Walk down the long lavish corridor to the end of the HSBC Lounge.

In contrast to the Western-style style outside, the interior of this room is entirely oriental, at least in Thomas. Sir Humphrey's eyes are like this: on the Oriental mahogany Bogu shelf, there are gorgeous colored porcelain, jade snuff bottles and ivory statues of Guanyin, in front of the soft sofa, there are exquisite small bamboo screens, and on the elegant stilt table, the simple bronze incense burner is wafting elegant precious incense. There are several old and strange oriental calligraphy and paintings hanging on the wall, the flying lines are as powerful as knife carvings, and the mottled ink seems to have gone through vicissitudes.

A courteous Chinese servant welcomed them through the door, while another tall, fair-skinned, handsome maid served them coffee and soda on a large tray. Sir Humphrey skillfully placed his white top hat on the tray at the door, and then leisurely admired the furnishings and calligraphy and paintings of the house with his hands behind his back, waiting patiently for his master. Kong Xiangxi, on the other hand, was a little nervous, and even restless.

-- No way, Minister Kong Xiangxi's next negotiation object is not only the agent of HSBC, but also the representatives of the Hong Kong banking community, in a sense, they are also the behind-the-scenes masters of China in this era!

A moment later, several Chinese and white men in fashionable suits and gold-rimmed glasses walked in with smiles on their faces and extended their right hands to Kong Xiang in a friendly manner—they were the managers of the major banks in Hong Kong, or one of the Shili representatives in China of the major American and British conglomerates.

Next, these foreigners and "high-class Chinese" will represent their respective masters. Under the guidance of the British diplomat Sir Humphrey, he discussed with Minister Hung Xiangxi the provision of military loans for the Chiang Kai-shek regime in order to contain the rapidly expanding Red armed forces in southern China. Restore the "normal order" of the Eastern Shijie...... At the same time, it further deepened its control over the Chiang Kai-shek regime and profited from it......

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A century later, there are many people who fantasize about becoming warlords in the Republic of China era, as long as they find a way to pull up a team that can fight, occupy a relatively oily territory, and then hug the thighs of a certain or several powers, and get jishu and funds from them. If you ask them to help you train your own talents, and eventually build your own industrial system, you can save the nation and the country...... In the midst of a real cold history. This naïve idea is really ridiculous -- where was the warlord of the Republic of China so easy to behave? How can it be so easy for the agents of the imperialist powers in China to do so? If the road of warlords can really save the country, then why did Zhang Zuolin, Duan Qirui, and Wu Peifu fail to succeed?

Not to mention the turbulent times of the Republic of China. Even after World War II, when the international environment was relatively peaceful. Which of the rulers who have been completely propped up by the imperialist powers, from the Pahlavi Shah of Iran, Syngman Rhee of South Korea, to Karzai of Afghanistan, has accomplished the great cause of reviving the country and saving the nation? On the contrary, those opponents who worked hard to bring them down did a certain degree better than they did.

The reason why people in later generations have all the above delusions about the Republic of China era is that the ideological pattern is not broad enough. Nor is it sharp enough to see through the superficial dazzling political and military struggles. Let's see through the essence of the troubled times of the Republic of China.

Here is a relatively recent modern example -- the Libyan civil war after Gaddafi's death -- on the surface, it seems to be a brutal melee between various tribes, and it is even interpreted by some as the restoration of Gaddafi's remnants, but in fact it is a desperate struggle between the comprador government and the tribal armed forces around Libya's biggest source of revenue, oil. Many of the tribes that opposed Gaddafi in the past have regretted it when they see that their days are not as good as they have been, and they have thrown themselves into the war against the new government at this time.

In the face of a surging nationwide uprising, in order to maintain the crumbling comprador government, NATO not only invested a large number of mercenaries and special forces, but also sent warplanes to bomb the Libyan rebels, which seemed to be very righteous about their own doglegs. But the question is, if it weren't for the fact that Western countries swallowed up a huge amount of Libya's oil revenues after the fall of Gaddafi, making it difficult for the new Libyan government to distribute benefits, appease the people, and bribe all parties to divide the country, where would a good oil-rich country get to the level where it is now in full swing and the people are in misery?

In the same way, how can imperialism, who are constantly shearing sheep every year in order to squeeze the Chinese people to the death, allow you to accumulate enough wealth to build an armed force capable of resisting imperialism? In the late twentieth century, Japan, South Korea, and Southeast Asia all regarded the US imperialists as their fathers, and they were still slaughtered by Wall Street tycoons, and they couldn't take care of themselves?

What's more, since you can "carry the foreign to self-respect", then of course your subordinates can also concoct the same. Those guys you sent out to learn advanced jishu may have become brainwashed time bombs when they come back, ready to overthrow your rule at any time under the orders of foreign masters -- for example, after Chiang Kai-shek's defeat and flight to Taiwan, with such a strong alliance between the Americans and Chiang Kai-shek, the United States will do everything possible to support Sun Liren and overthrow Chiang Kai-shek's rule over Taiwan from within, so as to make it easier to cut the wool of the Taiwan people!

-- The long history of seafaring colonization for hundreds of years has already trained the European and American powers into experienced animal tamers, as long as you covet a mouthful of food they take out and obediently enter their cages, then it is difficult to get rid of the shackles in the future.

Of course, there are no examples of easy escape, such as Egypt after World War II, which abolished the unequal treaties and reclaimed the Suez Canal with relative ease - but this was because the United States and the Soviet Union put their guns on the heads of Britain and France, forcing the two down-and-out animal trainers to tear down their cages themselves or shoot them in the head...... And then Egypt finally fell into the cage of the United States......

To get back to the point, if it had been in the era of the Taiping War, when the Western powers were still very weak in the Far East, this kind of revolutionary strategy of "relying on foreigners to gain self-respect" and armed secession would still have a certain degree of feasibility -- under the conditions of Jishu at that time, the distant geographical distance and the lag in information dissemination made it extremely difficult for European and American countries to intervene in the Far East on a large scale, and there was still room for maneuver in the strategy of "relying on foreigners to oppose foreigners."

However, in the era of the Republic of China, when imperialism had penetrated deeply in China, such a "curve to save the country" was a completely dead end.

In fact, at least by the time of the Boxer Rebellion, it was clear to the Western powers that because the long distance limited their ability to project troops against China, it was impossible to turn the whole of China into a colony with strong ships and artillery and the Industrial Revolution alone. And simply paying compensation for land cession and opening treaty ports cannot suffocate China's economic potential. But silent financial infiltration is far more powerful than a naval fleet with strong ships and guns.

Therefore, after the eight-nation alliance entered Beijing, after some careful consideration, the Western powers believed that the cost of directly carving up and destroying China was too great and was likely to lead to uncontrollable consequences, so they finally decided to support a puppet regime that was subservient to their ears, continue to "manage" China for them, and maintain a stable semi-colonial zone in the Far East as the optimal strategy, so as to continuously extract wealth from the Chinese people.

After that, the situation in China was completely controlled by the Western powers, to be precise, the international financial shili with the Western powers as the carrier.

Although the destruction of the Manchus and the fall of Yuan Shikai deprived the imperialists of a tool capable of steadily exploiting the whole of China, the ensuing endless warlord secession and separatist civil wars further deteriorated the domestic political environment, resulting in the withering of people's livelihoods, economic collapse, and the continuous influx of private wealth into the foreign banks in the concessions, which were eventually transferred to the hands of international financiers. Whoever eventually unifies the whole country will only get a poor and white China, without any precious metals such as gold and silver as monetary reserves, the financial order cannot be established, and the government finances will inevitably be difficult to support, Zuihou will have to be reduced to a puppet, and his every move will be completely dependent on the snort of foreigners.

This is why in modern history, apart from our party, there is hardly a single politician in China who does not sell the country -- because there is really no reason why they do not sell the country. Their regime was born in the ashes of war, and for a time there was no abundant source of funds, so they had to borrow money from foreign banks on the collateral of the state's rights and interests in order to maintain the regime. However, borrowing will be unsustainable after all, and it will also make China an economic vassal of the Western powers, and eventually ruin the luck of the country and the nation, and it will never recover. And if it's a default...... It means war!

During this period, it is not that no one has ever thought of fighting, but limited to their vision and insight, most people can't see the overall situation of such a shijie clearly, but instead go around in the same place countless times, and finally can only end in failure.

Finally, China, a giant in the Far East that had been glorious for thousands of years, was hollowed out of its wealth and broke its backbone. On the remaining decaying and depraved body, there are also financial vultures of the Western powers, who may sometimes fight each other, but more often they peck at the dried carrion, and at the same time look around for potential threats with a cold and vigilant gaze, ready to strangle any resistance of the Chinese at the beginning.

But they never dreamed that they would suddenly become prey and be swallowed by some Chinese who opened the plug-in! (To be continued......)