Li Hongzhang submitted a note to Daming through the Prime Minister's Yamen, hoping to negotiate with Daming about the Northeast Railway, if it was a few years ago, it would be impossible for Daming to accept negotiations, and now Zhu Jinglun's primary purpose is to provide relief to the victims, which requires the cooperation of the Manchu government, at least they cannot be obstructed, so they accepted the negotiations. Pen % fun % Pavilion www.biquge.info

But the Ming insisted that the construction of a railway from Dalian to the Russian border was a right agreed by the Qing court ten years earlier, and that this right could not be violated, and that negotiations could be made, but they had to be negotiated on the basis of this right.

To be honest, the Westernists have contributed to Chinese history, and it is they who started the modernization of Chinese history, but it is not a fact that they should be elevated to a high position, they are progressive compared with the diehards, but they are still a relatively conservative group of literati and doctors.

But they have one thing to praise for their rhetoric, conservatives and diehards, and that is pragmatism.

They know very well that it is impossible to talk about starting a war, and if they can really fight, why will Xinjiang be lost, Shaanxi and Gansu will be destroyed, why will half of the south of the Yangtze River be unprotected, and there will not even be a Ming country.

Since the Ming Dynasty has begun to build railways in Qingdao and Qinhuangdao, and even the Russians are building the Kyakhta to Zhangjiakou railway, it is obviously impossible for the Ming Dynasty to give up the construction of the railway from Dalian to Manchuria.

The only thing the diehards feared was the loss of Manchuria, and they spoke on that basis.

Li Hongzhang said that the Qing Dynasty did not object to the Ming Dynasty's construction of a railway in the northeast, but they believed that the Ming Dynasty had violated the Qing Dynasty's jurisdiction over the people by sending the victims from the Qing Dynasty to the northeast, and they demanded that the Ming Dynasty stop such behavior. Da Ming said that this was a rescue operation based on benevolence, not an infringement of the rights of the Manchus.

In the end, after fierce negotiations, the Ming promised the Manchu government that it could manage the victims who entered the northeast. At the same time, the Manchu Qing Dynasty once again affirmed that the Ming Dynasty had the right to build a railway in the Northeast, and also said that it would not interfere with the Ming Dynasty's transfer of victims.

After Li Hongzhang reported the results of the negotiations to the Empress Dowager Cixi, he naturally did not satisfy the diehards, and they fought a war of words in the court.

The diehards questioned how the Qing Dynasty would govern the Qing Dynasty if the puppet Ming continued to transfer the people. Li Hongzhang replied that the establishment of government offices in the northeast and the establishment of new prefectures and counties in Harbin and Manchuria and other places with officials would naturally be able to govern them.

The diehards questioned, now let the puppet Ming migrate the people, the people do not understand the righteousness, see the interests and forget the righteousness, and are bought by the puppet Ming, if the puppet Ming is unwilling to accept the jurisdiction of the Qing government in the future, then what should be done, so it is best not to let them migrate the Qing people from the beginning.

Li Hongzhang replied, "Raze to raze." In the future, if the Ming Dynasty refuses to accept the treaty signed with the Qing Dynasty, foreigners will come forward. During this time, he had communicated with other countries, all of which supported the power of the Qing Dynasty in the northeast, and said that if any country infringed on the power of the Qing Dynasty in this region, they would resolutely support the actions of the Qing Dynasty to defend its rights.

Li Hongzhang's negotiations with foreigners during this period were not without gain, which allowed him to understand foreigners better and further perfected his diplomatic thinking of using razing to defeat raze.

So when there was a conflict with the Ming in the Northeast, he negotiated with the Ming Dynasty while secretly communicating with other countries, hoping to get the support of the great powers, and the final concessions of the Ming Dynasty were actually affected by the attitude of the great powers. Britain, the United States, and Russia all said that they did not want the Ming Dynasty to unilaterally expand its rights in the northeast with the help of building railways.

Whether the diehards should be dissatisfied or dissatisfied, Li Hongzhang has long lost interest in arguing with them, as long as Cixi supports it.

The Empress Dowager Cixi acquiesced and stopped the controversy, but did not clearly express her approval of Li Hongzhang, this woman is how she established her status as a transcendent adjudicator in the struggle between various factions, and finally step by step, Li Hongzhang, Zuo Zongtang and other famous ministers were played between applause, and she was able to rule the late Qing Dynasty for half a century, relying on the status of the Empress Dowager.

In fact, not only were the diehards of the Manchu Qing Dynasty dissatisfied with Li Hongzhang, but the opposition within the Ming Dynasty was also dissatisfied with the content of the negotiations of the Foreign Affairs Department.

For disaster relief, Zhu Jinglun was purely out of the consideration of preserving the blood of the nation, but inevitably, still holding the mentality of traditional scholars, but completely opposed to the Manchu literati and doctors, the Ming officials had other ideas, they regarded disaster relief in Shandong and other places as buying people's hearts and strong support, and regarded immigration to the northeast as the Ming Dynasty's expansion of the northeast and cheered loudly.

But in the end, the result of the negotiation between the Ming Foreign Affairs Department was to recognize the Manchu Qing's jurisdiction over the Northeast.

They think that the price paid by the Ming Dynasty is too great, so they are very dissatisfied with it, but the Ming Dynasty does not have a court like the Manchu Dynasty, the government is according to the department to perform its duties, they are dissatisfied with the foreign affairs department, but they can not directly scold people in the court, the ideological quarrels in the Ming Dynasty, mainly concentrated in the newspapers, not only the literati officials from time to time to express some of their views on the current situation to win reputation, the majority of the literati in the opposition also like to join the discussion.

As a result, the dissatisfied civilian officials intensively denounced the failure of the Foreign Affairs Department in the newspapers, regarded the Northeast Negotiations as the biggest diplomatic failure after the founding of the Ming Dynasty, and even called it a traitor, which put great pressure on Wu Chongyao, who presided over the negotiations, and even fell ill.

When Zhu Jinglun visited him, he was also a little frustrated, and asked the emperor if the concession was too great, and Daming paid the price that he shouldn't have paid.

Zhu Jinglun let him recuperate with peace of mind, told him that he was very clear about the negotiation process, put disaster relief first, this is the main premise, and everything else can be abandoned, and said that the Ming Dynasty has no territorial claims to the Northeast for the time being, and will not plan to expand here for a long time in the future.

As for the price, of course Daming paid the price, and it was a heavy price.

A steady stream of materials sent to the disaster area, these are all real money in exchange, Daming's own grain production can not be self-sufficient, can only be imported in large quantities, and even directly raised the world food price by three percent, Daming's domestic food price has doubled.

To feed the entire north, which is the size of the population of the whole of Europe, naturally leads to changes in world food prices.

Of course, the biggest profits are the grain-producing countries the United States and Russia, and the losses are all the grain-importing countries, of which the biggest loss is, of course, the Ming Dynasty.

In order to provide a steady supply of food to the disaster area, Daming has issued $200 million in bonds in the United States, which will be repaid in the future.

In the country, it issued 500 million taels of silver of domestic debt, which directly led to the instability of the Ming financial system, not only the price of various bonds fell, and even caused a run one after another, and finally the Bank of Guangzhou could not afford it, so it had to suspend the payment of paper money, which caused the root cause of the decline in the bank deposits of the government bank, mainly because of the purchase of too many government bonds, so in the end the government had enough reasons to introduce a law to support the Bank of Guangzhou to stop converting paper money, and to give the Bank of Guangzhou paper money the status of legal tender. After acknowledging that Cantonese banknotes have the power to pay taxes and purchase government assets, it was officially confirmed that this was the official currency of the Ming Dynasty, and all merchants and ordinary people were not allowed to refuse to accept paper money in the territory of the Ming Dynasty.

After the government gave the Canton banknotes legal status and allowed him to stop dealing with cash, the government could issue more bonds, which were then purchased by the Canton Bank with banknotes, and the government got the banknotes to buy more materials, which was equivalent to the government printing money directly, so the devaluation was inevitable.

Although everyone could not refuse to accept paper money, prices were rising vigorously, and the domestic economy was in chaos.

In Zhu Jinglun's view, this is the biggest price paid by the Ming Dynasty, the stable financial market that will be painstakingly built for many years has been completely disrupted, and it has also been burdened with huge foreign debts, and the last to bear these costs will be all the people of the Ming Dynasty. It can be said that the accumulation of more than ten years since the government created and insisted on industry and encouraged commerce has all been smashed into it.

But if tens of millions of lives can be saved, the price is worth it.

According to the statistics and estimates made by the relief stations under the name of the railway company, although there were cases of people dying of starvation in Shandong and Zhili last year, they were all individual cases, and the vast majority of the disaster-stricken areas were relieved because of the support of railway transportation, and there was no tragedy in which people in the entire region starved to death.

However, because the construction of the railway requires a process, the situation in Henan and Shanxi is much more serious, originally in the first year, the famine in these two places is actually not as serious as Shandong, but in the end, because Shandong is more likely to get foreign aid from the Ming Dynasty, the phenomenon of starvation in Henan and Shanxi is more serious.

It is impossible to make accurate statistics, but it is estimated that the number of people dying of starvation in the two provinces last year was more than 100,000 according to the estimates of relief stations that went deep into the disaster areas.

Since the beginning of spring this year, the drought has continued in the north, and it is clear that the famine will continue, or even worse.

Obviously, the cost of Daming's disaster relief has not yet been completed, and it will bear an even greater price this year.

According to the feedback from the disaster area, the Ming government, which provided disaster relief at any cost, decided to continue to issue foreign debt.

Domestic debt is not dare to borrow again, this time will be issued in London 100 million pounds of bonds, with the Ming tariff as collateral, so that the equivalent of 400 million US dollars can be raised, and in the United States will continue to issue bonds, the number of up to 300 million US dollars, the same tariff collateral, it can be said that if the future development of the Ming economy can not rise, the Ming customs will be controlled by Britain and the United States, lose its autonomy.

At the same time, such a huge amount of foreign debt will make the financial system of the Ming Dynasty subject to the greater influence of the European and American financial groups in the future, and if it cannot develop as soon as possible, the Ming economy will be fully colonized.

This may be the biggest price paid by Daming.

The world is fair, there is a reward for what you give, and this return is not equivalent, but most of the time, this return will be much higher than the input.