When he walked in, he saw that Zhao Dongyun was already inside, and immediately took off his politeness: "I've seen His Excellency the President!" ”

Zhao Dongyun and Zhu Erdian are not strangers, the two have actually met many times, especially in the past three or four months, almost every four or five days, and every time they meet, Zhao Dongyun will have a deep talk with him, after all, this Zhu Erdian is the British Minister to China, although he is just a diplomat, but behind him stands a British Empire, his influence on China is extremely huge.

In this era, the private attitude of the ministers of various countries to China basically represents the official attitude of various countries towards China! In the original time and space, the U.S. minister to China had a great favor of China, wanted to unite with China to deal with Japan, vigorously promoted the Sino-US alliance, rebuilt the Chinese navy and other affairs, and directly led to the signing of the Treaty of Bethlehem. And this Zhu Erdian, who has a close relationship with Yuan Shikai, believes that Yuan Shikai is the only person in contemporary China who can guarantee China's independence and a stable situation, so Britain in the original time and space did not hesitate to support Yuan Shikai.

It may sound like a child's play, but it is true, after all, although contemporary China has more than 10 million square kilometers of land and a population of 40,000, in the eyes of the great powers, the importance of contemporary China is extremely limited, and it is unceremoniously no more important than Thailand, which also acts as a buffer zone between France and Britain on the Indochina Peninsula.

Generally speaking, when the Chinese people of later generations heard that something big had happened in a certain country in Africa, their first reaction was backwardness and chaos, and the second reaction was: It's my business!

Perhaps future generations will not want to admit this, but the reality is so cruel!

The lack of attention paid by the great powers to China has led to a relative lack of people who have studied China in depth, so the decision-makers of various countries have almost blindly followed the advice of diplomats in China when deciding on their China policies.

In this case, the private attitude of those ministers to China can be regarded as the official attitude of various countries towards China.

Zhao Dongyun is not a stupid boy, nor is he a guy with inflated self-esteem, so every time he sees Zhu Erdian, he always tries his best to show his attention to Zhu Erdian, and at the same time, he tries to show his ability as much as possible, trying to make Zhu Erdian deepen his influence on himself, and it is best to make him think that Zhao Dongyun is the only choice to maintain the stability of the situation in China.

There are two aspects to the core interests of contemporary Britain in China, on the one hand, it is naturally the well-known commercial interests! And the second is to curb Russian expansion.

And to achieve the above two interests, then they need China to keep the situation stable! Thanks to the stable situation, British businessmen were able to make money doing business in China's extensive southern provinces, especially the Yangtze River and Pearl River basins. Only by stabilizing the situation in China can we avoid allowing Russia to take advantage of the fire to rob!

Although Britain did not want to see China strong, but they were even more reluctant to see China completely divided, why did they choose to vigorously support Yuan Shikai in history, and even provided a large loan to Yuan Shikai for military expenses, and then completely unified China through the second revolution in 1913, in order to not want to see China fall into complete chaos.

A weak and steady China is what they need!

And from this aspect, it is Zhao Dongyun's established policy to win the support of the British for himself!

Even though the four-nation banking group made many unreasonable demands on Zhao Dongyun, Zhao Dongyun still did not give up this hope, because on the other hand, Britain was naturally willing to get a four-nation banking group to talk to him, which showed that he had become the main supporter of the British in China.

The current disagreement is this: the British are willing to support Zhao Dongyun to unify China, but they need Zhao Dongyun to pay a price he cannot pay!

If the British didn't want to see Zhao Dongyun unify China, they would have stopped talking to you a long time ago, and went directly to the Southern Federation or Duan Qirui and threw tens of millions of pounds, no matter how awesome Zhao Dongyun was, he would have to be killed by the Northern Expedition.

Not only the attitude of the British side was like this, but in fact, Germany, France, and the United States were also inclined to unify China with the Soviet-led Beiyang.

The rest of the day is already a veritable far-reaching far-flung stirrer in contemporary times, and it naturally does not want to see China reunified, so it has not been in contact with the Soviet Union for a long time, and as soon as the Feng army occupies Shandong, it immediately turned around and supported Duan Qirui, and as soon as it struck, it was 5 million yen in arms.

Russia also wants to take advantage of the fire to strike, and naturally does not want to see China completely reunified so soon. Before the Feng army entered the customs, he returned to Zhao Dongyun and fought hotly, instigating Zhao Dongyun to enter the customs and start a war with Wang Yingkai, but when Zhao Dongyun led the army into the customs and successively won Zhili, Shandong and Henan, and the Soviet situation was very good, the Russians also immediately retracted a series of previous commitments, and then turned around and hooked up with Zhao Erxun, and it is rumored that Zhao Erxun was provided with a lot of Russian-style ammunition, and then made trouble in Mongolia, trying to encourage the Mongolian princes to become independent. Zhao Dongyun was forced to send the First Cavalry Brigade and three patrol cavalry battalions to the Outer Mongolia region last month, and quietly suppressed several Mongolian princes, bandits and other armed forces.

A careful analysis of the attitude of the contemporary powers towards China shows that most of the Britain, Germany, France, the United States, Austria-Hungary and other small and medium-sized countries still hope that China will maintain a stable situation, of course, they will never sit idly by and watch a strong China appear, what they need is a weak and stable China, preferably China in the pre-Qing era, forcing China to sign a treaty today to cede a concession, tomorrow to an eight-nation or ten-nation alliance armed tour, and the day after tomorrow to ask for hundreds of millions of reparations. This is the ideal China in the minds of the great powers.

As for the fragmented China that fights every day is not their ideal target for blackmail, the United States in later generations will only see people blackmail Saudi Arabia, copy the bottom of Japan's book, and then play the financial crisis in Southeast Asian countries, but who of you has ever seen the Americans blackmail Somalia?

Not to mention blackmail, speaking of this Somalia has to make the Americans' hearts entangled, even if the Black Hawk falls, it is still playing the retro style of pirates in the 21st century, which has to make people hurt a lot!

And because of the relationship between Japan and Russia because of the relationship of geopolitical rectification, they both hope that China will fall into chaos or even completely break up, because they are not satisfied with the extortion of compensation or even a few concessions or road construction rights, they want to annex a large area of China's territory, and the wolf ambitions of Japan and the Russians for the three eastern provinces are well known, so if they want them to support a certain side of China to unify China, it is basically not to count on it.

Therefore, for this meeting with Zhu Erdian, Zhao Dongyun still attaches more importance to it!

After the two sides said the scene, because there were only two people on today's occasion, it could be regarded as a private meeting, so Zhao Dongyun also put down the so-called diplomatic principle, to stubbornly use Chinese, and then talk under the translation of the translation official, but if Zhao Dongyun does not use Chinese, it should logically also use French, the lingua franca of the diplomatic community, but Zhao Dongyun's French is very general, in order to see military theory in the past few years, although he taught himself, but let him read and write OK, but the pronunciation is very blunt, He was nowhere near as fluent in German and English, so he did not speak French, either privately or diplomatically.

And although Zhu Erdian is good in Chinese, even if he is a Chinese expert who has lived in China for decades, most of this Chinese is awkward, in order to make it more convenient for the two sides to talk, he said in English as before: "If my guess is correct, your minister came today, or is it for the aftermath of the loan?" ”

Zhu Erdian nodded and replied, "That's true! ”

"I heard that Belgium has signed a loan agreement with your country?" Although Zhu Erdian had learned the news from many sources, he was still a little unsure if he didn't hear Zhao Dongyun's answer in person.

As he expected, Zhao Dongyun reached it very decisively: "That's true! ”

reached a loan agreement with Belgium, this matter can't be concealed at all, and the complete exposure is nothing more than a few days later and a few days earlier, and the difference is not big, so Zhao Dongyun simply admitted it.

Zhu Erdian didn't feel any surprise, and this question was just for the final confirmation.

So he immediately changed his words and said: "I think the Belgian bankers can provide loans to your country, so our bankers in the British Empire naturally have enough strength to finance and lend to your country!" ”

Zhao Dongyun said: "I have always welcomed foreign capital to enter the domestic market, whether it is for investment or lending to our government, I have always maintained a welcoming attitude!" It's just that according to the loan program submitted by your country a few days ago, the above conditions are difficult for our country to accept! ”

Zhu Erdian naturally knew what the conditions were that Zhao Dongyun could not accept, because those conditions were drawn up by him personally!

Putting aside the so-called four-nation banking group, in the loan negotiations between Britain and China in private contact, the British side said that it could provide at least 15 million pounds of aftercare loans, please note that this aftercare loan is not limited to the purpose, but only requires that if you use the money to import materials, you must import from the foreign houses designated by the United Kingdom, and give priority to the purchase of products produced in the United Kingdom, which is to prevent the Chinese from taking the money of the British to buy German cannons.

The interest is not too high, and the British proposed that it could be paid at a nine-percent discount, with an interest of five percent, which could be repaid in thirty years. This delivery discount and interest are quite favorable.

However, there was a series of clauses attached to it, China must declare that it would not interfere in the internal affairs of West Tibet and not station troops in Tibet, that the Jinpu Railway and the Longhai Railway should be handed over to Britain for construction, that the mortgage required for the loan should be secured by the salt administration of the whole of China, the remaining tariffs, and the local fiscal revenues of the two provinces of Fengtian, Shandong, and Henan, that Britain should send official officials to the three provinces to supervise the collection and expenditure of taxes, that Britain should jointly establish a new salt administration agency with China, and that the British side should appoint a general office. The Chinese side and the British side will each send one member.

If Zhao Dongyun dares to agree to any of them, he will become a traitor referred to by Wanfu the next day, and then be ousted by others, and the end will definitely not be much better than Yuan Shikai, who is the emperor.

To put it mildly, the British were the harshest of the terms of the loans put forward by the Great Powers, and there was no doubt that the British were lions of mouth compared to the Americans, who merely demanded salt and tariff collateral.

Therefore, in the past half a month, the two sides expected to say that they were talking in private, but in fact there were no actual negotiations at all, and they were the slowest to make progress.

As Zhu Erdian, who drafted these negotiation requirements, naturally knew that most of the conditions he proposed were hopeless to be reached, and he originally thought that if he continued to delay, if he dragged it until next year, it was estimated that Zhao Dongyun's financial situation would be even more tense, and he was afraid that Zhao Dongyun would not comply?

However, he didn't expect that Zhao Dongyun's ability to raise money in the past six months really exceeded his imagination, this issued patriotic bonds, and went to the financial market in Paris and London for private placement, although this kind of private placement is not guaranteed by the British government and those big banks, the issuance volume cannot be too large, but there are many capitalists with adventurous spirit, so Zhao Dongyun still raised five million yuan in the Paris and London markets.

Now, with the addition of a loan of 200 pounds from the Belgian side, all of which add up, the Soviets have collected more than 50 million Chinese yuan in the past year through the issuance of bonds or direct loans, and in addition to the financial revenues of the Soviets in the areas under their control, in fact, although the Soviets had a large financial gap and a staggering deficit in the 1907 period, they still maintained normal operation and the continuation of the war.

In particular, the two million pounds provided by Belgium can at least allow the Soviet Union to survive for three or four months, and with these three or four months, who can guarantee that the Feng army will not take Jiangnan and Zhejiang and other regions in one go?

And after the Soviet Union took control of Jiangnan and Zhejiang, he still borrowed a fart of money, and if people went around Jiangnan, even if they couldn't get hundreds of millions of yuan, tens of millions of dollars would be appropriate.

When the time comes, gritting your teeth will be able to hold on to the reunification of China, so how can those foreign bankers earn interest in China! Although countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States have put forward a variety of harsh loan conditions, in essence, they still want to lend money to Zhao Dongyun to earn interest, otherwise they will not talk about it forever.

So as soon as Zhu Erdian learned that China had got another sum of money, he couldn't sit still, so he had today's trip to Xiyuan Yingtai!