Abstract: Tea is the most exported Chinese products to the U.S. in the modern history. After the Opium War, the export of Chinese tea dramatically expanded, but its quality tremendously degraded due to the subjective and objective factors and tea trade disputes frequently occurred between China and the U.S. Changes in economic and social environment led the U.S. to tackle the tea quality problems. Since the 1880s, the U.S. government had twice worked out tea regulations and acts to set quality thresholds for tea imports. These quality thresholds severely impacted Chinese tea export to the U.S., and instead, the U.S. tea market was quickly occupied by up-to-standard Japanese tea, Indian tea and Ceylon tea. From the late Qing Dynasty to the 1920s, innovative research and practices were continuously conducted on quality problems caused by human factors in the U.S. forbidden green tea. However, they focused more on suggestions than acts, low in speed and limited in practice, and lacked of holistic perspective and systematic motivation and organization. In 1931, Nationalist Government started to implement export inspection and gained certain effects, but it was to too late to change the results.
Key words: International trade; tea trade; quality thresholds; export inspection; the U.S.