Throughout the 19th century into the 20th century, the west started to have an increasingly great influence on the other parts of the world. Asia, in particular, was faced with the decision of whether to adopt and conform to the western ways or to reject and stick with their traditional ways of life. In the end, Asia adapted to ways of the western “devils”, but most of their efforts seemed unsuccessful while others were quite successful. The main countries that experienced the western influence were China, Korea and Japan. Although all three countries experienced their share of internal and external strife, China and Korea’s modernization efforts were, in comparison to Japan, unsuccessful. The reason for this was because Japan was able to fully utilize their resources and take advantage of the opportunities that they were presented with in Asia, whereas China and Korea were occupied with internal and external conflicts. Although China and Korea weren’t total failures, the Land of the Rising sun overshadowed them. China’s first experience with western imperialism is seen in the 1830’s when they had conflict with the spread of opium and the dwindling of silver within the country. China wished to stop both these events so when they confiscated supplies of opium from British traders, the British government used its newly developed military power to make their dissatisfaction known to the Chinese. This, along with other factors, led to the First Opium War (1839-1842). The result of this was the Treaty of Nanjing, which gave the British Hong Kong and allowed them to stop the trade monopoly of the Canton System. This treaty ultimately led to the Second Opium War (1858-1860), because of the reluctance of the Chinese government to abide by the terms of the treaty. This event also ended with essentially a British victory. The Treaty of Tianjin allowed westerners free