Why did you think the US protected the Dowager Empress??? It was not done for charity purposes. The US realize that if the Empress died, the reform movement which controlled southern China and kept the Boxers out can move north and take Bejing. How is the US, Japan and the West going to take advantage of a weak China head by more competent modern leaders? Old Asian strategy, never kill an incompetent general or leader, he might be replaced with a good one. For the US keeping the Dowager Empress alive served that purpose plus it was also good PR.
By the way, the southern reform movement mentioned eventually overthrew the Manchus and established an American style republic in 1911. The leader of the movement became its first President, the person was Sun Yat Sen. Ask yourself a dumb question, back in 1900 the US felt that China needs to be modern and civilized like modernized Japan, why did we protect a monarchy in lieu of supporting the southern reform movement in China modeled after Western republican ideas???? Despite our democratic and modern ideals, money and greed still talks. It happen back in 1900 and it still happens today.
BTW, when it was time for the Marine Corps to exit the theatre of combat at the Chosen Reservoir it was the 1/15 who had the honor of protecting that exit and then escorting the Marine rear guard out of there ~ out of the hands of the blood thirsty Chicoms.
Even then the 1/15 was highly respected and feared by the Chinese who encountered them. Many a Marine of that time owes his life to the fearsomeness of the 1/15.
No one whose ever served in the 1/15 at any time in the 20th century has the slightest fear of the Chinese, or the Germans, or the Arabs. They're all the same thing ~
Fee, your history is completely wrong. It's history written by Chinese propagandists (and reinforced by Imperial Japanese propaganda seeking support for the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere). The reality is that Chinese revolutionaries raised funding from overseas Chinese in British colonies and North America without interference by Western powers. If they had really wanted to interfere with the revolutionaries, they would have imprisoned the fund raisers and confiscated their property. The truth is that the West was merely a spectator and repelled attacks on its concessions where they arose. In the mid-19th century, the Taiping rebels shot themselves in the foot by making mistake of threatening the British and French Concessions in Shanghai. In response, Western business interests in Shanghai hired Frederick Townsend Ward to form the Ever Victorious Army, which repelled Taiping attacks on Shanghai, stopping what had seemed to be the irresistible momentum of the Taiping rebels. It was the beginning of the end for the Taiping rebels - instead of securing Western neutrality by avoiding the Western concessions, they attacked them head on and suffered the consequences. The Chinese revolutionaries who toppled the Chinese monarchy did not make the same mistake - they studiously avoided the Western concessions (in particular, the French concession endured for 35 years after the 1911 revolution). It's also wrong to say to say that Chinese were not allowed inside the Western concessions. Like Hong Kong, anybody could purchase property there, and armies of Chinese both lived and worked in Shanghai, Tianjin and other similar cities.