Master Yuan, start!

Hearing this somewhat unfamiliar but refreshing expression, Roosevelt's heart, which was originally full of confrontation, suddenly changed.

Seeing the olive branch extended by Yuan Shikai, Theodore Roosevelt, the US Secretary of the Navy, who was highly expected by President William, fell into deep thought.

You have to know that the ambitions of American politicians in the late 19th century had not yet become as inflated as they were after World War II.

For them, being able to enjoy the east coast of the Pacific Ocean alone was an unexpected surprise.

After all, the slogan "Americans' America" ​​has been shouted for so many years, but European countries have not taken it seriously, and they still continue to fan the flames in America.

For the first time, Roosevelt felt that the guarantee made to an emerging regime that was at war with the old European colonial power had a chance of success.

It's not about morality, but about feasibility of interests.

"It doesn't seem impossible?"

Chapter 474 Before the Peace Talk

Inside the Guangzhou Governor's office, the sun was scorching hot. Several grape vines were entangled together, climbing along the bamboo racks and covering the entire courtyard.

The broad grape leaves are like small palm-leaf fans, blocking the scorching sun and bringing patches of green shade.

The sea breeze blowing from Guangzhou Bay, carrying a slightly fishy smell, filled the Li family's old house, and also brought a touch of coolness to Yuan Xiangcheng, who was hiding under the grape trellis and lying in a rocking chair to take a nap during his morning break.

"This Lingnan is so hot and unbearable!"

The gentle breeze was far from enough to make Yuan Xiangcheng feel comfortable physically and mentally.

A few days ago, Xu Shiguang from the attendant's office found two students from Lingnan University to stand next to Yuan Xiangcheng and fan him.

However, after waking up and seeing this scene, Yuan Xiangcheng was extremely angry. He called Xu Shiguang and scolded him, then asked him to apologize to the two students and let them go back to school.

Therefore, Yuan Xiangcheng can only rely on himself to fan himself with a palm-leaf fan to keep cool.

Today, Yuan Xiangcheng misses the cooling devices that were popular in thousands of households in his previous life.

But now, let alone air conditioning, even the most basic electric fan is a luxury.

It’s not that electric fans haven’t been invented yet. In 1880, Americans invented an “electric fan” in the modern sense.

However, this type of fan is extremely noisy, the blades can injure people, and the motor can overheat and stop working from time to time.

Often the time it takes to fan the fan is not as long as the time it takes to repair the fan.

Therefore, Yuan Xiangcheng simply did not use it.

The sultry weather in Guangzhou soon reminded Yuan Xiangcheng of the area outside the Great Wall with snow falling all over the sky in winter.

However, just as this thought came to his mind, he smiled bitterly with helplessness. As long as the war against France was not over, he would not be able to return north.

Moreover, even outside the Great Wall, the summer is still hot.

It’s just that the hot period is slightly shorter than in the south.

Alas, helpless!

Yuan Xiangcheng stood up, picked up a ladle from the big vat beside him, scooped some cold water, and sprinkled it on his shorts.

To be honest, Yuan Xiangcheng's current material needs can be said to be extremely low.

Not to mention the emperor or a prince, he is probably not as good as a prefect in the Qing Dynasty.

The reason he did this was simply to give others the image of a leader who was "upright and selfless."

After all, in this land, the role of leaders is immeasurable.

If the upper beam is straight, the lower beam may not be crooked.

But if the upper beam is not straight, the lower beam will almost certainly be crooked.

Yuan Xiangcheng knew very well that he had to set a good example for the people of the world who had just emerged from the feudal era, and treating everyone equally was extremely important.

However, compared with another leader who was good at showmanship, Yuan Xiangcheng thought he was far from enough.

The poor descendants of Amaterasu, in order to stop the growing protests in the country and ease the pressure of revolution, Emperor Meiji forcibly leased the two warships, Fuji and Yashima, which were the lifeblood of the new Japanese Navy, to the country.

In order to give an explanation to the people, Emperor Meiji even announced that he would reduce his salary to one tenth of his original salary.

Yuan Xiangcheng could never learn this skill of showing off and pretending to be rich.

After all, is Emperor Meiji's salary really that important?

The Ministry of Finance takes care of all his food, clothing and daily expenses. Can the emperor go to the street to buy things and bargain with street vendors?

They underestimated the ideas of freedom and civil rights in the late 19th century and thought that the emperor only needed to pretend to do so to satisfy the people.

But in fact, as the number of educated people in Japan increases, this trick will no longer work sooner or later.

The key is to reform the political system.

But could Emperor Meiji do this?

Yuan Xiangcheng was not optimistic.

The imperial system is contrary to the ideas of nature and freedom and civil rights. No matter how much the emperor says he is diligent and loves the people, he is still an oppressor.

If it were the original time and space, Emperor Meiji could still rely on the huge reparations brought by the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 to buy off the domestic opposition classes, give small benefits to the lower classes, and ease the conflicts.

However, in this time and space, Japan does not have such an opportunity.

After his arrival, the Qing Dynasty was much stronger than in the original time and space. Not only did Japan fail to gain any advantage in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, but it could not even compete with foreign goods in ordinary export trade.

It can be said that after Japan's Meiji Restoration, the accumulated contradictions are erupting bit by bit.

If it doesn't expand, it will die. This is Japan's destiny.

Whether it is a fascist country or not, it will not change.

However, this kind of outbreak is exactly what Yuan Shikai wanted to see, because only when Japan was in chaos could their threat to the country become smaller and smaller.

Even if Japan, which is too weak, forms an alliance with European countries and is willing to be a pawn, it will be difficult for it to pose a threat to the domestic 6.

This is a gradual path. After all, I am not qualified to subvert Japan head-on at the moment.

Therefore, they had no choice but to keep dragging Japan into the war, forcing it, which was planning to recuperate, to participate in the war.

Let the Meiji elites focus on the war, only then will they relax their control at home.

Yuan Xiangcheng believed that there was no doubt about whether it would succeed.

At the end of the 19th century, Japan had not yet implemented imperial education, or rather, they simply did not have the money to implement imperial education.

The hunger of not having rice to eat will surely overcome their piety towards the emperor.

But now is not the time to deal with Japan. Now is the time to enjoy the fruits of victory!

The Spanish sent a big gift package to Luzon, and the German fleet sent by William II further weakened the French fighting will.

The de-legalization of Indochina is a foregone conclusion!

Moreover, all the spoils in Tonkin, Vietnam, have been counted.

Although the French retreated, they did not have time to destroy some local facilities, and most of the fixed assets were preserved.

During the more than ten years of colonization in Tonkin, France invested about 2000 million francs, or million taels of silver.

The Battle of Hanoi was lost too quickly, and all those light industrial factories and plantation processing bases fell into the hands of the National Revolutionary Army.

Together with the "legal assets" seized from the people of Tonkin, the estimated harvest is about 2500 million taels of silver.

Fortunately, most of these are fixed assets. If they were converted into real silver, it would be extremely difficult to transport them back to the country.

As for the remaining nine silver coins, the Northeast Secondary Industry Bank, which would be renamed the China Eighth Bank, chose to issue a kind of "Zhonghua Banknote" (abbreviated as "Huabi") which could be exchanged for "4 Northeast Banknote" at a one-to-one ratio to purchase them.

Of course, this does not include Central Vietnam and the land of Tonkin, Vietnam that is already in its hands.

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However, Yuan Shikai knew that the infiltration and assimilation of Vietnam would be a long process, and relying solely on colonization would no longer work in those days.

It's not so bad in Tonkin. After all, the people here don't look much different from those in Guangxi, and they have also been ruled by the Central Plains dynasty.

It is enough to make local intellectuals understand that in such a world where the strong prey on the weak, independence is oppressed.

Faced with the northern power that had expelled the Tartars and completely shared the same language and culture, Yuan Xiangcheng believed that the Vietnamese would make the right choice.

After all, in order to resist France, they all asked for help from the Qing Dynasty, which was dressed in "fishy and smelly barbaric clothes". Now, they may not be unwilling to be incorporated into the territory of China.

As for the Central Vietnam area, which has rarely been involved in the Central Plains dynasties, Yuan Shikai has decided to focus on economic control.

Of course, the most important thing at present is to relocate people to these two places. As long as the proportion of Chinese people reaches a certain level, many invisible problems in the future will be solved.

In addition, this war allowed the country to control the mineral resources in northern Vietnam.

Although the prospectors sent out have not been able to accurately measure the reserves, Yuan Xiangcheng knows very well that Vietnam’s largest iron ore mine is already in his hands!

With a total reserve of 5 million tons in the Ha Tinh area and 3 million tons of mineable iron ore, and a large number of skilled Vietnamese miners, it will only take one or two years for the iron ore to be turned into steel for construction and into warships!

In addition to the Ha Tinh iron ore mine, there is also a medium-sized coal mine in northern Vietnam and a large amount of rice resources.

In Yuan Xiangcheng's mind, Vietnam is the cornerstone of the future economic boom in South China.

Of course, in addition to the fact that the Ha Tinh Iron Mine is easy to mine because of its close distance, the more important point is that it is not currently part of the country.

这点资源1，说实话0，远远比0不上7富饶的关6外地9带。14+36;

The reason why they targeted Vietnam's Ha Tinh Province was that they learned the tricks of the United States in later generations to use other people's tricks and reserve them for their own use.

If the control of Tonkin, Vietnam is already underway, then the conquest of Central Vietnam has just begun.

As for the Cochinchina area, Germany can do whatever it wants, whether it decides to bombard Saigon Port or massacre the French, it has nothing to do with it.

At present, the country cannot reach that far.

Moreover, Yuan Xiangcheng knew clearly that the most anxious person now was not himself, but Britain!

Britain acquiesced to Germany's move to the Far East in order to combat French influence, but did not intend to let Germany replace France.

Although the war between the two places has not yet ended, Yuan Shikai has already realized that it is only a matter of time before Indochina completely surrenders.

After the victory of the naval battle, the entire central Vietnam area, from Hanoi to Hue, within hundreds of miles, was filled with the rumbling sound of artillery.

The National Revolutionary Army in Guangxi was also not idle. They took advantage of the fact that the French Army had lost the support of naval artillery and advanced to the city of Lianzhou. Sweeping across Qinlian was just around the corner!

It's time to think about something else!

Yuan Xiangcheng tapped his feet lightly, causing the recliner to rock slowly. The bunches of green grapes above his head kept getting bigger in his eyes, as well as the vast territory in his mind that covered half of the Pacific Ocean.