The clouds opened and the rain was shining, and the sun of the southern and central seas shone into the room through the east window, and Colonel Müller finally saw the sunny weather.

When he arrived in Annam, he was caught in a tropical storm and it was raining heavily outside for a Sunday, so he had to stay in the Austro-Hungarian naval base in Da Nang. Da Nang, known by the French as the "Oriental Toulon", is one of the few natural harbors in Annam, with its wide and deep water, backed by mountains and facing the sea, and the horseshoe-shaped harbor surrounded by mountains. Since the French occupation in 1883, it has been built into a fortified naval base.

After the European War, Germany and Austria took control of the colony of Annam from the French, and according to the agreement reached between the two countries, the Germans received control of the relatively wealthy southern Mekong Delta region, while Austria-Hungary received the so-called "Beiqi" region.

The railway from Hanoi to the mouth of the Yunnan River is jointly managed by the two countries.

Although he remained in the room, Colonel Müller had some general idea of the situation in Annan and the Far East.

Annan is a strange country, and although the French have been promoting French education here for many years, the results have been quite limited. The local indigenous Jing people speak a language similar to that of the Zhuang people in Guangxi, and they have no barriers to communicate with the Chinese people, and the indigenous people on the Chinese side can understand what they say.

This is a country with a deep sinicization, and local readers have been using the kind of Chinese characters that are a headache for Westerners, and the books are all printed in Chinese. The French have been trying to push the natives to use the Latin alphabet to spell their language, but to no avail. Annam's upper-class intellectuals have been stubbornly using Chinese characters, and it was quite difficult for them to change traditions.

And after the Austrians ruled the area, the local colonial government simply changed its original intention and used German and Chinese to advertise in parallel.

It is said that this was what Emperor Friedrich meant. "It's good to adapt to some things, and the colonial policy of the empire should be adapted to the local culture, not to try to force changes to them." The Emperor had told the colonial officials of the Empire.

Austria-Hungary has since taken over the colonies in North Vietnam. Two naval bases were set up in Da Nang and Hekou Port to the north, plus the German naval base in Qingdao on the Shandong Peninsula in China. The Austro-Hungarian Far Eastern Fleet operated mainly in the Far East from these three ports. In fact, in the Far East, with the exception of the Japanese navy, the strength of the German-Austrian Far East Fleet was obviously stronger than that of the Anglo-American Far East Fleet.

France did not build any industry in Annam, and relied mainly on cash crops in the colonies for profit. After Germany and Austria gained control of the area, the Austrian Linz Iron Works established a steel mill at the mouth of the river. However, the scale is not very large, the annual steel output is only about 100,000 tons, mainly for the repair of ships and the laying of railways in the colonial areas, and to supply the two provinces of Guangxi and Yunnan in China.

With the assistance of Germany and Austria. The Beiyang government has built seven large iron and steel complexes in China: Wuchang Iron and Steel Plant, Baotou Iron and Steel Plant, Wuhu Iron and Steel Plant, Xuanhua Iron and Steel Plant, Taiyuan Iron and Steel Plant, Anyang Iron and Steel Plant and Xinyu Iron and Steel Plant, but the total steel output is 2.56 million tons, about half of the cost of Japan.

Comparatively speaking, after the military government came to power, Japan put the "expansion of national defense armaments" in the first place, and its domestic industries related to the military industry developed rapidly. With the support of the United States, its steel production reached 5.2 million tons, about half that of Austria-Hungary. However, about half of Japan's steel production comes from scrap steel in the United States, and its pig iron production is only about 2.4 million tons. About half of them came from "Manchurian Iron and Steel".

Although it is slightly inferior to China in terms of industrial capacity, China has a population of nearly 500 million, and the Beijing government has an army of about 1.8 million, and most of the troops are so-called "German armor divisions" equipped with German and Austrian heavy weapons, and their combat effectiveness is not inferior to that of Japan.

In Europe, Müller was completely unaware of the tensions in the world, and although the situation in France was somewhat worrying because of the totalitarian government, even Austria-Hungary was able to completely suppress France in terms of industrial and military power. Not to mention that there was an even more powerful Germany that sided with Austria-Hungary.

The British had been excluded from the European system, and Germany and Austria had joined forces to dominate the affairs of the continent. The Italians also took refuge in the German-Austrian League. In fact, both industrially and militarily, Germany and Austria could not feel threatened. Russia has been greatly weakened and has been isolated. It was only because of the economic crisis in the United States that Anglo-American industrial equipment and technology began to flood into the communist country. But they are still only in the stage of large-scale recovery.

But in the Far East, the situation is becoming more and more serious.

Soviet Russia was slowly regaining its strength, announcing the merger of the Far Eastern Republic with the Soviet Union, and engaging in numerous armed clashes with the border guards of China. It is clear that Zhuashvili has decided to prepare to use force in the East first. If it weren't for the warnings of Germany and Austria, it is estimated that the Soviet Russian Red Army would have crossed the Yakinissei River and marched directly into the Far East.

In the northeast of China, the original king of the Northeast, Zhang Zuolin, was assassinated in 1931, but he himself has been using force to obstruct the reunification process of Beijing, and the two sides are tense and may break out at any time.

Comparatively speaking, although four "Cardinal"-class battleships were obtained from Austria-Hungary "half bought and half given", after more than ten years, the basic naval personnel of the Republic of China have not developed much. So far, China's four major shipyards (Jiangnan Shipyard, Hudong Shipyard, Fuzhou Shipyard and Guangzhou Shipyard) have only independently built six light cruisers of about 6,000 tons, which is a huge gap compared with Japan.

In recent years, due to the suppression of Germany and Austria, Japan did not dare to brazenly use force to do too much in China, but after the military government came to power, they began to become unscrupulous and paid less and less attention to the warnings of Germany and Austria, and public opinion in Japan itself was also one-sided anti-German and Austrian propaganda.

The reason for this is that there have always been Americans behind it.

Germany and Austria have long suspected the existence of a secret alliance treaty between Japan and the United States.

Due to the European war, the United States has always regarded Germany and Austria as the biggest enemy in the world, especially after Germany and Austria dominated the government of China, the Americans turned to support Japan. First of all, when the intervention forces of the Far East countries withdrew, they handed over the administration of Vladivostok and the Far East to Japan, and with the joint support of the British, they obtained the "entrusted management" of the former Russian Far East east of Burleigh. Second, since 1931, the United States has greatly increased the amount of loans to Japan, and with the support of billions of dollars in foreign loans, Japan has received a large amount of heavy industrial equipment and industrial raw materials, which has doubled Japan's steel production in less than six years. Moreover, because the United States has exported about 150,000 units of equipment to Japan, Japan's military production has increased several times in just a few years.

However, there is really no evidence to prove that the United States and Japan have formed an alliance at present.

That is why the situation in the Far East is becoming more and more volatile.

There has never been a good thing about the game between major powers in a certain region. (To be continued)