What did Imperial Japan want from China?

What were the militarists trying to achieve in their increcibly brutal war with China?

a couple of things really. Firstly they wanted the resources that (especially Northern) China could offer to a resource poor Japan. Secondly they wanted a captive market that would buy Japanese goods. On a more ideological/political note they wanted to impede the growth of a powerful china under the KMT and to secure for Japan an empire that matched the western powers. Add in the internal conflict between the Army and the Navy over how Japan should solve its problems and army officers who routinely ignored orders from tokyo and you can see how the chinese fiasco came about.
 
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