Master Yuan, start!

Should we protect our homeland, the nearby Africa, or the distant Indochina?

This multiple-choice question is not difficult to answer.

During his anxious wait, after some bargaining, the surrender ceremony was finally confirmed. It was led by Britain and renamed the "Indochina Peace Handover Ceremony", while Germany attended as an observer.

This brought the negotiations into the final and most difficult stage.

compensation!

As soon as Tang Shaoyi opened his mouth, he proposed a price that no one could accept: 2000 million francs, million taels of silver.

This number is not much, not even a fraction of the reparations France paid to Germany in the Franco-Prussian War.

However, for a great power that once dominated Europe, this compensation was indeed too insulting.

Paul Toume said that France would find it difficult to accept the demand for reparations.

Seeing this situation, Tang Shaoyi proposed a method of ceding land as compensation, that is, France unconditionally ceded Madagascar Island and at the same time allowed Chinese people to enter France's colonies in Africa to work for a period of 10 years.

As soon as this request was put forward, it was strongly opposed by Paul Toume. The importance of Africa to France is self-evident, and Madagascar Island is the gateway to France in Southeast Africa and cannot be ceded.

Faced with opposition, Tang Shaoyi calmly pointed out that France had only just colonized Madagascar and its rule there was not stable.

Even if you don't cede it, it will definitely take more energy to deal with it in the future, so it is better to get rid of it in advance.

However, when it comes to Africa, Paul Dume suddenly became confident and he firmly rejected China's request.

Seeing that the French disagreed, Tang Shaoyi's face lit up with joy, and he took the opportunity to suggest that Taiwan and Xiamen could be used as compensation.

They just ask for a high price and then pay you a low price.

This method is a very common diplomatic tactic, but it is extremely appropriate to use it at this time.

When Tang Shaoyi came up with this solution, everyone realized that the Chinese people could no longer tolerate the loss of their own land.

Finally, after some bargaining, France agreed to return Taiwan and Xiamen. At the same time, China had to protect all local property of French companies and allow them to continue operating.

France, a European power that once again showed its fangs and claws in the world after the Franco-Prussian War, has now had its claws chopped off in the Far East.

And China has also ushered in a true rise.

...

Chapter 476 The Airship Era

In early October, the heat of the scorching summer is no longer felt in Lushun Bay. The waves hit the dock with the wind, bringing the breath of autumn.

However, this autumn atmosphere does not mean bleakness.

After Lushun was established as a prefecture, the two better ports in the area were used in different fields.

The southernmost edge of the peninsula, also known as the "Lüshunkou" small port, was used as a military port.

The wide bay located dozens of miles north of Lushunkou and surrounded by Sanshan Island, known as "Dalan Bay" by local people, was renamed "Dalian Bay" and used for civilian purposes.

Although the climate is no longer hot, Dalian Port is still bustling with thousands of people, reflecting the prosperity of this largest port in Bohai Sea.

Today, there are four relatively famous ports in the Bohai region.

Counting clockwise from west to east, they are Dagu Port of Tianjin Prefecture, Yingkou Port of Niuzhuang Prefecture, Dalian Port of Lushun Prefecture, and Yantai Port of Dengzhou Prefecture.

The reason why Lushun Dalian Port has become the largest port in Bohai Bay is not only due to its unique geographical location, but also due to the support of its peers.

Among the four major ports in Bohai Sea, Tianjin Dagu Port is too far away from the main urban area of ​​Tianjin Haihe Center;

Dengzhou Yantai Port has not yet been connected to the railway;

Niuzhuang Yingkou Port is not on the main shipping route of "Korean Zhili".

Dalian Port, on the other hand, has perfectly avoided the above three shortcomings, so it has developed the fastest since its establishment.

With the continuous influx of people from Guandong, Lushun's already prosperous fishing and seafood processing industries have grown even stronger, and various small processing workshops have emerged in an endless stream.

In addition, the agricultural product processing industry is booming. As an important channel for the export of agricultural products from Northeast China, Lushun's rice milling, wood processing, salt making, and sugar making industries are also developing rapidly.

Coupled with the shipbuilding industry originally established here, it can be said that Lushun has embarked on a path of development in which light and heavy industries develop in parallel.

However, these things are not the reason why Yuan Shikai rushed to Lushun.

At the Dalian Port dock today, Yuan Xiangcheng and tens of thousands of people looked towards the east sky together, as if they were waiting for something to happen. Among the crowd, there were also many blond-haired and blue-eyed foreigners.

In Dalian Bay, a fleet of dozens of steamships was cruising back and forth not far from the shore.

On each boat, there were more than a dozen strong men wearing simple life jackets. They looked up at the sky, squinting their eyes against the dazzling sunlight in the air, and looked in the same direction.

Today, a highly anticipated "flight review" was held in Dalian Bay.

There is an airship that departs from Incheon and is expected to arrive in Lushun after more than 20 hours of travel.

After this news was released, it not only attracted domestic people, but also attracted quite a number of foreigners and reporters.

If we talk about what changes Yuan Shikai has brought to this ancient land of East Asia since his time travel.

In addition to territorial expansion, the spread of ideas, and the influence of nationalism, the most novel thing is the change in travel methods.

Ever since humans started making fire by drilling wood, the climb up the technology tree has always followed the rules set by scientific laws, which are extremely difficult to stop or change with human power.

No matter who travels to a parallel Earth or to which era, they will always have to develop technology according to the development of the Stone Age, Iron Age, Steam Age, Internal Combustion Engine and Electricity Age.

However, during the development process, some forks in the technology tree can be intervened manually.

The airship is such a unique flower that once caused a craze in the history of original space-time technology, but was short-lived.

Since Yuan Shikai attached great importance to the role of hot air balloon troops in all the wars, in order to meet the needs of combat, researchers in the Incheon Machinery Bureau continued to improve the technology, from the initial dog skin to the later chemical waterproof cloth, trying to find better balloon skin materials to reduce weight and increase floating time.

After a long period of research, China has become an international leader in this area!

In their spare time, researchers at the Incheon Machinery Bureau used materials for hot air balloon skins to produce 10 airbags, covered the outside with extra-large waterproof cloth, and finally added a small-power engine to create an airship with their own hands.

After learning about this situation, Yuan Shikai immediately ordered people to set up an "Airship Institute" within the Incheon Machinery Bureau and assigned special personnel to study airships.

In the original time and space, China missed the golden age of airship development due to the turbulent situation in the first 20 years of the 20th century.

By the 30s, when the country was initially unified, aircraft technology had gradually matured, and the country directly jumped from the airship era to the airplane era.

Yuan Xiangcheng knew that although the upcoming 20th century and even the 21st century would be dominated by airplanes, airships with large load capacity and long range still had great civilian value in history before the outbreak of World War II.

At that time, there was a super-large airship route across the Atlantic between the United States and Germany every month, and the number of people transported on a single trip could even exceed 1000.

This passenger capacity is more than twice that of the Airbus A21, the largest civil airliner in the 380st century.

21世纪，飞艇的速度是没法和上百公里时速的汽车、2-300公里时速的高铁、8-900公里时速的飞机相比的。

However, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, airships with speeds of more than ten kilometers per hour were not particularly backward compared to current transportation competition.

After all, the designed speed of the railways outside the Great Wall and in North Korea is only 30 kilometers per hour.

Therefore, considering the comprehensive cargo volume and speed, Yuan Xiangcheng believes that even without considering the subsequent military use, the civilian value of the airship is very high.

The reason why it failed to become the mainstream in later generations was that after the crash of large airships such as the Hindenburg, due to the inertia of technical failure, they were at a disadvantage in the subsequent route competition with airplanes.

You just need to pay more attention to safety measures during manned space flight. Once the technology matures, you can replace hydrogen with helium and no longer have to worry about the risk of explosion.

"I'm coming!"

Someone with sharp eyes spotted a small black dot on the horizon.

A shout made the people near Dalian Bay look in the direction of the sound, and even the foreigners who could not understand Chinese raised their heads.

"Look, looksky!"

Beside Yuan Xiangcheng, little Hoover, who had just been sent to the Far East by his uncle, exclaimed:

",

Itsbird?

? ”

Looking at the somewhat immature and surprised future American president, Yuan Xiangcheng smiled and replied:

"No!"

Chapter 477: Bottom-level Perspective

On the train heading north from Lushun, Yuan Shikai looked at the young Hoover who was leaning against the window and gazing into the distance, and was thinking about how to use the current good relations between China and the United States to promote the renewal and development of domestic heavy industry.

When Hoover Jr. arrived in the Far East this time, he had two duties on his shoulders.

First, he was appointed by his uncle as the U.S. Department of Commerce's Special Envoy to China. This wasn't a formal position, but rather a temporary one created by President William McKinley to maintain frequent communication between the White House and Yuan Shikai on U.S.-China trade issues.

Second, as the general manager of Carnegie Steel's Far East region, he was responsible for continuously transferring the already exploded, excess and backward production capacity in the United States to the Far East.

After all, the current American railway boom has been over for some time, and World War I has not yet broken out. The huge industrial production capacity can only be consumed by the private sector, and the problem of overcapacity has gradually emerged.

These two burdens may seem like heavy tasks, but in fact they are not difficult, because both trade and steel production capacity transfer have been running stably for many years.

All Hoover needs to do is ensure that these two things continue to operate stably on the original basis.

Therefore, compared to the business which has not changed much,

At this time, Hoover was more interested in exotic scenery. He leaned on the train window and looked at the ever-changing natural scenery on the Liaodong Peninsula with some curiosity.

Near the railway, it is now the harvest season. Soybeans, corn, and a small amount of experimental rice stand tall and full in this vast Northeast land.

The people who were harvesting crops on both sides of the field were no longer surprised by the train. They put their sickles beside them and squatted on the edge of the field, some of them with homemade cigarettes in their mouths.

In their spare time, a few people gathered together and pointed at the moving train.

A middle-aged farmer named Liu pointed at the yellow sun and twelve-star flag hanging from the locomotive and shouted, "Old Zhang, look!

There's a red cloth hanging in front of the car. Could it be some high-ranking official traveling? "

The farmer, known as Lao Zhang, glanced at the speeding train and explained, "What red cloth? That's called a national flag!

Do you understand the national flag? Didn’t you see it in town a few days ago? How come you forgot it in the blink of an eye? "

The old farmer surnamed Liu replied unconvincedly, "I'm an old farmer from Caozhou, Shandong. I'm not one of those child soldiers from the Production Corps who have national flags hanging from their beams every day. So what if I don't recognize them?"

However, he also knew that he was not in the right, so he did not dwell on it too much and continued to ask, "Sir, is he as high an official as the former county magistrate?"

Lao Zhang took a puff of his cigarette and said, "To be able to ride on a special train, he must be at least at the level of a provincial governor. Oh, that's the level of an official at the level of a governor in the Qing Dynasty, much higher than a county magistrate."

Before the outbreak of the French War, the areas outside the Great Wall, which served as the base of the National Revolutionary Army and Yuan Shikai, were gradually undergoing modern official reforms.

One of the important changes was to change the official titles of "governor", "prefect" and "county magistrate" in the Qing Dynasty to the more clear and straightforward "provincial governor", "prefectural governor" and "county magistrate".

Therefore, people outside the Great Wall are now gradually changing their names.