China, Burma, and India constituted what was known as the CBI theater of the conflict. The CBI theater was the backwater area of Allied operations and was to the main area of the Pacific what the Italian campaign was to the Allied effort against Germany-an interesting but ultimately indecisive sideshow. President Roosevelt took a special interest in the China theater, as did the Luce publications, Time and Life. China received Lend Lease supplies after Pearl Harbor, as well as numerous loans. Roosevelt was determined to see that the material and money sent to China were not squandered, although he enjoyed almost no knowledge of conditions in China, either political or military. In the CBI theater the only real Allied military successes were in Burma. There, the British were desperate to regain the initiative against the Japanese. Everywhere, Japanese conquest paved the way for the independent nations in southeast Asia that exist today.