Open Door policy

The Open Door policy is an American foreign policy in the early 20th century that called for equal foreign commercial access to China, as opposed to closed spheres of influence. Its three interrelated goals were equality of commercial opportunity, territorial integrity, and administrative integrity. The Open Door policy was formally announced by Secretary of State John Hay in 1899 and 1900, and was accepted, grudgingly, by other powers and became the basic American policy in the Far East. It was intended to encourage a strong independent China aided by foreign investment that would absorb increased American imports. China finally gained strength in the 1920s, but was invaded by Japan in the 1930s in violation of the Open Door, leading to war between the U.S. and China in 1941.

Origins

The Open Door policy emerged from two major cycles of American expansionist history; the first, a maritime cycle, gained impetus from the new commercial thrust of the mid-19th century and blended into the new cycle of industrial and financial capitalism that emerged toward the end of the century and continued into the 1930s. Thereafter, its vitality ebbed away as political and economic forces posed a new power structure and national reorganization in the Far East. The first cycle of Open Door activity developed through the mid-19th-century interaction of the expansion of American continental and maritime frontiers. The construction of the transcontinental railroads gave rise to the idea of an American transportation bridge to China.

Merchants in the small China trade, based in Boston and New York, traded in furs, ginseng, silk and sandalwood with the Chinese. The opening of China to American trade on the heels of the British victory in the Anglo-Chinese War of 1839-42 via the Cushing Treaty of 1844; and the push into the Pacific led by Secretary of State William H. Seward that culminated in the purchase of Alaska in 1867 and the Burlingame Treaty of 1868. Throughout this period the United States adapted British commercial policy to its own ends by supporting the notion of free and open competition for trade in international markets, while denouncing British colonial acquisitions and preferential trade positions. The European subjection of China by force and the imposition of the resulting treaty system gave American maritime interests an opportunity to flourish without a parallel colonial responsibility or imperial illusion. After 1890 the main American export to China was kerosene, shipped by the Standard Oil Company, owned by John D. Rockefeller. China absorbed less than 5% of American exports (most of which went to Europe.)

Missionaries

More influential than the traders was the missionary interest, primary Protestant but including Catholics, that saw China as the most promising site for conversions of heathens to Christianity. They actively promoted a vision of a Christian China in towns and cities across the land, and wanted an open door for missionaries. The missionaries worked primarily as social workers, especially as medical doctors in the villages. The children of these missionaries often became important spokesmen for Chinese interest, most notably Henry R. Luce (1898-1967), who used his influential Time and Life news magazines to talk up China after 1926. Novelist Pearl S. Buck (1892-73), was raised in China by missionary parents and won the Nobel Prize in Literature for her numrous stories and novels portraying heroic Chinese peasants, especially The Good Earth (1931).

Philanthropists

American philanthropists, led by the Rockefeller Foundation, made the modernization of China a high priority after 1910, with special emphasis on promoting modern medicine and higher education.

International rivalry

A major international rivalry to carve up the globe emerged in the 1870s, with special emphasis on Africa, Asia and Latin America. The U.S. largely ignored Affrics, used the Monroe Doctrine to prevent European powers from taking control of any country in Latin America, and use the Open Door doctrine to prevent the carving up of China the way Africa was carved up.

The American policy expanded to a chain of positions regarding other areas similar to the Open Door policy.

Manchuria and Japan

After 1900 the United States became concerned with Manchuria as well as in China proper. Both Russia and Japan wanted control there, and they went to war in 1905. At first anti-Russian in Manchuria and intent on extending American railroad, mining, and commercial privileges there, the United States then became anti-Japanese after the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, although it was not able to make a definitive commitment of national resources and energy. Influenced by the caution of President Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909), in the Taft-Katsura Agreement of 1905 and the Root-Takahira Agreement of 1908, the United States recognized Japan's growing power in eastern Asia in return for stated Open Door principles and respect for American territorial legitimacy in the Far East. During the administration of President William Howard Taft (1909-1913), the United States attempted to move into Manchuria and China proper via Open Door proposals on behalf of American railroad and banking investment interests in 1909 and 1913, and in so doing made overtures of cooperation with the European powers as well as with Russia and Japan, but nothing deeveloped.

During President Woodrow Wilson's administration (1913-1921) the United States veered from side to side: it attempted to protect its stake in China by opposing Japan's 21 Demands on China in 1915, and then it attempted to appease Japan's ambitions in Manchuria by recognizing the Japanese stake there in the Lansing-Ishii Agreement of 1917. During the Warren G., Harding administration (1921-23), in 1922 at the Washington Armament Conference negotiations, the Open Door outlook was embedded in the details of the Nine-Power Treaty, which called for the territorial and administrative integrity of China and equality of trade opportunity without special privileges for any nation; there also began plans for the abolition of "extrality" (the system of legal rights and privileges that foreigners enjoyed in China, which placed them under control of foreign consuls and beyond the reach of the Chinese courts.) At the conference China formally recognized the Open Door principle for the first time.

1929-45

During the period 1929-33, Manchuria came to the forefront of American Open Door concerns, with the invocation in 1931 of the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1927 against Japan's use of force in Manchuria. By 1931, President Herbert Hoover's Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson had established the continuity of American policy by linking the principles of the Kellogg-Briand Pact with those expressed in the Nine-Power Treaty of 1922. In 1932, Stimson made history by articulating his non-recognition doctrine, regarding Japan's conquest of Manchuria and the establishment of the puppet state of Manchukuo. From that point onward, throughout the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-45) the United States, led by Secretary of State Cordell Hull, maintained growing opposition to Japan's aggrandizement in the sphere of China and the enlargement of Japan's ambitions throughout Southeast Asia. The goals of the Roosevelt administration were to build up Chinese state power as a counterweight to Japan, and to end Japanese control of Manchuria. The coming to power of Mao Zedong and the Communists in 1949 abruptly turned China into a hostile power, and U.S. forms were not allowed to trade with it until President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger opened détente with China in 1972.

Historiography

The policy has been the subject of heated debates among American historians. A. Whitney Griswold in 1938, sees the policy alternating between an aggressive/assertive approach and retreating/withdrawing approach whereby the integrity of China, which was to be a means to trade, became an end in itself creating other problems. The revisionist argument, formulated in the 1950s by William Appleman Williams spawned a whole "Wisconsin School" of interpretation. The Wisconsinites see the policy as a calculated, well-planned strategy that would allow the United States all of the benefits of an empire without any of the burdens of colonial administration. Critics note that major American corporations had little trade with China before the 1980s.

Ninkovich, (1982), fopcusing on Woodrow Wilson, argues the policy reflected all facets of 19th century liberalism. That is, it was a pacific ideology, that emphasized nonpolitical commercial and cultural expansion. Paradoxically, many proponents of the Open Door Policy advocated an "open world" with its interventionist tendencies. The ideological orientations of Jane Addams and Wilson illustrate this inconsistency. Addams consistently held to the fundamental ideology that the world was naturally internationalist, even if politicians failed to recognize it as such. Wilson's operative ideology, Wilsonianism, led him to attempt to construct an internationalist world, by force where necessary.

Bibliography

• Griswold, Alfred Whitney. The Far Eastern Policy of the United States (1938) 530 pp.
• Hu, Shizhang. Stanley K. Hornbeck and the Open Door Policy, 1919-1937. (1995). 263 pp.
• Hunt, Michael H. Frontier Defense and the Open Door: Manchuria in Chinese-American Relations, 1895-1911. (1973). 281 pp.
• Israel, Jerry. Progressivism and the Open Door: America and China, 1905-1921. (1971). 222 pp.
• Ninkovich, Frank. "Ideology, the Open Door, and Foreign Policy." Diplomatic History 1982 6(2): 185-208. Issn: 0145-2096
• Pugach, Noel H. 'Paul S. Reinsch: Open Door Diplomat in Action. (1979). 310 pp.
• Scully, Eileen P. "Taking the Low Road to Sino-American Relations: 'Open Door' Expansionists and the Two China Markets." Journal of American History 1995 82(1): 62-83. Issn: 0021-8723 in JSTOR
• Vevier, Charles. "The Open Door: An Idea in Action, 1906-1913," The Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Feb., 1955), pp. 49-62 in JSTOR, reflects Wisconsin School