In the mid-19th century- after the Opium War, the Chinese population grew to 430 million people. At the same time of the population increasing, the food production stayed the same which caused widespread famine throughout China. This caused many Chinese people to feel discouraged and opium addiction among the people also increased. This caused the Chinese to rebel against the Qing Dynasty. The rebelling against the Qing dynasty resulted in the Taiping Revolution. Taiping means ''great peace'' in Chinese. The Taiping Revolution began in the late 1830's when a man named Hong Xiuquan started to recruit followers to build a ''Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace." In this kingdom, everyone would share their wealth and nobody would live in poverty. By the 1850's Xiuquan had managed to put together a peasant army including more than a million people. Over time, the Taiping army had taken over control of large parts in southeastern China. In 1853, Xiuquan had even captured the city of Nanjing and declared it as their capital. Quig troops along with British and French troops all launched attacks against the Taiping. This caused China to pay a terrible price. China had lost at least 20 million of it's people because of all of the fighting. Throughout the late 19th century, many foreign nations took advantage of China because they knew it was struggling and attacked China. Negotiations after each of these conflicts resulted in many foreign nations more power over China's economy. Alot of Europe and Japan gained a strong foothold in China. This foothold was also called the "sphere of influence''. It was an area that a foreign nation controlled trade and investment. Since the United States was a long-time trading partner with China American's were afraid that China would divide into colonies and not allow any trade with America. To keep this from not happening in 1899 the U.S. declared the Open Door Policy. This meant that China had to trade with all foreign nations.