In 1900, Britain, the United States, Germany, France, Russia, Japan, Italy, and austria-Hungary launched the Eight-Power Alliance's war of aggression against China under the pretext of suppressing the Boxer Rebellion. The total number of invading Chinese troops was only 50,000, but with advanced long guns and short cannons, the beaten Manchu Qing Dynasty had no power to fight back, and Empress Dowager Cixi and the Guangxu Emperor were forced to flee, known as "Western Hunting".
In August 1900, the imperial capital of Beijing completely fell, the major aristocratic mansions suffered one after another, even Zhongnanhai (Xiyuan) and the Summer Palace were not exempted, and the treasures were lost; what is even more heartbreaking is that the Yuanmingyuan, known as the "Garden of Ten Thousand Gardens", has since been destroyed. The stolen treasures can be slowly recovered, but how to recover the burned buildings and cultural relics?
The invasion of China by the Eight-Power Alliance was originally a war of aggression, and as a result, the invaders shamelessly demanded reparations afterwards, allowing China to sign a paper treaty that can be said to be the largest amount of indemnities in modern times, the "Xinugu Treaty", which completely reduced China at that time to a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society.
In the Treaty of Xinugu, China's indemnities to various countries, the sum of principal and interest totaled 980 million taels of silver, repaid in 39 years, is the highest amount of reparations in modern China, that is, the so-called "Gengzi indemnity". Since 1909, the United States has taken the lead in returning the floating surplus of the original interest, but this return is not directly returned to real money, but used as a "study abroad fund" to pay those Chinese students who study in the United States for study.
With the United States as the leader, China later recovered the reparations from other countries by virtue of its status as a victorious country in World War I. However, like the United States, other countries are only willing to use this reparations for education or other investments, and are not willing to return the reparations in real money.
The essence of these countries is to attract more outstanding Chinese students to study in their countries, brainwash these Chinese students, and recruit excellent Chinese to their own countries. Even if we know the wolf ambitions of these countries, we have to admit that the level of education and the speed of scientific development in Europe and the United States at that time were indeed many times higher than that of China in the late Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the People's Republic. In order to allow students to learn more advanced science and technology to develop the motherland, China had to admit this method of indemnity.
In addition to the "Gengzi Indemnity", another relatively large impact brought about by the invasion of China by the Eight-Power Alliance was that it set off a frenzy of great powers dividing up China. Mr. Wen Yiduo's "Song of the Seven Sons" is probably not unfamiliar to many people, and most of these "forced leases" or direct occupation of Chinese land occurred after the Eight-Power Alliance's war of aggression against China. There is only one country that is the exception, and that is the United States.
Looking at the unequal land-cutting treaties in modern times, such as the "Special Article on Expanding hong Kong Boundary Sites", the "Luda Lease Treaty", the "Lease Weihaiwei Special Treaty", and the "Jiao-Macao Lend-Lease Treaty", we will find that basically Britain and France are the leaders, supplemented by Japan and Russia, but there is no United States. In fact, the United States was firmly opposed to the partition of China at that time. Why is this the case in the United States, is it out of humanitarian concern? No, just because the U.S. was not strong at the time.
Although the United States was counted as one of the "great powers" at that time, after all, the history of the country was too short, and it was only established in 1776 by launching the Revolutionary War. The foundation is not enough, and when competing with other world powers at that time, it is bound to be in the inferior position. It is also true that in the following decades, even if the United States often followed Britain, France and other countries everywhere, the benefits it could get were always limited. It was not until the Second World War that this situation underwent a fundamental change.
During World War II, due to its geographical location, the United States did not take the lead in joining the occupation, but seized the time to cooperate with various warring countries to develop military and scientific and technological forces. After the strength developed to a certain extent, the United States joined the war in the late stages of World War II, immediately curbed Japan's plan to dominate the Pacific, and forced Japan to surrender through two atomic bombs, completely becoming a superpower.