In 1862, three of China’s most prominent officials, Zeng Guofan, Li Hongzhang, and Zuo Zongtang, were locked in a mortal battle against the last hold outs of Hong Xiuquan’s Taiping Rebellion. Even as the armies of Zeng and Li used western weapons and troops (the Ever Victorious Army led first by the American Frederick Townshend Ward and later by Charles “Chinese” Gordon), Li Hongzhang began to worry about the motives of foreign intervention in this internal conflict and at the growing power of the foreigners in China’s major port cities. “In early August 1862, he wrote to Tso Tsung-tang* (Zuo Zongtang): ‘Although Shanghai is on our population register and on our map, the hearts of the officials and the people have long since gone over to the foreigners, as if unaware that the Chinese [themselves] can still manage affairs and that the Chinese troops can still fight.’ Li strongly suspected that the British and French had territorial designs on China in the areas adjacent to Shanghai and Ningpo. By mid-August, Li wrote Tseng Kuo-fan (Zeng Guofan) that local Western-language newspapers (which were translated for him regularly) had published a proposal that all of Shanghai, not just the foreign settlement, should