The United States needs a strategy that challenges China's narrative on its foreign investments and the inevitability of unification with Taiwan. The question of how the United States should respond to the rise of China has dominated the foreign policy debate in recent years. US-China relations have an incredibly complicated history that dates back many years to when the United States first interacted with Asian nations.
In the 19th century, after a long period of isolationism, China and then Japan came under pressure from the West to open to foreign trade. This led to the Boxer Rebellion in China, a violent anti-foreign and anti-Christian uprising that took place between 1899 and 1901. The United States, along with other Western powers, responded to the Boxer Rebellion by forming a coalition to protect their interests in China.
Since the fall of the Qing dynasty more than a century ago, young Chinese have repeatedly pressed their country's leaders to learn lessons from history and avoid repeating past mistakes. The Boxer Rebellion serves as a reminder of the consequences of isolationism and xenophobia in a globalized world.