Li Hongzhang

Li Hongzhang was born on February 15, 1823, in Hefei, Anhui province. The Paper’s profile gives his courtesy name as Jianfu and his literary name as Shaoquan and describes him as a native of Modian in the eastern district of Hefei, Anhui (today Feidong county).⁠[1][2]

A China News Service article of 2009 describes him as a native of Modian in the Yaohai district of Hefei, and a 2016 article places his home village in today’s Modian community in the Xinzhan High-tech Zone of Hefei.⁠[3][4]

Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period, edited by Arthur W. Hummel, gives his courtesy names as Zifu and Jianfu and his art names as Shaoquan and Yisou, and records him as a native of Hefei (Luzhou), Anhui.⁠[5]

The Encyclopedia of World Biography writes that he passed the first of the official examinations in 1843 and then went to Beijing; because his father, Li Wen’an, and Zeng GuofanZeng GuofanZeng Guofan (1811–1872) was an official, military commander and Neo-Confucian scholar of the late Qing dynasty, the founder and commander of the Xiang (Hunan) Army. He led that army against the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom for more than a decade, then governed the Liangjiang provinces and Zhili and helped to begin the self-strengthening projects that brought Western machinery and technology to China.Open the full entry had both obtained the jinshi degree in 1838, he became Zeng’s student in the capital, the start of a long partnership that shaped Chinese history, and in 1844 he passed the second examination. BritannicaEncyclopædia BritannicaEncyclopædia Britannica is a general English-language encyclopedia first published in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1768; the name also refers to its publisher, Chicago-based Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. (which presents itself as The Britannica Group). The print edition ended in 2012, and the company’s main businesses since then have been the online encyclopedia Britannica.com, digital education products for schools and libraries, and Merriam-Webster dictionaries.Open the full entry dates the start of his official career in Beijing under Zeng’s guidance to 1844, and the Encyclopedia of Western Colonialism since 1450 likewise has him going to Beijing in 1844 to study under Zeng Guofan (1811–1872), who became his patron and mentor.⁠[6][1][7][8][9]

An article by Guan Shanyuan (first published in the Xinhua Daily Telegraph and reprinted in Wenzhaibao in 2015) says that Li was 23 when he became Zeng’s student and that Zeng first met him in Nian’er Lane in Beijing; a 2025 question-and-answer piece by Ju Hai in The Paper says that in the year he turned 23 Li studied scholarship with Zeng in the capital.⁠[8][9]

Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period gives his father, Li Wen’an (1801–1855), the courtesy name Shihe and the original personal name Wengan; it says that after becoming a juren in 1844 Li went to Beijing, where he studied intensively under Zeng’s direction, and that Zeng thereafter became his patron and close friend.⁠[5]

In 1847 he obtained the jinshi degree and became a bachelor of the Hanlin Academy, which the Encyclopedia of World Biography calls a signal honor; Britannica likewise says that he earned his terminal degree in 1847. A 2016 China News Service article says he passed at 24. The Encyclopedia of Western Colonialism since 1450 dates his admission to the Hanlin Academy to 1849.⁠[6][1][10][7]

Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period says that after obtaining the jinshi in 1847 he was selected a bachelor of the Hanlin Academy and three years later was made a compiler.⁠[5]

The Encyclopedia of World Biography writes that in 1853 he and his father were ordered back to Anhui to organize local militia against the Taiping and Nian rebels; he fought in Anhui for six years and won honors but was frustrated at being in what he considered a backwater. Britannica says that when the Taiping threatened his home area he and his father organized a local militia, and the Encyclopedia of Western Colonialism since 1450 writes that he returned to Anhui when the Taiping reached the central provinces in 1853, raised a militia regiment and so caught Zeng Guofan’s attention.⁠[1][6][7]

His father, Li Wen’an, died on July 6, 1855; instead of retiring for the traditional period of mourning, he stayed on in camp unofficially because of the exigencies of war, and in 1856 he obtained a judgeship.⁠[1][5]

The Encyclopedia of World Biography writes that in 1858 he resigned his position in Anhui and set out to join Zeng Guofan, who was commanding an army against the Taiping in Jiangxi, and that from 1859 to 1862 he held military and administrative posts under Zeng; it says that in this period he was described as “a brash, young genius”, and that relations between the two were often strained. The Encyclopedia of Western Colonialism since 1450 writes instead that he had been made a circuit intendant (daotai) in Fujian and was reassigned by Zeng to the campaign against the Taiping in 1859. Britannica says that Zeng was governor-general of the Liangjiang provinces in 1860, organizing irregular forces against the Taiping, and that Li later joined his staff.⁠[6][7][1]

Ju Hai, in a 2025 question-and-answer piece in The Paper, writes that he joined Zeng Guofan’s camp as a member of his staff at the end of the ninth year of the Xianfeng reign (around the turn of 1859 and 1860).⁠[9]

The Encyclopedia of World Biography writes that in 1861 Zeng Guofan sent him to recruit an army, later known as the Huai Army, and that in 1862 he led it to Shanghai and at the same time became governor of Jiangsu; in Shanghai he had his first close contact with foreigners and saw Western military strength at first hand. Britannica says that in 1862 he became acting governor of Jiangsu and went to Shanghai with his own troops on rented steamers; at just under forty he combined high provincial rank with independent military power, a combination that the rebellion had forced on the central government. A photo caption of the Academy of Chinese Studies gives 1862 as the year in which Li founded the Huai Army.⁠[6][1][11]

In an article in Wenshi zhishi (2000, no. 6), summarized by the China Reading Weekly, Qiu Guihua and Liu Baihe describe the Huai Army as an outgrowth of Zeng Guofan’s Xiang Army.⁠[12]

Britannica writes that in the following years he worked with foreigners and their weapons around Shanghai, and that the “Ever-Victorious Army”, which it describes as a force of foreign mercenaries, was later placed at his disposal under the command of Charles George Gordon, a 30-year-old English army officer. The Encyclopedia of Western Colonialism since 1450 calls it a Chinese brigade trained and led by foreigners, first raised by Frederick Townsend Ward (died 1862) and later commanded by Gordon, and credits Li’s victories with it for the surrender of Suzhou and the capture of Nanjing. The Encyclopedia of World Biography calls it a Chinese mercenary group led by foreigners, writes that the Huai Army, at times spearheaded by it, cleared the Taiping from Jiangsu, and judges that it showed Li that well-led, trained and equipped Chinese soldiers could fight effectively.⁠[1][7][6]

Britannica writes that Westerners often credited the Ever-Victorious Army with ending the rebellion but that the real work was done by Zeng Guofan and subordinates such as Li; the 1864 campaign against Nanjing, the capital of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, was directed by Zeng’s brother, and Li, fearing jealousy, ignored orders to help in the final assault. The Encyclopedia of World Biography writes that, with Zeng and with Zuo ZongtangZuo ZongtangZuo Zongtang (1812–1885) was a statesman and military commander of the late Qing dynasty. Holding only the provincial degree, he joined the staff of the governor of Hunan, raised the Chu Army against the Taiping Rebellion and served as governor of Zhejiang and governor-general of Fujian and Zhejiang, of Shaanxi and Gansu and of Liangjiang, rising to grand secretary and grand councillor; from 1875 he directed the campaign in Xinjiang that defeated Yakub Beg, after which Xinjiang was made a province.Open the full entry in Zhejiang, the Taiping Rebellion was crushed in 1864.⁠[1][6]

For his part in crushing the Taiping he was made an earl of the first class with the designation Suyi.⁠[5]

The Encyclopedia of World Biography writes that Zeng Guofan, then governor-general at Nanjing and Li’s nominal superior, worked with him to rehabilitate the Shanghai–Suzhou area and set up an arsenal in 1865. The Academy of Chinese Studies writes that Zeng, Li and others founded the Jiangnan Arsenal in Shanghai, established in 1865 as a photo caption states and the largest arsenal in China at the time, and the Jinling Arsenal in Nanjing. The Encyclopedia of Western Colonialism since 1450 writes that he set up an arsenal at Nanjing while acting governor-general there, and Britannica that he maintained Western-style arsenals at Nanjing and Shanghai to strengthen China against the West and against Japan, whose modernization in the late 1860s alarmed him.⁠[6][11][7][1]

The Jiangnan Arsenal began as an ironworks with machinery bought abroad and was developed primarily by Zeng Guofan and Li; in 1868 it produced the first modern Chinese steamship, and its translation bureau, directed by John Fryer, translated more than 160 foreign works into Chinese.⁠[13]

The Encyclopedia of World Biography writes that from 1865 to 1868 he and Zeng Guofan cooperated in suppressing the Nian Rebellion, and that when Zeng became governor-general of Zhili in 1868 Li assigned Huai Army units to support him. After the Nian were put down in 1868 Li kept his army intact; China’s best force and personally loyal to him, it became the base of his rise. The Encyclopedia of Western Colonialism since 1450 writes that in 1866 he was ordered to suppress the Nian in Henan and Shandong, and succeeded, and that in 1867 he became governor-general of Huguang (Hunan and Hubei), a post he held until 1870. Britannica summarizes the years 1865–1870 as a series of high posts in central, northern and western China, mainly in suppressing other rebellions.⁠[6][7][1]

In 1866 Li succeeded Zeng Guofan against the Nian and set up encirclement lines along the Huang He (Yellow River) and the Grand Canal.⁠[14]

Bland’s biography says that before taking up the governor-generalship at Wuchang in 1868 he spent three months in Anhui.⁠[15]

For the Nian campaign he was given the minor hereditary rank of qiduwei and the title of Grand Guardian of the Heir Apparent, and was made concurrently an Associate Grand Secretary.⁠[5]

In 1870 came the Tianjin Massacre, which the Encyclopedia of Western Colonialism since 1450 describes as an attack on Catholic missionaries by anti-foreigners incensed by rumors of human sacrifice and the drinking of babies’ blood. The Encyclopedia of World Biography writes that when France threatened war over it, Li, then governor-general of Hunan and Hubei, was ordered to bring the Huai Army to Tianjin and was appointed governor-general of Zhili on the way, replacing Zeng Guofan, who returned to Nanjing; he held the post for 25 years and played a leading role in China’s foreign and domestic affairs. Britannica calls it an unprecedented 25-year term.⁠[7][6][1]

Britannica writes that he was at the same time a grand secretary and superintendent of trade for the north, supervising trade at the treaty ports north of the Yangtze, and that he became the Chinese negotiator most familiar to foreigners; the Encyclopedia of World Biography says that after 1870 he also served as superintendent of trade for the northern ports, handling trade with foreigners in the north, and that he gradually became in effect a one-man foreign office, especially after 1875. The Encyclopedia of Western Colonialism since 1450 writes that he suppressed all anti-foreign sentiment in Zhili and was rewarded with the position of imperial tutor and a seat on the Grand Council, and that he played a key role in Qing foreign affairs. Qiu Guihua and Liu Baihe write that after he took up the posts of governor-general of Zhili and northern commissioner the Huai Army long guarded the gateway to the northern frontier.⁠[1][6][7][12]

After the Tianjin Massacre France demanded the execution of three Chinese officials; the Qing negotiators, Zeng Guofan and Li, succeeded at least in refusing that demand, though several other people were put to death.⁠[14]

Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period says that he served concurrently as Grand Secretary from 1872 to 1901 and from 1879 held the honorary title of Grand Tutor of the Heir Apparent.⁠[5]

In 1864 rebel Muslims set up an independent power at Kuldja (Yining) in Ili; Russia occupied the area in 1871 and stayed for about ten years. Li Hongzhang hoped to regain Ili through negotiation.⁠[14]

In 1872 he founded the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company to recover shipping rights lost to foreigners. He chose Zhu Qi’ang, an official he trusted, to organize it; on December 23, 1872 he wrote to the Zongli Yamen forwarding the company’s regulations in 28 articles, as revised by Zhu and others with an emphasis on attracting Chinese merchants’ capital, and the company formally opened on January 17, 1873. In May 1873 he sent staff to Shanghai to join Zhu in inviting Tang Tingshu, Xu Run and others to take over its management, and Tang became its general manager.⁠[6][16]

Sheng XuanhuaiSheng XuanhuaiSheng Xuanhuai (1844–1916) was a Chinese official and industrialist of the late Qing dynasty who for many years served as Li Hongzhang’s chief economic deputy. He ran the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company, the telegraph administration, the Huasheng cotton mill, the Hanyang Ironworks and Hanyeping Company, the Railway Corporation and the Imperial Bank of China, and founded Peiyang University and Nanyang Public School. As minister of posts and communications in 1911 he pursued railway nationalization, which set off the Railway Protection Movement; dismissed after the Wuchang Uprising, he went into exile in Japan for a time and died in Shanghai in 1916. His vast personal archive is held by Shanghai Library.Open the full entry joined Li’s staff in 1870 and in the summer of 1872 drafted the early steamship regulations on his orders. The company was officially established in Shanghai in January 1873 as a government-supervised, merchant-managed enterprise, with initial capital of 100,000 taels in government shares and 250,000 taels in merchant shares, of which the brothers Zhu Qi’ang and Zhu Qishao held 100,000 taels each and Li Hongzhang 50,000.⁠[16][17]

After the Meiji Restoration China and Japan signed a commercial treaty, which was ratified in 1873. Li and Zeng Guofan supported the new relations and advocated a positive diplomacy toward Japan.⁠[14]

The Encyclopedia of Western Colonialism since 1450 writes that after the Tongzhi Emperor died in 1875 Li played a major role in the coup that placed the Guangxu Emperor on the throne.⁠[7]

In 1876 China sent a mission of apology to Britain after the murder of a British official, and in the same year Japan concluded a treaty with Korea that ignored China’s traditional suzerainty. He concluded the Zhifu (Chefoo) Convention of 1876, which settled the problems arising from the Margary affair; the agreements he concluded also included treaties with Peru and Japan.⁠[1][7]

The Chefoo Convention, negotiated and signed at Yantai (Chefoo) in Shandong, brought further Chinese concessions and the opening of several new ports, and provided for a mission to delineate the border between Yunnan and Burma; Britain did not ratify it until 1885.⁠[18]

The Encyclopedia of World Biography writes that he founded the Kaiping mines in 1877 to fuel his ships, built China’s first railway in 1880 to carry coal to the docks, set up the first telegraph lines in 1881 and the first cotton mill in 1882, which was given a monopoly to keep out foreign competitors, and that all his enterprises were financed and controlled by Chinese.⁠[6]

During his world tour, Ulysses S. GrantUlysses S. GrantUlysses S. Grant (1822–1885) was an American soldier and politician who commanded the Union armies in the final years of the Civil War (1864–1865) and served as the 18th president of the United States from 1869 to 1877.Open the full entry met Li at Tianjin in 1879. The Library of CongressLibrary of CongressThe Library of Congress is the library of the United States Congress. Founded in 1800 and housed on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., it answers reference requests from Congress, the public and other federal agencies.Open the full entry holds a photograph of the two, titled “Gen. Grant and Li Hung Chang, Viceroy of China, taken at Tientsin Jan. 1879” and credited to the photographer See Tay (Liang Shitai); the catalog record says that it shows the two men during a meeting to discuss China’s dispute with Japan over the Ryukyu Islands. The National Park Service writes of a friendship formed during Grant’s visit to China. In 1879 China lost suzerainty over the Ryukyu Islands to Japan; in a later treaty of commerce between the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry and Korea, which he tried to manipulate, Li failed to secure American recognition of China’s traditional relationship with Korea.⁠[19][20][1]

He supported the Chinese Educational Mission, which sent young Chinese to study in the United States, but when conservatives at court called it subversive he did not defend it, and it was ended in 1881.⁠[1]

A biography of Li by the British writer Bland (published in Chinese translation by New World Press in 2016 in one volume with Liang QichaoLiang QichaoLiang Qichao (1873–1929) was a thinker, politician, journalist and scholar of the late Qing and early Republic, a disciple of Kang Youwei and a participant in the Hundred Days’ Reform of 1898. After the reform failed he spent 14 years in exile in Japan, where he ran the journals Qingyi Bao and Xinmin Congbao; returning in 1912, he helped to found the Progressive Party, served the Beijing government as minister of justice and minister of finance, and in 1915–1916 opposed Yuan Shikai’s attempt to make himself emperor. After leaving politics at the end of 1917 he devoted himself to writing and teaching, was a tutor at the Tsinghua Academy of Chinese Learning and director of the Beijing Library, and left the collected works known as the Yinbingshi heji.Open the full entry’s biography of Li, and excerpted in the China Reading Weekly on July 20, 2016) writes that Li’s mother, whose maiden surname was also Li, had lived for more than ten years in the official residence of his elder brother Li Hanzhang, then governor-general of Huguang, and died there at Wuchang in the spring of 1882, aged 83. It says that Li had not seen her since he led troops to Shaanxi in the spring of 1870; during her illness he had asked Li Jingfang to look after her and had petitioned for leave to visit her, but she died at Wuchang before he could set out; the Confucian mourning rites required him to leave office for 27 months, and in the autumn of 1882 he was granted two months’ leave to go home and see to her funeral.⁠[15]

The book adds that her elder son, the governor-general Li Hanzhang, two of Li’s younger brothers, twenty grandsons and eight great-grandsons gathered at her grave.⁠[15]

On July 23, 1882 soldiers and civilians in Hanseong (Seoul) rose in the Imo Incident, attacking senior officials and the Japanese legation. In the same year a Qing brigade of the Huai (Anhui) Army, commanded by Li, was dispatched to Korea; Yuan ShikaiYuan ShikaiYuan Shikai (1859–1916) was a Chinese army leader and reformist minister of the late Qing dynasty and the first president of the Republic of China, from 1912 to 1916. The modern army he trained at Xiaozhan, Tianjin, grew into the Beiyang Army; in 1915–1916 he proclaimed a monarchy with himself as emperor, cancelled it in March 1916 and died on June 6 of that year.Open the full entry began his career in it.⁠[21][22][23]

Britannica writes that he sought French recognition of Chinese suzerainty over Vietnam (Annam), but that the Sino-French War of 1883–1885 replaced it with French suzerainty; Britannica’s summary lists the negotiations ending the Sino-French War among the humiliating negotiations in which he represented China. A 2016 China News Service article lists a brief Sino-French convention and a Vietnam treaty among the treaties he signed for the Qing government; the Encyclopedia of Western Colonialism since 1450 dates his treaty with France ending the war to 1886.⁠[1][24][4][7]

In 1882 Li negotiated an agreement with France under which the two countries were to make the area a joint protectorate. The Li–Fournier Convention called for the admission of French trade through Tonkin, the withdrawal of Chinese troops from the area and the recognition of French rights in Tonkin, while China was not required to pay any indemnity; in the peace treaty signed at Paris in 1885 China agreed to recognize the Li–Fournier agreement.⁠[25][26]

During the war Li and Zeng Guoquan were reluctant to mobilize their respective northern and southern fleets.⁠[14]

In 1885 he and Itō Hirobumi, a leading Japanese statesman, in effect agreed to a joint protectorate over Korea, and Japanese efforts undercut his attempts to restore China’s standing there. The Board of Naval Affairs was formally established in 1885, and construction of the major naval ports of Lüshun and Weihaiwei began in 1886; the Beiyang Fleet, the most distinguished of the four modernized fleets, was based at Weihaiwei, with its headquarters on Liugong Island in Shandong.⁠[1][11]

After the Gapsin Coup of December 4, 1884, Japanese and Chinese troops clashed in Hanseong (Seoul). Itō Hirobumi then went to Tianjin to negotiate with Li, and on April 18, 1885 they signed the Tientsin Convention: both countries would withdraw their troops from Korea, neither would station military advisers there, and each would notify the other in advance of any future dispatch of troops.⁠[21][22]

In 1894 Japan went to war with China over Korea, beginning the First Sino-Japanese War. Britannica writes that his northern fleet bore most of the fighting, with little help from the two other modern Chinese fleets, and that China lost the naval war; he had tried to avoid the war, but his influence suffered. The Encyclopedia of World Biography writes that he opposed the war, into which conservatives pushed China, but that he was blamed for the defeat because it was his army and navy that had fought and lost, and that he narrowly escaped with his life; it judges that his self-strengthening efforts thereby failed. The Academy of Chinese Studies writes instead that from the start of the war Li and other senior officials under the Empress Dowager Cixi were never truly committed to fighting Japan.⁠[1][6][27]

After Jinzhou fell on November 6, 1894, Li, as Minister of Beiyang Commerce and Viceroy of Zhili, concluded that China had to make peace with Japan; on November 26 his envoy Gustav Detring arrived in Kobe with a letter to Prime Minister Itō Hirobumi, but Japan refused to recognize him because he lacked proper accreditation, and he returned to China.⁠[28]

An article reprinted in People’s Digest writes that during the war the censor An Weijun impeached Li for avoiding battle and seeking peace, alleging that he had placed more than 15 million taels of silver with a Japanese firm, with Sheng Xuanhuai acting as his agent; the article says that the charge lacked firm evidence and came to nothing.⁠[29]

In the Battle of the Yellow Sea in September 1894 the Beiyang Fleet lost five warships and its commander, Admiral Ding Ruchang, was critically injured, though its capital ships could still fight; the fleet then withdrew to Weihaiwei and, following Li’s strict orders, refrained from engaging the enemy.⁠[30]

The Gengzi xishou congtan, a memoir dictated by Wu Yong and written down by Liu Zhixiang, records a remark Li made after the war, which may be rendered: all my life I have handled affairs, training troops and building a navy, but they were all paper tigers; when was I ever able to act with a free hand? I could only paper over the cracks, and they were a mere outward show.⁠[31][30]

The Huai Army, the base of Li’s political manoeuvres, was defeated and collapsed in the war of 1894–1895.⁠[14]

In 1894 Sun Yat-sen wrote a long letter to Li, then governor-general of Zhili, setting out how China could gain strength; Li gave only a perfunctory endorsement of his scheme for an agricultural and sericultural association.⁠[32]

Japan took Weihaiwei in February 1895, and Admiral Ding Ruchang committed suicide; after Weihaiwei fell, Li was appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary with full powers, with Li Jingfang, a former minister to Japan, as second plenipotentiary. Before this, Zhang Yinhuan and Shao Youlian had arrived at Hiroshima on January 31, but Japan questioned their credentials and broke off the talks.⁠[28]

Accompanied by his adopted son Li Jingfang, he arrived at Shimonoseki (then also called Akamagaseki) on the morning of March 19; the former U.S. Secretary of State John W. Foster (1836–1917) served as his adviser.⁠[28][33]

JACAR writes that the negotiations opened on March 20 at the Shunpanrō, a Japanese-style inn, with Prime Minister Itō Hirobumi and Foreign Minister Mutsu Munemitsu as Japan’s plenipotentiaries. At the first session China asked for an armistice; at the second, on March 21, Japan made it conditional on the occupation of Dagu, Tianjin and Shanhai Pass, control of the Tianjin–Shanhai Pass railway and payment of Japan’s military costs, which China refused; the third session, on March 24, also ended without agreement. The Academy of Chinese Studies dates the opening of the negotiations to March 21.⁠[28][34][27]

JACAR writes that after the third session on March 24 Li was shot in the street by Koyama Toyotarō (Rokunosuke), suffered facial injuries and temporarily withdrew from the talks; the Academy of Chinese Studies gives his age at the time as 73. The Japan Tourism Agency’s English description says that he was attacked by a Japanese radical as he returned to his lodgings at the Injōji temple and that afterwards he took a less public route to the meetings, which the Chinese versions of the description say came to be called the Li Hongzhang Road.⁠[34][28][27][33]

The Academy of Chinese Studies writes that on seeing his bloodied clothing he is said to have remarked that the blood had been shed for China’s benefit, and that he saw that the incident gave him leverage to win concessions.⁠[27]

The attack drew Japanese sympathy and somewhat softened the harsh peace terms; Japan softened its position, and an unconditional armistice was signed on March 30, 1895, from which Taiwan and the Pescadores were excluded, Japanese forces having begun landing on the Pescadores on March 23.⁠[1][28]

Li Jingfang attended the fourth session on April 1 on instructions Li gave from his sickbed, and Li Hongzhang had recovered enough to resume his seat for the fifth session on April 10. The Academy of Chinese Studies writes that Japan initially demanded an indemnity of 300 million and reduced it to 200 million after the attempt on Li’s life.⁠[28][27]

The treaty was signed on April 17, 1895 at the Shunpanrō by Itō, Mutsu, Li and Li Jingfang, Li’s nephew and later adopted son, and had 11 articles. Its main terms were that China recognized Korea as a “completely independent sovereign state”, ceded the Liaodong Peninsula, Taiwan and the Pescadores, agreed to pay a large indemnity, opened Shashi, Chongqing, Suzhou and Hangzhou to Japan, and agreed to conclude a treaty of commerce and navigation. Ratifications were exchanged on May 8.⁠[27][28]

On April 23 the envoys of Germany, Russia and France advised Japan to give up the Liaodong Peninsula, which Japan eventually accepted; China and Japan signed the convention for the retrocession of the peninsula in November 1895 (JACAR’s text gives November 18, the description of an attached document November 8), with China paying an additional 30 million taels. Russia was among the Western powers that forced Japan to return the peninsula, which Russia itself took in 1898.⁠[28][27][1][35]

The treaty as signed required China to pay Japan an indemnity of 200 million taels.⁠[35]

Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period gives the terms differently, listing an indemnity of 300 million Kuping taels, the opening of seven new ports to trade, chiefly in the Yangtze and West River regions, and numerous concessions to Japanese merchants.⁠[5]

Britannica gives his term as governor-general of Zhili as 1870–1895. The Encyclopedia of Western Colonialism since 1450 writes that after China’s defeat he lost influence and was moved to a non-political post; the Encyclopedia of World Biography writes that until he was appointed governor-general at Canton in 1899 he was in semiretirement, holding only minor posts.⁠[1][7][6]

Early in 1896 he was sent to Russia as China’s representative at the coronation of the tsar, and while in Russia he negotiated a secret alliance between the two countries, which Britannica calls modern China’s first equal treaty.⁠[1][6]

The article reprinted in People’s Digest says that he was accused of taking a bribe of three million rubles from the Russians when the secret treaty was signed, but that the claim appears only in the memoirs of the Russian minister Witte and so rests on a single source; it cites the historian Chen Xulu’s maxim, which may be translated as “a single piece of evidence is no evidence”, and says that the dozens of compilers of the Complete Works of Li Hongzhang, after more than ten years of work, found no new evidence that he took bribes from foreigners.⁠[29]

The Sino-Russian Secret Treaty was signed in Moscow on June 3, 1896 by Li, the special envoy sent to the coronation of Nicholas II, and by the Russian foreign minister Lobanov and finance minister Witte; its existence was kept secret, and Japan confirmed it only after the Russo-Japanese War broke out.⁠[36]

He met Otto von Bismarck in Germany and William Ewart Gladstone in England, and traveled through western Europe.⁠[6][1]

A note of August 6, 1896 from the Chinese minister in Washington, Yang Yü, to the State Department relayed Li’s cable: he would leave England on August 22 aboard the steamship St. Louis for New York, spend one day in New York and part of a day in Philadelphia, then about a week in Washington, and go on to Canada to catch a steamer leaving Vancouver for China on September 13; his suite numbered sixteen secretaries and attachés, twelve military attendants and nine servants. Yang asked for an early audience with the President so that Li could present an autograph letter from the Emperor of China.⁠[37][38]

On August 12 the Acting Secretary of State, W. W. Rockhill, replied that the President would receive Li and accept the letter in New York, that Li and his party would be guests of the United States during their stay in New York, that a special train would take them to Washington and on to Canada, and that an army officer of rank would meet Li on his arrival in New York and attend him during his visit; a further note of August 25 moved the reception to Saturday, August 29, at 11 a.m., at No. 2 West Fifty-seventh Street, New York. Who’s Who of Victorian Cinema writes that Li arrived in New York on August 28, met President Grover ClevelandGrover ClevelandGrover Cleveland (1837–1908) was an American politician and Democrat who served as President of the United States from 1885 to 1889 and from 1893 to 1897, as the 22nd and 24th president, the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms.Open the full entry the next day and the day after that visited Grant’s tomb, where he laid a wreath, whereas Britannica writes that he was received by President Cleveland in Washington, D.C.⁠[39][40][41][42][1]

W. K.-L. Dickson filmed for Biograph his journey to the Waldorf (released as “Li Hung Chang - Fourth Avenue and Broadway”), his journey to meet the President (“Li Hung Chang 5th Ave and 55th Street”) and his visit to Grant’s tomb, and Edison also filmed his arrival; he was shown a Mutoscope record of one of Dickson’s films, and Harry Marvin promised him one of the machines. After his return to China, Fred Ackerman of Biograph, filming there during the Boxer Rebellion, made two more films of him: one of him receiving a Mutoscope in Beijing, the other of him watching himself through the machine.⁠[42]

On September 13, about to sail from Vancouver, he telegraphed Yang Yü asking him to see the Secretary of State without delay and to thank the President for the “politeness and hospitality accorded to me by the American nation”, and to thank the army officers who had attended him and the cavalry escort in New York and Washington. The Encyclopedia of World Biography writes that he returned from the United States and Canada in October 1896. On November 2 Yang conveyed to the State Department a cable of November 1 from the Zongli Yamen expressing gratitude for the reception given to Li by the American government and for the military and naval honors he had received.⁠[38][6][43]

Britannica writes that his reception at home was cool, that the empress dowager probably had to use her influence to protect him (it was said that he had bribed her for her favor), and that he kept his trade superintendency.⁠[1]

The Grant Monument Association records that on May 7, 1897 the former Chinese minister Yang Yu, representing Li Hung Chang, planted a ginkgo tree on the site of Grant’s temporary tomb, later followed by a witness tree, a Chinese cork, and a plaque inscribed in Chinese and English; the National Park Service writes that Li planted a seven-foot ginkgo at Grant’s temporary tomb in 1897 as a tribute to their friendship.⁠[44][20]

After the failure of the Hundred Days’ Reform of 1898, in a family letter to Li Jingfang dated the second day of the ninth month of the 24th year of the Guangxu reign, he wrote of the court, in words that may be translated as: the Empress Dowager has taken charge of the government, executed or banished a dozen or more people and overturned the new policies, and it has become a conservative world again.⁠[45]

Britannica writes that he became acting governor-general of the Liangguang provinces in 1899, and the Encyclopedia of World Biography likewise dates his appointment as governor-general at Canton to 1899, whereas the Encyclopedia of Western Colonialism since 1450 says that he became governor-general of Guangdong and Guangxi two years after his tour (1898, by its dating of the tour).⁠[1][6][7]

The Boxer Rebellion of 1900 interrupted his stay in Canton; after the Boxer siege of the legation quarter in Beijing, an eight-nation allied force occupied the capital. The Empress Dowager Cixi, who had fled to Xi’an, ordered him and Yikuang (Prince Qing) to negotiate peace with the powers, and he was chosen to negotiate with them.⁠[6][46][1]

During the Boxer crisis of 1900 the governors-general Liu Kunyi and Zhang ZhidongZhang ZhidongZhang Zhidong (1837–1909) was an official, scholar and educator of the late Qing dynasty and one of the leading figures of the Self-Strengthening movement. He served as governor of Shanxi and as governor-general of Guangdong and Guangxi and of Hubei and Hunan, founded iron and steel, arms and textile enterprises and modern schools in Hubei, wrote the Quanxue pian (Exhortation to Learning) in 1898, and in his last years was a grand councillor and grand secretary in Beijing.Open the full entry, like Li at Guangzhou, disobeyed Beijing’s anti-foreign decrees; on June 26 Liu and Zhang concluded an informal pact with the foreign consuls at Shanghai under which they would protect foreigners within their jurisdictions.⁠[14]

In the same year Sun Yat-sen joined secret manoeuvres with Sir Henry Blake, the British governor of Hong Kong, and He Kai to persuade Li to declare independence from the Qing. Responding to an invitation from Li’s staff, Sun went to Hong Kong but, fearing a trap, did not go ashore; he sent Miyazaki and two other Japanese in his place, and the meeting came to nothing.⁠[32]

An imperial decree published in the Pekin Gazette on July 9, 1900 appointed Li governor-general of Zhili and superintendent of northern trade; since the defence of Tianjin was then of the greatest importance, it directed Yu Lu and others to concert measures until Li arrived. An English translation of the decree was enclosed with the American minister E. H. Conger’s report of August 17 to Secretary of State John Hay and printed in the Foreign Relations of the United States for 1900.⁠[47]

An edict of August 27 commanded Li, envoy plenipotentiary with full discretionary powers and grand secretary, to proceed at once by steamer to Beijing and there to join Prince Qing (Yikuang) in dealing with all pending questions. Li relayed the edict in a cablegram of September 9, which the Chinese minister in London passed to the Chinese minister in Washington, Wu Tingfang, and which was handed to the Acting Secretary of State, Hill, on September 11.⁠[48]

On October 15, 1900 Prince Qing and Li, as plenipotentiaries with full powers, sent the American minister E. H. Conger a copy of the draft preliminary convention they proposed. In his report of October 19 to John Hay, Conger relayed Li’s statement that Chinese soldiers had been ordered not to fire on or oppose the movements of the foreign armies in any way.⁠[49]

On January 15, 1901 he and Prince Qing signed the Outline of Peace Negotiations for the Qing government.⁠[50]

On September 7, 1901 Yikuang and Li signed the Boxer Protocol for the Qing government with the representatives of eleven countries: Britain, Russia, the United States, Germany, Japan, France, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Belgium. China was to pay an indemnity of 450 million taels of silver, later known as the Boxer Indemnity, over 39 years, secured on customs and salt revenues, with interest at 4 percent a year, so that principal and interest came to about 980 million taels. A photo caption of the Academy of Chinese Studies shows Li, then 78, arriving at the British legation with a walking stick.⁠[46][50][51]

Li Hongzhang died in Beijing on November 7, 1901 (the twenty-seventh day of the ninth month in the lunar calendar), aged 78. The Encyclopedia of World Biography says that he died a month after signing the Boxer Protocol, the Academy of Chinese Studies two months after.⁠[1][29][51][6][46]

The Southern Weekly article writes that he fell ill after catching a chill on the way back to the Xianliang Temple from calls on the British and German ministers and coughed blood repeatedly, and that after the Boxer Protocol was signed he coughed up a great deal of blood, which his doctor diagnosed as a ruptured blood vessel in the stomach. It writes that the Russian minister stood at his bedside pressing him to sign a treaty on Russia’s occupation of northeastern China, that after the minister left those around him relayed the Russian promises, and that at the end he could no longer speak but only wept. It also quotes a memorial he sent to the court from his sickbed, in words that translate as “we have found that in recent decades every conflict has meant one more loss”, and writes that the Empress Dowager Cixi, on her way back to the capital, received the news of his death at Huixian on the Yellow River.⁠[50]

The article reprinted in People’s Digest says that after his death his second son, Li Jingshu, inherited his title of Marquis Suyi but died a year later, aged only 38, and the title passed to Li Jingshu’s son, Li Guojie.⁠[29]

The note of November 8 from the Chinese minister in Washington, Wu Tingfang, states that, by the telegrams he had received, Li died on November 7 about noon, and gives his titles at death as Earl of Suyi of the First Rank, Grand Tutor of the Heir Apparent, Grand Secretary of State, Viceroy of Zhili and Plenipotentiary of China.⁠[52]

After his death he was given the honorary title of Grand Tutor, the posthumous name Wenzhong and the hereditary rank of marquis of the first class, and his name was entered in the Temple of Eminent Statesmen; in later years special temples to his memory were built in Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Nanjing, Suzhou and other places.⁠[53][5]

On November 8, 1901 the Chinese minister in Washington, Wu Tingfang, informed Secretary of State John Hay of Li’s death. The same day Hay wrote to the American minister in Beijing, E. H. Conger, that the government and people of the United States sympathized with China in the loss of a statesman who for many years had shone preeminent in the councils of his country and who had given many proofs of his esteem and friendship for the United States; on November 11 Hay replied to Wu that the government and people of the United States sympathized with China in the loss of her “great statesman”, and that the minister in China had been instructed to offer condolences.⁠[52][54][55]

The People’s Digest article writes that in April 1904 his direct descendants drew up a property division agreement, now displayed in the Li Hongzhang Memorial Hall at Daxingji in Hefei. It covers no movable property such as gold and silver, only real estate (land, houses and a pawnshop in Anhui, Jiangsu and Shanghai), without stating its extent or value, so that the total value of the estate is hard to estimate; the article puts it at several million taels of silver. The Li Hongzhang papers in the Shanghai Library include a collection of real estate deeds of the Li family’s Jishantang.⁠[29]

Li Hongzhang’s former residence on the Huaihe Road pedestrian street in Hefei was built in the Guangxu reign of the Qing in the typical Jianghuai vernacular style, with a traditional timber frame; it opened in 1999 and is the only museum in China devoted to him, as well as a museum of the history of the Huai Army. A 2016 China News Service article says that in the memorial hall on the pedestrian street many photographs, texts and historical objects tell the story of his life; the article opens by listing firsts associated with him: the first navy, the first railway, the first students sent abroad, the first coal mine.⁠[56][10]

In 2007 the new Complete Works of Li Hongzhang was published by Anhui Education Press of the Anhui Publishing Group in 39 volumes and more than 28 million characters, nearly two-thirds of it primary material published for the first time. The project was approved in 1992 as a national key publishing project and a national project for the collation and publication of ancient books; editorial work began in April 1993 and took fifteen years in all. The bibliographer Gu Tinglong first proposed the punctuated edition and was its chief editor together with the Qing historian Dai Yi, with Weng Fei, Liu Shenning, Tong Bendao and Chen Bingren as members of the executive editorial board; more than thirty scholars from Beijing, Shanghai, Anhui, Shandong, Hebei, Guangdong and other provinces and cities took part in the punctuation and editing, and the proofreading took four to five years. The new edition contains 20 million characters more than the Complete Writings of Li Wenzhong compiled by Wu Rulun.⁠[45]

On November 28, 2009 members of Li Hongzhang’s clan met in Hefei to discuss revising the family genealogy. Li Lusheng, a fifth-generation descendant, said that his generation used the generation name Dao, that the genealogy had last been revised in 1925, that preparations for a Li family association had begun in 1997 and had so far traced nearly a thousand descendants, and that he estimated Li’s descendants at about twenty thousand.⁠[3]

In 2013 the former residence was listed as a major historical and cultural site protected at the national level. From July 5, 2021 it closed for repairs to its old roofs and its electrical wiring, its first major repair in twenty years.⁠[56]

On December 17, 2016 a three-month Li Hongzhang Cultural Festival opened in the Modian community of Hefei, attended by dozens of scholars and members of the Li family. A fifth-generation descendant said that Li’s descendants numbered about 23,000 at home and abroad, chiefly in Canada, Europe and Southeast Asia, that the family had reached its eighth generation counting from Li Hongzhang, and that the descendants met every year or two to visit his former residence and home village. The article adds that the Binhu New Area of Hefei planned to rebuild old buildings including the Li Hongzhang ancestral temple and the residence of Li Guoheng, described as his nephew.⁠[10]

On December 20 the Li descendants held a winter sacrifice in the Xu family’s Bao’en (Gratitude) Shrine in his home village to mark the 115th anniversary of his death. Li Lusheng, a fifth-generation descendant and vice-president of the Anhui Li Hongzhang Research Society, said that the shrine has three courtyards and seven bays and covers about 1,500 square meters; it was rebuilt in 2015 with more than three million yuan raised by descendants of the Xu and Li families, had served as a family school as well as a shrine, and after the founding of the People’s Republic housed the Guanghua Primary School, with three to four hundred pupils a year.⁠[4]

The Li Hongzhang Former Residence Museum in Hefei closed for repairs from July 5 to August 4, 2021, with the roof work and the rewiring carried out at the same time, and reopened on August 5; it was the first closure for repairs since it opened in 1999. Its director, Wu Sheng, said that it had been open for more than twenty years; affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, it received about 260,000 visitors in 2020, including some from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan.⁠[57]

A 2009 China News Service article says that the family’s forebears were originally surnamed Xu and moved from Hukou in Jiangxi to Hefei in the Ming dynasty to escape unrest; the ninth-generation ancestor Li Xinzhuang had no son, and a relative by marriage in the same village, Xu Yingxi, gave him his second son, Zishen, who took the surname Li. Weng Fei, director of the Anhui Historical and Cultural Research Center, said in 2016 that Li’s ancestor had been adopted from the Xu family and that Li returned home in the jiashen year of the Guangxu reign (1884) to build an ancestral shrine for the Xu family, which he named the Bao’en (Gratitude) Shrine; an old Hefei saying, which may be translated as “the Li and the Xu are one family and do not intermarry for a hundred generations”, reflects this.⁠[3][4]

The People’s Digest article says that he had four wives and concubines: his first wife, née Zhou, whose son Jingyu died young, died in 1861 (the eleventh year of the Xianfeng reign); his second wife, Zhao Xiaolian, was a daughter of the jinshi Zhao Yun of a prominent family of Taihu; a secondary wife was née Mo; and there was also a concubine named Dongmei.⁠[29]

The same article says that the Li clan genealogy records six sons, three of whom died young, leaving three legal heirs: the eldest, Li Jingfang (1855–1934; the Japan Tourism Agency’s description gives 1854–1934), adopted from the family of his sixth brother Li Zhaoqing; the second, Li Jingshu (1864–1902), born to Zhao Xiaolian, his principal wife; and the third, Li Jingmai (1877–1938), born to née Mo, whose other sons Li Jingyuan and Li Jingjin died young. His three daughters married Guo Enhou, Ren Dehe and Zhang Peilun and so had no share in the inheritance.⁠[29][33]

China Merchants Group’s account says that Li’s grandson Li Guojie was vice-chairman of the company’s board from 1919 to 1923 and was elected chairman on November 1, 1924 (his term is given as 1924–1926); he was suspended with the other directors in 1928, appointed chairman and general manager in 1932, and later removed after signing unauthorized contracts with an American firm.⁠[16]

The People’s Digest article quotes a couplet current in the late Qing that mocked the wealth of Li Hongzhang, a man of Hefei, and Weng TongheWeng TongheWeng Tonghe (1830–1904) was an official, calligrapher and diarist of the late Qing dynasty, tutor to two emperors, Tongzhi and Guangxu, and at various times president of the Board of Revenue, Grand Councillor and Associate Grand Secretary. He was dismissed soon after the Hundred Days’ Reform began in 1898 and stripped of his ranks after the coup that ended it; the diary he kept for nearly half a century is counted among the four great diaries of the late Qing.Open the full entry, a man of Changshu, and says that Li held substantial shares in enterprises including the China Merchants company, the Telegraph Administration, the Kaiping mines and the Imperial Bank of China; after his rise the six brothers bought large estates in Anhui, the family’s land at its height is said to have exceeded 2.5 million mu, and Li’s own holdings yielded about 50,000 shi of grain in rent a year. It cites Liang Qichao’s view that the popular claim that Li was the richest man in the empire was not credible, though property worth several million was possible.⁠[29]

Li’s daughter Li Juou married Zhang Peilun. A 2015 report in the Modern Express says that after the defeat at Mawei in the Sino-French War Zhang was taken onto Li’s staff and given his daughter in marriage, and that the couple lived in Li’s household after the wedding; a 2010 article in the World Journal of Canada says that Zhang’s first wife died while he was in exile and that after his release he joined Li’s staff and married Li Juou. Their only son, Zhang Tingzhong, was the father of the writer Eileen Chang, who was thus Li Hongzhang’s great-granddaughter.⁠[58][59]

Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period says that Li’s rank was inherited first by his son Li Jingshu (courtesy name Zhongpeng; the book gives his death as 1901 with a question mark) and then by Li Jingshu’s son Li Guojie (courtesy name Weihou, 1881–1939), who was Chinese minister to Belgium from 1910 to 1912 and a director of the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company until 1932. It says that Li’s elder brother Li Hanzhang (courtesy name Xiaoquan, 1821–1899) served as governor-general at Wuchang (1867, 1870–1875, 1876–1882) and at Guangzhou (1889–1895), and that his youngest son, Li Jingmai (courtesy name Jigao, died 1938), was minister to Austria from 1905 to 1907.⁠[5]

Britannica lists the modernizing projects he promoted from Zhili: an arsenal and improved fortifications at Tianjin, the sending of young Chinese to study in the United States, a commercial steamship line, Western-built warships, a coal mine, a railway, a telegraph line, a cotton mill, a military academy, a modern mint and two modern naval bases; he also discussed reforming the Confucian examinations, and few other officials shared his interest in these projects.⁠[1]

A photo caption of the Academy of Chinese Studies says that once the Huai Army adopted Western training and weapons it became the mightiest infantry of the Qing empire during the Self-Strengthening Movement.⁠[11]

Qiu Guihua and Liu Baihe quote his own summary of his life, which may be translated as: in youth the examinations, in his prime the battlefield, in middle age a provincial governorship, in old age foreign affairs, rising steadily all the way.⁠[12]

In 2016 Weng Fei quoted Li’s description of his times, in words that translate as “the greatest change in three thousand years”, and described his work as an attempt to respond to that change; Weng also noted that Li had mockingly called himself the Qing empire’s paper-hanger.⁠[4][10]

In 2016 Weng Fei also quoted two lines of a deathbed poem attributed to Li, which may be translated as “the dust of trouble from overseas has not yet settled; gentlemen, do not take it lightly”, as evidence of his concern for the country at the end of his life. Pan Xiaoping, however, doubts that the poem is Li’s: she writes that its earliest known source is Gao Baishi’s Nanhu luyi, that it is not included in his collected works, and that some have recently argued that its real author was Kang YouweiKang YouweiKang Youwei (1858–1927) was a Chinese scholar, political reformer and calligrapher of the late Qing and early Republican periods and a principal promoter of the Hundred Days’ Reform of 1898. After the reform was reversed he spent more than a decade in exile, founded the Baohuanghui (Chinese Empire Reform Association) and argued for constitutional monarchy; in later life he campaigned to make Confucianism the state religion. His works include The Forged Classics, Confucius as a Reformer and the Datong shu (The Great Commonwealth).Open the full entry.⁠[10][60]

Weng Fei, director of the Anhui Historical and Cultural Research Center, is one of the compilers of the Complete Works of Li Hongzhang and has studied Li for more than thirty years.⁠[10]

The Southern Weekly article writes that Liang Qichao finished his biography of Li two months after Li’s death. A 2009 China News Service article quotes Liang’s line, which may be translated as “I respect Li Hongzhang’s talent, I regret Li Hongzhang’s lack of insight, I grieve over Li Hongzhang’s fortune.” In a book review in the Procuratorial Daily, Liu Yiqing cites Liang’s view that Li’s history was the history of forty years of the Qing empire.⁠[50][3][61]

The correspondence between the Chinese and American governments on his visit of 1896 is printed in the 1896 volume of the Foreign Relations of the United States under the heading “Visit of Li Hung Chang”, seven documents in all.⁠[41]

Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period says that the collected literary works of three generations of the Li family, eight juan for each, were edited by Li Guojie and printed in 1904 as the Hefei Li shi sanshi yiji; that Li’s memorials, correspondence and other documents were printed in 1908 as the Li Wenzhong gong quanshu (Complete Writings of Li Wenzhong) in 165 juan, with an additional juan of biographical information; and that drafts of his letters composed by his secretary Yu Shimei were reproduced in facsimile in 1916, with Li’s corrections, as the Li Wenzhong gong chidu, in 32 volumes.⁠[5]

Britannica’s assessment holds that Li did not embody all the Confucian virtues: he lacked Zeng Guofan’s reputation for financial disinterest, and much of his enterprise was aimed at personal profit; he and a few contemporaries modernized parts of China’s forces in order to protect the old system, within which modern devices could not fully function; he hoped examination reform would raise the standing of scientific study, but his proposals were cut back and he was almost alone in pressing them. Britannica judges that he was adept at working within the system and loyal to it, and that his career illustrates how late-nineteenth-century modernization, meant to save the dynasty, was badly hindered by institutional contradictions.⁠[1]

The Encyclopedia of World Biography writes that advocates of war called him a traitor and appeaser, while he believed that China needed time to build up its strength and that diplomatic concessions cost less than military defeat; it judges that he failed to see that ships and guns were useless without Western ideas and institutions.⁠[6]

Qiu Guihua and Liu Baihe cite the verdict of the biography of Li in the Draft History of Qing: that after the great rebellion was put down he alone directed the affairs of state for decades, often bearing the brunt of domestic and foreign affairs alone, and that his fame filled the world and impressed China and foreign countries alike. The two authors hold that the Huai group he led fundamentally shook the barriers between Manchu and Han and established the political standing of the Han, that Yuan Shikai inherited Li’s mantle, and that both the Hundred Days’ Reform of 1898 and the rule of Yuan’s Beiyang government were in a sense continuations of the influence of Li and the Huai Army.⁠[12]

In a dialogue on Shanghai Television’s documentary channel program Cultural China (the transcript was printed by the Wenhui Book Review), Wei Runshen, associate professor in the School of Liberal Arts of Capital Normal University, argued that the powers forced the treaties on China, that signing required the court’s consent, and that Li, having no power of decision, was merely the instrument that signed them.⁠[62]

A 2016 China News Service article quotes Tang Qixue, a professor of modern Chinese intellectual and cultural history, as seeing Li as a representative figure in politics, economics and diplomacy and an active explorer in industry, culture and education whose record should be judged in its historical setting; in 2009 Weng Fei held that Li could not escape blame for advocating concession and peace at the cost of territory and sovereignty in foreign negotiations and in wars against aggression, but that in founding factories, mines, shipping, telegraphs, railways, a new army and schools he introduced much that was new from the West and took an important step in learning from it. The 2016 article also says that the former Japanese prime minister Itō Hirobumi once called him the only man in the Qing empire able to contend with the world’s great powers.⁠[10][3]

In a book review in the Procuratorial Daily, Liu Yiqing writes that because he signed a series of treaties that cost China rights and territory he was regarded by his countrymen as a traitor both in his lifetime and after his death, and cites the Cambridge history of the late Qing for the view that from 1870, when he became northern commissioner, the leadership of the self-strengthening reforms lay in his hands.⁠[61]

A 2016 China News Service article lists among the remains in his home village of Qunzhi, in the Modian community of Hefei, the Li Hongzhang family temple, the Liuyin Pond, the Qunzhi ancestral hall, the Bao’en Shrine and the Xiongzhuan Well, and says that Hefei had in recent years restored and rebuilt sites connected with him, which had helped local tourism.⁠[10]

In Shimonoseki the Sino-Japanese Peace Memorial Hall, a reinforced concrete building, was built in 1937 on the grounds of the former Shunpanrō to display items used in the negotiations; it reproduces the conference room in which the treaty was negotiated and signed, with the original writing implements on the central table, a French stove and European-style chairs made in Britain for the Japanese government. The Chinese versions of the description say that the hall was registered as a national tangible cultural property in 2011.⁠[33]

The Li family residence stood on Anqing Road in Hefei; the Li Hongzhang ancestral temple was demolished for urban construction in the 1980s and 1990s. In March 2016 Hefei announced plans to rebuild the residences and ancestral temples of the Li Hongzhang and Duan Qirui families in the Binhu New Area from the existing survey drawings and photographs, with work to start in the second half of the year and the buildings to be handed to the heritage authorities.⁠[63]

The Li Hongzhang family temple in Yuwan Village, Modian community, in Hefei’s Xinzhan High-tech Zone, where the Li descendants worshipped their direct ancestors, had been reduced to a single wall by the 1970s; from June 20, 2017 it was repaired with 320,000 yuan raised by the zone’s construction bureau and the Modian community, and its courtyard holds eight relics, including a stele of an imperial edict, a stone lion’s head, stone drums and a horse trough; the work was scheduled to finish at the end of August that year.⁠[64]

An old Western-style house in the compound at 273 Baixia Road, Nanjing, is popularly called the “Young Lady’s House” and is said by tradition to have been the boudoir of Li’s daughter; the heritage authorities have named it the Zhang Peilun Residence. Zhang Tingzhong, her son with Zhang Peilun, was born and grew up there. In August 2015, with more than ten holes in its roof, the house had its first major repair.⁠[58]

Bland’s biography writes that Li’s first wife died at the hands of the Taiping and that he then married again (the article reprinted in People’s Digest says that his first wife, née Zhou, died in 1861); it attributes his equanimity, self-denial, steadiness in adversity and liberal views largely to his mother and his second wife. It says that his second wife had no children for several years after their marriage, so that Li had already adopted Li Jingfang, the son of his late brother Li Zhaoqing, who later became widely known as Li Xihou (Li the Inheriting Marquis) and served as Qing minister in London and Tokyo; his second wife bore a child soon after recovering from an illness, and she died in 1892.⁠[15][29]

The book says that Li Jingshu died three months after his father, in January 1902, when the Empress Dowager Cixi returned to Beijing from her flight (the People’s Digest article says that he died a year after his father); it describes Li Jingmai as both a capitalist and an arms dealer, and Li’s nephew Li Jingxi, a former governor-general of Yunnan and Guizhou, as the most distinguished and respected of the family’s descendants.⁠[15][29]

It writes that his health was on the whole excellent, that in 1889 he suffered a facial paralysis from which he soon recovered, that he was genial and fond of drink and good company but moderate and only occasionally drunk, and that he was a strict father, especially over his sons’ studies. In the book’s view his own conduct and that of his elder brother Li Hanzhang set his sons a bad example, and his family and relatives became notorious for embezzlement and corruption; in the 1890s the viceregal yamen at Tianjin became a gathering place for speculators and schemers, his sons obtained posts through his connections, and the last eight years of his life were lonely and embittered.⁠[15]