Li Hongzhang in the context of "Royal Victorian Order"

The Treaty of Shimonoseki (Japanese: 下関条約, Hepburn: Shimonoseki Jōyaku), also known as the Treaty of Maguan in China or the Treaty of Bakan (馬關條約, Bakan Jōyaku) in Japan, was signed in Shimonoseki, Japan, on April 17, 1895, between the Empire of Japan and the Qing dynasty. The treaty ended the First Sino-Japanese War, in which the Japanese decisively defeated the Chinese land and naval forces. The treaty was signed at the Shunpanrō [ja] hotel by Count Itō Hirobumi and Viscount Mutsu Munemitsu for Japan and Li Hongzhang and his son Li Jingfang on behalf of China.

The peace conference took place from March 20 to April 17, 1895, and the treaty followed and superseded the Sino-Japanese Friendship and Trade Treaty of 1871. It consisted of 11 articles which provided for the termination of China's tributary relations with Korea; required that China pay an indemnity of 200 million taels and cede Taiwan (Formosa), the Penghu (Pescadores) Islands, and the Liaodong Peninsula to Japan; and opened four cities (Shashi, Chongqing, Suzhou, and Hangzhou) to Japan as trading ports. However, due to the diplomatic Triple Intervention of Russia, Germany, and France just one week after the treaty was signed, the Japanese withdrew their claim to the Liaodong Peninsula in return for an additional war indemnity of 30 million taels from China.

Li Jingfang GCVO (李經方; 1854 – 28 September 1934), also known as Li Ching-fong, was a Chinese statesman during the Qing dynasty. Being the nephew and adopted son of the late statesman Li Hongzhang, he served in his adoptive father's secretariat in his youth. In 1882, Li Jingfang obtained the second highest degree in the imperial examinations and subsequently obtained appointment in the Qing foreign service because of his knowledge of English. In 1886–89, he worked as a secretary to the Qing legation in London and in 1890-92 he served as the Qing minister to Japan. He is mostly known for having signed the Sino-Japanese Treaty of Shimonoseki in Li Hongzhang's stead in 1895. He was appointed as an Honorary Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order by Queen Victoria in 1896 and was promoted to a Honorary Knight Grand Cross a few years later in 1909. He also served as the Chinese Minister to London in 1909–1910.

The Sino-Japanese Friendship and Trade Treaty was the first treaty between Japan and the Qing dynasty. It was signed on 13 September 1871 in Tientsin by Date Munenari and Plenipotentiary Li Hongzhang.

The treaty guaranteed the judiciary rights of Consuls, and fixed trade tariffs between the two countries.

The Huai Army (Chinese: 淮軍; pinyin: Huái jūn), named for the Huai River, was a military force allied with the Qing dynasty raised to contain the Taiping Rebellion in 1862. It was also called the Anhui Army because it was based in Anhui province. It helped to restore the stability of the Qing dynasty. Unlike the traditional Green Standard Army or Eight Banners forces of the Qing, the Huai Army was largely a militia army, based on personal rather than institutional loyalties. It was armed with a mixture of traditional and modern weapons. Li Hongzhang, a commander in the Xiang Army, created the Huai Army in October 1861. It succeeded Zeng Guofan’s Xiang Army. The Huai Army itself was succeeded by the New Army and the Beiyang Army, which were created in the late 19th century, though it continued to exist until the end of the dynasty in 1911.

During the Manchu–led Qing dynasty, the economy was significantly developed and markets continued to expand especially in the High Qing era, and imperial China experienced a second commercial revolution in the economic history of China from the mid-16th century to the end of the 18th century. But akin to the other major non-European powers around the world at that time like the Islamic gunpowder empires and Tokugawa Japan, such economic development did not keep pace with the economies of European countries in the Industrial Revolution occurring by the early 19th century, which resulted in a dramatic change described by the 19th-century Qing official Li Hongzhang (who promoted the Self-Strengthening Movement) as "the biggest change in more than three thousand years" (三千年未有之大變局).

Critics of the Qing, some of whom may be motivated by Chinese nationalism and anti-Qing sentiment, argue that the specific actions and policies of the Qing dynasty held the nation-state of China back during its rule, when the Industrial Revolution which occurred in Europe by the 19th century led to a Great Divergence in which China lost its early modern economic and industrial lead over the West which it had previously held for more than a millennium. According to the critics, the advances in science and technology and economic development in the preceding Song and Ming dynasties moved China toward a modern age, but the restrictions placed on commerce and industry and the persecution of non-orthodox thought after the transition from Ming to Qing in the 17th century caused China to gradually stagnate and fall behind the West and led to the century of humiliation.

The Convention for the Lease of the Liaotung Peninsula (Chinese: 旅大租地條約; Russian: Русско-китайская конвенция), also known as the Pavlov Agreement, is an unequal treaty signed between Alexander Pavlov of the Russian Empire and Li Hongzhang of the Qing dynasty of China on 27 March 1898. The treaty granted Russia the lease of Port Arthur (Lüshun) and permitted its railway to extend to the port (later South Manchuria Railway) from one of the points of the Chinese Eastern Railway (CER).

Liang Shitai 梁时泰 – also known as Liang Seetay – (fl. 1870s-1890s) was one of the foremost portrait photographers working in China in the late Qing dynasty. The artist specialized in portraits of high-ranking officials, and photographs that appealed to Chinese clients interested in literati painting. As one of the first photographers of prominent Qing Dynasty officials and other distinguished citizens, Liang Shitai's work convinced the Qing court to embrace photography as an artistic medium for the first time. He established his studio in Hong Kong in the early 1870s, then relocated to Shanghai in the late 1870s, and later to Tianjin in the 1880s. Liang Shitai's photographs are among the most historically important and visually exquisite of their time.

The Beiyang Fleet (Pei-yang Fleet; simplified Chinese: 北洋舰队; traditional Chinese: 北洋艦隊; pinyin: Běiyáng Jiànduì; Wade–Giles: Pei-yang Chien-tui; lit. 'Northern Ocean Fleet', alternatively Northern Seas Fleet) was one of the four modernized Chinese navies in the late Qing dynasty. Among the four, the Beiyang Fleet was particularly sponsored by Li Hongzhang, one of the most trusted vassals of Empress Dowager Cixi and the principal patron of the "self-strengthening movement" in northern China in his capacity as the Viceroy of Zhili and the Minister of Beiyang Commerce (北洋通商大臣). Due to Li's influence in the imperial court, the Beiyang Fleet garnered much greater resources than the other Chinese fleets and soon became the dominant navy in Asia before the onset of the 1894–1895 First Sino-Japanese War. It was the largest fleet in Asia and the 8th largest in the world during the late 1880s in terms of tonnage.

The Mutual Defense Pact of the Southeastern Provinces (traditional Chinese: 東南互保; simplified Chinese: 东南互保; pinyin: Dōngnán Hùbǎo) was an agreement reached in the summer of 1900 during the Boxer Rebellion by Qing dynasty governors of the provinces in southern, eastern and central China when the Eight-Nation Alliance invaded northern China. The governors, including Li Hongzhang (governor-general of Guangdong, Guangxi), Xu Yingkui (governor-general of Fujian, Zhejiang), Liu Kunyi (governor-general of Jiangsu, Anhui, Jiangxi), Zhang Zhidong (governor-general of Hubei, Hunan) and Yuan Shikai (provincial governor of Shandong), refused to carry out the imperial decree promulgated by the Qing imperial court to declare war on 11 foreign states, with the aim of preserving peace in their own provinces.

Some other Han-majority provincial authorities, such as the governor-general of Sichuan and the provincial governor of Shaanxi, did not formally join the mutual protection agreement but similarly disobeyed the imperial edict. Thus, for the first time, the vast majority of Han regional authorities refused to aid the Qing court. For much of the conflict, the main forces fighting for the Qing court (alongside the Boxers) were the Manchu Hushenying, the Manchu Peking Field Force and three of five divisions of the Qing court's most modernized Wuwei Corps (including its Manchu division and Muslim Gansu division), but Yuan Shikai commanded the other two divisions into Shandong and actively used them to suppress the Boxers, in open defiance of the Qing court. In Manchuria, large groups of Han bandits named Honghuzi ("Red Beards") also actively fought alongside Manchu banners, mostly as a response to the separate Russian invasion that had widespread atrocities against Manchus and Daurs like the Blagoveshchensk massacre and Sixty-Four Villages East of the River massacre.