The United States Has Long Helped China, but Why Does the CCP Hate the United States?【Knowings Lecture Hall Enlightenment Forum Yu Maochun】EP265
This episode is presented by Yu Maochun, exploring the profound contributions of the United States to China's modernization process and why the CCP regards the United States as its greatest ideological enemy. Yu Maochun points out that, unlike the European powers, the United States did not attempt to carve up China, but profoundly influenced China through education, science, medicine, commerce, diplomacy, and constitutional systems. He uses Anson Burlingame’s mission and the Open Door Policy as examples, emphasizing the United States’ respect for and protection of Chinese sovereignty. Although there are historical blemishes such as the Chinese Exclusion Act, the United States’ goodwill and contributions to China are the mainstream of history. However, after the CCP was founded, it viewed the United States as a survival threat and deliberately worked to erase its influence. The video argues that the CCP’s real fear is not the United States’ military or economic power, but the universal values of democracy, freedom, and constitutionalism that the United States represents, which pose a fundamental challenge to the CCP’s ideology. Therefore, the CCP treats American influence as ideological contamination and subjects it to strict scrutiny and blockage.
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Welcome to the Enlightenment Forum of Zhi Ding Lecture Hall, I am Yu Maochun. Today many people describe US‑China relations as an inevitable confrontation between two great powers, as if the sides are destined to compete for global hegemony. History tells us that this is not the case. Over the past two hundred years, the foreign nation that has contributed the most to China’s modernization is not any European country, nor Japan, but the United States. Unlike European colonial empires and the Japanese empire, the United States did not try to carve up China, occupy Chinese territory, or turn China into a colony. Instead, the United States profoundly influenced modern China through education, science, medicine, commerce, diplomacy, and the demonstration of constitutional governance. Ironically, these contributions are why today’s CCP not only sees the United States as a geopolitical opponent but also as its greatest ideological enemy.
The United States’ friendly attitude toward China has deep historical roots. As early as the eighteenth‑century Enlightenment, thinkers such as Voltaire praised China’s imperial examination system and high civilization. This appreciation later crossed the Atlantic and deeply influenced educated Americans. The United States was founded on an anti‑colonial revolution, so it never viewed China as a land to be conquered, but as an ancient civilization worthy of respect and friendship. This spirit made U.S. policy toward China clearly different from that of the European powers. Britain opened the Chinese market with opium, eventually sparking the Opium War, but the United States never took that path. American merchants did conduct business in China, yet Washington never demanded colonies, nor did it seek territorial concessions like Britain’s acquisition of Hong Kong, Germany’s of Qingdao, Russia’s of Port Arthur, or Japan’s of Taiwan.
The person who best represents this tradition is Anson Burlingame. In 1861, President Lincoln appointed him as the United States minister to China. Burlingame insisted that China should be treated as a sovereign, equal nation, not as a target of imperialist exploitation. After leaving U.S. service, he even accepted an invitation from the Qing government to serve as the chief envoy of China to the Western powers, becoming the first American to represent another country abroad. Through his efforts, the United States and China signed the Burlingame Treaty in 1868, one of the most generous treaties the Western powers ever concluded with the Qing dynasty. It recognized Chinese sovereignty, opposed colonial coercion, and encouraged free migration of peoples between the two nations.
When the European powers were busy carving up China's sphere of influence, the United States opened its doors to Chinese immigrants. However, this goodwill later sparked domestic backlash, ultimately leading to the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. This is indeed a disgraceful page in American history. But a larger historical fact is: before the exclusion, there was acceptance; before suspicion, there was friendship.
The same spirit is reflected in the "Open Door Policy" proposed by U.S. Secretary of State John Hay in 1900. After the anti-foreign Boxer Rebellion, Europe and Japan were calculating how to divide China. Hay insisted that China must maintain its territorial integrity and remain open to trade with all nations. This policy successfully preserved China's political unity and prevented China from suffering the fate of the African continent, which fell into comprehensive colonial partition.
However, America's greatest contribution to China was not diplomatic but intellectual and educational. In the late Qing and early Republican periods, American missionaries, educators, and charitable organizations established many first‑rate universities, hospitals, and research institutions in China, including Yenching University, St. John’s University, Lingnan University, West China Union University, and the Peking Union Medical College founded by the Rockefeller Foundation. Later, the United States returned most of the Boxer Indemnity funds to finance Chinese students studying in America, cultivating generations of Chinese scientists, physicians, engineers, educators, and political leaders. Modern China's higher education, medicine, science, and engineering development all bear clear American fingerprints.
Moreover, the United States profoundly reshaped Chinese political thought. Constitutional government, separation of powers, judicial independence, representative systems, individual liberty, and the rule of law deeply influenced the late‑Qing reformers and Republican revolutionaries. Sun Yat‑sen openly praised the American constitutional system, and the establishment of the Republic of China was a concrete implementation of these democratic principles.
Yet history experienced a huge rupture. In 1921, Lenin sent Bolshevik agents to Shanghai to assist in the founding of the Chinese Communist Party. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the CCP deliberately tried to erase American influence and regarded the United States as the greatest threat to its regime’s survival. Ironically, since 1979, for nearly half a century the United States, through trade, technology, investment, and educational exchanges—and even supporting China’s accession to the World Trade Organization—pursued a policy of engagement based on miscalculation. This instead made a regime fundamentally hostile to the United States richer and stronger. As former President Nixon lamented in his later years, the United States seemed to have created a "Frankenstein".
Why did this happen? Because what the CCP truly fears has never been America’s military or economic power, but America’s ideas. Marxism‑Leninism is built on one‑party rule, ideological monopoly, and absolute personal obedience to the party’s authority. In contrast, American constitutional democracy holds that government legitimacy derives from the consent of the people, that individual rights precede the state, that truth must be discovered through free inquiry, and that political power must be strictly constrained by law. The CCP is well aware of something many Americans have forgotten: these democratic principles possess a powerful attraction. Democracy, freedom of speech, religious freedom, academic freedom, constitutional government, and the rule of law echo a universal human yearning. This is why Beijing treats American influence as ideological contamination rather than ordinary cultural competition. Platforms such as Google, YouTube, X, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Wikipedia, foreign media, universities, and NGOs are censored and blocked not because American ideas are weak, but because they are too potent.
The CCP frames U.S.–China tension as an inevitable clash between civilizations. But history shows that this is not the case. Long before the CCP’s emergence, Americans already admired Chinese civilization, defended Chinese sovereignty, educated Chinese students, built Chinese universities, trained Chinese physicians, welcomed Chinese immigrants, and opened markets to Chinese goods. None of these actions stemmed from hostility toward the Chinese people.
Therefore, the root of today’s U.S.–China confrontation is not an inherent conflict between the two nations, but an irreconcilable chasm between democratic constitutionalism and Marxist‑Leninist dictatorship. The CCP fears not America itself, but the universal values America represents and the free ideas capable of awakening and inspiring billions of Chinese people. This is the deepest irony of U.S.–China relations: the nation that contributed most to China’s modernization is the very one the CCP regards as its greatest threat. What America has given China has never been machines, capital, or technology, but a revolutionary concept: the purpose of government is to serve the people, not to rule them; truth is discovered through freedom, not defined by ideology; every individual possesses basic human rights, and no regime has the right to strip them away.
In other words, the tragedy of today’s US‑China relations lies in the fact that the United States, which once sent Pu Anchen to defend China’s sovereignty, now has to face a dictatorial regime that fears Pu Anchen’s spirit the most. What the CCP fears is not American power, but America’s core principle. This principle holds that a free society thrives because of openness, liberty, equality, and popular sovereignty; whereas a dictatorial regime can survive only through coercion, censorship, and fear.