Chapter 275: Opportunities and Crises

January 1, 1914

On the first day of the new year in the Western calendar, the district councilors of Anqing, Wuhu, Jiujiang, and Nanchang, as well as the councilors of Anhui and Jiangxi counties, wasted no time in taking to the streets, going door to door to ask for warmth.

If they cannot be re-elected because of their estrangement and courtesy of voters, the annual salary of thousands of silver dollars for county councilors will be lost, and if you add the office expenses, carriage and horse expenses during the meeting of the council, it will be a loss of more than 2,000 silver dollars.

At the same time, it vigorously supported the construction of district and county-level councils, and at the same time imposed extremely strict restrictions on the power of district and county-level councils, but neither the military advisory office nor local officials were allowed to interfere in matters within their scope of responsibility. Although many things seem to be nothing more than the affairs of the people, for the common people, it is the responsibility of the members of the district and county councils to resolve these disputes, to nip the contradictions in the bud, not to let the resentment of the people gather and ferment and eventually cause a catastrophe, and at the same time to supervise the inaction and corruption of officials.

The results of the Consultative Bureau in the anti-** aspect are undoubtedly extremely huge, and since Chai Dongliang became the governor of Anhui two years ago, there have basically been no large-scale group ** cases. The parliamentarians are staring at the officials in every possible way, and once they find the handle, they can only consider themselves unlucky, and the court's bailiffs will unceremoniously arrest people. The legislators who expose corruption cases will become famous, and they are likely to change from county and district councilors to provincial councilors, and their annual salary will increase from 1,000 to 3,000.

However, with the fall of a large number of officials, it is not easy to catch corrupt officials again, first, many officials are indeed frightened, and second, some corrupt officials are more secretive.

At the same time, a large number of unclothed homeless people emerged on the streets of Anqing and Jiujiang, which were originally clean and tidy, and these people spoke with an obvious Huai sound, which was very close to the people of Anhui, but it was different when they listened carefully. They are not from Anhui, but have fled across the river from Xinyang, Guangzhou, and other places in Henan. The white wolf bandits are surrounded and intercepted by Duan Qirui, and they have stabilized, and the white wolf is trapped in Baofeng's lair, and it has been a grasshopper after the autumn for a few days. However, the southeastern region of Henan has been plagued by the back and forth of officers and soldiers and bandits, and a large number of displaced people heard that Anhui and Jiangxi were divided into fields, so they fled to Huaibei with their families and then to Anqing. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, King Li Chuang washed Gwangju, and the local natives were almost wiped out by these Luàn bandits, and most of the ancestors of the current Gwangju people came from Jiujiang, so they fled to the place where their ancestors lived.

The arrival of tens of thousands of displaced people from Henan has brought tremendous pressure to the local government in Anhui and Jiangxi, and it has become the focus of the work of the local government to resettle them and open porridge sheds for relief. At present, the local finances of Anhui and Jiangxi are unprecedentedly abundant, and some local business associations and churches have donated some food and clothing, so that the refugees can have a full meal, and what is really difficult is the residence. It is now a cold winter, and although Anqing and Jiujiang are not dripping into ice like in the north, the wind blowing on the Yangtze River is also cold to the bone. If they were allowed to sleep on the streets, they would surely die en masse, and there was a risk that the plague would spread. Taking advantage of the winter school holidays, the local government temporarily merged the students of several middle schools and vacated the school buildings for the displaced people to live in.

The arrival of the displaced people soon displeased the local people, who did not know how to go to the public toilets, and often defecated in the huā altar on the side of the road, and Anqing, Jiujiang, which were known for their cleanliness and tidiness, were now filthy. The contrast between the straight and wide roads, the newly built high-rise buildings and these ragged homeless people is even more glaring.

Happiness is compared to the local people in Anhui and Jiangxi to see the tragic situation of the displaced people in Henan, and they feel more and more that the good days are not easy to come by, Yuan Shikai's cousin Zhang Zhenfang is in Henan as the governor of the city to scrape the ground, and the military discipline of the Yi Army and the Zhensong Army stationed in Henan is not much worse than the white wolf bandits, and the Jianghuai Army not only does not disturb the people, but also on the rest day under the leadership of the officer, take the initiative to help the people carry water and chop firewood, Anhui, Jiangxi and other places are not only children do not need money to study, but also send things and money during the New Year's holidays. The tax paid by the merchant also often enjoys preferential treatment such as tax refund.

It's not like I don't feel it, in comparison, the people of Anhui and Jiangxi regard the Jianghuai Army as a soldier from the bottom of their hearts, and their support and worship for Chai Dongliang have reached their peak. However, the common people are tired of these homeless people, hate their smelly bodies, hate them for not making a living, hate their bad habits of stealing xiǎomo, and even some homeless people are not good people in the first place, eating porridge in the crowd during the day, beating houses and robbing houses in groups at night, evil xing cases emerge one after another, and the pressure on public security in Anqing, Wuhu, Jiujiang, Nanchang and other places is unprecedented.

This situation has made many local people dissatisfied, and they have approached the councillors, hoping that the local council will find a way to prevent the displaced people from entering the city.

The district and county councils did not have such powers, but the provincial councils held two meetings to discuss and finally decided to set up a special shelter for displaced people in the suburbs to resettle the displaced people. After eating a few full meals, the young and strong were arranged to do some work to repair water conservancy and roads, so that they could support themselves, and the old and weak people were also organized by special personnel in the shelter to teach them the techniques of light manual labor such as weaving and embroidery. At the same time, Chai Dongliang personally sent a telegram to Yang Bangzi, director of the Shanghai Police Department, transferring him to Anqing to serve as the director of the public security department of the Jianghuai Patrol Embassy Bureau, responsible for public security in Jiangxi and Anhui provinces, and preventing the occurrence and spread of evil cases.

At the behest of Chai Dongliang, Wu Jintang and others passed the "Bill on the Protection of Vulnerable Groups," which stipulates that local governments have the obligation to ensure the food and clothing of the displaced people, and at the same time determines that the children of the displaced people have the same right to education as the local people in Anhui and Jiangxi.

This bill caused an uproar*, giving the displaced people a few full meals and a few old clothes, and the common people had no opinion, but allowing their children to receive free education, the local people in Anhui and Jiangxi did not do it. Why do these outsiders not have a penny of tax paid, so they can study without money? Locals staged several demonstrations on a xiǎo scale to protest against the Hun Accounts Law introduced by the Privy Council.

After Chai Dongliang heard about it, he wanted to scold the street angrily, two years ago, how much better could the quality of the local people in Anhui be than these Henan refugees? After three full meals, you feel like you're superior? But when I think about it deeply, I am relieved, doesn't this mean that the people in the area under my rule already have a preliminary sense of rights, isn't this exactly what I want to achieve?

At least the common people already understand that the government is raised by their own taxes, not by the imperial court, which is thousands of times stronger than during the reign of the Qing Dynasty.

The Military Advisory Office put up a large number of proclamations, activated the Constitutional Party's propaganda tools to tell the people what it meant for the children of the displaced to study, and mobilized students from military schools and public secondary schools to distribute leaflets to passing crowds.

If their children cannot be educated, this kind of poverty will be passed on from generation to generation, and the gap between the rich and the poor will be too serious and at the same time block the upward passage of the children at the bottom, it will become a hidden danger to social stability, and they will pay a greater cost to maintain social order. If the children of displaced people can also receive a good education, they will have the ability to create more wealth and pay more taxes to repay the society when they grow up, which is the good cycle.

In fact, many ordinary people do not understand these propaganda, but they are sure that Chai Dongliang will not lie to them, since the Military Advisory Office said that it is good for the locals to let them study, it must be beneficial.

Since Chai Dongliang deceived Wuhu with two salted duck eggs, he paid the most attention to honesty in governing the locality, saying that if the land was distributed to the people, it must be divided, and that the income from mineral resources should be shared by the whole people, so that they must get real benefits. The good reputation of the Military Advisory Office has gained the trust of the people, and the various systems introduced by Chai Dongliang can be fully understood and cooperated by the people, even if it is something that they do not understand for the time being, they will not hesitate to implement it.

Everyone believed that Chai Dudu would not harm everyone

In January 1914, two years and two months passed, that is, a full fifty months, from November 1911, when Chai Dongliang crossed into this world.

In the space of fifty months, Chai Dongliang has gradually grown from a rookie who trembles in two salted duck eggs to the most powerful figure in China. The two giants of Sun Wen and Yuan Shikai, who have been pressing him and making him breathless, have fallen from the altar to the world because of the frequent faint moves after the establishment of the Republic of China. Sun Wen didn't know that the so-called "second **" was spurned by the people of the world, and was regarded as a sinner who undermined the Republic of China, and even the Kuomintang had already deviated from morality, and when Sun Wen made the "China ** Party" and asked party members to swear allegiance to him according to the fingers, Huang Xing, Li Liejun, Bai Wenwei, including Wang Jingwei, avoided him.

Yuan Shikai made his mind faint, elected him as the first official president of the Republic of China with military ruffians, and brazenly dissolved the Kuomintang and the National Assembly, pushing the Jingying class to the opposite side of himself, including Liang Qichao, who has always supported the presidential system, and other celebrities were completely disappointed in him.

Chai Dongliang's popularity increased day by day, sending troops to recover Ménggu, thwarting the Kwantung Army's vain attempt to split China in Manchuria, and implementing a comprehensive free education and a rudimentary welfare system, making him one of the brightest stars in Chinese politics. Whether it is China's Jingying class or the European and American powers, they have already considered him to succeed Yuan Shikai and the best candidate for the Luàn Bureau after the end of the Republic of China.

Lack of prestige has always been Chai Dongliang's shortcoming, compared to Sun Wen, who has been unswervingly anti-Qing for decades, compared to Yuan Shikai, who promoted foreign affairs and held Beiyang BI to abdicate the Qing court, and even compared to Li Yuanhong, who was pulled out of the chuáng by the ** party and forced to give him the name of the first righteous father, Chai Dongliang has a huge gap. After all, after more than two years of hard work and the opponent's continuous mistakes, the weakest link in the past has now become his strongest point

In half a month, it will be the Chun Festival, let Yuan Shikai spend the last year in the presidential palace

Chai Dongliang has always been reluctant to unify China by force, which is based on the fact that the military strength is inferior to Beiyang or the balance of power between the two sides, and once the war is raging, it will really be a nightmare for the Chinese. Therefore, Chai Dongliang planned to unify the whole country after the end of World War I.

However, things changed over time, and Yuan Shikai vainly tried to collect the military power of Beiyang with a model regiment, just like at the end of the Qing Dynasty, Zaifeng and others tried to collect the power of local governors, so that Beiyang, which was barely able to maintain unity, fell apart in an instant, and Beiyang was no longer a problem

Chai Dongliang also has a fear that in the war of reunification, the Japanese will take advantage of the fire to strike, but if they can complete reunification before the first world war, then the Japanese will not be in trouble. In Chai Dongliang's office, there is also a picture made by the German Emperor Wilhelm II, showing a bodhisattva holding a sword in his hand riding a fiery dragon, the fire dragon spews flames from its mouth, and below it is a burning map of Europe. The painting was made after the Russo-Japanese War, when the Japanese defeated Russia, causing the entire Western world to panic, and the victory of the yellow race over the white race made the German emperor exclaim that "* disaster is coming". According to Western scholars, China was occupied by Japan, 10 million Chinese soldiers under the command of Japanese officers, led by twenty Japanese divisions, slaughtered to the West, and Christian civilization was completely destroyed by Asians. When this sword-wielding bodhisattva (alluding to Japan) successfully harnesses the fiery dragon (alluding to China), the end of the West is coming, and the whip of God will chou a heavy burden on the Christians.

After the Russo-Japanese War, even the British people, who had always hated Russia, began to sympathize with the Russians, who could not tolerate such a defeat as Caucasians.

Under such an international environment, the great powers absolutely could not allow Japan to send troops to occupy China, which is why since the time of Ito Hirobumi, Japan's top politicians have agreed to drain China's economic interests rather than directly occupy China.

Japan is not yet capable of confronting the Western powers, and directly sending troops to occupy China is tantamount to a complete break with the West, and Japan will face a military threat from the great powers, and Ito Hirobumi and others know this very well.

But if the First World War broke out, the situation would change dramatically, and the great powers would not be able to take care of themselves, where could they take into account the threat of disaster?

Historically, World War I broke out in August 1914, just eight months later

Overtaking Japan in strength within eight months is obviously an impossible task, that is, Chai Dongliang must end the unification war within eight months, otherwise China, which is mired in civil war, will face a huge threat from Japan

But will the war end in eight months, as he hoped? Chai Dongliang was not sure