Until the end of the 19th century, Chinese thought and theory was always within the framework of the medieval tradition.

It is the Confucian tradition, which means that before the 19th century, the Chinese did not accept the West y enough, so all the intellectual theories put forward at that time still used Confucian (or traditional) concepts, forms and ideas. For example, the theory of learning from the barbarians to control the barbarians is a theory, he continued the Confucian mentality of contempt for foreigners and utilitarian understanding of the inertia of science, although it is a theoretical reflection of the realities of the time, but undoubtedly not deep enough.