China and Britain are friendly and cooperative on the surface, but secretly they are deeply hostile, because China wants to compete for world hegemony, while Britain wants to maintain world hegemony, and the core interests of the two sides are irreconcilable, so they are actively preparing for the next war.

In the past ten years, Britain has been harmed by Li Weiguo's illegal banknotes, the pound has depreciated sharply, and the counterfeit money has seriously damaged Britain's finance and economy, resulting in a large-scale outflow of gold and silver and other wealth accumulated by Britain for hundreds of years, which was plundered by Li Weiguo.

The British government has stepped up the crackdown on counterfeit money, but the temptation of counterfeit money is too great, because Li Weiguo's counterfeit pound can almost be fake, with a simulation degree of up to 90%, which is impossible for ordinary British citizens to see, unless they get the bank to check the verification code to find the problem.

This caused a headache for the British government, and finally forced the British government to reduce the circulation of paper money, and instead mint large-denomination gold and silver coins to replace paper money that was easy to be counterfeited. This greatly affected the British currency market, after all, many transactions require a large amount of currency, and holding a coin weighing dozens of pounds is obviously not as light as paper money, which has caused British citizens to complain.

In order to avoid the loss caused by the illegal banknote, many British Chambers of Commerce had to give up the pound sterling and use internationally trusted foreign currencies as trading and reserve currencies, and the strength of the renminbi has always been linked to gold and is trustworthy, so many British chambers of commerce have gradually begun to use the renminbi for offshore transactions, which has invisibly hit the pound sterling, so that the renminbi continues to swallow the status of the international first currency that originally belonged to the British pound and become the world's common currency.

This is exactly what Li Weiguo wants to see, when one day the renminbi becomes the only strong currency in the world, when all countries in the world are including the renminbi in foreign exchange reserves, then the renminbi will dominate the world's currency market, China will kidnap the whole world, and when there is a shortage of money, it will start the money printing machine and let the countries of the world pay for it.

This was the American practice of later generations, and Li Weiguo is now following suit. And step by step close to success.

The currency war between China and Britain is quietly going on, this time Li Weiguo did not launch a currency war against other European and American countries, but only against Britain, the purpose is to ease relations with other European and American countries, even if it is impossible to win over these European and American countries to follow China to deal with Britain, at least let these European and American countries understand that China is only against Britain, not against other countries, but all rational countries understand that they should not get involved in the game between China and Britain. Otherwise, you will be burned, and neutrality is the best choice.

The secret wrestling between China and Britain is not only manifested at the level of currency wars, but also in the industrial war.

Following the invention of open-hearth steelmaking in China, Britain was not far behind, replacing steelmaking blast furnaces on a large scale, increasing steel production, depressing steel export prices, and competing with China's steel internationally.

But. The British people are very sad to find that whenever the end of the month comes, the British government happily announces that this month's British steel production has increased by 10% year-on-year, reaching 700,000 tons. The results were soon announced by the China Audit Office. China's steel output rose 20% year-on-year to 1 million tonnes that month.

As early as 1869, China's total steel production actually surpassed that of Britain, but British vanity at that time refused to admit it. I thought that in a few years, Britain would definitely be able to increase steel production and get rid of China.

As a result, several years passed. Britain did increase steel production significantly, but it failed to realize its desire to open a few streets in China, and was thrown away by China a few streets.

Although Britain can transport raw materials back from overseas colonies for processing and production, it is a pity that Britain has a small population and limited labor force, so its production capacity is naturally limited.

China, on the other hand, has expanded its land area in recent years, reaching 15.76 million square kilometers, surpassing Tsarist Russia to become the world's largest country in terms of land area.

The British government is not satisfied, and has repeatedly lowered the price of steel exports, competing with China for the international steel market share. As a result, China was slapped in the face, because China's substantial increase in steel production capacity on the one hand to meet domestic construction consumption, on the other hand, a large number of international steel market to make money.

China's steel was sourced locally, and the cost of mining and transportation was low, while the British had to bring back ore from overseas colonies for processing, which naturally made it expensive. At the same time, China's steel mills adopt advanced steelmaking methods, and the quality of steel exceeds that of British carburizing steel technology and German Krupp steel technology, and the steel quality is the highest, which has been recognized by all countries in the world, making China's steel with high quality and low price, and high cost performance to win the recognition of the market.

In this case, the UK's steel competitiveness is deteriorating, and it has suffered a lot from competing with China on steel prices.

When the Chinese government launched a price war against the UK, international steel prices plummeted, and the high-cost British steel mills suffered large losses, and in less than half a year, many British private small and medium-sized steel mills were forced to close their doors or even go bankrupt.

Of course, the steel price war between China and Britain has also hurt the steel factories of other countries in the world, and countries such as France, Italy, and Russia, which are weaker than the British steel technology, have also suffered heavy losses. However, there has been a rise of steel in Germany and the United States.

Because Germany has formed a strategic alliance with China, some of China's advanced steel technology has been transferred to Germany, and Germany itself has Krupp steel technology, so it can smelt very good steel to survive the Sino-British steel price war.

In addition to being technologically inferior to China and not having China's advanced steelmaking technology, to a certain extent, the United States is comparable to China in other aspects, because the United States itself is a resource-rich country, iron ore and coal mines are concentrated and easy to mine, and the production cost is even lower than China's, so it has also survived this steel price war.

As a result, a Sino-British steel price war finally caused Britain to lose three liters of blood, and China won, but it also gave German steel and American steel a chance to rise.

This made Li Weiguo a little unexpected, but he didn't take it to heart, he had a way.

Soon, the Chinese government, based on its position as the world leader in steel, began a price war for automobiles.

At this time, all countries began to study the internal combustion engine and manufactured a variety of cars, but on the whole they were inferior to the cars made in China, because some key technologies and resources could not be mastered.

For example, the cylinders, engines, bearings and other materials of Chinese automobiles use the most advanced special steel materials in China. Even tungsten carbide, nichrome alloy and other elements are added to it, and foreign countries cannot produce this kind of steel. Although there are many kinds of rubber in the world, Western countries are also looking for many kinds of rubber trees, but they cannot achieve the standard of automobile tires. They all thought that China's rubber came from the natural rubber trees of Luzon (the Philippines), but they did not know that the real original rubber trees came from the Brazilian rainforest.

In this way, China has kept steel prices down, but has not directly exported steel. Turning to support the production of the national automobile industry, the cost of automobile production has decreased, but the sales price of automobiles has risen, and the profits in the middle are huge, which makes foreign automobile counterparts envious and jealous, and they have to import various engines, bearings, tires and other components from China.

At the same time, on the mutual recognition of patent rights between China and Britain, the British suddenly found themselves suffering a big loss, and previously thought that the Chinese would not create. It will only copy the invention of the British, so the British government has done everything possible to take the initiative to sign a patent protection treaty with China, but now it is found that it is self-tied, such as the invention and design patent rights related to various parts of the car. Li Weiguo casually took out some historical classic car design schemes to apply for patents first, which made China's automobile industry shine, and made the British people only envious but unable to go to the cottage.

Seeing that China's auto industry monopolizes the world market. The hard currency of golden and white flowers continued to flow into the pockets of the Chinese, and all countries in the world were envious and jealous, except for Britain. It seems that no country dares to confront China, because China's military strength is strong, defeating Britain three times, defeating France, the United States and Russia once, this kind of record has been recognized as a military power all over the world, and no country is willing to provoke a military power, so it can only cooperate with China.

Of course, Li Weiguo's tactics were very successful, with a big stick in one hand and sweet dates in the other. While militarily oppressing other countries, they do not forget to give them some benefits. For example, we should strengthen economic, trade, and military cooperation, obtain each other's needs through bilateral trade, and export weapons and equipment to these countries through military cooperation. China's military strength is strong, and many world-class advanced weapons and equipment have been tested in actual combat, so many countries recognize it. Coupled with Germany's large-scale imports of weapons and equipment from China, this has played a very good leading role. Every country has its own national interests, and it has been unaccustomed to Britain as the hegemon for many years, and military cooperation with China to improve its own national defense capability is in itself in line with the core interests of all countries.

Therefore, China's bait of economic, trade and arms trade quickly attracted the attention of many European and American countries, allowing them to remain neutral between China and Britain without taking sides.

China has launched an all-round attack in military, science and technology, politics, and economy, and militarily has increased the approval of military exports, allowing more Western countries to buy China's weapons and equipment.

In terms of science and technology, some export restrictions have also been relaxed, and some civilian technologies that do not affect China's world scientific and technological hegemony are allowed to be exported, but they will sign technology agreements with Western countries and are not allowed to be transferred to the United Kingdom. For Western countries, each has its own national interests, and naturally it will not easily leak the technology to the UK.

Politically, the Chinese government has assured Western countries that as long as they are not hostile to China, there will be no illegal attacks on the financial markets of these countries, which is very important for Western countries, because they have experienced the huge impact of money violations on their countries, so they have said that they will never be enemies of China.

On the economic front, China will open its domestic market to other countries and reduce import and export tariffs. China will open the land and maritime Silk Road to strengthen economic and trade relations between countries along the route. Among them, focusing on railway cooperation, China will build railways along the land Silk Road, China will be wholly owned, accounting for 60% of the shares, enjoying 99 years of operating rights, and countries along the line are responsible for the transfer of land ownership and demolition work along the line, enjoying 40% of the shares.

Through these means, China will maintain friendly relations with most of the countries of the world except Britain, and although these countries will not be able to turn to China in the short term, as long as they do not turn to Britain.

As a result, China and Britain began fierce competition and competition on the international stage, from the economy to the military, from science and technology to politics, China and Britain have used diplomatic means to launch a war without gunpowder.

However, in the nineteenth century, all other means were secondary, and the final victory or defeat depended on the military capabilities of both sides, and whoever had the bigger fist was the winner.

China and the UK, as well as other countries, are convinced of this.

The whole world is watching the direction of the development of armaments and the quantity of equipment between China and the United Kingdom, and the naval arms race between China and Britain has been going on, and this cycle is constantly shrinking. In the past, the service cycle of the Chinese and British navies in the development, design, and construction of ships was five years. But now, the navies of both sides are competing every year.

For example, last year the Chinese Navy began to lay keels on three battleships, and Britain quickly got the news that a few months later six or nine battleships of the same class would be built, almost doubling or tripling the number.

Britain is a naval power, with many shipyards, strong shipbuilding capabilities, and the ocean area under its control far exceeds that of China, and it is a global delivery navy, so the number of warships needed is naturally much more than that of the Chinese Navy, not to mention that the British Navy was defeated in the Battle of Scarborough Shoal, and it is afraid of the Chinese Navy, and it is even more necessary to increase the number of warships.

Li Weiguo knew the British Navy's thinking best, so when he learned that Britain would start building more warships, the Chinese Navy quickly started building warships in the following year, forcing the British Navy to invest more money and manpower to build more warships again, in the hope of dragging down Britain's finances and economy.

Fearing that the British Navy would not follow suit, Li Weiguo specially instructed the Chinese Navy to hold a press conference to disclose some of the data, and at the same time deliberately let some British spies obtain some so-called "confidential" information, so as to stimulate the British Navy to build more targeted warships.

Li Weiguo is not afraid of an all-out arms race with Britain, but he is afraid that Britain will not follow, and as long as Britain takes the bait, then there will be a chance that Britain will suffer a big loss.

For example, the Chinese Navy started to build all-steel battleships, but the appearance has not changed much from the previous ironclad ships, and it is also claimed to be ironclad ships. (To be continued.) )