China's recent economic reforms have opened its economy to the world. This policy, however, is not new: in the late nineteenth century, the United States put forward the Open Door Policy as a counter to European exclusive 'spheres of influence' in China. This book, based on extensive original archival research, examines and re-evaluates China's Open Door Policy. It considers the policy from its inception in 1899 right through to the post-1978 reforms. It relates these changes to the various shifts in China's international relations, discusses how decades of foreign invasion, civil war and revolution followed the destruction of the policy in the 1920s, and considers how the policy, when applied in Taiwan after 1949, and by Deng Xiaoping in mainland China after 1978, was instrumental in bringing about, respectively, Taiwan's 'economic miracle' and mainland China's recent economic boom. The book argues that, although the policy was characterised as United States 'economic imperialism' during the Cold War, in reality it helped China retain its sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Preface Introduction: Open Door versus Spheres of Interest 1. The Origins of the Open Door Policy in China 2. Secret Diplomacy Undermines the Open Door 3. The Growth of Nationalism in Post-1911 China 4. The Debacle at Paris 5. The 1917 October Revolution's Impact on the Open Door Policy 6. The Washington Conference, 1921-1922 7. Soviet Attempts to Open Diplomatic Relations with China and Japan 8. Soviet-Japanese Secret Diplomacy Undermines the Open Door Policy 9. The Soviet-Japanese Struggle to Partition China 10. The Open Door Policy and China's Post-war Territorial Integrity 11. The Open Door Policy and the Chinese Civil War, 1945-1949 12. The Open Door Policy in the Era of the Two Chinas Conclusions: A Reassessment of the Open Door Policy's Impact on China