Li Hongzhangsheng was in turmoil, the most turbulent late Qing Dynasty, and the foreign affairs movement led by him was the last hope of the Qing Dynasty, the first navy, the first batch of overseas students, the first coal mine, the first railway, and the first telegram. The Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau, founded by Li Hongzhang in Shanghai, was the largest government-run military enterprise at the time, capable of manufacturing guns, ammunition, ships, and machinery. The Steamship Merchants Bureau founded by Li Hongzhang has now developed into today's China Merchants Bank. He had remarkable achievements in both military and civilian industries, and all this was destroyed in the First Sino-Japanese War.
The reason for this is that it is mainly the internal factors of the Qing government and the external factors of other countries that led to the failure of the foreign affairs movement.
Li Hongzhang prides himself on being a framer of the Qing Dynasty, but he cannot withstand the wind and rain. Internally, under the feudal and decadent autocratic rule of the Qing government, the purpose of the foreign affairs movement was to learn from the advanced western technology to maintain the feudal autocracy of the Qing government, and did not change the nature of the corruption and incompetence of the Qing government, at that time the class contradictions in society were serious, the people were not happy, Cixi was weak and incompetent, the former Iron Horse Eight Banner Soldiers had long been broken and broken, various forces in the imperial court colluded, and the diehards obstructed in all kinds of ways under the acquiescence of Cixi. The people's understanding of the foreign affairs movement is even less, and their thinking is also in the feudal superstition and etiquette constraints, so how can the slogan of "self-improvement and seeking prosperity" be realized? The foreign affairs movement was doomed to failure.
From the perspective of external factors, taking Britain as an example, during the period of the Western Affairs Movement, Britain was already a fully industrialized country, and the Qing Dynasty was at war with Western countries, in contrast, Britain was a modernized country, and the Qing Dynasty was an ancient country. Britain is capitalism, the Qing Dynasty is feudalism. Britain is an industrial country, the Qing Dynasty is an agricultural country, the United Kingdom is a large-scale industrial production of machines, the Great Qing is a handmade natural economy, the two empires such a collision, say something without heart and lungs, whose head is already doomed.
The Sino-Japanese War was precisely the painstaking effort of Li Hongzhang for thirty years; in the Sino-Japanese War, military expenses were misappropriated by Cixi Dashou, internal corruption was carried out, soldiers' combat ability was low, artillery was used to dry underwear, weapons and equipment were even inferior to Japan's, the Sino-Japanese War was defeated, the foreign affairs movement was also defeated, Li Hongzhang was also defeated, and the Qing Dynasty was doomed to failure.