Westernization is a political faction gradually formed and expanded within the ruling class after the Second Opium War, especially in the process of suppressing the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement. At that time, the landlord class in China began to undergo a new political division, and there appeared the Westernization School which advocated change and the die-hards who maintained the traditional system. At that time, the main representatives of the Westernization School in the central government were the aristocratic officials of the Manchu imperial clan represented by Prince Gong Yixin and the Han officials represented by Zeng Guofan, Li Hongzhang, Zuo and Zhang Zhidong in the local government.

Westernization school takes "learning from foreigners to control foreigners" as its main purpose and "learning from the west as the body and using western learning" as its principle. At first, the Westernization School took "self-improvement" as its slogan, and in the 1970s, it put forward the slogan of "seeking wealth". In view of the fact that China was far behind the West in weapons and military technology at that time, it advocated learning advanced western technologies and training methods. He put forward the ideas of "strengthening the country by law" and "building the country by industry and commerce", and was a political group with reform and transformation ideas in early modern China.

However, the thought of Westernization School has great limitations. As the Westernization School is a political faction differentiated from the landlord class, it has the characteristics of the landlord class. Learning from the west is limited to the military and management fields, and does not involve political system reform. Its fundamental purpose is to maintain the feudal rule of the Qing dynasty, and at the same time adopt an exclusive attitude towards the advanced capitalist system in the west. With the failure of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-0/894+65438, the reform movement initiated by the Westernization School finally went bankrupt.