In the late 1830s, being the first country in the world to accomplish the Industrial Revolution, Britain became the most powerful capitalist country of the time. In order to expand the markets for its industrial products and secure more resources of industrial raw materials, britain launched a war against China - the Opium War, in which China was defeated and was forced to sign unequal treaties, including the Treaty of Nanking. From then on, China began to lose sovereignty and territorial integrity and to decline to a semi-colonial, semi-feudal state. Therefore, historians regard 1840 as the beginning of the modern history of China, a history of 110 years. Ever since the Opium War, time and time again the imperialist powers waged aggressive wars against China, further violating sovereignty and territorial integrity, and reduce China to a semi-colonial, semi-feudal country. At the same time, Chinese launched resistance movements one after another, such as the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement, the Reform Movement of 1898, and the Yihetuan Movement, all intending to save the country. The greatest of all these was the Revolution of 1911 led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen, which brought to an end the 2,000-year-old autocratic, feudalist monarchy and established the Republic of China (1912 - 1949). The May 4th Movement of 1919 laid the groundwork for the establishment of the Communist Party of China (CPC), which was founded in 1921, thus epitomizing a new phase of revolutionary development in China.

In 1949, led by the Communist Party, Chinese managed to drive away the imperial powers and overthrew the government of the National Party (Kuomintang, KMT) led by Jiang Kai-shek, representative of imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism. The history of the semi-colonial and semi-feudal society in China was replaced with the victory of a democratic revolution.