Volume 2: The crown and the hat are all over the capital, and the spirit is full of energy and enter the foggy city Chapter 13 North Southwest
Subtitle of this chapter: How can this be repaired? Yasen is about to commit suicide!
Of course, the Japanese are hateful, and they are determined to turn "China" into their India. However, on the issue of how to turn China into their India, there are fierce debates among the Japanese, so fierce that they are often punished by God.
In October 1916, with the full support of the Choshu clan leader Aritomo Yamagata, Army Marshal Terauchi Masayoshi became the Prime Minister of the Japanese Cabinet, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Finance, and Governor-General of Korea.
These two names should be familiar to those who know a little about the modern history of China and Japan. Anyway, in novels set in the late Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China, these two people have to show up.
Aritomo Yamagata was known as the "Father of the Imperial Army", one of the nine elders of the Meiji era, the maker of continental policy and the pioneer of the First Sino-Japanese War. At that time, he could be said to be the most powerful figure in Japan, without a doubt.
Terauchi Masayoshi was the first Governor-General of Korea. During his tenure as Prime Minister, the army's "50th Division" and the navy's "86th Fleet" military construction plans were approved.
However, at that time, the two most powerful generals in the army had already realized that it was too difficult to force Serbia to become a colony of Japan through force. The "Twenty-One Demands" was an extremely obvious failure.
And the key issue is that the Japanese chaebols were very dissatisfied with the government and military's policies toward China at the time. From the perspective of these big capitalists, imperialism cannot be too ambitious, and India is not something that can be acquired overnight, so it is better to do business with China first. Of course, the so-called "business" is to obtain cheap raw materials and dump their own industrial products.
The problem is that the Republic of China was so poor at that time that the two state-owned banks, the Bank of China and the Bank of Communications, lent too much reserves to Caesar Yuan in 1916. In order to cope with the bank run, the Beiyang government had to order the two banks to stop paying depositors for several months, and the national finances almost collapsed.
At this time, the Terauchi Masayoshi Cabinet took the initiative to propose a loan. They hoped to improve Sino-Japanese relations through loans, help China rectify its financial and fiscal system that was about to collapse, reform China's currency system, and gradually achieve "Japanese-Chinese currency mixing", "enable Chinese citizens to develop their own land and enjoy its benefits, while at the same time being consistent with the revitalization of the imperial industry, so that Japan and China can become one, seek self-sufficiency, and form an inseparable alliance in economy and national defense." In other words, it is soft colonization.
Because this huge loan of nearly 200 million yen (equivalent to 80 million US dollars) was handled by Kameyama Nishihara, the special representative of the then Japanese Prime Minister Terauchi Masayoshi and the Japanese adviser to Octavian Duan, it was called the Nishihara Loan.
Please note that the Nishihara loan is an important node in China-Japan relations and Japan-US relations.
Let's talk about Sino-Japanese relations first. Even the Chinese side felt that this loan was quite "generous". Zhou Shulian, an official of the Ministry of Finance at the time, also admitted that the Japanese side "did not set very high requirements for the loan conditions, and was particularly vague about the collateral. The railway advance was not built, and the other collateral was only specified in the loan agreement, but was not actually taken over."
Wang Yunsheng, a reporter for the Ta Kung Pao who later became the editor-in-chief, also said: "In another sense, they can also be regarded as selling out their country. With a huge sum of 200 million yuan, there is no solid collateral, and no high-interest kickbacks. As a result, most of it has become a debt with no place to go. No wonder Terauchi, Katsuta and others are attacked by their own people.”.
Reporter Wang was right. The favorable terms of the loan have inevitably caused extreme dissatisfaction among the young generation in Japan.
It would be fine if the money could be recovered, but Octavian Duan never thought about paying it back. He said to Marco Anthony Feng bluntly: "We are only using Japan for a while, who is going to pay them back? As long as our country becomes stronger, we can just give them a glare and forget it!"
If the money could not be recovered, the relationship between the two countries would improve, and Japan could smoothly intervene in China's financial and fiscal system. However, Japan occupied Qingdao by force, causing Sino-Japanese relations to deteriorate rapidly.
Therefore, Nishihara's loan became a waste of time and effort, and only gave more excuses to the young Japanese military officers, allowing them to say things like "the Chinese have no sincerity, and showing sincerity to them is like keeping chastity for a prostitute" and "they are betraying the souls of the soldiers who died in the bloody battle" with so-called "factual basis".
"Mr. Nomura, Mr. Yamamoto, your country's Nishihara loan is nothing more than an old trick used by the Anglo-Saxons to control politics with money. We Chinese don't understand it, but the Americans certainly do. Wouldn't that arouse their vigilance?"
"If it is really possible to achieve 'Japan-China integration' or 'mixed currencies of the two countries', guess which country in the world would be the most uneasy?"
After hearing this, the two Japanese golds looked serious and remained silent.
“The Xiyuan loan is just one of them.”
Our Master Yuan sneered and said, "Last January, the United States withdrew its troops from Siberia on its own and asked your country to do the same. But after the Temple Street Incident, your country not only did not withdraw its troops, but instead increased its troops and occupied the northern part of Sakhalin Island."
After the US withdrew its troops in April 1920, only the Japanese troops remained on Soviet territory. Japan's refusal to withdraw its troops would inevitably lead to stronger resistance from the Soviet people. On May 27, 1920, after a violent conflict between the local guerrillas and the Japanese army, they set fire to the Temple Street City (Nikolaevsk), killing a total of 384 Japanese personnel. This was the "Temple Street Incident."
Unfortunately, Temple Street was once the seat of the Nurgan District, the administrative agency of the Northeast of our country, and the birthplace of our Qing Dynasty. Its geographical location is very important, and it is the only way to sail on the Heilongjiang River.
"I guess your Ministry of Foreign Affairs has received repeated strong protests from the Americans. This is the second reason. The third one is..."
He didn't need Neon Jin to ask, and continued, "The Americans are very upset about your country's acquisition of a series of Pacific islands that originally belonged to Germany: the Marshall Islands, the Mariana Islands, and the Caroline Islands. What is their naval budget this year?"
“US$433 million!”
Yuan Yan sighed and said to the two naval officers, " Then Colonel Nomura, Lieutenant Colonel Yamamoto, please tell me which country the '88 Fleet' plan passed by your country's Congress last July is aimed at?"
What does he mean by this?
In fact, Master Yuan was hinting to the two Japanese that if they wanted to cut flesh from the Soviet Union, regardless of whether they could defeat the Russians, the Americans would definitely not support and oppose it; if they went west to Serbia, the Americans would be even more opposed to it. The first barrier to the south was the Philippines, a US colony.
In this part of the Far East, instead of being tied up in the north, southwest and south, you Japanese might as well have a good fight with the Americans in the east.
