Early Diplomatic Contact:
United States & China - 1784-1878
Westerners were accustomed to formal diplomatic relations between governments, but
the Qing Dynasty insisted that state-to-state interactions be brief and largely ceremonial.
The Qing had not yet established permanent and reciprocal diplomatic missions with its
trade partners, and disputes also arose over the manner and practice of diplomatic
relations. The British won full diplomatic representation after the first Opium War in
1842 in the Treaty of Nanjing (Nanking).
The United States followed Britain’s lead and opened diplomatic relations with the Qing,
a move strongly endorsed by the missionaries. In 1843, Secretary of State Daniel Webster
dispatched Caleb Cushing as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to
negotiate a treaty that would provide virtually the same trading and diplomatic rights that
the British had obtained.
Former President Ulysses S. Grant confers with Chinese diplomat Li Hung Chang in 1879 (Wikimedia Commons) Cushing held his first meeting with the Qing official Qiying late that year and expressed
his hope to negotiate directly with the Emperor in Beijing. His counterpart was unwilling
to allow this and delayed negotiations. When Cushing finally dropped his request to meet
with the Emperor and opened negotiations with lower-level officials, Cushing demanded
that Americans be granted extraterritoriality and not be subject to Chinese laws. Qiying
agreed to Cushing’s demands. On July 3, 1844, Cushing and Qiying signed the Treaty of
Wangxia (Wang-hsia/Wang-hiya), which marked the beginning of official relations
between the United States and China.
LATER 19TH CENTURY DIPLOMACY
An early Chinese diplomat and his son at the consulate in San Francisco (Library of Congress)
American diplomacy’s low profile was in part the result of the short careers and limited
scope of action of the U.S. officials who served in China. Of the 17 ministers posted there
between 1844 and 1900, most had a tenure of less than two years, and two died of disease
while at post. All of them acted on an ad hoc basis, since the U.S. Government had no
formal policy towards China throughout the 19th century.
Minister Anson Burlingame, who in 1862 became the first U.S. representative to reside
in Beijing, took a more active role in China’s international relations. Burlingame quickly
acquainted himself with leading reformers in the Chinese Government, including the
influential Prince Gong, the brother of Emperor Xianfeng, who established China’s first
Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
In 1867, when Chinese officials decided to send a diplomatic mission overseas to
renegotiate China’s treaties, they lacked a high-ranking official with sufficient experience
to lead the expedition. The Chinese turned to Burlingame who, with permission from
Washington, resigned his ministerial post and entered the service of the Qing Empire. He
then led a small group of Chinese to the capitals of the West, including Washington,
D.C., an event that Burlingame billed as having epic historical significance:
“[It] means commerce; it means peace; it means a unification of her own
interests with the whole human race ... The fraternal feeling of four hundred millions of
people has commenced to flow through the land of Washington to the elder nations of the
West, and it will flow on forever.”
The Burlingame Treaty
The resulting treaty, the Burlingame
Treaty, signed by Burlingame and U.S.
Secretary of State William H. Seward,
expanded contact between Chinese and
Americans. It ensured the reciprocal rights
of travel, residence, and study; it provided
Chinese consuls with full diplomatic rights
in U.S. ports; it encouraged Chinese
laborers to immigrate to the United States;
and it offered official U.S. support for
Chinese territorial sovereignty.
The terms of this treaty surprised some in
the Qing court, particularly those
provisions promoting immigration, which
went much further than they had initially
authorized. Nevertheless, the two sides
signed the treaty in 1868 and ratified it the
following year.
Several years after ratifying the Burlingame
Treaty, the Qing court established a
legation in Washington, D.C. Chen Lanbin,
who had already spent several years in the
United States leading a group of students,
was appointed to head the legation.
Chen’s arrival in 1878 marked the
beginning of full bilateral diplomatic
relations between the two countries.
Minister Anson Burlingame (Library of Congress)
Source: A Journey Shared: The United States & China, 200 Years of History, Aug. 2008, U.S. Department of State.