Twenty-One Demands

The Twenty-One Demands was a set of demands made during the First World War by the Empire of Japan, under Prime Minister Okuma Shigenobu, to the government of the Republic of China on 18 January 1915. The secret demands would have greatly extended Japanese control of China: Japan would keep the former German leased territory it had seized at the start of the war, gain increased influence in Manchuria and Inner Mongolia, and take an expanded role in China's railways. The most extreme of the demands would have given Japan a decisive voice in China's finance, policing and government affairs, in effect making China a protectorate of Japan and reducing Western influence there.