China's Open Door Policy

During a lot of the nineteenth century China was constantly fighting with foreign countries over their land. Because of the advancements in technology the foreign army’s weapons would take out entire imperial Chinese armies. The emperor of the Ch’ing Dynasty desperately wanted a way to get rid of the foreign powers from their land for good. The foreign powers were Austria, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan and Russia and they all claimed to have trading rights and even own some of the Chinese territory. The foreign countries had divided the land into spheres to separate themselves from each other. But, when the United States gained the Philippines from the Spanish American War it became another Asian power also. Since China was so close to the Philippines a lot of American business men were hoping to benefit from China’s many resources.
During this time the United States Secretary of State John Hay came up with the idea of negotiating the situation of the land w...