鄭觀應與李提摩太關係考述

After the defeat in the second Opium War, Chinese society suffered from the eastward expansion of western powers. Zheng Guanying and other patriots urgently needed to find a way to save the country. Western missionaries, represented by Timothy Richard, came to China one after another at this time. In order to better develop Christian believers, they disseminated western political, economic, cultural and educational content and committed themselves to persuading Chinese elites to believe in the value of Western culture. The fate of the two men was destined to follow the fate of both countries. They started to contact each other while involved in the relief work, and got to know each other while trying to “awake” the Chinese people. There were cooperation and disagreements during the reform process. The practice of Timothy Richard and other missionaries catered to the political ideas and reform intentions of Zheng Guanying and other elites, which greatly influenced the development of his bourgeois Reform thought.