A Historical Review of the ideas and Practice of Chinese Modernization

Ideas of Chinese modernization came into being after the Opium War. From Wei Yuan's view that China should counter Western countries with techniques acquired from them to Deng Xiao-ping 's Theory of building Socialism with Chinese characteristics, the development of Chinese modernization ideas has gone three different stages: capitalist modernization, new democratic modernization and socialist modernization. In practice, each of these views led to a series of activities, such as the Yang Wu Movement (known as the Self-strengthening Movement), 1898 Reform Movement, 1911 Revolution, the New Culture Movement, Socialist Revolution, Reform and Open-door policy. This study is significant to the understanding of the history of Chinese modernization as well as the history of modern China.