184 1 in summer and autumn, Lin zexu, who had been dismissed and sent to Yili, Xinjiang, passed by Zhenjiang, shared a room with his good friend Wei Yuan and had a good talk on the couch. Lin Zexu gave Wei Yuan the information about foreigners compiled by The Chronicles of Four Continents and asked him to compile a book. Wei Yuan lived up to his great trust. Shortly after the signing of treaty of nanking, he compiled it into the Atlas of the Ocean and published it.
The book puts forward the idea of "learning from foreigners to control foreigners". This proposition is the aspiration of a powerful country to resist aggression, and it is also the forerunner of modern China to learn from the West. Since then, seeking truth from western countries has gradually become the main trend of China's ideological reform in modern times. Lin Zexu's theory of "learning from foreigners", which was first put forward and put into practice, is a leap in his spiritual world as well as that of modern China. It is of groundbreaking enlightenment significance and the starting point of the "new culture" gradually formed in modern China. So more than 50 years later, Kang Youwei thought that "twenty years after Daoguang, Lin Wenzhong began to translate foreign newspapers, which was the beginning of emphasizing foreign situations." More than a hundred years later, historian Fan Wenlan praised Lin Zexu as the first person in modern China who opened his eyes to see the world.
Then came the Reform Movement of 1898, which advocated reform and reform. Then came Dr. Sun Yat-sen's revolutionary faction, which advocated overthrowing the feudal monarchy.