Perhaps neither here nor there but as early as the 1830s or 40s, there was an American politician who was calling for assisting China in industrializing then marrying our economy to their manufacturing base. That guy went on to become the Secretary of War and then....well, president of the confederacy.
But his dream didn't die with that conflagration. Near the turn of the century J.P Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, National City Bank of New York, and the Chase National Bank poured a lot of effort into
American-China Development Company . A failure but a very important step in American foreign policy development at the turn of the century.
A lot of these guys saw humongous dollar signs when looking at China.
The Myth of the China Market, 1890-1914 by Paul A. Varg
That generation of rich guys who failed and bitterly had to sell their stakes to King Leopold suddenly start all sorts of activity to prime the pump for an international America to kick every two-bit European empire's behind, put them in their place & then profit.
The end result is Wilson and generations of this
BCUzD5eBTNU