Liu Weimin, chairman of the executive committee, is not as energetic as before.

In a few years, he feels that he is physically and mentally exhausted every day, and the increasingly heavy government work, foreign affairs on thin ice, thousands of immigrants and naturalizations, and endless civil and military officials are all involved in his limited energy, making him unable to sleep well almost every day.

"Fortunately, there is still more than half a year to step down, many people say that greed for power is human instinct, fuck it, why do I think it's a burden. I will be re-elected at the end of the year, and I can finally throw away this heavy burden, I have borne it for so long, and it is time to hand it over to the young and strong descendants. Liu Weimin stood in a special private room on the second floor of Luoqia Railway Station, looking at the endless sea in the distance, and his heart was full of thoughts.

He's really tired of the last ten years, very tired. Born as a middle school teacher, he was able to become the president of the country because of the compromise between the forces of all parties, because everyone knows Lao Liu's stunt, that is, to make peace with the mud -- to put it more elegantly, he is good at bridging the differences of all parties and repairing the relationship between all parties.

But Lao Liu really doesn't like the mud, the countless disputes in the past ten years at the National People's Congress and the Executive Committee have exhausted his energy, and he really doesn't want to do it anymore. As he said at the plenary meeting at the beginning of this year, he has a great love for the country that you have built, and he has made many sacrifices in the past ten years, and he asks for forgiveness for his mistakes, for the wrong decisions he has made, and for the next Executive Committee as much as he has for him, but he is really enough, and he just wants to do the rest of his term for the rest of his term. Then go to the attached area of the Southern Railway to retire.

Finish cleaning up your mood. Liu Weimin rubbed his forehead with a faint pain. Then he sat down at a large desk, picked up the materials handed over by the secretary, and looked through them slightly. He had already read the material before, and it was a series of international diplomatic activities carried out by the Kingdom of Portugal since the so-called "War of Liberation" (the Portuguese War of Independence).

The Portuguese Reconquista that began in 1637 did not rely on the aristocracy, but on the Portuguese people, who were oppressed under Spanish rule, and their patriotic fervor was thoroughly aroused, and Guò himself fought a bloody battle to drive the Spanish rulers out of Portugal.

The Spanish officer who attacked the fortress of St. Lucia near Evac once wrote: "The Portuguese soldiers were weak and not alert. But the spirit of resistance was so tenacious that no one agreed to shout the slogan 'Long live King Philip', so they were all executed. ”

"These rebels are so stubborn that no one but an elderly woman asks for mercy or shouts long live King Philip, so we have decided to behead them all."

And while the Portuguese people were fighting bloodily, what were the Portuguese nobles doing? They were "duplicitous, dealing with King João IV (the first king of the Bragança dynasty) and begging for King Philip's forgiveness." They pedal on two boats, left and right"; "Some people also secretly communicate with the Spaniards. They deliberately frustrated the fleet by delaying ships carrying critical supplies, allowing shipwrights to flee"; "Many people withheld military salaries and did not give them food and grass, so that the soldiers could not go into battle at a critical moment."

It is the sorrow of the Portuguese people that it is the pity of the Portuguese people that they have stolen the fruits of the uprising in a grand manner after the war, and it is also a blessing for the people of the East Coast, who are better to deal with these nobles who can be called parasites of the country than to deal with the republicans who are full of patriotic enthusiasm and shrewdness.

Let's take a look at the "outstanding" diplomatic achievements of these nobles who stole the fruits of their victories: at the beginning of 1641, Portugal sent envoys to Rome, France, the Netherlands, England, Denmark and Switzerland. Needless to say, the Pope would not receive any envoy from Portugal until the head of the Habsburg royal family, the King of Spain, agreed to the independence of Portugal; Diplomacy with Britain was also a failure, and in a country that the Portuguese saw as their saviors, the Portuguese envoys failed to form a military alliance with the British, only to obtain a British promise not to attack Portugal on the European scale.

In order to obtain this promise from the British, the nascent Portuguese regime also sold a host of rights, such as: English merchants were free to trade in the Portuguese overseas territories and enjoyed the same rights as the Portuguese (Treaty of 1642); After the establishment of the Republic of England, Cromwell sent troops to the door under the pretext that Portugal was sheltering the fleets of the British monarchists (which were stationed near the mouth of the Tagus River and used them as a base to attack British warships), and he knocked on a lot of benefits, including Portugal's reduction of tariffs on goods imported from Britain, etc., and the nascent Portuguese kingdom lost face.

Portugal's diplomacy towards France was even more humiliating: Portugal asked to join the French-led multinational group against the Habsburg royal family, but was ruthlessly refused; Then the Portuguese retreated and proposed that if Spain was unwilling to reconcile with Portugal, then France would not reconcile with Spain, and France ignored this clause; Even at the end of the Thirty Years' War, Portugal's request for a place in the peace negotiations was rejected, they were excluded from the Treaty of Westphalia, and even France did not allow Portugal to negotiate directly with Spain (because they might exchange Portuguese interests with Spain), which was humiliating.

In addition, their diplomacy in the Netherlands was also full of frustrations, and Denmark, Switzerland and other countries had limited influence, so it was really strange that the Kingdom of Portugal was mixed up with enemies everywhere in Europe, and had not yet ended the state of war with Spain, and at the same time competed with the Netherlands for colonies in the Americas, Africa, and Asia.

"It's just a broken country...... Liu Weimin quickly finished the materials, then closed his eyes and began to recuperate. The secretary cautiously walked over, took away the materials that Liu Weimin was reading, and then handed over a copy of the latest report from the State Intelligence Administration.

The crisp sound of leather shoes sounded outside the door, and the secretary walked out lightly, and after a short conversation with the outsider. And they drew him in.

Liu Weimin opened his eyes. He handed the report that was placed in front of him to Colonel Lu Ming, Chief of the General Staff of the Joint Staff Headquarters and Minister of the Navy, who walked in. said: "The latest information about Portugal and Brazil, you can take a look, and then talk about your own opinion after reading it." ”

The room was silent for a moment, except for the faint sound of the waves outside the window, only the rustling sound of flipping through the materials. Lu Ming saw it quickly, it only took him more than ten minutes to finish reading the report submitted by the General Administration of National Intelligence, and after organizing the language slightly, he only heard him say: "These rumors are estimated to be true. The conditions put forward by the British, as described above. It is very much in line with the usual style of the British bourgeois government. Open the markets of Brazil, Africa and the Eastern Territories to the UK, reduce the tax rate on British goods to 23%, and when you need to charter ships, you can only rent British ships. ”

Lu Ming automatically ignored the clause that "British merchants were allowed to carry out their own religious activities in the Portuguese territory", because he could not understand the stubbornness of Spain and Portugal on religious issues when he grew up in later generations. In fact, it was this article that was most difficult for the Portuguese government, so it was so slow to accede to the demands of the British, so much so that in 1654 Cromwell sent a fleet to the mouth of the Tagus River to force the Portuguese to accept these demands, known as the 1654 Agreement (a supplement to the 1642 Agreement).

"The Brits are arrogant right now." Lu Ming took the materials and said, "They have increased their shipments in the Seville market - the way to find 'Spanish relatives' through guò." That's not enough, I still want to reach out to Brazil. Is it really unreasonable to treat us as if we were nothing? Should we find someone to tell us that the Peruvian and Brazilian markets are ours and that outsiders must have our consent to enter them? ”

"There are people who are extremely conceited and self-conscious, and they will not pay attention to you until they have been hit with a heart-wrenching blow. Unfortunately, Cromwell seems to be such a person. Liu Weimin frowned and said slowly: "The time is not yet ripe, and we may not be able to suppress Britain with naval strength, so let them be arrogant for a while." Although it is a national policy to unite with the Netherlands to control the British, this does not mean that we, the East Coast Republic, will now stand on the front line against the British, which is the exclusive stage of the Dutch, not ours. The most appropriate way for us to deal with it is to use more economic means to resist the invasion of the British markets in Brazil and Peru, and then bury our heads in development, immigrate more, have more places, have more children, raise the level of industry, and increase military power, and wait until the time is ripe to come out. Rest assured, time is on our side, how can Britain fight with the current system that restricts productivity, poor industrial technology, and the lack of basic education of the national monks and the not very abundant capital? The only thing they had to rely on was probably a large number of gray animals. ”

"Then the mission of the navy this time is ......," Lu Ming asked with some hesitation. The Executive Committee spent several months recalling a large number of naval ships one after another, is it to give everyone a holiday? Obviously not, there must be a military operation, but how to grasp the degree of this military operation, Lu Ming is not very clear. The last time the executive committee met, he didn't discuss the reason, and recently he went south to inspect the construction of the naval base, and he was not in the capital, so he didn't know a lot of things.

"Send the main fleet north to the coast of Brazil, put pressure on them, and intercept merchant ships from various countries entering and leaving Brazil." Liu Weimin looked at Lu Ming and said firmly: "By the way, escort merchant ships to transport supplies to Dutch Brazil, those small broken ships of the Portuguese Navy in Brazil generally don't dare to obstruct you." But you also need to be right, try to avoid direct firefights, and even if there is an exchange of fire, you must control the intensity of the fire, and not let it escalate into a full-scale war. Remember, the Executive Committee did not want war now, and the country did not need war at this stage, but only to demonstrate the severance of trade with the Portuguese. ”

"In addition, the Navy dispatched a fast boat to accompany the special envoy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to Europe with the latest instructions of the Executive Committee and handed it over to Mo San." Liu Weimin thought for a while, and then explained: "Everyone means to let Mo San take the time to go to Lisbon recently to find a way to negotiate with the Portuguese. The severance of trade between the two countries was clearly a reaction by the Brazilian colonial authorities, most of whom Lisbon was unaware of. Judging from the cowardly temperament of the Portuguese aristocracy shown in the information gathered, it does not look like they are capable of such a thing. No matter how tough the Brazilian side is, it will have to listen to Lisbon, and if the trade crisis can be resolved through negotiations in Europe, it will save a lot of trouble. Of course, the group of native-born whites on the Brazilian side may not be very tough, everyone is a businessman, and it is not common to tear up faces, and this time it is estimated that they are also in a hurry, and they ordered to cut off trade as soon as their minds were dizzy. However, when they saw warships flying the flag of the Republic of China on the east coast of China everywhere outside the window, they believed that they would be calmer. ”

"I understand, I'll make it clear to Li Yi of the First Fleet." Lu Ming nodded heavily and said. (To be continued......)