A relationship that began with hopes of commerce and mutual opportunity has evolved into one of the defining geopolitical rivalries of the 21st century. Historians say the United States’ long-held ambitions to trade with, influence and ultimately reshape China have repeatedly collided with historical realities, transforming a centuries-old partnership into a contest over economics, technology, security and global leadership.
The departure of the Empress of China from New York Harbour in February 1784 marked more than the first commercial voyage between the newly independent United States and Qing China. As reported by the South China Morning Post, historians regard the expedition as the beginning of a relationship shaped by shifting American expectations and changing balances of power that continue to influence global politics today.
When the converted privateer sailed across the Pacific, the United States was still a fledgling republic. The Declaration of Independence had been signed less than a decade earlier, while the Treaty of Paris formally recognising American independence was less than a year old. The young nation possessed neither a powerful navy nor significant international influence. What it did possess, historians argue, was an ambitious vision of China.
After a six-month voyage, the Empress of China reached Canton, the only Chinese port then open to Western maritime trade under Qing rule. For the Americans aboard, China represented opportunity, prosperity and access to one of the world’s most coveted markets. More than two centuries later, the nation that once inspired commercial dreams has become Washington’s foremost strategic competitor, with the world’s two largest economies now competing across trade, technology, security and influence over the international order.
According to Xu Guoqi, David H.Y. Chang Professor of Chinese History at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), the importance of China to the origins of the United States is often overlooked. He noted that the tea thrown into Boston Harbour during the Boston Tea Party in 1773—the symbolic act that helped ignite the American Revolution—was Chinese tea.
“The dream of independence for future Americans came, to a certain extent, from their dream of the China market,” Xu said.
Tea, which Americans referred to as “green gold”, functioned almost as a form of hard currency, he explained, while fascination with China long predated the establishment of the United States itself. Europeans had sought routes to China since the era of Marco Polo, a search that famously sent Christopher Columbus across the Atlantic in 1492.
“That is the irony of the shared history between China and America – it was interconnected from the very beginning,” Xu said.
When the Empress of China reached Canton in 1784, it embodied the belief that access to Chinese commerce could secure America’s future. That conviction remained influential for more than 200 years.
During the 19th century, the aspiration took shape through expanding China trade and later through Washington’s Open Door Policy, which advocated equal commercial access to China rather than allowing foreign powers to divide the country into exclusive spheres of influence. At the time, the Qing Empire had been weakened by the Opium Wars and unequal treaties imposed by imperial powers.
The same hopes resurfaced more than a century later through policies of reform and engagement. When China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, many policymakers and business leaders in Washington believed that opening China’s economy would create one of the world’s largest export markets while gradually reinforcing the principles of the American-led global economic system.
Former US President Bill Clinton articulated those expectations in 2000 while supporting China’s WTO accession.
“Economically, this agreement is the equivalent of a one-way street. It requires China to open its markets – with a fifth of the world’s population, potentially the biggest markets in the world – to both our products and services in unprecedented new ways,” Clinton said.
Instead of evolving towards the American economic model, however, China developed a state-led system that successive administrations in Washington increasingly viewed as a strategic challenge. The first Trump administration launched a trade war in 2018, while the second expanded those measures in 2025, reflecting a growing bipartisan consensus that China itself had become America’s principal long-term competitor.
Historians argue that America’s understanding of China has often reflected its own aspirations as much as Chinese realities.
Wang Yuanchong, Associate Professor of History at the University of Delaware, observed that when the Empress of China first arrived, its crew possessed little understanding of the country they had travelled to. They carried what he described as a “sea letter”, a general passport addressed to no specific authority and listing every official title they could imagine.
“That actually proves they knew nothing,” Wang said. “They were completely in the dark about China’s administrative system, its society, its history and culture. They simply came.”
Qing officials likewise knew little about the newly independent United States, viewing foreign visitors through the traditional framework of tribute and trade.
Wang argued that while ignorance characterised both sides in the 18th century, that imbalance no longer exists. Ordinary Chinese, he noted, can identify several American presidents, whereas many Americans “can’t name a single Chinese leader”.
America also developed an image of itself as a different kind of power in China. Unlike Britain and France, it established no colonies on Chinese territory and promoted the Open Door Policy rather than exclusive spheres of influence. In 1868, departing US minister Anson Burlingame was invited by the Qing court to represent China diplomatically abroad. The resulting Burlingame Treaty recognised reciprocal rights for travel and education between the two countries, while later American decisions to return part of the Boxer Rebellion indemnity financed Chinese educational institutions and scholarships benefiting the predecessor of Tsinghua University.
Yet historians caution against portraying this period as one of uncomplicated goodwill.
Xu argued that American behaviour reflected a genuine sense of exceptionalism rooted in the country’s recent break from European imperial traditions.
“The US looked down on the old European countries,” Xu said. “They thought they were corrupt.”
Wang similarly noted that throughout much of the 19th century, America’s primary interest remained commerce rather than territorial control.
“It was just a country that came to share the spoils,” Wang said. “The ones out front were mostly Britain, France, Russia and Germany.”
Gordon H. Chang, Olive H. Palmer Professor in Humanities at Stanford University, also challenged idealised interpretations of American policy, arguing that President Theodore Roosevelt’s decision to return part of the Boxer indemnity sought principally to advance American influence in China rather than purely benefiting Chinese society.
The image of a benevolent America is also complicated by the experience of Chinese immigrants in the United States. Thousands contributed to building the transcontinental railroad, completed in 1869, while many others worked in mining, agriculture and commerce before their contributions became overshadowed by discriminatory policies.
“The fact that it was forgotten or neglected or covered up is part of that history of discrimination,” Chang said.
Historians identify another enduring feature of the bilateral relationship: America’s recurring ambition to transform China.
Chang argued that the United States has repeatedly sought to reshape China—first through Christian missionary work, later through capitalism, and more recently by encouraging a non-communist political system.
“The sense that the United States should shape, mould or change China is quite deep,” Chang said.
He added that these ambitions have consistently been followed by disappointment because “China continues to be what it is, regardless of what the United States wants”.
Wang, however, believes this transformational ambition emerged later, arguing that it was only after the Second World War and during the Cold War that Washington seriously embraced the idea of redesigning China’s political future.
The normalisation of diplomatic relations following Richard Nixon’s 1972 visit, Deng Xiaoping’s subsequent visit to the United States and China’s programme of reform and opening encouraged many American policymakers to believe that engagement, trade and integration into global institutions would gradually encourage political liberalisation.
In Beijing, however, many leaders interpreted engagement differently. The concept became associated with fears of “peaceful evolution”, the Cold War theory that communist governments could eventually be transformed through the gradual spread of Western political values rather than military intervention. Chinese leaders repeatedly warned that similar efforts might target China, despite assurances from both the Biden and Trump administrations that they did not seek regime change.
Chang remained sceptical of such assurances.
“If Donald Trump could snap his fingers, of course he would like to have a change in China,” he said.
He argued that current tensions resemble those of the 1950s more than the relatively cooperative period between roughly 1990 and 2015.
The changing relationship has also reflected dramatic shifts in global power. When the two countries first encountered one another, China was the wealthier and more established civilisation, while the United States remained a fragile republic. Around the turn of the 20th century, that balance began to reverse as America emerged from the Gilded Age as a Pacific power while China struggled through the Boxer crisis and foreign occupation.
“The US is a late-developing country, founded just as the industrial revolution was beginning, so it caught the express train from the start,” Wang said. “China’s misfortune is that its whole 19th century was a descent, while America rose the whole way – two completely opposite trajectories.”
Today, many Chinese believe history is shifting again. Shortly after the riot at the US Capitol in January 2021, President Xi Jinping advanced the view that “the East is rising and the West is declining”, a concept that has since become widely discussed within official and public discourse in China.
Historians argue that changing power dynamics have also altered Washington’s strategic outlook. Wang noted that before the world wars, the United States had no permanent global rival, with the concept of managing a long-term principal adversary emerging only after America became a global power.
China’s perceptions of the United States have also evolved repeatedly. Before the end of the First World War, many Chinese intellectuals admired President Woodrow Wilson and hoped his principle of national self-determination would restore China’s rights. Those expectations collapsed when the Paris Peace Conference transferred Germany’s former privileges in Shandong to Japan.
“After 1919,” Xu said, “the Chinese became radical, became desperate, and turned to a third civilisation: Russia.”
Looking across 250 years of engagement, Chang sees recurring cycles of unrealistic optimism followed by excessive fear, with both obscuring a more complex reality.
Wang argues that continued engagement remains essential despite rising political tensions.
“Without exchange, there is nothing,” he said. “Wasn’t ping-pong diplomacy exactly this?”
None of the historians interviewed by the South China Morning Post expected relations to return easily to earlier periods of warmth. Chang expressed that view bluntly.
“The idea that China and the United States should become great friends has never been the case, and I don’t think it ever will be.”
For Rana Mitter, S.T. Lee Chair in US-Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School, the enduring lesson is that the relationship has never remained static.
“China and the US have been rivals, enemies, partners and collaborators during the past two centuries, in particular the last century,” Mitter said.
“It’s worth remembering that history changes over time but the two countries remain important to each other.”
