Abstract
SS Alice Dollar incident, an exact reflection of civil wars, social disorder and soldier-bandit outrages along Yangtze, was an important historical event between China and US in the 1920s. Chinese soldiers bet and injured Americans on the American ship, SS Alice Dollar at Ichang. This was a humiliation to the US sovereignty and respect. American sailors from a gunboat nearby got on board the steamer immediately, arrested the Chinese soldiers in flagrante delicto, and then kept them in custody on the gunboat. US Naval intervention made this incident more complicated. Furthermore, this incident occurred just after the four naval powers, US, Great Britain, Japan and France, planned working together to deal with the navigation security problem on Yangtze. American Commander, Yangtze Patrol, as the main initiator of the naval cooperation, tried every effective way to remove unstable elements on Yangtze. Thus, a seemingly simple conflict became a serious incident, and tense diplomatic negotiations about extradition and trial between US and China followed. Due to the fact that Chinese soldiers were kept on board American gunboat, the attitude and intervention of US Navy definitely would influence the result of the matter. On modern history, Sino-foreign conflicts and gunboat diplomacy brought by the Powers used to be one of the most important factors for shaping the relationship between China and foreign countries. After World War I, US took the lead on the Powers' policies toward China. The conflict-solving strategies and patterns between the US and China would be important models. Mild or hard line that the US Navy took in the interventions and negotiations would not only arouse the Chinese people's complex feeling to Americans, but also make other Powers following in the same way. Secondly, settlement of the disputes always involved delicate diplomatic negotiations and legal trials, but US Naval intervention would make the things different. In other words, besides conducting military demonstrations, US Navy might try to work on the diplomatic and legal affairs indirectly at the same time.
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