China, commercial interests, and American Pacific power

Did Japan's war in China push it into conflict with the United States?

Yes, because expansion threatened American interests in China and Washington's wider vision of Pacific control.

American policy should not be described as a disinterested defense of China. The United States, like Britain, protected commercial and strategic interests there. Washington also expected Japanese expansion to continue into Southeast Asia and the wider Pacific instead of stopping at the Chinese coast. Because Americans increasingly regarded the Pacific as their principal ocean, Japanese growth became a contest over regional control as well as a response to events inside China.