Historical Review 113,
no. 3 (June 2008): 752–772.
Nye, Joseph S., Jr. The Paradox of American Power: Why the World’s Only Superpower Can’t
Go It Alone. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Office of Technology Assessment. Technology and East-West Trade. Washington, D.C.: Con-
gress, 1979.
Oksenberg, Michel, and Elizabeth Economy. Shaping U.S.-China Relations: A Long-Term
Strategy. New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1997.
O’Neill, William L. American High: The Years of Confidence, 1945–1960. New York: Free
Press, 1989.
Osterhammel, Jürgen. “‘Technical Co-Operation’ between the League of Nations and China.”
Modern Asian Studies 13, no. 4 (1979): 661–680.
Ostermann, Christian F., ed. Inside China’s Cold War. Vol. 16, Cold War International History
Project Bulletin, Fall 2007/Winter 2008.
Pantsov, Alexander. The Bolsheviks and the Chinese Revolution, 1919–1927. Honolulu, Ha-
waii: University of Hawaii Press, 2000.
Paterson, Thomas, et al. American Foreign Relations: A History. Seventh edition. Florence,
Ky.: Wadsworth Publishing, 2009.
Paulsen, George E. “The Szechwan Riots of 1895 and American ‘Missionary Diplomacy.’”
Journal of Asian Studies 28, no. 2 (February 1969): 285–298.
Pearson, Margaret M. “The Case of China’s Accession to GATT/WTO.” In The Making of
Chinese Foreign and Security Policy in the Era of Reform, 1978–2000, edited by David M.
Lampton, 337–370. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2001.
Peng Dehuai zhuan bianxie zu (彭德怀传编写组). Peng Dehuai zhuan [彭德怀传 The biogra-
phy of Peng Dehuai]. Beijing: Dangdai Zhongguo chubanshe, 2006.
344 Bibliography
Pepper, Suzanne. “The KMT-CCP Conflict, 1945–1949.” In The Cambridge History of China:
Republican China, 1912–1949, vol. 13, edited by John K. Fairbank and Albert Feuerwerker,
723–788. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Peraino, Kevin. A Force So Swift: Mao, Truman, and the Birth of Modern China, 1949. New
York: Crown, 2018.
Perdue, Peter C. China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia. Cambridge,
Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005.
Perkins, Bradford. The Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations. Vol. 1, The Crea-
tion of a Republican Empire, 1776–1865. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Perlmutter, David. Picturing China in the American Press: The Visual Portrayal of Sino-
American Relations in Time Magazine, 1949–1973. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield,
2007.
Pfaelzer, Jean. Driven Out: The Forgotten War against Chinese Americans. New York: Ran-
dom House, 2007.
Platt, Nicholas. China Boys: How U.S. Relations with the PRC Began and Grew. A Personal
Memoir. Round Top, N.Y.: Vellum, 2010.
Plesur, Milton. America’s Outward Thrust: Approaches to Foreign Affairs, 1865–1890. De-
Kalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois University Press, 1971.
Pollard, Robert T. China’s Foreign Relations, 1917–1931. New York: Macmillan, 1933.
Pomfret, John. The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to
the Present. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2016.
Powell, Robert. In the Shadow of Power: States and Strategies in International Politics. Prince-
ton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999.
Price, Eva Jane. China Journal 1889–1900: An American Missionary Family during the Boxer
Rebellion; with the Letters and Diaries of Eva Jane Price and Her Family. New York:
Scribner, 1989.
Prime, Penelope B. “Studies of China’s Economy in the United States.” In China Watching:
Perspectives from Europe, Japan and the United States, edited by Robert Ash, David Sham-
baugh, and Seiichiro Takagi, 80–96. London: Routledge, 2007.
Pumpelly, Raphael. Across America and Asia: Notes of a Five Year Journey around the World
and of Residence in Arizona, Japan, and China. 2 vols. New York: Leypoldt and Holt, 1870.
Qi, Zhou. “Conflicts over Human Rights between China and the US.” Human Rights Quarterly
27, no. 1 (February 2005): 105–124.
Qian, Qichen (钱其琛). Waijiao shiji [外交十记 Ten diplomatic episodes]. Beijing: Shijie
zhishi chubanshe, 2003.
Qin, Julia Ya. “Trade, Investment and Beyond: The Impact of WTO Accession on China’s
Legal System.” China Quarterly, special issue 191 (2007): 720–744.
Qin, Yucheng. The Diplomacy of Nationalism: The Six Companies and China’s Policy toward
Exclusion. Honolulu, Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, 2009.
Qing, Simei. From Allies to Enemies: Visions of Modernity, Identity, and U.S.-China Diploma-
cy, 1945–1960. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007.
Ranney, James Taylor. World Peace through Law: Replacing War with the Global Rule of
Law. London: Routledge, 2018.
Rea, Kenneth W., and John C. Brewer, eds. The Forgotten Ambassador: The Reports of John
Leighton Stuart, 1946–1949. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1981.
Reid, Gilbert. A Christian’s Appreciation of Other Faiths: A Study of the Best in the World’s
Greatest Religions. Chicago, Ill.: The Open Court Publishing Company, 1921.
———. Glances at China. London: The Religious Tract Society, 1892.
Reilly, Thomas H. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom: Rebellion and the Blasphemy of Empire.
Seattle, Wash.: University of Washington Press, 2004.
Ren, Jiantao (任剑涛). Zhongguo de xiandai guojia goujian [中国的现代国家构建 The con-
struction of the modern state in China]. 2 vols. Hong Kong: Hong Kong City University
Press, 2019.
Rengger, Nicholas, and Ben Thirkell-White, eds. Review of International Studies 33 (April
2007). Special issue, Critical International Relations Theory after 25 Years. Cambridge:
Bibliography 345
Reynold, Douglas R. China, 1898–1912: The Xinzheng Revolution and Japan. Cambridge,
Roberts, Priscilla. “William L. Clayton and the Recognition of China, 1945–1966: More Spec-
ulations on the ‘Lost Chances in China.’” Journal of American-East Asian Relations 7, nos.
1–2 (Spring–Summer 1998): 5–37.
Roberts, Sean. The War on the Uyghurs: China’s Internal Campaign against a Muslim Minor-
ity. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2020.
Roosevelt, Theodore. The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses. New York: Century Co.,
1900.
Ross, Robert S. “International Bargaining and Domestic Politics: U.S.-China Relations since
1972.” World Politics 38, no. 2 (1986): 255–287.
———. Negotiating Cooperation: The United States and China, 1969–1989. Stanford, Calif.:
Stanford University Press, 1997.
Ross, Robert S., and Jiang Changbin, eds. Re-Examining the Cold War: U.S.-China Diplomacy,
1954–1973. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2001.
Ross, Robert S., Øystein Tunsjø, and Zhang Tuosheng, eds. US-China-EU Relations: Manag-
ing the New World Order. London: Routledge, 2010.
“Roundtable: Turning to the Pacific: U.S. Strategic Rebalancing toward Asia.” Asia Policy, no.
14 (July 2012): 21–49.
Rubinstein, Murray A. “The Wars They Wanted: American Missionaries’ Use of the Chinese
Repository before the Opium War.” American Neptune 48, no. 4 (Fall 1988): 271–282.
Rule, James B. “The Military State of America and the Democratic Left. George Packer
Responds. Michael Walzer Responds. James B. Rule Replies.” Dissent 57, no. 1 (Winter
2010): 81–90.
Ruskola, Teemu. “Canton Is Not Boston: The Invention of American Imperial Sovereignty.”
American Quarterly 57, no. 3 (September 2005): 859–884.
Young, John Russell. Around the World with General Grant: A Narrative of the Visit of
General U.S. Grant, Ex-President of the United States, to Various Countries in Europe,
Asia, and Africa, in 1877, 1878, 1879. 2 vols. New York: The American News Company,
1873.
Sang, Ye. China Candid: The People on the People’s Republic. Berkeley, Calif.: University of
Saxton, Alexander. The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in Cali-
fornia. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1971.
Schaefer, Donald D. A. “U.S. Foreign Policies of Presidents Bush and Clinton: The Influence
of China’s Most Favored Nation Status upon Human Rights Issues.” Social Science Journal
35, no. 3 (July 1998): 407–415.
Schaller, Michael. The United States and China: Into the Twenty-First Century. Fourth edition.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. First edition in 1979.
Schaller, Michael, Janette Thomas Greenwood, Andrew Kirk, Sarah J. Purcell, Aaron Sheehan-
Dean, and Christina Snyder, eds. Reading American Horizons: Primary Sources for U.S.
History in a Global Context. Third edition. Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2018.
First edition in 2013.
Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr., ed. The Dynamics of World Power: A Documentary History of
United States Foreign Policy 1945–1973. 4 vols. New York: Chelsea House Publishers,
1973.
———. “Origins of the Cold War.” Foreign Affairs 46, no. 1 (October 1967): 22–52.
Schmidt, Hans. “Democracy for China: American Propaganda and the May Fourth Move-
ment.” Diplomatic History 22, no. 1 (December 1998): 1–28.
Schopp, Susan E. Sino-French Trade at Canton, 1698–1842. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Univer-
sity Press, 2020.
Schoppa, R. Keith. Revolution and Its Past: Identities and Change in Modern Chinese History.
Second edition. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson, Prentice Hall, 2005.
Schrecker, John. “‘For the Equality of Men—for the Equality of Nations’: Anson Burlingame
and China’s First Embassy to the United States, 1868.” Journal of American-East Asian
Relations 17, no. 1 (2010): 9–34.
346 Bibliography
Schulzinger, Robert D. The Making of the Diplomatic Mind: The Training, Outlook, and Style
of United States Foreign Service Officers, 1908–1931. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan Uni-
Schwar, Harriet Dashiell, ed. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968. Vol. 30,
China. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1998.
Schwarcz, Vera. Long Road Home: A China Journal. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University
Press, 1984.
Schwartz, Harry. “The Moscow-Peking-Washington Triangle.” Annals of the American Acade-
my of Political and Social Science 414, issue USA-USSR: Agenda for Communication (July
1974): 41–50.
Scobell, Andrew. China’s Use of Military Force: Beyond the Great Wall and the Long March.
Scott, James C. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985.
Scully, Eileen P. Bargaining with the State from Afar: American Citizenship in Treaty Port
China, 1844–1942. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001.
Service, John S. The Ameriasia Papers: Problems in the History of U.S.-China Relations.
Berkeley, Calif.: Center for Chinese Studies, University of California, 1971.
Shambaugh, David. Beautiful Imperialist: China Perceives America, 1972–1990. Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991.
———. China Goes Global: The Partial Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
———, ed. Deng Xiaoping: Portrait of a Chinese Statesman. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995.
———. “A New China Requires a New US Strategy.” Current History 109, no. 728 (Septem-
ber 2010): 219–226.
———, ed. Power Shift: China and Asia’s New Dynamics. Berkeley, Calif.: University of
Shambaugh, David, Eberhard Sandschneider, and Zhou Hong, eds. The China-Europe Rela-
tions: Perceptions, Policies and Prospects. London: Routledge, 2007.
Shan, Patrick Fuliang. Yuan Shikai: A Reappraisal. Vancouver: University of British Columbia
Press, 2018.
Shaw, Samuel. The Journals of Major Samuel Shaw, the First American Consul at Canton,
with a Life of the Author by Josiah Quincy. Taipei: Ch’eng-wen Pub. Co., 1968. Reprint of
1847 edition by Wm. Crosby and H. P. Nichols in Boston, Mass.
Shaw, Yu-ming. An American Missionary in China: John Leighton Stuart and Chinese
American Relations. Cambridge, Mass.: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University,
1992.
Shen, Yu (沈予). “Lun Kangri Zhanzheng shiqi Rijiang de ‘heping’ jiaoshe” [论抗日战争时
期日蒋的”和平”交涉 On the “peace” negotiations between Japan and Chiang during the
War of Resistance]. Lishi yanjiu, no. 2 (1993): 108–127.
Sheng, Michael M. “Chinese Communist Policy toward the United States and the Myth of the
‘Lost Chance’ 1948–1950.” Modern Asian Studies 28, no. 3 (1994): 475–502.
Shirk, Susan L. China: Fragile Superpower. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Shiroyama, Tomoko. China during the Great Depression: Market, State, and the World Econo-
my, 1929–1937. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2008.
Simmel, Georg. Georg Simmel on Individuality and Social Forms. Chicago, Ill.: University of
Chicago Press, 1972.
Singer, Peter Warren. “America, Islam, and the 9–11 War.” Current History: A Journal of
Contemporary Trends 105, no. 695 (December 2006): 415–422.
Sinn, Elizabeth. Pacific Crossing: California Gold, Chinese Migration, and the Making of
Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2013.
Skidmore, David, and William Gates. “After Tiananmen: The Struggle over U.S. Policy toward
China in the Bush Administration.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 27, no. 3 (Summer
1997): 514–526.
Smith, Philip Chadwick Foster. The Empress of China. Philadelphia, Pa.: Philadelphia Mari-
time Museum, 1984.
Bibliography 347
So, Wai Chor. “The Making of the Guomindang’s Japan Policy, 1932–1937: The Roles of
Chiang Kai-Shek and Wang Jingwei.” Modern China 28, no. 2 (April 2002): 213–252.
Solow, Robert M. “A Contribution to the Theory of Economic Growth.” Quarterly Journal of
Economics 70, no. 1 (February 1956): 65–94.
Soman, Appu K. “‘Who’s Daddy’ in the Taiwan Strait? The Offshore Islands Crisis of 1958.”
Journal of American-East Asian Relations 3, no. 4 (Winter 1994): 373–398.
Song, Hongbin (宋鸿兵). Huobi zhanzheng [货币战争 The currency war]. Beijing: Zhongxin
chubanshe, 2007.
Song, Qiang (宋强), Zhang Cangcang (张藏藏), et al. Zhongguo keyi shuobu: Lengzhan hou-
shidai de zhengzhi yu qinggan jueze [中国可以说不: 冷战后时代的政治与情感抉择 Chi-
na can say no: Politics and sentiment in the post–Cold War era]. Beijing: Zhonghua gong-
shang lianhe chubanshe, 1996.
Song, Xiaojun (宋晓军), Wang Xiaodong (王小东), et al. Zhongguo bugaoxing: Da shidai, da
mubiao ji women de neiyou waihuan [中国不高兴: 大时代、大目标及我们的内忧外患
China is unhappy: Broad picture, grand strategy, domestic concerns and external threats].
Nanjing: Jiangsu renmin chubanshe, 2009.
Spence, Jonathan. God’s Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan. New
York: Norton, 1996.
———. To Change China: Western Advisers in China. Reprint. New York: Penguin, 2002.
First edition in 1969 by Little, Brown.
Steigerwald, David. “The Reclamation of Woodrow Wilson?” Diplomatic History 23, no. 1
(Winter 1999): 79–99.
———. Wilsonian Idealism in America. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994.
Storti, Craig. Incident at Bitter Creek: The Story of the Rock Springs Massacre. Ames, Iowa:
Iowa State University Press, 1991.
Stromquist, Shelton. Re-Inventing “the People”: The Progressive Movement, the Class Prob-
lem, and the Origins of Modern Liberalism. Champaign, Ill.: University of Illinois Press,
2006.
Stross, Randall E. Bulls in the China Shop and Other Sino-American Business Encounters.
New York: Pantheon Books, 1990.
———. The Stubborn Earth: American Agriculturalists on Chinese Soil, 1898–1937. Berke-
ley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1986.
Su, Ge (苏格). Meiguo duihua zhengce yu Taiwan wenti [美国对华政策与台湾问题 Ameri-
ca’s China policy and the Taiwan question]. Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 1998.
Su, Weizhi (苏位智), and Liu Tianlu (刘天路), eds. Yihetuan yanjiu yibainian [义和团研究一
百年 One hundred years of Boxer studies]. Jinan: Qilu shushe, 2000.
Subramanian, Arvind. Eclipse: Living in the Shadow of China’s Economic Dominance. Wash-
ington, D.C.: Peterson Institute for International Economics, 2011.
Suettinger, Robert. Beyond Tiananmen: The Politics of U.S.-China Relations. Washington,
D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2003.
Sullivan, Michael P. Theories of International Relations: Transition and Persistence. New
York: Palgrave, 2001.
Sun, Youli. China and the Origins of the Pacific War, 1931–1941. New York: St. Martin’s,
1993.
Sun, Zhe (孙哲). Meiguo Guohui yu Zhongmei guanxi: Anli yu fenxi [美国国会与中美关系:
案例与分析 The American Congress and U.S.-Chinese relations: Case studies and analy-
sis]. Beijing: Shishi chubanshe, 2004.
———. Meiguo xue: Zhongguo dui Meiguo zhengzhi waijiao yanjiu, 1979–2006 [美国学: 中
国对美国政治外交研究 American studies: Chinese writings on American politics and
foreign relations]. Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 2008.
Sutter, Robert. U.S.-Chinese Relations: Perilous Past, Uncertain Present. Third edition. Lan-
ham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018. First edition in 2010.
Swaine, Michael D. “Chinese Decision-Making Regarding Taiwan, 1979–2000.” In The Mak-
ing of Chinese Foreign and Security Policy in the Era of Reform, edited by David M.
Lampton, 289–336. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2001.
348 Bibliography
Swaine, Michael D., and Zhang Tuosheng, with Danielle F. S. Cohen. Managing SinoAmerican
Crises: Case Studies and Analysis. Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for Internation-
al Peace, 2007.
Swan, Trevor W. “Economic Growth and Capital Accumulation.” Economic Record 32, no. 63
(November 1956): 334–361.
Szuprowicz, Bohdan O. “China Fever: Scrambling for Shares in a $600 Million Buying Spree.”
Management Review 68, no. 5 (May 1979): 8–16.
Tai, Paul H., ed. United States, China and Taiwan: Bridges for a New Millennium. Carbondale,
Ill.: Public Policy Institute, 1999.
Tamarin, Alfred, and Shirley Glubok. Voyaging to Cathay: Americans in the China Trade.
New York: Viking, 1976.
Tang, Chi-hua (唐启华). Bei “Feichu Bupingdeng Tiaoyue” zhebi de Beiyang xiuyue shi
(1912–1928) [被“废除不平等条约”遮蔽的北洋修约史 A history of the Beijing Govern-
ment’s treaty revision efforts that was overshadowed by the “Abolition of the Unequal
Treaties”]. Beijing: Shehui kexue chubanshe, 2010.
Tang, Tsou. America’s Failure in China, 1941–50. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press,
1963.
Tanner, Harold M. “Guerrilla, Mobile, and Base Warfare in Communist Military Operations in
Manchuria, 1945–1947.” Journal of Military History 67, no. 4 (October 2003): 1177–1222.
———. Where Chiang Kai-shek Lost China: The Liao-Shen Campaign, 1948. Bloomington,
Ind.: University of Indiana Press, 2015.
Tao, Wenzhao (陶文钊). Zhongmei guanxi shi [中美关系史 A history of Sino-American rela-
tions]. 3 vols. (vol. 2 edited). Second edition. Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 2016.
Taylor, Jay. The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-Shek and the Struggle for Modern China. Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 2009.
Teitler, Ger, and Kurt W. Radtke, eds. A Dutch Spy in China: Reports on the First Phase of the
Sino-Japanese War (1937–1939). Leiden: Brill, 1999.
Tellis, Ashley J., ed., Strategic Asia 2020: U.S.-China Competition for Global Influence. Seat-
tle, Wash.: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2020.
Templeman, Kharis, Yun-han Chu, and Larry Diamond, eds. Dynamics of Democracy in Tai-
wan: The Ma Ying-Jeou Years. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2020.
Teng, Ssu-yu, and John King Fairbank. China’s Response to the West: A Documentary Survey,
1839–1923. Reprint of 1954 edition with a new preface. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni-
———. Research Guide for China’s Response to the West: A Documentary Survey,
Terrill, Ross. The New Chinese Empire: And What It Means for the United States. New York:
Basic Books, 2003.
Thomas, S. Bernard. Season of High Adventure: Edgar Snow in China. Berkeley, Calif.: Uni-
versity of California Press, 1996.
Thomson, James Claude, et al. Sentimental Imperialists: The American Experience in East
Asia. Second edition. New York: Harper and Row, 1985. First edition in 1981.
Thomson, James C., Jr. While China Faced West: American Reformers in Nationalist China,
Tiedemann, R. Gary, ed. Handbook of Christianity in China. Vol. 2. Leiden: Brill, 2009.
———. “Protestant ‘Missionary Cases’ (Jiao’an) in Shandong Province, 1860–1900.” Ching
Feng 8, no. 1–2 (2007): 153–195.
———. Reference Guide to Missionary Societies in China: From the 16th to the 20th Centu-
ries. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 2009.
Tong, Sarah Y. “The US-China Trade Imbalance: How Big Is It Really?” China: An Interna-
tional Journal 3, no. 1 (March 2005): 131–154.
Tuchman, Barbara W. “If Mao Had Come to Washington: An Essay in Alternatives.” Foreign
Affairs 51, no. 1 (October 1972): 44–64.
———. Notes from China. New York: Collier Books, 1972.
Bibliography 349
———. Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911–45. New York: Bantam Books,
1972. First edition in 1971 by Macmillan.
Tucker, Nancy Bernkopf, ed. China Confidential: American Diplomats and Sino-American
Relations, 1945–1996. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001.
———. The China Threat: Memories, Myths, and Realities in the 1950s. New York: Columbia
———, ed. Dangerous Strait: The U.S.-Taiwan-China Crisis. New York: Columbia University
Press, 2005.
———. Patterns in the Dust: Chinese-American Relations and the Recognition Controversy,
———. Strait Talk: United States-Taiwan Relations and the Crisis with China. Cambridge,
———. Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the United States, 1945–1992. New York: Twayne Publish-
ers, 1994.
Turner, Oliver. American Images of China: Identity, Power, Policy. London: Routledge, 2014.
Tyler, Patrick. A Great Wall: Six Presidents and China, an Investigative History. New York:
PublicAffairs, 1999.
Unger, David C. The Emergency State: America’s Pursuit of Absolute Security at All Costs.
New York: Penguin, 2012.
Van de Ven, Hans. “Stilwell in the Stocks: The Chinese Nationalists and the Allied Powers in
the Second World War.” Asian Affairs 34, no. 3 (November 2003): 243–259.
Van Dyke, Paul A. The Canton Trade: Life and Enterprise on the China Coast, 1700–1845.
Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005.
———. Merchants of Canton and Macao: Politics and Strategies in Eighteenth-Century Chi-
nese Trade. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2011.
———. Merchants of Canton and Macao: Success and Failure in Eighteenth-Century Chinese
Trade. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2015.
———. Whampoa and the Canton Trade: Life and Death in a Chinese Port, 1700–1842. Hong
Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2020.
Varg, Paul A. Open Door Diplomat: The Life of W. W. Rockhill. Urbana, Ill.: University of
Illinois Press, 1952.
Ver Steeg, Clarence L. “Financing and Outfitting of the First U.S. Ship to China.” Pacific
Historical Review 22, no. 1 (February 1953): 1–12.
Voci, Paola, and Luo Hui. Screening China’s Soft Power. London: Taylor and Francis, 2017.
Vogel, Ezra F. Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap
Press, 2011.
Wachman, Alan. Why Taiwan? Geostrategic Rationales for China’s Territorial Integrity. Stan-
ford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2007.
Wacker, Grant. One Soul at a Time: The Story of Billy Graham. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William
B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2019.
Wakeman, Frederic, Jr. “The Canton Trade and the Opium War.” In The Cambridge History of
China, vol. 10, edited by Denis Twitchett and John K. Fairbank, 163–212. Cambridge:
Wallerstein, Immanuel. Geopolitics and Geoculture: Essays on the Changing World-System.
Walmsley, Lewis C. Bishop in Honan: Mission and Museum in the Life of William C. White.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974.
Walton, Gary M., and Hugh Rockoff. History of the American Economy. Tenth edition. Mason,
Ohio: South-Western, 2005.
Waltz, Kenneth N. Theories of International Politics. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979.
Wang, Bingnan (王炳南). Zhongmei huitan jiunian huigu [中美会谈九年回顾 Recollections
of nine years of Sino-American talks]. Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 1985.
Wang, Chaoguang (汪朝光). 1945–1949: Guogong zhengzheng yu Zhongguo mingyun
[1945–1949: 国共政争与中国命运 The political conflict between the GMD and CCP and
China’s destiny]. Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2010.
350 Bibliography
Wang, Dong. “Between Tribute and Unequal Treaties: How China Saw the Sea World in the
Early Nineteenth Century.” History: The Journal of Historical Association 103, no. 355
(April 2018): 262–285.
———. “The China Divide: A Revisit.” Review of Kevin Peraino, A Force So Swift: Mao,
Truman, and the Birth of Modern China, 1949 (New York: Crown, 2018). Diplomatic
History 43, no. 2 (April 2019): 394–396.
———. “China’s Trade Relations with the United States in Perspective.” Journal of Current
Chinese Affairs 39, no. 3 (November 2010): 165–210.
———. China’s Unequal Treaties: Narrating National History. Lanham, Md.: Lexington
Books, 2005.
———. “Circulating American Higher Education: The Case of Lingnan University
(1888–1951).” Journal of American-East Asian Relations 9, no. 3–4 (delayed 2000 issue,
appeared in 2006): 147–167.
———. “The Discourse of the Unequal Treaties in Modern China.” Pacific Affairs 76, no. 3
(November 2003): 399–425.
———. Longmen’s Stone Buddhas and Cultural Heritage: When Antiquity Met Modernity in
China. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2020.
———. Managing God’s Higher Learning: U.S.-China Cultural Encounter and Canton Chris-
tian College (Lingnan University), 1888–1952. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007.
———. “Portraying Chinese Christianity: The American Press and U.S.-China Relations since
the 1920s.” Journal of American-East Asian Relations 13 (November 2008): 81–119.
———. “Redeeming ‘a Century of National Ignominy’: Nationalism and Party Rivalry over
the Unequal Treaties, 1928–1947.” Twentieth-Century China 30, no. 2 (April 2005):
72–100.
———. “The United States, Asia, and the Pacific, 1815–1919.” In The Society for Historians
of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) Guide: An Annotated Bibliography of American
Foreign Relations since 1600, edited by Alan McPherson. Leiden: Brill, 2017. http://
referenceworks.brillonline.com/browse/the-shafr-guide-online.
———. “US-China Economic Relations.” In A Handbook of US-China Relations, edited by
Andrew Tan, 155–177. Surrey: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2016.
Wang, Dong, and Flemming Christiansen. “The Pursuit of New Citizenship by Peri-urban
Residents in China: Status, Rights, and Individual Choice.” China Information 34, no. 2
(July 2020): 250–269.
Wang, Gungwu. Anglo-Chinese Encounters since 1800: War, Trade, Science, and Governance.
Wang, Guo. “The ‘Revolution’ of 1911 Revisited: A Review of Contemporary Studies in
China.” China Information 25, no. 3 (2011): 257–174.
Wang, Jisi. “China’s Search for Stability with America.” Foreign Affairs 84, no. 5 (September/
October 2005): 39–48.
Wang, Jianlang (王建朗). “Xin Zhongguo chengli chunian Yingguo guanyu Zhongguo Lianhe-
guo daibiaoquan wenti de zhengce yanbian” [新中国成立初年英国关于中国联合国代表
权问题的政策演变 The evolution of British policy on the Chinese representation question
in the UN in the early years of new China]. Zhongguo shehui kexue, no. 3 (2000): 179–190.
———. “Xinren de liushi: Cong Jiang Jieshi riji kan Kangzhan houqi de Zhongmei guanxi”
[信任的流失: 从蒋介石日记看抗日后期的中美关系 The loss of trust: Sino-American re-
lations in the later phases of the Anti-Japanese War as seen through the diary of Chiang Kai-
Shek]. Jindaishi yanjiu, no. 3 (2009): 49–62.
Wang, Jingyu (汪敬虞). Waiguo ziben zai jindai Zhongguo de jinrong huodong [外国资本在
近代中国的金融活动 The financial activity of foreign capital in modern China]. Beijing:
Renmin chubanshe, 1999.
Wang, Qingjia Edward. “Guests from the Open Door: The Reception of Chinese Students into
the United States, 1900s–1920s.” Journal of American-East Asian Relations 3, no. 1 (Spring
1994): 55–75.
Wang, Qisheng (王奇生). Geming yu fan geming: shehui wenhua shiye xia de Minguo zhengzhi
[革命与反革命:社会文化视野下的民国政治 Revolution and counterrevolution: Politics in
Bibliography 351
the First Republic of China from the viewpoint of society and culture]. Beijing: Shehui
kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2010.
Wang, Taiping (王泰平). Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo waijiaoshi [中华人民共和国外交史
A diplomatic history of the People’s Republic of China]. Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe,
1999.
Wang, Xi (汪熙). “Lüelun Zhongmei guanxishi de jige wenti” [略论中美关系史的几个问题
A brief discussion of several issues in Sino-American relations]. Shijie lishi, no. 3 (1979):
12–19.
Wang, Xi (汪熙), and Tajiri Tōru (田尻利), eds. 150 Nian Zhongmei guanxishi lunzhu mulu
(1823–1990) [150 年中美关系史论著目录 A bibliography of works on the history of Sino-
American relations over the last 150 years]. Shanghai: Fudan daxue chubanshe, 2005.
Wang, Yanwei (王彦威), and Wang Liang (王亮), comp. Qingji waijiao shiliao [清季外交史
料 Diplomatic sources for the late Qing]. 10 vols. Changsha: Hunan shifan daxue chuban-
she, 2015. First edition 1932–1933.
Wang, Yongqin (王永钦). “1966–1976 nian Zhong Mei Su guanxi jishi” [1966–1976 年的中
美苏关系纪事 A chronicle of China-U.S.-USSR relations, 1966–1976]. Parts 1–3. Dangdai
Zhongguoshi yanjiu, nos. 4–6 (1997): 112–126, 110–127, 143–156.
———. “1966–1976 nian Zhong Mei Su guanxi jishi.” Part 4. Dangdai Zhongguoshi yanjiu,
no. 1 (1998): 103–118.
Wang, Yunsheng (王芸生). Liushi nianlai Zhongguo yu Riben [六十年来中国与日本 China
and Japan over the past sixty years]. Beijing: Sanlian chubanshe, 1981.
Weathersby, Katheryn. “New Findings on the Korean War.” Cold War International History
Project Bulletin, no. 3 (Fall 1993): 1, 14–18.
Wei, Shiyan (魏史言). Nikesong fanghua [尼克松访华 Nixon’s visit to China]. Xin Zhongguo
waijiao fengyun [新中国外交风云 New China’s diplomatic experience]. 3 vols. Beijing:
Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 1994.
Weng, Yanqing (翁衍庆). Zhongguo minzhu yundong shi: Cong Wang Shiwei zheng minzhu
dao Xidan Minzhuqiang [中国民主运动史从王实味争民主到西单民主墙 A history of
Chinese democracy movement]. Taipei: Xinrui wenchuang, 2016.
Welch, Ian. “‘Our Neighbors but Not Our Countrymen’: Christianity and the Chinese in Nine-
teenth-Century Victoria (Australia) and California.” Journal of American-East Asian Rela-
tions 13, a special volume edited by Dong Wang (November 2008): 149–183.
Werking, Richard H. “The Boxer Indemnity Remission and the Hunt Thesis.” Diplomatic
History 2, no. 1 (January 1978): 103–106.
West, Philip, ed. Remembering the “Forgotten War”: The Korean War through Literature and
Art. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 2000.
Westad, Odd Arne. Cold War and Revolution: Soviet-American Rivalry and the Origins of the
Chinese Civil War, 1944–1946. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.
———. Decisive Encounters: The Chinese Civil War, 1946–1950. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford
———. Restless Empire: China and the World since 1750. New York: Basic Books, 2012.
White, Donald W. The American Century: The Rise and Decline of the United States as a
World Power. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1996.
White, Theodore H. “An Old China Hand in the New China.” Life, March 17, 1972.
White, Theodore H., and Annalee Jacoby. Thunder out of China. New York: William Sloane
Associates, 1946.
Whiting, Allen S. Soviet Policies in China, 1917–1924. Second edition. New York: Columbia
Whyte, Bob. Unfinished Encounter: China and Christianity. Harrisburg, Pa.: Morehouse Pub-
lishing, 1988.
Wilbur, C. Martin, and Julie Lien-ying How. Missionaries of Revolution: Soviet Advisers and
Nationalist China, 1920–1927. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989.
Wilczynski, J. “Strategic Embargo in Perspective.” Soviet Studies 19, no. 1 (1967): 74–86.
Wingrove, Paul. “Russian Documents on the 1954 Geneva Conference.” Introduction. Cold
War International History Project Bulletin, no. 16 (Fall 2007/Winter 2008): 85–91.
352 Bibliography
Wolin, Richard. French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution, and the Legacy of the 1960s:
The Wind from the East. Second edition. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2018.
Wong, John D. Global Trade in the Nineteenth Century: The House of Houqua and the Canton
System. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.
Wong, J. Y. Deadly Dreams: Opium, Imperialism, and the Arrow War (1856–1860) in China.
Wong, R. Bin. “Centennial Perspectives on China’s 1911 Revolution.” China Information 25,
no. 3 (2011): 275–282.
Wu, Cheng-tsu, ed. Chink! A Documentary History of Anti-Chinese Prejudice in America. New
York: World Publishing, 1972.
Wu, Xinbo. “The Promise and Limitations of a Sino-U.S. Partnership.” Washington Quarterly
27, no. 4 (Autumn 2004): 115–126.
Wu, Yixiong (吴义雄). “Yapian Zhanzheng qian zaihua xiren yu duihua zhanzheng yulun de
xingcheng” [鸦片战争前在华西人与对华战争舆论的形成 The moulding of public opin-
ion in support of war with China among Westerners in China prior to the Opium War].
Jindaishi yanjiu 179, no. 2 (March 2009): 23–43.
Xi, Xuan (席宣), and Jin Chunming (金春明). “Wenhua Dageming” jianshi [“文化大革命” 简
史 A brief history of the “Cultural Revolution”]. Expanded edition. Beijing: Zhonggong
dangshi chubanshe, 2006.
Xia, Yafeng. Negotiating with the Enemy: U.S.-China Talks during the Cold War, 1949–1972.
Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2006.
Xiang, Liling (项立岭). Zhongmei guanxi shi quanbian [中美关系史全编 A comprehensive
history of U.S.-Chinese Relations]. Shanghai: Huadong shifan daxue, 2002.
Xiong, Xianghui (熊向晖). Lishi de zhujiao: Huiyi Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai ji si laoshuai [历
史的注脚:回忆毛泽东、周恩来及四老帅 Footnotes of history: Reflections on Mao Ze-
dong, Zhou Enlai, and the four marshals]. Beijing: Zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe, 1995.
———. Wode qingbao yu waijiao shengya [我的情报与外交生涯 My careers in espionage
and diplomacy]. Expanded edition. Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe, 2006. First
edition in 1999.
Xiong, Zhiyong (熊志勇). Bainian Zhongmei guanxi [百年中美关系 A century of Sino-U.S.
relations]. Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2006.
Xu, Guangqiu. Congress and the U.S.-China Relationship, 1949–1979. Akron, Ohio: Akron
———. “The Issue of U.S. Air Support for China during the Second World War, 1942–1945.”
Journal of Contemporary History, no. 36 (July 2001): 459–484.
———. War Wings: The United States and Chinese Military Aviation, 1929–1949. Westport,
Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2001.
Xu, Guoqi. China and the Great War: China’s Pursuit of a New National Identity and Interna-
tionalization. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
———. Chinese and Americans: A Shared History. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 2014.
Xu, Yihua (徐以骅). “Meiguo ‘1998 nian guoji zongjiao ziyoufa’” [美国1998年国际宗教自
由法 The U.S. International Religious Freedom Act of 1998]. In Zongjiao yu Meiguo shehui
[宗教与美国社会 Religion and American society], edited by Xu Yihua, 515–546. Beijing:
Shishi chubanshe, 2004.
———. “‘Patriotic’ Protestants: The Making of an Official Church.” In God and Caesar in
China: Policy Implications of Church-State Tensions, edited by Jason Kindopp and Carol
Lee Hamrin, 107–121. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2004.
Xu, Yan (徐焰). Diyi ci jiaoliang: Kangmei Yuanchao Zhanzheng de lishi huigu yu fansi [第一
次较量:抗美援朝战争的历史回顾与反思 The first showdown: Reflections on the Anti-
American Korean War]. Beijing: Zhongguo guangbo dianshi chubanshe, 1990.
———. Kangri Zhanzheng shengli qianxi zhi shengli hou wodang zhanlüe fangzhen de zhuan-
bian [抗日战争胜利前夕至胜利后我党战略方针的转变 The transformation of CCP strat-
egy from the eve to the aftermath of victory in the War of Resistance]. Dangshi yanjiu
Bibliography 353
ziliao, edited by Zhongguo geming bowuguan dangshi yanjiushi (中国革命博物馆党史研

究室). Vol. 7. Chengdu: Sichuan renmin chubanshe, 1987.
Yang, Guohua (杨国华). Zhongmei Zhishi Chanquan wenti gaiguan [中美知识产权问题概观
An overview of the U.S.-Chinese intellectual property question]. Beijing: Zhishi chanquan
chubanshe, 2008.
Yang, Kuisong (杨奎松). “Huade Shijian yu xin Zhongguo dui Meiguo zhengce de queli” [华
德事件与新中国对美国政策的确立 The Ward incident and the formulation of new Chi-
na’s policy toward the U.S.]. Lishi yanjiu, no. 5 (1994): 104–118.
———. Shiqu de jihui? Kangzhan qianhou Guogong tanpan shilu [失去的机会? 抗战前后国
共谈判实录 A lost opportunity? A true account of the negotiations between the GMD and
CCP before and after the War of Resistance]. Beijing: Xinxing chubanshe, 2010.
———. Zhonggong yu Mosike de guanxi (1920–1960) [中共与莫斯科的关系 The Chinese
Communist Party’s relations with Moscow]. Hong Kong Haixiao chuban shiye youxian
gongsi, 1997.
———. “Zhongjian Didai” de geming: Guoji da beijing xia kan Zhonggong chenggong zhidao
[“中间地带”的革命: 国际大背景下看中共成功之道 The “Mid-zone” revolution: Tracing
the CCP’s path to success within a broad international context]. Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin
chubanshe, 2010.
Yang, Tianhong (杨天宏). Jidujiao yu Minguo zhishi fenzi [基督教与民国知识分子 Chris-
tianity and the intelligentsia in the Republic of China]. Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 2005.
———. “Wanqing ‘Junshi’ waijiao yu ‘Menhu Kaifang.’” [晚清“均势”外交与“门户开放”
The diplomacy of “the Balance of Power” in late Qing and the “Open Door”]. Shehui kexue
yanjiu, no. 6 (2008): 146–153.
Yang, Yunruo (杨云若), and Yang Kuisong (杨奎松). Gongchan Guoji he Zhongguo geming
[共产国际和中国革命 Comintern and the Chinese Revolution]. Shanghai: Shanghai ren-
min chubanshe, 1988.
Ye, Weili. Seeking Modernity in China’s Name: Chinese Students in the United States,
1900–1927. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2001.
Yen, Ching-hwang. The Chinese in Southeast Asia and Beyond: Socioeconomic and Political
Dimensions. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Co., 2008.
———. Coolies and Mandarins: China’s Protection of Overseas Chinese during the Late
Ch’ing Period (1851–1911). Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1985.
Young, Benjamin R. “Imagining Revolutionary Feminism: Communist Asia and the Women of
the Black Panther Party.” Souls (2019): 1–17.
Young, Ernest P. The Presidency of Yuan Shih-k’ai. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan
Press, 1977.
Young, Kenneth Ray. “The Stilwell Controversy: A Bibliographical Review.” Military Affairs
39, no. 2 (April 1975): 66–68.
Young, Louis. Japan’s Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism.
Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1998.
Yung, Judy, Gordon H. Chang, and Him Mark Lai, comps. and eds. Chinese American Voices:
From the Gold Rush to the Present. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2006.
Zakaria, Fareed. The Post-American World. New York: Norton, 2009. First edition in 2008.
Zarrow, Peter. China in War and Revolution, 1895–1949. London: Routledge, 2005.
Zhang, Baijia (章百家). “Cong ‘Yibiandao’ dao ‘Quanfangwei’: Dui wushi nian lai Zhongguo
waijiao geju yanjin de sikao” [从“一边倒”到“全方位”: 对50年来中国外交格局演进的思
考 From “Leaning to One Side” to “Multidirectional”: Thoughts on the evolution of China’s
diplomatic framework over the last 50 years]. Zhonggong dangshi yanjiu, no. 1 (2000):
21–37.
Zhang, Baijia (章百家), and Jia Qingguo (贾庆国). “Cong Zhongguo jiaodu kan Zhongmei
dashiji huitan” [从中国角度看中美大使级会谈 Sino-American ambassadorial talks seen
from the Chinese perspective]. Dangdai Zhongguoshi yanjiu, no. 1 (2000): 40–51.
Zhang, Kaiyuan (章开沅), and Zhu Ying (朱英), eds. Jindai jingji guanxi yu Zhongguo jindai-
hua [近代经济关系与中国近代化 Modern economic relations and the modernization of
China]. Wuhan: Huazhong chubanshe, 1990.
354 Bibliography
Zhang, Shu Guang. Deterrence and Strategic Culture: Chinese-American Confrontations,

1949–58. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1992.
———. Economic Cold War: America’s Embargo against China and the Sino-Soviet Alliance,
1949–1963. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2001.
Zhang, Wenqin (章文钦). Guangdong Shisanhang yu zaoqi Zhongxi guanxi [广东十三行与早
期中西关系 Guangdong’s Thirteen Hongs and early Sino-Foreign relations]. Guangzhou:
Guangdong jingji chubanshe, 2009.
Zhang, Xiaojing. “Rebalancing the Global Economy.” In Global Power Revisited: The United
States in a Changing World Order, edited by Foresight. Berlin: Foresight, 2009.
Zhao, Suisheng, ed. China and the United States: Cooperation and Competition in Northeast
Asia. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
———. “Shaping the Regional Context of China’s Rise: How the Obama Administration
Brought Back Hedge in Its Engagement with China.” Journal of Contemporary China 21,
no. 75 (2012): 369–389.
Zheng, Bijian. “China’s ‘Peaceful Rise’ to Great-Power Status.” Foreign Affairs 84, no. 5
(September/October 2005): 18–24.
Zheng, Huixin (郑会欣). Guomin Zhengfu zhanshi tongzhi jingji yu maoyi yanjiu (1937–1945)
[国民政府战时统制经济与贸易研究 A study of the Nationalist government’s controlled
wartime economy and trade regime]. Shanghai: Shanghai shehui kexueyuan chubanshe,
2009.
Zhonggong zhongyang wenxian yanjiushi (中共中央文献编辑委员会), ed. Zhou Enlai xuanji
[周恩来选集 Selected works of Zhou Enlai]. Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1980.
Zhongguo guoji wenti yanjiu suo (中国国际问题研究所). Guoji xingshi he Zhongguo waijiao
lanpishu (2009/2010) [国际形势和中国外交蓝皮书 The bluebook of the international situ-
ation and China’s foreign affairs (2009/2010)] Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2010.
Zhu, Zhiqun. US-China Relations in the 21st Century: Power Transition and Peace. New
York: Routledge, 2006.
Zi, Zhongyun (资中筠). Meiguo duihua zhengce de yuanqi he fazhan (1945–1950) [美国对华
政策的缘起和发展 The origins and development of American policy toward China].
Chongqing: Chongqing chubanshe, 1987.
Zweig, David. Internationalizing China: Domestic Interest and Global Linkages. Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press, 2002.
Zweig, David, Chen Changgui, and Stanley Rosen. “Globalization and Transnational Human
Capital: Overseas and Returnee Scholars to China.” China Quarterly 179 (September 2004):
735–757.
Index
Academy of Sciences, 215, 280–281, American aid to China, Communist

313n3 rejection of, 133
Acheson, Dean, 146, 147, 149 American and Chinese intellectuals works,
ACSF. See Anti-Christian Student 308–311
Federation American and Chinese presidents,
Adams, John, 23–24 269–270
Adams, John Quincy, 28–29, 66 American arms sales, to Taiwan, 202–203,
Afghanistan, 200, 204 266
African American activists, 180–181 American Asiatic Association, 39, 65,
African American organizations, 180 71n46
Agenda 21 process, 215–216, 239n9 American Baptist Board of Foreign
agents of encounter, 167 Missions, 75, 77
Agreement between the United States of American Board of Commissioners for
America and the Union of Soviet Foreign Missions, 75, 77
Socialist Republics on the Prevention of American-Chinese relations, 135–136;
Nuclear War, 198 agents of encounter with, 167;
Agreement on Textiles and Clothing Communism impact on, 158; with
(ATC), 234–235 economic convergence, 279, 313n1;
Alabama Claims, 36–37 Ford administration and, 197–200;
Albright, Madeleine, 255, 255–256 interactions importance with, 167;
Alien Wives Act (1946), 54 political and military gap with, 279;
Alta California report, 62 with trade, society, religion, culture,
Amended Treaty (1880), 57 279
America, proselytizing of, 302; culture, American-Chinese relations during Cold
302; human rights, 303–305; politics, War: China in United Nations relating
303–305; religion, 302, 303–305; to, 143; ideological competition with,
society, 302 143; Korean War, 146–150; post-World
American, Chinese, and global factors, War II setting, 144–145; rapprochement
with trade, 4–9 with, 144, 161n6; recognition and
American aggression, Zhou on, 151–152 representation of PRC, 143, 145–146;
Taiwan impact on, 143–144, 150–154,
355
356 Index
161n3, 200–202; U.S.-Korean War Anglo-American hospitality, 5

impact on, 143; Vietnam War and Sino- Anglo-Chinese College, 75
American relations in 1960s, 154–158 Anglo-Chinese trade, 25, 28, 29
American Christianity, 304–305; American Anglo-Japanese alliance, 42, 121
Social Gospel, 85–89; anti-Christian anti-American demonstrations, after
violence, 81–83, 93n29; Boxer embassy bombing, 255–256
Uprising, 40–41, 42, 83–85; in China, anti-Asian immigration, 120
74–75, 171–173, 231, 303–304; as anti-Chinese exclusion, 35
foreign and Chinese institutions, 81–89; anti-Chinese sentiment, 53–54, 63
Taiping Rebellion and, 78–80 anti-Chinese violence, 62–63
American Civil Rights Movement, 167 Anti-Christian Movement, 172, 173, 179
American colonies, 5 Anti-Christian Student Federation (ACSF),
American dominance, during post-World 172
War II, 144 anti-Christian violence, 81–83, 93n29
American female laureate, Buck as, 170 anti-Communism, xxix–xxx, 125, 205
American Game. See Nixon’s “race in anti-imperialist, anti-warlord revolution,
Asia” and Mao’s “American Game” xx
American goods, boycott of, 65 anti-Manchu Chinese, xix
American imperialism, 192–193 anti-missionary riots, 82
American interest, in East Asia, 150, 154 Anti-spiritual Pollution and Anti-bourgeois
American invasion, of Cambodia, 194 Liberalization, 203–204
American missionary movement, in China, Arrow incident, 33–34
75, 77, 77–78, 79–80, 85 Arthur, Chester, 35, 38, 58
American missions and treaty rights, ASEAN. See Association of Southeast
75–78 Asian Nations
American Open Door notes, 83 Asia: East Asia, 120, 150, 154; economics
American patronage, Nationalist revolution in, 191; geopolitical changes in, 200;
and, 107–112 U.S. as watchdog of “free world” in,
American political system, Chinese 155. See also Nixon’s “race in Asia”
immigration relating to, 51 and Mao’s “American Game”
American Protestantism, 73, 89, 223; Asia-Indo-Pacific, China power across,
American Christianity as foreign and xxii
Chinese institution, 81–89; American Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, xxii,
Christianity in China, 74–75; American 284
missions and treaty rights, 75–78; Association for Relations across the
growth of, 75; Taiping Rebellion and Taiwan Strait, 253
American Christianity, 78–80 Association of Southeast Asian Nations
American Revolution, 4, 17 (ASEAN), 287, 289, 290, 292
Americans, Black, xxxi Astor, John Jacob, 16
American Social Gospel, 85; Chinese ATC. See Agreement on Textiles and
culture, religion, society and, 88–89; Clothing
contributions with, 85–89; higher “Authoritarian Adversary”, 323
education and, 87–88; medicine and, automobile industry, 301–302
86–87; publishing and, 86
American support: for China, 125–126; for balanced trade approaches, 194
GMD, 143 Bandung Conference, 153, 159
American trade policy, 193 Bao Dai, 155, 156
American Volunteer Group, 129 Barnett, A. Doak, 204–205
Anderson, Herbert, 233 Barrett, David D., 129
Index 357
Barshefsky, Charlene, 298 Board of Foreign Missions of the

Basic Principles of Negotiations on Presbyterian Church of the United
Strategic Arms Limitation, 198 States, 77
Battle of Triangle Hill, 149 Bogart, Humphrey, 180
Beijing Convention (1860), 35–36, 77 Bonham, George, 79
Beijing government, United States and, Borodin, Michael, 110
100, 112; CCP and, 101; GMD and, Bowles, Chester, 155
101; Republic of China and, 100–101, Boxer Indemnity Fund, 168
102; Shandong question and, 105, 108, Boxer Protocol, 84
110, 116n23, 170; Treaty of Versailles Boxer Uprising, 40–41, 42, 83; Boxer
and, 105–106, 106, 107, 109; Wilson Protocol with, 84; against Christians
and, xx, 102, 103–104, 121; Yuan and foreigners, 83–85, 94n39;
Shikai and, xxix, 100–102, 102–103, patriotism and, 85; Plum Flower Boxers
114n3, 169 and, 83; U.S. reactions to, 84–85
Beijing Olympics (2008), xxii, 307 boycott, of American goods, 65
Beijing Primary, 195 Brezhnev, Leonid, 157, 198, 203–204
Beijing trip, during Nixon/Kissinger-Mao/ BRI. See Belt and Road Initiative
Zhou initiative, 195 Bridgman, Elijah C., 75, 76, 77, 86
Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), xvi, A Brief Account of the United States of
267–268, 282, 283–285 America. See Meilige guo zhilüe
Bergman, Candace, 180 Britain: American colonies war with, 5;
Bergman, Ingrid, 180 Canton blockade by, 28; China defeat
Berlin Conference (1885), 39 by, xvii; copyright protection with,
Bible, 75–76, 308 xxiv–xxv; First British-Chinese Opium
“Big Four” peace settlement, 104–105 War, 10; Free-Trade Britain, xxv;
Big Sword Society, 83 immigration relating to, 61; Opium
bilateral economics, with U.S.-Chinese Wars with China and, 24–27; Qing
trade performance (1990-2020), 289, China conflict with, 24–27, 28, 29, 30,
315n38 31; Sino-British commercial treaty,
bilateral relationship, Deng involvement xxiv
with, 189, 190–191, 198, 199, 200, British and Foreign Bible Society, 74
201–202, 250 British East India Company, 4, 10, 14, 24
bilateral relationship renewal (1970-1989), Browne, J. Ross, 82–83
189; adjustment and reorientation in Bruce, David, 198, 198–199
1980s, 202–204; détente, 189; Ford Buck, Pearl S., in China, 170, 177; as
administration and American-Chinese American female laureate, 170; Chinese
relations, 197–200; Nixon/Kissinger- disparagement of, 171; Christianity
Mao/Zhou initiative, 193–197; Nixon’s and, 170–173; missionary background
“race in Asia” and Mao’s “American of, 171–172; Nobel Prize in literature,
Game”, 190–193; normalization and 170–171; Pulitzer Prize won by, 170;
consequences, 200–202 rehabilitation of, 171; spiritual ideals
bilateral trade imbalance, with China, 229, of, 172; works by, 170–171, 172
241n60 Buddhism, 81, 89
Black Americans, xxxi Burlingame Treaty (1868), 55–57, 60,
Black Lives Matter, 304 69n13
Black Panther Party, 180 Bush, George H. W., xxvii, 204, 244, 249,
Blaine, James G., 62–63, 70n38 251
Blumenthal Michael, 220 Bush, George W., 244, 256–257, 262;
China relations with, 258–259, 298,
358 Index
304–305; during Tiananmen Incident, Chiang Kai-shek, 109, 197; anti-

247, 248, 248–249, 250 Communist stance of, 125; CCP and,
Byrnes, James F., 131 126; China unification by, 122; control
lost by, 133, 178; as GMD leader,
CAI. See China-EU Comprehensive xx–xxi, xxv; Japan and, 123–125, 168;
Agreement on Investment during Korean War, 146, 150; League
Cairo Conference (1943), 129 of Nations complaint with, 122; Luce
Cairo Declaration (1943), 125, 144, 146 and, 174; Mao Zedong and, 126–128,
California, 52–54 129, 130–131, 174–175; military
Cambodia, 194 unification of, 110–111; nationalism of,
Campion, Donald R., 233 127; Taiwan issue with, 144, 150, 152,
Canada, 61 153, 154; U.S. relationship with, 112,
Canton, China, 27; British blockade of, 28; 128–129, 135, 142n51
Columbia in, 10–11; Empress of China Chiang-Stilwell feud, 129, 130
in, xv, 5–6, 8–9, 10, 20n20–20n21; Chicago Convention on International Civil
foreign trade in, 5–8, 9–10; GMD in, Aviation (1944), 256
104; multinational mercantile Chicago Defender, 179
community in, 12; Sino-foreign trade Chin, Frank, 180
in, 4, 7 China, xxii, 168, 189, 207n2; American
Canton Register, 27 Christianity in, 74–75, 171–173, 231,
capitalism, xix, 236; with IPR, xxvii–xxviii 303–304; American missionary
cargo, of Empress of China, 8, movement in, 75, 77, 77–78, 79–80, 85;
20n20–20n21 American support for, 125–126; in
Carnegie, Andrew, xxv, xxxivn31 balance, 131–135; British defeat of,
Carter, Jimmy, 200–202 xvii; Bush, George W., relations with,
Castro, Fidel, 180 258–259, 298, 304–305; Chiang
Catholics, in China, 74, 77, 89 unification of, 122; Clinton in,
CCC. See China Christian Council 254–255, 255–256, 303, 304, 304–305;
CCD. See Community of Common Destiny domestic migrant population in, 267;
CCP. See Chinese Communist Party economics of, 158, 194, 226, 227–228,
Central Pacific Railroad Corporation, 53 286, 322; foreign policy of, 203; as
challenges and implications, with China global development engine, 213–214;
market, 233; China reform process, loss of, 119–120, 126–135, 136, 158,
236; communication advances issues, 179; Ming China, 74; nascent
234; growing trade deficit with China, democracy in, 236; negative attitudes
235; political issues, 234; “self” and towards, 307; new and old, 217; Nixon
“other” perceptions, 237 in, xi, xxvi, 181, 266; nuclear test of,
Chapdelaine, Abbé Auguste, 33 156; Open Door doctrine in, xix, xxxii,
Chen, Eugene, 109 38–42, 42–43, 108; Opium Wars with,
Chen Duxiu, 101, 104 24–27; outside world approach of, 203;
Cheney, Dick, 263 reform process in, 236; sanctions
Chennault, Claire, 129 against, 293; state control in, 214;
Chen Qingzhi, 176 technological advances in, 267; threat
Chen Shui-bian, 262–263 of, 204–205; unfavorable opinions of,
Chen Xujing, as scholar and educator, 322; in United Nations, 143, 146, 197,
xxviii, 174, 175, 176–177, 177 209n35, 215; virtual bankruptcy of,
Chen Yi, 193, 198 120; in war against terror, 259. See also
Cheonan, 261 American Protestantism; Buck, Pearl
Chestnut program, 202 S., in China; Canton, China; growth
Index 359
dynamics, in China; Japanese “China’s Peaceful Development White

aggression, in China, Sino-American Paper”, xvi
Alliance and; People’s Republic of China trade, 279; with agricultural
China; Qing China; Red Star over technology, 226–227; American,
China and loss of China Chinese, and global factors with, 4–9;
China, in American imagination: African bilateral trade imbalance, 229, 241n60;
American activists relating to, 180–181; domestic economy restructuring,
Chinese Protestantism impact on, 178, 227–228; economic reform impact on,
179; Chinese response during Cold 226; exports with, 10; financing of,
War, 177–181; Christianity impact on, 12–15; foreign, with Canton, 4, 5–8, 7,
178–179; denominational churches in, 9–10; fortunes amassed with, 15–17;
178, 185n44; liberal Chinese Christian four periods of, 10; Hong Kong impact
leaders impact on, 178–179; trade on, 229–231; during 1980-1989,
figures relating to, 177–178 226–228; participants with, 3–4; with
China, international development of, 280; private farming, 227; with state-owned
with agriculture, 281; BRI, 281; with heavy industry, 227; tea, 10–11, 24;
BRI, 283–285; with domestic U.S. trading partner, 226; Yankee
programs, 281; with human-centered merchants and, 3, 11; See also specific
development, 281–282; with trade
infrastructure, 281; observations of, China-U.S. joint communiqués, 254–255
285–286; with sea lines, 284; China White paper, 136
technological advancement quest, Chinese: Christian tracts in, 79; culture,
282–283, 285–286; after world War II, religion, society, 88–89; in United
280 States, 82
China, Taiwan and, 249, 250, 264–266; Chinese-American educational exchange
crisis impact on, 252–254; trade impact programs, 307
on, 235 Chinese Christians, 172–173, 173,
China Christian Council (CCC), 179, 223, 178–179, 222–223
233 Chinese Christian workers, 78
China entry into WTO, 293, 294–298, Chinese Civil War (1949), 264, 280
300–301, 302; automobile industry Chinese Communist Party (CCP), xv,
impact of, 301–302; contributions with, xx–xxi, xxv, xxx–xxxi; Chiang and,
298–300; GATT relating to, 293–294; 126; constitution of, 192–193; five-year
globalization and liberalization impact plan of, 285–286; GMD and, 101, 130,
on, 295 131–133; Manchuria and, 132, 141n38;
China-EU Comprehensive Agreement on Mao and, 119, 128; negotiations with,
Investment (CAI), 290 112; Russians and, 109–110; Taiwan
China Lobby, 168, 197 and, 254; during Tiananmen Incident,
China market: allure of U.S. and, 213; 246, 247; United Front alliance with,
challenges and implications with, 109
233–237; first decade (1971-1980) Chinese Communist revolution, 126
framework building, 217–226; growth Chinese Courier and Canton Gazette, 27
dynamics and W. Arthur Lewis in Chinese diaspora, 51
China, 213–216; second decade, 1980- Chinese diplomat, Koo as, 168–170, 177
1989, improvements and obstacles, Chinese disparagement, of Buck, 171
226–233 Chinese Eastern Railway, 42
China Merchants’ Steam Navigation Chinese embassy bombing, 254–255,
Company, 16 275n41, 297; anti-American
China Mud (1941-1945), 128–131 demonstrations, after embassy
360 Index
bombing, 255–256; U.S. compensation Chinese roots, of Christianity, 73, 74–75,

paid, 256 91n1
Chinese-English dictionary, 75 Chinese Six Companies, 64
Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), 58, 62 Chinese Student Protection Act (1992),
Chinese exports to United States, 230 247
Chinese house back in order, 191; during Christianity, xxix, xxxii, 29, 35; Buck on,
shifting assessment of world situation, 170–173; in China, 74–75, 171–173,
192; with Sino-American 178–179, 231, 303–304; Chinese roots
rapprochement, 191–193; Soviet Union of, 73, 74–75, 91n1; denunciation of,
and U.S. threat relating to, 192–193 179; as heterodox sect, 81, 93n31; Qing
Chinese immigration: American political China and, 74. See also American
system relating to, 51; to California, Christianity
52–54; controlling immigration and The Christian Manifesto, 222–223
surviving exclusion, 51, 59–65; Christian missions, 41
migration between China and U.S., The Christian Occupation of China
52–54; for resident Chinese, 60, 66–67; (Buck), 172
U.S. approaches to, 73; U.S. roots of, Christians, Boxer Uprising against, 83–85,
51; wielding and contesting power of 94n39
state, 54–59 A Christian’s Appreciation of Other Faiths
Chinese Immigration and Emigration, (Reid), 89
1848-1868, 55 Christian Science Monitor, 304
Chinese Immigration to the United States, Christian tracts, in Chinese, 79
1869-1943, 56 Churchill, Winston, 125, 146, 150
Chinese Influence & American Interests: Church Missionary Society, 74, 81
Promoting Constructive Vigilance: citizen, by birth, 60
Report of the Working Group on Civil Rights Act (1964), 54
Chinese Influence Activities in the Cleaver, Eldridge, 180
United States (Diamond and Schell), Cleveland, Grover, 35, 38, 63
309 Clinton, Bill, 244, 249, 253; in China,
Chinese institutions, 81–89 254–255, 255–256, 303, 304, 304–305;
Chinese intellectuals works, 308–311 human rights crisis policies of,
Chinese IPR, xxv–xxvi 250–251; Zhu and, 297
Chinese laborers, 54, 57, 58, 58–59, 60, 61, CoCom. See Coordinating Committee for
63, 65, 214 Multilateral Export Controls
Chinese military exercises, during Taiwan coexisting rural and urban economies
crisis, 254 theories, of Lewis, 214
Chinese miners, 63 Cohen, Paul A., xvii
Chinese National army, 131 Cohen, William, 255–256
Chinese National Congress, xxvii cohong system, 6, 14, 19n8
Chinese nationalism, xxxii, 76 Cold War, xxi, xxii, xxix, 202, 204;
Chinese Nationalist government, xx, xxv Chinese response during, 177–181. See
Chinese navy, 268 also American-Chinese relations during
Chinese People’s Voluntary Army, 148, Cold War
149–150 Collis, Maurice Stewart, 27
Chinese presidents, 269–270 Columbia, 10–11
Chinese Protestantism, 178, 179 “The Coming Chinese Crackup”, 309
The Chinese Repository, 27, 75, 76, 78, 86 Commission for Reform of the Economic
Chinese response during Cold War, System, 216
177–181 Commission on Human Rights, 251
Index 361
Committee on American Interests in culture, 88–89, 279, 302; religion and, 222,
China, 39 222–226, 223
Committee on the Limitation of Cushing, Caleb, xvii–xviii, 29, 43, 77, 202
Armament, 107 Cushing, John P., 11, 14, 15, 16
Committee to Defend America by Aiding Customs, 6
Anti-Communist China, 223–224
Communism, 126, 127, 136, 193, 225, 304; Dalai Lama, 199
American-Chinese relations impacted Dalian, 132
by, 158; anti-Communism, xxix–xxx, Daoism, 81, 89
125, 205; containment of, 145, 146, Davies, John P., 129
148, 149, 158 Davies, Stephen, 51, 68n2
Communist Chiang government, xx Davis, J. F., 32
Communist China, 152, 156, 194, 208n25 Declaration of Four Nations on General
Communist ideology, 150 Security, 125
Communist International (1919-1943), 109 democracy, xxx
Communist Party, 153. See also Chinese Democratic Progressive Party (DPP),
Communist Party 252–253, 254, 264
Communists, 155; American aid to China Democratic Republic of Vietnam, 155
rejected by, 133; GMD defeat by, Denby, Charles, Jr., 39, 76, 82
133–134, 141n43; pro-Communist Deng Ziaoping, xxi, xxvi, 134; bilateral
missionaries, 224; revolutions, xxxii; relationship involvement of, 189,
Soviet-led Communist bloc, 144 190–191, 198, 199, 200, 201–202, 250;
Community of Common Destiny (CCD), Four Cardinal Principles announced by,
xvi, xxxiiin5 203; Four Modernizations of
Comparison of Growth in China’s Exports agriculture, industry, science and
to the World and to the United States technology, and military, 221–222, 227;
(2002-2020), 295 reforms of, 215, 216, 218, 226,
computers, 283 280–281; Second Revolution led by,
Condit, Philip M., 304 227; Southern Tour of Shenzhen, 250;
Confucianism, 81, 89 during Tiananmen Incident, 246–248
Confucius Institute, 307 denuclearization of Korean Peninsula, 261;
Congregation for the Propagation of the North Korean involvement with,
Faith, 74 261–262; Six-Party Talks with, 261;
Convention of Beijing (1860), 35–36 South Korean involvement with,
Coolidge, Archibald C., 170 261–262
coolies, 52, 53, 61 denunciation, of Christianity, 179
Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Derby, Elias Hasket, 16
Export Controls (CoCom), 220, 240n29 détente, 189
copyright infringement, with IPR, xxvii Diamond, Larry, 309
Council on Foreign Relations, 155 Dien Bien Phu, 155
COVID-19, 270, 286, 292, 323 Digest of International Law (Koo), 169
Crimea, 244 diplomatic relations, with China, 220
Cross-Strait Services Trade Agreement Dixie Mission, 129–130
with China, 264 Doha Development Round, 294
Crow, Carl, xxvi Dominicans, 74
Cuba, Soviet troops in, 200 Douglas, Lewis W., 155
Cultural China, 302, 306–308 DPP. See Democratic Progressive Party
Cultural Revolution. See Great Proletarian Du Bois, W. E. B., 180
Cultural Revolution dujuns, 104
362 Index
Dulles, John Foster, 152 Falun Gong, 255

dynastic empires, with Qing China, xvi Fanon, Frantz Omar, 180
Feng Yuxiang army, 109–110
East Asia: American interest in, 150, 154; 5th National People’s Congress (1982),
Japan in, 120 203
East India Company, 25 55 Days in Peking, 180
ECFA. See Economic Cooperation First British-Chinese Opium War, 10
Framework Agreement First Opium War, 24, 28–32, 43
economic convergence, with Chinese- Five-Power Pact, 107
American relations, 279, 313n1 Five Principles of equitable international
Economic Cooperation Framework relations, 159, 166n84
Agreement (ECFA), 263, 290 Food and Agriculture Organization, xxii
economic dualism and modernization Foot, Rosemary, xvi–xvii
ideas, of Lewis, 214 Forbes, Robert B., 25, 26, 28, 30
economics: in Asia, 191; bilateral, 289, Ford, Gerald R., 199, 210n45
315n38; challenges with, xvi, xix, 5, Ford administration and American-Chinese
194; of China, 158, 226, 227–228, 286, relations, 197–200
322; knowledge, 289; during 1971- Ford Foundation, 155
1980, 217–222; SEZs, 282–283, 294; Foreign Affairs, 190, 191, 260
supremacy of, xxiii, xxvi, xxx–xxxi foreign and Chinese institutions, American
Economy, Elizabeth, 309 Christianity as, 81–89
Eden, Anthony, 146, 159 Foreign Assets Control regulations, 193
education, xxviii, 87–88, 214 foreign commercial ships, in Qing China, 6
Einstein, Lewis, 170 foreigners, Boxer Uprising against, 83–85,
Eisenhower, Dwight D., 149, 152, 156 94n39
Elegant, Robert, 190–191 foreign policy: of China, 203; of U.S., 136.
Elements of International Law (Wheaton), See also United States foreign policy
86 reorientation
Elliot, Charles, 25, 27, 28, 30 foreign trade, in Canton, 4, 5–8, 7, 9–10
empire: concept of, xvi; dynastic, with Formosa. See Taiwan
Qing China, xvi Formosa Strait, 153
empire-nation, U.S. as, xvi Four Cardinal Principles, 203
Empress of China (U.S. ship), xv, 5–6, 8; Four Modernizations of agriculture,
cargo of, 8, 20n20–20n21; journey of, industry, science and technology, and
8–9, 10 military, 221–222, 227
Episcopal missions, 75 Four-Power Pact (1921), 107
epistemic communities, 280 Fourteen Points, 104, 106
Erasmus, Desiderius, 321 Franciscans, 74
EU and non-EU members, 269 Free Trade Agreement (FTA), 289–290,
European and American Protestant 290
missionaries, 78 Free-Trade Britain, xxv
European Catholic priests, 77 French Indochina, 155
Evarts, William M., 62–63 French Revolution, 10
Ever-Victorious Army, 80 FTA. See Free Trade Agreement
Exclusion Act (1882), 58 FTZ. See Shanghai Free Trade Zone
exclusionist setbacks, immigration relating Fuzhou missionary incident, 81
to, 60
Gang of Four, 198
Fairbank, John K., xvii, 43, 224 Garvin, Vicki, 180
Index 363
GATT. See General Agreement on Tariffs 216; with high-level education in

and Trade engineering and sciences, 214; with
Geary Act (1892), 58 hydroelectric power development, 220;
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade international orientation approach to,
(GATT), 293–294 216; with mass production, 214; with
Geneva Conference (1954), 155–156, MFN status, 220–221; with natural
158–159 sciences solutions, 215; state control
geoculturalism, xxviii, xxx, xxxii impact on, 214
geopolitical issues, xxxii Guangdong Maritime Customs, 6
Germany, 40 Guangdong Province, 6, 8, 14, 25, 32, 34,
Gilded Age, xx, 37, 54, 65, 101–102 52, 86
Girard, Stephen, 16 Guangzhou, 76
global context, of U.S.-Chinese relations, Guevara, Ernesto “Che”, 180
xvii–xxii, 322 Guomindang (Nationalist Party, GMD),
global development engine, China as, xx, 100
213–214
global event, of Tiananmen crisis, 244–245 Hager, John S., 62
global factors, with China trade, 4–9 Haig, Alexander M., 202–203
global geopolitical and economic Happer, Andrew, 87
challenges, xvii, xix Harding, Warren G., 107
global IPR, xxvi Harvey, Lawrence, 180
globalization, xvii, xxii, 295 Hay, John, 39, 40, 48n60
global power, xxiii, xxviii Hays, Rutherford B., 101–102
GMD. See Nationalist Party hegemony, 5
GMD-CCP coalition, 101, 110, 127 Heston, Charlton, 180
God, 79, 80 heterodox sect, Christianity as, 81, 93n31
Goldberg, Jeffrey, 304 He Yingqin-Umezu Yoshijirō Agreement
The Good Earth (Buck), 170 (1935), 124
Gorbachev, Mikhail, xxi, 203–204, 243 higher education, with American Social
Graham, Billy, 233 Gospel, 87–88
Grand Anti-religion Federation, 172 Ho Chi Minh, 155, 180
Grant, Ulysses S., 35, 37–38 Hoffman, Ogden, 62
Great Depression, 99, 122 Hong Kong, xxi, xxxii, 6, 32–33, 264–265
Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere, hongs, 7, 8, 11–12, 14–15, 20n12, 21n51
124–125 Hong Xiuquan, 78–79
“great interregnum”, 143 Hoover, Herbert, 123
Great Leap Forward (1958-1959), 154 hoppo, 6, 19n9
Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, xxi, Houqua, 21n51
177, 191, 198, 245; chaos with, 154, A House Divided (Buck), 170
157–158, 190, 231 Hua Guofeng, 221
Green, John, 5–6 Hu Angang, xxiii
growth, of American Protestantism, in Huang Hua, 135, 192
China, 75 Hubei Province, 100
growth dynamics, in China, 213, 214, 216; Hu Fuming, 215
cheap Chinese labor impact on, 214; Hughes, Charles E., 107, 108
China as global development engine, Huguang Railways, 42
213–214; with cross-cutting expertise, Hu Jintao, 244, 259, 263, 282, 306
215, 239n7; with full diplomatic Hull, Cordell, 124, 125
relations, 220; general practices for,
364 Index
human rights, 231–233, 250, 303–305; relating to, xxvii; legal standards for,
Clinton policies with, 250–251; MFN xxiii, xxiv, xxvi–xxvii; Qing China and
impact of, 250–251; UNHRC relating 3, xxiv; regulation of, xxiv–xxv; theft
to, 251–252 relating to, xxiii, xxxivn26
human trafficking, 61 International Civil Aviation Organization,
Hundred Days’ Reform (1898), 86 xxii
The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s international development: of PRC,
Secret Strategy to Replace America as 280–281. See also China, international
the Global Superpower, 309 development of
Hunter, Alan, 179 internationalism, 99–112, 136
Hunter, William C., 12, 14 International Monetary Fund, 216, 281
Huntington, Samuel, 235–236 international organizations, xxx
Hunt’s Merchants’ Magazine, 29 international orientation approach, to
Hu Qili, 246 growth dynamics, 216
Hurley, Patrick, 128, 130–131 International Religious Freedom Act, 303
Hu-Wen, 259–260 International Telecommunication Union,
Hu Yaobang, 203, 227, 245 xxii
hydroelectric power development, 220 invasion: American, of Cambodia, 194;
Japanese aggression, in China, Sino-
ideological competition, with American- American Alliance and, 127
Chinese relations, 143 IPR. See intellectual property rights
ideology, Communist, 150 Isaacs, Harold R., xxix–xxx
illiberal capitalism, 236 Ishiwara Kanji, 122
“Illusory Market: Trade with China, Long Islam, 81, 89
a Dream of Americans, Remains Only a
Mirage; Peking Policy Limits Imports; Jackson-Vanik Amendment, 220–221
China’s Potential Exports Unlikely to Jacoby, Annalee, 128
Spur demand; Want to Buy Any Pig Japan, xxi, 191; ambitions of, 107, 121,
Bristle?”, 219 126; Anglo-Japanese alliance, 42, 121;
immigration. See Chinese immigration ascendency of, 119; Chiang and,
immigration, surviving exclusion and 123–125, 168; China and, 168; defeat
control of, 51, 59, 60–61, 62–65; citizen of, 128; in East Asia, 120; Manchurian
by birth relating to, 60; exclusionist coup by, 119; Sino-Japanese
setbacks relating to, 60; legal commercial treaty, xxiv; U.S.
approaches to, 59; Mexico, Britain, and geopolitical clash with, 120–121
Canada relating to, 61; resident Chinese Japanese aggression, in China, Sino-
relating to, 60, 66–67 American Alliance and, 122, 124–126;
Immigration Act (1924), 120, 139n5 economic difficulties relating to, 122;
imperialism, American, 192–193 invasion relating to, 127; Manchukuo
Independence, USS, 254 relating to, 122, 123–124; Manchuria
The Independent, xxix, 78, 102–103 and, 122–124, 169; Russian threats and,
Indochina, 155–156 122
Industrial Development Organization, xxii Japanese Kwantung Army, 122
industrialization, 23–24, 53 Japanese wars: Russo-Japanese War
The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, 180 (1904-1905), 42, 120; Second Sino-
intellectual property rights (IPR), xxiii, Japanese War (1937), 119; Sino-
xxv–xxvi; capitalist systems with, Japanese War, xxv, 39, 120, 124–125
xxvii–xxviii; copyright infringement Jay, John, 9, 23
relating to, xxvii; global, xxvi; lawsuits Jefferson, Thomas, 23–24
Index 365
Jesuits, 74 Roosevelt, F. during, 146, 150; 38th

Jiang Qing, 198 Parallel during, 147, 147–149; Three
Jiang Zemin, 244, 247, 249–250, 254, 298; Great Allies during, 146; Truman
Bush, George W., and, 258–259, during, 147, 149; U.S. and China
304–305 involved in, 146–150, 162n19; Zhou
Jiaohui zinbao, 86 during, 148
Jin Cairong, 311
jingoism, militarism and, 122 Lansing, Robert, 121, 170
John of Monte Carvino, 74 Latourette, Kenneth S., 80
John Paul II (pope), 231–233 Law of the People’s Republic of China on
Johnson, Hewlett, 224 Safeguarding National Security in the
Johnson, Lyndon B., 154–155, 156 Hong Kong Special Administrative
Judaism, 89 Region (2020), 265
Juye Incident, 83 lawsuits, with IPR, xxvii
League of Nations, 105, 107, 122, 123, 169
Kelley, James, 263 Lee Teng-hui, 252–253, 254
Kellogg, Frank B., 111 The Left Hand of God, 180
Kennedy, John F., 155 legal approaches, to immigration, 59
Kerr, John G., 86 legal standards, for IPR, xxiii, xxiv,
Keying, 51 xxvi–xxvii
Khrushchev, Nikita, 157 Lenin, Vladimir, 109
Kim Il Sung, 147 Levi, Werner, xxviii
Kim Jong II, 261 Lewis, W. Arthur, 5–6, 213–214;
Kim Jong Un, 261–262 coexisting rural and urban economies
Kim-kwong Chan, 179 theories of, 214; economic dualism and
King, Rodney, 304 modernization ideas of, 214; as Nobel
Kirby, William C., xvii, xxv laureate, 214
Kissinger, Henry, 189, 193, 199, 201, 204, Liang, Chin-tung, 129
322–323 Liang Qichao, 41, 85
KMT, 264 Liang Tingman, 7–8
knowledge economy, 289 liberalization of commercial activity,
Knox, Henry, 17 during 1971-1980, 218–219
Kochiyama, Yuri, 180 Li Bingheng, 83
Koo, Wellington V. K., 104–105, 107–108, Li Hongzhang, xxix, 37, 80, 85
112; as Chinese diplomat, 168–170, Li Keqiang, 244, 282, 288
177; Digest of International Law Li Lanqing, 218
written by, 169; U.S. training of, Lilly, James, 200–201, 204, 210n49
168–170 Lin Biao, 134, 192, 198
Koo Chen-fu, 253 Lin Liru, 176
Korea, xxi, 37, 38, 39 Li Peng, 246
Korean Peninsula. See denuclearization of Liu Bingzhang, 82
Korean Peninsula Liu Bocheng, 134
Korean War, 146, 192, 223; Chiang during, Liu Shaoqi, 190–191
146, 150; consequences of, 149–150; Li Wenliang, 270
end of, 149–150; Mao during, 148; Li Xiannian, 204
Marshall during, 148; North Korea Li Yuanhong, 104
attacked by United States during, Liyuantun Incident, 83
148–149; Republic of Korea attacked Lodge, Henry Cabot, 42, 106
by North Korea during, 147–148; London Missionary Society, 74, 77
366 Index
Long March, 126–127 McQueen, Steve, 180

Long Yongtu, 293 medicine, with American Social Gospel,
Lord, Winston, 250 86–87
Luce, Henry R., 174 Meiji, Emperor, 120
Lu Kun, 25–27 Meiji Restoration, 38, 168
Lytton Report, 123 Meilige guo zhilüe (A Brief Account of the
United States of America), 86
MacArthur, Douglas, 147–148, 149 Merchants and Hong Names, 8
Macartney, George, 25 merchant security system, 11–12, 14
Macau, 6, 7, 27 Methodist Church, 74
MacMurray, John, 108–109, 111 Methodist Missionary Society of USA, 77
Magnuson Act, 54 Methodist missions, 75
Manchu Qing court, 6, 80, 100, 101, 114n5 Mexico, 61
Manchuria, 99, 119, 148, 150; dominance MFN. See most-favored-nation status
struggle over, 133–134; GMD and CCP midair collision, 254–257
attention towards, 132, 141n38; Middle East, 268
Japanese aggression with, 122–124, migration between China and United
169; Three Military Campaigns in, 134 States, 52–54
The Manchurian Candidate, 180 militarism, 122
Manchurian incident, 120–126 military conflicts, with Qing China, 76, 80
Mannix, Francis, 103 military spending, xxii, xxxivn17
Maoist Thought, 127 military unification, with Chiang, 110–111
Mao Zedong, xx–xxi, 101, 119, 124, 156, Millard, Thomas F., 172
157; CCP and, 119, 128; Chiang Kai- Milne, William, 75
shek and, 126–128, 129, 130–131, Milošević, Slobodan, 255
174–175; death of, 221; Hurley and, Ming China, 74
130; during Korean War, 148; Taiwan missionary organizations, xxviii–xxx, 41
and, 153–154; three world division missions. See specific missions
theory of, 199; U.S. relationship with, mobile phones, 283
112, 128–129, 135, 142n51; Zhou and, Molotov, Vyacheslav M., 159
130–131. See also Nixon/Kissinger- Monroe Doctrine, xviii–xix, 38
Mao/Zhou initiative; Nixon’s “race in Moon Jae-in, 261
Asia” and Mao’s “American Game” Moore, John Bassett, 169, 169–170
Marco Polo Bridge Incident, 124 Morrison, Robert, 75
Marshall, George C., 128–129, 131–133, Moscow, 205
148 most-favored-nation (MFN) status,
Marshall Plan, 235 220–221, 249–250, 250–251
Marxist-Leninism, 203, 215, 239n8, 282 Mukden Incident, 122–123, 169
Ma Sicong, 158 Multifiber Agreement, 234–235
Massachusetts General Hospital, 16 multilateral international organizations,
mass production, 214 xxx
Matsu, 152, 153 multinational mercantile community, in
May 4th Movement, 106 Canton, 12
Ma Ying-jeou years (2008-2016), 262, Muslims, 258
263–264 Mutual Defense Treaty (1954), 198
McConaughy, Walter, 135
McGregor, James, 234 Nanjing government, xxviii, 79, 110, 112,
McKinley, William, 39, 40–41, 42–43, 168, 177
84–85, 102 Nanjing Incident, 110–112
Index 367
Nanjing Massacre, 124 220; liberalization of commercial

Nanking Military Control Council, 135 activity during, 218–219; Nixon
Napier, William, 25, 29 economic policy change during, 218,
Nasser, Abdul, 159 219–220; ping-pong diplomacy, 218;
National Association of Evangelicals, 303 religion and culture, 222, 222–226, 223;
National Development and Reform social and economic note, 217–222;
Commission, xxviii, 216 U.S.-Chinese trade during, 217; U.S.
National Economic Council, xxv trade balance with China during, 222,
national identity, xviii, xx 223
nationalism, xvii, xix, 76, 127. See also 1980-1989 improvements and obstacles,
revolutions, nationalism, and 226; religion, Tibet, and human rights,
internationalism 231–233; retraded goods problem,
Nationalist Party (GMD, Guomindang), 229–231; trade, 226–228
xxv–xxvi, 177; American support for, 1980s, adjustment and reorientation in,
143; in Canton, 104; CCP and, 101, 202–204
130, 131–133; Chiang as leader of, 1990-2001, 249; China MFN status,
xx–xxi, xxv; Communist defeat of, 249–250, 250–251; Embassy bombing
133–134, 141n43; Manchuria relating and midair collision, 254–257, 275n41,
to, 132, 141n38; negotiations with, 297; human rights crisis, 250–252;
111–113; Soviet Russia and, 109–110; Taiwan crisis, 252–254; U.S.-Chinese
Taiwan and, 252–253; United Front relations during, 249–250
alliance with, 109; U.S. and, 119 Ningpo, 76, 80
Nationalist revolutions, xxi, xxxii, Nixon, Richard, 144, 191, 249; in China,
107–112 xi, xxvi, 181, 266; economic policy
Nationalists, 146, 153–154 changes of, 218, 219–220; resignation
National Reconstruction Commission, xxv to, 199; Zhou and, 156–157, 189
National Resources Commission, xxv Nixon Doctrine, 194
National Security Act (1947), xx–xxi, Nixon/Kissinger-Mao/Zhou initiative, 193;
xxxiiin16 ambassadorial talks during, 194;
National Security Council, 145, 149 American trade policy liberalized
National Security Strategy of the United during, 193; balanced trade approaches
States of America, 259 with, 194; Beijing trip during, 195;
National Trade Commission, xxviii China in United Nations during, 197,
NATO. See North Atlantic Treaty 209n35; Communist China issue
Organization during, 194, 208n25; cooperation and
natural sciences solutions, 215 assurances during, 195–197; Soviet
negotiations: with CCP, 112; with GMD, Union as issue during, 196; Taiwan
111–113 issue during, 196–197; U.S. and China
Nevius, John, 89–90 animosity during, 194–195; Yahya
New Development Bank, 284 Khan meetings during, 194, 195
Newton, Huey P., 180 Nixon’s “race in Asia” and Mao’s
New York Times, 218–219, 224, 233 “American Game”, 190; Chinese house
Ngo Dinh Diem, 156 back in order, 191–193; U.S. foreign
Nie Rongzhen, 193, 198 policy reorientation, 190–191
Nimitz, USS, 254 Nobel laureate, Lewis as, 214
Nine-Power Treaty, 108, 121 Nobel Prize in literature, for Buck,
1971-1980 framework building, 217; 170–171
China, new and old, 217; full Nolan, Peter, xxiii
diplomatic relations established during,
368 Index
normalization: consequences of moving Paris Peace Conference, 105, 107, 112,

forward and, 200–202; of Sino- 169–170
American relations, 189 Parker, Peter, 77, 86
North American colonies, 5 patent office, in Qing China, xxiv
North Atlantic Treaty Organization patriotism, with Boxer Uprising, 85
(NATO), 255, 265, 268–269 Paul, Henry D., 64
North Korea: nuclear program of, Pearl Harbor, 99, 119, 125, 129
261–262; Republic of Korea attacked Pearl River Delta, 6, 7, 52
by, 147–148; U.S. attack on, 148–149 Pelosi, Nancy, 247
North Vietnam, 156 Pence, Mike, 269, 309
Peng Ming-min, 254
Obama, Barack, 243–244, 302, 305; U.S.- People’s Liberation Army (PLA), 128,
Chinese relations during 2009-2017, 134, 144–145, 246, 256, 265–266
266, 267–269, 269 People’s Republic of China (PRC), xvi, 54,
Olney, Richard, 38 134–135, 144–145, 149, 181; birth of,
Open Door doctrine, 125; in China, xix, 134–135; economic standard of, 158;
xxxii, 38–42, 42–43, 108; notes from, international development of, 280–281;
83; with Opium Wars, 23–43 recognition and representation of, 143,
Operation Ichigo, 126 145–146; survival policies for, 249;
Operation Showdown, 149 Taiwan and, 153–154, 253, 265–266;
opium trade, 25, 27; treaty limitations with, Truman and, 145; United Nations and,
11 146; U.S. and, xxi, xxvi–xxvii,
opium treaties (1842-1877), 7, 76; See also 119–120, 150, 266; Vietnam War, Sino-
specific opium treaties American relations, and, 154
Opium Wars, xvii, 6, 76; backdrop to, People’s Republic of Korea, 147, 148
24–27; Britain and China in, 24–27; Perkins, Thomas Handasyd, 16
First British-Chinese Opium War, 10; Pescadores, 150, 152
First Opium War, Treaty of Wanghia, Pew Research Center, 307
and, 24, 28–32, 43; Open Door policy Philadelphia Bible Society, 75
with, 23–43; Qing China relating to, 24, Pillsbury, Michael, 309
28; Second Opium War and Treaty of ping-pong diplomacy, 218
Tianjin, 32–35; U.S., commercial PLA. See People’s Liberation Army
treaties, and, 24–35, 45n3 Plum Flower Boxers, 83
Organization for Economic Cooperation Politburo Standing Committee, 246
and Development, xxiii–xxiv political issues, 51, 234, 248–249, 279,
303–305
Pacific and Far Eastern Questions, 107 Port Arthur, 132
Pacific Frontier and Qing China, xxxii post-World War II setting, 144; American
Pacific War, Red China and, 119; dominance during, 144; China, in
Manchurian incident, 120–126; Red Soviet-led Communist bloc, 144; PLA
Star over China and loss of China, during, 144–145; PRC during, 144–145
119–120, 126–135, 136, 158 Powell, Colin L., 257
Panikkar, Kavalam Madhava, 148 PRC. See People’s Republic of China
Panmunjom, 149 PRC National Development and Reform
Pan Zhencheng, 7 Commission, 285–286
Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations pro-Communist missionaries, 224
of the United States with the Annual Progressive Era, 65
Message of the President Transmitted progressive reform, xx
to Congress December 5, 1899, 40
Index 369
“Promote People-to-People Friendship and Reid, Gilbert, 86, 88–89

Create a Better Future”, 282 Reinsch, Paul S., 106, 170
Protective Germany, xxv religion, 88–89, 279, 302, 303–305; culture
Protestantism: Chinese, 178, 179; and, 222, 222–226, 223; Tibet, human
European and American Protestant rights, and, 231–233
missionaries, 78. See also American Religious Freedom Act, 303
Protestantism republicanism, xix
Protestant missionaries, 74, 77–78, 81 Republic of China, xix, 100–101, 102, 150,
Prueher, Joseph W., 257 153
publishing, with American Social Gospel, Republic of Korea, 147, 149
86 resident Chinese, immigration for, 60,
Pulitzer Prize, of Buck, 170 66–67
Pumpelly, Raphael, 36, 78 Reston, James, 218
Restoring Educational Rights Movement
Qing China, 3, 14; Britain conflict with, (1924), 173
24–27, 28, 29, 30, 31; capitalism and, retraded goods problem, 229–231
xix; Christianity and, 74; Cleveland Revolutionary Action Movement, 180
and, 63; dynastic empires relating to, revolutions, xx, xxxii; See also specific
xvi; empire-nation of US and, xvi; First revolutions
Opium War and, 28; foreign revolutions, nationalism, and
commercial ships in, 6; intellectual internationalism, 99, 136; Nationalist
property and, xxiv; military conflicts revolution and American patronage,
with, 76, 80; Opium Wars relating to, 107–112; U.S. and Beijing government
24, 28, 32, 33, 33–35; patent office in, (1912-1928), 100–106
xxiv; PRC and, xvi; U.S. relations with, Rhee, Syngman, 147
36; U.S. treaty with, xviii, xxiv Ridgway, Matthew B., 149
Quadrennial Defense Review Report Roberts, Issachar, 79
(2001), 258 Rockefeller Foundation, 155
Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, 302 Rockhill, William W., 39, 40, 48n62, 101
Quemoy, 152, 153 Rock Springs Massacre (1885), 63
Roman Catholic missions, 74
racial exclusion, 59 Roosevelt, Franklin, 124, 125; during
rapprochement, xxi; with U.S. and China, Korean War, 146, 150
144, 161n6, 191–193, 233–234, Roosevelt, Theodore, xix, 39, 42, 43,
244–245 49n76, 121
RCEP. See Regional Comprehensive Root, Elihu, 121
Economic Partnership Root-Takahira Agreement, 121
Reagan, Ronald, 201, 202–203, 204 Roy, J. Stapleton, 252
recognition: of China, by UN, 143; of Rules of Trade and Tariff, 34
PRC, 143, 145–146; of Taiwan, 150 Runcie, Robert, 233
Red Guards, 157 Rusk, Dean, 155, 159
Red Star Over China (Snow), 175 Russell, Richard, 155
Red Star over China and loss of China, Russell, Samuel W., 11
119–120, 126–135, 136, 158 Russian Revolution, 190
Regional Comprehensive Economic Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), 42, 120
Partnership (RCEP), 290
regulation, of IPR, xxiv–xxv Saigon, 155, 156
Regulations on Religious Affairs, 305 Salvation Army, 74
rehabilitation, of Buck, 171 The Sand Pebbles, 180
370 Index
Sao-ke Alfred Sze, 107–108, 112 Sino-Japanese War, xxv, 39, 120, 124–125
Sasser, James, 255–256 Sino-Russian Treaty of Friendship and
Schell, Orville, 309 Alliance, 134
Schlesinger, Arthur, 190–191 Sino-Soviet split, 157–158, 158
Schneier, Arthur, 233 Sino-U.S. commercial treaty, xxiv
Second Coming of Christ, 75 Six-Party Talks, 261
Second Revolution, 227 Smoot-Hawley Act (1930), 220
Second Sino-Japanese War (1937), 119 Sneevliet, Hendricus, 110
Self-Strengthening Movement, 85 Snow, Edgar, 130, 173; as journalist, 173,
Senior Steering Group, 250–251 174, 175, 177
September 11 attacks, xxii, 258 Snowcroft, Brent, 247–248
Service, John S., 129, 130 social and economic note, during 1971-
Seward-Burlingame Treaty (1868), 36–37 1980, 217–222
SEZs. See special economic zones Socialist Youth League, 172
Shambaugh, David, xxiii society, 88–89, 279, 302; See also specific
Shandong Province, 105, 108, 110, society
116n23, 170 Society for the Propagation of the Faith, 74
Shanghai Cooperation Organization, xxii, Society of Righteousness and Harmony,
284 83–84
Shanghai Expo (2010), xxii Society of the Divine Word, 83
Shanghai Free Trade Zone (FTZ), 291 SOEs. See state-owned enterprises
Shanghai Joint Communiqué, 196, 199 Song, James, 263
Shanghai Steam Navigation Company, 16 Sons (Buck), 170
Shaw Samuel, 5–6, 11, 12, 15, 17 Soong, T. V., 111, 125, 168
Shidehara Kijūrō, 120, 122 Soong Mayling, 112, 125, 168
Shi Guangsheng, 298 South China Sea, 268
Sihanouk government, of Cambodia, 194 Southern Tour of Shenzhen, 250
Silk Road Fund, 284 South Korea, xxi, 261–262
Sinatra, Frank, 180 South Manchurian Railway, 123
Sino-American alliance: Japanese Soviet bloc, xxi
aggression in China and, 122–126, 127, Soviet Bolsheviks, 109
169; Manchurian Incident, Pacific War, Soviet-led Communist bloc, 144
and, 120–126; Vietnam War and, Soviet Russia, GMD and, 109–110
154–158 Soviet Union, xxi, 107, 196, 203–204;
Sino-American rapprochement, 191–193 demise impact of, 243–244; U.S. and,
Sino-American relations: 1950s and 1960s, 192–193
143–144, 159; normalization of, 189 Spaghetti Bowl, 289–290
Sino-American treaties, 54–55; Amended Spanish-American-Cuban-Filipino war,
Treaty (1880), 57; Burlingame Treaty 39–40
(1868), 55–57, 60, 69n13; Chinese Special Conference on Tariffs, 108, 112
Exclusion Act (1882), 58, 62; 1882 special economic zones (SEZs), 282–283,
Exclusion Act, 58; 1894 Treaty, 58–59; 294
Geary Act (1892), 58; Relinquishment spiritual ideals, of Buck, 172
of Extraterritorial Rights in China and Stansbury, Daniel, 11
the Regulation of Related Matters, 125 state control, in China, 214
Sino-British commercial treaty, xxiv State Intellectual Property Office, xxviii
Sino-foreign trade, in Canton, 4, 7 state-owned enterprises (SOEs), 250,
Sino-Japanese commercial treaty, xxiv 267–268
Sino-Japanese conflict, 123–124 state-owned heavy industry, 250, 267–268
Index 371
state planning, with technological Tang dynasty, 74

advancement, 283 Tanggu Truce (1933), 124
Stevenson, Adlai, 155 Tang Jiaxuan, 257
Stilwell, Joseph W., 126, 128–129 Tanzam Railway, 216
Stimson, Henry L., 123, 126–127 Taylor, Charles, 79, 79–80
“Strengthening Cultural Self-Confidence tea trade, 10–11, 24
and Building a Strong Socialist Country technological advancement quest, of
of Culture” (Xi), 306 China, 282; with computers and mobile
Stuart, John Leighton, 128–129, 132–133, phones, 283; with domestic market,
134–135 283; with SEZs, 282–283; with state
Subramanian, Arvind, xxiii planning, 283
Sun Yat-sen, 86, 101, 109–110, 115n10, Tenet, George, 255–256
127 theft, of IPR, xxiii, xxxivn26
Supreme Court cases, 59, 60, 70n28 The Third Revolution (Economy), 309
Su Yu, 134 Third World, 201
Thirteen Hongs, 6
Taft, William Howard, 42, 121 Three Military Campaigns, in Manchuria,
Taiping Rebellion, 33; American 134
Christianity and, 78–80 Three-Self Patriotic Movement Committee
Taiping Tianguo, 79 (TSPM), 223
Taiwan, xxi, xxxii, 6, 189, 192, 199–200, three world division theory, of Mao, 199
206n1; American-Chinese relations Tiananmen crisis (1989), xxvii, 201, 205,
during Cold War impacted by, 235, 244, 293, 295; Bush, George W.,
143–144, 150–154, 161n3, 200–202; during, 247, 248, 248–249, 250; CCP
CCP and, 254; Chiang and, 144, 150, during, 246, 247; Democracy impact
152, 153, 154; China and, 249, 250, on, 245–246; demonstrations during,
264–266; disputes over, 150–154, 154; 245–246; Deng during, 246–248; as
GMD and, 252–253; Mao and, global event, 244–245; militant
153–154; PRC and, 153–154, 253, university students during, 245–246,
265–266; protection of, 152; 273n6; political setback of, 248–249;
recognition of, 150; trade with, 235; supporters of, 245
treaty with, 152; Truman and, 150, Tibet, xxxii, 231–233, 249
151–152; UN expulsion of, 146; Zhou Ting, K. H., 178
and, 153 Tongzhi Self-Strengthening Movement, 35
Taiwan crisis, 153, 252; American arms TPP. See Trans-Pacific Partnership
sales during, 202–203, 266; China and, trade. See China trade
252–254; Chinese military exercises trade figures, with China, 177–178
and, 254; Lee and, 252–253, 254; Trade in Services Agreement, 290
Nixon/Kissinger-Mao/Zhou initiative trademarks, xxiv
during, 196–197; UN impacted by, 253; trade war, U.S.-Chinese trade performance
U.S.-Chinese relations impacted by, during, 286–287
252–254 trading commodities, finance, and
Taiwanese Nationalists, 146 mechanisms, 9–15
Taiwan issue, 197 Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), 289–290
Taiwan Relations Act (1979), 201 Treasury Department, U.S., 59
Taiwan-U.S.-Chinese relations (2008- treaties: limitations of, 11; rights of, 75–78;
2016), 262, 264, 265–270; Ma Ying- Taiwan, 152; See also specific treaties
jeou, 262, 263–264; Tsai Ing-wen, 262, Treaty of Amity, Commerce and
264, 265 Navigation, 11
372 Index
Treaty of Nanjing, 32 United Nations Security Council, xvi, 125,

Treaty of Paris, 5 147, 152, 261, 280
Treaty of Tianjin, 32–35, 77 United States (U.S.): Beijing government
Treaty of Versailles, 105–106, 106, 107, and (1912-1928), xx, xxix, 100–106,
109 107, 108, 109, 110, 112, 121, 170;
Treaty of Wanghia, 28–32 Boxer Rebellion reaction of, 84–85;
Treaty of Washington (1871), 323–324 Chiang relationship with, 112,
Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear 128–129, 135, 142n51; China trade
Weapons, 261 with, 4–9, 15–17, 21n55, 213, 226, 230;
treaty ports, 76, 77 Chinese in, 82, 168; embassy bombing
Trudeau, Pierre, 248 compensation paid by, 256; First
Truman, Harry, 131, 132, 133, 179, 321; Opium War, Treaty of Wanghia, and,
during Korean War, 147, 149; PRC 24, 28–32, 43; foreign policy of, 136;
and, 145; Taiwan and, 150, 151–152 GMD and, 119; hongs relating to, 12;
Trump, Donald, xxxii, 243–244, 244, 262, industrialization in, 23–24; Japan,
286, 302, 307 geopolitical clash with, 120–121; Koo
Tsai Ing-wen years (2016-present), 262, trained by, 168–170; Mao relationship
264, 265 with, 112, 128–129, 135, 142n51;
Tsing Hua College, 168 migration between China and, 52–54;
TSPM. See Three-Self Patriotic Movement as nation-state and empire, 321; North
Committee Korea attacked by, 148–149; Opium
Tuchman, Barbara, 129, 217 Wars, commercial treaties, and, 24–35,
two Chinas notion, 153, 202, 253 45n3; PRC and, xxi, xxvi–xxvii,
2001-2020, 257; denuclearization of 119–120, 150, 266; Qing China and,
Korean Peninsula, 261–262; U.S.- xviii, xxiv, 36; Second Opium War,
Chinese relations trends during 2001- Treaty of Tianjin, and, 32–35; Soviet
2012, 257–260 Union and, 192–193; trade fortunes
amassed by, 15–17; urbanization of, 66;
UN Declaration of Rights, 250–251 as watchdog of “free world” in Asia,
UNESCO, 306 155; after World War II, 158
UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), United States foreign policy reorientation,
251–252 190; Asian economics with, 191; Nixon
Union Pacific Railroad, 53, 63 views on, 191; Schlesinger on, 190–191
Unitarianism, 89 United States Trade Representatives
United Front alliance, 109 (USTR), xxvii
United Nations: China in, 143, 146, 197, U.S. See United States
209n35, 215; Taiwan crisis impact on, U.S.-China Defense talks, 286
253 U.S.-China Human Rights Dialogue, 286
United Nations agencies: Food and U.S.-China Strategic and Economic
Agriculture Organization, xxii; Dialogue, 286
Industrial Development Organization, U.S.-China Track II Dialogue on the Rule
xxii; International Civil Aviation of Law & Human Rights, 286
Organization, xxii; International U.S.-China Track II Economic Dialogue,
Telecommunication Union, xxii 286
United Nations Development Programme, U.S.-Chinese relations, 112–113, 277n74,
215–216 311–312; American and Chinese
United Nations Millennium Development presidents, 269–270; as an ongoing
Goals, 285, 313n7 contest between two states in a
changing global context, xvii–xxii;
Index 373
balance of power with, 243; during Vietnam: Cambodia and, 200; Democratic
Biden administration, 266, 270; clashes, Republic of Vietnam, 155; North
cooperation, fluctuations in, 243–244; Vietnam, 156
crises impact on, 250–257; Vietnam War and Sino-American relations
deterioration of, 243–244; during in 1960s, 154, 155–156, 156–158;
1860s-1880s, 35–38; global concern of, Communist regimes during, 155;
xvii–xxii, 322; Korean War impact on, Democratic Republic of Vietnam, 155;
146–150, 162n19; major crises impact PRC involved with, 154; Saigon with,
on, 243; during 1990-2001, 249–250; 155, 156
during Obama years (2009-2017), 266, violence: anti-Chinese, 62–63; anti-
267–269, 269; rapprochement with, Christian, 81–83, 93n29
144, 161n6, 191–193, 233–234,
244–245; Soviet Union demise impact Wang Chonghui, 107–108
on, 243–244; strategic repositioning, Wang Hongwen, 198
267–269; survey of, 321; Taiwan crisis Wang Jianlang, 129
impact on, 252–254; Tiananmen crisis Wang-Koo summit, 253
watershed, 244–249; during Trump Wanguo gongfa, 86
years, 266, 269, 269–270; during 2001- War Brides Act (1945), 54
2020, 257–262. See also Taiwan-U.S.- Ward Incident, 134
Chinese relations (2008-2016) War of 1812, 10
U.S.-Chinese relations trends during 2001- War of Resistance (1937-1945), 124
2012, 257, 258–260; geopolitical wars: against terror, 259. See also Cold
relationship elements, 257–258 War; Korean War; specific wars
U.S.-Chinese Trade (1971-1980), 217, Washington, George, 23–24
222, 223 Washington Conference on Naval
U.S.-Chinese Trade (1981-1990), 231 Disarmament (1921-1922), 107,
U.S.-Chinese Trade (1991-2020), 296, 299 107–108, 112
U.S.-Chinese trade performance (1990- Washington-Moscow-Beijing strategic
2020), 286, 289–290; with bilateral relationship, 159
economics, 289, 315n38; China as Watergate scandal, 199, 199–200
second-largest economy, 286; with Webster, Daniel, xvii–xviii
commercial services, 286, 288, 315n31; Wedemeyer, Albert C., 128–129, 133
with exports and imports, 287–288, Wei Daoming, 125
314n18, 314n22, 315n24; with Wei Jingsheng, 245
knowledge economy, 289; with quality Wen Ho Lee, 255
development, 286, 289; trade data Wen Jiabao, 244, 259, 260, 263, 282, 305
trends, 291–292; during trade war, Wen Wei Po newspaper, 297–298
286–287 Whampoa, 6, 7
U.S. Copyright Act (1970), xxiv–xxv, Wheaton , Henry, 86
xxvii White, Andrew D., 40
U.S.-Korean War impact, 143 White, Theodore H., 128, 130, 217
U.S. Taiwan Assurance Act (2019), 201, WHL properties, 306, 318n89
265 Wilcocks, Benjamin Chew, 11
USTR. See United States Trade Williams, Hosea L., 226
Representatives Williams, Robert F., 180
U.S. trade balance with China (1971- Wilson, Woodrow, xx, 102, 103–104, 121
1980), 224 Wolfe, John R., 81
U.S. trade balance with China (1990- World Bank, 216, 281
2020), 294 World Health Organization, 215–216
374 Index
World Heritage Convention (1985), 306 Yao Yilin, 246

World Intellectual Property Organization, Yard, James M., 173
xxiv, xxvi–xxvii Ye Jianying, 193, 198
World Student Christian Federation, 172 Ye Mingchen, 32–33, 34
World Trade Organization (WTO), 221, Yen, W. W., 112, 168
250, 267–268, 288; background of, YMCA, 74
xxiii–xxiv, xxvi; China entry in, Young, John Russell, 61
293–302; principles of, 300–301 Yuan Mongols, 74
World War I, 99, 103, 120 Yuan Peng, 310
World War II, xx, xxvi, 99, 133–134, 158, Yuan Shikai, xxix, 100–102, 102–103,
280. See also post-World War II setting 114n3, 169
WTO. See World Trade Organization Yung Wing, 168, 183n2
Wu, Y.T., 178 YWCA, 74
Wu Chaoshu, 111
Wu Chengming, 214 Zeng Guofan, 80
Wu Peifu, 108 Zhang Chunqiao, 198
Zhang Jinfu, 220
Xianfeng, Emperor, 34, 35 Zhang Xueliang, 110, 122, 127
Xi’an Incident (1936), 127, 174 Zhang Zhidong, xxiv, 41
Xi Jinping: Kim Jong Un and, 261–262; Zhang Zuolin, 108
Ma and, 264; as president, xvi, 150, Zhao Ziyang, 227
243–244, 269, 282; “Strengthening Zheng Bijian, 260
Cultural Self-Confidence and Building Zhongguo bugaoxing, 310
a Strong Socialist Country of Culture” Zhongguo keyi shuobu, 310
by, 306 Zhou Enlai, 135, 142n51, 145, 159, 204;
Xinjiang, xxxii on American aggression, 151–152; on
Xu Chongqing, 175–176 American imperialism, 192–193;
Xu Guangjin, 32 during Korean War, 148; Mao and,
Xu Xiangqian, 193, 198 130–131; Nixon and, 156–157, 189;
Taiwan and, 153. See also Nixon/
Yahya Khan, Agha Mohammad, 194, 195 Kissinger-Mao/Zhou initiative
Yalta Conference (1945), 129 Zhu Rongji, 244, 247–248, 249, 298;
Yan Xuetong, 310 Clinton and, 297
Yao Wenyuan, 198
ASIA/PACIFIC/PERSPECTIVES
Series Editor: Mark Selden
Crime, Punishment, and Policing in China

edited by Børge Bakken
Woman, Man, Bangkok: Love, Sex, and Popular Culture in Thailand
by Scot Barmé
Making the Foreign Serve China: Managing Foreigners in the People’s
Republic
by Anne-Marie Brady
Marketing Dictatorship: Propaganda and Thought Work in China
by Anne-Marie Brady
Collaborative Nationalism: The Politics of Friendship on China’s Mongo-
lian Frontier
by Uradyn E. Bulag
The Mongols at China’s Edge: History and the Politics of National Unity
by Uradyn E. Bulag
Transforming Asian Socialism: China and Vietnam Compared
edited by Anita Chan, Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet, and Jonathan Unger
Bound to Emancipate: Working Women and Urban Citizenship in Early
Twentieth-Century China
by Angelina Chin
The Search for the Beautiful Woman: A Cultural History of Japanese and
Chinese Beauty
by Cho Kyo, translated by Kyoko Iriye Selden
China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution: Master Narratives and Post-
Mao Counternarratives
edited by Woei Lien Chong
375
376 ASIA/PACIFIC/PERSPECTIVES
North China at War: The Social Ecology of Revolution, 1937–1945

edited by Feng Chongyi and David S. G. Goodman
The People between the Rivers: The Rise and Fall of a Bronze Drum Culture,
200–750 CE
by Catherine Churchman
Prosperity’s Predicament: Identity, Reform, and Resistance in Rural War-
time China
by Isabel Brown Crook and Christina Kelley Gilmartin with Yu Xiji,
compiled and edited by Gail Hershatter and Emily Honig
Little Friends: Children’s Film and Media Culture in China
by Stephanie Hemelryk Donald
Beachheads: War, Peace, and Tourism in Postwar Okinawa
by Gerald Figal
Gender in Motion: Divisions of Labor and Cultural Change in Late Imperial
and Modern China
edited by Bryna Goodman and Wendy Larson
Social and Political Change in Revolutionary China: The Taihang Base Area
in the War of Resistance to Japan, 1937–1945
by David S. G. Goodman
Rice Wars in Colonial Vietnam: The Great Famine and the Viet Minh Road
to Power
by Geoffrey C. Gunn
Islands of Discontent: Okinawan Responses to Japanese and American Pow-
er
edited by Laura Hein and Mark Selden
Masculinities in Chinese History
by Bret Hinsch
The Rise of Tea Culture in China: The Invention of the Individual
by Bret Hinsch
Women in Early Imperial China, Second Edition
by Bret Hinsch
Chinese Civil Justice, Past and Present
by Philip C. C. Huang
Local Democracy and Development: The Kerala People’s Campaign for
Decentralized Planning
by T. M. Thomas Isaac with Richard W. Franke
Hidden Treasures: Lives of First-Generation Korean Women in Japan
by Jackie J. Kim with Sonia Ryang
North Korea: Beyond Charismatic Politics
by Heonik Kwon and Byung-Ho Chung
A Century of Change in a Chinese Village: The Crisis of the Countryside
by Juren Lin, edited and translated by Linda Grove
Postwar Vietnam: Dynamics of a Transforming Society
ASIA/PACIFIC/PERSPECTIVES 377
edited by Hy V. Luong
From Silicon Valley to Shenzhen: Global Production and Work in the IT
Industry
by Boy Lüthje, Stefanie Hürtgen, Peter Pawlicki, and Martina Sproll
Resistant Islands: Okinawa Confronts Japan and the United States, Second
Edition
by Gavan McCormack and Satoko Oka Norimatsu
The Indonesian Presidency: The Shift from Personal toward Constitutional
Rule
by Angus McIntyre
Nationalisms of Japan: Managing and Mystifying Identity
by Brian J. McVeigh
Poisoning the Pacific: The US Military’s Secret Dumping of Plutonium,
Chemical Weapons, and Agent Orange
by Jon Mitchell
The Korean War: A Hidden History
edited by Tessa Morris-Suzuki
To the Diamond Mountains: A Hundred-Year Journey through China and
Korea
by Tessa Morris-Suzuki
To Hell and Back: The Last Train from Hiroshima
by Charles Pellegrino
From Underground to Independent: Alternative Film Culture in Contempo-
rary China
edited by Paul G. Pickowicz and Yingjin Zhang
Wife or Worker? Asian Women and Migration
edited by Nicola Piper and Mina Roces
Social Movements in India: Poverty, Power, and Politics
edited by Raka Ray and Mary Fainsod Katzenstein
Pan-Asianism: A Documentary History, Volume 1, 1850–1920
edited by Sven Saaler and Christopher W. A. Szpilman
Pan-Asianism: A Documentary History, Volume 2, 1920–Present
edited by Sven Saaler and Christopher W. A. Szpilman
Biology and Revolution in Twentieth-Century China
by Laurence Schneider
Contentious Kwangju: The May 18th Uprising in Korea’s Past and Present
edited by Gi-Wook Shin and Kyong Moon Hwang
Thought Reform and China’s Dangerous Classes: Reeducation, Resistance,
and the People
by Aminda M. Smith
When the Earth Roars: Lessons from the History of Earthquakes in Japan
by Gregory Smits
Subaltern China: Rural Migrants, Media, and Cultural Practices
378 ASIA/PACIFIC/PERSPECTIVES
by Wanning Sun
Japan’s New Middle Class, Third Edition
by Ezra F. Vogel with a chapter by Suzanne Hall Vogel, foreword by
William W. Kelly
The Japanese Family in Transition: From the Professional Housewife Ideal
to the Dilemmas of Choice
by Suzanne Hall Vogel with Steven K. Vogel
The Korean War: An International History
by Wada Haruki
Longmen’s Stone Buddhas and Cultural Heritage: When Antiquity Met Mod-
ernity in China
by Dong Wang
The United States and China: A History from the Eighteenth Century to the
Present, Second Edition
by Dong Wang
The Inside Story of China’s High-Tech Industry: Making Silicon Valley in
Beijing
by Yu Zhou
About the Author
Dong Wang is distinguished professor of history and director of

the Wellington Koo Institute at Shanghai University since 2016, research
associate of the Fairbank Center at Harvard University since 2002, a member
of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, and an elected Fellow of the
Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. Her single-authored
books in English are: Longmen’s Stone Buddhas and Cultural Heritage:
When Antiquity Met Modernity in China (2020), The United States and Chi-
na: A History from the Eighteenth Century to the Present (2013, winner of
The American Library Association’s “Choice Top 25 Outstanding Academic
Titles”; second and revised edition 2021), Managing God’s Higher Learn-
ing: U.S.-China Cultural Encounter and Canton Christian College (Lingnan
University), 1888–1952 (2007), and China’s Unequal Treaties: Narrating
National History (2005).
379

DONG WANG - The UNITED STATES AND CHINA - A History From The Eighteenth Century To The present.-ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD (2021)

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

DONG WANG - The UNITED STATES AND CHINA - A History From The Eighteenth Century To The present.-ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD (2021)

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The United States and China

A History from the Eighteenth

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE

Copyright © 2021 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Wang, Dong, 1967- author.

List of Illustrations vii

Part I: The Pacific Frontier and Qing China, 1784–1911 1

Part III: Rapprochement, the United States as the Benchmark

11 Clashes, Cooperation, and Fluctuations in the Relationship 243

Mao Tse–Tung (Mao Zedong) Cartoon, 1958.

Fig. 12.2 Comparison of Growth in China’s Exports to the

Table 1.1 List of Business Names of Merchants,

While presenting my findings from original research, a historical synthesis

Sciences in Beijing—for the United States in August 1993; my plane ticket

Combining original research with contemporary scholarship, this revised edi-

effectively by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) at open platforms and

to avoid contentious issues, to be mindful of American national dignity, and

The assertion of national identity and independence was of prime importance

took the lead in extending reciprocal copyright protection to foreign coun-

In Nationalist China of the 1930s, these measures had predictable conse-

The Chinese manufacturer is also a graceless and shameless imitator of trade

where the state-guided acquisition of IPR, expanding markets, and technolo-

Many Chinese perceived Christianity as a foreign intrusion into their relig-

independence and administrative integrity. . . . It was an experience shared by

REVISIONS AND CHAPTER OUTLINE

The Pacific Frontier and Qing China,

Yankee Merchants and the China Trade

AMERICAN, CHINESE, AND GLOBAL FACTORS

Economic Challenges and Opportunities in the Postrevolution Era

As a colony of a hegemonic power, America had been included in the British

Foreign Trade in Canton

Business Name of Merchants Hong Names

eighty-three foreign vessels anchored in Canton harbor, bringing tax reve-

The Empress of China

On Sunday, February 22, 1784—George Washington’s birthday—the 360-

TRADING COMMODITIES, FINANCE, AND MECHANISMS

Enjoying considerable flexibility compared to their British competitors who

British monopoly systems. Although not comparable to the British China

[T]he gardens belonging to Chowqua [Chen Yuanquan; hong name, Yuanquan

As a body of merchants, we found them honourable and reliable in all their

Sir, Mr. A [Augustine] Heard [Forbes’ partner] having kindly afforded me a

foreigners. 46 In the latter two-thirds of the eighteenth century, however, most

of a peasant rebellion. The letter throws an intimate light on what—beyond

The following letter illustrates another side of the triangular relationship

Your open letter by Capt. Pearson was handed me yesterday by himself in

ASSESSMENT OF AMERICA’S EARLY CHINA TRADE

interactions between U.S. strategic interests, competition, profitability, the

ence of China in the American Enlightenment (Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State

Opium Wars and the Open Door

THE UNITED STATES, THE OPIUM WARS,

The merchants supposed that he was coming to make some arrangements by

In a similar vein, John Thacker, a British trader, recollected that in expecta-

it was understood by the Chinamen and Europeans that he came to soften

Encountering resistance to his demands, Lin imposed an embargo on all trade

group of merchants headed by William Jardine and James Matheson, the

To trade in a noxious drug was not characteristic of British commerce. The

The United States, the First Opium War,

As the Anglo-Chinese trade conflict intensified, American expatriates, politi-

Lord Napier, a commissioner and plenipotentiary so appointed. . . . The con-

One lengthy article written by a lawyer for Hunt’s Merchants’ Magazine