What changes took place in China's socio-economic structure after the Opium War

(1) China began to degenerate into a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society. The main contradiction in society began to change from the contradiction between the landlord class and the peasant class to the contradiction between foreign capitalism and the Chinese nation, and the contradiction between feudalism and the masses of the people; and the contradiction between foreign capitalism and the Chinese nation became the most important contradiction among all kinds of social contradictions. From then on, the Chinese people shouldered the dual revolutionary tasks of opposing foreign capitalist aggression and opposing the feudal rule of their own country. (ii) The feudal imperial dynasty of the Qing Dynasty, which had already been in decline, was unable to rule as it had done in the past because of the continuous loss of territory and sovereignty after the blows of the two Opium Wars. After learning the lessons of the failure of the Opium Wars, part of the feudal ruling class, began to transform into foreign affairs, the implementation of the foreign affairs movement, in an attempt to "learn from the barbarians to control the barbarians". At this time, the Qing government began to modernize. (c) With the opening of the trading ports and the emergence of various modern enterprises, advanced Western production technology was introduced, which facilitated the transformation of China's traditional society into a modern society and played a role in spreading Western civilization, as well as the introduction of Western social systems. The Qing government set up the Premier's Office and the Minister of Commerce for the North and South Oceans in the foreign affairs system. From then on, the diplomatic system of the Qing government began to step into the modern sense of diplomacy. (d) After the Opium War, the Qing government began to openly collaborate with foreign invaders and to suppress the uprisings of the Chinese people. The Qing government actually became a tool for the Western invaders to rule China. On the other hand, the rulers of the Qing government began to rely further on the Han landlord-bureaucrats, so that the power of the Han landlords was developed and became an important force in the rule of the Qing dynasty.

Economically:

(a) After the Opium War, China gradually became involved in the world capitalist market, and the opening of the trading ports greatly impacted the self-sufficient feudal natural economic system, causing it to gradually disintegrate. As Marx said in The Chinese Revolution and the Revolutions in Europe, "The English cannon undermined the authority of the Chinese emperor and forced the Celestial Empire to come into contact with the world on earth. Complete isolation from the outside world had been the first condition for the preservation of old China, and when this isolation was violently broken by British efforts, the process of disintegration inevitably ensued, just as mummies carefully preserved in airtight coffins - on contact with fresh air - inevitably disintegrate." After the war, with the opening up of the Chinese market, the Western capitalist countries went on a rampage of dumping goods on China. The total value of commodities exported from Britain to China reached more than 2,394,000 pounds in 1845, up from more than 900,000 pounds in 1837. This dealt a fatal blow to China's traditional handicraft industry. "...... Recently the foreign cloth big line, the price is only when the shuttle cloth one-third of the ...... pine, too cloth market, eliminated by half." (Bao Shichen: "Answer to the Clan Zi Meng Kai Shu", "An Wu Siji", vol. 26) At the same time, the Western capitalists also exported a large number of agricultural and sideline products from China. Such as silk, tea and so on. In this way, China's silk and tea production began to be integrated into the world's capitalist market. The economic structure of Chinese society underwent new changes. Along with the changes in China's economic structure, the class relations in Chinese society also underwent new changes. The modern enterprises set up in the trading ports gave rise to the first working proletariat in China. (ii) Modern industrial and mining enterprises began to use machines. Transportation and commerce were also modernized. Modern finance began to emerge in China. For example, the HSBC Bank of China was set up by Britain in China. This promoted the development of financial business in China.

In cultural thought

After the Opium War, China began to fall into semi-feudal and semi-colonial, the invasion and plunder of the imperialist powers and the government's corruption and incompetence, so that the Chinese nation is facing the danger of "the end of the country and the end of the race". At the time of national crisis, "saving the country from extinction", "seeking strength and wealth", and changing the tragic fate of China's backwardness and beatings became the ideals and pursuits of the advanced intellectuals at that time. In order to realize the historic task of "salvation and survival", some advanced intellectuals began to break through the traditional cultural constraints, and looked to the world to learn from the West, seeking the truth to save the country. Their ideas represented the new trend of Chinese society after the Opium War. Their representative figures include Lin Zexu, Wei Yuan and Xu Jishe.

Lin Zexu was the first person to open his eyes to the world. After the war, he began to understand the West, and organized translations of "Four Continents" and "Chinese Affairs" to learn from the West and put forward the idea of "learning from the enemy's strengths in order to control the enemy". Wei Yuan (魏源), a native of Shaoyang, Hunan Province, was the author of "The Pictures of the Sea and the Country", a famous patriotic thinker in modern China, who advocated learning from the West and clearly proposed learning from the West. He strongly criticized the feudal culture and hoped to wash away the shame of losing the Opium War. Wei Yuan, through his book "The Illustrated Book of the Sea and the Country", introduced in detail the geography, history and social status of the countries of the world, and at the same time clearly put forward the idea of "learning from the barbarians to control the barbarians".

The ideas of these advanced intellectuals reflected the direction of development of China's social trends, and their ideas had a great impact on modern China, promoting the liberation of the people's thinking, enabling people to recognize themselves and at the same time understand the advanced civilization of the West, and opening the prelude to the search for the truth of saving the country from the West in modern times.

The Opium War played a dual role in modern Chinese society. The Opium War was a war of aggression launched by Britain to open up the Chinese market. As a result of the war, China failed to make a humiliating peace with the foreign invaders and signed the first unequal treaty, the Treaty of Nanking, thus putting independent China on the road to a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society. The stimulating and promoting effect of the Opium War on China's modernization was that, by virtue of the privileges gained from a series of unequal treaties, it gradually controlled China's political and economic lifelines, and pressed China's national capital to the extent that it could not hold up its head and was unable to obtain normal development. China's import and export trade, between industrial imports and exports of agricultural and sideline products, carried out unequal exchanges, from which sucked up a lot of blood and sweat of the Chinese people, plunging China into poverty. Huge war reparations, but also become a heavy burden on the Chinese people. Therefore, the Opium War was the beginning of the oppression and exploitation of the Chinese people by foreign invaders. But the Opium War also forced China to move from feudal society to modernization. The modernization of China was a direct product of the Opium War, therefore, the Opium War was also the beginning of China's modernization. So it promoted China to embark on the road of modernization, and oppressed and inhibited the smooth progress of China's modernization, and had to embark on the deformed road of semi-colonial and semi-feudal society.