Ma Jianzhong Restoration Thought

Ma Jian-zhong was a prominent person among the intellectual group in the late Qing Dynasty .He was a patriotic person whose life was devoted to the cause of saving the nation and helping his fellowmen. However, he was often criticized by some others when he was in his life, even after his passing. Ma Jian-zhong was a learned person with western cultural background. In his early times, he was thought a lot of by Li Hong -zhang. He displayed his skills in dealing with foreign affairs, and contributed more to running the China Merchants' Steam Navigation Company. Li Hong -zhang often consulted with Ma Jian-zhong about Chinese economy and foreign affairs and military problems, and many of his suggestions were put into practice. With the increasing invasion of foreign capitalism, Ma Jian-zhong converted gradually from the western affairs party into one representative of earlier reformers.The soul of Ma Jian-zhong's reform ideas was his economic thoughts, in which the idea of "making people rich" was the most important. "Making people rich" was the center and the main start of strengthening national powers, he thought, and also was the basis and standard of that. He designed five schemes in order to push the social and economic development forward. That is, to reform the economic system, protect the firm, establish companies; to develop foreign trade; to effect tariff -protecting policy; to borrow foreign loans, make full use of foreign capital; to put much emphasis on industry and so on. His economic thought, which was against closing policy, and protested the invasion of foreign capitalism, proposed opening to the world and fostering Chinese capitalism, was very important in the history of modern Chinese economic thought.Ma Jian-zhong's diplomatic views were very profound, which was the important part of his reform ideas. On foreign policy, he claimed that a dynamic foreign policy is necessary, and he proposed taking advantage of international law in dealing with foreign affairs. On human resources, he thought that a diplomat should weld the theory into practice, and he was the first man who advocated that a potential diplomat should be specialized systematically in Qing Dynasty. Ma Jian-zhong's diplomatic views was an elaborated system., with the characteristics of intensive patriotism, which played an important role in the evolving history of Chinese diplomatic thought.As a patriotic intellectual, he wrote a book, called Ma Shi Wen Tong, which was the first systematic grammatical writings in China. And meanwhile, it was the important tool he took to improve the nation power. The spirit of exploitation and innovation expressed in his writings has still far-reaching impact today.