Although they had expected that the Great Powers would be open to Chinese loans, they did not expect that the Great Powers, especially the British, would be so demanding.

In this loan negotiation, the amount of interest and payment method are only secondary, and the more important thing is to require the use of salt administration, tariff collateral and financial supervision, and the salt administration and financial supervision in these three things, even the former Qing Dynasty such a nesty regime has not been 'sold', and if he Zhao Dongyun dares to open this opening, he guarantees that the whole country will swarm and scold himself as a traitor, and even the northern part of Beiyang will collectively denounce him, and the Soviet Union may split internally.

Zhao Dongyun is a warlord who relies on prestige, it can be said that prestige is the foundation of his power, as for the Feng army loyal to him is just bricks and tiles, the reason why hundreds of thousands of people in the Soviet cultural relics industry and commerce support Zhao Dongyun, and the reason why more than 100,000 soldiers in the Feng army, especially many young middle and senior officers and generals, are loyal to Zhao Dongyun and fight is because they believe that Zhao Dongyun has the ability to lead this team and the country to rise, well, and at the same time, it can also bring them practical benefits.

Once his reputation is stinky and he becomes a well-known traitor at home and abroad, then Zhao Dongyun can expect that he will become the second Yuan Shikai in history.

And the shape of Zhao Dongyun today is actually much worse than Yuan Shikai in 1912 in history!

If you look closely at Zhao Dongyun in 1907 and Yuan Shikai in 1912, then you will find that the shapes they are in are very similar, for example, the territory they have is almost the same, and they are basically based on the north.

Today, Zhao Dongyun's actual territory is smaller than that of Yuan Shikai, which is limited to the three eastern provinces, Zhili, Mongolia, and some Shandong and Henan regions. In 1912, Yuan Shikai had unified China, at least on the surface, the territory belonging to Beiyang also included the three eastern provinces of Zhili and Shandong and Henan provinces, and at the same time, large-scale wars had stopped, and there was no need to worry about huge military spending every day.

However, Zhao Dongyun's control of his own territory is much stronger than Yuan Shikai, although Beiyang in 1912 has not yet been divided, but basically the generals of all parties have gone their own way, and Yuan Shikai can only be regarded as an alliance leader at best. As for Zhao Dongyun, using the power system of separating military salary, recruitment, training, and command from the beginning of the Third Town era, the following senior generals cannot completely control the troops under their command, so that Zhao Dongyun can always firmly control the troops, which can be seen from Zhao Dongyun's transfer to Chen Guangyuan's transfer from the commander of the Third Division to the commander of the Thirteenth Division.

This kind of thing is almost impossible for other warlords to do, because people will think that this third division is already Chen Guangyuan's army, and to withdraw Chen Guangyuan from the third division is to deprive Chen Guangyuan of power. But in today's Feng army, this third division is not Chen Guangyuan's troops, nor Gu Lanyu's troops, but Zhao Dongyun's troops, and Zhao Dongyun's subordinates basically dare not say anything about the transfer of senior generals.

However, Zhao Dongyun's strong control of the army also indirectly led to a relatively thorough separation of military and political affairs in the Soviet Union, and the military generals were only responsible for fighting, and as for local operations, the civilian system was responsible for the unification of the local system, which also led Zhao Dongyun to strong control of the localities.

Zhao Dongyun's control of the territory and army is much stronger than Yuan Shikai, but he also has more enemies, Duan Qirui, Wang Shizhen, Zhang Huaizhi, Wang Ruxian, the four Beiyang bigwigs are his enemies, and the Southern Federation is also his enemy, among the many warlords in the country, only one Wu Fengling can barely be regarded as his ally, and this ally is still bought with a lot of ordnance and military spending, and he is not really refuted with him at all.

Surrounded by foreign enemies, even if the Feng army under Zhao Dongyun is the most powerful, if it wants to sweep all the warlords all the way south to unify China, the difficulty can be imagined.

If those warlords do not take the initiative to surrender and need to defeat and recover them one by one, even if it is an optimistic estimate, the frontline Feng army will win successive victories, but if they want to sweep all the way south to unify China, it will not be possible to do it in two or three years.

As for the surrender, just kidding, the Southern Federation is all old and stubborn, since Zhang Zhidong came up with this Southern Federation, and was able to unite a large group of Manchu and Han feudal officials to do it together, this means that Beiyang really has no influence in the southern provinces, and Zhang Zhidong led by the Southern Federal System and the Beiyang system There is a fundamental contradiction, this contradiction is the fundamental contradiction between the southern industrial and commercial capital and the northern landlord class and industrial and commercial capital, the most obvious example is the Fuyuan Textile Factory, Huludao Textile Company and other northern cotton textile industry and the southern Dasheng Yarn Factory, Nantong native cloth contradictions, these two systems in order to compete for the domestic cotton market in recent years can be inseparable, and such as Fuyuan Cigarette Factory and Nanyang Cigarette Factory and other southern cigarette factories to the domestic cigarette market competition, Fuyuan Cigarette Factory those shareholders dream of their own Fuyuan cigarettes into the southern provinces of the cigarette market, and the southern cigarette factories are also coveted for the northern provinces of the cigarette market.

Any military and political force, especially a large-scale military and political group, will basically represent the interests of a certain group, and what the Soviet Union represents is the interests of northern capital such as Zhili and the three eastern provinces, Zhao Dongyun is behind Fuyuan Company, and behind Fuyuan Company is a series of joint ventures such as Fuyuan Machinery Factory, and these subsidiaries, especially such super-large enterprises as Fuyuan Machinery Factory, Tangshan Iron and Steel Factory, and Fuyuan Cigarette Factory, the shares in them are very scattered. Basically, most of the northern capitalists are more or less involved, and every super-large-scale military purchase by the Feng army is a feast for the northern capital, and every time the Feng army occupies a province, then it will break the original gold and industrial and commercial system of this province, and there is no longer a rampant gold and various checkpoints for other provinces in the country, so the products of many enterprises in Zhili and the three eastern provinces can occupy the local market like the tide.

In the Fengjun entry operation and the current southward combat force, the soldiers of the Fengjun army continued to advance on the front line, and the capitalists behind also followed the pace of the army with their products and tides, and then crowded every corner of the market.

Therefore, when you see the essence of the civil war between the north and the south, you will find that the war between the north and the south is not just a so-called struggle between the monarchy and the republic, but a life-and-death struggle between southern capital and northern capital. This kind of contradiction is irreconcilable, either you die or I die.

Moreover, Zhao Dongyun inherited the Beiyang inheritance, if you want Zhang Zhidong, a famous foreign minister, to surrender to a Beiyang warlord who has not grown a single hair, you can kill him directly.

Although several other warlords in Beiyang do not have this kind of capital competition with Zhao Dongyun, these Beiyang bigwigs are all ambitious enough to swallow elephants, especially Duan Qirui, people are full of energy to compete with Zhao Dongyun, in Duan Qirui's heart, the position of the Beiyang boss is still hanging in the air, and it is really uncertain who will fall into it, unless you Zhao Dongyun completely cripples the Anhui army, otherwise don't expect Duan Qirui's ambition to compete for hegemony.

Wang Shizhen, Zhang Huaizhi, Wang Ruxian and even Wu Fengling also have similar ideas, and Wang Xiang will Hou Ning have a kind! Why can you, Zhao Dongyun, be the president and rule the world, and I can only obediently bow down to the ministers? Who dares to say that you Zhao Dongyun are not the next Wang Yingkai, and who dares to say that I am not the next person to become the president?

This is the consequence of the lack of prestige to serve the public, and the consequence of entering the central government.

If the same situation is replaced by Yuan Shikai, relying on Yuan Shikai's prestige, those Beiyang military leaders will not be obedient, and even the armistice negotiations with the Southern Federation are possible.

If Zhao Dongyun wants those people to surrender obediently, then there is only one way, that is, to defeat them completely, and then they will surrender obediently like Wang Yingkai, Lu Yongxiang, and Bao Guiqing.

And if you want to defeat them, it means that Zhao Dongyun needs more troops, more artillery and ammunition, and these will eventually become military spending, Zhao Dongping, chief of the Ordnance Department of the Command, said that today's military spending gap is as high as tens of millions is not groundless, but a fact!

And the huge gap in military spending is the biggest reason why the Soviet Union wants to borrow from foreign countries, but although the money has to be borrowed, there are some things that cannot be discussed, and some terms cannot be made in any concessions, he would rather be a brutal ruler to loot the northern provinces to the end, than let himself be charged with traitors for tens of thousands of years, which has nothing to do with whether he wants to betray the country, but reality does not allow him to do so.

Therefore, Zhao Dongyun simply rejected these loan requests put forward by the British side, but the rejection of the first three conditions does not mean that the door to negotiations is closed, on the contrary, the so-called aftermath loan is still ongoing, and the British side is asking for too high a price and other countries.

For example, Germany is very willing to provide Zhao Dongyun with a loan, well, to buy German arms!

The French also had a lot of money and were willing to make contacts.

And the United States, this country is a bit strange now, economically it is undoubtedly a first-class power, enough to compete with Britain, France and Germany, but militarily it is at most third-rate, and the navy is okay, but the army is estimated to be unable to beat the Feng army, but the international political influence is not even third-rate, so the difficulty of the United States to find a market in the international market is amazing, otherwise it would not be shouting every day that the door is open and no one will bird him, and now Zhao Dongyun is looking for him to borrow, as long as they give a sufficient price, they are very happy.

But what made Zhao Dongyun very depressed was that the history was strikingly similar, and when he saw Zhao Dongyun negotiating with other countries, Britain once again played the rogue role of a super empire, and even united France, Germany, and the United States into a so-called four-nation banking group.

Then he announced to Zhao Dongyun that if Zhao Dongyun wanted to get a loan from Shikoku, he would have to negotiate with Shikoku at the same time!

After learning the news, Zhou Xuexi, the Minister of Finance in charge of the specific loan negotiations, scolded Zhao Dongyun in front of him: "They are too deceitful!" ”

Some time ago, the reason why Zhao Dongyun negotiated with various countries separately was to choose among the countries and then strive for the best conditions, but now that a four-nation banking group has been created, it will not be easy to deal with later

"What about the Japanese and the Russians? Go to them again and tell them that they can't lose the opportunity, they won't come again, there will be no chance after this time, and the conditions can be appropriately relaxed! Zhao Dongyun frowned and said: "In addition, countries such as Belgium, Italy, Austria-Hungary and even the Netherlands have also contacted one by one!" ”

After saying this, Zhao Dongyun felt that the bargaining chips he gave were still not enough to attract these countries, and if they wanted to resist the pressure of Britain to lend to themselves, if the chips thrown out were not enough, they would definitely be unwilling, so after thinking about it, he said: "Let the news go out again, even if my country plans to borrow money to build a north-south railway, which is scheduled to go from Tianjin to Nanjing." ”

This is to attract ordinary nations, but to divide Britain and the United States and Germany, etc., there is a way to do so, and there is nothing in any era that can provoke the great powers to compete for it than a super-large arms purchase.

"In addition, let the navy also go out through the wind, and say that I want to rebuild the navy!" Zhao Dongyun was speechless: "Well, let's just say that we want to purchase at least eight battleships and matching auxiliary warships!" ”

Zhou Xuexi was also frightened by Zhao Dongyun's words: "It is appropriate to rebuild the navy, but it is just to purchase eight battleships at once, I'm afraid the outside world will not believe it!" "Whether outsiders believe it or not, anyway, Zhou Xuexi himself doesn't believe it, now the finances are on the verge of bankruptcy, it would be very good to rebuild the navy if it could afford one or two gunboats, there is money to buy battleships, and it is still as many as eight at once, to put it bluntly, the whole of China has been sold, and it is impossible to get together the funds needed to form a huge fleet with eight battleships.

Zhao Dongyun said blandly: "It doesn't matter if they believe it or not, the important thing is to sue them that I am ready to do this!" ”