Trading conditions were very different in Asia east of the Malacca straits. Establishment of trading relations with China and Japan was a much more difficult proposition than with countries in the Indian Ocean. Requests for access to China in 1513 and 1521–22 were rejected. It was not until 1557 that Portugal acquired Macao though it participated earlier in clandestine trade off the Chinese coast. Contact was made with Japan in 1543 and trade started there in earnest in the 1550s from the base in Macao.
