Chiang Kai-shek turned around, walked to the rattan chair and sat down, looked at Song Zhewu and said: "Wen Ge, you are not only very good at training and managing the army, but also very strategic. It can be said that the points you just mentioned are exactly the same as the plan of the central authorities, and I am very pleased that there are such rising stars as you in the National Revolutionary Army! ”

Chiang Kai-shek paused and continued: "The Gui system has been basically solved, and the problem of the Northwest Army will soon be resolved, and the remaining Jin Suijun family of Yan Baichuan will be easy to handle." It is only after the settlement of a few of them that there are still many powerful local factions in various localities, and these people support their own troops and are self-governing, and the central government's major policies have not been implemented at all in many places. For example, in August last year, the Fifth Plenary Session of the Second Central Committee passed the "Proposal on Unifying Finance, Determining the Budget, Sorting Out Taxes, and Implementing Fiscal Policies for Economic Construction, so as to Plant a Financial Foundation and Benefit the People's Livelihood"; The two bills, "Criteria for Dividing State Revenue and Local Revenue", stipulate the revenue and expenditure of the central and provincial finances, and include major industrial and commercial taxes such as salt tax, customs duty (customs duty and regular tariff), unified tax, stamp duty, and mining tax as state revenue. Taxes suitable for local collection, such as land tax, deed tax, tooth tax, pawn tax, and business tax, are listed as local revenue. In this way, the central government concentrated most of the country's financial resources through the form of law, and at the same time reserved mobile financial resources for the localities, and the local financial difficulties were solved through transfer payments, thus reversing the unfavorable situation in which financial power had been dispersed among the localities since the end of the Qing Dynasty. This is a good thing for the benefit of the country and the people, but it cannot be implemented in Yunnan, Sichuan and other places; Some delay or reduce the amount of the surrender for various reasons, such as Shanxi, Shaanxi, Henan, Hebei, Guangdong and other places. These places are simply a country within a country. How to deal with these new warlords, Wengo what can you do? ”

This question made Song Zhewu very difficult to answer, because he himself was also a local powerful faction, and he could even be regarded as a small warlord. Chiang Kai-shek asked him, a small warlord, to take the initiative and voluntarily provide Chiang Kai-shek with solutions to many small warlords, including him, Song Zhewu.

To use a very appropriate analogy, this is seeking the skin of a tiger, or more precisely, it should be a skin with a sheep. In front of Chiang Kai-shek, he Song Zhewu is definitely not a tiger, he can only be regarded as a sheep, one of the dozen sheep in sheepskin that Chiang Kai-shek remembers. Chiang Kai-shek was asking him how to skin the sheep without causing a fierce resistance from the sheep. And it was a sheep that was also waiting to be skinned.

Song Zhewu knew that Chiang Kai-shek was still testing him, but the difficulty was that he had to tell Chiang Kai-shek about the "skinning" technique. Even Chiang Kai-shek thought that he Song Zhewu wanted to give him his "sheepskin" willingly first. If he shirked or said insincerely, it would inevitably arouse Chiang Kai-shek's suspicion of him. It seems that only still telling the truth.

Fortunately, in real history, Chiang Kai-shek did not take drastic measures. Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi's Gui line was gradually centralized during the Anti-Japanese War; Many powerful warlords in Sichuan were gradually digested by the central government during the Anti-Japanese War, and in the end, only a few people such as Yang Sen were lucky to be retained; Wang Jialie in Guizhou (Wang Jialie is not yet the chairman of Guizhou Province, and Wang Jialie was in charge of Guizhou in March 1932) was during the Red Army's Long March, and Chiang Kai-shek ordered Xue Yue to take advantage of the situation in the name of pursuit; Long Yun in Yunnan was forced to leave Yunnan by force at the end of the Anti-Japanese War, Du Yuming, commander-in-chief of the Fifth Army and commander-in-chief of the defense of Kunming, taking advantage of the fact that Long Yun's two main divisions were sent to Vietnam to surrender.

However, this also provided an opportunity for Song Zhewu to take this opportunity to express his attitude to Chiang Kai-shek, explain his reasons for wanting Shanxi, and obtain Chiang Kai-shek's understanding and support.

Song Zhewu said with a smile: "Chairman, Zhewu has never thought about this issue. However, since the chairman of the committee inquired, Tetsumu said a little bit of his superficial thoughts, and asked the chairman to give him advice. ”

Chiang Kai-shek looked at Song Zhewu, nodded and said, "Wen Ge, you speak boldly." There are only two of you and me here, out of your mouth and into my ears, even if you have some wrong ideas, I will forgive you! ”

Song Zhewu knew that Chiang Kai-shek had misunderstood him, thinking that he had to think about these local powerful factions, of course, including himself, and hurriedly said: "Chairman of the Committee, after dealing with Feng Yuxiang's Northwest Army and Yan Xishan's Jin Sui Army, the remaining local powerful factions are not to be afraid. There are two reasons for this: first, all the remaining local powerful factions are far inferior to the chairman in terms of seniority, and they do not have any prestige in the party, so they will not have any thoughts of non-division; Second, most of these people are geographically confined to a couple, just thinking about how to stabilize their existing territory, and they dare not and are unable to get involved in other provinces. In particular, the Sichuan warlords led by Long Yun in Yunnan, He Jian in Hunan, and Liu Wenhui and Liu Xiang's uncle and nephew in Sichuan are typical here. Although Zhu Peide of Jiangxi also has the intention of ceding land for self-protection, Jiangxi is located in the hinterland of the interior, and the products are not abundant, so he does not have the conditions for self-protection. Moreover, Zhu Peide has always followed the central authorities closely, and once the conditions are ripe, Zhu Peide will hand over Jiangxi's military and political power to the central authorities. ”

Chiang Kai-shek nodded and reminded Song Zhewu: "Wen Ge, you haven't said Tang Shengzhi yet, he still has some seniority in the party." ”

Song Zhewu nodded and said: "Chairman, I didn't mention Tang Shengzhi just now, because Tang Shengzhi is different from other people, as the chairman said, Tang Shengzhi has certain qualifications in the party, and he also has some prestige, and more importantly, Tang Shengzhi is very ambitious. An ambitious person can easily be exploited by factions within the party that oppose the chairman, which is why I separate Tang Shengzhi from others. For Tang Shengzhi, Zhewu thought that after solving the Northwest Army and the Jin Sui Army, the next first thing was to solve Tang Shengzhi's Fifth Route Army. For the Fifth Route Army to be incorporated into the units under the Central Army, Tang Shengzhi himself had to give up his military power and take up a post in the Central Committee. ”

Chiang Kai-shek listened quietly, his fingers tapping slowly and rhythmically on the armrests of the rattan chair, showing that Chiang Kai-shek was pondering Song Zhewu's words.

Song Zhewu continued: "For the powerful factions in other places, Zhewu believes that it cannot be solved by force, but should be solved by political, economic, and military means. This is because most of these places are located on the border or in relatively closed areas, such as Yunnan and Sichuan. If troops are used in these places, the number of troops is too small to be sufficient. For example, the warlords of all walks of life in Sichuan have more than 300,000 troops, and there is the danger of the topography of Shu Road, which is by no means possible in a short period of time; If there are too many troops, military spending will inevitably be huge, and the central government will inevitably carry a heavy burden on its finances. Even if the use of force succeeds in bringing it back to the central government, a large number of troops would have to be sent to maintain law and order in order to maintain local stability, which in turn would disperse the power of the center. Therefore, Zhewu thought that it should be easy to deal with these people. As long as they approve of the central leadership, they can solve the problem without resorting to military means. First of all, it is a political means, where party departments at all levels and branches of the Central Committee can be set up to supervise the implementation of the policies and guidelines of the Central Committee, and at the same time, it can propagate major policies and national policies, and increase the local people's sense of identity with the state. The economic means have been the "Proposal on Unifying Finances, Determining Budgets, Sorting Out Tax Collections, and Implementing the Fiscal Policy for Economic Construction, Benefiting the People's Livelihood by Planting a Financial Foundation" and "Proposal on Dividing the Standards for State and Local Revenues" as means to control local finances and taxes, limit their revenues, restrict the expansion of their armed forces, and stipulate that their troops are not allowed to leave the country without the approval of the central authorities. The central authorities agreed to provide military salaries according to the number of the downsizing, and those who did not accept the downsizing were not to be paid. ”

Seeing that Chiang Kai-shek was still listening attentively, Song Zhewu said: "What Zhewu said above is based on the assumption that the central government has a heavy financial burden, and if the central government allows it, the central government will forcibly take back the administration of the powerful factions in a local area by military means, and there is nothing wrong with finance, taxation, and military power. Then, the central authorities should vigorously develop the economy, support agriculture and businessmen, and carry out industrial construction, paying special attention to the building of the national defense industrial system, so as to make early preparations for resisting the invasion of foreign enemies. ”

Seeing that Chiang Kai-shek stopped his percussion movements, he fell into deep thought. Song Zhewu stopped talking at the right time. Sit quietly on the side.

The central government's finances have long been unable to make ends meet, but thanks to Song Ziwen, the finance minister, who has the ability and connections, he has brought in a large amount of money from the major domestic and foreign consortia, especially the Jiangsu and Zhejiang consortia, which have already issued public bonds. Otherwise, this battle would have been unfought.

However, since it is a debt, it must be repaid, otherwise it will be a terrible thing for the political axe to go bankrupt. Economic development is urgently needed, but it will be after Feng Yuxiang's Northwest Army and Yan Xishan's Jin Sui Army have been settled. Feng Yuxiang and Yan Xishan must be solved, and they must be allowed to leave the army to serve in the central government, no matter how difficult it is, he Jiang Zhongzheng must also pass this hurdle.

Chiang Kai-shek very much agreed with Song Zhewu's point of view, not only Tang Shengzhi, but also Chen Mingshu and Chen Jitang in Guangdong, who Song Zhewu did not mention, and Zhang Fakui, the commander of the Fourth Army, should also be relieved of their military power as soon as possible. Song Zhewu just said that they could be used by the factions within the party that opposed him Chiang Chung-zheng, although he did not say it explicitly, but the only ones who could use them were the reorganized faction that supported Wang Ching-wei. Chiang Kai-shek knew that Tang Shengzhi had close contacts with Er Chen and Zhang Fakui in Guangdong, and with Wang Ching-wei in France and with the reorganization faction within the party, and had many correspondence with each other.

After the Fourth Plenary Session of the Second Central Committee of the Kuomintang in 1928, the Wang Chingwei clique was defeated in the struggle for the supreme ruling power of the Nanjing Nationalist Axe. Wang Ching-wei's sworn friends, Chen Gongbo and Gu Mengyu, claimed that they would "gather revolutionary comrades," reformulate the program, and reorganize the Kuomintang. Subsequently, the headquarters of the Chinese Kuomintang Reorganization Comrades Association was set up in Shanghai, with Wang Jingwei as the leader and Chen Gongbo as the general leader, flaunting "restoring the spirit of reorganizing the Kuomintang in the 13 years of the Republic of China." In fact, it was an attempt to compete with Jiang Zhongzheng for party power and political power through the reorganization of the Kuomintang. Its local branches now cover 178 provinces and cities such as Nanjing, Shanghai, Beiping, Tianjin, Jiangsu, Anhui, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, France, Japan, Vietnam, Hong Kong and other countries and regions, with more than 10,000 members. This is a force second only to Li Zongren, Feng Yuxiang, and Yan Xishan, and they are more influential in the party. Li Zongren, Feng Yuxiang, and Yan Xishan were the biggest threats to him outside the Central Committee, and this reorganization faction was the biggest threat to him from within the Central Committee. Once they unite with Tang Shengzhi, Guangdong's Er Chen, Zhang Fakui and others, the threat to him will definitely not be less than Feng Yuxiang and others, or even worse than them.

Chiang Kai-shek can basically relax about Song Zhewu, a young man, now. In his opinion, this Song Zhewu didn't want to be a warlord, at least not a warlord in the traditional sense, otherwise he would not have given himself these feasible means to deal with these local powerful factions, and Song Zhewu at least did not put himself among the warlords.

However, Chiang Kai-shek still had a trace of doubt, since this Song Zhewu did not want to be a warlord, what did he want Shanxi to do?

(To be continued)