Traitor to the country for glory? Bowing? What kind of person was Li Hongzhang in real history?
Recently, I can always see many bloggers on the Internet, netizens are doing justice for Li Hongzhang, whitewashing, and even holding Li Hongzhang up to the sky, what bowed to death and then has been, is the biggest hero of the late Qing Dynasty;
It is also true that because there is almost no problem with the record of Li Hongzhang in the history of the Qing Dynasty, it is better to say that Li Hongzhang hid his various behaviors very deeply than without records;
In fact, if we pay attention not to the history of the Qing Dynasty, but to the history of the world, it is not difficult to see whether Li Hongzhang was a hero who bowed down to the best of his ability, or a traitor who betrayed the country and sought glory.
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According to records, in 1886, Li Hongzhang took the passport given by Cixi and visited Western countries, and on May 3 of the same year, "Li Hongzhang" held a secret meeting with "Count Witte, the Minister of Finance of Russia" and "Foreign Minister Rodroff";
The main purpose of the talks was that the Russian government would pay bribes to Li Hongzhang through state finances, and under the joint agreement between the Duke of Ustenki and the Hua-Russian Daosheng Bank, the director of the Rothstein and the General Affairs Office of the Russian-Chinese Bank, and Romanlov, the protocol was secretly signed-------- and it was agreed that the Hua-Russian Daosheng Bank would contribute 3 million rubles to Li Hongzhang to establish a personal foundation, which was simply to bribe Li Hongzhang, (Remarks: This Chinese-Russian Daosheng Bank is actually jointly operated and funded by Russia and France. Russia and France founded this bank in order to carry out economic aggression against other countries.
A month or so later, the famous "Sino-Russian Secret Treaty" was originally funded by the Hua-Russian Daosheng Bank to establish the Li Hongzhang Foundation according to the agreement, but after the matter was completed, it was only given 1 million rubles, and Li Hongzhang was so angry about this that he asked his son Li Jingfang to recover the stolen money, and even went all the way through the envoys of the Tsarist Russia to make trouble with the Russian royal family;
In fact, embezzling these 1 million is a trivial matter, but to sign a Sino-Russian secret treaty for this purpose, the impact on future generations is too great;
At the same time, the Hua-Russian Daosheng Bank undertakes the right to build railways, protect the way, mine and mine in Heilongjiang, Jilin and other areas, and even some rights, including the establishment of political legislation, culture and education, and a railway line is like a national border;
In December 1897, Russia relied on the Russian Secret Treaty to turn the northeast region into Russia's sphere of influence without a single shot, and in the same year Empress Dowager Cixi ordered Russia to withdraw from the northeast region; Russia, which could not find any excuse to stay in the northeast region, once again issued an invitation to Li Hongzhang, ordering the representative in China to send Li Hongzhang a million taels of silver, real gold and silver were in front of him, Li Hongzhang forgot the pain and ran to Cixi to persuade Tsarist Russia to stay in the northeast region;
On March 27 of the following year, the Luda Lease Treaty was signed, which included the right to build the railway from Harbin to Dalian Niuzhuang to Yalu River, as well as related rights along the railway line, and Russia further extended the spearhead of aggression to North China and the Yangtze River Basin, and further exerted influence on the Qing government to compete for hegemony in the Far East;
In the late Qing Dynasty, when everyone was hungry and could only gnaw on the bark, Li Hongzhang's family property was as high as 40 million taels of silver, according to the Manchu Qing regulations, the annual salary of a pin official was 180 taels, and it took more than 200 years of coolie to have such a property, and the annual financial income of the Manchu Qing at that time was only 90 million taels of silver;
So the question is that the Manchu Qing dynasty is experiencing national disasters, what should Li Hongzhang do with this money? In fact, he had long thought that by taking advantage of the opportunity to negotiate with foreigners, Li Hongzhang found a way to transfer his own property, in line with many rich people in China at present, and deposited a large amount of his own property in foreign banks, so as to avoid the qing Dynasty's finance minister's audit, and to avoid the trouble caused by many wars and conflicts.
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Of course, these things are compared with Li Hongzhang's other bad deeds, it is really not worth mentioning, from the beginning of 1894, Japan without warning to the Korean region to deploy a large number of troops, the Qing generals stationed in the Korean region have written to the imperial court, requesting to send troops to prepare for war, and at this time Li Hongzhang, who holds military power, is thinking about how to use external forces to balance and avoid conflicts with the Japanese army, thus delaying the warplane, of course, this is only one of the reasons for the defeat in the Sino-Japanese War. Another reason for Li Hongzhang's passive preparation for war is that he owns a large number of banks and tea hills in Japan, and also runs various businesses through close relations with the imperial family.
On July 25 of the same year, the Sino-Japanese War broke out, Li Jingfang, the son of Li Hongzhang, took advantage of his position during the war to sell grain to the Japanese troops that were invading our country, so as to frantically amass wealth, and Li Zhongtang, as the commander of the combat troops, did not think about how to defeat the thieves when the Japanese army attacked Dalian and Lushun Port, but instead got hundreds of vehicles of his family's gold and silver treasures to take refuge in his hometown, and it was precisely because this practice disturbed the hearts of the entire army, causing some officers and soldiers to flee before the army began to fight;
Even if Li Hongzhang signed so many humiliating treaties, he was still regarded by posterity as a generation of heroes, that is because foreign countries exaggerated Li Hongzhang too well, and the history of the Qing Dynasty only recorded these positive events, but no one in the back of the plot was willing to say that as a minister of the destruction of the country, to this day, future generations still live at ease, and it is conceivable whether the real history is covered up, of course, if you want to know a history clearly, you can't only understand it from one side, nor can you judge it by taking it out of context by netizens alone.