John Hay and the Open Door in China, 1899–1900

Secretary of State John Hay. Image from the Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State.

In a series of notes in 1899 and 1900, Secretary of State John Hay set out the idea of the "Open Door" in China: equal opportunity for the trade and commerce of all nations there, and respect for China's administrative and territorial integrity. Britain and the United States had long followed similar principles, but once Hay put them in writing, the Open Door became the official U.S. policy toward East Asia for the first half of the 20th century.

The first note

The idea came from two China experts, the Briton Alfred E. Hippisley and the American William W. Rockhill, who believed their countries' interests would be best served by a formal agreement among the powers to keep China open for trade. On September 6, 1899, Hay sent the first Open Door Note to the great powers with interests in China — Britain, France, Russia, Germany and Japan — each of which guarded its own sphere of influence and trading privileges.

Hay proposed that merchants of every nation have equal access, building on the most-favoured-nation clauses of the Treaties of Wangxia and Tianjin. Each power should give up special economic advantages for its own citizens in its sphere, and China's tariffs should apply to all and be collected by the Chinese themselves. For the United States, with little political weight and no territory in China, non-discrimination mattered most.

Britain and Japan saw the plan as in their interest, though both made their acceptance conditional on everyone else's; France followed; and that pressed Germany and Russia to agree — Russia with so many caveats that it all but emptied the note of meaning. Hay nonetheless declared all the powers' acceptances "final and definitive."

The Boxer crisis

In 1900 events inside China threatened the Open Door. The Boxer Rebellion, an anti-foreign movement named for the martial artists who led it, attacked foreign missionaries and Chinese Christians. Backed by the Empress Dowager Cixi and the imperial army, it became a violent conflict that killed hundreds of foreign missionaries and thousands of Chinese. As the Boxers closed on Beijing, foreigners, embassy staff among them, took refuge in the besieged legations and called for help.

The Empress Dowager Cixi. Image from the Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State.

Foreign armies fought their way in from the coast, some grabbing concessions and zones of interest along the way. On July 3, 1900, Hay sent a second message, the Open Door Circular, stressing respect for China's "territorial and administrative integrity" — an effort to keep the powers from using the rebellion to carve China into colonies. It asked for no formal agreement.

Boxer rebels. Image from the Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State.

What the notes achieved

The Open Door Notes set out U.S. policy toward China and its hope of cooperation among the powers there. They mattered for a long time in U.S.–East Asian relations and fed the idea of a special Sino-American relationship. But they bound no one: they could not stop any power, the United States included, from seeking Chinese territory or favouring its own interests — Hay himself briefly considered seizing territory before rejecting the idea. His successors kept to the policy all the same, and it marked America's growing involvement in East Asia.

There was an irony. Even as Hay held the door to China open, the U.S. government was doing all it could to shut the door on Chinese immigration to the United States, cutting off opportunities for Chinese merchants and workers.

Sources

• U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, "Secretary of State John Hay and the Open Door in China, 1899–1900," Milestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations, dedicated to the public domain under CC0; rewritten in hubnx's own words.