"Restoration? Can you be sure? ”

"Yes, that's the most logical conclusion we can draw from all the sources. Your Excellency Prime Minister. The middle-aged man in his forties in a suit said very calmly.

"Well, that's the case" Terauchi Masaki touched his bald head, he still trusted the middle-aged man in front of him very much, "Zong Fangjun, in this case, can we do something for the benefit of the empire?" ”

Kotaro Munakata smiled slightly, opened his briefcase, and handed Prime Minister Masatsuki Terauchi a report. "Prime Minister, I think this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and the choice of the Empire will be very important, and this decision is only for you to make."

The temple that took the report did not open, he just silently sent the cup of tea that had just been sifted to the sect, the sect bowed, and then took the tea cup with both hands over the top, and the two tasted the tea silently, and then there was no word.

Munakata's knowledge of China made him a highly trusted China expert by the Japanese military, and Terauchi worked with him during the Russo-Japanese War, and he trusted him very much in his vision and ability. Kotaro Munakata was appreciated by the Japanese top brass not only because of his espionage career behind enemy lines, but also because of his strategic foresight that was different from ordinary spies. Zongfang is a scholar-type figure, who has read thousands of books and traveled thousands of miles in China for a long time, which has given him a deep understanding of China's people's conditions and political style. At the request of the Japanese high-level, he revised and completed two analysis reports, "The Tendency of China's General Trend" and "Suggestions on China," which made an incisive and nuanced analysis of China and offered suggestions and suggestions for Japan's conquest of China.

In the article "The Tendency of China's General Trend", he argues that corruption in China is pervasive throughout the whole people, and the original belief system of Confucius and Mencius has become the material for the imperial examination and the ladder for officials. Zongfang pointed out that the state is a collection of the people, and the people are a "molecule" of the state organization, and once the "elements" are corrupted, how can the state be strong? The "elements" in China are collectively corrupted, and the vitality of the country is lost. He estimated that in 10 years at the earliest and 30 years at the latest, China "will inevitably fall apart and show a major change." In fact, if it weren't for the contrarian rise of the Shandong Chamber of Commerce and the National Defense Force, China would have been caught in a warlord melee now, after all, no matter how far the Zong side is, it can't be compared with Wu Chenxuan and Wu Daguan, who controlled the cheating base and changed his life against the sky.

In "Sayings to China", Kotaro Munakata pointed out more specifically that Japan must unite with China in order to confront the West, but that between China and Japan "if there is no great war, there can be no great peace; After a great war and a great victory, China will know that Japan's strength is invincible before it can achieve synergistic results." Therefore, it must first "suppress and subdue China with force," and "the benevolence and righteousness of the people are not the way to control the Chinese." Therefore, he suggested that the Japanese military, which was winning victories at that time, "must overcome all difficulties and capture the enemy's capital city of Beijing," and then "enter the throat of the Yangtze River, occupy the important areas of the Yangtze River, cut off the communication between the north and the south, and plunge the enemy country into a place where there is no way to do it, so that the government and people of the enemy country will know the real defeat, and then achieve our goal." To this end, he proposed nine specific measures to suppress China, which became one of the blueprints for the Treaty of Shimonoseki in the future.

Zongfang suggested that after the iron-blooded policy, it should be implemented with the heart of "fairness and sincerity, and treating the people like sons" in the occupied areas, so as to sweep away the "old evils and poisons" of Chinese politics and eliminate the "hatred of the Chinese" toward Japan, and "make the hearts of the two countries harmonious and harmonious, like a family." He therefore called on the Japanese authorities to pay attention to this "heavy responsibility" issue and to make good use of the civil affairs officials in the occupied areas.

In fact, the later War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression was carried out according to the idea of Kotaro Munakata, the Japanese army first hoped to capture the capital Nanjing to deter China from seeking peace, and did not achieve the goal to expand the war to control China's East China, Jiangnan and other economically developed areas and transportation towns, in an attempt to use economic strangulation to force the Chinese government to shrink slowly, although the final result of the War of Resistance was the collapse of Japan, but the idea of promoting peace with war and raising war with war was still implemented.

At this moment, through the information provided by Kawashima Naniwa's General Staff Headquarters, the Chinese Intelligence Bureau, and the Shina Branch of the Black Dragon Society, after nearly half a year of careful analysis and bold speculation, he came to a conclusion that was unbelievable to him. The recovery of Qingdao, the dispatch of troops to Europe, the extermination of the revolutionary party, the recovery of the southwest, the entry of the army into Tibet, and even the recent anti-corruption and anti-corruption all seem to be independent decisions, but a series of actions are all accumulating popularity for the chief Wu Da. In today's China, the Nanjing government is the right one, but Li Yuanlong's presidential decree leaving the Yangtze River Road has become a piece of waste paper, and in China, from the high-ranking officials and nobles to the ordinary people, who does not know that Wu Chenxuan, the leader of the Xinhua Party and the general minister of national defense, is the head of the country.

Thinking about the fact that many people now think that the chief minister is the emperor, and the president is just a scholar or something like that, behind this joke actually shows a very profound problem, although China seems to have awakened, but his strange political system of the lord and the weak and the strong is a thin chain between the legs and feet of this lion, even if it can't restrain his pace, it will slow him down. One day, Kotaro Munakata was sorting out the briefing he had collected on the situation in China, and in the face of the information he analyzed, he wrote down his questions in a notebook, and then tried to analyze and answer them, which was his usual way of analyzing intelligence, but today the more he analyzed, the more confused he became.

"No, no, Sunset, I've become a general, my prestige and army can be armed all over the world, why can you still order me?" The voice of his youngest son sounded, it seems that they are playing the game of "Buwu World", speaking of which is a game similar to the promotion chart brought back from Shanghai, and maybe it will be listed on the market in Osaka next month.

"I'm the Emperor, huh?" The son of the owner of the Sunset Co., Ltd. on the other side of the door is about the same age as his youngest son, and the two are also friends, and it seems that this time he has been promoted to the position of emperor in advance, and now his youngest son will have a hard time.

"But my prestige and strength are greater than yours, and I can disobey your edicts. Otherwise, it's too unfair, why can't you give me an order if you don't want me? "My youngest son is a little disgusted with the fact that the other party is not as high as his own value, but he can order himself to fight this and attack that.

"No way, who made me emperor? No matter how powerful you are, you are also a general, and generals can be replaced, but the emperor is a family of eternity. Sunset's rhetoric is very much in line with the rules of the game, and of course it is also in line with reality. Zong Fang grinned, yes, it seems that the prime minister with the highest position is not also in power today and will go to the field tomorrow, but the emperor has always been succeeded only by the father and the son, where is there any replacement? Wait a minute! Could it be because?

Zong Fang suddenly became excited, and he suddenly understood why a guy who held the military power of the whole country, sat on the largest chaebol, and was well-known was willing to be a civilian official who only managed the army, which was too inconsistent with the political traditions of the East. If a strong man like Wu Chenxuan is in Japan, let alone being the prime minister, he is creating the shogunate himself, and there is no power to stop him as a general, oh, a guy who doesn't even care about the shogun, what will his ambitions be? Of course, it is the position of the eternal lineage, that is to say, Wu Chenxuan, the guy who controls everything behind the scenes, his ultimate goal is to restore the imperial system in China, so that he can reach the peak of that world.

"After the Wuchang Revolution, China's thousand-year-old imperial system was abolished and the republic was established. In fact, however, the southern part of the republic has been torn apart by some bureaucrats, politicians, party members, and the like, and the people's lives are still miserable. The lives of the people in the northwest and northeast may not be better than those in the Qing Dynasty, and the warlords have made their lives even more miserable. Only the common people in Lujiang, Zhejiang and Anhui, who belonged to the areas under Wu Chenxuan's rule very early, have some guarantees, and can share the fruits of economic development, at least without worrying about starvation. This period was the enlightenment period when Chinese society was transforming from an ancient feudal system to a democratic representative system, from "imperialism" to "rule by the people", and the political consciousness of the lower-class people, who accounted for 95% of the entire Chinese population, was far less high than outsiders imagined. They don't care about the republican system and the monarchy, what they care about is whether they can eat enough and live a good life. Anything that can be put in a bowl and eaten in the mouth, for them, this is real democracy, and Wu Chenxuan, who started the Chamber of Commerce, is indeed incomparable to any Chinese political party and politician in terms of his ability to solve the national economy and people's livelihood. In China at this time, the imperial system was abolished on the surface, but the deep-rooted autocratic ideology was still there, and in the hearts of many people, there was still an imperial complex. They are accustomed to having a high emperor above their heads, not to mention that now, the old has been broken, the new has not yet been established, and China's current deformed political system has been extinguished, but whether the alternative political system is a republic or an imperial system, or other systems, China is standing at a crossroads. ”

Putting down the report in his hand, Terauchi Masayi didn't need to read it to know that Zongfang's suggestion must be to let the Japanese Empire support Wu Chenxuan claim emperor in exchange for his concessions on the Kanto and Taiwan issues, and perhaps other interests to be transferred. Perhaps Wu Chenxuan at this time will temporarily give up his hard-line nationalist stance for the sake of the throne, after all, it is not the factions in China that can pose the greatest threat to his claim to be emperor, but the strong neighbor of Japan. However, if Wu Chenxuan, who was sometimes tough and sometimes ambiguous towards Japan, was really made the unrestrained Chinese emperor, would it be good or bad for the long-term interests of the empire? Perhaps on this issue, not only China is faced with a choice, but Japan also has to make a careful choice.