Woodrow Wilson was wrongly blamed for betraying China at the 1919 Paris peace talks due to a chance clerical error. His “secret” compromise solution to the Sino-Japanese Shandong question divided the problem into “political” versus “economic” concerns. While fighting to return to China full control over all political rights, Wilson was willing to grant Japan the economic rights that Germany had previously held in the Shandong concessions, and which the Japanese government had acquired from Beijing by means of official—albeit secret—agreements. Wilson successfully negotiated this compromise with the Japanese delegation during the last week of April 1919, immediately prior to the announcement of the Paris Peace Conference's peace treaty. Coincidentally, Wilson's secretary back in Washington neglected to release this agreement, thereby helping to precipitate the 4 May 1919 student demonstrations in China that eventually resulted in the founding of the Chinese Communist Party.

President Wilson stood up for China's national sovereignty at the Paris Peace Conference ending World War I. On 29 April 1919, Wilson expressed his concerns that Japan might wrongly acquire Germany's former political rights—considered illegal by China—in Shandong province. He even went so far as to ask the Japanese envoy, Baron Makino, several detailed questions, first about underwater cables, then about railways and mines, to make sure that Japan was not being given more rights than Germany had previously enjoyed. Wilson was especially worried about Tokyo's contention that the Japanese citizens should enjoy extraterritorial rights along the railway lines in Shandong, warning the Japanese delegates that “He must say frankly that he could not do this. He asked the Japanese representatives to cooperate with him in finding a way out. He wanted to support the dignity of Japan, but he thought that Japan gained nothing by insisting on these leased rights being vested in the government.” As for Japan's insistence on using Japanese police along the railways, Wilson clarified that “he did not mind Japan asking for these rights, but what he objected to was their imposing them.”