The U.S held strength in the Asian region from aggravating European imperialist encroachment. To Japan, this represented a developing threat to the autonomy of the region. U.S.–Japanese relations would recover a bit in the early 20th century, but by the early 1920s, few in Japan believed that the United States meant anything positive for the future of Asia. By the 1930s, the U.S. presence in Asian affairs, along with the instability in China and the collapse of the Western economic order, Japan would act aggressively with respect to China, setting the precedent that would ultimately culminate in the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Some scholars suggest that Japan's road to World War II had begun not upon winning the Russo-Japanese War, but when it lost the peace.