Guan Xuqing's visit to Germany was set a few years ago, and when William I was 90 years old in 87, China sent a huge celebration team headed by Prince Gong Yixin, who is not only the emperor's uncle, but also the chief cabinet minister and prime minister of the upper study, and the status is equivalent to the prime minister of Europe, and a long list of people listed behind Yixin's name, including Li Hongzhang, Zhang Zhidong, Ding Richang, Liu Kunyi, Ding Baozhen, etc., are either in important positions in the cabinet or a provincial feudal official. This kind of courtesy is to the British Queen Victoria, who is known as the "grandmother of Europe", and China has never done so, which has made the Germans, whose self-esteem has been extremely inflated since the Franco-Prussian War, feel that they have a lot of face. In addition, the two countries have just signed the "Sino-German Treaty of Trade and Friendship", and the relationship is in the honeymoon period, so it is not an accident that the courtesy exchange invited Guan Xuqing to visit Germany.

It's just that Guan Xuqing has been busy with trivial government affairs in China in recent years, so he didn't make the trip. During these three years, the international situation was generally calm, except for the British who were still trapped in the swamps of the Sultan Mahdi uprising, and the German occupation of Siam was not very successful. However, in the case of external calm, wave after wave was set off in the Qing Dynasty.

After basically resisting the pressure of external aggression through two foreign wars and a series of diplomatic activities that were carried out in a series of vertical and horizontal ways, Guan Xuqing, who had established his authority, began to carry out drastic reforms against various malpractices at home. The reform of the bureaucratic system, the sale of government-run enterprises, the encouragement of non-governmental enterprises to set up industry and commerce, and the banning of provincial tax bureaus have all touched the nerves of the whole country. Some of these have been fully implemented, and some are still being piloted in one or two provinces, but the overall changes to the Chinese are enormous.

In such a seemingly calm, but in fact turbulent torrent, there will naturally be no fewer problems. Although the number of cases of official corruption and malfeasance has been greatly reduced after several purgies, the officials selected under the old imperial examination system are still lackluster in dealing with the problems that have arisen in the course of the reform. This makes Guan Xuqing almost everything. Everything has to be taken care of, the lights in the Qianqing Palace are lit almost every night until after the fourth watch, and even the queen has seen each other a lot less in recent years. Compared to the original Sino-British War, not to mention other concubines! And on this visit to Germany, Guan Xuqing specially brought the queen, on the one hand, out of respect for Germany, on the other hand, he also wanted to compensate her well and accompany this wife in this life and the future.

Although because of his arrival, this time and space has undergone major changes, such as Thailand, which originally took advantage of the contradictions between British and French colonial forces to barely survive, and later became the only country in Southeast Asia. Because the two wars between China and France and China and Britain ended in China's victory, which disturbed the surrounding environment of Thailand, and was finally annexed by Germany, which was desperately looking for colonies around the world, such a butterfly effect must not be less. However, in the next two or three decades, the mainstream of the international situation will not change. Later, a new imperial and religious state, led by Germany, emerged. In order to have more colonies in order to obtain ample markets and raw material sources. The contradictions between the two sides are not like the national contradictions of the past, such as the Anglo-French contradictions, the Franco-German contradictions, and the Anglo-Russian contradictions, there are no eternal friends or eternal enemies between the countries, and under the common interests, the soldiers of both sides can still sit in the same trench. However, the contradictions between the old and new imperialist camps are acute and irreconcilable, and there seems to be no other way to resolve them than war, and this is also a historical necessity.

Guan Xuqing knows all this. However, in such a-for-tat situation where the two camps are opposed, what position China will be in and what it must do to seek maximum benefits are what Guan Xuqing has been thinking about all along. And if we want to take advantage of that worldwide wave to get the most out of China, we must join one of the camps. If you join the Entente camp, just like Japan in history, it seems that it will be easy to win, and you can also make a lot of war money, and you don't have to pay too much price; But now China seems to be closer to the Allies, and, if in the future war, the Allies have China joining, it is bound to greatly involve the power of Russia and Britain in the Far East, after all, Russia cannot give up the Far East and Siberia, and Britain cannot not want India, in this way, as long as Italy does not turn against the water, and controls the time for the United States to enter the war, the outcome of World War I may not be rewritten, whenever he thinks of this, Guan Xuqing can't help but be moved, what is more fascinating than creating it with his own hands. However, Guan Xuqing quickly calmed down, this is not a one-person game, but a matter related to the future and destiny of this country and this nation, God gave him a chance to create history. Even if it is to exhaust his own life and make China strong and prosperous, he will no longer suffer the shame of the sick man of East Asia. Therefore, all decisions must be made with great caution, not to mention that China is far from reaching the point where it can influence the world situation with the power of one country, and even self-preservation is a problem. Over the past few years, Britain has been making small moves on the Tibet issue, and at one time it will privately dispatch armed forces to fight against the anti-British Tusi forces under the pretext of surveying the boundary between Tibet and India. In the name of developing roads. On the other hand, Britain spared no effort to help Japan develop its navy, not only helping Japan train naval officers, but also helping Japan build three of the most advanced cruisers, Yoshino, Naniwa, and Akitsuzu, with the goal of suppressing China. Achieving what they call regional balance. China still has a long way to go to break such a blockade.

Not to mention, it is too early to think about the First World War. The Sino-Japanese War in front of Guan Xuqing was imminent, but judging from the current situation, both in terms of naval strength and army quality, Daqing was far superior to Japan. It is still unclear whether little Japan will dare to get along with the Qing Dynasty on the issue of the DPRK and Xian Dynasty as it has done in history, and it is not known whether it will fight or not.

Therefore, at such a time, China could not stand directly in front of the British, and for hundreds of years, all those who dared to directly confront John Bull fell at their feet, including those like Napoleon's First French Empire, and Russia, which straddled Europe and Asia under the leadership of the Romanov dynasty. And this time I am about to visit、Now just like the First German Reich in Japan and China。 The Burma War was won because they were barefoot and not afraid to wear shoes, and with China's national strength at that time, if the British had gone all out, they might not be able to repeat the outcome of the first two Opium Wars. But the price to pay must be very large, because China is an extremely feudal and centralized dictatorship, and China's social economy is still dominated by its own self-sufficient small peasant economy, so as long as the Chinese emperor insists on fighting, it will be difficult to bring China to collapse. At that time, the domestic economy was in turmoil, the colonies were under attack, and there was no external force to borrow. The British still abandoned Burma and recaptured Iran, Afghanistan, and Turkey.

However, China cannot stay in a small-scale peasant economy forever, and China must develop. It is inevitable to increase the circulation of goods, change the people's living standards, and increase the proportion of foreign trade, and once the society develops to such a point, the British will have more means to choke China's throat. At that time, if China and Britain go to war again, the British only need to bomb the factories along the coast of China and leave the seaports, and the people, who are accustomed to the means of subsistence such as flour, matches, toothpaste, and soap, will rise up in rebellion.

Therefore, when China is not completely strong enough to be afraid of foreign invasion, it must find a country to attract the attention of the British instead of itself. Guan Xuqing chose Russia. By the end of the 70s, Russia under Tsar Alexander II had recovered from the tragic defeat in Crimea that led to the suicide of one of the tsars and the sinking of the entire Black Sea Fleet. In the 10th Russo-Turkish War in 1877, Russia took advantage of the national liberation war of the Balkan Slavs to declare war on Turkey under the banner of "liberation". The Russian army, with the cooperation of the Romanian army and the Bulgarian army, successively conquered the important towns where the Turkish army was stationed, such as Plevin, Sofia and Adrianople, and if it were not for the timely intervention of the British, Russia would have occupied Constantinople and the straits. However, the war also allowed Russia to gain southern Bessarabia in Europe and Batumi, Kars, and Ada in Asia, and to put Romania and Bulgaria, two Orthodox countries composed mainly of South Slavs, under its "protection." Such a high-profile seizure by the Russians had already aroused the dissatisfaction of the British, and anti-Russian sentiment in the British colonies such as Turkey and Afghanistan was quite high. Contain Britain through Russia and let yourself easily seize Burma. And let the British teach this wolf a hard lesson for themselves.

In the past three years, the Russians have been squeezed out by Britain and France everywhere, and their economy and military have plummeted. But there are two sides to everything, just when things don't go well. From the end of the 10th Russo-Turkish War to the present, in just ten years, Russia has built Catherine II, Georgi. Pobedonosets, Chesma, Sinop, Alexander II, Nicholas I, the Twelve Apostles, and Gangut, a total of eight large battleships, plus Peter the Great, built in 1872, and Navarin, which will be commissioned next year, the number of Russian battleships suddenly reached double digits, you must know that these are more than 10,000 tons.

With a powerful navy, the Russians began to pursue their windows to the seas more persistently. On the Baltic coast, they annexed the Kingdom of Lithuania and built large shipyards there; On the shores of the Arctic Ocean, they snatched Finland from Sweden; On the Pacific coast, they leased Jeju Island; And in the last Russo-Turkish war, they almost opened the way to the Mediterranean. Of the four oceans, they have ports on all three oceans, and the only thing left is the Indian Ocean, and it seems that they are not far from that goal. In Afghanistan and Iran, the Russians have been particularly watchful, and have always maintained a considerable number of troops, perhaps still haunting the defeat of the British last time, especially when the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria and Italy on the Western Front and the thriving China on the Eastern Front have made no progress, and they have put all their strength on the betting board of the Middle East.

And in doing so, it has greatly damaged the territory of traditional British influence. In particular, it threatens India, the jewel in the crown of the British Queen. Such an opponent is an excellent target to attract the attention of the British, and when Britain and Russia launch an all-out confrontation, China can hide behind the Russians and cultivate internal skills with peace of mind. Then, when Britain finishes cleaning up the Russians, when he thinks of China, he will find that China is no longer something he can rub and rub casually.

It is precisely with this foreign policy in mind that Guan Xuqing has maintained a strong stance towards Britain in recent years, while making appropriate compromises with Russia. Even though Russia still often sent troops to loot in the northeast, Guan Xuqing only asked Prime Minister Yamen to protest a few words to the Russian ambassador and passed. Sure enough, John Bull was drawn to most of his energy by the Russians, who were busy wooing Turkey and Japan in order to draw the Russians against the land powers, which they would not traditionally go into battle shirtless. As for China, it doesn't care. As a result, China has had a relatively stable development environment in recent years.

However, with the expiration of the re-guarantee treaty between Germany, Austria, and Russia this year, all the situation has taken a new turn. At the initiative of Bismarck, the border security treaty signed by the emperors of Germany, Austria, and Russia enabled the three countries to reach an understanding on the Western Front concerning Poland and the Balkans, and Russia was able to concentrate on expanding to the East, while the Triple Alliance led by Germany dominated Europe and completely isolated France, Germany's old enemy. This would have been a happy situation, but after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, who had single-handedly signed the treaty. The situation changed slightly, and each tsar before Alexander II pursued a foreign policy close to Germany, and successive Tsars of the Romanov dynasty married nine German princesses in succession, which in itself was one of the foundations of the Three Emperors Alliance. However, Alexander III, who succeeded Alexander II, married a Danish wife. Under the influence of his wife from Denmark (Denmark was forced to cede the Schleswig Holstein region after losing the Prussian-Danish War), he became resentful of Bismarck and Wilhelm I's Germany. In addition, the two Mediterranean conferences secretly convened by Germany, Austria, and Italy fundamentally infringed on Russia's territorial interests in the division of power in the Balkans, Asia Minor, and North Africa, and caused a rift in the originally solid alliance. Ultimately. Russia refused to sign a reassurance treaty. And France, isolated and desperate, co-opted the past. If history really follows this route, Russia will most likely change the direction of its current expansion. Devoting the main energy to the struggle for the Balkans will inevitably make Britain breathe a sigh of relief, and because of the relationship between China, Britain and France will have no contradictions in the Indochina Peninsula, and the two countries will come together in advance, and Britain may even unite with Russia to carve up China from the north and south, just as they have secretly planned in history, the Yangtze River valley will belong to Britain, and the north of the Great Wall will belong to Russia.

Naturally, such a thing would be very unfavorable to China, and one of the main purposes of Guan Xuqing's visit to Germany was to hope that he could think of some way to deal with this matter. It is not suitable for anyone else to go, but he is the only one who understands the key and speaks with enough weight.

At this time, Guan Xuqing was dressed in a dragon robe, standing alone on the bridge of the "Zhenyuan", letting the sea breeze blow the horns of his clothes and hunting. Although it is already the largest warship of the Beiyang Fleet, it is still very turbulent in the face of the manic sea, not to mention the queen and some officials who visited with Guan Xuqing, even a few newly graduated naval officers of the Beiyang Naval Academy also vomited badly. But Guan Xuqing seemed to be nothing, which made Zhenyuan Ship admire from Deng Shichang down, and a generation of saints was outstanding.

Guan Xuqing took the train from the capital to Tanggu to get on the ship. Now the Manchuria Railway (from Beijing to Qiqihar), the South Manchurian Railway (Fengtian to Lushun), the Beijing-Pudong Railway, the Jinghan Railway, the Longhai Railway, the Shanghai-Hangzhou Railway have been built, under the design of the German engineer Bao Ning, China built the first bridge on the Yangtze River, and it is also China's first road and railway dual-purpose bridge, the Jiangning Yangtze River Bridge, plus some regional railways that have not yet been incorporated into the large railway network, such as: Hengyue Railway (Guangzhou to Hengyang), South Guangdong Railway (from Guangzhou to Chaozhou), West Sichuan Railway (from Chengdu to Mianzhu) and so onThe actual total railway mileage of Daqing has surpassed that of Japan and India, ranking first in Asia.

In addition to these, the planned Guangdong-Han railway from Guangzhou to Hengzhou in Hunan will also be opened to traffic within two to three years, when not only will the first Chinese designed Yangtze River bridge be built between Wuchang and Hankou, but China will also have the first railway artery running through the north and south. The construction of the Hunan-Burma Railway (from Changsha to Yangon) through the four southwestern provinces and the Southern Xinjiang Railway (from Changsha to Saigon) through Guangxi to Annam has also broken ground. Needless to say, the construction of these two railways is significant, and both Vietnam and Myanmar are newly recovered land. Historically, the two regions also belonged to the border areas of the unsubordained kings, and they had hardly been controlled by the central government for nearly two hundred years, so the local separatist forces here were still very large.

As a result, Guan Xuqing took a large number of pacification and assimilation measures, in addition to establishing a province in the two Vietnamese provinces and setting up a minister in Burma, enforcing the popularization of Chinese and Chinese characters in the two places, and relocating a large number of people to change the demographic structure of the two places. This naturally touched the inherent interests of local forces such as the old royal family of Annam and the Tusi of various ethnic groups in Burma. Conflicts between the two places have occurred from time to time in recent years, and a rebellion led by Nguyen Thi En, the former Prince of Annam, broke out in Vietnam. Looking at it this way, there is no doubt about the social turmoil in the two places, a powerful army. It is undoubtedly the best means to suppress such a revolt in a short period of time. However, China has a vast territory and many ethnic groups, and if it needs to garrison heavy troops everywhere, even raising 10 million troops will not be enough, and now is the time for the country to vigorously develop its economy and catch up with the European and American powers, so it is undoubtedly unrealistic to raise so many troops. Therefore, a railway line that can mobilize a large number of troops at any time is the solution.