U.S.-China Negotiations Risk Shutting Out the Rest of the World

On a wintry Sunday in February 1784, the Empress of China pulled out of New York Harbor and headed for Guangzhou with a crew of 42 and a cargo of liquor, Mexican silver, and American ginseng. It was off on what’s now a well-worn trade route between the world’s two largest economies—the first ship under the flag of an independent United States to venture to China in search of fortune. It also raised a question that’s consumed U.S. policymakers since: How do you cut a deal with China when the rest of the world wants to make one too?

As John Pomfret, author of The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom, a history of U.S.-China relations that documents the voyage of the Empress of China, writes, America’s preoccupation with China goes back to the Boston Tea Party. The protest was at its root against Britain’s use of unfair taxes to control the price of tea from China. The Empress of China set out in part to loosen the British grip on the tea trade.