After Yuan Shikai came to power, he actively expanded the Beiyang military armed forces, expanding the 9 divisions of the new army with 110,000 people and the old army of the patrol battalion with 40,000 people in the last years of the Qing Dynasty into 12 divisions and 16 mixed brigades of the new army, totaling about 220,000 people. Together with the old patrol battalion and Zhang Zuolin and other troops, there are about 300,000 people in total.

On the other hand, Huang Xing, who stayed behind in Nanjing, was drastically disbanding his troops, and Huang Xing had already raised nearly 150,000 people's troops.

At this time, the revolutionaries have begun to be divided by Yuan Shikai, especially this running general Huang Xing, this person has no will to fight, basically he runs when he sees the limelight is wrong, Yuan Shikai bluffed a few times, he thought that the country has been reunified, and there is no need for so many people's troops.

As a result, the 20 divisions of the revolutionary party were reduced to 5 divisions, and the strength of the revolutionaries was greatly reduced, but the inability to support them financially was also one of the main reasons.

In the three autonomous provinces of East China, Xia Jun is working hard to organize and train troops.

The five mixed brigades had already undergone initial training, and at this time he had been stationed in the coastal areas and began to build a large number of fortifications along the coast.

These fortifications have been under construction since last year, and Xia Jun has his own coastal defense plan, and has begun to build strong underground fortifications in coastal areas where landfall may occur.

Bombs and shells of such underground fortifications cannot be blown up, and only a small army can defend the entire position and wait for the arrival of a large army.

As for the other five reading groups, Xia Jun is asking them to march to neighboring provinces, to suppress bandits in neighboring provinces, and at the same time to protect commerce, these five reading groups themselves are set up with the intention of defending against attacks by neighboring provinces, it is better to take the initiative and go to their territory to suppress bandits, and warn the surrounding provinces by the way.

As for the three infantry divisions and one artillery division in hand, as soon as the Lantern Festival troops regrouped, they immediately began to crack down on bandits in the three autonomous provinces.

Among the three provinces, the bandits in Fujian have basically disappeared, and the bandits in Zhejiang have almost been wiped out, but the bandits in Jiangxi have not been eliminated.

The 2nd and 3rd Infantry Divisions of Zhang Jiyu and Lin Chenggui were transferred to Jiangxi to cooperate with the newly formed armed forces of various parts of Jiangxi to carry out a thorough eradication of the bandits in Jiangxi.

Jiangxi bandits have already suffered a blow before the Spring Festival, but there are still many who continue to be bandits.

As soon as the crackdown on bandits began, the second and third divisions gave the Jiangxi bandits a thunderous offensive, and the two divisions were scattered into battalions, or even smaller company-level units, and attacked everywhere in Jiangxi.

This kind of decentralized operation has brought a great challenge to the command, but it is precisely because of this decentralized operation that the command and officers at all levels have accumulated a certain amount of command experience.

Also because of the suppression of bandits, Xia Jun's points in his hands have risen by more than 3 million, and the five reading groups have entered Jiangsu, Anhui, Hubei, Hunan, and Guangdong provinces.

Among these five provinces, there are many bandits in Hunan, especially in Xiangxi, where there are simply as many bandits, and there are at least 50,000 or 60,000 bandits in Xiangxi, but the Third Reading Force Regiment that entered Xiangxi was still encircling and suppressing bandits in Xiangdong at this time.

Xia Jun began to build military and civilian airports in various places, and the first batch of air force pilots recruited 500 people and set up a fighter brigade and a strong aircraft squad.

Of course, the Air Force also lacks bombers.

Xia Jun plans to develop his own bomber, Anthony? Fokker was the chief designer of the East China Aviation Manufacturing Company, and Xia Jun also trained some designers in advance.

These designers formed the design team of the East China Aviation Manufacturing Company and began to study bombers and other aircraft, for which Xia Jun provided the bomber design with electric bombers, bombing sights, piloting and navigation instruments, these technologies are very simple, but they are not available in this era.

Soon they designed the first aircraft, a 150-horsepower biplane bomber designed to be able to carry 500 kg of bombs.

Soon the drawings were manufactured, and the planes were simple, wooden and cloth-covered, and because of the lack of power, they were mostly double-winged.

However, the East China Aviation Manufacturing Company is not limited by power, and the East China Internal Combustion Engine Manufacturing Plant has been able to manufacture 450 horsepower high-power engines, and there is a lot of room for design.

Anthony Folk, who was involved in the design of the aircraft, was involved in technical issues, so he signed a confidentiality agreement with the East China Autonomous Political Axe.

The agreement stipulates that Fokker will not disclose all details about these technologies to the outside world, and even if he leaves, he will only be able to open an aircraft factory in China. This guy is here, Xia Jun naturally can't let him go, even if he resigns, Xia Jun will not allow him to leave the three provinces of East China Autonomous Region.

At the same time, agricultural aircraft will be studied, and to put it bluntly, bomber bombs will be replaced with fertilizer, pesticides, or seeds.

In addition to bombers, reconnaissance planes are currently the main object of development, which are mainly used for export, and the requirement is that they are faster and easier to observe than reconnaissance planes of other countries.

The air force has gradually stabilized, while the navy has developed rapidly, with a naval crew of 5,000 and 61 submarines, 80 torpedo boats, 10 300-ton destroyers, and one 8,000-ton cruiser under construction in Mawei.

The navy, army, and air force have all entered a stage of steady development, with the air force and navy in a state of expansion, while the army has not yet expanded, but it will soon introduce a compulsory military service system, which is mainly for the purpose of reserving troops.

After the introduction of compulsory military service, adult citizens must enlist in the army for two years, which are mainly regular military training, after which they can be discharged home.

When the professional army was expanded, it was selected from these retired or serving conscripts, and at the same time, in order to have a good source of soldiers, militia training was also begun in the rural areas of Zhejiang and Jiangxi.

In the future, China will face a situation where millions of troops will fight against each other, and the profession will not be able to maintain such a large number in peacetime.

While building the army, Xia Jun is also constantly investing, after the first batch of loans from the Germans arrived, Xia Jun invested in the raw silk industry, and the East China Group opened several raw silk processing factories.

The largest output of raw silk is Huzhou Mansion in Zhejiang Province on the edge of Taihu Lake, where there are many wealthy families who start from raw silk, with small capital of hundreds of thousands of taels and large ones of millions of taels.

The Propaganda Department began to publicize the new silkworm species to the silkworm farmers in Huzhou Prefecture, which has been cultivated from the cultivation base, with a feed intake 50% higher than that of the general mulberry silkworm, and 30% higher than the average silkworm, and it only takes 24 days from hatching to cocooning.

As far as silkworm farming is concerned, the yield limit is not how fast the silkworm grows, but how many mulberry leaves, so the new silkworm species does not have too obvious advantages in these aspects, and it is more costly mulberry leaves, but the focus is that the new silkworm species has strong disease resistance and survivability, and can be stocked in large quantities.

At the same time, there are also high-yield mulberry trees, which grow mulberry leaves quickly, about 80% more than ordinary mulberry trees, which is very suitable for stocking mulberry silkworms.

Raw silk is an important raw material for military industry and electricity, and the number of people wearing silk will gradually decrease this year, but the market is still relatively good.

At the same time of investing in the raw silk factory, Xia Jun began to provide a large number of advanced production equipment for the textile industry and the paper industry, which was mainly produced by the East China Machinery Manufacturing Factory.

On the eve of the opening of zero tariffs with the United States, the commercial activities of the three East China Autonomous Provinces were extremely active, and various goods from the three East China Autonomous Provinces began to spread to the Chinese provinces through various channels.

Because of the recovery of tariffs, the price of imported cotton has been reduced a lot, so that the competitiveness of those textile factories has been greatly improved, and the dye industry has also made a breakthrough in the development of the East China Chemical Company in Huai'an and other places after a large number of chemical raw materials, fuel costs have been greatly reduced, and it has brought a great competitive advantage to cotton cloth.

In the three provinces of East China, where transportation is improving, the price of dyed cotton cloth is not much higher than that of homespun cloth, and in the past, dyed cotton cloth was a luxury for the poor people, who wore homespun cloth with monotonous colors.

At present, the textile industry generally uses advanced textile equipment, coupled with low labor costs, as well as the development of the dye industry, the cotton cloth of the three autonomous provinces in East China has begun to spread to other provinces.

As far as domestic commercial competition is concerned, except for the three autonomous provinces of East China and the adjacent provinces, there is no transportation advantage in other provinces.

In many undeveloped areas, there is no significant difference in freight between the goods of foreigners and those of the three provinces of East China, and the self-sufficiency rate of these areas is relatively high, and most of them maintain a strong rural natural economic model.

In the Yangtze River Basin, it is the world of foreign goods, and the goods of the three provinces of East China Autonomous Province began to enter the Yangtze River basin market through the ships of the East China Offshore Transportation Company.

The Yangtze River basin is densely populated and is the most important economic region in China.

However, China's wealth has basically been squeezed to a great extent, and the people are generally poor, and the main source of wealth comes from agriculture, which is also an important source of raw materials.

For example, the cowhides gathered in Hankou can provide 100,000 quintals of cowhides in the Yangtze River basin every year, and these raw materials are the objects of competition for the four major oceans.

The commodities of the three autonomous provinces of East China, which had just entered the Yangtze River Basin, soon fought their way out of the Yangtze River Basin, and foreign goods began to boycott the national commodities of the three autonomous provinces of East China, especially several major foreign banks began to join forces to block the commodities of the three autonomous provinces of East China.

In the brutal price struggle, as well as transportation control, the goods of the three autonomous provinces of East China were once defeated, but when the East China Offshore Transportation Company began to operate, the national capital regained its strength and once again launched an impact on the market in the Yangtze River Basin.

This time the impact was more ferocious, and the national goods became organized, and all the goods were labeled with a new trademark.

The trademark is a computer-created pattern, and the words "Made in China" are written on the side of the three words "Made in China" that change the color of the eyes under different lights and angles, and the words "Support domestic products and revitalize China." ”

At the same time, a large part of the goods are labeled with high-quality trademarks, which are owned by the 'China Commodity Quality Inspection Station' established by Xia Jun, and all kinds of goods can apply for the use of this trademark, provided that the goods meet the quality requirements and need to pay a certain deposit.

If there is a quality problem with the goods with this trademark in use, you can find the 'China Commodity Quality Inspection Station', and the testing station will use the commodity deposit to compensate the consumer.

The clarion call for the counteroffensive of national capital has been officially sounded in this early spring.

(To be continued)