Just when East China was studying the positioning and reorganization of the Marine Corps, Russian negotiator Witt and his entourage arrived in Harbin again, and negotiations between East China and Russia were reopened.

This time, Russia's attitude was obviously much more pragmatic, and Witte did not have the constraints of St. Petersburg, so the negotiations went much more smoothly than the last one.

The first thing the two sides negotiated was the amount of compensation, in the last negotiation, the amount of compensation issued by East China ** was 1 billion rubles, and now the negotiations are going on, it must be increased on the basis of this amount, Bi Jing is the first thing Russia can't bear, so Qin Zheng proposed that the amount of compensation is 1.5 billion rubles.

Witte first said that Russia can agree to add another part to the amount of the last reparation, but believes that the indemnity of 1.5 billion rubles is too high, and Witte also frankly admitted that now Russia's domestic economy is basically collapsing, and now it can only be maintained by French funds, if East China ** insists on the amount of reparations of 1.5 billion rubles, Russia will definitely go bankrupt, so it is unable to repay such a huge amount of reparations, and then even East China ** It was possible to occupy the Russian Far East, and even the whole of Siberia, and not to receive an indemnity from Russia in the amount of a ruble.

At the same time, Witte also pointed out that although the financial situation of East China is better than that of Russia, this war also involved a lot of manpower and material resources in East China, and caused huge consumption to East China, and ending the war as soon as possible is also beneficial to East China. Therefore, Russia hopes that East China** will be able to reduce the amount of reparations to 1.2 billion rubles, which is the maximum amount that Russia can accept.

As for the attitude of the Russian side, after consultation between Qin Zheng and Qingdao, it was finally determined that East China could accept the amount of 1.2 billion rubles in compensation, but 200 million rubles of which must be paid in gold rubles, while the remaining 1 billion rubles were converted into four currencies: pounds, francs, US dollars, and German marks. This is also the bottom line of East China, if Russia refuses, then this negotiation can also be declared broken, East China will rather take the risk of not being able to get a ruble indemnity, and will never take another step back on this basis.

After receiving this condition from East China, Witte couldn't help but smile bitterly, this blow from East China ** was indeed quite uncomfortable for Russia, although East China ** gave in and accepted the amount of 1.2 billion rubles in compensation, but asked for 200 million to be paid in gold rubles, making it difficult for Russia to refuse and accept.

The gold ruble is a gold currency issued by Russia in 1897, with a face value of 5 rubles, of which 1 ruble is about 0.774 grams of gold. In fact, the issuance of the gold ruble was one of the great achievements of Witte in Russian politics.

It turns out that after the middle of the 19th century, with the rapid development of European countries, the turnover of industrial and trade funds has also expanded dramatically, so gold has become more and more important in the circulation of money. Britain began to implement the gold standard as early as 1823, stipulating that one pound is equal to 7.322 grams of gold, due to the prominent position of Britain in the world economic system at that time, so it also established an international gold standard system centered on the pound sterling and based on gold. Other countries followed suit, with Canada adopting the gold standard in 1853 and the United States and Germany adopting the gold standard in 1873. After the 1870s, other major European and American countries also adopted the gold standard instead of the gold and silver standard or the silver standard.

Until the 1890s, Russia was still using the silver standard, which weakened the ruble in the international financial markets and put Russia at a long-term disadvantage in foreign trade and credit. With the introduction of a large amount of foreign capital in Russia, it is urgent to use gold, an internationally accepted value scale, to calculate when accepting loans and repaying loan interest. Therefore, the needs of Russia's overall economic and financial development prompted Werther to implement monetary reform in Russia and change to the gold standard. By this time, Russia had accumulated more than 1,000 tons of gold, which also provided sufficient capital for Russia's monetary reform.

On January 14, 1897, the Russian State Council approved Witte's proposal to implement a gold standard in Russia, and on January 15, the Ministry of Finance issued a general decree to the whole country, implementing the monetary gold standard from now on, confirming that gold and rubles are freely convertible, and issuing gold rubles. At this time, the total value of gold in the Russian treasury was about 1.5 billion rubles, and on the basis of such a huge amount of gold, Russia also successfully completed the monetary reform of the gold standard, and it was also the largest political capital of Werther.

However, after 1900, Russia was engaged in the competition in Northeast China, expanded its armaments, and launched a fierce confrontation with Japan, so it had to borrow heavily from foreign countries, and before the Russo-Japanese War began, Russia's foreign debt had reached 4 billion rubles, of which 3 billion rubles were purchased by France, so Russia had to pay 330 million gold rubles to France to maintain the ruble's credit in the French financial market.

After the start of the Russo-Japanese War, due to Russia's successive defeats in the war, the domestic economy deteriorated seriously, and the ruble also depreciated sharply in the international financial market. Now the Russian gold ruble is less than 500 million rubles.

Now East China is demanding 200 million gold rubles, almost cutting off nearly half of Russia's existing gold rubles, which is certainly unacceptable to Russia. But the rejection of this condition of East China ** means that Russia can only choose between paying 1.5 billion rubles in reparations and breaking down negotiations.

The breakdown of negotiations naturally cannot be chosen, and the refusal to pay gold rubles means that Russia needs to pay an additional 300 million rubles, and this loss is also unbearable for Russia, because East China does not accept rubles, but requires conversion into pounds, francs, US dollars, and German marks to pay, and now the ruble has depreciated sharply in the international financial market, which will make Russia pay a greater price.

If the gold ruble is paid, it means that Russia only needs to convert 1 billion rubles into foreign currency, which will undoubtedly make it easier for Russia, but it will lose nearly half of the gold, which will make it difficult for Russia to recover its economy after the war, so it is indeed a dilemma. However, on such a major issue of choice, of course, Witte could not decide, so he could only report to the country and ask St. Petersburg to make a decision.

3 days later, St. Petersburg replied to Witte that he could accept the conditions of East China ** and pay 200 million gold rubles, after all, it is still necessary to look at the present first, and a little less is a little, and there are a large number of gold mines in Russia, even if the gold rubles are lost, no more mines can be made up. But Russia also put forward a condition, that is, the remaining 1 billion rubles must be converted at the rate of 1 ruble worth 0.774 grams of gold, and not at the value of rubles in the international financial market. Since the ruble has now depreciated by more than 30% in the international financial market, Russia will be able to save more than 300 million rubles if the ratio of 1 ruble is worth 0.774 grams of gold.

Soon, East China also replied that it could accept Russia's request. In fact, East China has received about 180 million pounds in reparations from Britain, France, Japan and the Netherlands, which can not only make up for the cost of the war, but also nearly half of the surplus. Moreover, for a country like Russia, we must not let go of a horse, and we must have as much as we want.

But the request to pay 200 million gold rubles, in fact, is to increase the gold reserves of East China, Bijing gold is a hard currency for international trade, even in the old time and space, no longer implement the gold standard, but gold is still the most valuable capital, countries are also hoarding a large number of gold, so for East China, of course, the more the merrier.

Moreover, the silver standard is actually implemented in East China, but neither silver dollars nor paper money can be circulated internationally. Of course, since the establishment of East China, the main market is still in China, and foreign imports are mainly to buy machinery, munitions, food, etc., but the demand is not large, and the use of foreign capital is to attract investment in East China. Therefore, although the foreign trade of East China is still in deficit, it can basically maintain the trade balance by relying on the war reparations received before and the income from the sale of resources.

However, after the war in the Far East, the foreign trade of East China will definitely expand, the original main import of machinery will definitely expand, and at the same time will also import a large number of other industrial products, in addition to further expand the introduction of foreign capital, if East China still implements the silver standard system, it will undoubtedly cause serious repercussions to the foreign trade of East China, and it is not conducive to the currency of East China to the world.

Of course, after the Far East War, East China received a huge amount of reparations, foreign exchange is sufficient, and it can also support import expenditures for a period of time, but in the long run, East China will sooner or later have to change the monetary system, from the silver standard to the gold standard, or the gold and silver double standard, then it is necessary to reserve a large amount of gold now, and make full preparations for the future currency reform.

200 million gold rubles, about 155 tons of gold, which is naturally considerable, you must know that the gold inventory in East China is less than 80 tons. Therefore, the actual value of the 200 million gold rubles to East China** is far more than the value of the currency it represents.

And the remaining 1 billion rubles, even if converted at the ratio of 1 ruble worth 0.774 grams of gold, is about 105 million pounds, which is already a huge amount of compensation, and there is no need for East China to insist on using international financial exchange rates. And what Werther said is not wrong, now East China also needs to stop the war and restore peace.

In this way, after several days of repeated distance, East China and Russia finally reached an agreement on the amount of reparations, and also completed an arduous task, making a good start for this negotiation.