The imperialists' colonial rule in China subjected the Chinese people to humiliation, devoid of human dignity. At that time, foreign invaders enjoyed "extraterritoriality", which was not subject to Chinese law. on December 24, 1946, the rape of Shen Chong, a girl at Peking University, by American soldier Pearson in Peking, aroused great indignation among the people of China, but the criminal was unilaterally dealt with by the United States, and he was acquitted. Powers in China set up the "Concession", has the executive, legislative, judicial, police and financial power, become completely independent of China's administrative and legal system outside of the "country within a country". 1885, the foreign invaders even in Shanghai, French Concession Park door openly erected "Chinese" in front of the park. In 1885, the foreign invaders even put up a sign in front of the park in the French Concession in Shanghai, "Chinese and dogs are not allowed to enter", and insulted the personality of the Chinese people with impunity.
The imperialists forced China to sign more than 1,100 unequal treaties and plundered China's wealth on a large scale. According to statistics, in the past hundred years, foreign invaders have plundered war reparations and other sums amounting to 100 billion taels of silver through these unequal treaties. Among them, the Treaty of Nanjing, the Treaty of Shimonoseki, the Treaty of Simchun and other eight unequal treaties extorted compensation of 1.953 billion taels of silver, equivalent to 16 times the income of the Qing Government in 1901. And the compensation of 230 million taels of silver extorted by Japan through the Treaty of Shimonoseki alone was equivalent to four and a half years' income of the Japanese national treasury at that time. The losses caused by the invaders' destruction and looting during the war were even more difficult to estimate. During Japan's total war of aggression against China (1937-1945), more than 930 cities in China were occupied, with direct economic losses amounting to 62 billion dollars and indirect economic losses exceeding 500 billion dollars. The loss of national sovereignty and the looting of social wealth deprived the Chinese people of the minimum conditions for survival.
This is the minimum requirement of the Chinese people, who have long been trapped in the plight of hunger and cold. The successive governments of old China not only failed to solve this problem, but also aggravated the people's disaster. In old China, landlords and rich peasants, who accounted for only 10% of the rural population, occupied 70% of the land, while the poor peasants, who accounted for 70% of the rural population, occupied only 10% of the land; the bureaucratic buyer bourgeoisie, which accounted for a very small proportion of the population, monopolized 80% of the industrial capital and manipulated the economic lifeblood of the country. The Chinese people were subjected to land rent, taxes, usury and exploitation by industrial and commercial capital, and the extent of their exploitation and poverty was rare in the world. According to statistics, in 1932, there were as many as 1,656 types of exorbitant taxes and duties alone, with donations accounting for about 60 to 90 percent of the farmers' harvest. Coupled with the reactionary government's political corruption and incompetence, the loss of power and humiliation of the country, acting as a tool of imperialist rule, the large and small warlords, a long period of war and chaos, so that the people's disaster steed deep, difficult to survive. According to estimates, 80% of the people in old China are in a state of chronic hunger and semi-starvation, and almost every year there are tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of people die of hunger. In 1931, flooding in East China caused more than 3.7 million deaths, and in 1943, 3 million people died of starvation in Henan Province alone, while another 15 million people were on the verge of death by gnawing on grass roots and eating tree bark. After the victory of the war of resistance against Japan, the Kuomintang reactionary government launched a civil war, extracting the people's fat and wealth, resulting in the total collapse of the economy. 1946, 10 million people died of starvation in all parts of the country. 1947, the national starvation people amounted to more than 100 million people, accounting for 22% of the national population at that time.