However, Fang Tianhao has always been a person from the past. Although, Fang Tianhao was shocked that the Fang family's factory in Lexian County had changed so much! Moreover, the change in the Fang family's factory is still caused by his son not knowing what method to use, which is very amazing! In his heart, he was guessing what method Fang Mu used to increase the output of the Fang family's factory in Lexian County tenfold, but the shocked expression on his face spread out, returning to his original serious and plain appearance.

Fang Tianhao's mental performance is not unconvincing. You know, if ordinary people hear that they can earn nearly three million taels of silver a year, then they are not crazy to be happy for three days and three nights, and carnival for three days and three nights! And Fang Tianhao calmed his heart in a very short period of time, which can not make people admire him for being well-informed and tough!

Because, that's nearly three million taels of silver!!! If the Fang family continues to develop according to this momentum, ten years later, the Fang family's family property will be 30 million taels of silver!!!

That's three million taels of silver, not three million RMB. Besides, can three million RMB be compared to three million taels of silver? Even if it can be 30,000 taels of silver, it can't be compared!!

In the late Qing Dynasty. The value of silver itself, due to the silver plundered by Spain and Portugal from the American colonies, poured into China in large quantities, from which a lot of silk, porcelain and other luxury goods were exchanged for the extravagant life of the royal families of the two countries. As a result, China's silver has depreciated and is not as strong as it used to be. (For example, in the Ming Dynasty: ten taels of silver was enough for a squire to use for ten months!) However, even in this era, a tael of silver is enough for an ordinary family to live for two or three months!!! Converted, three million taels of silver in this era is equivalent to tens of billions of RMB in later generations. The Fang family's factory in Lexian County can now earn so much in a year, isn't it shocking?

Even in the late Qing Dynasty in 1900, the annual national fiscal revenue was only about 80 million taels of silver, and this was still the sixth largest national fiscal revenue in the world. Even if the Qing court's financial revenue was 80 million taels of silver, not all of the 80 million taels of silver went into the Qing court's treasury. Most of the revenue was used to pay reparations to the Great Powers.

For example, "the Treaty of Shimonoseki signed by the Qing court with Japan in recent years, according to the provisions of the treaty, the Qing court will compensate Japan with a war reparation of '200 million taels of silver'. Although, according to the Treaty of Shimonoseki, it was to let the Qing court pay it in eight installments. But even if it was paid off eight times, the Japanese demanded that the Qing court pay off Japan's war indemnity of 50 million taels of silver within six months for the first time.

Moreover, there was also the imminent invasion of China by the Eight-Nation Alliance, and the Qing Dynasty was even more defeated in this war, and signed the "Xinchou Treaty" with the foreign powers that was even more humiliating and humiliating. Among them, the 'Gengzi indemnity' is as high as 450 million taels of silver! In other words, China had to pay 450 million taels of silver to the foreign powers for the war reparations, and it also incurred a heavy debt of 450 million taels of silver without paying Japan's war reparations!!

Among them, the Treaty of Shimonoseki signed between the Qing court and Japan hurt China the most. This is because other powers came to China just to seek wealth, or to take advantage of China's cheap labor to open factories in China to make money.

Even if it's a huge Gengzi indemnity. Subsequently, the reparations owed by other powers to China were also gradually waived. The United States even returned part of the 'Gengzi indemnity' that China had already paid to it and used it for Chinese students studying in the United States, and Britain, Germany, and France followed the United States' lead and waived China's remaining 'Gengzi indemnity'.

Only the Japanese had the intention of destroying China from the beginning. It wants both land and money, and it also wants to open factories and garrison troops in China, which can be described as a wolf's ambition for China, and it is obvious!

The Treaty of Shimonoseki was an unequal treaty signed between the Qing Dynasty government of China and the Meiji government of Japan on April 17, 1895 (March 23, 21st year of Guangxu) in Shimonoseki, Japan (now Shimonoseki City, Yamaguchi Prefecture). The signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki marked the end of the Sino-Japanese War. The plenipotentiaries of the Chinese side are Li Hongzhang and Li Jingfang, and the plenipotentiaries of the Japanese side are Hirobumi Ito and Mutsu Munemitsu.

Japan's ambitions for China can be seen from the content of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, which was intended to destroy China at the beginning. After the Meiji Restoration, Japan deliberately expanded to the outside world and gradually formed a "mainland policy" centered on aggression against China. The first step was to capture Taiwan, the second step was to annex Korea, the third step was to march into Manchuria, the fourth step was to destroy China, and the fifth step was to subdue Asia in the First Sino-Japanese Sea and dominate the world

In 1871, China and Japan signed the first treaty in modern times, the "Sino-Japanese Treaty of Reconciliation", the first paragraph of the treaty stated: "After that, the Qing Dynasty and the Great Japan Kingdom were in harmony, and the world was endless." That is, the territories to which the two countries belong should also treat each other with courtesy, and they should not invade each other in the slightest, so as to gain permanent security. "It's an equal treaty.

However, Japan ignored the treaty's "territories to which the two countries belonged...... No trespassing". In 1872, it invaded the Chinese vassal state of Ryukyu, and in 1874 it invaded the Chinese territory of Taiwan, and forced the Qing government to indirectly recognize the Ryukyus as a Japanese vassal state through the "Beijing Treaty", and formally annexed the Ryukyus in 1879 and changed it to Okinawa Prefecture of Japan. At the same time, Japan invaded Korea, another Chinese vassal state, and in 1875 created the "Unyang Incident", which was used as a pretext to force Korea to sign the unequal Ganghwa Treaty in 1876.

Later, Japan took advantage of the "Renwu Mutiny" and the "Jiashen Coup" in Korea to further expand its influence in Korea and squeeze out China, the former suzerainty of Korea, and in 1885 signed the "Tianjin Conference Article" with the Qing government, in fact, achieving an equal status with China on the Korean Peninsula. Since then, Japan has systematically invested its national strength in carrying out arms expansion activities against China in order to wage a war in which "national fortunes are gambled." It can be seen that before the First Sino-Japanese War, Japan had already been involved in Taiwan and Korea and made some progress, and Japan's victory in the First Sino-Japanese War and the signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki made Japan's ambitions a reality.

In 1894, Japan sent a large army into Korea and provoked the First Sino-Japanese War in response to the uprising of the Donghak Party in Korea and the Korean government's invitation to China to recruit troops. The main battles of the Chinese and Japanese armies on land were the Battle of Chenghuan, the Battle of Pyongyang, the Battle of the Yalu River, the Battle of the Golden Brigade, and the Battle of Liaodong, and the main battles at sea were the Battle of Toshima, the Battle of the Yellow Sea, and the Battle of Weihaiwei. Among them, the Qing army's successive defeats in the Battle of Pyongyang and the Battle of the Yellow Sea in September 1894 made the war situation take a sharp turn for the worse, and the battlefield was also transferred from abroad to China, and the defeat of the Qing army in the Battle of Weihaiwei in February 1895 made the Beiyang Naval Division annihilated, and the Qing court had no intention of fighting, while Japan continued to maintain military pressure, and there was a great tendency to advance by sea and land to attack the Beijing Division (now Beijing, China), in this case, the Qing court had been constantly seeking peace with Japan through European and American powers since October 1894, and in the later stage of the war, Japan also believed that "the Sino-Japanese war cannot continue indefinitely, and the time for peace talks will be ripe sooner or later." In this way, China and Japan finally sat down at the negotiating table and began the Shimonoseki peace talks.

Empress Dowager Cixi and Li Hongzhang, who held the power of the imperial court, did not intend to continue the war from the very beginning. After the successive defeats in the Pyongyang and Yellow Sea campaigns, at the end of September 1894, the Empress Dowager Cixi reinstated Prince Gong Yixun, who had been deposed by her in 1884, as the prime minister. In early October, Yixun personally came forward and asked Britain to join the United States and Russia to mediate the Sino-Japanese war. Due to the intentions of the United States, Germany, and Russia, as well as Japan's refusal, the British mediation proposal on 6 October did not yield any results.

In early November 1894, the Japanese army invaded Liaodong and burned the flames of war into China. The Qing court was very frightened that its "land of Longxing" was plagued by soldiers, and asked Tian Bei, the US minister to China, to mediate. At this time, the US Government believed that the time had come to blackmail the Qing government and expressed its willingness to "mediate" between the two sides. Anxious for peace, Li Hongzhang, with the consent of Prince Gong, sent a German, De Xuanlin, who served as the secretary of taxation in Tianjin, as his representative to Japan to explore the terms of peace.

However, when De Zhulin arrived in Japan, the Japanese refused to negotiate with him, and at the same time, Japan, through the Americans, asked the Qing government to send "a fully qualified commissioner."

Ito Hirobumi won many battles on the battlefield, but after all, the national strength was limited, and the huge consumption brought by the war further increased the burden on the ordinary people of Japan, and since the end of 1894, peasant revolts broke out in many parts of Japan, and social unrest was unstable. Moreover, Japanese Prime Minister Hirobumi Ito also attaches great importance to the attitude of Western countries, "He knows that the Western powers do not welcome the rise of Japan in their bones, and they are jealous of Japan's sharing of the interests of Westerners in the Qing Dynasty."

In addition, Ito explicitly opposed the "Naoli Plain Operation Plan" of the military headquarters, which directly attacked Beijing, believing that if this was done, China would lose its legitimate government as a target for blackmail, which would lead to the intervention of various countries, and that it would be difficult to transport it in the cold Bohai Sea, and he suggested on December 4, 1894 that Weihaiwei and Taiwan should be attacked first as a bargaining chip for future peace talks, and if "the Qing court is still hesitant to surrender to us in the warm spring," it would not be too late to attack Beijing again.

The Emperor took Ito's suggestion and earlier recalled Yama Prefecture Aritomo, who was preparing to attack Shanhaiguan in the Liaodong Battlefield, according to Ito's wishes. This showed that by the end of 1894 Japan was no longer pursuing a unilateral military victory, but was trying to reap greater benefits from the peace talks with the Qing Dynasty.

At this time, the Qing Dynasty's desire for peace was even stronger. At that time, Lushun had been lost, and the Empress Dowager Cixi was afraid that the Japanese army would invade Beijing and Tianjin, so she ignored the opposition of Emperor Guangxu and others, first instructed Yixin to entrust Tian Bei to secretly dredge up with Japan, and then on January 14, 1895, she officially sent Zhang Yinhuan, a squire of the household department, and Shao Youlian, governor of Hunan, as ministers plenipotentiary, and hired US Secretary of State Kostec as an adviser to Japan to seek peace.

At that time, Japan was storming Weihaiwei, and because of its military victory, Japan's appetite for aggression was very great and its arrogance was extremely arrogant, and it felt that the opportunity to make the Qing government surrender unconditionally had not yet come, so it insulted the two peace-seeking representatives of the Qing government in Hiroshima and expelled them back to China under the pretext of "lack of full powers."

At the same time, on February 2, 1895, when Japanese Prime Minister Ito Hirobumi expelled Zhang and Shao, he submitted a request to the Qing government for peace talks through Wu Tingfang in the Qing delegation, and named Prince Gong or Li Hongzhang as plenipotentiary representatives.

On February 17, 1895, the day when Japan captured Liugong Island and the Beiyang Naval Division was annihilated, Japan proposed to the Qing government through the Americans that it was necessary to "negotiate peace" with land cession and indemnity, otherwise there was no need to send representatives to Japan.

The Qing government had sued for peace three times, two of which were refused, and the Qing government was very afraid of the continuation of the war, and was determined to do whatever it took to obtain an armistice. After learning of Japan's request, the Empress Dowager Cixi immediately summoned Li Hongzhang, the governor of Zhili and minister of Beiyang, to Beijing and appointed him as a plenipotentiary to Japan to negotiate peace.

After Li Hongzhang entered Beijing, the Empress Dowager Cixi said that she was ill and asked Emperor Guangxu to be responsible for the reception. In the court meeting on February 22, 1895, Emperor Guangxu asked Li Hongzhang to discuss peace with his ministers.

Ministers Sun Yuwen and Xu Yongyi believed that the current situation was urgent, and if the conditions for Japan's land cession were evaded, the peace talks would not be able to continue. Wen Tingshi also advocated following the story of Tsar Alexander I of Russia who moved the capital and eventually defeated Napoleon, and demanded that the capital be moved to fight again, but this was quickly rejected. Li Hongzhang claimed: "If you cut the land, you can't do it, and if you can't talk about it, you will return to your ears!" ”

Later, Li Hongzhang visited the ministers of various countries and begged for interference, but to no avail. Li Hongzhang saw that the land cession was a foregone conclusion, so he went to the emperor on March 2 to report to the emperor on the matter of land cession, and asked for a "face-to-face instruction", and he had to get a clear authorization from Emperor Guangxu to cut the land. Emperor Guangxu had no choice but to say that he could grant Li Hongzhang the "right to transfer land by business".

Therefore, on March 13, 1895, in the name of Minister First Class and Plenipotentiary, Li Hongzhang led more than 100 attachés to Shimonoseki (now Shimonoseki), Japan, with Japanese Prime Minister Hirobumi Ito and Foreign Minister Mutsu Munemitsu. On March 19, 1895, Li Hongzhang arrived in Shimonoseki, Japan, and stayed at Jieyinji Temple (the residence of Korean messengers in ancient times). On March 20, the two sides met at Chunfan House (a famous Japanese restaurant in Shimonoseki that is famous for cooking puffer fish) and officially opened peace talks.

The scene of the signing period, Counselor Luo Fenglu, Counselor Wu Tingfang, Counselor Ma Jianzhong, Counselor Lu Yongming, and Counselor Luo Gengling are the translators. Participating in the talks on the Japanese side were: Minister Plenipotentiary Hirobumi Ito, Minister Plenipotentiary Mutsu Munemitsu, Cabinet Registrar Daiji Ito, Foreign Affairs Secretary Katsunosuke Inoue, Foreign Minister Secretary Keiyoshi Nakata, Foreign Ministry Interpreter Mutsu Hiroyoshi, and Foreign Ministry Interpreter Narahara Tamamasa.

From March 21 to 24, 1895, the first three rounds of negotiations were held between China and Japan. At that time, although the Beiyang Naval Division was annihilated, the battle on the battlefield in Liaodong was in full swing, and Japan established the so-called "Governor's Office of the Qing Dynasty" on March 16, before the negotiations, with Prince Akihito Komatsu, chief of staff, as the governor of the capital, preparing to enter Lushun, go straight to Beijing, and command the "Zhili Plain Operation".

Therefore, Li Hongzhang demanded an armistice before the peace talks, and the Japanese side put forward four harsh conditions, including the occupation of Tianjin and other places, forcing Li Hongzhang to temporarily withdraw the armistice demand. Li Hongzhang then asked about the terms, and the Japanese side decided to present them in the next round of negotiations. When Ito Hirobumi revealed the cession of the island of Taiwan in the third round of negotiations, Li Hongzhang replied that Britain would intervene, and Ito smiled and said: "It's not just Taiwan!" Wherever you are in your territory, if I want to take it, who can refuse it? ”

In short, in the first three rounds of negotiations, Ito Hirobumi did his best to humiliate Li Hongzhang, while Li Hongzhang made compromises and was afraid of making peace. The Japanese side voluntarily withdrew its armistice proposal under harsh conditions, thus achieving the goal of peace talks without stopping the war.

After the third round of negotiations on 24 March, Li Hongzhang was suddenly shot by the Japanese Toyotaro Oyama on his way back to his residence at the 'Jieyin Temple', causing Li Hongzhang to be injured in the left eye. The Japanese government was greatly embarrassed and discouraged by this incident, which greatly reduced Japan's negotiating advantage, and admitted that "the empire had to be placed in a very difficult position because of this murderous incident, but the Qing state had thus obtained the best possible excuse for the countries, and the Qing envoys might return to China immediately."

and when it pleads to the nations, they will show sympathy to them, and it is difficult to guarantee that they will not turn to restrain us by the pressure of their union". Fearing that it would be a pretext for the intervention of a third country, the Emperor and Empress personally sent doctors and nurses to treat Li Hongzhang and offer condolences, and on the other hand, they voluntarily declared a truce. Li Hongzhang did not immediately return to China, as Japan feared, but continued negotiations. On March 30, the two sides signed a truce treaty, which lasted for 21 days, and the scope of the truce was limited to Fengtian, Zhili, and Shandong. By this time, the Japanese army had already attacked and occupied Penghu on March 23, creating a threat to Taiwan, and the armistice excluded this area, maintaining Japanese military pressure here.

After the turmoil subsided, the Japanese representatives continued to threaten and blackmail in the posture of victors. The American adviser Crestec tried by all means to induce Li Hongzhang to accept the conditions as soon as possible so that he could reap the benefits. In the fourth round of negotiations held on April 1, 1895, the Japanese side put forward very harsh terms of peace and demanded that the Chinese side reply within three to four days, mainly including:

confirmation of the independence of the DPRK;

China compensated Japan with 300 million taels of silver for military spending;

China ceded the island of Taiwan and its affiliated islands, the Penghu Islands, and the Liaodong Peninsula to Japan;

China opened seven treaty ports to Japan: Beijing, Shashi, Chongqing, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Xiangtan and Wuzhou.

the scope of navigation rights for inland waterways such as the Yangtze River, Xijiang River, Wusong River and canals;

The location of the Japanese garrison and the required military expenses.

Li Hongzhang was greatly shocked by the Japanese lion's wide opening, and he reported to the imperial court while refuting clauses other than "confirming the independence of Korea."

In the face of such harsh conditions from Japan, Li Hongzhang certainly could not agree. If he had agreed to Japan's initial conditions, he would have become a national sinner. When he returns to Beijing, even Cixi will not let him go. Because, from the very beginning, Japan's conditions were simply digging out China's heart and blood, wanting to put China to death, wanting to put the Qing Dynasty to death!!!