The deputies to the Third Congress of the Socialist Youth League of China in Europe (SYLC in Europe) have a group photo taken in July 1924: Zhou Enlai (fourth from left in the front row), Li Fuchun (sixth from left in the front row), Nie Rongzhen (first from left in the first row) and Deng Xiaoping (third from right in the last row).

From 1840 to 1842, Great Britain launched a war of aggression against China, which is known in history as the First Opium War. After the Opium War, China was gradually reduced to a semi-colonial, semi-feudal society due to the aggression of Western powers and the corruption of feudal rulers. The country endured intense humiliation, the people were subjected to untold misery, and the Chinese civilization was plunged into darkness. The Chinese nation suffered greater ravages than ever before.

To save the nation from peril, the Chinese people rose to fight back, and patriots of high ideals sought to pull the nation together, putting up a heroic and moving struggle. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement (1851–1864), the Westernization Movement (1860s–1890s), the Reform Movement of 1898, and the Yihetuan Movement (1899–1900) rose one after the other, and a variety of plans were devised to ensure national survival, but all of these ended in failure. The Revolution of 1911 led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925) brought down the absolute monarchy that had reigned over China for thousands of years, but it failed to change the semi-colonial and semi-feudal nature of Chinese society and to alter the bitter fate of the Chinese people. China was in urgent need of new ideas to lead the movement to save the nation and a new organization to rally forces of revolution.