Li Hongzhang

Biography

Family Background and Early Years

Li Hongzhang's paternal ancestors originally bore the surname Xu and came from Hukou, Jiangxi, later moving to Hefei County in Luzhou Prefecture, Anhui. His eighth-generation ancestor Xu Yingxi adopted his second son Xu Shensuo into the household of a relative by marriage, Li Xinzhuang, and the descendants thereafter maintained the Li line. By the generation of Li Hongzhang's father, Li Wen'an, the branch formally used the surname Li. The family had long lived by farming and study. According to the source, only by the time of Li Hongzhang's great-great-grandfather had it accumulated about two qing of land through thrift, and the family had previously lacked success in the imperial examinations. In 1838, the eighteenth year of Daoguang, Li Wen'an passed the jinshi examination under the registered name Li Wengan, in the same year as Zeng Guofan, and the family then rose to local prominence.

Li Hongzhang was Li Wen'an's second son. He was born on February 15, 1823, the fifth day of the first month of the third year of Daoguang, at the old family residence in Citangying, Modian Township, Hefei County. At age six he entered the family school, Dihua Study. He became a xiucai in 1840 and was selected as a yougong student at the Luzhou prefectural school in 1843. His father, then serving in Beijing, wrote urging him to come to the capital for the Shuntian provincial examination. Li traveled north and wrote ten poems titled Entering the Capital, using verse to express political ambition.

In Beijing, with introductions from his father, he visited Anhui officials including Lü Xianji, Wang Maoyin, and Zhao Jun and gained their notice. In 1844 he passed the special Shuntian provincial examination as the eighty-fourth successful candidate and married Lady Zhou that year. In 1845 he failed the metropolitan examination and, as the son of his father's examination colleague, entered Zeng Guofan's circle to study statecraft and moral philosophy. In 1847 he passed the jinshi examination and, after the court examination, became a Hanlin Academy bachelor candidate. In the fourth month of 1850 he completed probation, was appointed an editor of the Hanlin Academy, and also served as an editor at Wuying Hall. Zeng Guofan called him a “great vessel,” meaning a man of major potential.

Militia Service and Entry into the Hunan Army Staff

In the first month of 1853, the third year of Xianfeng, Taiping forces occupied Anqing and killed Governor Jiang Wenqing. Li Hongzhang urged Vice Minister of Works Lü Xianji to memorialize the throne and drafted the memorial for him overnight. The Xianfeng Emperor ordered Lü to serve as an official responsible for militia organization in Anhui. Lü told Li that since Li had brought the mission upon him, he would in turn request that Li accompany him. Li therefore returned to Anhui with Lü to organize militia. In the fifth month he defended Yuxikou in Hezhou and fought Taiping forces for the first time. In 1854, Li's father Li Wen'an was also recommended by Wang Maoyin to organize militia at home, and the father-and-son units were described as orderly and usable.

Li successively campaigned in central Anhui under Qing officials including Zhou Tianjue, Li Jiaduan, Lü Xianji, and Fuji against the Taiping and Nian forces. As a scholar leading troops, he was criticized both for reckless fighting and for behaving like a bandit in official robes. The years of militia service nevertheless taught him that command depended on more than temporary victory or personal bravery.

In the second month of 1855, after participating in the recovery of Hanshan County, he received the honorary rank of prefect. In the tenth month, following the recovery of Luzhou, he was registered with the Grand Council for future appointment at circuit or prefectural level. In the ninth month of 1856, after accompanying Fuji in the capture of Chaoxian and Hezhou, he received the honorary rank of provincial judicial commissioner. With growing achievements came increased criticism, and Li found his position in his home region increasingly difficult. In 1857, Fuji reported that Li had entered mourning for his father, ending five years of militia activity.

In 1858 Taiping forces again captured Luzhou. Li fled with his family and eventually reached Nanchang, where he stayed with his elder brother Li Hanzhang. In the twelfth month of that year, January 1859, through Li Hanzhang's mediation, he joined Zeng Guofan's headquarters to assist with military administration. This followed the defeat at Sanhe, when Zeng urgently needed capable staff. The source describes Zeng as giving Li special attention and carefully instructing him in political and military affairs, producing major changes in Li's thought, temperament, and habits.

In the autumn of 1860, Li and Zeng Guofan seriously disagreed over moving headquarters to Qimen and over the impeachment of Li Yuandu. Li argued that Qimen was a strategically dangerous “dead ground” and opposed the move. He also disagreed with Zeng's handling of Li Yuandu, whom Li Hongzhang considered a man of exaggerated literary talk rather than a capable commander. Refusing to draft the impeachment, he argued with Zeng and angrily left headquarters. After persuasion by Hu Linyi, Chen Nai, Guo Songtao, and others, and repeated invitations from Zeng, he returned to the Hunan Army camp in the sixth month of 1861. Zeng thereafter treated him with increased respect and consulted him on major military and state affairs.

Formation of the Huai Army and Campaigns in the Lower Yangtze

In 1860 the Taiping forces destroyed the Jiangnan Camp for a second time, leaving the Qing government without its last major field force in the lower Yangtze. Gentry and landowners fled to Shanghai, where local elites and compradors organized a joint Chinese-foreign defense organization and sent Qian Dingming and others to Anqing to request assistance from Zeng Guofan. Zeng initially considered sending Zeng Guoquan or veteran Hunan commander Chen Shijie but eventually turned to Li Hongzhang, who accepted. In the summer of 1861 Li was ordered back to Anhui to recruit Huai troops. Drawing on earlier militia networks and local connections, armed groups led by Zhang Shusheng, Zhou Shengbo, Pan Dingxin, Liu Mingchuan, and others joined him.

After the Lunar New Year of 1862, the first units of the Huai Army—the Shu, Ming, Ding, and Qing battalions—went to Anqing for training. Li also sent his younger brother Li Hezhang to Hefei to recruit former followers. Zeng Guofan transferred complete Hunan Army units and officers to Li, including the Chun, Ji, Kai, Lin, Xiong, and Yuan battalions and two personal guard battalions. The newly formed Huai Army comprised fourteen battalions, each organized with 505 regular soldiers and 180 laborers, for a total of 685 men per battalion according to the source.

In the second month Zeng inspected the Huai Army, marking its formal establishment. Shanghai gentry spent 180,000 taels of silver to charter seven British merchant ships and transport the force in batches. Li arrived in Shanghai on the tenth day of the third month with the first contingent. On Zeng's recommendation he became acting governor of Jiangsu and was formally confirmed at year's end. At the time, Taiping troops were attacking Shanghai, and some members of the Chinese-foreign defense organization mocked the poorly equipped Huai troops. Li encouraged his men by saying that an army's value lay in its ability to fight and that victory would earn respect. In the second half of the year the Huai Army fought independently in three severe battles at Hongqiao, Beixinjing, and Sijiangkou. Li personally directed operations and held Shanghai, changing foreign and Chinese opinion of the force.

Within less than a year in Shanghai, the Huai Army extensively altered the earlier Hunan Army system and adopted foreign rifles and artillery, employing foreign instructors and greatly increasing combat effectiveness. Through accepting surrenders and absorbing various armed groups, Li expanded the army from slightly more than six thousand men to sixty or seventy thousand in two years. He concluded agreements with British naval commander James Hope and army commander Charles Staveley for joint operations against the Taiping forces. In the spring of 1863 he and Staveley agreed on the Sixteen Articles on the Joint Command of the Ever Victorious Army, placing that force under his direction. He maintained good relations with its new commander Charles Gordon, whom the source describes as becoming his friend and beneficiary.

In personnel matters Li dismissed comprador officials whom he regarded as excessively deferential to foreigners and employed practical Self-Strengthening officials such as Guo Songtao and Ding Richang, forming a staff that valued administrative effectiveness and knowledge of foreign affairs. Financially he used customs revenue for the Ever Victorious Army and likin revenue for the Huai Army. The source also criticizes heavy grain levies, taxation, and contributions as producing widespread resentment and impoverishment. In foreign relations, Li used Robert Hart and Pan Zengwei as intermediaries to manage Gordon's anger over the execution of surrendered Taiping commanders at Suzhou and later maneuvered to disband the Ever Victorious Army, revealing what the source characterizes as emerging diplomatic skill.

In the eleventh month of 1863, Taiping commanders including Gao Yongkuan killed Tan Shaoguang and opened Suzhou in surrender. Accepting Cheng Xueqi's advice, Li lured eight surrendered commanders, including Gao, to their deaths and dispersed the remaining forces. Gordon strongly objected, but Li defended the action as cruel yet necessary to the larger situation. Zeng Guofan praised his decisiveness in his diary. After the capture of Suzhou, Li received the honorary title Junior Guardian of the Heir Apparent and the privilege of wearing the yellow riding jacket. In the fifth month of 1864 he captured Changzhou, and after the defeat of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was enfeoffed First-Rank Count Suyi.

Campaign against the Nian Army and Administration of Zhili

After the fall of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in 1865, the Nian Army became a major threat to the Qing court. Li was promoted to acting Governor-General of Liangjiang and ordered to supervise anti-Nian operations. In 1866 he succeeded as imperial commissioner and directed the campaign. After the Nian forces divided into eastern and western branches, Li adopted a strategy of blocking territory and encircling them, using river defenses and scorched-earth methods to restrict their movements. In 1867 he was appointed Governor-General of Huguang while continuing to direct the war from the field. In 1868 the eastern and western Nian forces were defeated in succession. Li received the honorary title Grand Guardian of the Heir Apparent and, while Governor-General of Huguang, became an assistant grand secretary.

In 1870, after the Tianjin Massacre and Zeng Guofan's unsuccessful handling of the crisis, Li was transferred to become Governor-General of Zhili and superintendent of trade for the northern ports, replacing Zeng. For more than twenty years he then dominated Beiyang administration and became one of the central officials of the Tongzhi and Guangxu reigns. The source notes that some contemporaries described him as “sitting in command of Beiyang while remotely directing court government.”

Self-Strengthening and Beiyang Coastal Defense

As Governor-General of Zhili and Beiyang minister, Li vigorously promoted the Self-Strengthening Movement. In 1872 he founded the China Merchants' Steam Navigation Company, described in the source as China's first domestically operated steamship transport enterprise. In 1875 he began directing Beiyang coastal defense and organizing the Beiyang Fleet. In 1879 he proposed the Tianjin Naval Academy to train naval personnel. In 1888 the Beiyang Fleet was formally organized, with ironclads including Dingyuan and Zhenyuan, and the source describes it as at one time the strongest navy in Asia.

During the Self-Strengthening Movement, Li also established or promoted the Jiangnan Arsenal, Jinling Arsenal, Shanghai Guangfangyan Guan, Tianjin Telegraph Bureau, and Chinese Engineering and Mining Company, spanning armaments, shipping, mining, telegraphy, railways, and education. He argued that China needed peace externally and reform internally and sought to strengthen state power through imported Western technology and trained personnel.

Defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War and Final Years

The First Sino-Japanese War began in 1894. The Beiyang Fleet suffered defeat in the Yellow Sea and was later surrounded and destroyed at Weihaiwei. As Beiyang minister, Li bore major political responsibility. In 1895 he was sent to Japan as special envoy and signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki, ceding Taiwan and agreeing to an indemnity of two hundred million taels of silver. He was dismissed from office but retained for service, and his reputation suffered severely.

In 1896 Li toured Europe and the United States for six months, inspecting political, economic, and military institutions and advocating reform after his return. In 1899 he was recalled as Governor-General of Liangguang. During the Eight-Nation Alliance invasion of 1900, Li participated in the Mutual Protection of Southeast China and was ordered north to negotiate. In 1901 he and Prince Qing Yikuang represented the Qing government in signing the Boxer Protocol with the foreign powers. He died soon afterward at Xianliang Temple in Beijing, aged seventy-eight. He was posthumously granted the rank Grand Preceptor, raised to marquis, and given the posthumous name Wenzhong.

His Lineage and His Old Home

The ancestors of Li Hongzhang were originally surnamed Xu. In the time of his eighth-generation forebear Xu Yingxi, the second son Xu Shensuo was given in adoption to Li Xinzhuang of the same village, and so from Xu the family changed its surname to Li, and the Hefei Li line began here. Their old house was at Citang Ying in Modian of Hefei county; and in the epitaph Li Hongzhang wrote for his father, the Geyuan muzhi, there is also a statement that the family's old cottage was at Xiongjia Zhuanjing in the eastern district, while another account says he was born in the old house at Daxingji in the eastern district of Hefei. The accounts stand side by side, but the genealogies and shrines of later ages mostly took Citang Ying in Modian as the native place. The Li family tilled and studied for generations and rose with Li Hongzhang; afterwards six brothers were all noted for degrees, military merit and office, and the Li family of Hefei became a clan of consequence.

The Moulding of Him in Zeng Guofan's Secretariat

Li Hongzhang's father, Li Wen'an, had taken the same examination as Zeng Guofan, and so Li Hongzhang early entered Zeng's school and received his teaching. Zeng Guofan's instruction appeared especially in small daily matters: Li Hongzhang loved to sleep late, and Zeng Guofan would not take his morning meal until all his secretaries had assembled, forcing Li Hongzhang to rise early every day; Li Hongzhang was fond of boasting and empty talk to court notice, and Zeng Guofan repeatedly admonished him plainly that in dealing with men the only thing was the single word sincerity; and when Li Hongzhang met difficulty and failure, Zeng Guofan would speak much of the classic of "holding firm". Zeng Guofan also from time to time set Li Hanzhang and others deliberately to contend with Li Hongzhang in words, to blunt his edge; and Zeng himself practised what he taught, influencing Li Hongzhang by his own example. By such pains he gradually transformed Li Hongzhang's thought, character and even habits of life. Li Hongzhang said of himself that he had had many masters but that none taught as well as this old man, who gave instruction at every time, place and matter; and he said again that in former days, serving various commanders, he had been at a loss whither to turn, and that now he knew the compass and gained greatly by it. Zeng Guofan was by nature hesitant and slow, while Li Hongzhang's manner was brisk and decisive, and on great plans Zeng Guofan often wavered and was decided by a few words from Li Hongzhang at his side. The two were different in temper, and the effect of their mutual correction was a matter often dwelt on by later ages in speaking of the Huai army and of the foreign affairs movement.

The Reorganisation and Expansion of the Huai Army

In military organisation Li Hongzhang saw in actual fighting the power of Western weapons and conceived the thought of humbly and patiently learning one or two of the foreigner's secret methods. Before the Huai army had been a year in Shanghai it had wholly changed the old system of the Xiang army and imitated the foreign troops, becoming a modern force armed with foreign rifles and guns and drilled by foreign instructors, its fighting power greatly increased. At the same time he used a series of measures of accepting surrenders and taking in all comers to expand his strength: within half a year the Huai army had grown suddenly to fifty battalions of about twenty thousand men, and thereafter expanded the more rapidly, so that on the eve of the attack on Tianjing its total strength had reached more than seventy thousand. For military funds Li Hongzhang used the policy of separating the customs from the likin and supporting the pay with the likin: the customs revenue paid for the Ever Victorious Army, the joint defence bureau and the defence troops at Zhenjiang, while the likin supported the Huai army; and as the campaigns advanced and the Xiang and Huai forces grew, likin barriers were added layer upon layer, securing the source of pay. To support foreign troops with customs revenue and the Huai army with likin was the financial arrangement that let the Huai army stand and maintain itself, while the multiplying likin barriers were also the source of the deep-seated evil of the late Qing likin system.

The Suzhou-Changzhou Campaign and the Killing of the Surrendered at Suzhou

In the second year of Tongzhi the Taiping commanders surrendered one after another, and Li Hongzhang took the occasion to launch the campaign to recover Suzhou and Changzhou. After repeated hard fighting with the Taiping forces that came to suppress the revolt, the Huai army took Changshu, Taicang and Kunshan; and after clearing the outskirts of Suzhou, Li Hongzhang made a plan of advance by three routes, the central route under Cheng Xueqi going straight from Kunshan to Suzhou, while Li Hanzhang and others advanced by separate roads on the north, until they pressed below the walls of Suzhou. The commanders of Suzhou opened the gates and surrendered. After the Huai army entered the city, the eight surrendered Taiping princes kept their troops in half the city, unwilling to shave their heads and lay down their arms, and demanded titles and establishment. Li Hongzhang therefore took Cheng Xueqi's advice and treacherously killed the surrendered commanders Gao Yongkuan and seven others; and Cheng Xueqi, after entering the city, searched out and killed more than two thousand of the fierce partisans and dismissed the rest. The killing at Suzhou, though it caused Gordon's displeasure and led for a time to a violent quarrel, removed for Li Hongzhang the hidden danger of treachery at his elbow, as he said in a letter to his mother: that he had killed the eight false princes, Yunkuan and the rest, with several hundred of their party, and that though the deed was too unkind, it concerned the great situation and could not but be done. Later ages have disputed much over the affair, some charging him with treachery in killing those who had surrendered, others holding that with the military situation unsettled the inner enemy could not but be removed; and Li Hongzhang himself plainly explained it with the four words, that it concerned the great situation.

The Joint Attack on Tianjing and the Title of Suyi Bo of the First Rank

At that time the Xiang army had long besieged Tianjing without success, and the court repeatedly ordered Li Hongzhang to lead the Huai army to join the attack. Considering his relations with the Zeng brothers, Li Hongzhang reckoned that to meddle in Nanjing would be taken for snatching the credit and would offend the Zengs; so he kept his troops unmoving in Suzhou and Changzhou while turning south to invade Zhejiang, which angered the governor-general of Fujian and Zhejiang, Zuo Zongtang, who memorialised the court accusing Li Hongzhang of crossing the border to seize merit. On the thirteenth day of the fifth month, hearing that the Xiang army's mine beneath the wall was nearly ready and pressed by the court, Li Hongzhang sent Liu Shiqi's artillery and the twenty-seven battalions of Liu Mingchuan, Pan Dingxin and Zhou Shengbo to join the attack on Tianjing. On the fifteenth day Zeng Guoquan showed his officers Li Hongzhang's letter announcing the troops, to spur them to attack; the next day the Xiang army took Tianjing. Afterwards Zeng Guofan grasped Li Hongzhang's hand and thanked him, saying that his brothers' poor reputation had been preserved by him. On the twenty-ninth day of the sixth month the court, on the ground that Nanjing had been recovered, enfeoffed Li Hongzhang as Suyi Bo of the first rank. In the affair of Tianjing Li Hongzhang had both the thought of avoiding credit and the duty of obeying orders, and much deliberation over advancing or halting; and his relations with the Zengs and with Zuo Zongtang were all fully revealed in it.

The Pacification of the Western Nian and the Humiliation of His Degradation

As the eastern Nian were being pacified, the western Nian came urgently to their aid, threatening the capital region by marching into Zhili and forcing the Qing armies to turn back. In the first month the western Nian reached Baoding, and the court was greatly shaken, hastily ordering Li Hongzhang, Zuo Zongtang and the governors of Zhili, Shandong, Henan and Anhui to lead troops north to rescue the throne. Li Hongzhang was then at Jining keeping the New Year, and though he sent orders to the various commanders to go north, not one would obey, but all sought leave to retire and quarrelled endlessly among themselves, so that the Huai army came near to dissolution. For failure to relieve the situation Li Hongzhang was punished by the removal of his double-eyed peacock feather, the stripping of his yellow jacket and the deprivation of his title of cavalry commander; and he regarded it as Zuo Zongtang's letting the bandits out of the mountains to involve him. Yet in the crisis Li Hongzhang patiently persuaded Pan Dingxin and the other commanders to obey the order and go north, while the court ordered Prince Gong to command the various armies and to reconcile Zuo and Li. With the Qing forces blocking him on all sides, Zhang Zongyu led the western Nian back and forth on the Zhili-Shandong border in the second and third months. On the twenty-ninth day of the fourth month Li Hongzhang and Zuo Zongtang met at Sangyuan in Dezhou and agreed on the policy of enclosing the ground where they stood: letting the water of the Grand Canal into the Jian River and the water of the Yellow River into the canal, with Huai, Eastern and Anhui troops holding sections, and picked Xiang and Huai troops as the roving force of pursuit. In the beginning of the sixth month the western Nian engaged the pursuing Xiang and Huai armies several times and was repeatedly worsted; in the middle of the month Zhang Zongyu's force tried several times to force the canal in the region of Dezhou without success, and with the waters of the Yellow River, the canal and the Tuhai River suddenly rising his position was the harder; and on the twenty-eighth day of the sixth month he met the main Huai force of Liu Mingchuan, Guo Songlin and Pan Dingxin on the march, and in a hard fight the western Nian were cut to pieces, Zhang Zongyu and some twenty others breaking out to the bank of the Tuhai and being heard of no more. The pacification of the western Nian, using rivers as troops and water as walls, was the height of Li Hongzhang's tactics against the Nian.

The Disbanding of the Huai Army and His Governorship

Li Hongzhang perceived that the court both relied on him and held him down, and that with the collapse of the Nian and the ascendancy of the Huai army his relations with the court must grow more tense; he therefore resolved to imitate Zeng Guofan's policy of advancing by retreating after the taking of Tianjing, and memorialised for the disbanding of part of the Huai army. In the eighth month of the seventh year of Tongzhi Li Hongzhang came to the capital by order and was received, receiving extraordinary favour, and was allowed to retain part of the Huai army in preparation for helping Zuo Zongtang against the Hui. In the tenth month he returned to Nanjing and took counsel with Zeng Guofan on the disbanding or retention of the Huai army, deciding to disband fifty battalions of horse and foot and memorialise to keep seventy-five. Soon after, Zeng Guofan went north to be governor-general of Zhili, and Li Hongzhang first went home to see his family, then in the first month of the eighth year of Tongzhi reached Wuchang and took up the post of governor-general of Huguang, in the second month acting concurrently as governor of Hubei. From the raising of the Huai army to a provincial governorship was no more than eight or nine years; and his disbanding of troops was a type of how a military man carried himself under the late Qing pattern in which great merit overawed the sovereign.

His Missions to Europe and America and His Days at the Zongli Yamen

In the twenty-second year of Guangxu Li Hongzhang made a tour of Europe and America with considerable success, some foreigners going so far as to take him for a symbol of China: his lack of pedantry and the directness of his speech and conduct suited foreign taste, and Europe and America praised him greatly, so that some said that the war between Qing China and Japan had really been a war between Li Hongzhang and Japan. On the thirteenth day of the sixth month of that year Li Hongzhang, then on his round-the-world tour, went by train from Russia to Germany, and of his German programme the one that most interested the reporters of the day and later ages was his visit to the former chancellor Bismarck, of which the foreign correspondents present made detailed records. On the thirtieth day of the eighth month Li Hongzhang, visiting the United States, went specially to pay his respects at Grant's grave and attended a dinner with Grant's widow Julia Grant; and when he reached America Grant's son had come in person to meet him, and Julia Grant gave him her late husband's cane on his behalf. A year after returning to China Li Hongzhang entrusted the Qing minister to the United States with his thanks. This journey gave him direct knowledge of the wealth and strength of Europe and America; yet on his return, full of ambition, Li Hongzhang was received by the Guangxu emperor and the empress dowager Cixi and spoke in detail of what he had seen, proposing that China, being poor and weak, must urgently find means; but his views were not attended to nor was he himself given high office, being appointed on the twenty-fourth day of the tenth month of the twenty-second year of Guangxu merely as an additional member of the Zongli Yamen, an official on probation without real authority. After his return Li Hongzhang worked at the Zongli Yamen and, drafting the memorial himself, asked the court to make extensive changes in form to the Double Dragon Order of the seventh year of Guangxu; and on the court's approval the version of the twenty-third year of Guangxu was produced. As Qing diplomacy multiplied after the end of the nineteenth century, this version of the Double Dragon Order was produced, conferred and preserved in very great numbers, and is the commonest version in modern collections.

The Turmoil of 1900 and the Journey North to Negotiate

In the twenty-sixth year of Guangxu the Boxer troubles arose and the eight-power army entered the capital; on the twelfth day of the sixth month the court again appointed Li Hongzhang governor-general of Zhili and commissioner of the Beiyang, telegraphing repeatedly for him to go north. Li Hongzhang thought the time unsuitable and pleaded delay; when he could not avoid it he set out slowly, and after reaching Shanghai by steamer lingered there on the plea of illness, seeking news from the north while sounding the intentions of the foreign ministers at Shanghai, and jointly with Liu Kunyi memorialising the court to protect foreign merchants and missionaries. His subordinates and kinsmen too urged him, with Shimonoseki as a warning, not to go north again. Only when the northern situation could not be settled at all, with the capital fallen and the two palaces in flight, did Cixi telegraph from her flight for him to go north, giving him discretion to act as he saw fit; and the provincial officials all showed the greatest concern for his going, holding that the day he arrived earlier was a day earlier of peace for the court. Li Hongzhang required that Prince Qing, Yikuang, should be joint plenipotentiary with him before he would go. These months of hesitating and watching were a hinge in the confusion of 1900: he dared not set himself alone against the edge of the powers, yet could not but come forward when the state was tottering. His joint memorial with Liu Kunyi at Shanghai for the protection of foreign merchants and missionaries answered to the mutual protection of the southeast by the southern governors, keeping the Yangzi valley from disorder, and later ages in discussing 1900 have generally counted this to his credit.

The Negotiations with Russia After 1900 and His Death

During the peace negotiations of 1901 Li Hongzhang bore heavy burdens in his frail old age, worn by care and toil, ill and somewhat better by turns. On the twenty-third day of the seventh month of the twenty-seventh year he caught cold again, with his nose stopped and his voice heavy and his spirits weary; on the twenty-fifth day, disregarding his doctor's orders, he went in despite of illness to the Spanish legation and signed the Protocol, and after returning to his lodging had alternate fever and chills, was choked with phlegm and could not eat, the court on hearing it allowing him twenty days' leave. After a fortnight's quiet he improved somewhat and at once resumed with Russia the negotiations on the transfer of the three eastern provinces; but to the Russian wish that the Qing government should by a private agreement make over to Russia all the rights of railway and mines and other interests in the three provinces, and that a bank agreement should be concluded first and a withdrawal treaty after, he firmly would not consent. On the nineteenth day of the ninth month, eight days before his death, Li Hongzhang went to the Russian legation to discuss matters, and the Russian minister exhausted every means of intimidation and compulsion upon him; after returning Li Hongzhang vomited about a bowlful of blood and was diagnosed by Western physicians as suffering from gastric bleeding. On the twenty-seventh day of the same month, the seventh of November, Li Hongzhang died at Beijing at the age of seventy-nine. The illness had its origin in the excessive loss of blood from the bullet at Shimonoseki in his earlier years, after which any fatigue brought on a stubborn dizziness; and to the end he was busy with the Russian negotiations, so that the toil of his last years may be seen in this.

His Last Hours and the Honours After His Death

In his final hours his trusted Zhou Fu and another were at his bedside. It is recorded that the day before his death he had already put on the grave clothes and answered when called, but could not speak; and by noon of the next day his eyes were still open and would not close. Zhou Fu stroked him and wept, saying: Master, what is on your mind that you cannot bear to go? What is unfinished in your hands we can do; please set your heart at rest and go. Then Li Hongzhang suddenly opened his eyes and moved his mouth, wishing to speak, and tears flowed; Zhou Fu wiped them away with his hand, wiping and calling to him, and only then did Li Hongzhang close his eyes and presently breathe his last. Those who stood by also saw that in the hour and more before his death the Russian minister had come to his sickbed with documents demanding his signature to the treaty on the transfer of Chinese and Russian territory, even trying to force Li Hongzhang's assistant to produce his seal; hearing it, Li Hongzhang closed his eyes and made no answer, and Zhou Fu wept aloud, and his weeping woke Li Hongzhang, who suddenly opened his eyes again and startled all about him, so that Zhou Fu had to console him, saying that the Russians had said that after the Grand Secretary's death they would never trouble China, and that the two palaces would soon reach the capital; and only then did Li Hongzhang close his eyes. The report that the Russian minister had provoked Li Hongzhang to death was recorded at the time in the New York Times under the title that Li's death was a dispute with a diplomat. After his death the Ming shi gao, in its life of Li Hongzhang, records that he died of vomiting blood from accumulated toil at the age of seventy-nine; that on the report of it the two palaces were shaken with grief, granted sacrifices and burial, conferred on him the title of grand tutor and advanced him to Marquis of the first rank with the posthumous name Wenzhong, and placed his tablet in the Shrine of the Worthy; and that shrines were built to sacrifice to him in Anhui, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Shanghai, Jiangning and Tianjin, with an order that a special shrine be built for him at the capital, that a Han minister should be sacrificed to at the capital being an extraordinary distinction. The Yici lu adds that when the news of Wenzhong's death reached the travelling court at Xi'an the two palaces were shaken with grief, an edict granting special favour, and he was about to be given a place in the ancestral temple; but when the ministers of the Grand Council went out to draft the rescript, Lu Wenzhuan of Dingxing suddenly asked where he was to be sacrificed to, and as with Emperor Wenzong Li Hongzhang was then still in office without merit achieved, with Emperor Muzong the meritorious of the restoration were not few and no distinction could well be drawn, and with Emperor Dezong the emperor was still in his prime, the rescript could not easily be worded, and the matter was shelved. The mourning honours after death and the debate over a place in the temple are both seen here. The sacrificial hall at Hefei was built in the twenty-eighth year of Guangxu, facing south, with the imperial stele, screen wall, gate, front hall, chamber and side rooms, a granary east of the hall and west of it the joint tomb of Li Hongzhang and his wife with the spirit way and stone figures, covering about thirteen hundred square metres; while the Li shrine at Tianjin was built under the direction of Yuan Shikai, governor-general of Zhili, in the thirty-first year of Guangxu, its gate on the bank of the Ziya River, a bronze statue of Li Hongzhang in the middle of the court and a great hall of nine bays as the main building.

The Talent of His Secretariat and Its Change Over Time

From the moment he was ordered to raise the Huai army Li Hongzhang began to build his own secretariat; and as his political standing rose his staff grew larger and larger. Taking his transfer to the governor-generalship of Zhili in the ninth year of Tongzhi as the dividing line, the earlier secretariat was chiefly military in function, made up of men of his own district, schoolmates, kinsmen, friends, former members of Zeng Guofan's staff and the gentry and compradors of Shanghai, still mainly men of the traditional old type; while in its later phase its function turned to administrative business, and for this he gathered a large number of modern men with special skill in running mines and factories, coastal defence, education and foreign affairs, a part of the older members also being transformed under Western influence. Scholars have held that before the war with Japan Li Hongzhang's secretariat could be called the one and only reservoir of modern talent in China at that time. Its members managed foreign affairs, conducted negotiations, led troops or excelled in documents; the government of the late Qing for several decades passed largely through their hands, and the power of the Huai faction thereby spread north and south.

His Relations with the Reform Party

Li Hongzhang's thinking was in many ways close to that of the reformers, and he therefore, though he would not openly declare himself, in fact lent them secret support. It is recorded that in a discussion of several hours with Kang Youwei and the others, Li Hongzhang asked only one question, whether, if the six ministries were wholly abolished, their regulations would be wholly abandoned, after Kang Youwei said that the laws should be changed and the official system put first, and gave no clear declaration. To give no open declaration was not to have no position: toward Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao and their party Li Hongzhang in fact gave secret support, as at the beginning of the Hundred Days Reform he twice held back or delayed memorials opposing the reforms; and because many of his ideas were close to those of the reformers, someone sent up an impeachment accusing him of being one of them. The empress dowager Cixi showed him these impeachments and asked him whether people said he belonged to Kang's party. Li Hongzhang answered that he was indeed of Kang's party; that in the matter of deposing and setting up emperors he had no part; that the six ministries might indeed be abolished, for if the old laws could make China strong she would long ago have been strong and would not be waiting until today; and that whoever advocated reform was pointed at as of Kang's party, from which he could not escape, and he was indeed of that party. Cixi was silent on hearing it. On the whole, though Li Hongzhang sympathised with and supported the reform movement in his thinking, yet because he wished to avoid the struggle between the emperor's party and the empress dowager's party, because of his long accumulated quarrel with the reform-supporting great minister Weng Tonghe, and because of his own neglect after the war with Japan, he supported the reformers only where it did not endanger his own political safety, guarding himself the more carefully.

His Relations with Grant

The acquaintance between Li Hongzhang and President Grant of the United States is an anecdote of late Qing diplomatic history. When Grant visited China he was received at Tianjin by Li Hongzhang, then governor-general of Zhili, and the two took to each other at once and became quite close. Li Hongzhang said to Grant with some self-satisfaction that they were the two greatest men in the world, for they had put down two famous rebel armies. At the banquet he asked Grant to help mediate the dispute between China and Japan over the Ryukyus, and Grant readily agreed and became the special diplomatic envoy of the Qing government. When Grant visited China he carried a cane set with diamonds, and Li Hongzhang, seeing so precious a cane, could not put it down; Grant told him that the cane had been given by the businessmen of all America and that he would give it to him after obtaining the consent of the business leaders at home; but Grant died in the eleventh year of Guangxu after returning to America, and never gave the cane to Li Hongzhang in person. On the thirtieth day of the eighth month of the twenty-second year of Guangxu Li Hongzhang, visiting the United States, went specially to pay his respects at Grant's grave and attended a dinner with Grant's widow, Julia Grant; and when Li Hongzhang reached America Grant's son came in person to meet him, and Julia Grant gave him her late husband's cane on his behalf. A year after his return Li Hongzhang entrusted the Qing minister to the United States with his thanks. Through the matter of a cane a link was made between China and America, and Li Hongzhang's liking for the company of foreigners and for hearing of foreign affairs may be seen in it.

His Appearance and Health in Later Years

From photographs of Li Hongzhang it may be seen that in his youth and prime he had something of the martially air, after middle age a look of fatigue, and in old age a certain stoutness; and in his later years he was troubled by the loss of many teeth on the right, so that his cheeks were full on the left and sunken on the right. In old age he liked to wear reading glasses, perhaps because of overuse of his eyes in youth. At the Shimonoseki negotiations there was added the scar of the bullet wound from the Japanese assassination, the scar standing out a little because the bullet still remained beneath the skin; and after the shooting Li Hongzhang's health declined from day to day, so that in his last years he needed a wheelchair. The excessive loss of blood from the Shimonoseki shooting in his earlier years left him with a stubborn dizziness on any fatigue, and during the peace negotiations of 1901 he fell ill with phlegm and coughing and could not eat, dying at last of gastric bleeding at Beijing. That a great minister of state should bear wounds of body corresponding thus to the wounds of his country's fortunes may be noted.

His Appearance as Foreigners Described It

On his missions to Europe and America many foreigners left eyewitness accounts of him. The American missionary and diplomat Chester Holcombe, in his book on the Chinese character, said that his bearing and way of thinking were more those of a soldier than a statesman; that he was taller than the ordinary Chinese, with a hoarse but vigorous voice, and gave an impression thoroughly plebeian and easy of approach. The Englishman Curzon, in his writings, described the scene of his meeting with Li Hongzhang and called it the finest memory of his life, observing him closely and finding him more than six feet tall, in a long grey silk robe and a black silk hat, of great dignity, with a heavy moustache covering half his mouth and Chinese-style whiskers on his chin, his hair a dark grey beginning to turn white. The American writer Sterling Seagrave, sketching Li Hongzhang at seventy-six, thought he looked a hypocrite, wearing thick-soled satin court boots, standing more than six feet four inches tall, and added that Li Hongzhang had had a stroke which left part of his face motionless, so that he always seemed to smile. Such accounts, though variously praising and blaming, are what later ages have mostly drawn on to know Li Hongzhang's appearance and bearing.

His Relations with the Court in Later Years and the Naval Funds

Li Hongzhang's relations with the court in his later years were marked by both reliance and restraint. He had long been on bad terms with Weng Tonghe, who controlled the Ministry of Revenue, and the funds for the Beiyang Navy were often withheld, so that most of its ships grew old; Ding Ruchang, before the war, proposed mounting quick-firing guns on the chief ships to offset the Japanese advantage in quick-firing guns, at a cost of six hundred thousand taels, and Li Hongzhang did not approve it. After the Beiyang fleet was defeated in the battle of the Yellow Sea, Li Hongzhang at last memorialised the state of the great naval funds previously raised and deposited in various places, among which one hundred and seven thousand two hundred and ninety taels lay in the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank. With such difficulty in raising money and so many restraints, and with naval expenditure thus entangled with court personnel, the causes of the defeat in 1894 lay by no means only at sea.

An Outline of His Life

Li Hongzhang, whose family name in the genealogy was Zhangtong and whose courtesy names were Jianfu and Zifu, styled Shaochuan, was a man of Hefei in Anhui and took the presented scholar's degree in the twenty-seventh year of Daoguang. Entering Zeng Guofan's secretariat in his early years, he was ordered at the end of the Xianfeng period to raise the Huai army and carried thirteen battalions, some nine thousand men, by sea to Shanghai; from the first year of Tongzhi he recovered Suzhou and Changzhou with the Huai army, in the second year killed the eight surrendered commanders at Suzhou, in the third joined the attack on Tianjing and was enfeoffed as Suyi Bo of the first rank. From the fourth to the seventh year he campaigned against the Nian, first destroying the eastern and then the western Nian, and became governor-general of Huguang and then of Zhili and commissioner of the Beiyang, being advanced to grand secretary of the Wenhua Hall and enfeoffed as Suyi Bo of the first rank. In the twenty-first year of Guangxu he went to Japan and signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki, in the twenty-second toured Europe and America, and in the twenty-seventh signed the Boxer Protocol, dying at Beijing in that year with the posthumous name Wenzhong.

Major Activities

Formation of the Huai Army and Suppression of the Taiping and Nian Forces

Li Hongzhang entered military command from a scholarly background and organized the Huai Army with Western-style weapons and training, making it one of the Qing government's principal forces. In 1862 he led it to Shanghai and fought the Taiping army, later recovering Suzhou and Changzhou and contributing significantly to the defeat of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. From 1865 to 1868 he directed campaigns against the eastern and western branches of the Nian Army, helping preserve Qing rule.

Self-Strengthening Movement

Li was one of the leading figures of the Self-Strengthening Movement. In 1865 he purchased an American-owned industrial works and established the Jiangnan Arsenal, later relocating it to Gaochangmiao south of Shanghai as a modern military industrial enterprise. In the same year he moved the Suzhou foreign-style artillery works to Nanjing and renamed it the Jinling Arsenal. In 1872 he founded the China Merchants' Steam Navigation Company. He also established or promoted the Shanghai Guangfangyan Guan, Tianjin Naval Academy, Tianjin Telegraph Bureau, and Chinese Engineering and Mining Company, extending his programs into armaments, shipping, education, communications, and mining.

Building the Beiyang Fleet

Beginning in 1875, Li directed Beiyang coastal defense, purchased foreign warships through intermediaries including Robert Hart, and built naval bases at Lüshun and Weihaiwei. The Beiyang Fleet was formally organized in 1888 with ironclads including Dingyuan and Zhenyuan. The source describes it as at one time the leading navy in Asia. Its destruction in the First Sino-Japanese War, however, wiped out much of the military achievement associated with the Self-Strengthening Movement.

Diplomacy

Li Hongzhang spent many years managing Qing foreign relations and signed agreements including the Treaty of Shimonoseki and the Boxer Protocol, both of which were widely condemned at the time as unequal treaties. He also participated in the Mutual Protection of Southeast China during the Eight-Nation Alliance invasion in an effort to preserve stability in the southeastern provinces. His 1896 tour of Europe and the United States exposed him to foreign political and economic institutions and reinforced his calls for reform.

Relations with Contemporaries

Li had a close relationship with Zeng Guofan as both student and political ally. Together with Zuo Zongtang and Zhang Zhidong, he was later grouped among the “Four Great Ministers of the Qing Revival.” The three nevertheless also competed and disagreed. Li became hostile toward Weng Tonghe over the impeachment of Weng Tongshu; the source states that Weng later obstructed the Beiyang Fleet after gaining influence, affecting the course of the First Sino-Japanese War.

The Raising of the Huai Army and Its Transport to Shanghai

In the later years of the Taiping movement the Qing government had lost its last main force in the lower reaches of the Yangzi. The Taiping armies advanced on Suzhou and Hangzhou, and the gentry and landlords of Jiangnan fled to Shanghai in crowds; to escape destruction, the gentry and compradors of Shanghai on the one hand prepared a joint Chinese and foreign defence bureau relying on Western mercenaries to protect the city, and on the other sent men to Anqing to seek help from Zeng Guofan. Zeng Guofan then ordered Li Hongzhang to raise recruits and form a separate army. In the second month of the first year of Tongzhi, Zeng Guofan, accompanied by Li Hongzhang, reviewed the Huai army battalions assembled at Anqing, and the Huai army was formally established. The gentry of Shanghai then spent a hundred and eighty thousand taels of silver to hire seven British merchant ships to carry the Huai army in detachments by water and land to Shanghai; and since the "Ji" battalion was left to guard Chizhou, the Huai army that sailed into Shanghai came to thirteen battalions of about nine thousand men. Li Hongzhang himself reached Shanghai with the first detachment on the tenth day of the third month. That an army should be raised with the gentry of a city paying for the ships and carried east over the sea in foreign vessels is a record without precedent in the modern military and diplomatic history of China; and from its first days the Huai army was entangled with the foreign concessions, merchants and ships of Shanghai, its later work in foreign affairs being rooted in this.

The Difficulties of the Huai Army in Shanghai and Its Self-Strengthening

Shanghai was where the wealth of Jiangnan was concentrated, with Chinese and foreigners mingled together, and when the Huai army arrived the Taiping forces were making their second great attack; whether the city could be held and its position developed was the greatest trial before Li Hongzhang. He kept firmly in mind Zeng Guofan's teaching that the training of soldiers and the learning of war were the very root of life, and that administration and foreign affairs should be left to later. The joint defence bureau raised by the gentry of Shanghai relied wholly on foreign mercenaries to resist the Taiping, and it and the foreign troops thought nothing of the Huai army, laughing and pointing at it as a band of beggars. Faced with this, Li Hongzhang encouraged his officers and men, saying that an army is prized for its power to fight, and that when they had beaten the enemy they would overawe them. Before the year was out the Huai army indeed fought on its own at Hongqiao and elsewhere. In the first year of Tongzhi Li Hongzhang also concluded an agreement with the British for the joint attack on the Taiping, providing that Li Hongzhang should send six thousand Huai troops to preserve the situation together with the foreign forces, of whom three thousand should be stationed at Nanqiao and three thousand rigorously trained by British officers; that military stores taken in action should belong to the Huai army; and that the two sides should inform each other of military movements and exchange military intelligence. In the spring of the second year of Tongzhi he concluded with Staveley the agreement on joint command. That a newly formed Huai army could stand on equal terms with foreign forces, and that it gained a footing in Shanghai, was due to the merit of these few battles.

The Retention or Disbanding of the Xiang and Huai Armies and the Beginning of the Campaign Against the Nian

After the failure of the Taiping movement, Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang took different courses on whether to keep or disband the Xiang and Huai armies. Ignoring the court's order that he should again attend to military affairs in Anhui, Zeng Guofan disbanded most of the Xiang army under his command less than a month after taking Tianjing: this was partly because the Xiang army's spirit was already tired, but more because he feared that great merit would overawe his sovereign and bring him death. Li Hongzhang, however, held that he and his master should be with military affairs from first to last, and that the Xiang and Huai braves should be retained to guard and suppress the regions north and south of the Yangzi, so that when the general situation was secure they could still be sent on distant expeditions; and he further saw that the present trouble was the internal bandits while the long-term trouble was the Westerners. His purpose in retaining the Xiang and Huai armies was thus not only to put down the internal bandits but to resist foreign insults. To disband and to retain was the fundamental difference between the two men's reading of the times, and on it the later existence of the Huai army and the unfolding of its work in foreign affairs were founded.

Not long after, Sengge Rinchen's whole army was destroyed at Heze in Shandong, and the court appointed Zeng Guofan imperial commissioner to go north and direct the campaign against the Nian, with Li Hongzhang again acting as governor-general of Liangjiang, in charge of moving troops and raising pay. In the eighth month he memorialised for the purchase of the machinery of the foreigners' ironworks at Hongkou in Shanghai, to be merged with the two existing bureaux of Ding Richang and Han Dianjia as the basis of the Jiangnan Arsenal. Since most of the Xiang army had been disbanded, the force Zeng Guofan led north was mostly Huai troops. As soon as he reached the front Zeng Guofan adopted the plan drawn up by Liu Mingchuan and Li Hongzhang, deciding to use fixed troops against an unfixed enemy, stationing strong forces at the four towns of Linhuai in Anhui, Zhoukou in Henan, Xuzhou in Jiangsu and Jining in Shandong, so that if one province were in danger the other three would send help; and afterwards he distributed troops along the Grand Canal, the Yellow Sea, the Sha River and the Jialu River, putting into practice the policy of drawing lines along the rivers and enclosing the ground. But on the one hand the Nian were at their height, moving swiftly and changeably, so that a passive defence could not quickly tell, and on the other Zeng Guofan could not effectively command the Huai army. After a year and a half, therefore, Zeng Guofan's direction of the campaign had no success, and the court had on the first day of the eleventh month of the fifth year of Tongzhi to appoint Li Hongzhang in his place as imperial commissioner to take charge of the campaign against the Nian.

Taking Charge of the Nian Campaign and the Pacification of the Eastern Nian

Taking charge of the campaign, Li Hongzhang first resolved to throw his whole strength against the eastern Nian. Though he still held to the strategy of quelling movement with stillness, he changed, in the light of Zeng Guofan's having spread his defence too wide with no effect, to the tactics of blocking the ground and encircling and suppressing, seeking to press the Nian into places of deep mountains and winding waters, giving up ground to lure them in, and then to combine the armies of the several provinces to surround them on three or four sides. The first battle was at Yinlonghe: the Huai and Xiang armies despised each other, and Liu Mingchuan, to snatch the credit, attacked alone in advance and was so heavily beaten by the Nian that he nearly lost his life, being saved only by Bao Chao's timely relief, and the Nian lost more than twenty thousand men; afterwards Li Hongzhang shielded Liu Mingchuan throughout and Bao Chao was instead accused of falsely claiming merit, so that Bao Chao fell ill from grief and anger and insisted on retiring, and most of the thirty-two battalions of his "Ting" army were disbanded, only Tang Renlian choosing picked men to form the "Ren" battalion and joining the Huai establishment. In the second month the eastern Nian destroyed another Xiang army force entirely. The second stage ran from the fifth to the twelfth month of the sixth year of Tongzhi, carrying out the Jiaolai and Grand Canal defence lines, with the main battlefield moving to eastern Shandong: after breaking out of the encirclement the eastern Nian again broke through the canal line in the fifth month and drove straight to the Shandong peninsula. On the advice of Liu Mingchuan and Pan Dingxin, Li Hongzhang decided on the policy of defending the canal in reverse and added an inner line of defence on both banks of the Jiaolai River, with Huai, Eastern and Henan troops holding sections. Because the governor of Shandong was unwilling to make his territory a battlefield and neglected his guard, the eastern Nian broke through the Jiaolai line in the seventh month; after a violent quarrel Li Hongzhang and Ding Baozhen were reconciled and together penned the eastern Nian in the narrow strip between the Yellow Sea, the canal, the Liutang River and the sea, so that the Nian's advantage of moving to beat the enemy could not be used. In the tenth month Ren Zhu fell in battle at Ganyu in northern Jiangsu, and the eastern Nian lost more than thirty thousand picked men in a single battle at Shouguang; in the twelfth month Lai Wenguang led the remnant through the Liutang River, went south to Yangzhou and was taken and killed.

The Debate on Coastal Defence and the Beiyang Navy

In the thirteenth year of Tongzhi, in the great deliberation on coastal defence, Li Hongzhang memorialised systematically proposing the purchase of ironclads, the formation of the northern, eastern and southern fleets, and the support of coastal land defence, thus forming a modern Chinese strategy of coastal defence. The next year, because coastal defence was urgent at the key points, Li Hongzhang was ordered to take charge of the affairs of the Beiyang coastal defence. From the fifth year of Guangxu to the eve of the war with Japan in the twentieth, he purchased the Dingyuan and Zhenyuan, the largest cruisers in Chinese history, and, following the naval regulations of the West, drew up the Regulations of the Beiyang Navy, so that the Beiyang Navy took its first steps toward modernity. In strategy he held that since the enemy invaded by sea a navy must quickly be trained, but that the foreign powers' ships and guns had long been refined and could not be matched at once, and that since China's land was greater than her water the army must still be the foundation of the state: if the army were well trained it could fight hard after the enemy landed, and if the batteries were well placed they could hold when the enemy's ships entered the river mouth. At the same time he held that with land forces alone and no navy the enemy's ships could spy everywhere, so that if we were defeated they would press on and if they were defeated we could only sigh at the sea; and that the navy must be established because it turned a dead position into a live one. He therefore held that coastal defence must join water and land. His dispositions put defence first and the guarding of the river mouths before all: since China had few warships she could only defend her own river mouths, and these must have their priorities, such as the line of Dagu, Beitang and Shanhaiguan in Zhili, which was the gate of the capital, and the line from Wusong to Jiangyin in Jiangsu, which was the gate of the Yangzi; if these chief and secondary places could be held, the other river mouths and frontiers of the provinces might be lightly disposed, and even if lost would not greatly matter to the whole. He also held that no army can defend that cannot fight, and that without ironclads, several trained squadrons and a decision on the sea, the excellence of fighting as a means of defence could not be attained; and therefore he opposed the name of a coastal defence office for the navy, holding that the words coastal defence meant only cramped self-defence and could not display the state's majesty or overawe the enemy, and asked that a ministry of the sea be established with authority over troops, funds and appointments. Following Western theories of modern defence and considering the court's means, and looking to the protection of the capital, he had batteries and forts built along the coast and chose Lushun and Weihaiwei as naval bases, facing each other north and south to hold the throat of the Bohai Gulf, guarding the capital within and resisting invasion without, the system of defence being carefully wrought; and since Lushun and Weihaiwei were separated by a wide sea over which enemy ships could enter anywhere, he insisted that defence must be prepared by fighting, not by holding. Yet the policy of preserving the ships to check the enemy that he advocated in the war with Japan ended in utter defeat.

The Korean Disturbances and the War of 1894

Korea repeatedly gave occasion for trouble, and Li Hongzhang was concerned in it each time. Earlier, on a Korean disturbance, Li Hongzhang sent fifteen hundred troops to Korea, notifying Japan under the Tianjin Convention; but Japan at once sent troops to Korea, increasing her force there to more than eight thousand. Since the disturbance quickly subsided and the Chinese and Japanese troops arrived when it was roughly settled, the Qing court proposed that both sides withdraw, but Japan unexpectedly demanded that the two armies remain and jointly administer Korean affairs, which the Qing refused; in the fifth month Japanese troops broke into the palace and seized the king, and the dispute over Korea became the occasion of war between China and Japan. At the beginning of the war the court ordered Li Hongzhang to take charge of frontier defence, but he held that the coastal defence of the provinces had few troops and scanty pay and the navy was untrained, so that no light word of war could be spoken to a European power. When the war went badly the court first sent Zhang Yinhuan and Shao Youlian to Japan to negotiate, but Japan refused to negotiate on the ground that their credentials as plenipotentiaries were incomplete, continuing its attacks by land and sea and hinting that Prince Gong or Li Hongzhang should appear. On the eighteenth day of the second month of the twenty-first year of Guangxu Li Hongzhang, unwilling but unable to refuse, was appointed plenipotentiary by the empress dowager Cixi and hurried to Japan. Though the court had given him full powers to cede territory and pay indemnity, he still hoped to gain a fraction for every fraction contested, and argued repeatedly with the Japanese representatives, so that the negotiations were at first deadlocked. On the twenty-fourth day of the third month, after the third round of talks, Li Hongzhang was shot at on the road from his lodging at Shimonoseki and struck below the left eyelid; the bullet did not reach a vital part and he recovered quickly, and the affair, causing a stir in world opinion, made Japan fear that the international situation would turn against her and so somewhat restrain her terms. On the sixteenth day of the third month, the tenth of April, his wound somewhat healed, the two sides held their fourth talks, and Japan declared that she would make no further concession on the indemnity of two hundred and fifty million taels of silver, three hundred million having been her original demand, nor on the cession of the Liaodong peninsula, Taiwan and the Penghu islands; the Japanese plenipotentiary Ito Hirobumi said that before Li Hongzhang there was only the choice between yes and no, and Japan then threatened to send more troops and fight again. Li Hongzhang and the others repeatedly telegraphed for instructions, and the Guangxu emperor agreed to sign, ordering them to conclude at once as previously instructed; and on the twenty-third day of the third month, the seventeenth of April, Li Hongzhang signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki with Ito Hirobumi on behalf of the Qing government. It is said that at the last moment before signing, Li Hongzhang said with tears to Foster, the American adviser of the mission, that if the negotiation failed they could only move the capital to Shaanxi and fight a long war with Japan, which could never conquer China, and that China could resist without end and Japan would in the end be defeated and sue for peace. By the treaty Korea passed from a dependency of the Qing to an independent state; the Qing ceded the Liaodong peninsula, Taiwan and the Penghu islands to Japan; paid an indemnity of two hundred million taels; and granted Japan most-favoured-nation treatment and the freedom to engage in all kinds of manufacture in the newly opened ports. During the negotiations Li Hongzhang privately informed the other powers of the course of the talks, prompting Russia, Germany and France, unwilling that Japan should swallow the Liaodong peninsula alone, to intervene and require her to give it up; Japan yielded, agreeing to give up Liaodong in return for thirty million taels, of "redemption money" from the Qing. The Treaty of Shimonoseki was the heaviest burden of blame in Li Hongzhang's life; the place where he was shot, and his words about gaining a fraction for every fraction contested, remain among the most painful memories of modern Chinese diplomacy.

His Work in Foreign Affairs: From Arms to Civil Enterprise

Li Hongzhang's work in foreign affairs began with munitions and extended to civil enterprise. Already in Zeng Guofan's secretariat he had argued for using the foreigners' strength to help suppress the rebels and reach far, and for learning the foreigners' wisdom to make guns and ships; and because he took part in suppressing the Taiping he came into frequent contact with Westerners at Shanghai and elsewhere, whence came his idea of learning Western military methods, and he set about recruiting foreign craftsmen, opening arsenals and making his own guns. Later, in the practical work of introducing Western equipment for modern production, he went further and said that if China wished to be strong she must learn the foreigners' sharp weapons; that to learn their sharp weapons she must find the tools that make the tools, imitating their methods without necessarily employing their men; and that to find the tools that make the tools, and the men who make them, a special examination subject might be set up, so that scholars might set before themselves for life the goal of wealth, honour and office, and then the trade would be accomplished, the art refined and the talent gathered. After becoming governor-general of Zhili in the 1870s, Li Hongzhang's responsibilities grew greater and his vision wider; surveying the development of the states of the world, he felt keenly that China's weakness and failure to rise came of poverty, and concluded that wealth and strength cause one another and that she must first be rich before she could be strong, and therefore while continuing to prepare the arms and ships of strong guns he attended also to civil enterprise. Moreover, when the foreigners wished to open telegraph business in China the whole court and country were in a panic, thinking that the telegraph went deep into the earth, rushing and crashing, reaching everywhere, so that the veins of the land would be cut; but Li Hongzhang knew that the telegraph held the highest military and civil value, and not long after the first telegraph cable in China, laid with his support, was opened between Dagu and the city of Tianjin, and then a telegraph company was founded with official capital for profit, which Li Hongzhang called official supervision and merchant management, since to found an enterprise with independent rights in China was a matter of weight that benefited the state and the people, so that it needed official support and a loan of official funds to help the insufficiency of merchant strength. Of the bureaux and works he established the Jiangnan Arsenal and the China Merchants' Steam Navigation Company were the most famous. Under this system of official supervision and merchant management, when an enterprise was first founded the authorities had not the strength to establish it alone and so cooperated with private capital; once it was on its feet the authorities sought by every means to exclude private capital and make the enterprise their own; and with the long years of war continually draining funds from the enterprises and forcing redundant staff upon them, and with long protection by policy leaving them without spirit, they could not escape a tragic fate as foreign power entered and national capital arose; while Li Hongzhang himself and his family made very large profits out of the foreign affairs movement.

The Signing of the Boxer Protocol

Once in the north Li Hongzhang was appointed plenipotentiary for the peace and sat with Prince Qing, Yikuang. The gist of his negotiation is recorded in the Yici lu: that on the sudden coming of the Boxer rebellion and the entry of the eight-power army into the capital, with the general alarm, he again became plenipotentiary and went into the capital to negotiate, but the ministers were not of one mind and their governments' publics took part, so that from Waldersee down every officer of the eight armies had to interfere, and the situation was extremely complicated, every clause being settled only after repeated deliberation. His ground of negotiation was that Li Hongzhang presented the Boxers as rebels and the declaration of war issued before the imperial house as having been made under duress; that he did not acknowledge that China had been at war with the eleven powers, and that therefore the powers had no ground for demanding territory while China had only the obligation to pay military expenses. After repeated discussion the powers on the third day of the eleventh month, the twenty-fourth of December, put forward the draft terms of peace, and when the full text was transcribed and shown to our country its words were that upon the edict's approval the troops could withdraw at once while the season was good, but that if it came to the heat they could not march and it would be delayed beyond the ninth and tenth months, and that every day of delay cost a million more, so that after autumn a hundred million more would be needed. Li Hongzhang forwarded it and the edict approved; and Zhou Fu, then provincial administration commissioner of Zhili, sighed that who was the plenipotentiary but a minister who merely wrote his assent. The treaty was then concluded, the Boxer Protocol. On the twenty-fifth day of the seventh month Li Hongzhang, disregarding his doctor's orders, went in despite of illness to the Spanish legation and signed the Protocol, and after returning to his lodging had alternate fever and chills, was choked with phlegm and coughing and could not eat. On the tenth day of the eighth month, in his memorial on the conclusion of the peace and the signing, Li Hongzhang said that in the last decades each time there had been a quarrel there had been the more loss, and that the events of the past year had come with particular suddenness, with the wounds deep and the pain great so that all within the seas were alarmed; that now the peace was made and the general situation somewhat settled, he still hoped the court would hold firm to its settled view, cultivate friendship without and seek wealth and strength within, and that there might then be a gradual turn for the better; that it was like a man of many diseases who, even while nursing himself carefully, fears to injure his vital powers, and if he fights and brawls the more must be in danger of his life. This memorial was the summary of his lifelong views on diplomacy and internal government, and the signing of the Boxer Protocol was the heaviest burden of his later years.

Schools, Students Sent Abroad and the Reform of Military Organisation

The military and civil enterprises Li Hongzhang founded in the foreign affairs movement needed in great numbers men with modern scientific and technical knowledge. In his memorial on coastal defence he said that the employment of men was the most urgent business and the storing of talent the most far-sighted plan. Holding that the old education was unfavourable to the training of talent, he founded a series of modern schools, actively promoted the teaching of natural science and Western technical knowledge, and gave weight to the education of students abroad, opening the curtain on modern Chinese education. He also saw the defects of the examination system, holding that Chinese scholars were steeped in the habit of phrases and small characters while the military were rude and careless, so that what was used was not what was studied and what was studied was not what was used, and Western sharp weapons were not valued; he approved the practical spirit of Western education and went on to say that for China to be strong she must go from learning the foreigners' sharp weapons to introducing the tools that make the tools, and above all train her own makers of tools, with talent the most urgent matter; and he advocated promoting Western learning and reforming the traditional examination system and the pattern of education, putting it into practice. Of the schools he founded, the Shanghai School of Foreign Languages had four sections, English, French, mathematics and astronomy, with pupils divided into senior and junior classes; in its teaching, besides the traditional classics, history and composition, it added Western languages and natural science, mathematics being a required subject for every pupil; and there was also the Tianjin School of Western Medicine of the nineteenth year of Guangxu. In these schools, besides the Confucian classics, natural science, practical science and military science were the chief subjects of instruction, and the rise of the new schools dealt a great blow to the traditional feudal pattern of education. In the education of students abroad, in the tenth year of Tongzhi Li Hongzhang and Zeng Guofan jointly submitted the memorial on the regulations for selecting and sending young boys to study in America, and overcoming the obstruction of the conservatives, the selection of pupils and the raising of funds, brought about the sending in the eighth month of the eleventh year of Tongzhi of the first government-sponsored students abroad in modern Chinese history, a hundred and twenty pupils going to America by the first year of Guangxu; and the young students in America and those studying in England and France, on returning, nearly all became professional men of science and technology. In military organisation he held that the system of arms was the foundation of the state and the hinge of controlling the barbarians, and that the circumstances of past and present were different and the ancestral rules could not be clung to, and argued that the weak must be wholly cut away, pay given liberally, bows and arrows abandoned in favour of firearms alone, scattered units made whole, able commanders chosen and hard drill practised, with foreign shipyards imitated and Western machinery bought to make firearms and warships; and because those taken by the examinations were too ignorant of foreign affairs, being employed in what they had not studied, so that military men versed in Western methods could not be produced, he proposed to the court that the examination system be reformed, that a separate field of advancement in foreign affairs be opened to foster such men, and that a bureau of Western learning be established to receive those who had the will to study Western learning, those who did well to be rewarded and promoted under the regulations for military recommendation.

His Negotiations During the War with France

In the ninth and tenth years of Guangxu China and France quarrelled over Vietnam, and the court ordered Li Hongzhang to take charge of frontier defence. Li Hongzhang held that the coastal defence of the provinces had few troops and scanty pay and that the navy was untrained, so that no light word of war could be spoken to a European power. He first concluded with Bourée, French minister to China, the Li-Bourée agreement, which the French government at once repudiated; and he then negotiated with the French minister to Japan, also without result. At the beginning of the tenth year of Guangxu the Qing armies were defeated in Tonkin and the war was plainly about to widen: the French parliament reconsidered its policy toward China and passed a new bill for reinforcements, the French war ministry and the front authorities took urgent measures to reinforce the front, so that the French forces in Tonkin came greatly to outnumber the Qing troops pursuing them southward; moreover the Qing military supply could in no way meet the needs of the field, the court was unable to bear the manpower and money of a widened war, and the Nguyen court of Vietnam in fact turned to France. In the course of the fighting the French side, its policy toward China being too weak and its aggression not forceful enough, saw the fall of the Ferry cabinet. In the war with France Li Hongzhang favoured peace without being able to stop the fighting, while those who favoured war could not win, and the matter ended in negotiation, the difficulty of his diplomacy being like that of Ili before and Shimonoseki after.

His Family and His Lands

The six brothers of Li Hongzhang all bought land on a great scale in their native Anhui and built vast manor-like residences; afterwards the power of the Li family of Hefei spread gradually to Hefei, Lujiang, Wuhu, Anqing, Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin and Dalian, becoming a wealthy and eminent clan. As to Li Hongzhang's fortune the accounts differ; the modern thinker Liang Qichao, in his Life of Li Hongzhang, held that several million in gold were to be expected in his case, though there is no accurate evidence. Besides Hefei his family held property at Tianjin, Shanghai and Suzhou, and his descendants mostly carried on by turns in office and in business, so that the Li house in the several decades of the late Qing was in fact a family combining military merit, political power and wealth, which was one side of the correspondence between his work in foreign affairs and his political position.

The Shrines After His Death and the Study of Him

Of the shrines established to Li Hongzhang after his death, many survive in place today. The sacrificial hall at Hefei is on the south side of Heyu Road in Hefei, Anhui, built in the twenty-eighth year of Guangxu, facing south, with the imperial stele, screen wall, gate, front hall, chamber and side rooms, a granary east of the hall and to its west the joint tomb of Li Hongzhang and his wife with the spirit way and stone figures, covering about thirteen hundred square metres, and was proclaimed a key cultural relic under provincial protection in 1998. The Li shrine at Tianjin, originally the family shrine of Li Wenzhong, is at number four Xijiandao, Li Gong Ci, Tianwei Road, Hebei district, Tianjin, and was once the site of the Fifty-Seventh Middle School of Tianjin; it was built under the direction of Yuan Shikai, governor-general of Zhili, in the thirty-first year of Guangxu, with its gate on the bank of the Ziya River, a bronze statue of Li Hongzhang in the middle of the court and a great hall of nine bays as the main building, and though the original buildings are gone the name Li Gong Ci Street survives. At Suzhou too there was a shrine built for Li Hongzhang by imperial order, where in the thirty-seventh year of the Republic the men of Anhui ran a private Huaishang middle school, afterwards changed to Huqiu middle school and then to the Suzhou school for kindergarten teachers; the edict stele in the shrine was buried in the 1950s and afterwards rediscovered and placed in the courtyard, and the three halls were repaired in 1983, the shrine being now a cultural relic under municipal protection. The region of the Xianliang Temple at Beijing was also the place of Li Hongzhang's residence in his later years and of his funeral rites, and the court afterwards built a special shrine there called the Shrine of Manifesting Loyalty, made up of gate, front hall, hall of offerings and side halls in two courtyards, the main buildings being roofed with black glazed tiles, with a hall of offerings of three bays in the style of a hipped roof with bracket sets and a platform before it with three flights of steps. As for the study of him, in the tenth month of 1988 a scholarly conference on the theme of Li Hongzhang and the modern Chinese economy was held at Hefei in Anhui, at which the scholars present discussed chiefly the influence of the foreign affairs movement he promoted on China's modernisation, beginning to re-examine the movement from the new standpoint of modernisation.

His Views on Diplomacy and the Doctrine of Peace Abroad and Reform at Home

Li Hongzhang's views on diplomacy may be seen from his own words. He recognised that China stood in a great change unprecedented in thousands of years and faced a formidable enemy unprecedented in thousands of years, and therefore said that in the present day to speak gladly of foreign affairs was the act of a sage; and he went on to hold that in a condition of weakness China could not but make peace, which was the long-term policy for resisting insult, and later summed up his whole thinking on internal and foreign policy in the phrase that without one must be at peace with the barbarians and within one must reform. Yet he did not hold that peace with the barbarians meant mere compromise, peace for peace's sake; for he said also that the way of diplomacy and the plan of self-strengthening are the inside and outside of one thing, and that while the peace is open, preparation for war must be secret, nor did he exclude the possibility of using force. In the actual negotiation of treaties he always contested what could be contested and yielded as little as possible, as in the Treaty of Shimonoseki, which in some measure shows his negotiating spirit of gaining back a fraction and so avoiding a fraction of the harm. His words that he and his master should be with military affairs from first to last, and that the present trouble was the internal bandits while the long-term trouble was the Westerners, show his judgement of the relative weight of military matters and foreign danger. All these were the guiding principles of his life's conduct, and his successes and failures may be sought within these few sayings.

An Outline of His Deeds

Li Hongzhang's deeds turn on two heads, arms and foreign affairs. In arms he raised the Huai army, wholly changed its organisation in imitation of foreign troops, armed it with foreign rifles and guns and hired foreign instructors; he maintained it by the policy of separating the customs from the likin and supporting pay with the likin; and against the Nian he changed to the tactics of blocking the ground and encircling and of defending the canal in reverse, at last destroying the eastern and western Nian. In foreign affairs he founded one after another the Jiangnan Arsenal, the China Merchants' Steam Navigation Company, the Shanghai School of Foreign Languages and the Tianjin School of Western Medicine, laid the telegraph cable from Dagu to Tianjin and advocated official supervision with merchant management; after the great deliberation on coastal defence in the thirteenth year of Tongzhi he took charge of the Beiyang coastal defence, purchased the Dingyuan and Zhenyuan, drew up the Regulations of the Beiyang Navy and made Lushun and Weihaiwei his bases; and he proposed opening a separate field of advancement in foreign affairs and establishing a bureau of Western learning, bringing about the first government-sponsored students sent to America in the eleventh year of Tongzhi. In diplomacy he negotiated the Treaty of Shimonoseki with Japan and the Boxer Protocol with the powers, and directed the negotiations over Korea, with France and with Russia, his principle being summed up as peace abroad and reform at home.

Personal Relations

• Father: Li Wen'an, jinshi of the eighteenth year of Daoguang, later an official in the Ministry of Justice.
• Mother: Lady Li.
• Elder brother: Li Hanzhang, who rose to become Governor-General of Liangguang.
• Third younger brother: Li Hezhang, who campaigned with Li Hongzhang and became circuit intendant of Ganliang in Gansu.
• Fourth younger brother Li Yunzhang, fifth younger brother Li Fengzhang, and sixth younger brother Li Zhaoqing are described in the source as all attaining wealth or status.
• Wife: Lady Zhou, married in 1844, the twenty-fourth year of Daoguang.
• Teacher: Zeng Guofan, under whom Li studied statecraft.
• Examination contemporaries: Zhang Zhiwan, Shen Guifen, Shen Baozhen, Guo Songtao, Ma Xinyi, and others, all jinshi of the twenty-seventh year of Daoguang.
• Staff and associates: Ding Richang, Guo Songtao, Liu Bingzhang, Pan Dingxin, Wu Changqing, and others.
• Xianfeng Emperor: ordered Li Hongzhang to accompany Lü Xianji in organizing militia.
• Tongzhi Emperor and Guangxu Emperor: Li served as Governor-General of Zhili and Beiyang minister and long held major administrative responsibility.
• Empress Dowager Cixi: both relied on and guarded against Li; the source cites the establishment of manufacturing operations in Tianjin as an example of this relationship.
• Weng Tonghe: became hostile toward Li after Li drafted the memorial impeaching Weng Tongshu; the source states that Weng later repeatedly obstructed the Beiyang Fleet.
• Zuo Zongtang: disagreed with Li on Self-Strengthening policy, coastal defense, and other issues.

Historical Assessment

Qing and Contemporary Assessments

Contemporary judgments were sharply divided. The Qing court praised Li as a minister of the dynastic revival and gave him the posthumous name Wenzhong. Popular and press opinion, however, often condemned him for signing unequal treaties and called him a “traitor.” Zeng Guofan praised his decisiveness in the Suzhou executions, while Charles Gordon condemned the killing of surrendered commanders as a breach of an agreement.

Late Qing and Republican Period

In the late Qing and early Republican era, Li became a major subject of controversy. Liang Qichao wrote in Biography of Li Hongzhang, “I respect Li Hongzhang's talent, regret the limits of his understanding, and grieve over the circumstances he encountered,” describing him as a hero created by circumstances rather than a hero who created the age. Revolutionary critics, by contrast, portrayed him as a servant of the Qing who sacrificed national interests.

Modern Assessments

Tang Degang characterized Li as serving an incompetent monarch at home while confronting powerful foreign states abroad and emphasized his flexibility in diplomacy. The source states that former U.S. president Ulysses S. Grant called him the foremost of four great men of his time. Modern scholarship has tended toward a more mixed assessment, recognizing his role in the Self-Strengthening Movement while criticizing diplomatic compromises.

Contemporary Assessments

Contemporary scholars generally treat Li as an important late-Qing reformer and diplomat whose Self-Strengthening activities contributed to China's modernization, while emphasizing that his diplomacy was constrained by national weakness and that the unequal treaties he signed reflected a larger historical crisis. Some scholars summarize his position as that of “one man confronting an entire country,” attempting to protect state interests amid overwhelming foreign pressure but unable to reverse the broader situation.