Julius. Lieutenant General Linger left Shanghai for Hankow, where he met with General Wu Peifu, who would serve as Wu's chief of staff and where he would help the Chinese train and build their newly recruited army. General Wu was slender and tall, and he was considered a tall man among the Chinese, with a long face and eyes that were yellow-brown like the Mongols. He is 64 years old and is seen as one of several powerful military figures in the military because he has taken over his old commander's troops.

China is in a peculiar situation, with a nominal parliament but actual power in the hands of a few major warlords with military power. The current president is one side, and the previous president is one side, and Wu is the main head of a faction that split off from the original Beiyang system.

China's armed forces were self-recruited by the major powers and were not loyal to the War Department in Beijing, but to their own commanders. Beijing was helpless about this, and Duan Qirui wanted to solve these problems by force for some time, but a compromise was finally reached in the face of opposition from other forces. The War Department gave each major force several or a dozen divisions a number, and the War Department paid each division more than 1 million yuan a year, and the provinces controlled by these warlords had to pay 30 percent of their taxes, and the Ministry of Finance in Beijing sent people to supervise the tax situation in each province and did not allow the provinces to increase their taxes privately.

Beijing's intention was to slowly bring the finances back to the central government, but before the work was done, war came.

These forces have their own representatives in Beijing, nominally subordinate to Beijing's leadership, but in reality they have a great deal of autonomy and sometimes oppose the policies of the central government. Beijing needs to take their opinions into account when formulating policies, and if there are those who oppose them, it will be difficult to enforce them.

But after the war began, these warlords, who had only been thinking about local interests, expressed their willingness to put national interests first. Willing to hand over their armed forces to the unified command of the state. Most of the former soldiers among them still care very much about their "reputation" and do not want to be infamous for "sabotaging the War of Resistance".

Ringel spent three years in China from 1924 to 1927 as a member of the Austro-Hungarian Military Advisory Corps, but at that time he was mainly in North and Northwest China, helping General Xu Shuzheng train his "Northwest Frontier Guards." General Xu earned himself honor for leading his troops to recover the territories of Mongolia and part of the Far East. After 1931, he held the position of Minister of War. This is also the position that is most valued by the various forces, who are far more interested in it than the prime minister.

General Wu's army "defense area" was the three provinces of Hunan, Hubei, and Henan in central China, and in fact the military rulers of these three provinces. Although each province nominally had governors, if they did not obey his orders, he would force them to "resign", which was their usual method.

Wuchang is one of the most developed areas of heavy industry in China, with the country's oldest and largest Wuchang steel plant, capable of producing 500,000 tons of steel per year, almost one-third of China's domestic output. The steel mill was initially almost sold to Japan by a profiteer surnamed Sheng. Later, due to fierce opposition from the domestic people, Yuan Shikai's government used the loan provided by the Vienna Credit Bank to buy and repay all the shares and debts held by the Japanese in this factory, and the factory became a "state enterprise" with a majority of state-owned shares, and has been under the direct management of the Ministry of Communications.

In Hanyang, there is also the Hanyang Arsenal, the largest in China, which produces more than half of the Chinese army's own imitation artillery, and the industry can produce 100,000 rifles a year. Thousands of machine guns and artillery. In 1913, the Hanyang Arsenal also began to copy automobiles and internal combustion engines, and the first aero engine in China was copied for the Nanyuan Aviation School in Beijing.

Now Imperial Islaia owns about 45 percent of the company's shares. It has grown into a large enterprise with tens of thousands of people, capable of building 12,000 cars, nearly 20,000 internal combustion engines, and enough to build nearly 600 tanks per year.

There are about five factories in China capable of producing automobiles, but only three tank and tractor factories, and in addition to the Hanyang Machinery Factory, the Zhangjiakou Locomotive Factory is also capable of manufacturing internal combustion engines and tanks and tractors. The other is the Baotou Tractor Factory, which was newly built in 1934. The Taiyuan Arsenal in Shanxi Province was able to make automobiles, but not internal combustion engines, and now General Yan is carrying out a large-scale reconstruction and expansion of this arsenal with German and Austrian aid equipment.

There are six aircraft factories in China, but none of them are very large, mainly engaged in the repair and assembly of aircraft. Beijing's Nanyuan Aircraft Factory is the largest aircraft factory in China. In addition, the naval arsenal in Fuzhou can also make airplanes and internal combustion engines, but the factory in Fujian is being relocated to Guangxi, and production is very abnormal. If foreign aid is cut off, according to Linger's estimates, China will only be able to produce less than 600 aircraft a year, far from meeting its needs.

Beginning in 1935, with the support of imperial loans, the Beijing government embarked on a package of rearmament, relocating and building a series of factories in the western cities of Chongqing, Xi'an, Baotou, Lanzhou, and Zhuzhou. However, since the entire construction began in 1936, it is expected that the first factory will not be put into operation until next spring.

China's CSKA division is not worse than the Japanese army, basically uniformly equipped with the Steyr-Carcano 6.5 mm caliber standard rifle, after the Steyr-Manlisa company was merged by the Islaia Group, the Carcano rifle designed for the Italians also adopts the design of the Israya rifle's ten-round magazine feed, and Lee Enfield, Islea is known as the world's three fastest bolt-action rifles, and excellent riflemen can even use it to achieve the rate of fire of semi-automatic rifles.

However, the equipment of China's local troops is much worse, most of them use Hanyang-style rifles that have been obsolete and imitate German-made committee rifles, but there are also some Japanese-style rifles and Russian-style rifles, which are equipped with a variety of equipment, and the training of soldiers is also very poor, especially the lack of artillery.

After the war was renewed, General Wu set up three recruit training bases in Yueyang, Hunan, Wuchang, Hubei, and Luoyang, Henan, and recruited about 300,000 recruits for training. At present, China does not have a complete reserve system, and conscription relies on temporary recruitment, and many people are forced to join the army.

Ringer found that there was a shortage of experienced career officers in these units, and that many of the young officers were recruited from the student army and had no experience of military school, which was a terrible thing, but there was nothing he could do. Rather than the dull Beiyang generals, Linger preferred to deal with mid-level officers from the Baoding Military Academy or who studied in Europe, who had good military qualifications and had a complete military education. In fact, they know how to fight better than the generals, but because of seniority, they have not yet risen to high positions.

Lingle believed that the old Beiyang generals would soon be eliminated by the brutal war, and that these middle-aged officers would soon become the backbone of the army. He prefers the Chinese soldiers, who are actually more hard-working, and although many are forced to do military service, they never complain, and they are optimistic and like to joke. Many people are laughing and telling about their experience of being "caught".

The Chinese soldiers were able to endure harsh food, which was unmatched by European soldiers, and were obedient and carried out the orders of their commanders without hesitation, even in the most dangerous tasks. The problem is that they rarely meet good commanders, and the senior officers of Beiyang are only concerned with their own enjoyment and have become out of touch with the troops, and some generals have not even inspected his troops for more than half a year. (To be continued......) R1292