open door policy definition us history

open door policy definition us history

The Open Door Policy in U.S. History: Definition, Significance, and Impact

1. Introduction to the Open Door Policy

The Open Door Policy is a term in diplomatic history that refers to the active participation of the United States in world affairs and the importance of this participation. This policy moved much of the traditional diplomatic decision-making out of the hands of European nations and into those of U.S. policymakers. The Open Door Policy reflects the willingness and the ability of the United States since the late 1800s to exert a positive and decisive impact on all matters of international concern to U.S. interests. In effect, going public on its Open Door Policy placed the United States in a position to be an advocate of empire abroad, and necessity brought the nation to become an imperialistic power. The evolution of the United States into an imperialistic power was reasoned, must be viewed as the product of evolving political, economic, and geopolitical forces converging and pulling the United States away from a long-standing tradition of continental isolationism.

2. Origins and Development of the Open Door Policy

For China, expansion by all the major powers meant that Western businessmen would profit at the expense of the Chinese. This reaction, in combination with a buildup of Chinese nationalism, led to a series of anti-foreign risings. When attempts for an open and precisely non-partitioned China were threatened in 1899, the United States felt compelled to take action. First, Secretary of State John Hay issued a policy paper known as the Open Door Note to all the other major powers urging them to declare formally that they would open their trade to equal, tariff-free protection in China. Having received agreement in principle, China did in fact sign commercial treaties with all the major powers. In doing so, China did not discover that the promise was easier to make than hold of the major powers had secured for the United States out of fear of exclusion. However, for the U.S. as a non-colonizer, the triumph had been in preserving the open door. The open door had thus been a first test of the U.S. as an anti-imperial power.

The origins and development of the Open Door Policy can be traced back to American economic interests throughout the world. By the late 19th century, increased industrialization and the need to export manufactured goods had made the United States the leading trading nation of the world. No longer able to fill their own increasing industrial needs by producing only the natural resources they required, the United States and other nations sought new opportunities overseas. These opportunities in Latin America, the Pacific, and Asia appeared especially inviting since powerful non-Western countries like China and Japan would conceivably become the future sources of fuel, rubber, tin, and even of labor and customers.

3. Significance and Impact on U.S. Foreign Policy

In the end, the Open Door Policy may have saved the United States from starting a war with other great powers over access to open markets in China and sacrificing considerable amounts of economic prosperity and domestic tranquility. The Open Door Policy was a clear reflection of U.S. intentions in the late 19th century. In particular, it was a clear reflection of U.S. intentions at least to offer China as an economic sphere of influence, if not even political influence in the Chinese state. Two significant impacts of the Open Door Policy are US-China relations and the rise of the Chinese Communist Party and the establishment of the Chinese Soviet Republic. In the ten years following the Open Door Policy announcement, China was the third largest market for U.S. goods, immediately behind Canada and Mexico. The United States and China had economic relations for over a hundred years.

The Open Door Policy allowed the United States to practice economic expansionism without resorting to colonialism, which was embracing the use of military force to subjugate distant peoples for self-interested economic ends. Because of the Open Door Policy, the United States avoided the armed protection of weakened China, which further facilitated the United States’ transition into a world power. The Open Door Policy seemed to confirm Harriman’s belief that a growing and fearful country should be willing to use its natural and material resources to improve its future prosperity, even if it meant breaking with the country’s past. Thus, the Open Door Policy with China was part of the worldwide U.S. foreign economic policy so favored by such progressive dollar diplomats as Harriman and Root. U.S. policy can still be classified as interventionist under the Open Door Policy because all the U.S. was doing was warning competitor countries to maintain the territorial integrity of the Chinese state or pay the consequences of the wrath of the United States.

4. Legacy and Relevance of the Open Door Policy Today

The Open Door Policy did help reduce the number of violent confrontations over Chinese trade. This was its most practical effect. It also laid down some precepts of good government’s economic relations with each other; for example, a government should not sponsor a trade monopoly with itself in an exclusive position. While the Open Door may have been a policy to ensure access to China’s trade, the policy still produced beneficial implications for the United States. The United States had a long-time commitment to trading at low tariffs, which edged against other protectionist blocs. Most favored nations’ treaty obligations required China’s trading partners to extend to all tariffs the same favorable trading terms, more favorable than the foreign trade exclusive arrangements that others were carving for themselves.

The Open Door Policy and its underlying principles, such as the rights of equal opportunity, independence, territorial integrity, and sovereignty, remained largely unfulfilled through the years. While the United States did not achieve all of these goals, the concept of China’s perpetual integrity and independence has persisted to the present. Recognition of casualty figures, relieving distress, and assisting in problems of construction and development are present-day features of American policy toward China. The United States now supports the return of Hong Kong to China. However, should reunification be urged on terms unacceptable to the people of Hong Kong, the United States would oppose it because Washington’s acceptance of Hong Kong’s re-entry into the People’s Republic of China is conditioned on the maintenance of Hong Kong as a hub for $15 billion worth of trade annually with the other members of globalization.