President Rutherford B. Hayes vetoed a Congressional bill restricting Chinese immigration on the basis that it violated the 1868 Burlingame Treaty, which provided for unrestricted Chinese immigration into the United States.
An uprising against foreign powers took place in China. The Boxer Rebellion was put down by an international army that included American forces.
At the Washington Naval Conference, the United States, Britain, France, Italy, Japan, China, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Belgium signed an agreement recognizing China’s sovereignty and maintaining the Open Door policy.
The People’s Liberation Army, led by Communist leader Mao Zedong, ousted Chiang Kai-Shek’s Nationalist government in China. Mao Zedong declared the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, and Nationalist forces and sympathizers were forced to retreat to Taiwan.
Richard Nixon became the first US president to visit the People’s Republic of China when he traveled there for one week in 1972. During his visit, Nixon met with Mao Zedong and other Chinese officials. The trip proved a success when China agreed to establish full diplomatic relations with the US.
The United States and the People’s Republic of China officially established diplomatic relations. The United States declared that it “recognizes the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal government of China.”
The Group of Eight (or G-8 Nations) is the organization of leading inudstrialized nations (the US, Canada, China, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan) that holds periodic meetings to discuss political and economic issues that affect its members and the global community. The G-8 Nation meetings have met with intense scrutiny and protest from anti-globalization protestors as well as environmentalists and human-rights activists.
Marco Polo (1254–1324) was a Venetian merchant who, as a young man, set off on a years-long journey with his father, Nicolo, through Asia. The Polos arrived in China around 1275 and spent seventeen years there. They returned to Venice around 1295, when Marco was forty-two years old. Just two years later, a ship under Marco Polo’s command was captured and held in Genoa. While imprisoned in Genoa, Polo met a fellow prisoner to whom he dictated his own, as well as his father’s, travels and adventures in Asia. Polo’s account would become famous...