The import of opium has seriously ruined social customs and ruined people's physical and mental health. Drug abuse not only harms the physical and mental health of China people, but also damages social productive forces, leading to the depression and decline of industry and commerce in the southeast coastal areas.

Opium trade has brought serious harm to China society and attracted the attention of the Qing government and people. The Qing government issued eight prohibitions in 182 1- 1834 for its own benefit. Some people in the ruling class witnessed the social crisis and demanded reform. Opium is strictly prohibited in China. In February, Daoguang appointed Lin Zexu as an imperial envoy and sent him to Guangdong to ban smoking.

Second, the performance of anti-aggression consciousness.

After the Opium War, some intellectuals began to abandon old ideas, pay attention to the world, explore new knowledge, and seek ways to resist aggression by strengthening the country, which sprouted a new trend of thought of learning from the West and had a certain impact on feudal thought.

In terms of social contradictions, with the change of social nature, the main contradiction in China society has changed from the contradiction between the landlord class and the peasant class to the contradiction between foreign capitalism and the Chinese nation, feudalism and the masses of the people. The revolutionary task of China people has changed from anti-feudalism to both anti-feudalism and anti-aggression. Thus, China's transition from a feudal society to a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society was the beginning of China's modern history and China's old democratic revolution.

Extended data:

The Qing government began to become a tool for the foreign powers to rule China step by step. As China's territorial, territorial sea, judicial, customs and trade sovereignty began to be seriously damaged, China gradually became a semi-colonial and semi-feudal country from an independent country.

The victory or defeat of the Opium War reflected the huge gap between the East and the West in science and technology at that time, which broke the dream of the Qing government to "fall from the sky". Domestic troubles and foreign invasion followed one after another, and the feudal society was in danger, which prompted a group of feudal intellectuals with keen political vision to further explore and find a good way to get rid of the social predicament and crisis in China.

They rely on traditional Confucian classics, take rectifying the current situation and saving the world as their own responsibility, and advocate internal rectification of official management and reform of shortcomings; Advocating learning western learning and resisting aggression, thus gradually forming a social trend of thought among the landlord class. Many learned people, such as Lin Zexu and Wei Yuan, began to pay attention to the progress of western science and technology and write books to introduce western things.

However, the vast majority of people, including the imperial court, did not change their views on the West because of the Opium War, let alone learn from the "foreigners" who have always been despised. The defeat of the Qing court did not make it reform, but continued to implement a conservative policy of closing the country to the outside world, which led to the emergence of self-improvement and national salvation movements such as the Westernization Movement after the Second Opium War.

Baidu Encyclopedia-Opium War