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Nearly sixty years ago, Henry R. Luce envisioned that the twentieth century was "America's first century as a dominant power in the world."1 His famous vision of "The American Century" showed America's commitment to exert upon the whole world the full impact of American influence. At century's end, it seems appropriate to assess how the United States attempted to exert its influence, particularly to spread American-style freedom and democracy in its foreign policy and to evaluate its relations with East Asia, particularly with China over the last one hundred years. To begin thinking about America's engagement with China historically, World War II provided a special stage for anAmerican image of anAmerican-oriented China. Because of the war, the United States came to embrace a vision of a "strong" and "independent" China emerging in postwar Asia. How did this new vision emerge in the American imagination, and how did it affect America's East Asian policy?
This essay examines how the United States transformed its China policy to promote China as an "equal state" in international relations during World War II. In particular, it focuses on the repeal of racially discriminatory legislation against the Chinese in 1943. By examining the process of repeal, we can see that the abolition of the discriminatory laws against the Chinese not only marked a historic turning point in America's China policy in wartime, but also had a great impact on the transformation of America's East Asian policy in the postwar period.
Formation of Chinese Exclusion Policy
The first Asian immigrants to enter the United States were Chinese, lured to California by the Gold Rush of 1848. By 1850 there were over 20,000 Chinese immigrants in the United States, most of them in California. Railroad construction in the United States during the 1860s further accelerated the influx of Chinese laborers. There were 63,199 Chinese in the United States in 1870. Ten years later there were 105,465 Chinese in America, over ninety percent of who settled on the Pacific Coast.2
As the number of Chinese increased, however, Caucasian workers in California began to resent Chinese laborers. The Chinese were considered "culturally and racially inferior" and a threat to wage levels and working conditions. By the mid-1870s, the completion of the transcontinental railroad, the growth...