At the end of the first round of talks with Qin Zheng, the two sides reached three major principles: first, the Qing court assigned Shandong Province to the jurisdiction of the traverser, and it was still under the rule of the Qing court in name, but it exercised complete autonomy internally, and the traversal group handed over Beijing to the Qing court, and completely withdrew its troops from Beijing and the surrounding areas, and only kept one office in Beijing, with responsibilities and powers equivalent to those of the legations of various countries; second, Tianjin was divided equally, and the traversal clique returned the old city of Tianjin to the Qing court, while the former Tianjin concession area was under the jurisdiction of the traversal clique, with the same responsibilities and powers as Shandong Province and the customs of TianjinThird, the Qing court agreed that the Cross Crossing Group would have a piece of land autonomy in Shanghai, and its rights and responsibilities would be shared in the Shanghai Concession.

Overnight, Li Hongzhang sent a telegram to the Qing court in Xi'an on the results of today's consultations, asking the Qing court to decide whether or not to agree with these three major principles, so that the details of the negotiations could continue.

After receiving Li Hongzhang's telegram, the Empress Dowager Cixi and the Guangxu Emperor did not dare to slack off, and immediately gathered all the ministers to discuss whether to accept these three major principles. As a matter of fact, the Qing court did not have much objection to Article 1 and Article 3, because the exchange of Shandong for Beijing had already reached a consensus within the Qing court, and naturally no one objected at this time, and as for the overseas Chinese's request to set up an office in Beijing, it was a trivial matter that could be completely agreed; although the request of overseas Chinese to set up a "concession" in Shanghai was somewhat unexpected, it was not a big deal; anyway, there were enough concessions in Shanghai, and they did not care about another one. However, the overseas Chinese resolutely refused to completely cede Tianjin, which made the Qing court very undecided.

Tianjin's geographical location was too important for Beijing, and although the Qing court was now interested in establishing good relations with overseas Chinese, it did make it difficult for the Qing court to rest assured, and from Cixi's heart, it was better to let foreigners occupy Tianjin than hand over Tianjin to overseas Chinese. Although foreigners are cruel and terrible, arrogant and greedy, they cannot be regarded as a serious trouble, because after all, foreigners are not of Chinese ethnicity, and it is impossible to get the recognition of the Chinese, so no matter how the land is ceded and reparated, the foreigners will not fully occupy China, and will not endanger the rule of the Qing court, in a sense, the foreigners will even support or support the Qing court, as long as the Qing court is willing to protect the interests of foreigners.

The overseas Chinese are different, they are not only the Chinese ethnic group, but also the descendants of the previous dynasty, this alone is enough to arouse the vigilance of the Qing court, not to mention that the overseas Chinese also have their own army, and by defeating the Eight-Nation Alliance, they have gained a high reputation, whether it is in that dynasty, it is a great threat to the ruler, and the overseas Chinese occupy Tianjin, which means that they can launch an attack on Beijing at any time, and now Cixi just wants to live a comfortable life in peace and stability for a few years, but does not want to deal with the threat from Tianjin at any time.

Although Cixi did not say this, the ministers undoubtedly understood and supported it, so after three days of negotiation, the Qing court sent a telegram back to Li Hongzhang, demanding that the overseas Chinese still insist on ceding Tianjin.

And after Li Hongzhang received the telegram, he couldn't help but smile bitterly, he didn't know the psychology of the Empress Dowager Cixi, but the current form was stronger than people, and he couldn't help but feel the old lady's mind. Li Hongzhang did not negotiate with the traverser, because he understood that even negotiation was useless, but immediately replied to Xi'an with a telegram, explaining that the overseas Chinese had no possibility of ceding Tianjin, and if the imperial court insisted on asking the overseas Chinese for Tianjin, I am afraid that it would anger the overseas Chinese.

After receiving Li Hongzhang's reply, Cixi was also in a dilemma, and the ministers couldn't come up with any good way, and just when everyone was at a loss, Guangxu expressed his opinion: At present, it is better to return to Beijing as soon as possible, and everything else can be done slowly, not to mention that it is not easy to recover the old city of Tianjin.

After listening to the emperor's speech, everyone also felt reasonable, and after thinking about it for another day, Cixi finally made up her mind to accept these three major principles, and at the same time ordered Li Hongzhang to negotiate the details with overseas Chinese as soon as possible.

In fact, in the past few days waiting for the Qing court's reply, Li Hongzhang has already begun to prepare for the negotiation of relevant details with the traveler in accordance with these three principles, and with Yuan Shikai, Li Jingfang, Zhang Peilun and others discussed the details and terms, although they received a telegram from the Qing court requesting that they must return to Tianjin, but Li Hongzhang did not change, because Li Hongzhang knew very well in his heart that the Qing court had no bargaining chips with overseas Chinese at all, so in the end they could only accept the conditions of overseas Chinese, otherwise what else could they do, unless the empress dowager and the emperor planned to move the capital to Xi'an.

And Yuan Shikai did not dare to hide it from Li Hongzhang, and reported to Li Hongzhang that he negotiated with overseas Chinese and asked overseas Chinese to send troops to Jinan in advance.

After hearing this, Li Hongzhang not only did not reproach Yuan Shikai for making his own ideas and acting recklessly, but instead praised Yuan Shikai for doing the right thing, because the overseas Chinese's demand for the occupation of Shandong has already been decided by the overall situation, and whether the Qing court agrees or not, there can be no change. Therefore, Li Hongzhang also decided to follow Yuan Shikai's proposal and discuss the details and terms in the next negotiations.

Of course, not everyone agreed with Yuan Shikai's behavior, Zhang Peilun reminded Li Hongzhang in private that Yuan Shikai was ambitious, and he was too bold and reckless, and regarded the imperial court system as nothing, and he was afraid of heresy in the future, so he should not trust Yuan Shikai too much. However, Li Hongzhang didn't care about this, thinking that in this extraordinary period, he could only do things urgently, and this also shows that Yuan Shikai dared to take responsibility, not stick to small details, be flexible, and be able to adapt to changes. If everything has to be considered to conform to the imperial court system, then nothing can be done, in fact, Li Hongzhang himself often does some things that are in line with the imperial court system.

And Li Hongzhang is preparing here, and the crossing group is also discussing the matter of taking over the Shandong region in an all-round way. At present, there are two main ways to take over the Shandong region within the group, one is the "rural encirclement of the city" type formulated before, that is, the control of the rural areas is completed through the implementation of land reform in the rural areas outside the effect, and then gradually expanded to the county seat, and then controls the entire territory of Shandong.

The advantage of adopting the bottom-up method lies in the advancement of step by step, steady and steady, first control the grassroots, lay a solid foundation for the rule of the group in Shandong, and at the same time control the grassroots, gradually cultivate a group of local administrative management talents, and then gradually upward, you can basically determine the rule in Shandong, and the early control of Jiaozhou, Gaomi, Jimo County, is basically the use of this model, but also accumulated a certain amount of experience, so there will be no major accidents.

However, the disadvantage of this method is that it takes a long time to see the effect, after all, it takes time to control the grassroots and carry out land reform, and because of the lack of control over the local high-level, it is easy to be violently resisted by local forces. Of course, these shortcomings are not insurmountable, and if they are violently resisted by local forces, they can also be suppressed with violence, but there is a difficult problem to solve, that is, from the bottom to the top, the law needs to invest a large number of local managers in the early stage, whether it is through the group or the local naturalized people.

According to the local administrative division of the Qing court, Shandong Province was divided into 10 prefectures, 2 Zhili prefectures, 8 scattered prefectures, and 96 counties. If only the county seat is controlled, the crossing group must set up 96 teams, and according to the average team of 15 traversers, more than 1,400 traversers are needed, which accounts for almost 4 percent of the current number of non-military traversers. It is enough to make the current crossing group hurt, and even if it controls the county, not everyone can do it, and it must have a certain amount of local management experience, but the current crossing group is still a local naturalized citizen, and it is obvious that there are so many local management personnel.

And because Li Hongzhang proposed to the crossing group that the Qing court could let the traveler serve as the governor of Shandong, the chief secretary, the envoy, the governor, the commander-in-chief, and the officials of various prefectures, so that the crossing group could package all the officialdom of Shandong, and some people proposed another model of controlling Shandong, that is, the emergence of the top-down method. It is to first obtain the highest administrative position in Shandong Province, and then slowly develop downward. That is, he first took over the official positions of governor of Shandong, secretary of the political department, envoy of the inspector, and Taoist platform to manage the affairs of the whole province, and then obtained the highest official position in the prefecture and prefecture, and then expanded to the scattered prefectures and counties below.

The advantage of adopting this method is that it can allow the group to obtain full control of Shandong Province in a relatively short period of time, and there are not many local management personnel who need to invest in the early stage, which can be done by the current human resources conditions of the group. However, the disadvantage lies in the fact that the ruling foundation in Shandong is not solid, and it may be hollowed out by local forces, and due to the lack of control, it is easy to cause major accidents, and at the same time, the crossing group also has to bear the grievances of the grassroots people, and bear the blame for some harmful acts of local forces.

It can be said that both methods have their advantages, and there is no perfect solution.