Xiao Zhenlei's originally good mood was made terrible by Ri Zhiyi, for such a long time, although he knew that the Japanese were very arrogant, but it also depended on the object, if it was still the Qing court, Japan would really be so arrogant to interfere with China's purchase of warships, but now is not the era of the Qing court, the Japanese are still so arrogant that people are unbearable, Xiao Zhenlei doesn't bother to pay attention to this kind of neurotic person.

After receiving the news, the diplomatic department drafted a note overnight, in which it said that China's purchase of warships is related to your Japanese birds. Why do you want to inform Japan? Japan is Japan, China is China, and each is an independent sovereign state. Japan is purely a dog meddled with rats, and the madman Ri Zhiyi is still talking nonsense that China's purchase of warships threatens Japan's security, so isn't the existence of Japan's combined fleet a threat to China's security? You Japan haven't sent a note to our country! Was Nichiki's rude protest caused by his own nerves, or was it instigated by your Japanese authorities? If he himself had a nervous attack and asked the Japanese authorities to send someone to take him back for treatment, our diplomatic staff would not have come into contact with anyone who had a nervous path, and if it had been instructed by the Japanese authorities, then I am sorry that this kind of unreasonable demand cannot be accepted by our country!

In view of the rudeness of the Japanese authorities, Huaguo will lower the rank of envoy to Japan from the original minister to chargé d'affaires. Chargé d'affaires is the lowest level of envoys stationed abroad, and it cannot be lowered.

According to the general division of the rank of envoys of various countries, the envoys stationed abroad can generally be divided into three levels, the highest level is the ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary, which was originally the plenipotentiary representative sent by the monarch of one country to the monarch of another country in a monarchy. Externally, he represents the monarch himself and enjoys great decision-making power. Later, he became the highest diplomatic representative between heads of state.

The second is the Minister Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, who is the plenipotentiary of the former head of state of a monarchy to the government of a republic. Later, it evolved into a diplomatic representation sent by a large country to a small country.

The lowest is the chargé d'affaires, who is the diplomatic representative temporarily in charge of foreign affairs when the ambassador or minister is not in office, and is later designated as the lowest-ranking diplomatic representative at the Vienna Conference, which is equivalent to an envoy sent by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of one country to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of another country.

After receiving the note from the Chinese diplomatic department, Japan immediately reported to Prime Minister Shigenobu Okuma, who was so angry that his nose was crooked when he saw the contents of the note, and he scolded Japan for not knowing the height of the sky, and for taking the initiative to go to Xiao Zhenlei for talking nonsense, and at the same time lowering the rank of the envoy to Japan to China, which was simply an insult to the Japanese Empire.

In fact, countries don't care so much about the rank of foreign envoys now. In most cases, the two countries have a relatively close relationship, and they send ambassadors extraordinary and plenipotentiary to each other; The relationship between the two countries is average, and the other party's national strength is weak, so it will send envoys at the level of ministers; If the relationship between the two countries has degraded to a normal situation, it is to send an envoy at the level of chargé d'affaires, and at the same time there is a sense of contempt for the other party, how can Shigenobu Okuma not be angry?

Anger is anger, but Okuma Shigenobu also knows that now is not the time to be rash, Japan and Tsarist Russia are already enemies, and there can be no more enemies in the Far East, if China is pushed into the arms of Tsarist Russia. Then Japan's upcoming war against Tsarist Russia will become very difficult, and one country against two countries is not something that smart people should do, you must know that China now has more than 1.5 million troops. This is not a dry meal!

What can Shigenobu Okuma do? The Japanese can endure it the most, and he can only endure it, so he doesn't care about the fact that Huaguo has lowered the level of its envoys to Japan. However, diplomatic relations with Huaguo could not be interrupted, and he immediately ordered the transfer back to Nizhiyi. The appointment of Kumataro Honda, consul general in the three eastern provinces, as Japan's Minister Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to China to take over the work of Nippon Zhiyi, was the diplomatic dispute settled. This was also the first diplomatic victory achieved by the new government toward Japan since its establishment, and the diplomatic staff of China were extremely excited, but the Japanese authorities took a step back on the surface, but behind the scenes, they approved the Navy's 88 shipbuilding plan, and the whole of Japan began to tighten their teeth and tighten their belts to raise more funds for the Navy to build new warships.

At the same time, Huaguo is not idle, the Japanese want to build a new large warship, Huaguo is not far behind, the navy submitted a plan to Xiao Zhenlei to build four aircraft carriers, in the plan, the standard displacement of each aircraft carrier will exceed 28,000 tons, but the design drawings are still being designed, Xiao Zhenlei on the grounds that the design drawings have not been completed, temporarily suppressed the ship-building application plan, he must wait to see the design drawings before making a decision, so the Navy Command immediately gave a death order to the ship design center, Complete the design drawings as much as possible.

The mind of the navy began to come alive, and Sa Zhenbing and other senior admirals saw that the four warships bought back from each share were indeed energetic, and they thought in their hearts why the domestic shipyards could not build warships with more than 10,000 tons. Now there are ready-made models here, and engineers and craftsmen can learn shipbuilding techniques from these ready-made models.

Now China and the United States have signed an alliance and a series of cooperation plans, one of these plans is that the United States must cooperate with China to build a shipyard with a dock displacement of more than 50,000 tons in China, and the investors are all private businessmen of the two countries, and they are responsible for their own profits and losses, and the shares are determined according to the proportion of investment, and the governments of both sides are not allowed to interfere in their operations, and the Chinese navy can bid for the construction of large warships from this shipyard, and this shipyard must first complete orders from the Chinese navy before it can take on other shipbuilding business.

How shrewd Americans are, now shrewd people know that the world is not very peaceful, Europe has become a powder keg, the shipbuilding industry is still on fire again, there is an American shipbuilding businessman who sees that the cooperation between the United States and China must have a lot of business opportunities, and this person is in the shipbuilding industry, when he got the United States and China signed a cooperation document to build a large shipyard in China, he immediately began to activities, and soon after spending some money, he got a power of attorney from the US government, And followed the footsteps of Xiao Zhenlei and others to return to China.

After receiving this news, Xiao Zhenlei immediately instructed the cabinet and the navy to put in touch with each other to implement the matter of the two countries cooperating in the construction of the shipyard and to complete and start construction of the shipyard as soon as possible.

Now countries are building ships like crazy, and even the United States, a large country isolated between the Pacific and the Atlantic, feels unsafe and has begun to build a large number of warships, not to mention other European powers, and now a large warship is built and launched almost every day in the world.

However, now the navies of all countries in the world are continuing to develop in the direction of artillery giant ships, the tonnage of warships is getting larger and larger, the caliber of naval guns is getting larger and larger, the firepower is getting more and more fierce, and the armor of ships is getting thicker and thicker.

Xiao Zhenlei is not so stupid, continuing to build dreadnoughts and super dreadnoughts is a complete waste of money, all the plans submitted by the navy to apply for the construction of battleships have been shelved by him, you must know that the funds required to build a battleship in this era are millions of pounds, more than tens of millions of pounds, this money is not available to every government at any time, rather than wasting the money to build the navy on building battleships and battlecruisers that will soon become obsolete and obsolete, it is better to start developing aircraft carriers now, Before other countries realized that aircraft carriers would dominate the oceans in the future, they began to vigorously develop aircraft carriers, and by the time other countries realized this, China had already surpassed them by several grades, making them unable to take a beat.

And the construction of aircraft carriers can not be in a hurry, step by step, the domestic shipbuilding capacity can not be compared with European and American countries for the time being, and even Japan can not compare, so Xiao Zhenlei is ready to build two small-tonnage aircraft carriers first to let the domestic shipbuilding try their hands, increase some experience, and then build a large-tonnage aircraft carrier, he expects to build two aircraft carriers with a displacement of no more than 20,000 tons, carrying more than 50 carrier-based aircraft.

On June 18, Sa Zhenbing came to Xiao Zhenlei to report the take-off and landing of carrier-based aircraft on the modified seaplane carrier, he said: "President, in the past few months, the take-off and landing training of aircraft on the seaplane carrier has lost too much, and we are very distressed, as of now, although we have trained more than 100 pilots who can skillfully take off and land on the mothership, but the loss is not small, six pilots caused the plane to crash and die during take-off and landing, and lost nine aircraft, three of which were injured, After being fished out of the sea, people are also wasted! ”

Xiao Zhenlei smoked a cigarette and said after listening to Sa Zhenbing's report: "This is the first time we have made such an attempt, and it is normal to have this kind of loss, don't be afraid of losses, don't be afraid of dropping the plane, but to strengthen the protection of the pilot, the design of the cockpit of the aircraft should increase the protection design of the pilot, and also add some protective measures to prevent the aircraft from rushing into the sea on the mothership, you must be good at finding problems and making improvements, so far, what problems have you found?" ”

Sa Zhenbing thought for a while and said: "It's not a big problem for the plane to take off on the deck, all of them can take off along the line, but it's not nothing, sometimes the plane doesn't move fast enough, and it doesn't reach the speed of take-off at the end of the deck, so it falls into the sea." However, the main reason is that there are many problems when landing, such as the pilot's control is not good, the early descent does not fall on the deck and falls into the sea, and there are also the plane's forward speed when descending too fast, the deck is not long enough, the plane rushes through the end of the deck and rushes into the sea, the aircraft engine is too noisy, and the ground crew on the deck cannot communicate with the pilot sitting in the cockpit and so on! (To be continued......) R1292