Twenty-One Demands
The United States was especially leery of Japanese designs on China, after the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) and the Twenty-One Demands (1915) and repeatedly signed agreements with the Japanese government pledging to maintain a policy of equality in Manchuria and the rest of Mainland China. These agreements concluded with Lansing–Ishii Agreement in 1917, which was soon shown to be completely ineffective.