Chapter 42 Follow the example of the ancients and want to innovate

In the process of suppressing the peasant uprising, Li Hongzhang established a Huai army equipped with Western-style weapons.At the same time, he also founded a number of modern military industries in order to achieve China's self-improvement.It can be said that the rise of China's modern military industry was mainly started by Li Hongzhang. After the Second Opium War, Yi Xin, Wen Xiang and others who presided over the Prime Minister’s Yamen, in view of the frequent internal and external troubles of the Qing Dynasty, actively advocated the so-called self-improvement with military training and weapon manufacturing as the main content.

Local advocates of this idea include Zeng Guofan, Li Hongzhang, Zuo Zongtang and others.Among them, Li Hongzhang was the most advocated, the earliest to do it, and the most to deal with. When Li Hongzhang first came to the Shanghai Concession, he was attracted by the prosperity of the concession which was different from the capital.The exotic place, the tall and majestic building made Li Hongzhang feel a kind of pressure indistinctly.The foreigners also raised many animals in the consulate, including cows, horses, sheep, deer, and many birds.These tall animals walk leisurely in the museum, and they look and behave like those proud foreigners.From time to time, ladies in Western-style long skirts walked by on the street. Their elegant demeanor and the bright smiles of foreign children made Li Hongzhang strongly feel the affluence and leisure of Western life.Since then, Li Hongzhang has investigated and compared the situation of China and foreign countries many times, and finally came to the conclusion that if China wants to stand on its own among the world powers, it must first get rich and then become strong.

After preliminary Westernization practice, Li Hongzhang gradually understood the West.He was surprised to find that the West is not only powerful in military, but more importantly, they are not the kind of barren land that the Chinese people imagined, but an astonishingly rich land. It turned out that in the middle of the eighteenth century, after the British Watt improved the steam engine, a series of technological revolutions were triggered.Machine production gradually replaced manual labor, large-scale factory production replaced manual production in individual workshops, and quickly spread from the United Kingdom to the entire European continent, and spread to North America in the 19th century.This is the world famous Industrial Revolution.The Industrial Revolution led to rapid progress in coal mining, steel smelting, shipbuilding, railway transportation, weapons and ammunition, and so on. European and American countries have become stronger one by one in just a few decades, leaving the closed-door Qing Dynasty far behind. behind.

After suppressing the southern uprising army, Li Hongzhang went to Tianjin to serve as the governor of Zhili, but he never forgot about Westernization.At the end of the thirteenth year of Tongzhi (1874), during the discussion on coastal defense launched by the Qing government, he published the famous "Discussion on Coastal Defense".In the middle of the compromise, Li Hongzhang pointed out: At present, all countries are eyeing China covetously and are ready to invade China at any time. We are facing a change that has not been seen in thousands of years; Advanced military equipment and land and sea passes cannot resist the invasion of foreigners at all, and we are facing a powerful enemy that has not been seen for thousands of years.For this reason, he strongly called for the strengthening of coastal defense, the development of military industry, the construction of railway telegraphs, the reform of imperial examinations, and the establishment of new education.

For those conservative officials of traditional Confucianism, Li Hongzhang's remarks are tantamount to idiotic dreams, unfounded worries, absurdities, and shocking the world.Because they are still immersed in the dream of a great power in the sky for thousands of years, and have never opened their eyes to see the thousands of changes in the world.In their eyes, the Chinese civilization has been thousands of years old, China has a vast land and abundant resources, the Han and Tang Dynasties in ancient times, and the prosperity of Kangxi and Qianlong in the present.Is there anything to learn from them?Even those ignorant diehards clamored: Our Confucianism convinces people with reason, transforms people with virtue, and guides the world with culture and teaching.The Tao is the body, and the utensils are the final use.Could it be that those Western tricks and tricks can be eaten when they are hungry?Can it be worn as clothes when it's cold?

Li Hongzhang has already heard these pedantic preachings so that his ears grow callused, and he feels that there is no need to have endless debates with these ignorant people. He sighed: "The Book of Changes", the first Confucian classic, said that poverty leads to change. Changes lead to success, and generalization leads to long-term success. What can we rotten scholars who read rote books do?Why do you say that the law of the ancestors is immutable?You only say that the Qin Dynasty perished soon because of the implementation of reforms, so for thousands of years, they dared not talk about reforms, and insisted on sticking to the rules.Both Shang Yang and Wang Anshi died because of the reform, so since then the subjects have been afraid of talking about the reform, and even concocted the theory that the ancestral law is immutable, which is really absurd.Nowadays, all countries in the world are reforming their laws to strengthen themselves, but China is still talking about the old laws of our ancestors. I have been beaten by robbers all these years and I still don’t know how to wake up. Is this God’s will?I am still so confused when I am on the verge of national subjugation. For the sake of my Chinese cause, I, Li Hongzhang, will learn from Shang Yang and Wang Anshi today.It seems that Li Hongzhang is going all out, and he and his other sober colleagues risk their lives to imitate the ancients and carry out reforms to strengthen themselves.