The war in the past few years has been an unprecedented benefit to Greece, the war has withdrawn the British shipping companies in the entire eastern Mediterranean, and the Chinese and French shipping companies have developed here, but Greece has received the largest share of the cake, and the annual Greek shipping revenue has increased by 100,000 pounds.

And British commerce is also shrinking here, and the biggest beneficiaries are the Greek business groups, which are more profitable than the shipping companies, and the shipping industry is to put it bluntly, the business groups are in charge. The contraction of the British allowed Greek commerce to rise to the top in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The biggest opportunity belongs to industry, the wool textile industry in Greece before the war already has a certain foundation, Zhou Chenggong vigorously promoted the development of cotton textile industry in the Athens region, the huge eastern Mediterranean to the Black Sea region, there was no decent modern industry before, cotton textiles are either handmade products, or imported from Britain and China.

The war cost Britain and China their markets almost simultaneously, Greek goods quickly filled the gap, and light industry was a lucrative and fast-paced industry that expanded rapidly when it encountered development opportunities. The cotton textile industry in Greece is almost rolling forward.

The development of these industries attracted more investment, and millions of pounds of capital poured into Greece this year. These influxes of money are extremely important for Greece. Because it weren't for the constant influx of new capital, Greece's finances would have gone bankrupt by now.

Before the war, they owed tens of millions of pounds in debt for the sake of war after war, and it was very unrealistic to rely on Greece to repay such a huge debt. There must be a special source of funding, otherwise Greece will have to go into debt, if not bankrupt, and may not see any improvement in its financial situation throughout its life.

Then the war broke out, Greece got an unprecedented opportunity for development, all industries were developing rapidly, all kinds of capital poured into Greece, this capital went into the Greek public bank, exchanged into Greek currency, the government issued national bonds, and from the public bank borrowed these foreign currencies to pay off the debt. Through this financial operation, external debt gradually becomes domestic debt, and as long as there is no large outflow of capital, this pattern can be maintained.

With the help of good economic momentum, Zhou Chenggong quickly increased his power and truly took control of the country. Although there is also a local parliament that checks and balances his power, the greatly restricted parliament is really just a showcase. What really wields power at the local level is the civil service system that Zhou has successfully built over the years. Officials selected through the imperial examination carried out the king's will at the local level.

Zhou Chenggong also regardless of the financial risk, in recent years to build a large number of railways, the technical level of the Chinese compatriots is amazing, over the mountains and mountains, the Greeks think that it is impossible to build without ten years, the Chinese engineers only took three years to complete all the work such as through the track laying.

All the way north from Athens, along the ancient road, connecting the city-states that appeared 4,000 years ago, and finally leading to the port of Thessaloniki. From Athens to the west, through the Isthmus of Corinth, into the Peloponnese, and then along the Gulf of Corinthia, to Patras, an important port in Western Greece. For the hinterland of the Peloponnese, the railway did not go deeper, firstly, because of the difficulty of construction, and secondly, because the local forces did not cooperate, and the Greeks in the Peloponnese always regarded themselves as Greek orthodoxy and adopted a confrontational attitude towards the central government, which made Zhou Chenggong very dissatisfied with the Peloponnesians.

In addition to the Peloponnese, where local power was too stubborn, Zhou Chenggong built the rest of Greece into a country with a more complete centralized system than France and a more docile bureaucracy than Germany.

And all this was successfully completed in the stage of rapid economic development, and this kind of opportunity is rare in a century, so Zhou Chenggong's desire to end the war is definitely not sincere.

But just as Leopold said, the way for a small country to survive is to seek political existence in the gap between the big countries, and if the small countries never do anything in the big power disputes, then the small countries are bound to be swayed by the big power game and cannot be autonomous.

Therefore, Leopold used slick means to move between Britain and France, and used various methods to strengthen his influence on Britain, and Zhou Chenggong's ambition was much greater than Leopold's. Greece offered him the possibility of becoming a great power in the Mediterranean region by restoring the Eastern Roman Empire. He doesn't want to wander between big countries to find a balance, he wants to make his own country a big country.

Now that he has tamed Greece, he needs to turn what is now Little Greece into a big Greece. A territory encompassing the coastal areas of present-day Macedonia, Bulgaria, Albania, and the peninsula of Asia Minor, and a large empire spanning the Black Sea, the Aegean Sea, and the Mediterranean.

Therefore, Zhou Chenggong decided to intervene in this great power dispute, and he began to act in the consuls of various countries. He knew very well that China's attitude could not be changed, and that his emperor father had said that if the tsarist regime was to be completely destroyed, it would definitely be realized; The key is the attitude towards the UK. He had to understand not only the attitude of the British, but also the attitude of China towards Britain, and the attitude of Britain towards China's disposition of Russia.

The relationship was complicated, and the British were willing to make peace, otherwise Leopold would not have come to Greece to find him. The Russians also want peace, and the situation in Russia is getting worse and worse, and through the Greek intelligence agencies in Russia, it is found that the internal rebellion in Russia is getting more and more intense, and there have been hundreds of serf riots this year, but the riots of the city dwellers have never been so fierce, and the Western countries are worried that a revolution will break out in Russia.

In Russia's current situation, there is no doubt about the defeat of the war, it is just a matter of when it was defeated and how badly it was defeated.

China must destroy the tsarist regime, then the tsar's rule in Russia may really come to an end; Apart from these two options, there is no third option for what China will do with Russia, directly annex it, or support the puppets, and Zhou Chenggong prefers the latter.

But China supports a puppet regime in Russia, which is again unacceptable to Britain, Russia's influence in Europe is huge, although it is feared and rejected, but it is impossible to deny Russia's strong influence, if the Chinese control Russia, China's influence in Europe is too great.

In other respects, Britain is willing to make some concessions on the territory of Canada and India, which, as it stands, is the most realistic option for both sides, and in both Canada and India, Britain is beginning to have a disadvantage, but it has not yet reached a state of collapse like Russia, and it makes no sense for both sides to continue fighting.

Obviously, the Russian question is the core issue, and as long as the Russian question is resolved, this unprecedented war can be brought to an end.