“……… The increase in tax revenues is also encouraging, especially in tobacco, which has increased by about 30% year-on-year compared to '16 and is expected to account for about 10% of the country's fiscal revenue in '17..."

In the conference room, Song Dinghan was seriously reporting to Yan Guang the accurate figures after the revision of last year's fiscal revenue―――――― there is no way, there is neither the Internet nor computers in this era, all the data is typed out by abacus, and China's own situation is so complicated, so it is quite fast to calculate a relatively accurate data so far.

And after listening to Song Dinghan's report, Yan Guang was also quite emotional.

Although Yan Guang has no interest in tobacco and alcohol, and has been in love with the juice series for ten years, he could never have imagined that almost a hundred years ago, the tobacco industry could still make such a strong support and contribution to China's financial undertakings..."Chinese smokers are really a great existence..."

After sighing, Yan Guang turned his head to Liu Guanxiong, ready to listen to the situation in the navy.

After all, almost all the main forces of the navy are now in the waters near Sakhalin, and the expeditionary fleet of Yuben has also set off.

After all, the aircraft carrier is still in outfitting and has not reached the level of sea trials, and even if it is in the state of sea trials, the pilots of carrier-based aircraft need to undergo a long time of training to make the aircraft carrier itself combat-effective.

Although the new [four-engine large bomber], the "twin-engine medium-range bomber" and the "biplane torpedo bomber" have all been put into service, and even the latest [monoplane fighter] is the same, there is no Chinese airfield near Sakhalin, and the air force planes obviously cannot fly there from the northeast to help the navy.

Therefore, although the navy has an advantage in the quality of the capital ship, and it is also equipped with a naval gun fire control system similar to the [South Ship Bell] or the [Ford Bell], Yan Guang's heart is still somewhat unsound.

Fortunately, Yan Guang also has some hole cards in his hand, even if he loses in the Battle of Sakhalin, it doesn't matter, but even so, Yan Guang still hopes to win... And after noticing Yan Guang's eyes, Liu Guanxiong also stood up.

After all, he was also the deputy minister of the Admiralty, and in the case of Sa Zhenbing, as the minister, personally leading the expeditionary fleet to the north, he was obliged to answer any questions Yan Guang had.

It's just that just when Liu Guanxiong got up and was about to answer Yan Guang's question, a phone rang suddenly in the conference room.

"What's the matter?"

Yan Guang was a little strange, because there was an important meeting going on here, generally speaking, there would be no calls coming in, even if there was really a call to find him, it would usually be after the meeting―――――― but Yan Guang still answered the phone, after all, what if there was something urgent?

And Liu Guanxiong, who was about to speak, shrugged his shoulders helplessly after noticing this.

It's just that after answering the phone, Yan Guang felt even more strange.

Because the other side of the phone said that the Minister of Health has something to look for himself?

"Ministry of Health? What can the Ministry of Health do urgently..."Yan Guang was a little confused. "It can't be that the extra money given to the Ministry of Health last time was greedy, right?"

After the start of the European war, after killing more than 10,000 officials at or above the bureau level one after another, he pursued a policy of high salaries and honest support, and the current national social and political axe is quite clean, and Yan Guang does not believe that there will be any major corruption cases. But in the end, Yan Guang still asked the Minister of Health to come in―――――― although it is more secondary, the Ministry of Health is also at the ministerial level, isn't it?

Others were also a little puzzled after hearing that it was the Minister of Health, and they did not know what the Ministry of Health could do.

Fortunately, after a while, the Minister of Health had already walked in, interrupting the curiosity of everyone present.

"President, something has happened recently..."Health Minister Lin Haiming said to Yan Guangdao with an anxious, but not particularly anxious, panicked, but not particularly flustered expression. Now there is an outbreak of the surname cold in the country..."

"Cold?"

At this time, the heads of the people present were a little unable to turn, and they didn't understand what there was to worry about a cold.

When it came to Yan Guang, after hearing Lin Haiming's words, his head [buzzed], as if he remembered something..."Spanish flu..."

If Yan Guang had completely forgotten about this cold beforehand, then after hearing Lin Haiming's words, Yan Guang completely recalled it, because the Spanish flu was, and will still be, the deadliest infectious disease in human history a hundred years later.

In 1918~1919, the Spanish flu infected about 1 billion people worldwide and killed 25 million to 40 million people (the world's population was about 1.7 billion at that time). Its global average fatality rate is about 2.5% to 5%, which is quite fatal compared to the 0.1% of influenza in general. The origin of its name is not due to the outbreak of the flu from Spain; Rather, it was because about 8 million people in Spain were infected with the disease at that time, and even the king of Spain was infected with the disease, so it was called the Spanish type of cold, and in Spain it was called the French type of cold.

The Spanish flu can be simply divided into three waves, the first of which occurred in the spring of 1918 and was basically just a common cold. The second wave, which occurred in the autumn of 1918, was the highest mortality wave; The third wave occurred from the winter of 1919 to the spring of 1920, and the mortality rate was between the first and second waves. The first recorded wave of influenza occurred on March 4, 1918, at a military camp in Kansas, USA, but the symptoms were headaches, high fever, muscle aches, and loss of appetite. However, it was stated at the time that the flu originated in southern China and was spread by Chinese laborers in 1917 who were supporting the war in Europe, but there is no evidence of this. Influenza also broke out in France, which was in the midst of World War I in April, and in China, Spain in May, and Britain in June, but none of them were serious.

In August 1918, a deadly flu outbreak occurred on a British ship that had just left the West African country of Lion Rock, and before the ship arrived in Britain, 75 per cent of the crew was infected and 7 per cent died, and similar conditions occurred on several other ships.

Another theory is that the source of the second wave was Ashgabat in the Soviet Union at the time (in early August 1918, there was a high mortality rate of influenza in Meshed, Persia, which is said to have been transmitted from Ashgabat, but it cannot be confirmed due to the Russian civil war).

On August 27, the flu spread to the United States and among dockers in Boston, and at about the same time in Brest, France, and spread throughout Europe and the United States in September, and spread around the world within weeks. The second wave of influenza is different from the epidemic surname cold in the past, and the mortality rate is particularly high among young adults aged 20~35 years, and its symptoms include high fever and headache, as well as blue face and coughing up blood. Influenza often causes complications and deaths, with pneumonia being the most common. Many cities have restricted citizens from going to public places, and movie theaters, dance halls, sports venues, etc. have been closed for more than a year. October of the same year was the darkest month in American history, when 200,000 Americans died, and the average life expectancy in the United States in 1918 was 12 years less than usual.

A third wave of influenza began to appear in many places around the winter of 1919 and mysteriously disappeared by the spring of 1920.

The flu has spread across the globe, from the Eskimo tribes of Alaska to the island of Samoa in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Many Eskimo tribes are dying village by village, with a mortality rate of up to 25 per cent in Samoa. The island of Marajo at the mouth of the Amazon River was the only human gathering place in the world at the time where no infections were reported.

The Spanish flu claimed between 25 million and 40 million (70 million or 100 million) lives, more than the death toll of World War I, and became one of the reasons for the early end of the First World War, as countries no longer had additional troops to fight.

This shows how terrible this flu really is, especially in the early twentieth century, when sanitation was extremely poor, and this flu was simply deadly. Although Yan Guang comes from later generations, and has been tested by various chemicals and even various drugs for a long time, except for the [Ganges water] in India, he is confident that he has a certain immunity to other chemicals on the earth, and even if he is infected with the Spanish flu, there is a 99% chance of being cured―――――― unless he is assassinated in the process of treatment.

But just thinking about the spread of this flu in China makes Yan Guang shudder.

In the four or five years since the government was in power, although the government has invested a lot in health, it is certainly not as good as that of later generations of China, especially in some remote areas of China, where there are hardly any resources available.

In later generations, a [***] can make such a big fuss, let alone the current China..."It's really ......... Unlucky, why did you come at this time..."

Just thinking about the harm caused by the Spanish flu makes Yan Guang a headache.

(Asia was the worst affected region of the Spanish flu, with at least 15 million of the more than 20 million people in Asia.) Among them, India is the largest, about 12.5 million, which is equivalent to more than 4,000 deaths out of 100,000 people, and this is only a rough statistics, it is said that it is 250,000, as well as Taiwan and other regions, as for other regions, it is more than 3 million people, and China seems to be among the others, and there is no way, after all, China at that time was not even a whole, and there was no way to make accurate statistics... ――――――――――Although Yan Guang's headache was quite severe after hearing the news of the Spanish flu, Yan Guang had to guard against this powerful flu.

Therefore, almost all the meetings that had been scheduled were suspended, and all the affairs of the country, large and small, were suspended, and with the exception of the wars in Vladivostok and Sakhalin, almost all the remaining resources were spent on medical and health care.

In just three days, the people of the whole country found that almost all of China had turned into a sea of white.

A large number of makeshift hospitals have been set up, and equipment for gas masks, which had been intended for shipment to Europe, has been distributed to medical personnel. At the same time, the garrisons in various places have also entered a state of combat readiness, and after making all the protective preparations, these soldiers wearing gas masks cooperate with the medical staff to isolate all patients with flu symptoms from the surrounding people.

Because the Spanish flu had not yet shown its power, almost all the people in the country were stunned by everything around them and did not understand what was going on.

In particular, some members of the National Assembly, although they also know about the flu, but because the flu itself has not yet shown its lethality, many members of the parliament have stood up against Yan Guang's measures.

It is no wonder, after all, that it was still a time of war in Europe, and orders and checks from the Entente were still sent to China. This is the busiest time for the councillors and their supporters' factories, and it is clear that they cannot tolerate quarantining the workers in their factories and doing something every day or two.

You know, this will affect the efficiency of the factory, and in a nutshell, it will affect their money. What's more, it's just a cold, is it worth making such a fuss? Besides, there are no dead people now!!

The parliamentarians, who do not understand that it is too late to die, make noise in the parliament every day.

Fortunately, when the National Social and Political Axe was established, Yan Guang had already completely turned those members of the National Assembly into vases or something in all aspects, so there was no need to worry.

But even so, Yan Guang is still under considerable pressure, after all... Even within the national social and political axe, there are a large number of people who have been troubled in terms of interests because of this incident. And these people are different from the vase of Congress, they also have a lot of close relations with Yan Guang himself, and it is not easy to use a tough attitude in the face of them.

Fortunately, after so many years, Yan Guang's prestige has increased, and for now, it can still shake the situation, but... Maybe it's because the pressure is too great, and now Yan Guang actually has some expectations that [flu] will appear earlier, even if all the prevention work is not over yet..."Really..."

"Unlucky..."

―――――――――― while Yan Guang was still lamenting in his office, the expeditionary fleet consisting of six battleships and three battleships, more than a dozen cruisers of the first and second rank, and five destroyer formations had entered the Sakhalin Sea, and at the same time, the transport fleet they were escorting had already transported the strength of a division to the southern part of Sakhalin Island, which was still in his hands.

Because so far, China and Yuben have not declared war or fought in a big way, so after the discovery of Yueben's transport fleet, neither the expeditionary force on Sakhalin Island nor the expeditionary fleet on the sea have obstructed the landing of the Yueben army.

However, in response, Yin Changheng still sent an additional division to the northern part of Sakhalin, and also transferred a heavy howitzer battalion to Sakhalin, providing great fire support for the expeditionary force on the island.

So far, the strength of the expeditionary force on Sakhalin Island has approached 20,000, and the army also has a division of more than 20,000 troops.

In the vicinity of Vladivostok, Yin Changheng is also attacking Vladivostok at night, striving to take Vladivostok within a week's time limit, so as to provide greater support to Sakhalin.

So far, Yin Changheng's progress has been quite smooth, and the Russian army only has the last line of defense left in Vladivostok, so Yin Changheng is relatively relieved.

"Your Excellency, are we still going to wait..."

On the bridge of the Ise, the flagship of the expeditionary fleet, after reading the information that had just been transmitted from a destroyer, a naval officer said to the commander of the expeditionary fleet, Gentaro Yamashita, with a worried face.

"Now that the Chinese have sent additional troops to Sakhalin, if we continue to wait like this, if that person takes Vladivostok, then even if we win Sakhalin, it will be useless..."

Hearing the words of his subordinates, Gentaro Yamashita looked at the sea in the distance and sighed for a long time.

"I'll have to wait for orders from Tokyo..."

After all, he was only the commander of the expeditionary fleet, and no matter what he did, he had to wait for orders from Tokyo, even if he couldn't wait to destroy the Chinese fleet in the distance.

Yamashita Gentaro is still very confident in the quality and morale of the officers and men of his fleet, especially in morale, after experiencing the fiasco of the Shandong Campaign, the officers and men of the Combined Fleet are looking forward to a disgrace, although Yamashita Gentaro himself is quite jealous of the 380mml/50 naval guns of the [Baxia-class] battleship... And in Tokyo, when the war came, the bureaucrats in Tokyo hesitated.

First, because after the end of the Shandong Campaign, the relations between China and China have been restored in the past four years, and secondly, the three battleships and three battle cruisers of the Chinese fleet are not vegetarians. However, the sound of the war in the end was overwhelming, after all, the British and American 20 million pounds had already been paid, and it was impossible to regret it at this time. What's more, the older generation of Yue himself can't bear to be overwhelmed by China again after 20 years of surpassing China... So it didn't take long for an order to reach Gentaro Yamashita ... After seeing the order, Gentaro Yamashita's originally deeply frowning brow finally relaxed, and after taking a deep breath, Gentaro Yamashita also turned around and said loudly to his subordinates.

"Action !!"

"Yes!!"

The expeditionary fleet, which had been suspended for a long time after sending the army to Sakhalin, finally took action, and several destroyers belonging to the Chinese expeditionary fleet, which had been paying attention to this place, also hurriedly transmitted the information to Sa Zhenbing.

More than ten minutes later, the Chinese expeditionary fleet, which had been sleeping, finally moved into action.

Following the First Sino-Japanese Naval Battle, another naval battle between China and China is about to begin, and this naval battle will be a shameful battle for both China and the Ben――――――――――...

(To be continued)