Research On Zengguofan's Political Thought

Zengguofan was a very important and complicated person in Chinese neoteric history. He owned a certain position on Chinese politics, military, diplomacy and culture. Through his speech and action, Zengguofan took form a theoretical route which gave priority to Confucianism and took Science and technology as the core. For inner side, he advocated to maintain the domination of the feudalistic laird rank and the Confucian rites and regulations; for outside, to learn the advanced scientific technologies and set up neoteric military industry. According to this route, he combined academic and politics meanwhile put them into management practice. Thus either saved Qing dynasty or started the neoteric period of China.Since the previous studies on Zengguofan mostly focused on the military and ethics ideas of him, instead of on his political thoughts, this paper focuses on the political thoughts and expounds the main content of Zengguofan's thought basing on analyzing the historical background of it, which are about making use of personnel, about being loyal to the sovereign, about people's livelihood, about outward issues, about oversea industries etc. The paper gives an objective estimation onto it from the angle of Materialism and disserts the revelation on setting up a harmonious society, on selecting personnel, on developing patriotic spirit, on maintaining heading the government for people in the modern society, thus reach the goal of drawing lessons from it and make fully use of it.