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”.

In the 19 century, the Western naval powers including England overwhelmingly rushed to China since their earlier aggression to India and the other parts of Asia. The English merchants armed with naval forces illicitly sold opium to China to regain its trade balance from the Chinese market. Consequently, China rapidly went to be drawn into the world economic system which was leaded by England and this unstable shift of China caused the collapse of the Qing dynasty at last. Then Wei Yuan, the patriotic intellectual of the late Qing, believed that the reason of the invasion of the Western powers is due to their needs of trade with China and then developed his idea of the benefits from the trade between China and the West could be shared in the mutually beneficial and equal international trade. However, Wei Yuan felt that his belief would be realized only in the condition of China's possession of unbending force to that of the West. Therefore, He developed his idea of China would need to equip with strong defense abilities, well trained armed forces and armaments to protect itself from the West and he also came to realize the necessity of learning from the West which would be able to do so only after getting over from China's superior understanding to the West. This is the idea of the 'Yi-xia concept(夷夏論 the concept of differentiation of Non-Han and Han Chinese)' which had sprouted from 'the studies on Jingshi(經世學 the studies on practical aims of political and social guidance)' and later the Yi-xia developed into his philosophical thoughts. Wei Yuan insisted that China should learn from the West but maintaining its sense of being superior to it. These thoughts became Wei Yuan's motivation of writing the book, 'Haiguotuzhi(海國圖志 Illustrated Treatise of Maritime Nations)', in which he insisted to learn from the West so as to protect China from outer threats. From the understanding of Wei Yuan's patriotism to China with his idea of 'Yi-xia concept' and his academic tendency of the New Text school(今文經學派), we can find the early concept of nowadays Chinese dream connected with the idea of the modernization movement of China.