Li Hongzhang
(1823–1901), Chinese official. Li Hongzhang was a leading Chinese official of the latter half of the nineteenth century. A Confucian scholar, Li served under Zeng Guofan (1811–1872) and helped suppress the Taiping Rebellion (1851–1864) and Nian Rebellion (c. 1852–1868). He was appointed governor of Zhili Province and remained in that position for a quarter of a century, serving in many respects as an unofficial prime minister of China.
Li was one of the prime movers behind the flawed Self-Strengthening Movement, which was an effort by the Qing dynasty (1644–1912) to restore power to resist Western encroachments, especially after the Second Opium War. Although he recognized the need to modernize and to borrow appropriately from the West, he was not capable of accepting or instituting changes necessary to meet the challenge of latenineteenth-century imperialism. Still, Li helped establish the Jiangnan Arsenal, the Nanjing Arsenal, the Tianjin Machine Factory, the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company, the Imperial Telegraph Bureau, and the Beiyang Fleet. Li was unable to stop Japan in the 1894–1895 conflict, although he did negotiate the peace and was responsible for the protocols that ended the western occupation of Beijing after the Boxer Rebellion (1900). He also helped accelerate the trend of power away from the capital and hence the coming warlord period of the 1920s and 1930s.
Further Reading
Chu, Samuel C., and Kwang-ching Liu, eds. (1993) Li Hongzhang and China's Early Modernization. New York: M. E. Sharpe.
Spector, Stanley. (1964) Li Hongzhang and the Huai Army: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Chinese Regionalism. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.
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