ABSTRACT
The primary goal of the United States was to increase the amount of commerce. American interaction with China began in 1784 when the ship Empress of China brought American goods to what Chinese termed the Middle Kingdom and returned with abundant amounts of tea and porcelain. The USSR sent advisors to China and succeeded in persuading members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), founded July 1921 in Shanghai, to join the Kuomintang in 1923. The federal government also began to dispense aid by relieving China of the debt associated with the Boxer Rebellion. Meanwhile, on May 4, 1919 students in Beijing protested against the Versailles Peace Conference utter World War I because it allowed Japan to assume control of former German-held areas of China it had taken during the war. The protests started what became known as the May Fourth movement, a revolution in ideas that fueled Chinese nationalism.
