At the turn of the twentieth century, American industrial entrepreneurs took great interest in China’s industrialization. They invested in the areas of railways, minerals, telegraph, electric power, harbor works and so on. These investments started in the late Qing and reached high points when China entered the Republican era. The technological introduction of these industrial developments provided opportunities to transform China and played important roles in training Chinese professional engineers. The existing studies are far from sufficient. This article focuses on two American engineering corporations’ projects in China: (1) the bid for building the Yellow River Bridge for the Peking-Hankow railway (a very challenging project given the river had strong and swift water flow and drift sand), and (2) the project for the improvement of Canton Harbor, the so-called “The International Harbor in South China.” Sun Yen-sen’s Shiye Jihua（實業計畫） emphasized the role of the second project in China’s national development. Unlike other cases of multi-national enterprise or the American consortium involving in China’s railway or other big investments for profits, a small group of American engineers played key roles in the above-mentioned two cases. These American engineers were highly confident of their skills to deal with challenging engineering works. However, both cases in China eventually did not bear fruit. By analyzing the two cases, I try to examine the difficult circumstances that American engineering companies encountered in China and their links with U.S. government. I will also explain the significance of the two failed cases in Chinese industrial modernization.