Liberal Imperialism: The Rise and Fall of Liberal Internationalism

482 Pages·2010·1.86 MB·English

Liberal Imperialism:
The Rise and Fall of Liberal Internationalism in U.S.-China Relations
and the Origins of the Cold War, 1898–1945

by

Jason C. Chang

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
(American Culture)
in The University of Michigan
2010

Doctoral Committee:
Professor Kevin Gaines, Co-Chair
Professor Penny Von Eschen, Co-Chair
Associate Professor Paul A. Anderson
Associate Professor Thomas A. Guglielmo, The George Washington University
© Jason C. Chang 2010
All rights reserved.
For my parents

Annie Koh Chang
and Ricky Wu-nan Chang

and in loving memory of Nikita, best dog ever.
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Acknowledgments

I‘ve always found writing to be a solitary pursuit, but one thing that I‘ve come to
learn while working on this dissertation is that the writing itself is perhaps the only part
of the long process that does not require the generous aid of mentors, teachers, family, a
dog, friends, and strangers. For all the help I‘ve received along the way, I‘d like to give
thanks.
Penny Von Eschen has been an enthusiastic advocate of my work ever since we
first met many years ago, when we were both new arrivals in Ann Arbor. The ideas that
eventually coalesced and became this dissertation were first conceived in her seminar on
Race, Gender, and Empire in U.S. History, and expanded in the readings we did for my
oral examinations. I hope that her longstanding dedication seeing to my intellectual
growth, and the influence of her own path breaking scholarship on the importance of
thinking U.S. empire in an international frame, will be apparent in the following pages.
Her support and feedback through all stages of this dissertation have made it a much
better product, and for that I am grateful. It has been an honor to be her student. Kevin K.
Gaines has been a steady pillar of support as well, ever since I first sat down in his
seminar on the Origins of Black Studies during my first week of graduate school, through
my oral examinations, and now as the co-chair of my dissertation committee. His level-
headed and incisive critiques helped focus what was at times a rather unwieldy project.
Thomas A. Guglielmo has been a model teacher and scholar, as well as a good friend. His
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commitment to a rigorous historical methodology, and his reminders about the primacy
of the archive have provided a model worthy of emulation, and some great leads on
sources. Paul A. Anderson has been a cheerful interlocutor, and an intensely close reader,
for which I am thankful. Plus, I owe my dissertation title to a conversation we had over
beers at Ashley‘s one afternoon several years ago.
I would like to give thanks to the many wonderful teachers I have had over the
years, both at the University of California at Santa Cruz, where I did my undergraduate
studies, and at the University of Michigan: Julia Adams, Tomas Almaguer, Jonathan
Beller, David Brundage, James Clifford, Christopher Connery, Phil Deloria, John
Dizikes, Geoff Eley, Dana Frank, Kevin Gaines, Herman Gray, Gail Hershatter, Scott
Kurashige, Curtis Marez, Terrence McDonald, Jim McIntosh, Aamir Mufti, Jeffrey
Paige, Hannah Rosen, Maurice Stevens, Penny Von Eschen, David Wellman, Marilyn
Westerkamp, Karen Tei Yamashita, Alice Yang, and Judy Yung. Two scholars outside of
the Santa Cruz and Michigan network deserve special mention for their support as this
project came to fruition. Kevin Scott Wong served as a commentator on several
conference panels where earlier versions of the ideas in this dissertation were presented,
and at conferences where he wasn‘t giving official comments, he was often in the
audience offering his wise counsel and support. Donald E. Pease offered good cheer,
insightful comments, as well as a collegial intellectual environment, when I had the good
fortune to present a portion of this dissertation in our seminar at the Dartmouth Futures of
American Studies Workshop in the summer of 2009.
Marlene Moore, of the Program in American Culture, has guided me seamlessly
through many years of the bureaucratic aspects of being a graduate student at the
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University of Michigan, and for this I thank her. Funding from the Horace H. Rackham
School of Graduate Studies, The Program in American Culture, Students of Color of
Rackham (SCOR), and the Organization for Academic and Multicultural Initiatives, have
made much of the research for this dissertation possible.
Fellow graduate students at the University of Michigan, and in the Bay Area
where I moved to finish the dissertation, have constituted a tremendous support network
in all phases of my graduate education. They are, in no particular order: Nicholas Syrett,
Laura Hymson, Robin Li, Charles Gentry, Justine Pas, Jennifer Beckham, Dolores Ines
Casillas, Robert Hill, Tracie Rubeck, Shawan Wade-Worsley, Robert McLean, Tamar
Carroll, Richard Kim, Erika Gassar, Leah Khaghani, Matthew Wittman, Tyler Cornelius,
Janxin Leu, Shaun Lopez, Larry Hashima, Daryl Maeda, Anna Pegler-Gordon, Grace
Wang, Nikki Stanton, Cindy Wu, Colin Johnson, Dean Saranillio, Sharon Lee, Lee Ann
Wang, Brian Chung, Nhi Lieu, John McKiernan Gonzalez, Jess Rigelhaupt, Kim Alidio,
Jan Bernabe, Sarah Gould, Afia Ofori-Mensa, Munia Bhaumik, Jennifer Harford-Vargas,
Swati Rana, and Jennifer Reimer.
I count myself lucky to have a solid group of friends whom I have known since
childhood, who have provided me with solid laughs and great times as I‘ve worked on
this project for many years. They are: Noah Dasho, Manton Hurd, Joshua Kennedy-
Smith, Gabriel Monts, Tobe O‘neal, John Roller, Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone, Paul
Vogler, and Noah Zoloth-Levy.
I‘d like to thank the librarians and archivists at the Bancroft and Asian American
Studies libraries at the University of California at Berkeley, the Hoover Institution
Archives at Stanford University, the Yale Divinity School Library at Yale University, and
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the United States National Archives and Records Administration, both in College Park,
MD, and San Bruno, CA.
In 2002, I adopted a beautiful four-year-old Husky–Shepherd mix named Nikita
from the Ann Arbor Humane Society. She was a tireless companion, and spent countless
hours by my side, under my feet, and wedged between by leg and some other object. She
was there as I read for orals, as I began the task of writing the dissertation, and was
always happy to see me when I came home from the archives. I had always had a vision
of celebrating the completion of my dissertation with her (and some humans as well), but
she passed away in 2008, before I could finish. She‘s always in my heart, and this
dissertation is dedicated in part to her memory. I know she would have really enjoyed
sleeping on her very own bound copy.
Without the love and support of my family none of this would have been possible.
My parents, Annie and Ricky Chang, have given me every kind of support imaginable,
and then some, and then some more. They are models of kindness and generosity. Words
cannot express my gratitude for the sacrifices they made, and the opportunities they
provided me with. I hope this dissertation gives them a soupcon of relief, and a feeling
that it was worth it. If not, it will at least make an incredibly serviceable doorstop on
those particularly windy Beijing days. My grandmother Cecile Koh has been ever
interested in my progress, and I am happy to be able to tell her now that the dissertation is
done. My uncle Hsing-wu Chang has been eternally supportive, and provided honest and
practical life advice. My older sister Aimee Chang has been an inspiration throughout
much of my life (in the years after I retired as her living TV-channel-changer, and other
sundry things for which there are now wireless technologies widely available). Her good
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cheer and fierce intellect are awe-inspiring, and my pursuit of a Ph.D. can be seen as just
one part of the larger life project of becoming, some day, I hope, as smart as she is. But I
suspect one cannot just learn these things, it is an expression of her extraordinary habitus.
Her partner Becky Escamilla is one of the kindest, most cheerful, and generous persons I
have ever met. Plus, she has a mind-bogglingly amazing guitar collection. It has been my
good fortune to have her as part of the family. My in-laws, Lois, Mark, and Sam Pipkin
provided much-needed cheerleading as this project came to a close. My partner in crime
and in life, Erin Pipkin, has been the exemplar of patience and understanding. Her wise
counsel and critical acumen have made this a much better dissertation than it could ever
have been without it, and our lively conversations always sharpen my thinking. More
importantly, her love and companionship have enriched my life beyond measure, and
make me feel as though every day brings with it the possibility for newness and
something even better than what came before. This is particularly uplifting for someone
who spends so much time looking backwards, contemplating what ways, if any, the
lessons of history might help lead us towards a more equitable and just future. There is no
way that I can thank her enough for all she has given me.
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Table of Contents

Dedication…………………………………………………………………………………ii
Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………iii
A Note on Usage………………………………………………………………………….ix
Chapter 1: Introduction……………………………………………………………………1
Chapter 2: Empire of Time: Emergent Chinese Modernities in The Republican
Advocate and Kang You-wei‘s Da Tong Shu…..………….…………………………….43
Chapter 3: The Missionary Apparatus, American Liberalism, and Chinese Anti-
Imperialist Nationalism………………………………….…………………………..….115
Chapter 4: The Rise and Fall of Sino-Soviet Relations, and the Origins of Chinese
Anti-Communism………………………………………………………………………168
Chapter 5: The Dixie Mission, SACO, and the Foundations of the Cold War Dynamic
…………………………………………………………………………….…………….209
Chapter 6: ―International Solidarity of the Indestructible Type‖: Race, Internationalism,
and the Two Chinas in the Debates over the Repeal of Chinese Exclusion..…………..280
Chapter 7: The Failures of U.S.–China Diplomacy and the Road to McCarthyism……337
Chapter 8: Conclusion………………………………………………………….……….433
Bibliography…………………………………………………………………..………..453
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A Note on Usage

For romanization of Chinese, I have opted to use both the now defunct Wade-Giles as
well as the contemporary Pinyin systems. For famous historical actors, where Pinyin
would presumably be less familiar to the reader, I have retained Wade-Giles. For
example, I have chosen to use Wade-Giles for Chiang Kai-shek, as the Pinyin form, Jiang
Jieshi, would be unrecognizable to most readers outside of the field of Chinese history. In
other instances, as with the Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong, I have used Pinyin,
as it is not only more current, but is also as recognizable to most readers as the Wade-
Giles, Mao Tze-tung. Most place names have been rendered in Pinyin, except those that
remain familiar to most readers in Wade-Giles, like Peking instead of Beijing. In other
instances, with less familiar names, I have generally used Pinyin, but list Wade-Giles in
parentheses, for example: Zhang Zuolin (Chang Tso-lin).
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