In the mid-19th century, under the background of the expansion of western marine civilization to the east, China had to submit to its powerful maritime military force. Faced with the invasion of Western forces, Wei Yuan, as a representative of the school of Confucianism, compiled the book Haiguo Tuzhi in the face of the current situation, and extended his vision to the world beyond the sea. Wei Yuan realized that after the Opium War, the ocean could not be used as a natural barrier for external defense as in the past. Faced with the western marine aggression, especially its colonial activities in Southeast Asia, Wei Yuan deeply realized that China would surely fall into a more terrible situation than the Opium War if it did not “master the skills of the barbarians” and pursue the development of the sea. Therefore, he further put forward the idea of building coastal defense, developing maritime military strength and even building the Chinese navy. At the same time, Wei Yuan advocated and actively participated in it in his early years. In the reform of maritime transport, it is suggested that commercial transport should replace official transport in water transport to develop maritime merchants, whose understanding of the ocean is far beyond that of other people of the same era. From defense to development, from safeguarding maritime rights to ocean construction, Wei Yuan formed his own ocean consciousness, which was inherited and developed by the later “Advocates of the westernization movement”.