History of colonialism colonies had acquired independence during the Latin American revolutions at the beginning of the 19th century. In Asia, The Great Game, which lasted from 1813 to 1907, opposed the British Empire against Imperial Russia for supremacy in central Asia. China was opened to Western influence starting with the First and Second Opium Wars (1839–1842; 1856–1860). After the visits of Commodore Matthew Perry in 1852–1854, Japan opened itself to the Western world during the Meiji Era (1868–1912). Imperialism also took place in Burma, Indonesia (Netherlands East Indies), Malaya and the Philippines. Burma had been under British rule for nearly a hundred
Foreign aid to China Foreign aid to China Foreign aid to the People's Republic of China since 1949 has taken the form of both bilateral and multilateral official development assistance and official aid to individual recipients. In 1978, China and Japan normalized their diplomatic relations. Deng Xiaoping had been to Japan to sign a treaty and to look at its development. As a result, China decided to borrow 220 million dollars in soft loans from Japan when the amount of foreign currency preparation was 167 million dollars. China poured that money into social infrastructures. In 2001 it received US$1.4 billion in foreign aid, or