In the conference room on the second floor of the Bund Hotel, Shanghai.

The curtains on the large floor-to-ceiling glass windows were lifted nearly halfway, and the late autumn sunlight slipped in through the unobstructed glass windows, illuminating the marble floors in the conference room.

On the rectangular table in the middle of the conference room sat two very different groups of people, on the right was a group of foreigners wearing tuxedos and also wearing British and French military uniforms, while on the left were mostly wearing Chinese uniforms, and there were also a few Chinese wearing double-breasted military uniforms of the Chinese Army.

At this time, the two groups of people were engaged in a conversation that was not high-pitched, but the tone was extremely firm!

"Your request for the establishment of a diplomatic mission in Beijing is acceptable in principle, but only if you officially recognize our government as the sole government of China and immediately cease all trade with the puppet Qing government in the north, especially the arms trade."

Song Xiangtang said as he flipped through the documents in his hand.

However, Bao Ling on the other side shook his head lightly: "For the civil war in your country, my country has no intention of interfering in any form, and will continue to strictly abide by the principle of neutrality, and freedom of trade has always been pursued by my country, and my government will not interfere in the trade behavior of merchants!" ”

"If your country is firmly committed to free trade, why should you impose high tariffs on your exports?" Song Xiangtang immediately asked rhetorically.

Bao Ling's face remained unchanged: "China's import and export tariff policy is to serve the needs of China's industrial and commercial development, if your country adopts unfair tariff rates on China's export goods, then in order to ensure the interests of your own businessmen, your country will naturally take necessary measures against your country's export goods!" ”

"The empire treats imported goods at tariff rates the same. It will never change from country to country, and the tax rate on imported goods in the country is reasonable. Tariffs on cotton, machinery, coal, and other commodities have not increased compared with the past, but have been slightly reduced. Isn't this a show of goodwill on the part of the Empire towards international trade? Song Xiangtang continued to speak in a calm tone.

And Bao Ling is naturally not far behind: "If it is treated equally, then your country should not impose high taxes on cotton, woolen and other products!" ”

"This is a necessary choice for the empire in order to protect hundreds of millions of people in the country, and the empire will never tolerate the import of a large amount of cotton cloth that will lead to a large-scale deterioration of the rural economy!" When Song Xiangtang said this, his tone was more firm than before.

The significance of the Chinese Empire's raising of import tariffs on wool products and cotton products is definitely not as simple as charging hundreds of thousands of additional tariffs, but has higher economic and strategic significance.

The important significance of raising the tax rates on cotton and wool products is to protect the domestic rural economy and delay as much as possible the bankruptcy of the traditional economic model of male farmers and female weavers in rural areas. And even if it is to go bankrupt, then it is not possible to let imported foreign cloth be forced to go bankrupt, but to be forced to go bankrupt by domestic woven fabrics.

Under the great wave of industrialization, the traditional economic model of male ploughing and female weaving will go bankrupt sooner or later, and what the empire has to do is to avoid external influences as much as possible, and it is best to let the domestic weaving industry develop to gradually replace the traditional 'female weaving' in male farming and female weaving.

In order to achieve the above-mentioned goals, the Cabinet meeting began to promote the development of the cotton industry, that is, the development of the entire industrial chain of spinning, weaving, printing and dyeing, and garments, in the second half of this year.

In order to protect the development of the domestic woven fabric industry. To avoid cheap dumping of foreign fabrics, it is inevitable to impose high import tariffs on foreign fabrics.

Therefore, on the matter of tariffs on cotton cloth, as well as on the opium trade, Song Xiangtang's attitude was very resolute. This is not a matter for discussion.

Although Song Xiangtang's tone was calm, anyone present could hear the resoluteness in his tone, although Song Xiangtang did not say it explicitly. But the meaning is already very clear, even if it is to continue this war. But don't expect the empire to bow down when it comes to tariffs.

Although Bao Ling's expression was still calm at this time, he knew that if he continued to dwell on this tariff topic. It is estimated that this day of negotiations will have to be spent in a whim, and this situation has played out countless times in the past month.

So he changed the topic at the right time: "In addition to tariffs, businessmen in China, France and the United States have always hoped that your country can provide more trade ports, I wonder if your country has made a corresponding decision in this regard?" ”

When Song Xiangtang heard Bao Ling change the topic, he immediately didn't ask, but changed the topic according to Bao Ling's words!

"As for the treaty port, the country has always welcomed more businessmen to come to trade and trade, and before that, the country also agreed to open Hangzhou, Qiongzhou, Taiwan, and Chaoshan as treaty ports in addition to the existing five treaty ports. And His Majesty the Emperor, in order to show his sincerity to this negotiation, has issued a hadith that he can add a number of ports in addition to the above-mentioned ports! ”

Hearing this, Bao Ling flashed a hint of joy, and immediately asked, "Oh, there is still such a port?" ”

Song Xiangtang said: "If your country can make concessions in other areas and reach a series of agreements with your country, in principle, you can open Nantong, Haizhou, Qingdao, Tianjin, Yingkou, Lushun and other coastal cities north of the Yangtze River as treaty ports." ”

Bao Ling immediately said: "What about inland cities? For example, what about cities along the Yangtze River such as Zhenjiang, Nanjing and Anqing? ”

Song Xiangtang shook his head lightly at this time: "Sino-foreign trade is still in the beginning stage, and the people of our country have many doubts about outsiders, if outsiders enter and leave inland cities, there may be accidents, so at this stage we will not open any inland cities to trade, of course, we will also rule out the possibility of continuing to open inland cities for trade in the future!" ”

Hearing Song Xiangtang say this, Bao Ling fell into deep thought, if China can really open up the above-mentioned many coastal port cities as Song Xiangtang said, especially the many ports in the north, this is undoubtedly a great thing for Britain and France and other countries, you have to know that the reason why the British and French coalition forces launched this war, the most direct purpose is to open up more trade ports.

But Bao Ling didn't know that the Chinese Empire led by Lin Zhe did not exclude the opening of the port to trade, and even welcomed it!

However, what the Chinese Empire required was that the opening of ports and trade must be under its own control, and the specific control included tariff autonomy, and foreigners who came to China must abide by the laws of the Chinese Empire.

In this respect, the treaty port was also one of the easiest sub-projects in the negotiation process between the Chinese Empire and Britain and France to reach a relevant agreement.

Unfortunately, the Chinese Empire, while promising to open more treaty ports, came with a series of ancillary conditions, namely tariff autonomy and other messy conditions.

It is impossible to negotiate such a large negotiation project by project alone, it is often a package, and some easy and difficult conditions are mixed together, and you either accept them together or reject them all, it is impossible to say that only one part of them is accepted, but the other part is rejected.

Therefore, if the situation is not particularly crisis, the so-called international negotiations are generally a marathon, which can take a long time and at the same time exhaust people.

And when Song Xiangtang and Bao Ling were negotiating in Shanghai, after nearly two months of continuous marching, Xu Yanqing also led part of the Second Army to successfully enter the Pearl River Delta area of Guangdong.

The Second Army that entered Guangdong had its main force, the Second Division, and two infantry regiments of the 11th Infantry Division, while the other infantry regiment of the 11th Infantry Division remained in Fuzhou.

The subsequent infantry regiment will be combined with the three new infantry battalions existing in Fujian to form the first mixed brigade of the Chinese Army, that is, the first mixed brigade of the Royal Army, which will be responsible for the defense of Fujian Province in the future.

After entering Guangdong, the Second Army first sent the Second Division to launch an attempt from Bao'an County towards Hong Kong in late October, but was stopped by the artillery bombardment of the British and French forces at Mingxi (Shenzhen River), and an infantry battalion that tried to cross the river from Mingxi suffered heavy losses, suffering at least 200 casualties.

Later, Xu Yanqing learned that the British and French forces had built a large number of fortifications on the south bank of Mingxi.

Considering that the enemy army had a large number of naval artillery fire support, and at the same time had perfect fortifications as support, and his own strength was only about 15,000 people, Xu Yanqing made a small-scale tentative attack across the river and stopped the attack, and then quickly turned around and headed north to Guangzhou.

This Hong Kong is hard to gnaw, but it doesn't mean that Guangzhou is too!

After more than 15,000 men of the Second Army marched north, it swept through several outlying garrisons of the British and French forces along the way, and then successfully joined up with the Third Army in the direction of Zengcheng, and then the two armies marched west to Guangzhou.

On October 29, the Second and Third Armies, totaling nearly 30,000 people, launched the first large-scale counteroffensive against Guangzhou!

In addition to the more than 3,000 troops originally stationed in Guangzhou, the British and French forces urgently transferred more than 2,000 troops from Hong Kong to reinforce Guangzhou by ship.

After four days of fierce fighting between the two sides, the second division of the Second Army took the lead in attacking the inner city of Guangzhou from the North City Gate, and had a brutal battle with the British and French forces in the inner city.

At this time, the Anglo-French army had nearly 1,000 casualties, and of course, the Second and Third Armies, which were the attacking sides, also suffered heavy losses, with nearly 2,000 casualties.

After the loss of the inner city, the remnants of more than 3,000 British and French troops retreated to the outer city of Guangzhou.

After capturing the inner city, the Chinese army did not stop and continued to attack the outer city in the south. (To be continued......)