The Opium War that broke out in 1840 marked a turning point in the Chinese history. Toward the down of the 19th century Britain dumped its opium in mammoth quantities into China, causing an unfavorable flow of silver, inflation and financial austerity in China.
     In 1839, Lin Zexu, a special envoy of the imperial court stationing in Guangzhou, was responsible for the prohibition of the opium products. For the protection of its opium dumping, Britain waged a war of invasion on China in 1840. At the outset, the Chinese patriots, led by Lin and some generals, launched a gallant resistance against the invaders. But owing to the concessions offered by the corrupt and incompetent Qing imperial court, the Nanjing Treaty, an unequal treaty surrendering China’s sovereignty under humiliating terms, was signed in the end . From then onwards , China gradually sank into a semi-feudal and semi-colonial society .

　
　　Since the end of the Opium War , the imperialist powers , such as Britain , the United States , France , Russia , Japan , etc. continued to coerce the Qing court to sign various unequal treaties , seizing further concessions and planning to establish “spheres of influence” in China , creating a tide of carving up of China . In order to resist the feudal oppression and the alien invasion , the Chinese people spared no efforts to wage unyielding struggles with a host of outstanding hero and heroines emerging among them . In 1851, Hong Xiuquan led the Revolt of the Tai Ping Tian Guo (Tai Ping Heavenly Kingdom), the biggest peasant revolutionary campaign in the modern history of China. 
 
　　In 1911, the Xin Hai Revolution – a bourgeois democratic revolution led by Sun Zhoungshan (Sun Yat-sen) –succeeded in overthrowing the rule of the Qing Dynasty, terminating the over-two-millennia-old feudal, monarchial system. The temporary government of Republic of China was constituted . However, the triumphant fruit was usurped by Yuan Shikai, a military lord in the north, due to the compromising, yielding attitude of the Chinese bourgeoisie. The populace still lived in miseries and poverty.