"Great man" is a person who has contributed to the country, and Li Hongzhang is not counted. However, some people call him a "traitor" and the evidence is not very obvious, at least the six major powers of Britain, Russia, the United States, Japan, Germany, and France cannot annex China alone because of "sharing the booty", and Wang Jixin cannot be born early.
(1) Li Hongzhang must first determine whether he is a patriot or a traitor, and then he can say whether he is a great man
According to the view of the Qing Dynasty, it is not counted, but according to today's point of view. Because, in the late Qing Dynasty, we did not have the concept of "country", only the concept of "imperial court" (but there was also the concept of territory). Li Hongzhang was loyal to the decadent late Qing regime rather than to the world and the people, and lost the traditional Confucian concept of "the world, the society, and the king". In the traditional Confucian concept, the world is the biggest and should be protected the most. But Li Hongzhang was loyal only to the king or the ruler, only to the society that could bring glory and wealth to himself.
From the perspective of modern society, if Li Hongzhang is a great man, he must have a "contribution" to explain. The world loves to make two points:
First, his contribution to foreign enterprises. Some people say how many foreign enterprises he has founded, but unfortunately he is only an intermediary between the investors of foreign enterprises (the Qing court and the rich people) rather than the founder, and his greatest value is not to bring modern enterprise management methods into China, he only "the ancient imperial court's business is operated in the form of enterprises", most of the foreign enterprises rely on the "monopoly right" of the Qing court to survive, but the insiders are overstaffed, corrupt and the demand of officials is excessive, and most of the foreign enterprises are inefficient and loss-making.
Second: the formation and development of the Chinese Navy. The first hero of the Chinese Navy in theory was Wei Yuan, but in practice it was the two founders. Zuo Zongtang and Li Hongzhang were the professional builders of the first and second navies, respectively, and they were the largest providers of naval software (talents) and independent intellectual property rights, and the biggest contributors to buying hardware (weapons).
(2) The world's description of its "bowing down" and "lying down to taste courage" is easy to make people feel that they are "great men", but after these "tear-jerking" words, we often see: personal interests four words
I have criticized many times, lying on the salary to taste the gall to have results, and it is to taste the "bitter bile" on the "salary" to be strong in the country, rather than lying on the "gold" to taste the "phoenix bile" to be strong in itself. Let's focus on the impression of "bowing down".
When we go to see Li Hongzhang's recital, we often see that Li Hongzhang is difficult to swing and not easy to speak. It was really difficult for Li Hongzhang to pay money from the Pocket of the Qing Court to build the Beiyang Navy and use the Qing court's money to "buy, buy, and buy" warships. However, when the Beiyang Navy was formed, it was the first in Asia in terms of hardware, and it was not much constrained by the reformists.
In particular, Li Hongzhang's poems and remains before his death, some people were even moved to tears, and then made up the bridge section where Cixi still lost her voice and cried bitterly. I really think of myself as indispensable.
In 1866, as the first of the three Zeng Zuo Li to specialize in coastal defense, it was difficult to establish the Fuzhou Shipping Administration. He was constrained by the conservatives of the Qing court, the British and the French, and the reformists of the Li Hongzhang faction (Li Hongzhang was only besieged by the conservatives). How much did Zuo Zongtang complain about in the recital?
Some people are born to be "movie emperors", and some people are born to be "people who do things". But if you only see the performance and ignore the substance behind the performance, then the conclusion can only be wrong.
Corruption of officials in ancient society: In addition to military weapons, administration, and the establishment of commercial institutions such as silver trumpets with their families, officials in the late Qing Dynasty used many ways to obtain bribes from great powers by signing agreements, opening foreign business enterprises or buying stocks or obtaining benefits such as secret stocks with power, matchmaking land or mining licenses, and at least running enterprises to work.
Well, Li Hongzhang is involved in all of the above. His bowing and busyness, then, is highly correlated with profiting for his family, his family, and his cronies. For example, what about the problems of family members such as Zhang Shiheng, a nephew who provided military intelligence to the Japanese in the Sino-Japanese War and sold weapons in peacetime?