Open door policy

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Caricature in the puck of 23 August 1899: Uncle Sam is standing on a map of China that is being cut up by European heads of state and says, “Gentleman, you can cut this card as many times as you like, but remember that too I'm here to stay. "

The open door policy (Engl. Open door policy ) is a special form of foreign and economic policy . It originally regulated the trade relations between the great powers in the Empire of China , which had obtained unhindered market access in China and mutual competition through military interventions and unequal contracts . The open door policy guaranteed all powers trading with China equal economic rights and free access to all Chinese ports. Although the open door policy is commonly associated with China, the great powers have transferred the concept to areas in various countries since the Congo Conference at the latest .

The open door policy was first postulated in September / November 1899 by the United States (USA) in a note to the European world powers and Japan . The USA, which developed into an East Asian superpower after the Spanish-American war, tried to assert its own geopolitical and economic interests in the region and to inhibit the division of China by the European world powers and Japan.

China's situation before the open door policy

Chinese provinces and borders in 1820 before the First Opium War

In the middle of the 19th century, " The Great Game " began, the battle of the great powers over Central Asia . In particular, China, which is rich in natural resources, was at the center of the military conflict for economic supremacy. The British world power laid its hand on the Chinese central provinces: from Shanghai on the Yellow Sea , along the Yangtze to the west to the economically prosperous Szechuan , including Tibet to the Indian border; France wanted to achieve the “natural extension” of its colonial claims in Indochina with southern China ; Russia made claims to Outer Mongolia and all of Manchuria , and in the process came into permanent conflict with Japan , which considered Inner Mongolia and Manchuria as its area of ​​influence.

Great Britain managed to force the opening of the Chinese market as early as the First Opium War . In the Second Opium War , France and Great Britain advanced jointly in China. At the same time, the Imperial Russian Army transferred troop contingents of tens of thousands of soldiers to the border with Outer Manchuria and gradually began to take control of the Amur region . The Qing dynasty could hardly counter the aggressive actions of the great powers on almost all Chinese borders and was forced to conclude a series of so-called unequal treaties . On this basis, China lost around 1.5 million square kilometers of its territory to Russia alone.

Almost every European state then tried to obtain the same rights and concessions as its rival in China. The German Empire also secured one of the so-called treaty ports with Kiautschou - and even Portugal with Macau . China itself lost its supremacy in Asia and became a semi-colonial protectorate of the great powers. The collapse of western capitalism along with cheap industrial goods destroyed Chinese industry and handicrafts, which led to social decline and a falling standard of living in China.

The appearance of the USA

At the end of the 19th century, important areas of China were under European control. This made it difficult for the USA, which is also geared towards economic expansion, to gain access to the Chinese market. With the acquisition of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War of 1898, the USA gained a presence in Asia, but at that time did not see itself militarily in a position to assert its geopolitical and economic interests in the division of the world against the major European powers and Japan.

In order not to lose China as a sales market to the European powers along with Japan and to prevent a territorial division of China as happened in Africa , US Secretary of State John Hay demanded the application of the Open Door Policy to all of China. This should enable the US to act in China without having to face the world powers militarily. In 1898, John Hay suggested that the rival states secure the territorial status quo in China and, instead of competing in competition , act together better through free trade . The concept met with acceptance and was only officially rejected by Russia.

The failure of the open door policy

In 1902, following the Boxer Rebellion , the US government protested the Russian attack in Manchuria, calling it a violation of the open door policy. After Russia's defeat in the Russo-Japanese War , the US reached an understanding with Japan to continue the open door policy. However, the open door policy was weakened between the Allies and Japan as early as 1917 in secret negotiations in which Japan was granted German possessions in China if the war ended successfully .

After the First World War, a national resistance against the foreign powers formed in the Republic of China , which was first expressed in 1919 with the May Fourth Movement and culminated in the May 30th Movement in 1925 . While the Western powers kept the open door policy unchanged, Japan was increasingly raising territorial claims in China alongside the economic ones. Likewise, the Soviet Union de facto continued the expansion policy of the Tsarist government . The clashes led to the Chinese Civil War in 1927 , the Soviet-Chinese Border War in 1929 and the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 .

Formally, the open door policy was abandoned after the Japanese occupation of Manchuria and the establishment of Manchukuo . After the Second World War , all of the major colonial powers gradually had to surrender the territories in China that they had gathered in the age of imperialism ; Russia alone retained all of its possessions. Historians consider this fact to be the main cause of the Sino-Soviet rift that culminated in the 1969 Sino-Soviet border conflict . It was not until 2004 that China renounced the territories it had lost to Russia and reached an agreement with the Russian Federation on the definitive course of the border. The treaty between the two states was ratified on July 23, 2008.

literature

  • Hermann children, Werner Hilgemann : dtv atlas of world history . Volume 2: From the French Revolution to the Present (= German 3002). Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, 1966, DNB 456490841 .
  • Niels P Petersson: Imperialism and Modernization. Siam, China and the European Powers. Oldenbourg Verlag, 2000, ISBN 3-486-56506-0 .
  • Manfred P. Emmes: The foreign policies of the USA, Japan and Germany in mutual influence from the middle of the 19th to the end of the 20th century. LIT Verlag Münster, 2000, ISBN 3-8258-4595-8 .
  • Hubertus zu Löwenstein: The red imperialism. The strategy of Moscow and Beijing in the struggle for world domination. Springer-Verlag, 2013.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Martin Ewans: The Great Game. Britain and Russia in Central Asia. Routledge Shorton, 2004, p. 25 f.
  2. ↑ A black cloud hangs over us. In: Spiegel online. February 11, 1974. Retrieved September 21, 2017.
  3. ^ Ussuri conflict. A black cloud hangs over us. In: Spiegel online. March 17, 1969. Retrieved November 2, 2017.
  4. ↑ Ann-Kathrin Bartels: Analysis and / or Speculation? The Soviet-Chinese conflict in the West German press using the example of the border conflict on the Ussuri in March 1969. diplom.de-Verlag, 2015, p. 19.
  5. ↑ Eva-Maria Stolberg: Stalin and the Chinese Communists. A study of the history of the origins of the Soviet-Chinese alliance against the backdrop of the Cold War. Franz Steiner Verlag, 1997, p. 113 f.
  6. ^ Long border between Russia and China. In: The world. July 23, 2008. Retrieved September 17, 2017.