Once both the Chinese and American governments accepted the dismemberment of the Japanese Empire as a logical result of the war, the next question was how to treat Japan's imperial territorial possessions. An answer, also seemingly logical, was that those territories seized by Japan from China should be returned. Thus, China's nationalist objective of recovering lost territories and America's wartime policy of promoting China's international status could both be satisfied. By the time of World War II, China's lost territories were not limited to those seized by Japan, such as Manchuria, Taiwan, and the Ryukyu Islands. It was simply politically expedient for the Allies to focus their postwar plans on the territories in Japan's possession lest other territorial issues cause inter-Allied disunity. Yet, even in the areas just mentioned, the Chinese and the American governments did not readily agree.

Manchuria

To the Chinese government, Manchuria held a unique place in China's rehabilitation. It symbolized China's territorial disintegration in the prewar years due to the fact that, after establishing itself in Nanjing in 1928, Chiang Kai-shek's “central government” had never been able to extend its actual control to the region. During the Sino–Japanese conflict in the 1930s, although it gradually ceased reproving Western treaty powers in China in order to win international sympathy, the Chinese government never formally abandoned the objective of recovering its lost territories. Refraining from pressing other treaty powers over territorial problems, the Chinese government's persistent claim to Manchuria became the only evidence that its “revolutionary diplomacy” was still alive.