In 1990, historian Jonathan Spence updated Isaac's model to include "reawakened curiosity" (1970–1974); "guileless fascination" (1974–1979), and "renewed skepticism" (1980s).

[2] According to John Pomfret: The newly independent United States dispatched consuls to Guangzhou as early as 1784—the first was Samuel Shaw.

[4][5] Silver and gold coins, ginseng, and furs, and more prominently tea, cotton, silk, lacquerware, porcelain,[6] and exotic furniture were traded.

[7][8] The American merchants, mostly based in the East India Marine Society in Salem, Massachusetts, became wealthy, giving rise to America's first generation of millionaires.

[9] Chinese artisans began to notice the American desire for exotic wares and adjusted their practices accordingly, manufacturing goods made specifically for export.

They organized moralistic crusades against the traditional customs of female infanticide and foot-binding, helping to accomplish what Pomfret calls "the greatest human rights advances in modern Chinese history.

[16][17] During the Boxer Rebellion of 1899–1901, Christian missions were burned, thousands of converts were executed, and the American missionaries barely escaped with their lives.

China is at present inchoate; as a nation it is a congeries of parts, in each of which there is energy, but which are unbound in any essential and active unit, and just as soon as unity comes, its power will come in the world.

With the goal of impressing the Imperial Chinese court and gaining access to the five ports, the Cushing mission suddenly appeared with four Navy warships, loaded with gifts that exalted scientific wonders including revolvers, telescopes, and an encyclopedia.

In the following years American trade with China grew rapidly, thanks to the high-speed clipper ships which carried relatively small amounts of high-value cargo, such as ginseng and silk.

[23][24] During the Second Opium War, American and Qing forces briefly clashed in November 1856 at the Battle of the Barrier Forts, the first instance of military engagement between the two.

This treaty stipulated, among other terms, that along with Britain, France, and Russia, the United States would have the right to station legation offices in Beijing.

In the 1850s and 1860s the California Gold Rush and the construction of the transcontinental railroad, large numbers of Chinese emigrated to the U.S., spurring animosity from American citizens.

Anti-Chinese animosity became politicized by Irish American labor leader Denis Kearney and his party, as well as by the California governor John Bigler.

In the first significant restriction on free immigration in U.S. history, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act on 6 May 1882, following revisions made in 1880 to the Burlingame Treaty.

[32] In 1899, a movement of Chinese nationalists calling themselves the Society of Right and Harmonious Fists started a violent revolt in northern China, referred to by Westerners as the Boxer Rebellion, against foreign influence in trade, politics, religion, and technology.

[33] The uprising began as an anti-foreign, anti-imperialist, peasant-based movement in northern China, in response to foreign westerners seizing land from locals, concession grabbing, and granting immunity to criminals who converted to Catholicism.

A coalition called the Eight-Nation Alliance comprising Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, Britain and the United States organized the Seymour Expedition with 2000 troops, including 116 Americans.

The United States played a secondary but significant role in suppressing the Boxer Rebellion, largely due to the availability of warships stationed in the Philippines.

American commander, Colonel Adna Chaffee began public health, relief, and police operations in cooperation with Chinese officials.

Reassigned to the Philippines he applied the lessons there, combining benevolence and public health measures with force and cooperation with local officials.

[38] In the 1890s the major world powers (France, Britain, Germany, Japan, and Russia) began proposing spheres of influence for themselves in China, which was then under the Qing dynasty.

In 1899, U.S. Secretary of State John Hay sent diplomatic letters to these nations, asking them to guarantee the territorial and administrative integrity of China and to not interfere with the free use of treaty ports within their theoretical spheres of influence.

[40] Grand Council Yuan Shikai travel to Hawaii discussing a potential alliance with the German Empire and the United States of America.

The most extreme demands (in section 5) would gave Japan a decisive voice in China's finance, policing, and government affairs.

The result in China was the growth of intense nationalism characterized by the May Fourth Movement, and the tendency of intellectuals and activists in the 1920s to look to Moscow for leadership.

Kellogg and Johnson successfully negotiated tariff reform with China, thereby giving enhanced status to the Kuomintang and helping get rid of the unequal treaties.

[52] The outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 saw massive military and economic aid start to flow into the Republic of China (ROC), from the United States under President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

[note 1] However, the proposed attack never took place: The Chinese had not built and secured any runways or bases close enough to reach Japan, just as the Army had warned.

China Hands such as Joseph "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell—who spoke fluent Mandarin Chinese—argued that it was in American interest to establish communication with the Communists to prepare for a land-based counteroffensive invasion of Japan.