Chapter 307 Daily Intervention

No matter what era, large-scale arms purchases have strong political significance, especially in interested countries.

When Zhao Dongyun had not yet entered the customs, he bought arms from Japan and Germany in order to expand his army, especially artillery. Not to mention Germany, the Germans had no influence in the Far East, and Germany's interests in the Far East, especially China, were actually the interests of arms dealers, which were related to Britain and Japan. Textiles and light industrial commodities are mainly exported to China.

At this point, it has to be emphasized that the so-called Far East interests are different for countries.

For the contemporary super empire Britain, the primary strategy in the Far East is to curb Russia's expansion, followed by China's textile and other light industry markets, Japan's heavy industry, especially warships and other arms markets. Once you know the British's Far East strategy, it is easy to understand Britain's in the Far East. There have been many diplomatic acts, including supporting Japan against Russia and selling battleships to Japan. Historically, the British supported Yuan Shikai to unify China to ensure China's business environment from destruction.

For Japan, the core interest of contemporary Japan is its own development!

Japan, an island with limited domestic demand, needs an external market for its development. The core economic pillar of contemporary Japan has three aspects. One is the export of raw silk. Contemporary Japan is the world's largest exporter of raw silk, and the total export of raw silk in 1910 will occupy the total Seventy-five percent of the output, the second is tea export, Japan is the fifth largest tea exporter in the world, and the third is the cotton cloth industry.

The first two items are not related to China. At most, there is a competitive relationship. However, the output and quality of contemporary Chinese raw silk are actually far inferior to Japan. Otherwise, they will not be Japanese raw silk in international competition, and tea does not have much to do with it. The direct conflict with contemporary China is the cotton industry.

Japanese silk and tea are sold to European and American powers, but their cotton cloth and other light industrial products are sold to China. Of course, they still have to compete with the United Kingdom and other Western countries for the market in China, but their biggest competitor is actually China's national industry.

This situation was particularly obvious after the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War. In the past, Japanese goods, especially cotton cloth, were sold to the three eastern provinces, Zhili and other northern provinces. However, after the supply of local goods was cut off on the day of the Russo-Japanese War, they were seized by a large number of domestic cloth and British cloth in China, especially in the three eastern provinces. The land is no longer the original Oriental cloth, but the domestic machine cloth of the northern national capital textile enterprise written by Fuyuan Yarn Factory and Huludao Textile Company. At present, the market share of domestic cloth in the northern region has reached 60%.

In addition to the competition between light industrial products such as cotton cloth and China, Japan also needs to import a large number of raw materials from China, including wood, bean cakes, coal, etc. At present, a considerable part of bean cakes in the northeast soybean industry are actually sold in the past.

Japan's foreign trade economic system directly affected their military and political foreign policy, which led to the subsequent competition with the Manchu Qing Dynasty. After the Russo-Japanese War, Manchu Railway was established, and the operation of the Liaodong Peninsula was a follow-up invasion of China. It can be said that all of this came from their foreign trade-oriented economic system. The source of the market and raw materials.

And for Japan in 1907, their policy towards China is also quite clear. In order to expand the market of Japanese goods in China and to curb China's resurgence, they just hope that China can fall into chaos and the country is in chaos every day. With the scuffle of warlords, this national industry will naturally not want to develop and compete with Japan's products, and if China continues to be chaotic or even finally divided, it will be a powerful neighbor for Japan.

Japan's China policy is fundamentally different from Britain's support for Yuan Shikai's initial unification of China.

In addition to the British super empire and its neighbor Japan, Russia's attitude towards China is the endless territorial greed. The Slavs' desire to expand their territory exceeds that of any nation. What they do is to be able to establish a so-called Yellow Russia, as for the so-called economic interests. It's not big. However, after Russia was shriveled in the Russo-Japanese War, it has withdrawn its bear claws. It just wants to make some economic benefits from the aftermath and let Zhao Dongyun maintain the export of materials to the Far East, especially high-intensity liquor. Basically, they will not say anything else.

This is especially true for Germany. Although they occupy Qingdao, it can only be regarded as William II's face project. Qingdao is not Germany's core interest in China. What is Germany's core interest in China: arms export!

Since the late Qing Dynasty, China has always had the habit of importing arms into Germany. This habit can be said to be deeply rooted. Arms merchants in other countries can't change it. The same is true in modern times. Whether it is Zhao Dongyun, Duan Qirui or the Southern Federation, they are the main customers of German arms dealers. In the past year, Germany's arms trade with China has reached a huge amount of nearly 20 million yuan. Among them, Zhao Dongyun's family ordered more than 5 million yuan of artillery, and the Southern Federation is even more generous. Each family has ordered a huge amount of arms of more than 10 million yuan, but although the prodigalts of the Southern Federation have bought a large number of The artillery was still defeated by Duan Qirui, causing a large number of arms purchased from Germany to fall into the hands of the Anhui army. Otherwise, how do you think Duan Qirui's hundreds of troops were armed? Basically, the Southern Federation sent people with equipment.

The Southern Federation in this era is a transport captain!

Based on the interests of German arms dealers, that is, let China's war continue. The more tragic the fight, the better. Of course, they will not say anything deliberately. Anyway, no matter who wins, they still have to find Germans to buy arms. That is to say, no matter how the situation in China has changed, anyway, this arms market Still German, even the British can only watch the Germans make a large amount of money.

France, the United States and Italy can basically ignore that they do not have any core interests in China. They have to say that some are China's commercial market, so the United States calls for opening up, while the French have fierce commercial competition with the British in the Guangdong and Guangxi region.

If you look at the Far East strategy of the countries and their policies on China, you will find that there is actually only one country that can block the unity of China's facts and have the ability to do so, that is Japan!

Not to mention whether Japan will send intervention troops to do so, at least the current withdrawal of Soviet-purchased ordnance is enough to prove that Japan has intended to obstruct Zhao Dongyun's gradual south to unify China.

"They not only detained our batch of ordnance, but also our representative in Japan has confirmed that this batch of ordnance has left Hong Kong and sailed to Shanghai. There is no doubt that I handed over the ordnance we ordered to Duan Qirui!" Zhao Dongping of the Ordnance Department is staying in Zhao Dongyun's office at this moment.

Zhao Dongyun also has a deep face. This batch of ordnance was ordered from Japan before the army entered the customs, with more than 30 75mm artillery pieces, including more than 10 of Japan's latest 38-year-style 75mm field guns.

Japan ordered more than 500 guns from Germany during the Russo-Japanese War, but at the beginning, Germany's inventory was not much and the output was not much, so there were not many actual arrivals. At the end of the Russo-Japanese War, Japan also bought a patent for its own imitation of the gun like Germany, which is very popular in later generations. The famous 38-year-old field gun.

With the large-scale mass production of the Japanese arsenal, after the Japanese 38-style field guns were batch equipped with troops, the replaced 31-year field guns and mountaineers were sold to many Chinese warlords on a large scale. Zhao Dongyun just bought a lot. In addition, he heard that Riben's 38-year-style field guns were mature, so he also proposed to buy a batch. Ri himself agreed before, but at that time, he did not expect that Zhao Dongyun would enter the customs so quickly and win many battles.

At this time, in order to restrain Zhao Dongyun's continued expansion and support Duan Qirui, it was reasonable for Japan to seize this batch of arms.

"Didn't the Ministry of Foreign Affairs know anything before?" Zhao Dongyun was also seriously dissatisfied with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs's inaction on this matter. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not know anything about such a big thing before. It was not until he sent this batch of ordnance directly to Shanghai that he hurried to learn about it. At this time, it was already too late. It is estimated that Duan Qirui is already happy in Shanghai. Accepted this batch of ordnance.

Lu Weixiang also looked gloomy: "I haven't mentioned it before, and the ordnance was reasonable before arriving at the port. It was not until they drove away our ordnance representatives that they learned!"

Since the goods were gone, Zhao Dongyun also knew that it was impossible for him to turn around and give himself. Since the fact had caused it, it was not feasible to be angry in vain. Immediately, he turned to Zhao Dongping and said, "I remember we still owed them a lot of ordnance money!"

Zhao Dongping immediately nodded and said, "On the day the goods arrived last month, this ordnance only paid the second batch, and the final payment of 200,000 yuan has not been paid yet!" Speaking of this, he thought for a moment and said, "The deposit in front of this batch of detained ordnance is 300,000 yuan!"

Zhao Dongyun said, "Well, withhold the final payment first, and you can talk about the specific Ministry of Foreign Affairs with yourself!"

Although the goods are gone, Zhao Dongyun is not going to let his deposit be wasted. Humph, if he dares to be the first year of junior high school, he dares to be the second year of junior high school!

Then he continued: "I'm afraid it will be difficult to buy ordnance in Japan in the future, and our current artillery, especially long-bore large-caliber artillery, is quite scarce. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has more contacts Germany. In addition, France and Russia can also talk about it. I won't Believe that if you have money, they won't come to make money!"

Since I don't sell it to Zhao Dongyun's arms, Zhao Dongyun will buy it from other countries. As long as he has real gold and silver, nothing can't be bought!

It's just that today's ordnance is nothing in itself. Zhao Dongyun is more worried about the meaning revealed behind it!

The next day, Zhao Dongyun held a temporary military meeting, but this meeting only said a few words about the ongoing Xuzhou campaign, and then Zhao Dongyun talked about the defense of the three eastern provinces, especially the defense of the Yalu River.