Spring 1900, January 14.

Hu Chuyuan's patience was indeed at its limit, and from 1893 onwards, Shaanxi, Gansu, Ningxia, and Xinjiang provinces, which had been suppressed for many years, became restless, and new military turmoil continued to emerge.

Huocheng, Ili, Korla, and Kashgar were all troubled places, and from 1893 onwards there were constant separatist riots, and in the years when the Sino-British alliance was taking shape, the Russians suddenly increased their support for the separatist forces in Xinjiang Province.

Dong Fuxiang of the Gan army was exhausted between Korla and Ili, killing tens of thousands of rebels and losing a lot of military salaries, but he never received real results, and recently suffered heavy losses one after another, losing the entire Ili, Aksu and Wusu regions, so that the rebels re-established the new Yarkand Khanate.

As a last resort, Hu Chuyuan decided to go to Xinjiang Province in person.

He just wanted to see what the problem was.

Taking the train, Hu Chuyuan went all the way to the west, and he had been watching the scenery around the railway.

The data can show that China is getting stronger, but when you leave the eastern coastal area and enter Shanxi, Ningxia, Gansu, Shaanxi...... Even in the old city of Yanjing, you will find that China has not changed, it is still the backward and ignorant, conservative and rigid, old and decadent feudal dynasty, and it is a servile feudal dynasty.

Hundreds of millions of Han Chinese still have braids that the world powers ridicule as "pig's tails", dirty, uneducated, illiterate, women still have perverted and ugly little feet, and most of them are still wearing shabby clothes, digging in the fields, and even growing big tobacco.

Along the street, you can see the earth smoke house everywhere.

People are thin, without a glimmer of hope in their eyes, ignorant, they don't know where the future is, they don't know what China is, and even the Han people have forgotten what they are.

Hundreds of years later, they still see themselves as slaves trampled on the soles of their feet, to be slaughtered.

Unbeknownst to them, the Manchu power had largely withdrawn from Yanjing and most of China, and that their former status could only be found in the three eastern provinces under the control of Rong Lu.

China is changing, but it's still too slow, not because of the economy, it's about people's minds.

In the six provinces south of the Yangtze River, which had been developed for 20 years, people and rich families used porcelain bowls and plates, aluminum basins, tin basins, copper basins, and enamel basins, and wore worsted fabrics to make clothes, using Shanghai soap, toothpaste, and soap, and eating peanut oil from Shandong, soybean oil from Northeast China, and refined sugar from Liangguang, and lived in buildings.

Twenty years of education support has cultivated more than one million intellectual youths and tens of thousands of international students, and they are influencing everything and changing everything along the coast, but only when you see the mainland, you will understand that China has not changed.

Perhaps, this is also the reason why the world does not regard China's recovery as a major event.

He said that the Russians, and the French all believed that sooner or later China would be divided into several countries, that Jiangnan and other regions would always be out of place, that Xinjiang Province, Mongolia, Northeast China, Tibetan Province, Yunnan, and Guangxi Province would not belong to the Han Chinese, and that they would eventually be divided, that they would definitely split, that they would definitely split, and that even if they did not split at the moment, they would have a way to speed up this split.

Hu Chuyuan thought, you guys just fantasize slowly.

Hu Chuyuan was working on the train, and when he arrived at any station, he would stop for half an hour, and a new report would immediately be transmitted through the telegraph network, and the Privy Council's assistant Zhang Jingsun Zongyuan would serve as the temporary general secretary, responsible for the collection and analysis of these reports and administrative documents.

In 1886, Hu Chuyuan was most optimistic about Xie Yuanqi, Yang Shipai, Sun Zongyuan, Li Xiling, Ding Bingqian, Chen Kuilong, Song Yuren, and Xu Shichang, and paid the most attention to their cultivation.

Of course, these people are also the Hu party within the Hu party, and the henchmen among the henchmen.

After a short stop at Lanzhou Station, Sun Zongyuan submitted new reports, some from the General Administration of Secrets, some from the Ministry of War, some from Xinjiang Province, and some from the Internal Affairs Yuan of the Prime Minister's Office.

Sun Zongyuan has a lot of good habits, he always puts the most important documents on top, and according to Hu Chuyuan's special advice, he will also carry his own opinions in the report.

This is a reference for Hu Chuyuan, and it is also a kind of exercise for Sun Zongyuan.

Recognize people, teach people, manage people, and employ people.

This is the most valuable wealth left to Hu Chuyuan by Zeng Guofan and Zuo Zongtang, and he is always constantly cultivating talents, accumulating talents, teaching talents, and training talents.

As long as it is his people, and the people he can manage, he will cultivate, require everyone to study and exercise uninterruptedly, arrange for them to go abroad for investigation, and appropriately serve as ambassadors and consul generals outside for one or two years, and get in touch with the European and American worlds.

According to the characteristics of each person, he will arrange for these people to start from the county and prefect at the grassroots level, some will start with Zhang Jing, secretaries, and assistants in Beijing, and some will be transferred to specific bureau affairs, starting from practical matters, and some will even be sent to places such as Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau and Tianjin Manufacturing Bureau.

Sun Zongyuan served as a prefect for two years, a counselor in the UK for two years, and a Taoist platform in Quanzhou for five years, with outstanding political achievements.

In two or three years, Hu Chuyuan planned to send him to a local area to serve as a governor in charge of a province.

Now just continue to observe him, beat him, temper him, and sharpen him.

The General Directorate of Secrets sent a secret telegram summarizing the activities of the merchants in Central Asia, and singled out six of them, estimating that they were all spies deployed near Ili.

Among the rebels in Ili, there must have been a number of staff officers sent by the military headquarters, but the number was more numerous than the Russian military officers.

Sure enough.

Hu Chuyuan was not surprised.

The contradictions between China and China are too great, not only because of the regional struggle for hegemony, but also in the entire economic system, both sides are in a period of initial industrial climbing, and the production of cheap industrial products is the main means of exchanging foreign exchange for exports.

If China is not defeated, China is not divided, and China's current industrial system is not allowed to collapse rapidly, there is no future.

Under the circumstance that coastal activities were relatively difficult, he chose to make a detour and infiltrate the Xinjiang provinces through the Central Asian region controlled by Tsarist Russia, and supported the [***] establishment movement, and a large amount of funds were allocated every year.

Of course, the real source of funding is the French political axe, basically the French are responsible for the money, Tsarist Russia and himself are responsible for contributing, and the three of them support [***] together.

Sun Zongyuan wrote a suggestion in this report -- the Sino-Russian war is imminent, or in a few years, I am afraid that it will be a strategy to attack the east from the west, and it is advisable for the northwest to be determined quickly, and the northeast should be to step up preparations for war.

After reading the report and Sun Zongyuan's suggestion, Hu Chuyuan thought carefully in his heart for a moment.

Immediately, he took a new piece of paper and wrote: France and Ben have no interests in Central Asia, and the reasons for supporting Ili at such a costly basis are more complicated; in addition to dragging our country into the Northwest War for a long time, it also intends to make Britain feel jealous and not to conclude a closer military alliance with our country, so as to facilitate the Franco-Russian Triple Alliance to launch a joint attack and aggression against our country in East Asia, and to facilitate the dismemberment of our country by the three countries.

The report of the War Department was a report on the entire war of counter-rebellion in the northwest, reassessing the strength of the forces of both sides, and with the support of the Franco-Russian Entente organization, the total number of Ili rebels was about 60,000 men, infantry and cavalry accounted for the absolute number, and the artillery unit was about the size of two brigades and more than 300 artillery pieces.

These rebels were mainly composed of Kazakh national armed forces and the "volunteer" forces of the Kokand Khanate, the Burak Khanate, and the Siva Khanate, which was a Central Asian coalition army organized by Tsarist Russia with the goal of occupying Xinjiang Province and rebuilding the Yarkand Khanate.

In addition, the Russian army has amassed more than 20,000 heavy troops in the Ayagus area, mainly cavalry, which may enter the Alashan Pass at any time.

Since the two important military fortresses of Alashankou and Wusu have been lost, there is no natural barrier for the Russian army to enter Xinjiang Province.

Hu Chuyuan quietly assessed in his heart, because there is no sign of military mobilization in Ben and Russia at present, but the Russian army has some movement in Central Asia, and he thinks that the Franco-Russian alliance is unlikely to start a full-scale war against China.

Of course, if there is really going to be a war, he is not afraid.

After suffering the big loss of the sudden war, Hu Chuyuan has been carefully preparing for war over the years, so as not to be caught off guard, especially in the past few years, he has prepared a lot of secret weapons.

However, he admitted that he neglected the preparation of the cavalry, and although the selection and breeding of special war horses had been done, and he had been constantly introducing good horses from the United States and North Africa to improve the local horse breeds, he was still far from keeping up with the progress, not to mention that there were some detours in the middle.

The second is the problem of carbines, the cavalry carbine based on the new Jiangnan rifle (Auckland M1894 rifle) has a very stable surname, but the number of stocks is less than 30,000, compared with the total inventory of 600,000 new Jiangnan rifles, it seems too small, and it is necessary to speed up domestic production.

In the final analysis, China has too many deficiencies in cavalry construction and has not paid enough attention to it, which is the main reason for the large-scale loss of the Ili area.

Hu Chuyuan gave replies to these problems one by one, and asked the Prime Minister's Office and the War Department to fully mobilize and give priority to ensuring the supply and distribution of the Northwest Army.

In the long run, he put forward another thing in particular, so that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs should quickly negotiate with the United States to bring in more excellent stallions from the United States, and carry out a larger-scale war horse breeding in the Hetao pasture.

The report submitted by the Interior House of the Prime Minister is about the "Enlightenment Movement", and although after nearly 20 years of training and educational support, China has as many as one million new generation of young people, who are the foundation of the "Enlightenment Movement", but even so, the "Enlightenment Movement" has met with opposition from many people.

In addition, Zhang Zhidong specifically mentioned "Kang Youwei" in the official document, and was very dissatisfied with the theory of the establishment of the Holy Religion that he openly preached, and wanted to arrest this person.

These are all inconsequential matters, and they will slowly become sand under the wheel of history, Hu Chuyuan did not care too much, and only replied - "respect individual freedom of speech and safeguard the fairness and authority of the provisional constitution."

I don't know how big China is if I don't go to Xinjiang Province.

The train keeps running in the vast Gobi Desert, the endless steppe, and the desolate desert, and never stops.

Many times, for a whole day, Hu Chuyuan did not see the slightest human population around the train, and it was desolate to the point of being inhabited at all.

In this vast world, you can feel the size of heaven and earth and the insignificance of people.

After arriving in Hami, the railway extends in the valley between the Tianshan Mountains, driving along the oasis, shuttling, and the line of sight can easily pass through the oasis, and see the desolate Gobi and the majestic Tianshan Mountains in the distance.

The Tianshan Mountains are so vast, and the world is so big.

When you arrive in Hami, you will always think of cantaloupe.

At Hami Station, Hu Chuyuan received a new telegram that the Yarkand Khan's army had captured Dihua (Urumqi), and Dong Fuxiang's Gan army of more than 30,000 people fled in disarray.

Li Kaiye personally sent a telegram to Hu Chuyuan, asking Hu Chuyuan to stay in Hami and dispatch the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningbo New Army to the north to garrison.

The message was very simple, but Hu Chuyuan could feel Li Kaiye's nervousness.

Hu Chuyuan was no longer allowed to send a telegram to contact Li Kaiye, let alone take a train to Turpan, and the Yarkand Khan army had already blown up the railway and cable lines and surrounded Shanshan County.

(To be continued)