In the form of a loan, a loan of 50 million blue coins was provided to the Prime Minister's Office, and the matter for the construction of Jiangnan Industrial Group has just ended, and Master Li is going to build the railway from Qinghai to Lhasa in the form of personal funding, did he hear it wrong, or did the emperor and the four ladies get angry?

Not to mention Li Enfu, even Chen Ping, who is familiar with Li Mo, was taken aback, Qinghai to Lhasa is all the way on the plateau, the mountains are high and the gorges are deep, and the frozen soil is difficult, and it is not a joke to build a railway on it, and when everyone thinks that Li Mo is a whim, Li Xiufeng quietly registered the Qinghai-Tibet Railway Company in Shanghai, and converted the 10 million British pounds earned from rubber speculation in Europe into gold and shipped it back to China after being exchanged for 70 million blue coins in the Central Bank, and then added 30 million yuan of capital injection. 100 million yuan was raised and preparations for the construction of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway were announced. (Full text reading, all in. (.i. Want. Wen. Learning Network)

When the news came out, Long Guozhang almost died head-on, Master Li said in Shanghai a few months ago that he had no money and was unwilling to continue to build submarines, but he didn't expect that half a year had not yet arrived, and he actually took out 100 million to repair the railway, and he also heard that this 100 million is only a preliminary budget, and it is very likely that the final investment will exceed 200 million!

Two hundred million! That's a whole fifteen Chinese ships, if you have so many Chinese ships at the same time, not to mention the British Far East Fleet, you will directly occupy the Suez Canal!

After Germany started to build four Nassau-class, after the British waited for a few wounded soldiers to board the ship, the ambassador to China, Sadaoyi, finally got the hydraulic decompression technology, and even did not even need the drawings of the Chinese ship, and immediately rushed back to Britain with technical information.

But no one expected that when he had just arrived in London with thick drawings and technical data, the British Navy technicians finally kicked out the door and solved the technical difficulties of the decommissioning, which is equivalent to saying that the British Huā only bought one million British pong for three months.

More than 10,000 pounds a day!

This news completely angered the Prime Minister Salisbury, who finally could not bear the sluggishness of Prince Badenberg in the technical grass, and then the first minister of the navy finally had to resign under pressure from Parliament and the prime minister, and handed over the throne to John Fisher, who was young and valued technology, and was dismissed from his post by the commander of the Far East Fleet, Philitman, who had made two major mistakes.

John Fisher deserves to be an outstanding fighter of the British Imperial Navy, "In the case that the battleships were already behind Germany, he did not rush to compete with Germany in terms of shipbuilding speed, because he knew that if Britain concentrated all its forces, it would surpass Germany, and he did not have the test results of this type of warship, unlike Germany, which not only bought the entire warship for testing for several months, but also bought all the data tested by China at that time, so he chose to build one first and experiment first."

On his first day in office, he announced the start of construction of a battleship and named it Dreadnought, implying that Britain was fearless against any challenge.

The dreadnought finally appeared, four years earlier than history, which made many technologies imperfect, especially in terms of power, which was 108,000 miles away from the picture in Fisher's mind. ※※※※※ I ※ I ※ ※

Britain's shipbuilding capability is indeed amazing, and in just three months, the dreadnought has shown its prototype, and the speed is even faster than that of the Nassau class, which started construction half a year earlier!

The defeat in the Far East and the German pioneering battleships completely infuriated the mighty empire on which the sun never sets, and the workers were busy almost day and night, with tinkling knocks and roars echoing over the Zaimstrand shipyard.

Although other countries also have the intention of building battleships at this time, "first, their dock has not been expanded, and they cannot build 20,000-ton warships, and secondly, they don't know whether this kind of battleship is really as powerful as expected" because the British actually only built one, so they took a wait-and-see approach for the time being, and France had actually secretly broken through the technology of decommissioning naval guns a month ago, but the news that the Far East Fleet was trapped in Hong Kong strengthened their determination to engage in submarines, and even did not hesitate to temporarily slow down the speed of building battleships. Still working hard to build the Dandong class.

Britain and Germany started to build "China, as the founding country, will certainly not be much behind, even the cowards and the Oss empire have ordered one" but this saddened Nicholas II, and then he had to turn to Britain for help.

In the case that he could not go to the Far East to take revenge, "the British government immediately agreed to Nicholas II's request for assistance, but proposed that it must wait for the construction of the Dreadnought, and judging from the ten-month Dreadnought construction cycle, this is equivalent to at least until 1903, Russia will not be able to have this type of battleship!"

When this news came back, Long Guozhang finally breathed a sigh of relief, because in 1903, his first two battleships and four heavy cruisers could be delivered, and if it was delayed until 04, the last two were estimated to be about the same, so he temporarily gave up the idea of pestering the Prime Minister's Office and Li Mo to continue to build ships.

However, he was not idle, and the total gold of Germany, Britain and the Ottoman countries obtained from the sale of Chinese ship technology and orders was used by the Prime Minister's Office to print money to support national construction, but according to the principle that the war troops can be earmarked, the navy can dispose of the spoils of war on its own, so he bought a large amount of equipment that the British Far East Fleet could not take away when it left for his own use, and also split up the naval base in Hong Kong and sold it to the rich Chinese businessmen in Hong Kong and Nanyang. It is said that the mansions where these British lived were very attractive, and they also salvaged more than a dozen British ** ships that sank in Victoria Bay and sold them to Taiwan steel mills as scrap metal.

His move really made Li Mo and Li Enfu laugh and cry, but fortunately, after confirming that Guangzhou and Hainan would be used as second-line naval bases, Hong Kong Island, which is narrow and lacks resources and heavy industry support, really does not need to keep so many military facilities, so he is allowed to mess around.

But I didn't expect that this big Hu who likes to mess around is still quite economical-minded, so he forcibly scraped together 10 million blue coins and immediately handed it over to the Equipment Department to build six additional defense-class destroyers, two supply ships and two hydrographic survey ships, which not only improved the supply and support capabilities of the navy, but also made the total number of defense-class ships reach as many as 30 after completion!

Raising money to build destroyers and support ships instead of building his favorite submarines, Long Guozhang has no choice, although the submarines have performed eye-catching twice in a row, but if this kind of underwater big guy lacks surface support, he has no ** combat capability at all, mainly because of the two defects of short legs and no eyes, "So he can only give priority to the construction of urgently needed destroyers and auxiliary vessels."

In addition to raising funds for the navy, he also issued an order to the whole army for the first time as commander-in-chief of the navy, criticizing the fleet's lack of combat capability in bad weather.

Unlike the navy's vigorous action, which also made the army take action, unlike the navy's lack of a big harvest this time, the army can be said to be a bumper harvest, but this kind of harvest made Zhao Long, deputy chief of the general staff and commander of the army, worried.

The army's harvest is very rich, but most of them are guns and ammunition that cannot be used, before Britain and France and other countries desperately stuffed hundreds of thousands of rifles to the southeast, nearly 100 cannons and a large number of ammunition are not in line with the Chinese army system at all, when scrap iron must be wasted, and then Li Mo gave him a trick and asked him to contact Marseille.

Although Cuba and the United States have fought a draw, it does not mean that they can sit on an equal footing, and the great powers are unwilling to talk to China, let alone Cuba, so Cuba has not received any assistance at all after the war, and it has consumed too much before, and there is a lot of damage to weapons and equipment, and it will be very dangerous if it is not replenished.

The weapons and ammunition that fell from heaven really made Marseo happy, but the problem was that this time China only wanted gold and hard currency to ask for the land of sugar cane plantations, and after some negotiations, after finally taking 20 torpedo boats and old-fashioned white-headed torpedo production technology, China paid 500,000 British pounds to obtain the right to mine a large barley mine left by the former Spanish colonists in Cuba at the cost of giving priority to Cuban employees and Cuba having the right of first refusal, and according to the data of the Spanish survey, the amount that can be mined there is estimated to be 500,000 tons.

500,000 for 500,000 tons of barley, in the eyes of Marseio, is really a cost-effective deal, because barley is not a scarce resource, and the role is not great, but he doesn't know that the Ministry of Science and Technology has been studying stainless steel, and it has reached the point where it is at the end of the door, and the data under the lazy style of the Spanish masters before is not accurate, according to the secret mapping and research of several mineral experts brought by Lin Jiye before, it is estimated that the output of this barley mine is at least about three million tons.

In fact, Li Mo didn't pay much attention to Cuba's poor resources of Branium, because compared with Thomas Mining in Canada and several barley mines controlled by himself in Australia, Cuba's reserves are really not large, not to mention that there are many things in Siberia, and Cuba's transportation problems are troublesome, so he can only use the method of digging out rough refining first, and try to send finished products instead of ore to reduce transportation costs, but fortunately, the Panama Canal can be opened in a few years, and the big problem is that Cuba really has no good things.

However, this deal aroused strong dissatisfaction from the United States, especially the 20 torpedo boats, and even proposed to blockade the waters off Cuba and expel Chinese weapons ships.

In fact, Li Mo understands very well that the United States is not afraid that Cuba will acquire 20 torpedo boats, and that the gains of starting a war with China for the sake of 20 torpedo boats outweigh the losses, but that it wants to use this to beat China and not take the United States seriously.

After consultations between the two countries, Tang Shaoyi persuaded the US government on the condition of increasing the purchase of rail steel from the United States, in exchange for the two sides reaching this agreement.

Rail steel is a much-needed material, so this deal is not a loss, and the steel industry in the United States is much ahead of China, and the price is much cheaper, but the domestic steel industry is a little aggrieved, but the domestic steel gap is too big, so imports are also necessary, from the geographical point of view, purchasing from the United States is also a good choice.

After solving the weapon problem, the army set its sights on more than 100,000 surrendered soldiers, many of them were recruited later in the southeast, most of them were trained by foreigners, and after the rapid pacification of the north, Li Hongzhang and others also saw through the lack of an army, which was not enough to fight Li Mo, so they only recruited local poor brothers, and the training was also very strict, these are all good seedlings.

However, Zhao Long's plan to expand the army again suffered a major blow, because after considering that some of the soldiers in this group were indeed of good quality, the General Staff consulted with the Prime Minister's Office, and finally selected 40,000 of these people to send them to the Marine Corps, and organized the previous five Marine Corps regiments into four Marine Divisions, and established the Marine Corps ** Command for the first time, Zhang Shun became the first commander, and most of the rest were divided between the Royal State Guard Corps and the Police Department.

The predecessor of the Royal Nationalist Guard was the internal affairs force under the control of Yan Fu, a total of 10 divisions, each of which had two regiments and 10,000 lightly armed troops, which were mainly used for domestic suppression of bandits, protection of the coast, and ensuring stability in various localities, and could carry out combat tasks such as assisting the main force to stabilize the theater when necessary.

Like the Marine Corps, the Royal Nationalist Guard also set up its own ** headquarters for the first time, and incorporated the 20 garrison battalions on the second-line naval bases originally stationed in the huge sea area, which were directly commanded by the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff, and the high-ranking commander-in-chief was still the royal family.

Although the army received nothing and gave the navy a wedding dress, the General Staff and the Prime Minister's Office also promised that the army's low requirements of 15 infantry divisions and 5 cavalry divisions would be guaranteed to be met after the financial difficulties were over.

Li Mo suddenly reorganized the army in succession, and set up the first Marine Corps and the National People's Guard Headquarters, so that the Chinese army not only improved its establishment and began to prepare for the future, but also the establishment of the Royal National People's Guard also made the focus of the navy, land and air force clearer, that is, to defend the country and protect the sea frontier.

After the reorganization was completed, Li Mo took another action and took advantage of the opportunity of the four marine divisions to be reorganized, run-in, and trained, and placed them in Bactria and Honolulu, Guam, Borneo, Luzon, and Hokkaido, as well as the entrusted islands of Shikoku, and strengthened his control over the outer sea territory.

On June 1, 1901, at the same time that Li Mo and the General Staff were actively reorganizing the army, good news finally came from the northwest, after the surrender was refused, the rebels led by Ma Anliang and Dong Fuxiang began to despair and tried to flee to the country, but too many non-military personnel made it impossible for the troops to move quickly, and finally were blocked on the border line by the four divisions and two regiments that had been hidden.

After receiving the news, the main force of the Northwest Army set off overnight, and finally after a day and a night of repeated battles, announced the recovery of Xinjiang.

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