With the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war in 1937, Japan not only occupied Northeast China, but had also expanded its economic presence and even monopoly over Japanese occupied areas of China. Japan’s expansion in China and East Asia presented an immediate concern for American interests in China. Starting from the second half of 1939, the American government planned to terminate the Japan-US Treaty of Commerce and Navigation as well as enact measures to challenge Japan’s economic monopoly in China. American embargoes of Japan were further expanded after the latter joined the Axis Alliance in September 1940.
The deepening Sino-Japanese war and tough new American policy towards Japan forced American businessmen in China to try effective variety of different responses. So far, few scholars have paid attention to such American responses after China and Japan started all-out war with each other. The existing scholarship even suggests that American enterprises in China during wartime passively collaborated with the Japanese or their puppets. This paper, using the case studies of the Dollar Trading Company and the British-American Tobacco Company, tries to provide a fresh look at the complicated issues of how American enterprises in China responded to Japanese aggression and economic threats.