Of these two tasks, the former cleared the obstacles and created the necessary premise for the latter. Therefore, how to oppose the invasion of foreign powers, get rid of feudal autocracy, and change the country's poverty and backwardness has become the main problem faced by semi-colonial and semi-feudal China.
The harsh reality aroused the unity of the Chinese nation. The combination of foreign capital, imperialism and feudalism in China turned China into a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society, which was also the process of China people's resistance to imperialism and its lackeys. Since the Opium War, the resistance of China people has never stopped. However, all previous wars against foreign aggression, the peasant war of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the Reform Movement of 1898, which advocated patriotic reform, and the Boxer Movement, which called for "helping the Qing Dynasty to destroy the foreign countries", failed again and again.
China people entered the 20th century with the national humiliation of Britain, the United States, Germany, France, Russia, Japan, Italy and Austria occupying the capital Beijing. What was presented to the Chinese nation at that time was the tragic prospect of extinction. After all kinds of unsuccessful resistance, the people of China revolted again.
The first revolutionary leader of China in the 20th century was the new national bourgeoisie. With the initial development of capitalist modern industry, the new social forces in China-the proletariat and the national bourgeoisie-have also grown up, thus causing new changes in class relations. However, because the proletariat did not realize its historical mission at this time, some struggles it participated in were still influenced by the national bourgeoisie.
After the initial development of the national bourgeoisie and its entry into the political arena, China's anti-imperialist and anti-feudal bourgeois national democratic revolution took on a new look. 19110 In June, the Revolution of 1911 broke out. 19 12 On New Year's Day, the Republic of China was founded. The Revolution of 1911 overthrew the Qing Dynasty and ended the feudal autocracy that ruled China for thousands of years. Since then, the concept of democratic governance has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. The Revolution of 1911 opened the modern national democratic revolution in a more complete sense, opened the floodgates of social progress, promoted people's ideological emancipation, and paved the way for the revolutionary struggle, especially the development of the new-democratic revolution led by the China Producer Party. In this sense, the Revolution of 1911 was a great success. This is the first historic and great change that the people of China experienced on the way forward in the 20th century.
However, the Revolution of 1911 did not have a complete and thorough anti-imperialist and anti-feudal political program, nor did it form a powerful revolutionary party that could successfully lead the revolution. The fundamental reason is that the national bourgeoisie in China, which leads the revolution, has great weaknesses both politically and economically. It is inextricably linked with imperialist and feudal forces, but it is seriously divorced from the working people at the lower level, who account for the largest population in China, and dare not mobilize them. In this way, the bourgeois revolutionaries will have no strength, let alone courage, to carry out the revolutionary struggle against imperialism and feudalism to the end.
The Revolution of 1911 ended in compromise with the old reactionary forces, and the fruits of the revolution fell into the hands of the Beiyang warlords headed by Yuan Shikai. The influence of imperialism in China has not diminished, and feudal forces are still entrenched in every corner of China. The two major historical tasks facing the Chinese nation have not been resolved, and the people of China still live in the abyss of poverty, backwardness, division, turmoil and chaos. In this sense, the Revolution of 1911 failed again. Its failure deeply inspired the advanced elements in China, and made them gradually realize that they must explore new ways to save the country and the people.