Li Hongzhang, a native of Hefei, Anhui, was one of the four famous ministers of the late Qing Dynasty, and the founder of the Huai Army and the Beiyang Marine Division.
He was originally a scholar, because of his meritorious efforts in suppressing the Taiping Army and the Twist Army, he was promoted to the rank of Minister of Commerce and Commerce of Beiyang and Viceroy of Zhili, and was knighted as a first-class Su Yibo.
It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of Li Hongzhang is closely linked to the Great Qing Dynasty, which can be called the national pillar of the Great Qing Dynasty and has profoundly influenced China's modern history.
Each historical figure, because of his different personality, different value orientation, and completely different posthumous evaluations, is either famous for Shi Yue Fei and Wen Tianxiang; or he has been left behind for thousands of years, such as Gao Li and Qin Jun.
So what kind of person is Li Hongzhang? To put it mildly, he was a man of mixed reputations. According to what he did, he was a corrupt official like Hezhen, although not as famous as Hezhen.
As the saying goes, fame and fortune cannot be double-received, and those who seek fame cannot seek profit. Of the four famous ministers, no one said that Zeng Guofan and Zuo Zongtang were corrupt, because they were indeed two sleeves of qingfeng.
Later generations criticized Zuo Zongtang for acting arbitrarily and Zeng Guofan for being scheming, but no one said they were greedy.
Strictly speaking, Li Hongzhang is nothing more than corrupt and perverting the law and buying and selling officials; while part of Li Hongzhang's money is linked to national interests, and there is a suspicion of misleading the country, which is much more serious in nature than that of Hezhen.
Let's review the history of Li Hongzhang and see how greedy he really was.
Whether an official is a corrupt official or not, there must be bright spots: First, he is very rich; second, his money is not coming from the right place.
Li Hongzhang is rich enough to be an enemy of the country
Li Hongzhang and the Guangxu Emperor's master Weng Tonggong were both important ministers of the late Qing Dynasty, and there were vice couplets in the folk: they used to use "the prime minister Hefei is thin in the world, and the si nong is often familiar with the world's wilderness." The first half of the sentence is to say that Li Hongzhang, a native of Hefei, was insatiably greedy, and Weng Tonggong, a Changshu man, made ill-gotten gains, and as a result, he harmed the people of the world and made them miserable and living in the depths of the water.
As the saying goes, the eyes of the masses are shining, and the folk couplets very vividly illustrate the greed of Li Weng and his wife.
However, if the assets of the two are compared, Weng Tonggong is a small witch in front of Li Hongzhang, a difference of 108,000 miles.
Because Li Hongzhang holds real power and has the opportunity to make money.
The Beiyang Marine Division was established by Li Hongzhang, the foreign affairs movement was led by Li Hongzhang, and the modern unequal treaty was signed by Li Hongzhang.
Therefore, the amount of property left behind by Li Hongzhang is beyond people's imagination.
Rong Hong, the father of the international students who once worked with Li Hongzhang, once said that Li Hongzhang "has 40 million private property to leave his descendants", and the forty million mentioned here is 40 million two silver, equivalent to tens of billions of yuan.
There is also a conservative estimate that Li Hongzhang's family property has a total of about 10 million and twenty million.
At the end of the Qing Dynasty, the educator Fei Xingjian disclosed in his "Biography of Modern Celebrities": "(Li Hongzhang) died, his family wealth exceeded 10 million, and his brothers and sons had more than 10 million silver and private wealth. Even so, Lee's assets are about 20 billion.
If the above statement is not authoritative enough, Li Hongzhang left a family separation contract after his death, which is reliable evidence.
In April 1904, Li Hongzhang's direct descendants left a copy of the "Separation Contract", which is now displayed in the exhibition column of Li Hongzhang's Hall in Hefei Daxingji.
The land involved in the family separation contract is about one million mu; the first paragraph is reserved for 14 real estates (each in 10,000 mu) for his son Li Jingfang.
Paragraph 8 of the contract for separation concerns the property "worth 45,000 taels of silver"
Li Hongzhang's land adopts the method of "building warehouses on 10,000 mu", and there are dozens of "warehouses" he has established in Hefei, Lu'an, Huoshan and other places.
Li Hongzhang's land is a cornucopia, and he sits on the ground and collects 50,000 stones of rent every year.
According to statistics, Li's cultivated land in Hefei Dongxiang accounts for about 600,000 mu of cultivated land, accounting for two-thirds of the local cultivated land.
From this family separation contract, Li Hongzhang's family property can be seen. The contract only involves real estate, and if you count real estate, negotiable securities, gold and silver jewelry and cultural relics from all over the country, it is not difficult to imagine family property.
Is the income legitimate?
Li Hongzhang himself has a salary and heavy power, and has shares in enterprises such as The China Merchants Bureau, the Telegraph Bureau, the Kaiping Coal Mine, and the Commerce and Commerce Bank of China.
Li Hongzhang also crossed the sea in secret, turning the state-owned enterprise steamship Merchants Bureau into the private property of himself and his accomplices.
Li Hongzhang is rich enough to be an enemy of the country, and he is inseparable from a rich man, Sheng Xuanhuai. This person was originally Li Hongzhang's secretary, relying on Li Hongzhang's promotion to qingyun, using the state assets of the Qing Dynasty to operate steamships, telegraphs, railways, steel, banking, textiles, education, and other industries, and enriching his own pockets in the name of establishing state-owned enterprises.
As a result, Sheng Xuanhuai became a huge wealth in the Qing Dynasty, leaving behind a "cash" of more than 12.7 million taels of silver.
If you buy a courtyard in Beijing, you can buy more than 20,000 sets.
When Sheng Xuanhuai died, the funeral specifications were not lower than that of the emperor, and the funeral procession was 2.5 kilometers long, and Shanghai was empty of people.
All that Sheng Xuanhuai had given was given by Li Hongzhang, and if he did not let Li Hongzhang get benefits, the ghosts would not believe it.
If it is just to abuse power for personal gain and engage officials to make money, the most unacceptable thing is that Li Hongzhang has seen profits and forgotten his righteousness, and he will not hesitate to betray the interests of the state and the nation in order to get rich.
Li Hongzhang is greedy to "betray" the country?
On June 3, 1895, Li Hongzhang, the "First Minister of Chincha", sent an envoy to Russia and signed the Sino-Russian Secret Treaty with Russia.
Why did you sign this secret contract? Because in 1894, the Qing Dynasty was defeated by Japan and forced to sign the Treaty of Maguan.
Taking advantage of the Qing government's fear of Japan, Tsarist Russia signed the Sino-Russian Secret Treaty.
The treaty is similar to an alliance treaty and the main contents are:
If Japan attacks China and Russia, the two countries will jointly resist.
At the time of war, all Chinese ports must be opened to Russian troops.
Russia was allowed to build railways in Heilongjiang and Jilin in China to transport troops and strategic supplies.
The treaty, also known as the Treaty of Defensive Alliance, is valid for fifteen years.
The signing of this treaty was an authentic traitorous treaty, a wolf-inducing treaty, and Tsarist Russia thus opened the door to future invasion of China.
Li Hongzhang was the first able minister of the Qing Dynasty, with a unique strategic vision; through the war of aggression, Tsarist Russia had encroached on millions of square kilometers of China's land.
However, Li Hongzhang actively operated to get the Qing government to ratify the treaty, and was very active in drawing a pledge on the "secret treaty"; the reason for this was that Li Hongzhang took kickbacks from it.
Some people argue that this secret treaty was approved by Empress Dowager Cixi, and That Li Hongzhang was only the manager.
You must know that Li Hongzhang was a "great purge pastemaker" who held the imperial court and forgot his duties and forgot that the Russians were hard to fill?
If this treaty is conducive to the interests of the state and the nation, why did Li Hongzhang accept bribes from it?
Wolf, then deputy director of the Foreign Ministry of the Russian Empire, wrote in his memoirs: "Li Hongzhang returned to Beijing with this signed treaty and the 2 million rubles in the bag. In the East, conscience has its price. ”
It should be noted that the qing leaders at first resolutely rejected the demands of Tsarist Russia, and it was not until Li Hongzhang returned from his trip to Russia that the treaty was signed.
In June 1896, Tsar Nicholas II held a coronation ceremony, "specially" invited Li Hongzhang to attend, and was treated with the courtesy of head of state.
Did Li Hongzhang accept bribes from Tsarist Russia? The historical data declassified by the archives later proved to be positive, not isolated.
But Li Hongzhang was not the only one who obtained bribes from Tsarist Russia from the Sino-Russian Secret Treaty.
Count Witt, the Minister of Finance of Russia who signed the Secret Treaty, does not mention this matter in his memoirs, but mentions that Li Hongzhangzi "deliberately created trouble and difficulties" in the negotiations, and the Tsar, in order to please Li Hongzhang, gave him two diamonds of great value.
In addition to Wolff, deputy director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Empire, Romanov, a confidential document of the Tsarist Chancellor of the Exchequer, Count Witt, also confirmed this matter.
In his book "The History of Imperial Russian Aggression against Manchuria," Romanov said that the day after the signing of the "Secret Treaty," the Russian side drafted the "commission" ("financial protocol") to Li Hongzhang and others in the form of a contract, mainly fearing that Li Hongzhang would not be at ease and wanted to sign the contract as soon as possible.
Responsible for the payment of rebates is the board of directors of the Bank of China-Russia, with a total rebate of 3 million rubles.
Moreover, the Russians are very contract-abiding and trustworthy, and the kickbacks were paid from 1897, the second year of the signing of the secret treaty, and took 5 years to pay them in full, with a total of 5 payments in installments, and another payment was personally handed over to Li Hongzhang by the Russian Duke of Ukhtomsky on his visit to Beijing.
Scholar Chen Zhaoming wrote in "Examination of Li Hongzhang's Bribery Before and After the Construction of the Eastern Qing Railway" that according to the declassified Tsarist russian archives, Li Hongzhang did accept bribes in the "Sino-Russian Secret Treaty".
Li Hongzhang himself only accepted bribes 1609120 rubles, and the Russian side gave them to Li Hongzhang twice.
The first was in May 1897, the year after the signing of the Secret Treaty, when Ukhtomsky, a member of the board of directors of the Sino-Russian Daosheng Bank, came to China "with great care" and handed over to Li Hongzhang, for one million rubles;
The second time was 609,120 rubles remitted to Li Hongzhang by the Russian side in 1898 to speed up the signing of the "Renewal Contract of the Eastern Province Railway Company" with China.
In addition to Li Hongzhang, The Prime Minister Zhang Yinheng also accepted bribes from the Russian side in the amount of 51,771 rubles.
Some people argue that the Sino-Russian secret treaty is your wish and my wishes, not an unequal treaty.
Even so, Li Hongzhang, as a great minister of the Qing Dynasty, should not accept bribes.
From the kickback of 1.6 million rubles, we can see the character of Li Hongzhang.
Since Li Hongzhang even dared to collect money from the Russians, what kind of money did he dare not collect?
Importing arms and establishing the Beiyang Marine Division to buy warships, why can't you eat kickbacks and take commissions?
Therefore, there is no doubt that Li Hongzhang is a corrupt official.
In this way, Li Hongzhang's brother Li Hanzhang needless to say, he "did his best to perform all military duties" during his tenure as governor of Huguang, which means that he engaged in power and money transactions with great fanfare and sold all the military attaches.
In 1898, the Tsarist Russia forced the Manchu Qing to sign the "Luda Lease Treaty", forcibly leasing the two ports of Lushun and Dalian, realizing the ambitions that Japan had not realized.
History is just, cherishing feathers Zeng Guofan, adhere to his bottom line: "For people to be consistent in appearance, everything can be made public..... Reverence, no evil thoughts in the heart. Therefore, he was admired by two great figures, one of whom said, "To the neighbor, to zeng Wenzheng alone." One said, "Zeng Gong is a model of the spirit of the people." ”
As for Li Hongzhang, these two big figures did not leave a single word; Zeng Li was superior to Li.
Li Hongzhang's experience tells everyone that if you care about your name, you must give up profits, and you should not be greedy; fish and bear paws cannot have both.