Modernity and National Identity in the United States and East Asia

Conclusion

Conclusion The Paris Peace Conference left many issues unresolved. The powers made one more effort to establish an international order for Asia at the 1922 Washington Conference, but by this time the domestic and international situations of the United States, China, and Japan had changed. Americanswereinacomparativelyisolationistmood. Wilson’sattempttomake the 1920 election a referendum on the League of Nations showed that American voters resoundingly rejected his vision, opting instead for what Warren G. Harding dubbed a “return to normalcy.” Normalcy was in short supply immediately after the war, however, as American society was roiled by economic depression, labor unrest, and anti-Bolshevik paranoia. Americans had no interest in leading the international system, and, except to missionaries and organizations like the Rockefeller Foundation, the problems of Asia were not of pressing concern. In China, the shock of the Versailles treaty betrayal had helped launch the May Fourth movement, adding a political dimension to the New Culture movement of the 1910s. Radical intellectuals had sought to sweep away Chinese tradition and create a new, modern culture inspired in part by Western ideals of science and democracy, but a viable formula was proving elusive. Western science and technology , philosophical ideas of enlightenment and pragmatism, and the emancipation of women still held strong appeal, yet the international system espoused by the Western powers had failed to restore China’s sovereignty and was just as inimical to China’s national salvation (jiuguo) as the imperialist order it supposedly replaced . With the founding of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921, some May Fourth intellectuals embraced a different worldview to set China on the path to a new national identity.1 In Japan, the political fissures that were already visible in 1912 widened. A series of demonstrations in 1919 and 1920 demanding universal suffrage signaled a renewal of the contestation over the nature of the Japanese polity and the beginning of a decade in which social order was a major concern.2 At the same time, while 185 186 conclusion some Japanese leaders were intellectually committed to cooperation with the international system, others, disappointed with the limited gains achieved during the war, pledged themselves to renewed territorial and military expansion.3 Out of these domestic political contexts, the United States, China, Japan, and the other powers met in 1921–22. For the United States, the Washington Conference represented a last attempt to establish stability in East Asia, institutionalize the Open Door policy, and limit Japan’s expansionist ambitions. In the Nine-Power Treaty, signed by all the nations with economic or territorial interests in Asia, the powers agreed “to respect the sovereignty, the independence, and the territorial and administrative integrity of China” and to maintain “the principle of equal opportunity for the commerce and industry of all nations throughout the territory of China.” These pledges were little changed from Hay’s Open Door notes of 1899 and 1900 and had no more enforcement power. The treaty also declared that it was “designed to safeguard the rights and interests of China” by “promot[ing] intercourse between China and the other Powers upon the basis of equality of opportunity . . . [and] provid[ing] the fullest and most unembarrassed opportunity to China to develop and maintain for herself an effective and stable government.”4 In short, the assembled powers did not believe that China yet possessed the requisite elements of a nation, riven as it was by the north-south split and competing warlords. Although China was a signatory to the treaty, it was really another agreement made by the powers about China. TheChinesehadhopedformorefromtheconference—tobetreatedasanequal, to regain Shandong, and to have tariff autonomy restored and extraterritoriality abolished. An example of the urgency with which many Chinese viewed the issue came from Chinese students in the United States. In 1920–21 the Chinese Students’ Alliance published a series of pamphlets outlining what they believed the position of the Chinese government should be at the Washington Conference on key issues of sovereignty and national rights. The students counseled that just as China “was disappointed in the Paris Conference, she may be disappointed even more here. Therefore, she should not expect too much.” Instead, China “should lay before the nations of the world very frankly her true situation,” relying on international law and public opinion to gain justice. The students warned against relying on pledges to protect China’s integrity, which were merely “camouflage” for the interests of the Western powers. Instead, they laid out a detailed, legalistic argument showing that both the Shandong clause...