At the 'foreigner's residence' in the Legation Quarter, Japanese representative Yoshizawa Kenkichi poured black tea for British representative Lampson. The British upper class liked to drink afternoon tea, and Japan, as a learner, had also learned this point.

Lampson was an elite civil servant in the British Foreign Office, and so was Yoshizawa Kenkichi. Watching Yoshizawa Kenkichi's skilled black tea brewing technique, Lampson recalled the information he had seen.

Yoshizawa Kenkichi, born in 1874, was 16 years older than He Rui. He graduated from Tokyo Imperial University in 1899, then entered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, serving as Vice Consul in Xiamen, Shanghai, Newchwang, and other places. In 1912, he served as Consul General in Hankou. In 1916, he served as Counselor of the Embassy in China. In 1919, he served as Director of the Asian Affairs Bureau of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

This Japanese elite diplomat came to China as a 'representative.' Was his purpose to seek negotiation with the He Rui regime, or something else? Lampson was quite curious.

Adding milk to the black tea and stirring it with a small spoon, Lampson heard Yoshizawa Kenkichi sigh, "I didn't expect China's milk supply to increase so fast. It wasn't easy to buy milk before."

"Hmm." Lampson just responded, waiting for the other party to continue.

"The He Rui government is investing heavily in railways. The Republic National Defense Force arrived in Yunnan from the Northeast within a month; perhaps it can be completed within just two or three years." After Yoshizawa Kenkichi finished speaking, he picked up the black tea and drank it, while waiting for Lampson's answer.

In the internal news of the British Foreign Office, Japan was hinting to Britain about 'rebuilding the Anglo-Japanese Alliance.' The Japanese were Japanese after all; this country completely lacked the straightforwardness of China. He Rui openly put forward their diplomatic demands here and made various bluffing threats. The Japanese wanted to sell themselves but had to let the British take the initiative to raise the price. Lampson also decided to cooperate a bit. After putting down the teacup, he asked, "Is your country ready to rebuild a powerful army?"

Yoshizawa Kenkichi followed Lampson's topic. "Judging from current experience, the size of the standing army of a force capable of maintaining order in the Far East must reach 600,000."

"How did you come to such a conclusion?" Lampson asked, pretending to be very curious.

"The number of troops of the Soviet Russian Red Army is not public. Judging from the Russian Civil War, its number is probably similar to the Tsarist Russian era, with a standing army of 2 million." Speaking of this, Yoshizawa Kenkichi raised a question, "Have you seen the bandit suppression news of the Republic government?"

Lampson didn't play dumb and answered frankly, "I've seen it."

"China has deployed a battalion, about 600 light infantry, in every county for bandit suppression. China has less than 1,500 counties. According to this number, the Republic National Defense Force has invested 900,000 troops. Adding about 500,000 troops remaining in the Northeast, as well as logistics, air force, and... naval forces, the total number of troops of the Republic National Defense Force is over 1.5 million."

Hearing Yoshizawa Kenkichi specifically mention the 'navy' of the Republic National Defense Force, Lampson felt that Yoshizawa Kenkichi's provocation was really a bit too blatant. The naval power of the Republic was weak and not worth mentioning, but in order to defend its own merchant shipping lanes, the Republic would indeed develop a navy. In ten years, if the He Rui regime did not have major problems, Britain would indeed face a little trouble.

"If a standing army of 600,000 cannot be maintained, one is simply not qualified to participate in the discussion of the Far East order." Yoshizawa Kenkichi concluded.

Lampson held the teacup and sipped slowly, judging the attitude of the Japanese side in his heart. Currently, both China and the Soviet Union were isolated internationally, so they naturally huddled together for warmth. According to news obtained by Britain, Sino-Soviet trade was developing rapidly. More than 95% of the railway sleepers and mine sleepers currently laid in China were orders placed by China two years ago, and now they were being transported into China train by train, ship by ship.

Britain dared to block the pitifully small number of Chinese ships in the South China Sea, but dared not intercept cargo ships from the Soviet Union to China. Since the Japanese side put forward a view, Lampson asked, "Does the Japanese side have the ability to inspect suspicious ships?"

"In the era of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, Japan received a lot of support. As long as sufficient support can be obtained, Japan is fully capable of inspecting any suspicious ship. After all, this is very beneficial to world peace. Of course, Japan also hopes to make a greater contribution to world peace through trade with Southeast Asia."

Before coming to China, Lampson had served in the Southeast Asian colonies for a long time. Yoshizawa Kenkichi's request for Britain to allow Japan to trade in Southeast Asia also sounded reasonable to Lampson. What Japan needed most were raw materials and sales markets. Now that Sino-Japanese trade was interrupted, the markets closest to Japan were only the United States and Southeast Asia.

The United States was the country with the highest industrial output value in the world today, and its industrial strength was above Japan. The goods Japan sold to the United States were mainly raw silk and handicrafts. The only market that could truly accept those poor-quality industrial products from Japan was Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia was also an area where Britain dumped industrial products. If part of the market were yielded, British interests would be damaged.

"I wonder what the domestic outlook in Japan is for the Anglo-Japanese Alliance?" Lampson asked. The times had changed. The previous Anglo-Japanese Alliance was mainly directed against Russia, and weak China was not the main target of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. Now that China had become the most powerful force in the Far East, Lampson naturally wanted to figure out Japan's conception of the reconstructed 'Anglo-Japanese Alliance' as much as possible.

While Britain and Japan drank black tea here, China's Minister of Commerce Morrison and comrades drank jasmine tea. The jasmine tea came from Zhuang Jiaxiong's hometown, Fujian. The new government made great efforts to eliminate trade barriers; various likin barriers were abolished, and transportation was unimpeded. But new requirements also appeared, which were packaging and clearly writing the ingredients on the packaging. Many priorities of the Ministry of Commerce's current work lay in this area.

However, Morrison was discussing another matter with the comrades at this time. The Director of the North American Trade Department reported to the Ministry of Commerce on the recent trade content with American merchants. Tea, raw silk, tung oil, and pig bristles were still the largest categories of exports.

"...These American merchants want raw silk. The degree of processing they can accept only goes as far as wound raw silk; they don't even accept dyed raw silk. Not only the United States, except for the Soviet Union, other industrial countries basically do not import industrial manufactured goods. They are only interested in bulk commodities like raw materials. Every industrial country is trying to establish a self-sufficient industrial system in its own country!"

Speaking of this, the Director of the North American Department took a sip of jasmine tea and couldn't help complaining, "If agriculture is also seen as industrialized food production, self-sufficiency is not only found in the small peasant economy. The industrial systems of various countries are also self-sufficient!"

No one laughed. Because this was a very serious issue, an issue that made the comrades feel great pressure. Just a year ago, China was still a market for countries to dump industrial products. China obviously couldn't understand the issue of countries establishing a 'self-sufficient' industrial system. Now the situation was completely different, and new cognitions overturned various past thoughts of the comrades.

Morrison understood these earlier. He said, "Comrades can now understand why the European War broke out, right? You can also understand why the Anglo-Japanese Alliance was established, and why Britain held an opposing attitude during the Sino-French War."

Being told so by Morrison, a foreign devil, actually felt a bit ridiculous. However, the members of the Ministry of Commerce had worked together for a long time, and Morrison's Chinese had absolutely no foreign flavor. After working together for a long time, everyone wouldn't deliberately remember that Morrison was a foreigner.

The content learned before was just learned. Facing the current situation, the comrades couldn't help but reflect. After China's unification, the Chinese market belonged to China. Whoever the Republic government allowed to do business could come. Whoever was not allowed stood outside the door. As all regions in the world had clear ownership divisions, this world became clearer.

Some comrades couldn't help sighing, "It would have been great if China's unification could have been completed before the end of the European War."

This sigh made all comrades feel empathetic, but such a sigh was meaningless. Everyone could only sigh for a moment.

Morrison felt that China was already very lucky. With He Rui leading everyone to fight, they finally completed China's independence before the outbreak of the next world war and were ready to welcome the future great war.

The prediction that the next world war must break out had increasingly become a consensus within the Civilization Party and the high-level officials of the Republic government. When China gained security, the perspective and mentality of the upper echelon viewing problems changed. From all angles, the economic contradictions between countries had not only not been eliminated but had been intensified by the Versailles system.

The core of the Versailles system was to recognize the power and legitimacy of the British and French colonial empires, which excluded all other industrial countries from the colonies and left no space for other countries. With the outbreak of the future economic crisis, countries that couldn't solve problems relying on the domestic market would inevitably choose other paths. War was undoubtedly a good choice.

As for China's choice, at least He Rui set the strategic direction. Since colonialism is evil and cruel, and especially since colonialism is 'extremely inefficient' for developing productive forces, in most aspects, colonialism will destroy the development of productive forces in colonies. Regarding such facts, China promoting the establishment of a more efficient, fairer, and more humane new international order for global productivity development, that is, a brand-new 'Earth Civilization,' was China's foreign policy.

Conducting such a discussion at the Ministry of Commerce meeting actually did not conform to the work arrangement of the Ministry of Commerce itself, but everyone did feel something new due to the change in vision, and the Party Secretary of the Ministry of Commerce was also happy to see such a discussion.

The unification war launched by the Civilization Party had not completely ended until now. In areas with harsh geographical environments, the battles of the unification war were still going on, but the bandit-suppression-level battles no longer had any impact on the entire country.

At the summary meeting, everyone agreed with He Rui's view. There was an incredibly deep social consensus for promoting the unification war in China. Those warlords and separatist forces only created various forms because of their vision and strength, but deep down they all looked forward to unifying China themselves. Not only these guys, but the Chinese people themselves also looked forward to unification and identified with unification.

Land reform was not the Civilization Party's original creation either; almost every dynasty in Chinese history had implemented land distribution policies. This was not a new thing for China either. Since everyone in China had such a deep social consensus on unification and land distribution, the unification war and subsequent social stability naturally proceeded exceptionally smoothly.

Different from unification and land distribution, China was very weak in foreign policy, with no national consensus and no historical consensus. If one had to say there was, it was probably in various storytelling where China was invaded by barbarians, fought back, and defeated the foreign enemies. Restoring peace to the borders, the Chinese people could live a good life again.

Adopting an active foreign policy was probably in the Han and Tang dynasties. He Rui's foreign policy had quite the style of Han and Tang, but this policy was unfamiliar to ordinary people, and even within the party, a complete consensus had not been reached. Since this discussion could promote consensus, it was a good thing to continue.

When the content of the Ministry of Commerce meeting returned to work, everyone had to face a cold real world. The United States was considered a very commercially open country, yet even such a country prioritized protecting domestic industries. For those colonialist countries, this was even more so.

For example, Britain, for the sake of domestic employment, would rather transport cotton from India to Britain to produce cloth and then sell it back to India than invest heavily in building textile mills in India. Under such a situation, even if Britain did not have a sharp struggle with China, it was impossible to allow Chinese goods to be sold freely in India. Britain was just an example; other colonial countries were the same.

Since there was no way to break through externally, the Ministry of Commerce could only turn to the domestic market. Now, everyone had another consensus: in terms of industrial layout, He Rui was undoubtedly the number one person in the Republic. Up to now, the preliminary work of several industrial zones proposed by He Rui had begun, especially exploration work.

Just as He Rui expected, those areas indeed had very good mineral foundations, enabling industrial development around local minerals. This made comrades full of sighs with a somewhat mystical flavor about the 'Earth Evolution History' proposed by He Rui.

The comrades certainly overestimated He Rui. He Rui's industrial layout ability was by no means because He Rui himself was so incredible. As long as one researched the place of origin a little in massive online shopping in another space-time, one could get massive information. If one possessed certain data analysis capabilities and knew some people who were serious about consumption, one could get considerable knowledge of industrial layout. He Rui only needed to uphold the attitude of 'grab-ism' and make full use of it.

For example, most jasmine flowers now came from Fujian. But Guangxi also had very good conditions for jasmine production. This was one of the many feedbacks to Guangxi in the future plan.

But He Rui absolutely could not say to the comrades, "I came up with these arrangements out of thin air!" If he said so, rational comrades would definitely oppose it. If comrades accepted it immediately without thinking, that would be even worse. Such blind obedience would turn the Civilization Party into a charlatan organization.

In order to explain reasonably, He Rui could only propose the Earth Evolution Theory. That was a history of earth evolution spanning billions of years.

Although this theory seemed quite charlatan-like at present, at least it was a scientific category. As long as one really researched it, one could still embark on a scientific direction.