With the establishment of ties between apartheid South Africa and Taiwan (officially the Republic of China), KMT-affiliated Taiwanese Chinese (as well as some Hong Kongers from British Hong Kong) started migrating to South Africa from the late 1970s onward. Due to apartheid South Africa's desire to attract their investment in South Africa and the many poorer Bantustans within the country, they were exempt from many apartheid laws and regulations. This created an odd situation where South Africans of Chinese descent continued to be classified as Coloureds or Asians, whereas the Taiwanese Chinese and other East Asian expatriates (South Koreans and Japanese) were considered "honorary whites" and enjoyed most of the rights accorded to White South Africans.