Japan during World War I July 1916, Japan and Russia signed a treaty whereby each pledged not to make a separate peace with Germany, and agreed to consultation and common action should the territory or interests of each in China be threatened by an outside third party. Although Russia had a claim to Chinese territory by the Kyakhta and other treaties, Japan discouraged Russia from annexing Heilongjiang and began to slowly push the other powers out, such as the Germans in the Twenty-One Demands (1915). The delineating line between Russian (north) and Japanese (south) spheres of influences in China was the Chinese Eastern Railway. On
Asian and Pacific theatre of World War I on Germany. The German and Austro-Hungarian concessions in Tientsin and Hankow were occupied and their nationals detained. An even more serious plot was Germany's funding of the Constitutional Protection Movement, which geographically split China into two rival governments for eleven years. Asian and Pacific theatre of World War I The Asian and Pacific theatre of World War I consisted of various naval battles and the Allied conquest of German colonial possessions in the Pacific Ocean and China. The most significant military action was the careful and well-executed Siege of Tsingtao in what is now China, but smaller actions were also