People can't just rely on imagination and speculation, and they can't take it for granted.

At least at the present stage, Britain is indeed willing to give up a great deal of vested interests, as well as possible benefits, in order to reach a long-term peaceful relationship with the Qing Empire and ensure cooperation between the two countries in the Asian region.

Considering that Britain and Germany were already engaged in fierce competition in South Africa, the German navy was slowly becoming stronger, and the Franco-Russian Entente alliance was also compressing the British navy's dominant position...... This series of factors made Britain reluctant to get into new troubles in East Asia, and even less willing to have a long-term and cumbersome competition with China, which was becoming stronger.

Similarly, although Zhang Baixi has the trust of Emperor Guangxu, he does not have enough diplomatic ability...... Hu Chuyuan temporarily promoted Ouyang Geng to the post of Consul General and Minister of Foreign Affairs, equivalent to the second foreign secretary of the United Kingdom, responsible for foreign affairs within Asia, and in fact obtained the right to govern the vassal states.

On this basis, Hu Chuyuan asked Ouyang Geng to select a new team to assist him in renegotiating with the British.

The British attached great importance to this new trend of cooperation, and soon sent Sir Henry Bannerman, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, to make a regular visit to China, and with the cooperation of Sir Mitchell, the British Minister to China, Douglas Douglas, and others, he and Hu Chuyuan held comprehensive talks on the new cooperation.

After more than a month of negotiations, Sir Henry Bannerman and Hu Chuyuan basically reached a relatively relaxed "Sino-British Colonial Cooperation Agreement".

Under this agreement, the Qing Empire would enjoy some of the suzerainty rights and interests in Singapore, and the Chinese assets registered in Singapore would also be entitled to other benefits of the British Empire's registration rights, and the right to invest in the British Empire's Asian colonies except India.

Similarly, after the capital of the British Empire was registered in Singapore, it also had the right to invest in Southeast Asia, North Vietnam and other colonies or vassal states of the Qing Empire, and enjoyed all the rights and interests in the treaty.

There is a loose restriction on the scope of investment of British capital, that is, it cannot invest in oil resources, gold and silver mines, which are in short supply on the Chinese side, and cannot invest in the tea and silk industries in Southeast Asia.

The two sides have designated HSBC, China CITIC Bank, Wells Fargo and Nanyang Bank as the designated note-issuing banks, with the former two as the main note-issuing banks, and the Joint Savings Committee in Singapore as the main financial supervisory body.

After this agreement was reached, the Sino-British cooperative relationship in the new period was determined, and the two sides first confirmed the issues of Mongolia, Tibet, and Xinjiang provinces, and recognized these areas as the territorial areas of the Qing Empire, and the British Empire could not raise objections to this.

Bhutan and Sikkim were vassal states of the Qing Empire, and the Kingdom of Nepal was a buffer zone between the two sides, and the British side gradually returned more than 60,000 square kilometers of occupied territory in the next ten years.

In Kashmir, which was occupied by the British in 1834, the Qing Empire bought back the territorial rights for three million pounds, and on the issue of territorial rights to the Republic of Sumatra, the Andaman Islands belonged to the Republic of Sumatra at Hu Chuyuan's more insistence.

As a compromise condition, the British demanded that the Qing Empire not place warships of more than 5,000 tons in the ports of the Andaman Islands, so as to prevent the Qing Empire from stepping into the Indian Ocean.

Both sides wanted to reduce the area of direct border as much as possible, and in principle, the British agreed to make Assam a separate autonomous state out of India as an important buffer zone to avoid disputes between India and China over territory.

At the same time, the two sides conducted a second round of negotiations on the Sino-Burmese and Sino-Thai borders, and initially demarcated a Bannaman line, which was expanded to Myitkyina, Bhamo, Lashio, Mon Ya, Mon Yang, Meng Dong, Jing Dong, and Meng Ai, and took half of the Shan State Plateau.

Coupled with the Sino-French agreement, the territory of Yunnan Province of the Qing Empire had expanded to the situation during the Dali period, and it was also based on the Dali vassal state in legal theory.

With this division, it is unlikely that Britain and China will clash over territory in the long run, and even in traditional Chinese vassal regions such as Burma and Thailand, there is no need for China to stir up new problems here because of the principle of benefit-sharing.

Similarly, there was no need for Britain to argue too much with China on the colonial issue in Southeast Asia, and at most to renegotiate some of the details of the Sino-British Colonial Cooperation Treaty.

With regard to some issues on trade between the two countries, the two sides reserve the mechanism for further negotiations, and it is expected that within three to five years, they will renegotiate and formulate a "Sino-British Trade and Reciprocal Commerce Treaty" that is more in line with the interests of both sides.

Hu Chuyuan also tentatively talked about the Hong Kong issue.

To his surprise, Sir Henry Bannerman did not think this was a big problem, but it was better not to talk about it, and as a concession, Britain was willing to withdraw the Chinese fleet stationed in Hong Kong to Singapore and cancel the Chinese fleet formation.

In this way, there was no need for the two sides to continue to compete and expand their navies in the South Seas, and the Qing Empire could concentrate on problems in Northeast Asia and the Far East, while Britain could concentrate on Germany and the Franco-Russian alliance.

On the question of Hong Kong, Sir Henry Bannerman's bottom line was that it would be acceptable for both parties to change the concession into a unified concession area, with the effective concession period starting in 1842 and ending in 1941, or possibly ending in 1921.

When and how this agreement will be negotiated, the two sides should wait until the Sino-British Treaty of Trade and Reciprocal Commerce is completed.

The Sino-British Colonial Cooperation Pact was exclusive, meaning that most of its provisions could not be applied to other countries, at least not that China could reach similar agreements with France, Germany, and the United States.

Similarly, in Asia, Britain's India, Burma, Thailand, and the Straits Settlements could not be granted investment authority to France, Russia, and Japan...... The sale of goods is still a normal trade behavior, as long as your goods can be sold to others, and this point, under the advance of classical free trade, there is no need for any country to set restrictions, except between China and the two countries.

Even after the end of the Sino-Japanese war, China and the two countries failed to reach an agreement on trade and trade, and at the same time, trade between the two Koreas, the two countries, and Southeast Asia came to a standstill.

In general, Hu Chuyuan was very satisfied with the Sino-British Colonial Cooperation Pact, and the British made relatively large concessions, for example, Chinese capital could invest in gold mines and oil industry in British colonies in Africa, but British capital could not invest in gold mines and oil industry in Southeast Asia.

In addition, with the exception of the question of the colony of Hong Kong, Britain completely renounced all privileges in China, recognized China's surname in tariff matters, and promised to first renounce all the rights of the international concessions in Shanghai and Tientsin after opening in China to allow Western, especially British capital, to enter.

The British Empire is a country that fully believes in classical free trade, for example, the British textile tariffs on China, France, the United States and Germany are maintained at 7% and 12%, and the lowest limit on China is only 7%, while the textile tariffs of other countries on the UK are above 20%, among the large economies, China's tariffs on British textiles are the lowest, but they are also 14%, which is enough to keep British textiles out of customs.

Correspondingly, the demands of the British Empire were mainly concentrated in the financial sector, because it was true that its industry was not very developed, and this change has become particularly evident in the last two decades.

The only thing Britain emphasized in the Sino-British Colonial Cooperation Pact was financial authority, or at least its quasi-suzerainty status second only to China.

In the upcoming Sino-British Trade and Reciprocal Trade Treaty, the UK also requires that the settlement of foreign trade between the two sides be based on pounds.

In this regard, Britain and later the United States are very close in terms of trade policy, and the printing of the pound is its most profitable industry at present.

July 14, 1898.

After the ratification of the two monarchs, the Sino-British Colonial Cooperation Pact between the British Empire and the Qing Empire came into force, which was a non-confidential and public treaty to be fully open to citizens and merchants of the two countries.

As a result, the content of the treaty was quickly communicated to the whole world.

Because the content of the treaty not only involves cooperation between the two sides in Asia, but also involves new mechanisms for military consultation and cooperation, for such a special treaty, it is not the Netherlands that is really most shocked in the world, but Germany, France, and Ben.

The Netherlands, already a country that had been eliminated from its seat as a great power, knew in its own heart that in mid-May, when the South Sea Fleet arrived in Palembang, the Kingdom of the Netherlands was forced to transfer the Dutch East Indies to the Qing Empire for £1.7 million.

At the end of July 1898, Conger, the new U.S. minister to China, and Count Bernhard-von-Pilov, Germany's special foreign secretary, arrived in Beijing to talk about the minimum similar treaty that could be reached, and at the same time to find out whether Britain had changed its foreign policy of glorious isolation and had formed an alliance with China in advance.

Hu Chuyuan's answer is that Britain has not completely ended its glorious isolation policy, but it is already groping for a new foreign policy, and it is expected that in the next five years, there will be more large-scale changes in Britain's national policy and foreign policy.

As for the question of the United States and Germany's desire to share China's colonial interests in Southeast Asia, Hu Chuyuan is also at a loss, and the xenophobic surname of the Sino-British Colonial Cooperation Pact is very strong.

In fact, the United States does not care, because the relationship between China and the United States is mainly bilateral trade, and through the upcoming "Sino-US Trade and Reciprocal Trade Treaty", American goods can enter the Southeast Asian market through China, and even indirectly enjoy the benefits of the "Sino-British Colonial Cooperation Treaty".

It was Germany that was really the most stimulated, and the Sino-British Colonial Cooperation Pact basically decided that it was impossible for Germany to find a relatively complete colony in Asia, especially in Southeast Asia, and at the same time it had lost a stable supply of raw materials and an export place for products.

As a matter of fact, Germany is also negotiating with China for a new "Sino-German Trade Treaty" to completely determine the legal surnames for mutual investment between China and Germany, but the Chinese side is very conservative in absorbing foreign deposits, and the financial sector is also closed, and the negotiations between the two sides are not as smooth as those between China and the United States.

For example, Hu Chuyuan demanded that China's Shanghai stock market be read out of the world economic system, limit the inflow of foreign capital, and cut off the possibility of China's silver outflow.

Germany is not particularly satisfied, and it is not acceptable for the rapidly expanding Juncker consortium.

It's hard to say right now.

The situation in the world is changing every day, and a treaty can change almost everything, and the Sino-British Colonial Cooperation Pact is a typical case of this.

In 1898, the situation in the world was also extremely complicated.

Britain has contradictions with almost all the major powers, especially between Britain and Germany, Britain and France, Britain and Russia, Britain and the United States, there are huge contradictions, Britain and Germany are the most violent, entangled in economic, military and colonial contradictions, especially the contradictions in many aspects of European leadership, the fierce contradictions between Britain and France are second only to Britain and Germany, the contradictions between Britain and Russia are purely military contradictions, and the contradictions between Britain and the United States are purely economic contradictions.

Britain's sudden change of policy toward an alliance with China at such a moment is quite a bit of an alliance between the United States and India in the later period, and at the same time it prevents the further development of Sino-US and Sino-German relations, and it is also a great constraint on the Russian-French Triple Entente.

Before this, Hu Chuyuan had never imagined all this.

In fact, it's all thanks to Eurocentrism.

For Britain, which is anxious to maintain its first leadership position in Europe and the world, the Anglo-Chinese contradictions are precisely the easiest to reconcile, and if you look closely, none of the territories that Britain has given up are not theirs, nor are they important to Britain.

Britain could not afford to risk its European and worldwide leadership and compete fiercely with the Qing Empire in Southeast Asia.

It can't do it.

With the signing of the Sino-British Colonial Cooperation Pact, three entente organizations emerged in the world, namely, China and Britain, Germany, Austria and Italy, and France and Russia.

It is difficult to reconcile the contradictions between Britain and Germany and France, the contradictions between China and Beneath and Russia, and the contradictions between Germany and Britain and France are equally irreconciliable.

It can be said that the current world situation has become more complex and balanced.

At the same time, with the recognition of Dutch East Indies, the Philippines, Kalimantan, Korea, Brunei, Laos, North Vietnam, Nepal, Bhutan, and Sikkim as stable vassal states of the Qing Empire, the Qing Empire's colonies also jumped back to the third place in the world, after Britain and France.

With the development of the entire industrial economy, the demand for colonies is also increasing, but the overall demand is not strong, and the amount of foreign investment will not be too large.

Therefore, for a long time, British investment in these regions still accounted for the main part, while the Qing government continued to increase industrial construction and domestic investment, and sold goods to the colonies.

The complementarity between the two sides is very strong, which is also different from that between China and Germany, China and the United States, and in the longer term, the competition between China and Germany and China and the United States in the field of commodity export will actually become more and more intense.

Along with this trend, Hu Chuyuan also quickly established a new Shanghai Academy of Science on the basis of the Jiangnan Western Academy, increasing technology research and development and accumulation in China, as well as research in natural sciences, and at the same time hiring scientists and engineers from abroad to work at the Shanghai Academy of Sciences.

Through the Fuguo Department, he also established his own Shanghai Fuguo Industrial Laboratory, invited Nikola Pfister and others to live and work in the Shanghai Concession, and also provided better treatment.

Not only that, but he even considered setting up a new region, which is completely international, allowing foreigners to stay in China for a long time to live and immigrate, and at the same time, it is also conducive to absorbing the best international talents in the future.

This place is, of course, in Shanghai.

He chose Gaoqiao and Pudong in Shanghai, and even deliberately reserved hundreds of thousands of foreigners to live there for a long time, forming a unique window effect, which is convenient for long-term continuous absorption of top foreign talents in various industries.

He believes that the Chinese have this mind.

Of course, if Shanghai wants to become a real economic leader, radiate the whole country and the world, absorb the talents of the whole of China, and become the real London and New York of China, its language must be officialized, and then English and other foreign Chinese education must be further popularized.

(To be continued)