[4]: 2 According to Liang Qichao, Western learning consists of an extremely wide range of topics including mathematics, mechanics, electrical science, chemistry, acoustics, optics, astronomy, geology, medical science, history, geography, legal studies, mining, military strategy and knowledge.
Since the late Qing period, Chinese researchers began to review and detailedly describe the process during which the Western knowledge was brought into China.
[5] Since the 1980s, the term has frequently appeared in various scholarly articles to describe the spread of Western technologies and ideologies in China.
While bringing back Chinese philosophies, especially Confucianism, to the Enlightenment Europe, these missionaries were the pioneers of spreading Western civilization to China.
[8] According to the Chinese encyclopedia Complete Library of the Four Treasuries, Qiankun Tiyi [Explication of the Structure of Heaven and Earth] by Matteo Ricci was the first book that introduced Western learning to China.