Yang Chao had a Japanese-language newspaper in front of him, which was run by the Japanese in the Japanese concession in Tianjin, and they forwarded the contents of some domestic newspapers, and seeing that the Japanese attached so much importance to this military exercise and reported on the situation of the navies of the three countries, Yang Chao knew that he had taken the first step in his strategy of encircling Japan. Pen ~ fun ~ pavilion www.biquge.info

But that's just the beginning.

Yang Chao does not care about the content of the military exercise, nor does he attach importance to it, it is just an exercise, or a joint exercise, the key is the political significance behind it, and the political significance is by no means in the formation changes on the sea surface, the shelling of targets, and other tactical actions.

Ten days after the exercise, the fleet departed for Brazil.

I was quite interested in the fleet going to Brazil, when Yang Chao arrived.

The fleet escorted the Chinese trade delegation to Brazil to discuss trade cooperation.

Prior to this, Yang Chao had already established a branch in Rio de Janeiro through Standard Chartered Bank and set up a comptoir.

The comptoir had already taken over a lot of land in Brazil and had bought the mining rights under it.

The map was provided by Yang Chao, for which he specially turned around Brazil, and determined the location of all the large iron mines in Brazil, Brazil in later generations was a famous iron ore exporter, and the iron ore negotiations in Vale made the bureaucratic steel factories of the Celestial Empire want to die every time.

However, quietly, the largest iron ore has been occupied by Yang Chaoquan. This is not a difficult problem, when a Pole under the banner of Standard Chartered Bank opens the way with a large amount of gold, Brazil's notoriously corrupt government officials don't care about any iron ore mining rights, and casually sells Brazil's most valuable iron ore for 20,000 pounds, and this batch of iron ore has a steel content of 10 billion tons.

These are all the easiest to mine, with a taste of more than 60% of the large-scale iron-rich mines, as for those that are not easy to mine, in order not to make the Brazilians suspicious, they did not do it for the time being, but Yang Chao will not let it go in the end.

At this time, Brazil has not yet discovered huge iron ores, and the hottest investment for Brazilians now is to invest in plantations to produce coffee, for which they have also sent people to China to negotiate immigration, hoping to encourage Chinese labor to go to Brazil to start farming.

It's a pity that at that time, when Kang Youwei and Guangxu were engaged in the Hundred Days Restoration, they felt that the Brazilians proposed that the whole family immigrate and join the Brazilian nationality was an insult to our Great Celestial Empire, so they arrogantly refused, so that a large number of idle Chinese laborers lost an opportunity to reclaim Brazil.

However, the Japanese were very active, and during the stay of the Brazilian delegation in Nagasaki, they actively negotiated with the Brazilians and reached an immigration agreement with Brazil. In 1908, the first passenger ship carrying 781 Japanese, the Kasato Maru, departed from Kobe for the port of São Dos, São Paulo, Brazil. Then the Japanese will emigrate 300,000 people to Brazil over the next 30 years. However, before World War I, only about 10,000 Japanese immigrants had immigrated.

Brazil is too short of labor, before they were the world's largest slave importer, after the end of the slave trade, it has always been in a state of labor shortage, after the industrialization of Europe, the flow of immigrants has stopped, that is, to immigrate, and most of them are immigrants to the United States to realize the American dream, Brazilian Europeans do not look down on it, so Brazil only thought of attracting immigrants from China.

When the Chinese business delegation came to Brazil, the Brazilians were quite enthusiastic, because the Chinese trade delegation was very popular in recent years, and the delegation sent by Yang Chao was often hundreds of millions of trade contracts, who didn't welcome it?

The so-called negotiations are actually nothing complicated, the basic point of view has been reached by the two sides before, and the content of the signed agreement is also very plain, that is, fair bilateral trade relations, such as the exchange of commercial consuls, the two countries promote each other's trade development, Yang Chao also gave Brazil a sweet date, that is, the establishment of a grain procurement company in Brazil, which will purchase three million tons of wheat from Brazil every year.

At the same time, no one cares that the commercial treaty between the two sides stipulates that each other will not set up investment obstacles for each other's nationals, that China welcomes Brazilian businessmen to invest in China, that the Brazilian government also welcomes Chinese businessmen to invest in Brazil, and that businessmen on both sides respect local laws and obey the management of local governments.

Well, this is what Yang Chao wants, after his iron ore is produced in Brazil in the future, if the Brazilians are red-eyed, then they have to ask the treaty, the treaty is not the problem, the problem is the huge fleet and army of China, which endorses the treaty.

Yang Chao is confident that China will have the strength to defend its own interests within a few years, not to mention that a navy of this size will be enough to deter countries like Brazil as long as it grows in a few years.

As soon as the business delegation left, Standard Chartered began to prepare for the construction of a railway to connect Itabira, a small town in the eastern state of Minas Gerais, north of Rio, with the city of Belo Horizonte, the first assistant of Minas Gerais, 50 kilometers away, which is completely commercial, no one cares, no one notices, and no one knows that there is an ore body 64 kilometers wide and 192 kilometers long under Itabira, with reserves of 3.5 billion tons and an iron content of up to 60-70%, and the ore layer is close to the surface, which is convenient for open-pit mining.

In fact, even if you know, it may not be taken seriously by the Brazilians, even the Western powers may not pay much attention to it, in this era, the Americans sell their iron ore cheaper than soil, Europe and the United States are not areas lacking mineral deposits, so there is no behavior of enclosing iron ore in the world at all.

This gave Yang Chao the opportunity, Yang Chao built 30 large steel plants in the northeast, with a planned annual output of 10 million tons, but the iron mines in the northeast are too poor, and it is not surprising that the idea is on Brazil, and when these steel mills start steelmaking, they will import Brazilian iron ore on a large scale.

At that time, it happened to be a world war, and steel would be an industry where the more the merrier.

Of course, Australia's iron ore reserves are also very large, but Australia is the territory of the British Empire, if it is found to be profitable, the British will take the iron ore directly, and Yang Chao has no way, so there is no interest in Australia at present, Brazil does not have to worry, let the Brazilians collect one and try, Yang Chao does not discount their legs?

Therefore, in addition to valuing Brazil's iron ore, Brazilians are not strong enough.

The business delegation left Brazil and headed north from the coast of South America, arriving in the United States more than two weeks later.

The Americans welcomed them warmly, because the Americans knew that they would reap a huge cake this time, an order for the construction of warships worth $500 million.

When he received the news that the delegation had arrived in the United States, Yang Chao sighed in his heart: "The second step is to go out!" (To be continued.) )