Kikujiro that acknowledged Japan’s “special interests” in China, even though
Japan privately agreed not to seek privileges at the expense of other friendly
powers in China. The notes were used by Japan as evidence of tacit US
support for Japanese expansion in China. Though Lansing opposed President
Wilson’s decision at the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919 to accept the
Japanese claim to the German concessions in China’s Shantung province,
Wilson felt compelled to accept Japan’s claim to the former German conces-
sions. The president’s action gravely disappointed Chinese patriots. The pro-
vision in the treaty was a catalyst for demonstration in Peking on May 4,
1919, that led to both intellectual reform campaigns and radical, anti-imperi-
alist movements that spread throughout China in following years and became
known collectively as the May Fourth Movement. 47
The United States after World War I took the lead in calling a major
conference involving powers with interests in the western Pacific, including
China but not the Soviet Union, to deal with relevant security issues. The
result was the Washington Conference of 1921–22 that saw passage of a
Nine Power Treaty supporting noninterference in Chinese internal affairs.
US delegates working with others also succeeded in getting Japan to agree to
withdraw from Shantung under terms of agreements at the conference. None-
theless, the treaty and the conference results disappointed Chinese patriots
heavily influenced by the strong nationalistic fervor that was growing in
China, as they had no enforcement mechanisms and did nothing to retrieve
the rights of sovereignty China had been forced to give up to foreign powers
over the previous eighty years. 48
Meanwhile, US policy makers were compelled to react to repeated acts of
violence against Americans and other foreigners and their interests, as revo-
lutionary political and military movements swept through China during the
1920s. By 1925 the foreign treaty port rulers and collaborating Chinese pro-
vincial rulers seemed to an increasing share of the Chinese public to consti-
tute an evil partnership of “imperialism” and warlords. The rising Chinese
Nationalist Party under Sun Yat-sen (d. 1925) and his successor Chiang Kai-
shek was receiving substantial military and financial support and training
from the Soviet Union and the international Communist organization known
as the Communist International or Comintern. Soviet-backed Communist
agents were instrumental in assisting the establishment of the Chinese Com-
munist Party, which was instructed to align with Sun and Chiang’s much
larger Chinese Nationalist Party. These movements were compatible in see-
ing the evils of imperialism and warlords as enemies of Chinese nationalism.
Chinese industrialists had prospered with the withdrawal of competition from
Western enterprises and the rise in foreign demand during World War I.
They were readier to take a stance against the foreigners in this period of
revived foreign economic competition in China. 49
Patterns of US-China Relations Prior to World War II
31
In Shanghai early in 1925 union organizers were active and strikes in-
creased, and at the same time merchants in the Chinese Chamber of Com-
merce protested against regulation and “taxation without representation”
under the foreign-ruled Shanghai Municipal Council. An incident in Shang-
hai arising out of a strike against Japanese-owned textile mills led to an
outburst of anti-imperialist and antiforeign demonstrations and sentiment.
British-officered police under the authority of the foreign-ruled Shanghai
Municipal Council killed thirteen demonstrators on May 30, 1925. There
ensued a nationwide multiclass movement of protests, demonstrations,
strikes, boycotts, and militant anti-imperialism. This May Thirtieth move-
ment dwarfed all previous antiforeign demonstrations. In June a demonstra-
tion in Canton led to shooting between Nationalist Party cadets and Anglo-
French troops, killing fifty-two Chinese. The resulting fifteen-month strike
and boycott of Hong Kong crippled British trade with South China. 50
In this revolutionary atmosphere, Chinese Communist Party organiza-
tions expanded membership rapidly. Consistent with guidance from the Jo-
seph Stalin–dominated Comintern, the party remained in a wary united front
with the larger Chinese Nationalists as Chiang Kai-shek consolidated his
leadership and prepared to launch the Northern Expedition from the Nation-
alist base in Canton in 1926. The military campaign and attendant political
agitation were designed to smash the power of the warlords, assert China’s
rights against imperialism, and reunify China. By 1927 the campaign had
gained control of much of southern and central China. 51
Advancing in Nanking in March 1927, some Nationalist forces attacked
foreigners and foreign property in this city, including the American, British,
and Japanese consulates. Several foreigners, including Americans, were
killed. Looting and threats against foreigners did not stop until British and
US gunboats began to bombard the attackers. The Americans joined the other
powers in demanding punishment, apology, and compensation from the Na-
tionalist authorities. The Nationalist authorities at the time were in turmoil
with a power struggle for leadership that saw Chiang Kai-shek’s forces kill
several hundred Communist Party and labor leaders in Shanghai the day after
the Nanking incident, foreshadowing the start of a broader and violent Na-
tionalist campaign against Communists and other perceived enemies. Ma-
neuvering within the Nationalist leadership resulted in Chiang Kai-shek’s
emergence as dominant leader in January 1928. US Secretary of State Frank
Kellogg reacted with moderation and restraint to the violence and challenges
to US and foreign rights in China. This helped facilitate US rapprochement
with the Nationalist regime of Chiang Kai-shek once it consolidated power in
1928. In March 1928 Chiang’s regime accepted American terms about the
Nanking incident while the US government expressed regret about the gun-
boat bombardment. 52
32
Chapter 2
Imperial Japan felt threatened by rising Chinese nationalism and endeav-
ored to consolidate its hold in Manchuria. Japanese agents assassinated the
Chinese warlord in Manchuria and eventually took control of the territory
under the guise of an independent state, Manchukuo, created in 1932 and
recognized among the major powers only by Japan. US policy makers did not
change their low-risk policy toward Japan despite Tokyo’s blatant grab of
Manchuria. Dealing with the disastrous consequences of the Great Depres-
sion, US President Hoover was reluctant to respond forcefully to Japan’s
aggression in Manchuria and its breach of US-backed security arrangements
in the Nine Power Treaty of 1922 and the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928. With
his secretary of state, Henry Stimson, in the lead, Hoover favored a moral
stance of nonrecognition of the changes brought by Japan’s aggression. This
so
-called Hoover-Stimson doctrine failed in 1932 as Japanese forces ex-
panded their military aggression in China to include attacks on Chinese
forces in Shanghai. The Hoover administration formally protested, sent addi-
tional forces to China, and appealed to the world not to recognize the Japa-
nese aggression. The Japanese halted the assault on Shanghai and the League
of Nations adopted a resolution of nonrecognition, but Japan created a puppet
state of Manchukuo and withdrew from the League of Nations when it ap-
proved a report critical of Japan’s actions. 53
The Franklin D. Roosevelt administration continued a cautious stance in
the face of Japanese aggression in China, though some administration offi-
cials showed sympathy and support for China. Harry Hopkins, a close advis-
er to President Roosevelt, was sympathetic to China’s cause and provided a
channel of communication between Chiang Kai-shek’s administration and
the US president. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau endeavored
to support the struggling Chinese Nationalist Party government against Japa-
nese aggression. In 1934 the United States inaugurated, primarily for domes-
tic reasons, a silver purchase program, which caused great turmoil in the
Chinese economy as massive amounts of silver left China by 1935. In re-
sponse, Morgenthau initiated a silver purchase program for Nationalist Chi-
na, paying it hundreds of millions of dollars in gold and US dollars for 500
million ounces of silver. 54
Even when Japan engaged in all-out brutal war against China in 1937,
Washington showed sympathy to China but offered little in the way of con-
crete support. Responding to Japanese aggression against China and other
military expansion, President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a speech on October
5, 1937, called for a quarantine of an “epidemic of world lawlessness.” No
specific US actions in Asia followed because the US government was not
prepared to stand against Japan as it ruthlessly advanced in China. Indeed,
Japanese aircraft in December 1937 sank the US gunboat Panay and ma-
chine-gunned its survivors in the Yangtze River. US officials accepted Ja-
Patterns of US-China Relations Prior to World War II
33
pan’s apology and compensation, not choosing to make this an issue of
confrontation with Japanese aggression in China. 55
Stanley Hornbeck, a senior State Department specialist on China, played
important roles in advising and implementing US policy toward China during
this period. A strong supporter of China, he also was realistic about Chinese
weaknesses and capabilities in the face of Japanese power. He was involved
in various efforts to provide US support for the Chinese Nationalist Party
government and to resist Japanese aggression without directly confronting
Japan. Those US efforts were slow in coming. 56
As secretary of state in the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration in the
years prior to World War II, Hornbeck’s boss, Cordell Hull, shied away from
support of China, then at war with Japan. He sought to avoid US involvement
in an Asian war at a time of heightened tensions and war in Europe. Hull
disapproved a plan supported by Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau to
provide China $25 million in credits to purchase supplies in the United
States, but President Roosevelt approved the plan while Hull was out of the
country in December 1938. Hull resisted efforts to impose sanctions on Ja-
pan, but eventually the State Department in January 1940 announced that the
United States would not renew a 1911 commercial treaty with Japan. This
step allowed the United States subsequently to impose selective embargoes
on the sale of strategic materials to Japan, leading to a US oil embargo in
1941. 57
By this time, with the support of Treasury Secretary Morgenthau and
others, President Roosevelt approved the formation of the American Volun-
teer Group, also known as the “Flying Tigers,” to support the beleaguered
Chinese Nationalist administration in the face of Japanese aggression. The
group arose from plans by retired US General Claire Chennault and others
that resulted in a secret presidential order allowing US pilots to resign their commissions and sign contracts with a firm whose operating funds came
from the lend-lease air program, for the purpose of flying fighter planes
transferred to the Chinese government under lend-lease. The lend-lease pro-
gram was proposed by the president and approved by Congress in early 1941,
and China became eligible to receive lend-lease aid on May 6, 1941. The
Flying Tigers helped protect airspace over the Chinese Nationalist capital in
China’s interior city of Chungking and other Chinese Nationalist holdings
against attacks by Japanese warplanes. 58
Nongovernmental American interaction with China continued to focus on
economic exchange and missionary-related activities, although educational
exchange separate from missionary activities grew in importance. US trade
with China increased to $290 million in 1929, worth almost half of the $692
million value of US-Japanese trade that year. As world trade contracted
sharply with the Great Depression, the importance of US exports to Japan
relative to US exports to China increased. In 1936, the year prior to the start
34
Chapter 2
of the Sino-Japanese War, US exports to China were valued at $47 million,
while US exports to Japan were valued at $204 million. The balance of US
economic interests appeared to reinforce continued strong isolationist ten-
dencies in the United States to avoid involvement on the side of China in
opposition to increasingly apparent aggression by Imperial Japan. 59
Japanese atrocities in the war against China beginning in 1937 and Impe-
rial Japan’s subsequent alignment with Nazi Germany in 1940 hardened
American public attitudes as well as those of US officials against Japan.
Individual Americans with close ties to both the Chiang Kai-shek and Roose-
velt administrations and a number of organizations such as the Committee
for Non-Participation in Japanese Aggression advocated giving US aid to
China. Thomas Corcoran, formerly a White House lawyer close to President
Roosevelt, was among the group of several former federal officials paid by
Chiang Kai-shek’s agents to ensure stronger US support for the Nationalist
government. Henry Luce, the child of Christian missionaries in China, creat-
ed a powerful media enterprise in the United States centered on Time and Life magazines. Luce used these widely read publications to strongly support Chiang Kai-shek and his American-educated wife, Soong Mayling, hailing
the nation-building struggles of the Nationalist Party government and its
protracted resistance to Japanese aggression. The Committee to Defend
America by Aiding the Allies and other groups and individuals worked
against those in American politics who continued to adhere to a noninterven-
tionist stance. The latter included the Women’s International League for
Peace and Freedom and the National Council for Prevention of War. The
noninterventionist stance was buttressed by widespread feeling in the United
S
tates in the 1930s that the United States had mistakenly intervened in World
War I on behalf of the privileges of a few, prompting peace activists to work
to prevent repetition of such errors. 60
The missionary response to China’s problems in the early twentieth cen-
tury went well beyond evangelical matters. Expanding from about a thousand
American missionaries representing twenty-eight societies in China in 1900,
the respective numbers increased by 1930 to more than three thousand mis-
sionaries representing sixty societies. Adjusting to the rise of nationalism in China, the emphasis now focused on making the Christian church in China
indigenous, led by Chinese and at least partially self-supporting, with
Americans assisting and advising. The YMCA had an emphasis on programs
for literacy and social work and proved to be attractive to younger Chinese
leaders. The North China famine of 1920–21 saw the creation of the China
International Famine Relief Commission that by 1936 used more than $50
million in foreign donations to promote basics in rural development. An
interdenominational Protestant conference in 1922 organized the National
Christian Council that set to work on social issues in urban and rural China.
James Yen, educated at Yale University and with the YMCA, used support
Patterns of US-China Relations Prior to World War II
35
from the Rockefeller Foundation to begin to spread literacy and practical
education to rural China. 61
American reformist ideas and influence were notable among the more
moderate elements of the Chinese intelligentsia at the time. The latter tended
to be foreign trained and to work in academic and scientific institutions. The
dozen Christian colleges were coming under more Chinese control and relied
on Chinese sources for more than half of their income, though a majority of
their faculties were foreign trained. The big national universities also had
staffs largely trained abroad, mostly in the United States. Such American
influence also was evident in the various research institutes of the central
government and the big Rockefeller-supported Peking Union Medical Col-
lege. Supporting these trends, 2,400 Chinese students entered American uni-
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