Scramble for China

[6] On the other hand, the Scramble for Africa by the Western European powers also appeared around the same time, which resulted in the direct colonization of almost all of the African continent by 1914.

At that time, the Qing government only allowed Western European countries to conduct any trade with China in Guangzhou under the Canton System.

The great powers such as Britain that won the Opium Wars initially only demanded the creation of a new framework for China's foreign relations and overseas trade, including privileges such as extraterritoriality and treaty ports.

As the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions wrote in 1898, Europe's current Scramble for China was much like its Scramble for Africa, which had sparked many discussions since a few years ago; China's vulnerability was made clear to the world in its 1895 war with Japan, and her current state could encourage eagles to flock together; and they had not taken long to do this – Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and others had all staked claims and were aggressively advancing their projects.

With the success of the invasion, the later stages developed into a punitive colonial expedition, which pillaged the capital Beijing and North China for more than a year.

To prevent the "carving of China like a melon", as the European powers were doing in Africa at the time, the U.S. Secretary of State John Hay created the Open Door Policy that called for a system of equal trade and investment and to guarantee the territorial integrity of Qing China, and circulated a note known as the "Open Door Note" (dated September 6, 1899) to the major European powers.

[13] The Note asked the powers to keep China open to trade with all countries on an equal basis and called upon all powers, within their spheres of influence to refrain from interfering with any treaty port or any vested interest, to permit Chinese authorities to collect tariffs on an equal basis, and to show no favors to their own nationals in the matter of harbor dues or railroad charges.

[15][16] Over the next decades, American policy-makers and national figures continued to refer to the Open Door Policy as a basic doctrine, which stopped the European powers from carving up China into colonies, but did allow them to establish spheres of influence.