"Your Majesty, things have yin and yang, things have urgency, there are so many things in the emperor, in fact, many things are not immediately solved, my opinion is that the things that can't be solved don't need to be solved first, and after a while, they will be solved by themselves."
Li Hongzhang suggested to President Meng.President Meng sweated, what is the difference between what you said and what you didn't say Li Hongzhang smiled: "The emperor may think that I am talking nonsense, but this is my experience in politics for 30 years, many things are indeed like this, if you don't really think about the pros and cons, you will make a decision blindly, it is better to face it easily, and leave it alone." ”President Meng nodded and said, "I understand what the teacher means."
Recently, I will arrange the affairs of the railway company. ”"Okay."
Because diplomacy is still involved, President Meng is mainly handed over to Li Hongzhang.Make the best use of people, President Meng really doesn't think that Li Hongzhang will be worse than anyone under him in the top management, no matter how talented Zhao Qingluo and Princess Katrina Kafu are, they can't catch up with Li Hongzhang's experience, Li Hongzhang is in China, and he definitely can't be the same as in the Qing court.Huaguo's railway company was established in Shanghai, with one branch in Tianjin and one branch in Hankou.At the beginning of the establishment, part of the official funds were invited to be used as start-up funds, and at the same time, local officials were asked to help raise commercial shares, so that they could have a capital of 13 million yuan.Since then, the road has been developed from north to south, and this year it has been officially completed and opened to traffic, and renamed Jinghan Railway.In the meantime, two branch roads of Zhengtai and Bianluo Road were also built.In the Yangtze River basin and the eastern coastal areas, five railways will be built from Tianjin to Zhenjiang, Shanxi to the Yangtze River along the Yangtze River via Henan, Kowloon to Guangzhou, Pukou to Xinyang, and Suzhou to Ningbo via Hangzhou.President Moe, accompanied by Princess Katrina Kaf, Lee Hongjang, and Lee Tae-hee, personally inspected this railway line in Japan.Since getting off the train, there has been no rest, and the battle report on the front line, at the first time, was reported to President Meng, in fact, it can't be regarded as a war report, it should be said that it is just a situation, because the battle has been fought.The Japanese did not react, and until now, even an official letter of protest has not been sent to Nagasaki.Mainly because the transportation of the Japanese is too inconvenient."
In my opinion, don't send troops to station, dismantle these steel rails, and transport them to the North Korean steel plant."
President Moe said to Princess Katrina Kafu and Li Hongzhang.Li Hongzhang didn't speak, he was an old character, not President Meng asked him, he generally didn't take the initiative, this is where President Meng annoyed Li Hongzhang.Li Hongzhang also knows that President Meng annoys him, but this is the personality he has cultivated over the years, and there is really no way to change it.Princess Katrina Kafu smiled: "Yes, but this project is not small, and it will take tens of thousands of people." ”President Meng looked at Li Hongzhang, "What do you think?"
"I also think it's okay." ”Li Hongzhang was used to calling himself a minister, or an old minister, but he changed it to me, and it was difficult to speak here in President Meng, which is also the reason why Li Hongzhang didn't dare to speak casually.President Meng smiled: "Teacher, you take it easy, I see that you are really hard to speak, you can say whatever you want, in Huaguo, as long as it does not involve corruption, you don't kill people casually, in my place, there is no such thing as making mistakes." ”Li Hongzhang smiled: "It's not that I don't want to speak, Princess Katrina Kafu said very well, I have nothing to say, dismantling the railway, it seems to be the best way, and the only way, can't it be occupied, can it be demolished I suggest, put Xiaguan City, along the railway line to Nagasaki, it is best to loot it, and forcibly recruit the Japanese people" President Meng was shocked, Li Hongzhang either didn't speak, and when he spoke, it was really a little scary, "Being so ruthless to the Japanese, will it cause them to be indignant throughout the country, and strive to resist" Li Hongzhang said with a straight face:" I suggest to the emperor, kill tens of thousands of people first, the Japanese have resisted the British, the French, the Americans, which of their powers killed less people in Japan, the Japanese have not resisted the Spaniards, the Dutch, as far as I know, the more the great powers that kill people in Japan, the more respected by the Japanese. ”The great powers also killed people and colonized Japan, but why did they not be so ruthless to the Qing Dynasty, and before and after the Meiji Restoration, Japan was constantly invaded by Western powers.Extraterritoriality, loss of power, humiliation of the country, concessions and land cession, unequal trade treaties indirectly equal to reparations abound.But Japan's bones are getting harder, the progress bar of modernization reads fast, and it quickly gets rid of aggression.In 1858, the Edo shogunate of Japan signed the Treaty of Ansei with the United States, Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Russia, forcing the opening of five ports: Nagasaki, Yokohama, Kobe, Niigata, and Hakodate.Between 1859 and 1869, these five ports, along with Tokyo and Osaka, were opened, and foreign concessions were established, which are called foreign settlements in Japanese.The first Opium War was because Lin Zexu detained goods and arrested people to prohibit trade, so the British Mao wanted to send an expeditionary force.Britain believed that China's normal trade deficit was caused by China's lack of trade with other countries, so it asked China to open ports.The Second Opium War was because the fool thought that there were not enough ports opened, so the Sino-British trade was still in deficit.So he found an excuse to start the Second Opium War.Imperialist expansion wants only two things, the first is cheap resources, and the second is a market where cheap junk products can be dumped.China does not have resources, but China has a market for these garbage products.Japan doesn't have any of the above, and it's a small market at most, so there's basically no value worth invading.China has no valuable resources other than coal, not even high-quality iron ore.It's really that no one wants the land, and the so-called partition just wants to dismember you, because it's too big and people can't control it.Only the stupid hanging of the Japanese is like taking the wrong medicine, and they came to China to occupy the land, and in the end, the occupying army did not even have a stutter, and had to transport it from their own country.After a few years of fighting, except for digging out some media, Mao didn't get one, and Japan has been looking for Chongqing to want a truce during the eight-year war of resistance, and in the end, Japan is really exhausted, and wants to go to Southeast Asia to grab rubber and oil, which led to the United States entering the war.In the early and mid-19th century, especially before the founding of the shogunate, Japan was not invaded on a large scale, although there were events such as the arrival of black ships, the five-nation treaty of Ansei, and the opening of treaty ports.Is it because the Japanese are smart or powerful, or are worthy of the fear of the great powers At that time, under the rule of the Edo shogunate, because of nearly 200 years of peace, Japan was already a country with loose armaments, and there was little resistance in front of the Western powers.The Qing and Japan were not much different from each other in the early to mid-19th century, and the military strength of the shogunate was even weaker than that of the Qing state, and even in the early Meiji Restoration, Japan's military strength could not be in the eyes of Britain and France and other powers.The more than 10,000 British troops who fought to Zhenjiang in 1840 and the more than 20,000 British and French troops who fought to Beijing in 1860 could still enter Kyoto and Edo if they were thrown to Japan, and there would be no other difference.The reason why Japan did not suffer a large-scale invasion by foreign powers was its geographical location and its poor resources.Japan is an island country hanging in a corner of Northeast Asia, the geographical location is not superior, and it is not on the important trade route at that time, for the Western powers, there are practical difficulties in large-scale invasion of Japan, Britain was able to invade the Qing country, because of the base and springboard of India, and it is obvious that when Commodore Perry led several black ships to bombard the gate of the palace, the primary purpose was to provide a supply point for the merchant ships and fleets of the United States to go to the Far East in the future.Of course, if Japan had the resources that the great powers coveted, then in the 19th century, even if it was remote, it would have attracted a large-scale invasion from the West, but it did not.Of course, this is by no means to say that Japan has always been poor, in fact, in the early 17th century of the Edo period, Japan was a notoriously rich country because of its abundance of gold and silver, and it was even called the "Land of Gold" by Marco Polo in his travelogues, and later by the Spaniards and the Dutch.Kurokawa Kanzan, Yunoku Kanzan, and Sado Kanayama were among the largest gold mountains in the world at the time, and they became important financial resources and financial pillars for the shogunate in the early Tokugawa shogunate.In addition to the gold mine, Japan also had a number of large-scale silver mountains, all of which were among the largest in the world at that time.So, in the 1617th century, the Spaniards and later the Dutch, including the later Qing people, gained great wealth by trading with Japan.Japan also did business with the Qing Kingdom, and even regarded the Qing Kingdom as a major trading object.In 1715, the shogunate promulgated a new ordinance on the exchange of sea vessels, which stipulated that the Qing dynasty could trade with 10 ships a year, and the transaction amount was limited to 3,000 kwan, while the Dutch traded within 1,500 kō a year, which was the weight unit in Japan at that time, about 375 kg.Due to Japan's small exports and large imports at the time, Japan's trade with foreign countries resulted in a staggering trade deficit, and the result of this trade deficit was a large outflow of gold and silver.According to the Japanese shogunate's own statistics, from 16551715 to 60 years, 2,397,600 taels of gold and 374,200 taels of silver flowed out of Japan, accounting for half of the gold production and three-quarters of the silver production at that time.In the 19th century, due to the oppression of Westerners, the outflow of gold and silver accelerated again.In 1854, after Commodore Perry's voyage to the Black Ship, the Japan-U.S.
Peace Treaty was signed, and the shogunate promised to fully open trade to the United States.An important part of this was to take advantage of Japan's gold-silver ratio, which was 1:10 in Japan and 1:20 in countries such as the United Kingdom.In just over a decade, Japan's gold flowed out in large quantities again, and the shogunate's finances reached the point of exhaustion, and it was precisely because of the financial failure that the Restoration Party was able to overthrow the shogunate rule for nearly two and a half centuries so easily.What is even more frightening is that at this time, Japan's mines have been depleted after many centuries of mining, and the production of large gold mines such as Sado Kanayama has become very low in modern times, and it can no longer be compared with the heyday.As a result, after centuries of inaction and failed trade with the Qing and Westerners, Japan's original precious metals have flowed out in large quantities, and it has changed from a country of gold that everyone admires to a barren country, and compared with the Qing country, which has accumulated silver for hundreds of years through the trade of silk and tea, it is tantamount to a country without any aggression value.If Japan still had as much wealth as the Qing Dynasty, then in that era of the jungle, no matter how enlightened and hard the Japanese shogunate or the Japanese imperial court was, they would definitely face aggression from the Western powers, so what matters is not how it is, but whether it is worth invading.Of course, after escaping the frenzy of Western aggression in the mid-to-early 19th century, Japan did not waste its luck, and in the Meiji era, after the painful experience of people with lofty ideals, it finally changed the inaction of the previous centuries, participated in the world with an active attitude, and with extraordinary efforts, changed Japan's extremely weak state in trade, became an industrially advanced country and a trade superpower, re-accumulated huge wealth, and finally became one of the world's great powers.Of course, in this time and space of President Moe, this possibility will no longer exist.The world before the United States in the 19th century was a world that had been carved up by the great powers and was alone on the other side of the world island.At that time, the United States proposed the Monroe Doctrine in an attempt to make the Americas its own, and the subtext was actually that it was far away from the competition for the world island by the traditional powers, and that taking care of its own one-third of an acre of land was essentially another manifestation of isolationism.If there is really a certainty of fighting for the world island, who doesn't want to participate in the China at that time, that is, the Qing Dynasty gave the United States such an opportunity.China did not become a colony solely because it was too big.Such a behemoth as the Great Qing Dynasty not only has a single-ethnic population of hundreds of millions, but also has a tradition of great unification in units of thousands of years.The European powers, which were both concentrating on the management of the colonies and wary of other powers, had such a great appetite to swallow China, and the British king never minded completing the great cause of the two emperors, which would go down through the ages.However, although the great powers could not swallow it, their efforts to divide China into eight pieces did not stop for a day.Of these powers, only the Americans were opposed to the dismemberment of the Qing Empire.Roosevelt once bluntly said: "I sincerely hope that China will not be divided, and it will be bad for anyone to do so." ”The Americans before him have said a lot of similar things, and they have been making similar efforts, such as the so-called open door policy.The Pacific Ocean does have room for China and the United States, but there is also Japan in the middle of them.In 1853, American General Perry opened the door to Japan, and the executioner cut off the legacy of the shogunate and ushered in the era of the Restoration, and since then the Japanese emperor has opened a constitutional monarchy and rapidly grown into an outward-looking capitalist empire.Japan only started the Restoration in 1867, and the answer to why it grew enough to invade foreign countries after only eight years was the Americans.The United States saw through the limits of the radiation of the European powers, and their greedy long tongues were entangled in the fat of the Qing Dynasty, and they had neither the ability nor the interest to continue eastward.At that time, the power of the great powers in Japan was actually an inertial extension of their respective global strength, such as the position of Britain in the Japanese market.But the Americans were different, they needed to open a sea route from the West Coast to the Qing Empire, and as much as possible to ensure that the road was in the hands of the Americans themselves, for which they annexed Hawaii with somewhat ugly eating habits.They also needed a Japan that could stand up to break the situation and stand on the front line of facing the European powers in their place.That's why they are so eager to open the door to Japan, and put aside the great powers to support Japan to embark on the road of opening up and expansion, such as allowing Japan to take back the tariff right, such as acquiescing in Japan's annexation of the Ryukyus, acquiescing in Japan's invasion of Taiwan and Korea, refusing to mediate the Sino-Japanese war in the early stage, and so on.It's just that the United States didn't expect that the Qing Dynasty and Tsarist Russia would be so incompetitive, so that Japan was connived at by itself as a monster."
I agree."
President Meng immediately said to Li Hongzhang and Princess Katrina Kaf.Princess Katrina Kafu nodded: "Indeed, if they had the ability to fight us, they would have hit Nagasaki a long time ago, and if they didn't kill a group of people, it was indeed not enough to deter the Japanese."
Our ultimate goal was only to get Nagasaki and gain permanent trade privileges with Japan. ”Li Hongzhang nodded in agreement, "Yes, the great powers opened the door of the Qing Kingdom for trade, and we opened the door of Japan for trade, if the terms of trade are recognized by the Japanese government, then, Saigo Takamori, can ask us to buy arms, and we will have the ability to hold Kyushu Island." ”President Moe is overjoyed, isn't this a way to come out"After solving the Americans, do the British and French have any attitudes in the United States, do you know about this matter?"
President Moe asked Princess Katrina Kaf."
No, there is no movement at all sides, the Americans do not have long-range radios, and they should not know that we have completely annihilated Sheppel's troops."
Princess Katrina Kafu smiled."
Keep an eye on what's going on."
President Meng nodded, "They don't dare to make any moves, if they want to make a move with China in Asia, they must have a stable logistics base, land warfare, none of us are afraid that we have landed in Japan now." ”t1706231537: