<P> Japan was now one of the most powerful forces in the Far East, and in 1914, it entered World War I on the side of the Allies, seizing German - occupied Kiaochow and subsequently demanding Chinese acceptance of Japanese political influence and territorial acquisitions (Twenty - One Demands, 1915). Mass protests in Peking in 1919 coupled with Allied (and particularly U.S.) opinion led to Japan's abandonment of most of the demands and Joseon's 1922 return to China . Japan received the German territory from the Treaty of Versailles, 1919, sparking widespread Chinese nationalism . </P> <P> Tensions with China increased over the 1920s, and in 1931 Japanese army units based in Manchuria seized control of the region without direction from Tokyo . Intermittent conflict with China led to full - scale war in mid-1937, drawing Japan toward an overambitious bid for Asian hegemony (Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere), which ultimately led to defeat and the loss of all its overseas territories after World War II (see Japanese expansionism and Japanese nationalism). </P> <P> In the aftermath of World War II, European colonies, controlling more than one billion people throughout the world, still ruled most of the Middle East, South East Asia, and the Indian Subcontinent . However, the image of European pre-eminence was shattered by the wartime Japanese occupations of large portions of British, French, and Dutch territories in the Pacific . The destabilisation of European rule led to the rapid growth of nationalist movements in Asia--especially in Indonesia, Malaya, Burma, and French Indochina . </P> <P> The war, however, only accelerated forces already in existence undermining Western imperialism in Asia . Throughout the colonial world, the processes of urbanisation and capitalist investment created professional merchant classes that emerged as new Westernised elites . While imbued with Western political and economic ideas, these classes increasingly grew to resent their unequal status under European rule . </P>

Which of the following was one way that western powers gained