China's thought of learning from the West in modern times was gradually formed and developed with the process of semi-colonial and semi-feudal society in China. It is the advanced people of China, including part of the landlord class, peasant class and bourgeoisie, and it is the way to save the nation from extinction in the situation of class and nation in peril. In other words, from the very beginning, learning western ideas was closely linked with saving the nation from extinction. Moreover, with the deepening of the crisis of feudal rule and the corresponding deepening of understanding, the content of learning from the west has a development and change process from concrete to abstract, from economy to politics, from implements to systems. The closed-door policy in the early years of the Qing Dynasty interrupted the spread of western learning in China, which had begun to rise in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. By the middle of the19th century, when the major capitalist countries in the west had completed the industrial revolution and gradually expanded overseas, our ancient big eastern country was still under the decadent feudal rule, and the self-sufficient small-scale peasant economy was still the most important economic form, and the political and ideological imprisonment was far behind the times. In this case, the enlightened literati in the landlord class noticed the serious crisis of feudal rule, namely the increasingly sharp class contradiction and the threat of aggression from western capitalist countries. Proceeding from the desire to maintain feudal rule, they began to attack state affairs and advocate reform. Gong Zizhen, Lin Zexu and Wei Yuan, feudal literati and intellectuals before and after the Opium War, were among them. Recognizing the crisis of feudal rule is the premise of learning from the west. At this point, Gong Zizhen is at the forefront. The greatest feature of Gong Zizhen's thought is to expose and attack the social darkness of the Qing Dynasty. He thinks that China in the19th century is a society with "the sun is waning, and the prosperity of Thailand rises suddenly", and from this, he issued a call for change that "from ancient times to today, all laws have changed, all trends have accumulated, all conventions have changed, and the atmosphere has remained unchanged". Just as Liang Qichao pointed out in "An Introduction to Academic Studies in Qing Dynasty": "Ideological emancipation in the late Qing Dynasty made great contributions to self-protection", Gong Zizhen's thoughts directly influenced the later reformists and laid the foundation for the rise of the trend of learning from the West. It is generally believed that Lin Zexu was the first China native to see the world from a broad perspective. While banning smoking, he organized manpower to translate the Encyclopedia of World Geography written by Englishman Murray and named it Shikoku. He also paid attention to studying the situation of various countries and translated many foreign newspapers and periodicals as materials. This has opened the eyes of China people who have been closed for a long time. On the basis of the Records of Four Continents, Wei Yuan completed the great work on the history and geography of the world in the Records of the Sea Countries, and put forward the anti-aggression thought of "learning from foreigners". He advocated adding a naval division in the Qing Dynasty. "Those who can build western warships, steamboats, flying guns, rockets, mines and strange devices are all Kejia people; People who can drive hurricanes, be familiar with the situation and shoot accurately are born in the ranks, thus clearly putting forward the slogan of learning from the West for the first time. The early pioneers' achievement not only lies in that they opened a cultural window to see the West, but more importantly, they realized the gap between China and capitalist countries at that time and started the wind of learning from the West. Wei Yuan said: "Those who are good at learning from the Four Yi can control the Four Yi, while those who are not good at learning from the Four Yi can control the Four Yi. "However, it can also be seen that these pioneers witnessed the power of western powers in the Opium War, so they started from an intuitive impression, combined the crisis of saving feudal rule with learning from the West, and advocated learning from advanced weapons and equipment in the West, which was also the most important content of learning from the West. In the late 1950s [the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom (1859) was less than nine years old], Hong Rengan, who was in charge of the peasant regime of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in the late prime minister period, put forward "Senior Minister New Chapter" to the heavenly king Hong Xiuquan, systematically expounding the idea of learning from the West and developing capitalism. Politically, it emphasizes centralization and unity, attaches importance to "communication from top to bottom", and advocates the establishment of a news library that is not controlled by ordinary officials and imitates the western democratic system; Economically, he advocated the establishment of a modern capitalist economy dominated by machine industry, the development of transportation, the development of mines, the establishment of financial postal services, the encouragement of inventions and the acceptance of employees. If the "learning from foreigners" in the 1940s only focused on building foreign ships and guns, Hong Ren advocated learning from western science and production technology while attaching importance to foreign military technology, which also involved some political systems in capitalist countries to some extent. This thought was in line with the objective requirements of social development in China at that time, so it was of progressive significance. The feudal peasant regime of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom had no conditions and could not implement this bourgeois scheme. It was the Westernization Movement after 1960s that really put western learning into social, economic and cultural practice on a large scale. With the deepening of China's semi-colonialism, the feudal ruling class was divided, and there appeared the Westernization Movement of Yibo and Li Hongzhang under the banner of self-improvement and the New Deal. This movement started from the military industry and spread to the fields of science and technology, national industry, culture and education. It combines the pursuit of strength with the pursuit of wealth, and becomes an obvious symbol in the process of China's modernization. The establishment of Wentong Museum in the first year of Tongzhi started the spread of western learning to the east and the systematic study of western history by China people. However, with the development of the Westernization Movement in the past 30 years, the idea of "Chinese style and western use" as the purpose of the movement has been gradually questioned. Zhang Shusheng, a bureaucrat of the Westernization School, believed that the western "style" was "cultivating talents in schools and discussing state affairs at home", and the Qing court must also learn from it. Because of its strong feudal comprador nature, the movement eventually went bankrupt with the failure of the Sino-Japanese War. It is not difficult to see that from the Opium War to the Westernization Movement, people's attention in this period mainly focused on western science and technology and natural science. They believe that the strength of western countries is only due to economy and technology. Compared with the west, China just lags behind in all kinds of acrobatics, while China's traditional ethics, knowledge, system and articles are above other countries. This is the limitation of his understanding and the direct influence of his learning from the west.