Regardless of the era, large-scale arms purchases have a strong political significance, especially for countries with relevant interests.

When Zhao Dongyun had not yet entered the customs, in order to expand the army, he wantonly purchased arms from Japan and Germany, especially artillery, and the Germans did not say it, because the Germans honestly had no influence in the Far East, and Germany's interests in the Far East, especially in China, were actually the interests of arms dealers, which was not the same as Britain and Japan, which mainly exported textiles and light industrial commodities to China.

Speaking of which, it is important to mention that for all countries, the so-called interests of the Far East are not the same.

For the contemporary super empire Britain, the primary strategy in the Far East is to curb Russia's expansion, followed by China's textile and other light industry markets, Japan's heavy industry, especially the warships and other arms market, once you know the British Far East strategy, then it is very easy to understand Britain's many diplomatic behaviors in the Far East, including supporting Japan against Russia, selling battleships to Japan, and historically the British supported Yuan Shikai to unify China to ensure that China's business environment was not damaged.

For Japan, the core interest of contemporary Japan is its own development!

The core economic pillar of contemporary Japan has three major aspects, one is the export of raw silk, the contemporary Japan is the world's largest exporter of raw silk, and in history in 1910, the total export of raw silk will account for 75% of the world's output, the second is the export of tea, Japan is the fifth largest tea exporter in the contemporary world, and the third is the cotton industry.

The first two items have little to do with China, at most they are competitive, but contemporary China's raw silk is far inferior to Japan's raw silk in terms of output and quality, otherwise it would not be even better than Japan's raw silk in international competition, and tea is not very important. The cotton industry has a direct conflict of interest with contemporary China.

Japan's raw silk and tea are sold to European and American powers, but their cotton cloth and other light industrial products are sold to China, and they certainly have to compete with Britain and other Western countries for the market in China, but the biggest competitor is actually China's national industry.

This situation is particularly obvious after the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, before the Japanese goods, especially cotton cloth, are sold to the three eastern provinces, Zhili and other northern provinces, but the Russo-Japanese War day's supply of this goods was cut off, by a large number of China's domestic cloth and British cloth to seize the market, especially in the three eastern provinces of the best-selling everywhere is not the original Oriental cloth, but Fuyuan Yarn Factory, Huludao Textile Company for the ghostwriting of the northern national capital textile enterprises of the domestic machine cloth, at present, The market share of domestic cloth in the northern region has reached as much as 60%.

In addition to the competition between light industrial products such as cotton cloth and China, Japan also needs to import a large number of raw materials from China, including timber, soybean cakes, coal, etc., and a considerable part of the soybean cakes in the soybean industry in Northeast China are actually sold to Japan.

Japan's foreign trade-based economic system directly affected their military, political and foreign policies, which led to the subsequent struggle with the Manchu Qing Dynasty for Korea's Xian, the establishment of the Manchurian Railway after the Russo-Japanese War, and the operation of the Liaodong Peninsula was the subsequent invasion of China.

In order to expand the market for Japanese goods in China, and at the same time to curb China's re-rise, they just hoped that China would fall into chaos, and the country would be chaotic and warlords would fight every day, and this national industry would naturally not want to develop to compete with Japan's goods, and if China continued to be chaotic or even finally split, then Japan would have one less powerful neighbor.

Japan's China policy is fundamentally different from Britain's support for Yuan Shikai's initial reunification of China.

With the exception of Britain, a super-empire and its close neighbor, Russia's attitude towards China was one of insatiable territorial greed, and the Slavs were more eager to expand their territory than any other people, and what they did was to be able to form a so-called Yellow Russia, with little economic interest. However, after Russia was deflated in the Russo-Japanese War, it has already retracted its bear claws, just thinking about getting some economic benefits from the aftermath loans, and then letting Zhao Dongyun maintain the export of materials to the Far East, especially high-strength wine, basically they will not say anything else.

This is even more true of Germany, although they occupy Qingdao, but to put it mildly, it can only be regarded as a face project of Wilhelm II, and a mere Qingdao is not Germany's core interest in China, what is Germany's core interest in China: arms exports!

Since the late Qing Dynasty, China has always had the habit of importing arms to Germany, this habit can be said to be deep-rooted, arms dealers in other countries have tried their best to change it, the same is true of contemporary times, whether it is Zhao Dongyun or Duan Qirui or the Southern Federation, they are the big customers of German arms dealers, in the past year, Germany's arms trade with China amounted to nearly 20 million yuan, of which Zhao Dongyun's family ordered up to more than 5 million yuan of artillery, and the Southern Federation is even more generous. The families together ordered a huge amount of arms of more than 10 million yuan, but although the group of losers of the Southern Federation bought a large number of artillery, they were still defeated by Duan Qirui, and a large number of arms purchased from Germany fell into the hands of the Anhui army, otherwise how do you think Duan Qirui's hundreds of thousands of troops were armed, basically the Southern Federation sent people and equipment to send them.

In this era, the Southern Federation is a transport captain!

Based on the interests of German arms dealers, that is, let the war in China continue, the more tragic the fight, the better, of course, they will not say that they deliberately want to influence anything, anyway, no matter who wins, they still have to find the Germans to buy arms in the end, that is to say, no matter how the situation in China changes, anyway, the arms market is still German, and even the British can only watch the Germans earn a large number of guns and silver.

France, the United States, Italy and the like can basically ignore that they do not have any core interests in China, if there is a commercial market in China, so the United States clamored for an open door, while the French engaged in fierce commercial competition with the British in the Liangguang region.

Looking at the Far East strategies and China policies of other countries, we will find that there is actually only one contemporary company that can want to block China's de facto reunification and has the ability to do so, and that is Japan!

Not to mention that Japan would not have sent an intervention force to do so, at least for the time being, Japan's seizure of the ordnance purchased by the Soviet Union is enough to prove that Japan has already obstructed Zhao Dongyun's gradual southward reunification of China.

"Not only have they detained this batch of our ordnance, but our representative in Japan has determined that this batch of ordnance has left Hong Kong and sailed for Shanghai, and there is no doubt that I will hand over the ordnance we ordered to Duan Qirui!" Zhao Dongping of the Ordnance Department was staying in Zhao Dongyun's office at this moment.

Zhao Dongyun's face was also dark, this batch of ordnance was still ordered from Japan before the army entered the customs, and there were more than 30 75-mm guns, and there were more than 10 of Japan's latest 38-year-old 75-mm field guns.

During the Russo-Japanese War, Japan ordered more than 500 artillery pieces from Germany, but at the beginning of Germany's inventory was not much, and the production was not much, so the actual arrival was not much.

With the large-scale mass production of the Japanese arsenal in the past two years, after the Japanese 38-year-old field guns were equipped with troops in batches, the replaced 31-year-old field guns and mountain guns were sold to many Chinese warlords on a large scale. Zhao Dongyun bought a lot, and I heard that the 38-year-old field artillery of the Japanese army had matured, so he also proposed to buy a batch, and the Japanese himself agreed before, but at that time, he did not expect that Zhao Dongyun would enter the customs so quickly, and he won frequently in many battles that entered the customs.

At this time, out of the consideration of curbing Zhao Dongyun's continued expansion and supporting Duan Qirui, it is reasonable for Ri' to detain this batch of arms.

"Didn't the Ministry of Foreign Affairs know anything about it before?" Zhao Dongyun was also seriously dissatisfied with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs's lack of expression in this matter, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs didn't know anything about such a big thing before, and he didn't know it in a hurry until he sent this batch of ordnance directly to Shanghai, and it was already too late at this time, and it was estimated that Duan Qirui had already happily accepted this batch of ordnance in Shanghai.

Lu Weixiang also had a dull face: "I haven't mentioned it the day before, and this batch of ordnance has always been logical until they arrived at the port, until they drove our ordnance representative to know!" ”

Since the goods are gone, Zhao Dongyun also knows that it is impossible for him to turn around and give himself again, since the fact has been caused, it is not feasible to be angry in vain, and he immediately turned his head to Zhao Dongping and said: "I remember that we still owe them a lot of ordnance money!" ”

Zhao Dongping immediately nodded and said: "On the day of the arrival of the goods last month, this ordnance only paid the second batch, and the final payment of 200,000 yuan has not been paid!" Speaking of this, he thought for a while and said: "The deposit we gave in front of this batch of seized ordnance is 300,000!" ”

Zhao Dongyun said: "Well, deduct the balance first, and you will talk to the specific Ministry of Foreign Affairs with Japan!" ”

Although the goods are gone, Zhao Dongyun doesn't plan to let his deposit be wasted, hum, I dare to be the first year of junior high school, he will dare to be the second year of junior high school!

Then he continued: "I am afraid that it will be difficult to buy ordnance in the future, and our current artillery, especially long-barreled large-caliber artillery, is quite in short supply, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has more contact with Germany, and France and Russia can also go to talk about it, I don't believe that they will not make money if they have money!" ”

Since he doesn't sell arms to Zhao Dongyun, then Zhao Dongyun will find other countries to buy them, as long as he has real money in hand, he can't buy anything!

It's just that the seizure of the ordnance itself is nothing, and Zhao Dongyun is even more worried about the meaning behind it!

The next day, Zhao Dongyun temporarily convened a military meeting, but this meeting only said a few words about the ongoing battle of Xuzhou, and then Zhao Dongyun talked about the defense of the three eastern provinces, especially the defense of the Yalu River.