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Importance and significance of the Open Door Policy

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Assess the significance of the Open Door Policy in China.

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Solution Summary

Understanding spheres of influence and the barriers they created to free trade. Focus on the importance and need for the United States Open Door Policy with China.

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Hay's proclamation of the Open Door policy was a landmark moment in the history of U.S. foreign relations. For one thing, it reflected the rise of the United States as a major power prepared to assert its interests in a distant part of the world where Europeans had reigned supreme. Hay set in motion a process that led ineluctably if fitfully to America's emergence as the predominant outside power attempting to shape Asia's economic and political destiny. Hay's policy also established a pattern of U.S. behavior that had long-term consequences far beyond Asia. With its annexations of Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines in 1898, the United States had demonstrated a clear interest in territorial acquisition as the means of satisfying its expansionist impulse. But Hay's notes indicated a shift toward a different approach: The United States would expand its influence through economic hegemony rather than imperial control.

The idea proved to have enormous staying power, partly because it fit with America's self-conception as a nation founded on ...

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