Renewing Sino-American bonds of contact, commerce and civility

Embedded in the interior walls at the 10^th landing of the Washington Monument, the obelisk that dominates the U.S. capital’s skyline, is an inscription in Chinese honoring the memory of America’s first president, George Washington. An “extraordinary man” he was, it reads. The inscription goes on to praise the United States’ kingless form of government with its “unprecedented” appeal to public opinion, shorn as it is of the trappings of a hereditary ruling class. Its author was Xu Jiyu, a pioneering mid-19^th century geographer and Fujian provincial governor, who went on to serve as a founding administrator of Tongwen Guan – the specialized government foreign language school that today houses Peking University’s language programs.

Xu had been introduced to Western sciences and government by American protestant missionaries – the latter, themselves, fortunate to benefit from provisions in the U.S.’ July 1844 Treaty of Wangxia with China’s Qing Dynasty rulers, which opened the door to missionaries to construct “hospitals, churches, and cemeteries.” The treaty also permitted foreigners to learn Chinese – or as the relevant provision noted, “the languages of the empire.” The missionaries would go on to play a stellar institution-building role in the sciences and socio-cultural fields, and their descendants’ stories of the earnestness, endurance and industry of the Chinese people, including Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth, would captivate millions of Americans. 

A hundred years earlier, another founding father, Benjamin Franklin, had modeled himself on Confucian virtues of self-cultivation and moral perfection and, alongside, had striven to integrate valuable elements from Chinese civilization into his young nation-in-being’s way of life. The east pediment of the U.S. Supreme Court today features a sculpture of Confucius, alongside Moses and the Athenian political philosopher Solon, to honor his contributions to ancient legal tradition and civilization. During Franklin’s time, wealthy merchants from Philadelphia – North America’s foremost ‘Chinamaxxing’ city at the time – would go on to launch the U.S.’ seaborne trading relationship with China. Ginseng, the main outbound cargo in the Empress of China’s maiden February 1784 voyage, had fittingly been discovered by Franklin in the mid-Atlantic colonies decades earlier.

If a few instructive pointers are to be gleaned from this earlier age of contact, it is these.

First, along the vast arc of Sino-American relations, admiration of the other travelled in both directions. The philosophical depth of China’s cultural traditions, the sophistication of its bureaucratic machinery, and the practicality and industry of the Chinese people appealed to the American sentiment. For their part, many Chinese saw the United States as a golden land of opportunity and important thought-leaders were inspired by its people-centered, not aristocracy-centered, political system. In both societies, honor ascended, not descended, based on a person’s virtuosity, learning and capabilities. The common dream of a better life united both societies and continues to do so today. 

Second, commercial contact and people-to-people bonds long predated relations between their governments, laying deep roots that continue to hold both societies in good stead unto this day. Formal ties were established in 1844. Yet long before that date, the homes of the American city-dwelling merchants had been “stead[ily] infiltrate[ed]” with “things Chinese, or in the Chinese style,” and the Empress of China had in fact arrived back in New York harbor in May 1785 with “fine tea table china in sets.” For their part, early-19^th century Chinese geographers and strategic scholars were indebted to Western cartographic techniques introduced by the early Protestant missionaries that helped them form a synthesized view of the empire’s frontiers, and the looming British Indian threat at their doorstep. Today, the equalizing landscape of social media is forming cross-border friendships and follower-ships that do not conform to a centralizing script. 

Finally, government-to-government support and sponsorship served as an accelerant for people-to-people networks, facilitating the remaking of both societies from the ground up. The Treaty of Wangxia opened the door to opportunities for young Chinese mission-educated girls who – after braving the sea passage and earning degrees from prestigious schools in America – went on to establish successful medical practices back home and tore down gender boundaries in the process. More recently, the 1979 bilateral Science & Technology Agreement (STA) has led to an efflorescence of academic exchanges, such that Beijing and Washington are each other’s top scientific partners and collaborative work between Chinese and American scientists is a standout feature of the most cited research papers. 

It is true the missionaries left a mixed legacy in their adoptive land, much like the imprint left by their counterpart group – early Chinese immigrants – whose lives impinged just as intimately on America’s mid-19^th century socio-cultural milieu. That the two countries were at very different stages in their national circumstances ensured that both groups were seen as hotbeds of subversion and elicited nativist pushback. One need not uncritically applaud their deeds to appreciate the pivotal role they played nevertheless as intermediaries and interpreters who facilitated access to the other’s culture and, like delicate tendrils, helped wrap the two societies over time around their common aspirations.

Today, as a liberated China re-rises on a scale and magnitude that is no less extraordinary than the U.S.’ rise a century-and-a-half earlier, similarly mirrored anxieties of the other are unfortunately creeping into nationalist discourse once again. People-to-people ties must craft an alternative narrative – one that champions a new vision of an equal partnership of two great societies and categorically rejects the false appeals of nativism, exclusivity and exclusion. The students and youth of the two countries as well as their businesspeople and entrepreneurs – the successors of the missionary, the seaborne trader, and the immigrant laborer in today’s more secular and globalized age, must serve as its cultural ambassadors. Both groups subscribe to worldviews that transcend ideological divides and are more at ease with the shifting terms of Sino-American power and leadership competition. And governments on both shores of the Pacific must advocate for their emissaries, including through programs such as President Xi’s 100K invitation to America’s youth and President Obama’s ‘100,000 Strong’ initiative earlier.    

A new chapter of contact, commerce and civility awaits to be written founded on the timeless principles that have informed and sustained the remarkable character of Sino-American people-to-people ties.

A revised version of this article was originally published in China Daily on October 15, 2026.