The Sino-American Commercial Treaty of 1946

On November 4, 1946, representatives of the United States and China signed a five-year “Treaty of Friendship, Commerce, and Navigation” at Nanking. Negotiation of this pact within six months of the cessation of hostilities had been called for by the treaty of January 11, 1943, under which the United States relinquished extraterritorial rights in China. The new treaty should thus have occasioned no surprise since it was intended merely as a routine instrument for facilitating commercial relations between the two countries.