On October 2, 1901, after four months of negotiations between China and the United States on Nicaragua, the preliminary results were finally reached, and Huang Zunxian agreed to pay the United States $150,000 in compensation for the 10 US Navy soldiers killed and missing in the collision.

At Huang's insistence, the United States promised not to independently undertake the construction of the Nicaragua Canal in order to avoid the militarization of the canal that China feared...... Of course, Qin Kai will not announce to the world that this investment company with the background of the London House of Lords has an inextricable secret relationship with the Global Sources consortium, and he does not mind helping the Yankees delay the construction at any time.

When the news reached China, Qin Kai was not in Beijing, but accompanied by Admiral Lu Han and his entourage, attended the launching of the 19,000-ton Kunpeng-class fuel supply ship built by the Yingkou North Shipyard...... The 19,000-ton supply ship, this tonnage alone made the admirals present swallow their saliva wildly.

You must know that the most powerful Han-class battleship in the Navy today is only 18,000 tons, and this Kunpeng-class supply ship carries enough coal and fuel oil for a large fleet of eight ships to complete the long journey across the Pacific Ocean and around the Strait of Magellan into the Atlantic, and this is undoubtedly the only way for the blue-water navy.

After visiting the Kunpeng-class fuel supply ship that day, Wang Ruijie, the former senior designer of the Beihai Shipyard who was in charge of the Northern Shipyard, introduced to the naval generals another even more surprising huge supply ship -- the Tianmuhu-class naval ammunition supply ship with a large continuous boom and a displacement of 18,000 tons, which is enough to carry 5,000-20,000 pieces of ammunition for various types of main guns and auxiliary guns, and can complete the transfer of a Han-class battleship with 6 main guns and a total of 420 main gun spare shells within four hours. This is important for maintaining the strike capability of the fleet. It's definitely a temptation that's hard to give up.

But. Due to military spending constraints, the admirals had to endure the great temptation to accept the test model of each model and carry out full maritime operations in the Northern Fleet, and from this month onwards, the advance work of the three major military technical departments began to produce results that the military greatly expected.

In the blink of an eye to the Spring Festival of 1902, the Beijing Daily of the same day published for the first time a photo of Qi Shuxuan, the wife of the Prime Minister, spending the Spring Festival with a female textile worker in Shanghai, but Qin Kai was facing a situation that made him feel quite troublesome again.

The real aftermath of the Boer War was already beginning to manifest itself in this year, despite the fact that the powerful British completely controlled the South African region. But in the open wilderness and tribal territory, the Boers attacked anything related to the British with more resolute fighting spirit, and the British, with an army of 350,000, suddenly found that this was a war with no certainty, and from this year onwards, Lord Milner finally came up with a trick of asking London to transfer all the captured Boers to India, instead of being treated as prisoners of war.

Huge Boer War military spending, naval arms race in the Atlantic. The Salisbury Cabinet was finally overwhelmed, and Britain was tired of the three-year war. The ongoing protests led to a surprise call on Prime Minister Salisbury by US Minister Temple on January 15.

Just a few days later, Britain and the United States suddenly announced that they would strengthen economic cooperation between the two countries and jointly deal with the maritime challenges from the Atlantic coast, and what Britain and the United States were referring to, and the discerning person knew at a glance that it was the German Empire, which was now surging in maritime power, and it was precisely the military base of the German Empire in Haiti in Central America, which threatened the United States to continue to penetrate into Central American power.

Qin Kai never relaxed his vigilance against Britain and the United States, a white man's skin was destined for the two countries to come together in the future, and the two countries in the original history of the rapid convergence after the Boer War, although now it happened somewhat unexpectedly in advance, although he and the Americans followed the Boer War to make a big deal, but the Yankees obviously quickly became the choice of Britain.

Standing in front of the huge global map, Qin Kai began to carefully consider the strategy he had formulated for China's future, when the United Kingdom, which is the world's first and third largest in terms of GDP in this era, unites, to be honest, this is indeed a super difficult copy!

In February, British Prime Minister Salisbury delivered a speech in Liverpool, and the leader of the Conservative Party, who was overwhelmed by the Boer War, apparently hoped that his diplomatic efforts would improve the Conservative Party's election strength in July, so at this meeting attended by the American minister, he expressed for the first time Britain's support for the Monroe Doctrine of the United States, and even directly stated that the British Empire had no intention of interfering in South and Central America.

Of course, Prime Minister Salisbury still very wittily reminded this new ally that the biggest obstacle to the expansion of the United States of America's interests in the Americas comes from Germany, which already has a permanent naval base, and Spain, which is enmity with the Cuban War.

As for another obscure adversary, China, which is now in control of the Panama Canal, considering the huge trade volume between the two countries in the past two years and the earlier binding of Central American interests, has not specifically stated that Theodore, who is having a headache for the abolition of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty? Roosevelt immediately telegraphed to Temple Temple, the British minister, to discuss with Salisbury's cabinet the possibility of abrogating the treaty.

If the treaty were abrogated, the United States would have been able to gain military control of the Nicaragua Canal, rather than simply operating it, and the loss of treaty protection would have required the United States to even cede rights to the canal to Britain, making it clear that Roosevelt's intention to control the Canal and his determination to expand its naval power were clear.

On March 23, when Britain and the United States were engaged in intense negotiations on the treaty, the Chinese Navy ushered in a cross-era moment when a 100-ton giant gantry crane easily lifted the last pair of 10-meter baseline, 25-magnification integral rangefinder onto the top of the bridge of the huge, towering Dreadnought-class battleship at the second outfitting dock of the Jiangnan Shipyard in Shanghai.

The navy received the new warship, is the commander of the Northern Fleet Vice Admiral Tang Qingshan, this has long entered the age of not confused, but this time did not hide his enthusiasm from the depths of his heart, as the navy for the future of the long-term dormant in the country's northern military port of the high-level of the navy, from the Chang'an-class 8 13-inch main gun design, to the current Dreadnought-class 10 305mm, 45 times the diameter of the main gun, although the caliber of the main gun has been reduced, but the high diameter of the main gun, but it means that this will be a new era.

However, this new warship with a design displacement of 22,000 tons, powered by 28 new hybrid oil-fired boilers and three-shaft steam turbines, still faces the same fate as the Chang'an class, according to the order of the Ministry of Military Affairs in Beijing, the warship will still be assigned to the Northern Fleet for at least two years of comprehensive testing at sea, including, of course, the newly installed Storm IV fire control platform on the Dreadnought class.

The news of the delivery of the battleship Intrepid was delivered to Qin Kai's desk on the same day, this news made him feel a little surprised, but also somewhat regretful, the huge displacement naturally means more revolutionary technology, and the vital nature comes from the new design of the hull, the first time a large number of miniaturized watertight cabin design, this battleship is isolated out of nearly 80 large and small watertight cabins, adjacent to each other can only be through the longitudinal watertight hatch in and out, which means that even if one-third of the cabins are flooded, It still allows the ship to maintain its continuous combat capability.

A small regret naturally comes from the mechanical fire control system, the dragon comprehensive fire control platform undertaken by the Mawei real yàn room and the real yàn room of Haitian University has been finalized and tested dozens of times in the past three years, although a large number of precision components are used to improve accuracy, and the alpha calculation clock has also developed a derivative 4 large series, but the test results of the entire fire control system have never been able to beat the storm series and gust series fire control of Jiangnan Precision and Beihai Heavy Industry!

Ahead of the curve, the new concept does not mean that success is within reach, as can be seen from the research and development of dragon fire control, if it were not for the Prime Minister's Office to continue to invest in the two major projects in the past three years, this project may really be aborted...... After all, it was a leapfrog technical challenge to bring this conceptual idea to life in the form of a mechanical simulation. (To be continued......)