When the Russians signed a commercial cooperation treaty with Lu Zhengxiang in Beijing, the British were the first to stand up, and the Anglian, the chief tax officer, said that this move was a sabotage of China's customs system and a great disadvantage to China. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 ｉｎfo

Like Hurd, Anglian was the British man who controlled the Chinese customs, but he was much more domineering than Hurd, and Hurd knew how to respect the Qing court, but Anglian did not have much respect for the Chinese government.

After the Wuchang Uprising, he immediately ordered the tax departments of all ports to hand over the taxes to the General Taxation Department or the consular corps for safekeeping, and remit all to HSBC. Customs duties in Hankou, Shanghai, Shantou, Guangzhou, Xiamen, and Yantai were directly withheld by the local tax departments and deposited with the Shanghai HSBC Bank, making a bad start to the theft of Chinese tariffs. Since then, throughout the period of the Republic of China, the customs tax balance has become a good card for the great powers to grasp the Chinese government, and obediently will give you the balance of the customs to pay off the debt, and if you are disobedient, I will detain it until you are obedient.

However, the Russians have never been in the habit of listening to other people's baton actions, and Yuan Shikai is now relying on the Russian army to fight against Japan, and at the same time does not want to offend Yang Chao, so he declares with Russia that the two countries have the right to open their own ports, and at the same time respect the rights and interests of other countries, and welcome the British to go to the Sino-Russian border to enjoy duty-free treatment.

Marked by China's opening of its border cities, the British's ability to control China was weakening, and later generations regarded this as the end of the Heard era, because the customs of the Heard era always firmly controlled China's finances, and it was also the time when Britain was the strongest and had the strongest control over the world.

However, the issue of the border crossing was only a small episode, and at most it made the British Empire unhappy, and the next agreement was intended to affect the world situation.

Russia and China signed a "Treaty of Mutual Protection in Northeast Asia," in which the two sides declared that in the event of a war between either of the two countries and a third country within the scope of Northeast Asia, the other country has a completely unshirkable obligation to guarantee each other, and must provide full support to the other side with all its land, sea, and air forces, all its industrial resources, and all its human resources.

The strength of this treaty is obviously much greater than that of the Sino-German-American alliance, but it can also be seen that it is a treaty against Japan. And not a passive treaty, but a purely military alliance, of course, a situational alliance limited to East Asia. There is, however, a subsidiary clause whereby the two countries must obtain the understanding of the other party before they can wage war against a third country.

In addition, the treaty also opposes any country in Northeast Asia that violates the territorial integrity and sovereign independence of other countries, starting from 1858, and the two sides do not recognize any territorial changes within the territory since then.

This article was obviously aimed at the annexation of Korea by Japan, which Russia had previously clearly objected to, and China had reservations, and through this treaty, China had repudiated it, and at the same time denied the question of Taiwan, which apparently had been ceded to Japan after 1858.

The Japanese strongly opposed the treaty, and the British also opposed it, believing that such a move would undermine peace and stability in the East.

However, Russia and China went their own way, and the two sides soon completed the signing and exchange of the treaty, and on March 1, 1914, the treaty officially entered into force.

Then Russia began to move troops to the east, and even couldn't wait for the snow in Siberia to melt, so it began to increase its troops to Irkutsk, and the number of their additional troops was not announced to the outside world, but according to the intelligence of various countries, Russia intends to increase its troops in Irkutsk by one million, plus the one million troops that China has formed in the northeast, China and Russia will have an absolute advantage in the northeast.

By this time, no one doubted that China would unite with Russia and start another war in the northeast.

Some people have even begun to study the diplomatic activities of the Chinese around the northeast in recent years, and some believe that the Chinese are very clever, did not overstimulate Russia, and reconciled with Russia in a relatively peaceful way, just as Bismarck did not invade Austrian territory, and was able to reconcile with Austria and neutralize Austria in the Franco-Prussian War.

However, some people believe that the Chinese are just a successful adjustment after a failed foreign policy, and if their diplomacy with Japan succeeds, they would have recovered the lost territory in the northeast long ago, and there is no need to join this war, and this war has the same purpose as the last war, but it is just a rest and recuperation of the goals that were not completed in the previous war, and it is an unnecessary war.

However, all agreed that Japan's diplomacy had failed completely, and the diplomats decided that Japan should not take up too much Russian territory, so that they would lose the opportunity to reconcile with Russia, and make Russia their destined enemy, and that the Russians would inevitably join them when they started a war with other countries.

At the same time, Japan should not even violate the agreement to forcibly occupy the lost territory, one of the achievements of China's war, so that Japan will push its allies who once worked together against Russia to the side of the Russians, and give China a reason to unite with Russia, so that the situation in Northeast Asia will be extremely unfavorable to Japan.

The involvement of Japan could bankrupt the long-term diplomatic efforts of the French, and the Anglo-Russian rapprochement they brokered could crack and cause Britain to confront Russia again.

As for British diplomacy, it has also spiraled out of control, and Japan has drawn them into a confrontation, and if Britain continues to support Japan, they will have to face a joint resistance from the Sino-American and German alliances and the Franco-Russian alliance.

Starting from the Sino-Russian mutual protection treaty, the two island countries of Britain and Japan were isolated by land powers for a time.

At this time, Britain and Japan, due to the increase of troops in the northeast of China and Russia, they did not care about the cultivation of the sea, and took the land route from Korea to the northeast to increase troops, through the north of Korea, into the Ussuri River valley, and then increased the troops in the Heilongjiang River basin. There was also a mobilization in Japan, which increased the number of troops to 2 million.

You must know that at this time, the Russian army was only 1.35 million, the German army was only 800,000, the French army was 600,000, the British army was 100,000, and the United States basically had no army.

The British, seeing that they were completely out of control, began to prepare for war.

Although the British did not want to get involved in direct confrontation with the continental countries, their policy has always been to support one continental country against another continental country, such as supporting Prussia against other powers, Russia against France, Prussia against France, and so on.

But this time, all the continental countries basically stood against their ally Japan, which made the British have to make a difficult choice between abandoning Japan or maintaining Japan.

In the end, considering that all countries had close alliances, Britain decided that they could not abandon Japan, but they made tough demands on Japan, and Japan was supported by Britain on the premise that Japan must cooperate unconditionally with British foreign policy.

Britain repeatedly negotiated with Japan about a possible war, and demanded that Japan not take the initiative to attack China and Russia, otherwise Britain would remain neutral in the war, and Britain promised that once Japan was attacked, Britain would try its best to keep the Americans neutral through diplomatic means, and then contain the German navy; The British had received assurances from France that they would not join the war, so as long as Japan did not launch an active attack and the United States and even Germany could remain neutral, Japan would only have to face China and Russia alone.

In this way, Japan still has a chance to win.

This was already the best option for the Japanese, who did not refuse the result that the British Empire had arranged for them at this time, and they had to fight a one-on-two war, during which Britain would not personally intervene in the war except for economic and diplomatic support.

But there is another variable, if Britain does not intervene in the war, they can contain the German navy, but they cannot contain the German army, and if the German army enters the northeast through Russian territory, the Japanese army will have no chance of winning.

So Japan demanded that once Germany declared its entry into the war, Britain must declare war on Germany, and in addition to sending a navy to fight Germany, Britain must also send an army to land in Germany.

Japan obviously wanted Britain to contain all the forces of Germany on land and sea, but the British refused, and the British thought it was just a joke, let them land a maritime country on the mainland to fight, what kind of joke?

The Japanese believed that the British did not bear their due responsibility, but at this time they did not dare to be tough on the British allies, because Britain was their last reliance at this time, and Japan was like a hairy child abandoned by the world, and now it could only be sheltered in the arms of the British mother.

At this point, the last piece of the puzzle of Yang Chao's siege of Japan is complete, but does Yang Chao really want to defeat Japan in one fell swoop?

Yang Chao is not so stupid, even if he defeats the Japanese in the northeast, what can he do, if the uncompetitive navy can't drive on Japanese soil, he will never be able to make the Japanese completely defeated.

Therefore, Yang Chao's behavior next made the whole world incomprehensible, he just Chen Bing border, neither took the initiative to attack Japan, but also asked Russia not to take offensive actions for the time being.

A cold war began. (To be continued.) )