Bismarck had no doubt that if China were not running the place, no country or force would have made it the center of the Black Sea in just five years.

China's vast material resources were gathered here and then transported to Europe, which was the basis for its prosperity. No country or force can meet this condition.

Although China's bulk commodities are still exported to Europe from the eastern region through the Suez Canal in large quantities, the products of western China must be exported from the Black Sea. Because from the western part of China to the eastern region, the cost of taking the railway is no different from that of the Black Sea. At least the vast Kazakh region, the Volga region of the Urals, and the Ili region must be more convenient to Europe from the Black Sea.

Commodities that are time-critical or cost-insensitive, such as tea and silk, are also sent by rail from eastern China to the Black Sea for export.

As for the real cheap commodities, it is indeed more cost-effective to go through the Suez Canal, but cheap goods are not scarce in Europe, and European industries are enough to resist the inflow of industrial goods from other regions, and countries have built tariff barriers. So in a way, the Black Sea is even more important to China than the Suez Canal.

There is no doubt that the battle for the Suez Canal is worthy of a war between China and a maritime power like Britain, and China will never give up easily in the Black Sea region, which is not inferior to the Suez Canal in terms of economic and strategic significance. Whether the Russian Tsars were willing to sign or not, unless they could destroy China directly, the possibility of them taking back the Black Sea region was completely gone.

And because the tsar refused to sign and did not give up his nominal sovereignty here, he put Russia in a situation where China had to guard against and even attack.

In such a region, Bismarck did not know what kind of contradictions would occur that would cause war.

In terms of national contradictions, there must be. The Muslim people of the Caucasus Mountains are not an easy people to tame. However, Bismarck's analysis argues that in China's militarized state of migration, Chechens living in the mountains are trapped in the mountains by Chinese immigrants who are fortressed outside the mountains. Even if they rebel, the regular Chinese army does not even need to be mobilized, these fortressed armed villages are enough to consume them, and it is better for them not to rebel in order to assist the strangulation of the regular army.

On the other side of the Caucasus Mountains was the Manchu Empire, which amazed all of Europe, expelled from China and miraculously tamed the Muslim peoples whom Europeans had feared for centuries. Of course, their taming is based on the brutal killing of the nomadic era, and no modern civilized country would dare to use such means. But the effect of this kind of conquest under the butcher's knife is also incomparable to any culture and education. They not only conquered the local peoples, but also used their own high-intensity organization and management model to completely establish rule among these peoples.

It was unlikely that the Manchu Empire would be an enemy of China, and this was the consensus of Western diplomatic circles. But in this country, there are indeed a large number of top figures who always insist on wanting to return to China. It is not those Manchu and Mongolian magnates who migrated here from Mongolia, but a group of Chinese bureaucrats, whose thoughts of chasing the Central Plains are becoming more and more hot with the increase of national strength.

The Han Chinese bureaucracy of the Manchu Qing Dynasty first migrated from the Ili region with Jiaqing, and later merged with various ethnic groups, and continued to attract frustrated scholars from China, and the population of the Han Eight Banners grew much faster than the Mongols who believed in Lamaism in Central Asia, which had much more resources than China, and became an ethnic group that the Manchus relied on more and more.

In particular, after occupying the Persian Plateau and the two agricultural areas in the two river valleys, the population of the Eight Banners of the Han Dynasty expanded rapidly, and now it has begun to account for half of the 30 million people of the Manchu Qing Dynasty. And it continues to show a higher growth rate than both the Manchu and Mongolian Eight Banners with a high status and the Hui Eight Banners with a low status.

With the increase in population and the population annexation and integration of other ethnic groups, the Manchu Empire was gradually emerging under the rule of the power of a Juche nation, and this Juche nation always had a return mentality. Bismarck did not know whether this mentality would prompt the Manchu Empire to go to war with China, but he did not see that the Manchu Empire had the strength to go to war with China for a short time.

Because Bismarck knew the results of the country's many wars, he judged that their combat effectiveness was probably the same as that of the Italian army, that is, the second-rate level of Europe, slightly stronger than the Ottoman army, and slightly weaker than the Austrian imperial army. Relying on the high mobilization capacity of the Eight Banners system, it has been able to organize European countries to invade and infiltrate it over the years. But competing with China is hopeless.

Bismarck also conversed with some merchants from the Manchu dynasty in the Black Sea region, and in conversation he found that the empire was decaying at an accelerated rate, and that they were beginning to lose the wildness and courage they had recovered from their inhospitable Central Asian steppes. The upper echelons of the empire were desperately looting for wealth with their privileges, just as their ancestors quickly parasitized the huge Han Chinese after entering the customs.

After they had conquered Persia, they began to enter the city in this way. After annexing a large number of Persians, Jiaqing began to liberalize private commerce. The Persians and some Han Chinese began to convert into merchants, but the merchants of the Jiaqing period were still small merchants.

After Daoguang, a large number of privileged merchants quickly began to form. The commercial forces in the Eight Banners of the Han Dynasty began to copy the domestic privileged business model, and they began to become monopoly salt merchants by relying on the characteristics of the Persian Gulf near the sea; By monopolizing the trade of the steppe tribes in Central Asia, he grew up with a large number of roles similar to those of the Jin and imperial merchants. In the field of commerce, the Persians have been suppressed and squeezed out, and the Persians can only survive in small business.

The only people who can compare with the Han Chinese merchants are the Armenian merchants. Although they were small in number, they were the indigenous people, they were the second only merchant group in the Ottoman Empire after the Greeks, and after the annexation of Armenia by the Manchus, they did not resist as fiercely as the Muslim peoples, nor were they brutally killed, and they were obediently organized into the Eight Banners. Later, they took advantage of their proficiency in various ethnic languages and quickly became a group of maritime merchants who carried out import and export trade with foreign countries.

The corruption brought about by privilege is manifested in three aspects, the first is that the great nobles occupy a large area of grassland on the steppe, and occupy a large amount of fertile land in Persia and the two river valleys. After they came to Central Asia and Persia, although they were incorporated into the Mongolian Eight Banners and became the Manchurian and Mongolian Eight Banners, they were neither willing to go to the grassland to herd sheep nor to go to Persia to farm, so they relied on the capital and ate hardcore crops, and there were more and more such people, and they had begun to become a heavy financial burden; The third corruption manifested itself in the corruption of the bureaucratic selection method, which was also implemented by the Manchus in the Chinese style of imperial examinations. However, a large number of special channels have been reserved for the Manchu and Mongolian banners, and they can more easily obtain the status of juren and jinshi through the examination of translation, and they can also enter the bureaucracy without going through the imperial examination by being a pen tip.

Corruption has already begun to produce a large number of ethnic contradictions, the contradictions between the upper privileged class and the lower classes of the common people, the contradictions between the Manchu and Mongolian Eight Banners and the Han Eight Banners, and the contradictions between the Han Eight Banners and the Hui Eight Banners and the Persian Eight Banners. The upper echelons of the Manchu Qing Dynasty have been skillfully co-opting the upper echelons of the Hui and Persian Eight Banners by raising the flag, and implementing the management of the lower classes of the people under the imperial examination, but spontaneous rebellion has begun to appear frequently.

The prophecy of the imminent appearance of a savior was circulated among the people at the bottom of the Eight Banners of the Hui Division, and the people at the bottom of the Eight Banners of the Han Dynasty rallied their rebel forces through the White Lotus Sect.

With the large-scale development of the Persian Plateau and the two river valleys, the wealth of the Manchu Empire increased on a large scale, the corruption became more and more serious, the national contradictions became more and more intense, and sooner or later unpredictable turmoil would break out.

Outside of the Manchu Empire, only the Ottoman Empire had a major conflict with China in the region, mainly because China organized Greece, Egypt and the Manchu Empire around the Ottoman Empire, and had repeatedly attacked the Ottoman Empire. So far, there is a looming anti-Ottoman alliance, and the core is China.

There was no territorial dispute, the Chinese land was taken from the Russians, and the Russians took it from the Ottomans, and after a while, it was whitewashed.

The two sides are bordered by China's Black Sea region and the Crimean Peninsula, which are separated by a strait. Assuming that the two countries go to war over territorial issues, China can easily seize the Crimean Peninsula, the Manchus will invade Asia Minor, Greece will seize the Balkans, and it may even cause Austria to move south for the Balkans.

Austria was either carved up from the Ottoman Empire with Greece and other countries, or it was later fought with these countries, triggering new conflicts.

Bismarck saw this as an ideal, strategic opportunity. If Austria begins to compete with Greece for the Balkans, Greece will have to be wooed in the future war in which Prussia squeezes out Austria. Behind Greece stands the powerful China, and it can be said that the chances of winning by uniting Greece to fight Austria are very high.

Before attacking Austria, it was necessary to first solve the problem of Russia, and Bismarck had to find in the complex contradictions and chaos that would allow Prussia and Austria to have relatively relaxed international conditions to fight Russia, and would not involve such great powers as China and Britain.

Bismarck pondered for a long time, and one day he suddenly saw a Russian and an Ottoman fighting on the street, and an inspiration suddenly flashed in his mind.

He immediately reacted that Russia and the Ottomans, two countries that were relatively less cautious about the war, might be the kind of international environment he needed.

He needs a war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire!