Is Li Hongzhang a patriot or a traitor? How much did he embezzle?

Li Hongzhang made many achievements, such as forming the Huai Army and fighting against the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. These are the highlights of Li Hongzhang's life, and Li Hongzhang's life is more of a stain. Treaty of shimonoseki and the Xin Chou Treaty were signed under the auspices of Li Hongzhang. It can be said that these two treaties made Li Hongzhang take the blame.

190 1 year, Li Hongzhang died of humiliation. This prominent figure in the late Qing Dynasty was criticized before and after. Today, more than one hundred years after his death, people still have different views on him. Destroyers always associate Li Hongzhang with some humiliating events in China's modern history, such as 1894- 1895' s defeat in the Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War of 1895, the signing of treaty of shimonoseki and the Treaty of Mourning Ugliness, and so on. Being directly responsible for these events, he inevitably became the object of criticism, and then became a symbol of a country's backwardness and a typical representative of "capitulationists" and "traitors"; According to his reputation, Li Hongzhang was a "patriot" in modern China, a "main pioneer of modernization in the late Qing Dynasty" and a "cohesion center of a generation of advanced intellectuals".

Li Hongzhang's own background. /kloc-China is in an unprecedented period of great change in the second half of the 9th century. And such a process, that is, China was beaten passively, and the western capitalist powers used opium and foreign guns to cannon warships, forcing China to implement the so-called "open door" situation. It is in this great change that people from all walks of life and various identities in China put forward various opinions and plans, trying to find an ideal way to strengthen the country and enrich the people.

After China experienced two Opium Wars and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement, a new reformist school of the ruling class-Westernization School appeared at the top of the Qing ruling group. They took over the banner of traditional Confucian practice, advocated and flaunted "middle school as the body, western learning for use", and tried to reverse the trend of feudal last days to the present. Therefore, such reformists can also be called the "heaven-mending school" of feudal rule, because although they introduced western science and technology, they only stayed at the level of object innovation and could not touch the fundamental ills of feudal social system.