Author: Xu Fei
Among the four famous ministers of the late Qing Dynasty, Li Hongzhang's controversy was the largest. On the one hand, he founded Beiyang and vigorously promoted foreign affairs, making great contributions to China's modernization; on the other hand, he was nepotistic, cracked down on dissidents, and criticized by others. The reason for this is that what Li Hongzhang did was to maintain the power in his hands.
If there is no great power in his hands, how can Li Hongzhang handle foreign affairs and build a navy? However, for the sake of power, Li Hongzhang also rejected dissidents, prevented political opponents from developing foreign affairs, and eventually suffered the consequences of his own, burying the Beiyang Navy he personally formed in the struggle for power. It can be seen that the double-edged sword of power is vividly embodied in Li Hongzhang's body.
01
Political tumblers
The author is a native of Hefei, and every time I go for a walk on huaihe road pedestrian street in the city center, I can't help but go to the "Li Mansion" on the street to have a look. Every time I visit, I think of the "dying poem" of the owner of the mansion -
The laborer's carriage and horse did not leave the saddle, and the oncoming party knew that he was dead.
For three hundred years, he has injured the national pace and hanged the people eight thousand miles away.
Autumn Wind Sword Lonely Lord's Tears, Sunset Banner Grand Admiral Altar.
The overseas dust atmosphere is still not ending, and the kings are waiting to watch.
"Li Mansion" is the residence of Li Hongzhang, a major minister in the late Qing Dynasty, and it is difficult for ordinary people to imagine that such a powerful person is in the world, and he is regarded as a person who is corrupt and corrupt, and his mansion in his hometown is actually such a small piece.
In his early years, Li Hongzhang threw himself into the pen and followed Zeng Guofan to suppress the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and repeatedly built qigong.
▲Li Hongzhang
In his middle age, he served as a feudal governor and promoted the foreign affairs movement, and in fact became the successor of Zeng Guofan. In his later years, he entered the zhi center, presided over diplomacy, and was active in the political arena of the late Qing Dynasty for forty years, surpassing any other first assistant figure since the founding of the Qing Dynasty.
Cixi once referred to him as "the man who recreated Xuan Huang".
Japanese Prime Minister Itō Hirobumi regarded him as "the only person in the Qing Empire who had the ability to compete with the world's great powers", which shows that Li Hongzhang is extraordinary.
In fact, in such a special era as the late Qing Dynasty, anyone who advocated learning from the West would be under tremendous external pressure. The younger brother of the Xianfeng Emperor, Prince Gong Yi bi, was known as "Devil Six" by all sectors of society at that time because he advocated "Shi Yi's long skills to control Yi", and often dealt with foreigners.
The emperor still had to be scolded and even insulted by officials at all levels, not to mention Li Hongzhang. The only setback li Hongzhang suffered in his eunuch career may have been the defeat of the Sino-Japanese War, the total annihilation of the Beiyang Navy, and his own forced signature of the "Maguan Treaty", once becoming a traitor that everyone in the country knew could kill.
So, how did Li Hongzhang rise to prominence in the political arena of the late Qing Dynasty for forty years? Some people think that he is good at drilling camps and can win the favor of "Lafayette" Empress Dowager Cixi; some people think that he is supported by the imperialist powers and that he is the best agent for the great powers to invade China; some people think that he has excellent psychological qualities, just like a couplet he wrote himself, "to bear the full strength of the world's officials and raise a spring in his chest", so that he can stand firm...
In fact, in the author's opinion, the reason why Li Hongzhang has become a tumbler in the political arena is very simple, that is, he has always maintained his own strength. As long as there is absolute capital in hand, no one can help him.
This can best be explained by his efforts to consolidate his power by promoting the abolition of the independent post of Beiyang Chancellor and making it a position held by a directly subordinate governor.
02
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="37" > compromise of the Qing court</h1>
In the first year of Xianfeng (1851), Hong Xiuquan revolted in Jintian, Guangxi, setting off a vigorous Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement.
In less than a year, the peasant movement swept through half of China, pushing the Qing Empire to the brink of extinction. If it were not for the Han officials Zeng Guofan, Li Hongzhang, and others who organized regimental exercises and went to great lengths to suppress the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement, then Jiangshan would have changed hands long ago.
▲Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement
After the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was destroyed, the great unification of the Qing Dynasty had already existed in name only. The wealthy areas of southeast China, such as Liangjiang, Fujian, and Zhejiang, were all controlled by the System of the Xiang And Huai Armies, which were dominated by the Han Chinese, and the Qing imperial family no longer had much say.
In fact, China at that time seemed to have two political systems, one was the "central government" led by Empress Dowager Cixi, and the other was the "Beiyang government" directly subordinate to Li Hongzhang, and the latter's actual power was probably greater than the former.
In the twenty-second year of Guangxu (1896), Sergei Witte, Minister of The Finance of the Russian Empire, commented on Li Hongzhang: "I think Li is a remarkable figure, of course he is a Chinese, he has not received a little European education, but he has a profound Chinese education, and the most important thing is that he has an excellent and sound mind, good at thinking clearly and observing the changes in the situation." Because of this, it is not surprising that he has played an important role in china's history and in governing China. At that time, it was actually Li Hongzhang who ruled the Chinese Empire. Empress Dowager Cixi was able to balance Li Hongzhang's power only by Zhang Zhidong, who controlled central China, and Zhang Zhidong was not necessarily completely subordinate to the central government.
The Xianghuai military industrial clique controlled at least two-thirds of the inland areas, and the Qing court was powerless to control it, and the most telling thing about it was that most of the local fiscal taxes were not paid to the central authorities, and the envoys who had collected taxes in various provinces on behalf of the household department were not cared for.
Although the traditional land grants and miscellaneous taxes were still controlled by envoys, with the overall decline of the feudal economy and the emergence of problems such as land annexation, these taxes were no longer much.
▲The Huai Army during the Sino-French War
In Contemporary Japan, the field accounted for 94% of the government's revenue, and it still accounted for more than 50% until the end of the 19th century. This allowed Japan's Meiji government to have enough money to maintain central rule, without looking at the faces of the localities, and to efficiently promote various reform measures.
The real large tax in the late Qing Dynasty was the centiary gold, and this money was basically retained by the local government. According to the estimation of Mr. Luo Yudong, a scholar of modern Chinese history, only 20% to 25% of the actual land endowments and gold collected in the late Qing Dynasty may have been handed over to the central government.
In order to increase revenue, the Qing court had to make many attempts, such as strengthening the central government's control over opium dealers, reducing the salaries of officials, and imposing high poppy taxes, but these measures were often small and unreliable.
In addition, Empress Dowager Cixi was not "diligent and thrifty" like the Daoguang Emperor, and her life was extravagant, which further aggravated the financial erosion of the central government.
Under these circumstances, the Qing court was always in a financial dilemma, and sometimes had to borrow money from foreign countries. The most typical example is Zuo Zongtang's western expedition, and the Qing court could not come up with money, so it had to borrow money from foreign merchants at the treaty port.
Because the financial system had decayed, the Qing court could not effectively exercise the central power, so it had to sit back and watch Li Hongzhang and other local officials become bigger and stronger. By strategically arranging Ding Richang and other cronies as agents, Li Hongzhang almost monopolized the diplomatic, customs taxation, and weapons production powers in the northern half of the Qing Empire.
In other words, to some extent, the imperial court could not control Li Hongzhang at all, and could only reuse it to maintain formal unity and the royal authoritarianism.
Li Hongzhang also knew how to repay Li with a peach, and although he held the most elite navy and army unit in China at that time, it was easy to overthrow the rule of the Qing court, but he chose to turn a blind eye to Empress Dowager Cixi's misdeeds and never thought of replacing it.
Of course, the Qing ruling clique knew this. In this way, the central government and the "Beiyang government" reached a delicate cooperative and compromise relationship.
▲Beiyang Army
Until the time of the Qing court's decision, Li Hongzhang still did not choose to break this relationship of cooperation and compromise. When the Eight-Power Alliance invaded China, Li Hongzhang served as the governor of Liangguang. At that time, Zhang Zhidong, the governor of Huguang, was worried that in case the two palaces were martyred and the political situation was in chaos, he put forward a so-called "Great President Li Hongzhang" and elected Li Hongzhang as the "President" of China to preside over the overall situation.
Sun Yat-sen's teacher He Qi also suggested that Li Hongzhang stay in Guangdong and cooperate with the XingzhongHui and other revolutionary parties to establish a republic, "divide the two Cantons, rebel against the Qing Dynasty and become the president."
However, Li Hongzhang did not take their advice, and still chose to go north to clean up the mess left by Empress Dowager Cixi and engage in humiliating negotiations with the Eight-Nation Alliance.
▲ Li Hongzhang signed the "Xinugu Treaty"
When Li Hongzhang arrived in Beijing, he had no bargaining chips at all, so he had no choice but to sign the unprecedented "Xinugu Treaty" with various countries that had lost power and humiliated the country. However, we can see from this how great a price Li Hongzhang paid to maintain this delicate cooperative and compromise relationship.
03
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="88" > Li Hongzhang's mental method</h1>
Because he had seen the power of the Western strong ships and cannons very early on, Li Hongzhang once said in a serious tone:
Since the defeat of the Qin coup d'état, later generations of monarchs have passed on the law as their heart. Since Shang Martin and Wang Anshi changed the law and were excommunicated, later generations of subjects complied with the law to please. Today, all countries have changed again and again and are thriving day by day, and The independent Middle-earth is conscientious of abiding by the law, that is, it will be defeated and extinct without remorse. Oh my God? People yeah? Evil knows its cause?
——" The Complete Works of Li Wenzhong, Letters from Friends, Fu Wang Nong Qiu Shan Chang"
This passage is a true psychological portrayal of his determination to save the country with the Foreign Affairs Movement.
To this end, he actively promoted the road of modern industrialization in China with the goal of "self-improvement", and for this reason did not hesitate to fight against various conservative forces. For example, at the end of the Tenth Year of Tongzhi (1871), the cabinet scholar Song Jin wrote to the Qing court, attacking the Fuzhou Shipping Bureau founded by the Western-style official Shen Baozhen for "too heavy a fee" and proposing to immediately abolish the Fuzhou Shipping Bureau and the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau and the affiliated schools.
At that time, Li Hongzhang stepped forward and joined forces with Zeng Guofan, Shen Baozhen, Zuo Zongtang and other foreign officials to defend the Fuzhou Shipping Bureau and the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau.
Li Hongzhang played the emperor and proposed that "all the expenses of the state can be saved, but the expenses of raising troops for fortification, practicing guns and artillery, and building warships must not be omitted."Otherwise, "if the country is not established, it must not be strong in the end." In the end, he won.
▲ Li Hongzhang in "Towards the Republic"
However, Li Hongzhang's promotion of the foreign affairs movement is not just for the purpose of saving the country and the people. He knew that starting a new type of industrial project would help him expand his local power and consolidate his position as a no-brainer.
Let's take a typical example. In the seventh year of Guangxu (1881), Li Hongzhang assigned Tang Tingshu to plan the construction of the Tangxu Railway. The purpose of the construction of this railway was to solve the problem of transportation difficulties in the Kaiping coal mine, which has always limited the development of the coal mine. The raw coal produced in the Kaiping Coal Mine is mainly sold to Tianjin. Tangshan is about 240 miles away from Tianjin¹, raw coal is transported by land to Lutai, then changed to waterway, from Dagukou into the sea to Tianjin, the freight is high, it takes a long time. If a railway is built from Tangshan to Lutai and coal is transported by train, the transportation cost will be greatly reduced.
Defense of the Qiang Gyeonggi area. However, his actual plan was to extend the Tangshan Railway to Shanhaiguan in the future. If this plan comes to fruition, Li Hongzhang will be able to bring the northeast under his control. Therefore, he proposed the construction of the Jintong Railway, the real purpose is also to obtain economic income, to support the laying of an extension of the direction of Shanhaiguan.
▲Tangshan Station
Some officials of the central government expressed strong opposition, because the extension of the railway to Gyeonggi, although it helped to quickly mobilize troops into the capital, but it should not be forgotten that most of these troops were loyal to Li Hongzhang.
However, Li Hongzhang still won the victory in the end, and in April of the seventeenth year of Guangxu (1891), the Qing court approved it and allocated him 2 million taels of funds for the construction of the Luhan Railway.
In addition, Li Hongzhang has installed cronies in almost all self-improvement projects, regardless of whether this crony is really capable of presiding over the project. The most typical is that Li Hongzhang appointed his own concubine and Huai general Ding Ruchang as the admiral of the Beiyang Navy.
The modern navy is a professional service with high technical content, command officers need to go through many years of special training, and Ding Ruchang hardly understands the navy, and what is more fatal is that he does not have a strong desire to learn, and the leader of the army has not been able to seriously study naval business for fifteen years.
His mind was used in other places, such as building a shophouse on Liugong Island to rent and collect rent; and even "drowning a prostitute with Fang Boqian, the prostitute was old and inferior, not as strong as Fang Zhiwei, vowed to marry Fang, and Ding Baiji was incompetent in business", making a lot of noise.
▲Ding Ruchang (first from the right)
Although Ding Ruchang was incompetent in a hundred, he was loyal to Li Hongzhang, and Li Hongzhang confidently handed over the Beiyang Navy to him. At this time, Li Hongzhang was thinking about firmly controlling the most powerful fleet in Asia as his own political capital.
Before his death, he said: "Foreigners are unreasonable in their arguments. "I've been doing things all my life, training troops, and the navy, all of them are paper tigers, so how can I really let it go?" However, it is barely decorated, and it is not revealed that it can be perfunctory. In fact, it was his excessive desire to control that harmed the Beiyang Navy.
▲Beiyang Navy
Economically, Li Hongzhang appointed his cronies Sheng Xuanhuai to control the steamship Merchants Bureau, the Telegraph Bureau, the Shanghai Machine Weaving Layout, and other officials to supervise commercial enterprises.
In the eighteenth year of Guangxu (1892), Sheng Xuanhuai was appointed by Li Hongzhang to act as the acting officer of Tianjin Customs Road, which was established at the request of Li Hongzhang in the ninth year of Tongzhi (1870) to be responsible for foreign affairs, defense and customs collection.
Sheng Xuanhuai thanked Li Hongzhang and swore allegiance, "I will do my best to help my zhongtang to do several things such as iron ore, banking, postal services, and weaving, and after a hundred years, I may be able to attach my name to the zhongtang after passing on the strategy, I wish it is enough." Through Sheng Xuanhuai's institutions, Li Hongzhang controlled commerce and revenue at the main ports of supply to the Beijing division.
It can be said that Li Hongzhang controlled the economic lifeline of the imperial court in the Gyeonggi region through Sheng Xuanhuai, further weakening the authority of the imperial court.
In turn, Li Hongzhang has always been reluctant to the central government's plan to run foreign affairs on its own.
In May of the fourth year of Tongzhi, Cixi ordered Chonghou, the minister of trade and commerce of the three ports, to open a machinery bureau in Tianjin, and asked Li Hongzhang to assist in the imitation and purchase of machines for Tianjin, with the purpose of establishing a new type of military enterprise directly controlled by the Manchu Xungui, breaking the monopoly of the Han bureaucracy, and thus reversing the situation in the imperial court.
Li Hongzhang saw through Cixi's true intentions, "implicitly implying the meaning of preventing problems and consolidating the original", so his attitude was perfunctory. He first said that Chonghou was a layman, "How does Chonggong discuss the matter of Tianjin setting up a bureau to create?" He is too layman, or he is not very careful, he can slow down", and said that he could not do it for a while and a half, "Now it is intended to be imitated by the overseers at any time, while purchasing from outside to make up for it." But the utensils are heavy, and they cannot be achieved without years and months, and they must be spared time and scribbled." In the end, it dragged on for a long time, and it seemed that it could not be dragged on, so I slowly swallowed up to help Chonghou to organize.
On July 13, the fourth year of Tongzhi, Li Hongzhang complained:
Shusheng sits and talks about the wrong country, and can sigh for Hao! And foreign countries are rampant to this point, there is no need to urgently seek prosperity and strength, how will China stand on its own! The changes in the eternal situation, the mediocre people do not know, and Bingjun ruling does not know, is it willing to look at its Shen Xuye?
—— "The Complete Works of Li Wenzhong, Letters from Friends, And Fu Zhu Jiuxiang Scholars"
However, judging from Empress Dowager Cixi's active preparation for the establishment of the Tianjin General Bureau of Arms Machinery, "Bingjun ruling" is not really as stubborn and conservative as he said, and is unwilling to "master the art of the master." On the contrary, Li Hongzhang was perfunctory about the central government's foreign affairs plan.
It is precisely by relying on the strength in the handshake that Li Hongzhang can always stand on the cusp of the storm and become a tumbler in the political arena of the Qing Empire.
This article is from the History Study Society's 2020 new book: The Glory of History
exegesis:
1. In the fourteenth year of Guangxu, Li Hongzhang also proposed to extend the Tangshan-Tianjin railway west to Tongzhou near the Beijing Division, and declared to the imperial court that the reason was to facilitate the transportation of troops and supplies, which could add about 576 meters to the present day in 1 Qing Dynasty.
bibliography:
a. 【Historical Data】
[Qing] Li Hongzhang: The Complete Works of Li Wenzhong.
b. 【Monograph】
1. Jiang Ming, "The Fleet Flying the Dragon Flag: A History of the Rise and Fall of China's Modern Navy", Life, Reading, and Xinzhi Sanlian Bookstore, 2002;
2. Liang Qichao: The Biography of Li Hongzhang, Hundred Flowers Literature and Art Publishing House, 2001;
3. Yuan Shuyi: The Biography of Li Hongzhang, People's Publishing House, 2004;
4. [American] Fei Weikai: China's Early Industrialization, translated by Yu Heping, China Social Sciences Press, 2002.