The U.S. Navy was unprepared for this, and only sent two outdated protective cruisers, but was bombarded by the field artillery of the Columbia Insurrectionary Army and fled back wounded, and sank a transport ship carrying an entire battalion, and international public opinion was in an uproar......

The frustrated US Government came back with additional troops, but by this time the Colombian Romans had already asked for help from the Chinese detachment in Hawaii, and although the warships could not cross the isthmus to the opposite side, after a regiment of Chinese Marines was stationed in Panama, the new Colombian government suddenly felt a great sense of confidence, saying that even if it abandoned the east coast, it would never give in to US imperialism. Pen ~ fun ~ cabinet www.biquge.info and the Chinese government not only openly recognized its legitimacy, but even pushed the Asian League to include the Republic of Colombia as the eighth member state, which means that if the United States dares to infringe on Colombia's sovereignty, it will immediately start a war with the Asia-Pacific Alliance led by China!

The U.S. government, which was not sure of defeating China, hesitated, but it was unwilling to cede such a vital place as the Panama Canal to China, so it sent a fleet to go back and forth on the east coast of the Isthmus of Panama, where the Chinese army could not reach it, to exert pressure.

The Chinese Navy's squadron in Hawaii immediately sent two Haitian-class armored cruisers to the port of San Francisco, and if the American fleet dared to shell the port of Colombia or civilian ships, they would immediately shell San Francisco in retaliation......

The situation in North America suddenly became tense, because this crisis arose because of the Panama Canal, which is known as the "Panama Crisis".

In the end, the crisis was resolved by the mediation of the British government, but the fundamental contradictions between China and the United States have not been eliminated, and the Chinese government has not given up on building and controlling the Panama Canal.

The terrible sight of the mighty Chinese fleet rushing through the Panama Canal to the east coast of the United States makes every American with the slightest insight feel like pins and needles. Even though the burden of maintaining a million-strong army is already heavy, there is still a consensus among the upper echelons of American society to build a powerful navy that is not inferior to China's and fundamentally eliminate the Chinese threat.

But in this way, the middle and lower class people in the United States soon felt the heavy tax pressure, and they paid a huge price to immigrate from Europe to the United States, just because they felt that there was a good life here and it was safer, but now that North America has been shrouded in the shadow of war, life is not as good as before, so what is there to be nostalgic for in the United States?

As a result, not only did the inflow of European immigrants into the United States continue to slow down, but more and more Americans even chose to move back to Europe, so that in 1899, the total population of the United States was less than 74 million, a million fewer than the same period in history, and as long as China could not be driven out of the Americas, the United States would never want to absorb European immigrants in large numbers as before......

But even at such a cost, the U.S. government is unlikely to stop strengthening its navy, because the East Coast is so important. If it weren't for China's somewhat unexpected sale of most of the Haitian-class equipment and its own reduction in the size of its main fleet, the United States would have declared war on China out of fear before the Panama Canal was built.

However, the British government had long expected this, and although its performance in the Sino-Japanese War and the Sino-Japanese War shocked the world, China was still a poor and backward agricultural country on the whole, and it was impossible for China to maintain a powerful navy that was the largest in the world for a long time.

What's more, the reason why China can maintain 12 10,000-ton capital ships when the country has just begun industrial construction is largely because Li Hui keenly grasped a break in the development of the world's navy and adopted the extreme strategy of abandoning auxiliary ships to build capital ships, but with the gradual maturity of torpedo technology (gyroscopes have been applied at this time, the accuracy of torpedoes has made a qualitative leap, but the problem of power has not been solved, so the range and speed are still insufficient. If the Ocean Fleet still has only capital ships, it will be no different from looking for death.

If it weren't for the fact that the scale of the Chinese Navy had expanded a lot after the war against Britain, I am afraid that it would only be enough to fill these eight unprecedentedly large ships, and there would be no extra personnel to operate the dozens of auxiliary ships.

Rao is so, after the saint-level battle patrol enters service, it is inevitable that the Haitian-level patrol will retire from active service, in fact, the former was originally designed and built to replace the latter.

However, as long as it is not compared with the saint-level battle patrol, the Haitian-level patrol is still world-class, and it is too wasteful to dismantle it directly.

For the capital ships, the number of 12 ships is not so easy to get rid of, but the performance of the Haitian-class patrol in the two wars is too conspicuous, and it is rare that the ship is still relatively new, so it was immediately popular.

Although the Japanese government, which had long been dissatisfied with those old ironclad ships, was still very financially tight, it still refused to let go of the rare opportunity to revitalize the navy, and with the support of the people of the whole country, including many migrant workers in China, tightened their belts, they bought four Haitian-class patrol ships in one go, becoming the largest buyer. Since the purchase volume is the largest, and at the same time it is an ally, it is actually similar to a left-handed hand-to-right hand for China, so the unit price is the lowest, and it only costs 50 million Chinese yuan in total, which is still paid in installments.

Other buyers did not have such a good treatment, especially Li Hui shamelessly played the auction, only accepting gold and silver, with a unit price of 10 tons of gold, and at least 1 ton of gold added to each bid.

As a result, Argentina, which recently had two small sums of money, took the lead and bought two ships in one go. For this, the Argentine government paid a full 28 tons of gold.

The strength of the Argentine Navy has skyrocketed, and Chile, which has always had a bad relationship, was restless, so they also gritted their teeth and bought two ships to ensure the balance of power, due to the late shot, the competition was more intense, and the price paid for it was as high as 30 tons of gold, fortunately, Chile, which basically monopolized the world saltpeter market during this period, had money, only richer than the people, and even exceeded the current United States, 30 tons of gold hurt a little, but the financial support was fully supported. (To be continued.) )