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At the end of 1898, the number of the army forces of the world's major powers: Russia: 1,162,000, France: 715,000, Britain: 624,000, Germany: 524,000, Austria-Hungary China 250,000, although the United States does not determine the combat strength, and China's new army weapons are also relatively advanced, there are nearly 100 primitive tanks, but to completely conquer the Russian army of more than one million, it is not so easy, Song Xiaofei decided to carry out domestic training and political reform first, and then wait for the right time.

At this time, China's compulsory education was popularized to the primary school stage, night schools were opened in many places in rural areas, and illiteracy became less and less; coupled with the traditional concept that Chinese already had the traditional concept of "everything is inferior, only reading highly", the number of higher schools in the country has grown to more than 1,000, and the number of young students in cities has reached more than 500,000, becoming a class that cannot be ignored.

During Song Xiaofei's first term, Liang Qichao, Yan Fu and others felt that the loose federal system would make the country weak and bullied, and supported centralized power, and the civil governors (governors) of the provinces were also concurrently served by Beiyang generals, except for the seven provinces controlled by Zhang Zhidong, Liu Kunyi, and Wang Shaowen, all inland provinces were controlled by Song Xiaofei. As a person with a modern mind, Song Xiaofei advocated strict management methods and administrative regulations, emphasized officialdom discipline, regulated government institutions, appointed people he thought were reliable, such as the Xi family's brothers and sisters, and put domestic stability first, desperate to eliminate the unforeseen with a strong *, sometimes daunting, which can easily make people mistakenly think that Song Xiaofei was keen on coveting individual rights that were not subject to moral constraints, and became China's de facto "emperor". More and more people in the provinces also expressed their dissatisfaction with the military and political dictatorship of the Beiyang generals, and Song Xiaofei punished one hundred people, dismissed Zhang Xun from the post of governor of Yunnan Province, and reduced the thirty battalions under his command to three battalions and transferred them to Xuzhou for garrison. It began to change from the military and political stage to the training and political stage.

At the beginning, Song Xiaofei was still ambitious, insisting on establishing a strong central government through the Baath Party's one-party governance. Control of the military and newspaper opinion, which he believed was the best fit for China's national conditions, as was illustrated by the smooth progress of currency reform and the defeats of Japan and Spain. By the beginning of 1899, Sheng Xuanhuai's cabinet even hoped to completely abolish the open policy of provincial-level administrative units, but Song Xiaofei did not want to take too big a step in order to avoid arousing the opposition of Zhang Zhidong, Liu Kunyi, and Wang Shaowen.

Just after the Spring Festival in 1899, Song Xiaofei took the first step in the national discipline and promulgated the President's Decree No. 1, on the basis of weakening the power of the governors of the provinces. The powers of the provincial magistrates were strengthened, and it was announced that the provincial magistrates were in charge of provincial taxation and the appointment and dismissal of county governors, and that the governors of each province would no longer participate in civil affairs. Song Xiaofei also asked the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee to select competent civilian officials, especially those at the county governor level, and the content of the examination was no longer the Four Books and Five Classics. Rather, administrative regulations and general knowledge, thousands of people took the exam in Beijing.

Through a series of powerful reforms, the authority of the central government was greatly strengthened in this campaign to purge officialdom, and local instructions to the central government were quickly implemented, and the National Assembly soon passed new Criminal Code, Civil and Commercial Law, and Administrative Law. Song Xiaofei expounded his thoughts to the whole country through the Baath Party's "Central Daily": Today, women and children all talk about the word equality, and equality is only equality before the law. It does not mean that administrative hierarchies should be abolished or that everyone is the same, that individuals can deny the law, establish their own standards, or be economically equal. Freedom is another flowery modern word, but it is confined to the law, within which people are free. Unfettered freedom. This thing doesn't exist. The supreme goal of the law is to protect freedom, and the government does not prohibit it unless the law explicitly prohibits it. Republic is also an elegant word, but foreigners' understanding of the term is that they have a universal right to speak in the country. Rather than the whole population having to interfere in the actions of the government. What could be the possible outcome of such interference, in addition to causing chaos? As for the term civil rights, in addition to the supreme prerogative of electing the president, it also includes the right of representation, the right to vote, and the right to supervise, but it must not be understood as the direct handling of the administration by the people.

In the reform campaign led by Song Xiaofei, the government also reinstated the monitoring system, established the Independent Commission Against Corruption in China, which punished officials* and raised the carrots for officials in terms of salaries and high pensions.

However, every reform will inevitably harm the interests of some people. Song Xiaofei's practice of discipline and administration harmed the interests of Beiyang officers first of all. Cao Kun, commander of the Third Division stationed in Sichuan, and others were dissatisfied with Song Xiaofei's advocacy of civilian rule of law and weakening the power of the governor, and he was also Song Xiaofei's old subordinate, and it was difficult for the local police to confine Cao Kun's 10,000 new troops to the barracks.

Once, one of Cao Kun's regiment commanders named Li Xing took two henchmen to Qinglóu to drink flower wine, did not give money, did not say anything, and beat the girl who accompanied them, but Qinglóu's old mother called the nursing home to beat them. Li Xing was furious, and immediately rushed back to the barracks to lead the troops to smash Qing Lóu. At that time, Qing Lóu was still a legal business, and the local police chief arrived with four police stations, and Li Xing and others beat the police, and after Rong Rong's "Qiangguo Daily" disclosed the incident, public opinion across the country was in an uproar, and Cao Kun was asked to resign.

At that time, according to the armistice treaty signed between Japan and the eight countries, Japan disbanded the navy and army, and China sent troops to protect Japan in accordance with the terms of Japan's surrender.

Before Cao Kun arrived in Japan, he was scolded by Song Xiaofei for not strictly controlling his subordinates, and he felt very aggrieved and wanted to find a place to vent his anger. After Cao Kun arrived in Tokyo, according to his own ideas, he seemed to regard himself as the "Emperor Taishang" of Japan, and as soon as he arrived in Japan and settled the garrison, Cao Kun decided to kill the prestige of the Japanese so that they would obey his will. One evening, Cao Kun led 500 new troops, armed with the latest Gew.98 Mauser rifles, Maxim machine guns, mountain guns, and Krupp guns, to surround the Yasukuni Shrine in Kudanzaka, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, Japan.

The predecessor of the Yasukuni Shrine was called the Tokyo Spiritualist Society. In 1853, when Commodore Perry of the U.S. Navy requested the opening of a port in Japan, two opposing factions formed in Japan, namely the Imperial Court with the Emperor of Japan as the center and the Tokugawa shogunate. The shogunate ignored the orders of the imperial court, so the Lord's faction led the Choshu and Satsuma domains into a civil war to bring down the shogunate. On June 28, 1868, the Tokyo Spiritualist Society was established for 3,588 soldiers who had died in the Civil War for the sake of "consolation" and "showmanship" by Emperor Meiji. In 1879, according to the request of the Japanese military department, the Tokyo Spiritualist Society was renamed Yasukuni Shrine, and the word "Yasukuni" came from the 23rd year of the Zuo Chuan Gong "I take Yasukuni also", which means to make the country stable, which shows how much little Japan was influenced by Chinese culture. In Japan, the Yasukuni Shrine is a symbol of national Shinto, and every year in April and October, the Japanese imperial family will come here to organize sacrifices, which shows that the Yasukuni Shrine has an extremely special status in Japan.

Most of the Yasukuni Shrine is made of wood, and its guardians, Taro Che and Taki Oda, crawled out in a row, hugged Cao Kun's horse leg and cried bitterly begging the squadron not to destroy the Yasukuni Shrine. "Each of the 50 new soldiers carried a bundle of firewood, piled it around the Yasukuni Shrine, and poured kerosene. When it was already autumn and the cold wind was whistling in his ears, Cao Kun ordered a fire.

In the evening, the fire began at the gate of the shrine and spread to the shrine with the help of the wind. At that time, the weather was dry, and the wooden houses and dry trees in the shrine were like watered with pine oil. In the second half of the night, a red light could already be seen in the distant sky. The Yushokan, which is located in the center of the city, is also on fire.

The fiery red flames crackled and rose several feet high, the screens, doors, windows, and stairs were all surrounded by raging flames, the bronze statue of Mashijiro Omura built in 1893 was all melted, the tablets, sacrificial vessels, and ceremonial guards in the Yasukuni Shrine were all burned to ashes in the fire, and the thick Nanmu pillars were burned into black charcoal, and the ruins and broken walls could be seen everywhere.

When Wu Peifu, who was sent by Song Xiaofei to assist and supervise Cao Kun, rushed to the scene of the fire, this notorious shrine in history had been destroyed and turned into a scorched earth. ”