Page:Eminent Chinese Of The Ch’ing Period - Hummel - 1943 - Vol. 1.pdf/479

 two men for the Korean envoys to sign, Li was unable to insert in it any recognition that Korea was a dependency of China. The best he could do was to secure consent for an accompanying letter from the King of Korea, recognizing this fact but adding that Korea was free in her internal and foreign relations. Li was only partly responsible for the blunders in diplomacy of this period; some were made without his consent in Peking, and he did the best he could to retrieve what others had lost.

More than most higher officials of his day, Li Hung-chang realized that the backwardness of China in the matter of arms placed her at the mercy of stronger powers and that the lack of swifter communications and modern machinery retarded her economic progress. Hence he became the patron of many new economic enterprises and technical innovations. In 1872 the conservatives complained at the excessive cost of steamers, but in a memorial Li made a spirited defense of his policies on the ground that foreign encroachment was imminent and that China must provide herself with some of the things that made Western nations strong. Hence he supported in 1872 the proposal of Jung Hung for a steamship line, recommending that a government-subsidized company be formed, operating at first with chartered vessels to carry tribute rice from the South. From this developed the China Merchant's Line whose ships ran not only between northern and southern ports, but also to Japan, the Philippines and Singapore. Incidentally, a large part of the company's stock was owned by Li, as was the case with most of the enterprises he sponsored. Unfortunately, an experimental railway built between Shanghai and Woosung in 1876 was discontinued in the following year. But in 1880 Li submitted a memorial vigorously urging resumption of railway building. He proposed four trunk lines: Peking to Ch'ing-chiang-p'u (near Nanking on the Grand Canal), to Hankow, to Mukden, and to distant Kansu, all to be financed by properly safe-guarded loans. But much inertia had to be overcome before a line was authorized, namely, an eighty-one mile railway linking Tientsin with the T'ang-shan coal mines which Li had been instrumental in opening with modern machinery. Other railways were not constructed until years later (see under ).

Li Hung-chang likewise sponsored the first permanent telegraph lines in China. Sporadic attempts had been made since 1865 to construct short lines, among them one from Shanghai to Woosung, built under foreign auspices, and one from Tientsin to the Taku forts, built by Chinese. In 1880 Li recommended the construction of a line from Tientsin to Shanghai and this was completed on December 24, 1881. Three years later it was extended to Peking and from then on to the chief cities of the empire. Li sponsored a number of proposals for schools of a technical character to train Chinese to conduct these modern enterprises, including a weaving mill which was installed in Shanghai in 1882. But many of his proposals were not carried out, owing to the conservatism of the officials or to the cost which seemed to them prohibitive. A Military Academy was opened in Tientsin in 1885, and long before this there were the beginnings of a modern navy (see under ). But it was a distinct drawback to China that the arsenals and ship-building yards—the first of these being established when Li was governor at Shanghai, others being located later at Foochow and Tientsin—were regarded as provincial rather than national enterprises. Up to 1888 Li, as an associate controller of the Board of Admiralty (see under ), was able to secure funds to build up a fleet of some twenty-eight vessels, but from then till the out-break of the war with Japan (1894) a series of setbacks crippled the navy, among them the requisition of two million taels to celebrate the Empress Dowager's birthday (see under ) the resignation of Captain Lang, formerly of the British Navy, who with Admiral Ting Ju-ch'ang 丁汝昌, had built up the navy; and the death of Prince Ch'un (see under ), one of its chief friends among the Manchu princes. The provincial authorities who thus saw sums, which they had grudgingly contributed to the navy, diverted to other uses, naturally cut down their appropriations. Other reforms likewise were retarded after 1888.

Owing to the death of his mother in 1882, Li Hung-chang secured a leave of absence, but trouble in Korea forced his recall in the same year. Leave for the burial was curtailed in 1883 because of French aggressions in Annam. Prior to taking his second leave, Li negotiated a treaty with France securing recognition of Chinese suzerainty over Annam and placing a neutral zone between Chinese and French spheres. But this understanding was repudiated in Paris and M. Tricou was sent from Tokyo to negotiate another treaty recognizing the independence of Annam. Tricou awaited Li 467