Yan Huiqing learned that Professor Taira Toyomori had arrived in China, so he completely put the matter aside. Academic exchange was the work of the Ministry of Culture and relevant academic departments; the Ministry of Foreign Affairs only provided 'entry and exit' services.

The next task of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was to explain China's diplomatic principles clearly to the powers, including Britain. As long as the people in charge of diplomacy in various countries and those who could formulate policies understood this clearly. Once this work was completed, the reaction of foreign countries was not something the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs had to manage.

Although Yan Huiqing didn't like 'a new broom sweeps clean,' he began to adjust the current diplomatic work. Seeing the puzzled expressions of most department directors after receiving the assignment, Yan Huiqing felt that he would soon be challenged.

In less than ten days, Party Secretary Liu Bozhen talked with Yan Huiqing once. "Our diplomacy was very proactive before. Will Minister Yan's adjustment make us change from active to passive?"

Seeing that he indeed encountered opposition, Yan Huiqing became more spirited. "The previous initiative was for diplomacy to serve the war of liberation, sending someone to notify before the troops started the war. This is issuing a challenge. At this stage, our foreign wars will become fewer and fewer. After achieving peace with Britain through this war, China needs diplomacy in the traditional sense. Diplomacy in the traditional sense emphasizes equal diplomacy."

Liu Bozhen carefully considered Yan Huiqing's words, feeling that this new Foreign Minister was indeed a person with his own views. However, Yan Huiqing's thinking was quite different from Liu Bozhen's imagination of diplomacy. Liu Bozhen asked, "What is the key point of equal diplomacy?"

"Game. It's the game [strategy] Chairman He talked about in class." Yan Huiqing answered immediately.

"...Game... That is indeed equality." Liu Bozhen nodded slightly.

Yan Huiqing was very happy to see the Secretary could understand this matter, so he told his views on diplomatic traditions to Liu Bozhen, a 'new school' youth. According to Yan Huiqing's observation, He Rui's subordinates were all too new school, so much so that they had a resistant emotion towards the old era itself.

After talking for a while, he heard Liu Bozhen ask, "If it is such a tradition, doesn't it mean that countries pursue equality among nations?"

"Indeed so. Big countries bullying small countries and weak countries is tradition. Now all countries realize that the previous diplomatic model is outdated. If there can be a more equal diplomatic model, at least many conflicts can be reduced. But international diplomacy speaks of strength, so a situation has appeared where there are various good expectations but they cannot be realized."

"...That means other countries don't know that equal diplomacy is good, but for their own interests, they just can't do it?"

Yan Huiqing thought for a moment before answering, "As far as I know, it is indeed so. Did Secretary Liu think before that foreign countries simply bullied the weak?"

Liu Bozhen didn't shy away and admitted frankly, "I thought foreign countries went for bullying the weak."

"Before the European War, it was indeed so. After the European War, European countries all reflected. Countries believe that if such a war breaks out in Europe again, the entire Europe will be burned to the ground by the flames of war, so countries began to accept the benefits of equal diplomacy."

"But Europe obviously hasn't adopted equal diplomacy towards China." Liu Bozhen stated his view.

"If it were before, China recovered the concessions and hanged tens of thousands of foreigners from various countries according to Chinese law. Britain should have already pulled up a European coalition army. At least it would have reached a consideration of a coalition army with various countries. This time European countries ignored Britain, and Britain knew this very well, so it only wooed Japan. This is enough to show that European countries, including Britain, have regarded China as a power. Europe no longer wants wars between powers."

After speaking, Yan Huiqing looked at Liu Bozhen's reaction. He saw Liu Bozhen's expression wavering, seeming to accept it, but not truly accepting it. This made Yan Huiqing sigh in his heart. These young 'new school figures' following He Rui were indeed new school. In their view, countries all over the world harbored the intention of invading China and did so, so young people naturally returned hostility.

Yan Huiqing didn't want to deny past facts. The world indeed hurt China too deeply and heavily, but this was because the cultural background of the powers was barbarism, so they did so naturally. It wasn't that these countries deliberately planned to be barbaric for the sake of barbarism. Yan Huiqing personally appreciated He Rui's cultural confidence and civilization confidence. Compared with Chinese civilization, the cultures of other countries were indeed very barbaric; calling them 'barbarians' was really appropriate.

Although the barbarians were barbaric, they were unwilling to die. But the new school youth didn't think so; they would think the barbarians would attack China regardless of life and death. Because the war was still going on, Yan Huiqing dared not mention these contents now.

If one really looked at the world with a cold perspective, both Japan and Britain were the attacked parties. Britain and Japan both felt that China was the barbaric party, thinking Britain and Japan were pitiful to suffer such an undeserved disaster inexplicably.

After explaining Yan Huiqing's understanding of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' work to Liu Bozhen clearly, after Liu Bozhen left, Yan Huiqing continued to start work. The country most likely to make a breakthrough at present was Austria. Austria had neither the ability to fight China nor the reason to obey Britain.

Precisely because of this, Austria now showed a wait-and-see attitude. Because after the strongest industrial area, the Czech region, became independent, Austria had no trade capacity with China at this stage. Germany, which truly had trade capacity, had issued an invitation to China's Minister of Commerce Morrison, who was visiting France. The Chinese government also stated that Minister Morrison would visit Germany after visiting France.

There were still some contradictions between France and China. After the European War, Germany was completely driven out of Asia, leaving only space for cooperation with China. This was the judgment of the diplomatic situation provided by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

At this time, in a hospital in Paris, France, Minister Morrison, who was visiting, and the Chinese doctor accompanying the team were both wearing doctors' white coats, examining a child on the hospital bed.

Before Morrison chose to join the Northeast Government, few people in Europe knew Morrison, and no one knew Morrison was a medical doctor from the University of Edinburgh. At this time, Morrison had long forgotten the treatment experience accumulated during his internship. However, through the propaganda of French newspapers, anyone who had seen the introduction of Morrison knew that this was a medical doctor.

After negotiating with Morrison, the worried French Minister of Commerce actually asked Dr. Morrison what he thought about bacterial infections that even sulfonamide could not treat. Sulfonamide was one of China's contributions to the world pharmaceutical industry in recent years. Although Chinese pharmaceutical factories did export sulfonamide to the world, He Rui, as the discoverer of the medicinal value of sulfonamide, announced the chemical composition of sulfonamide to the world.

Since sulfonamide had been discovered and published by German chemists, sulfonamide could not be considered a Chinese patent. Countries produced sulfonamide on their own one after another. With France's national strength, it could naturally produce sulfonamide easily. Sulfonamide was a specific drug against streptococcus and the first drug that could directly kill bacteria without harming the human body. Sulfonamide had almost become the only credible weapon against bacteria in the world today.

As for bacteria that even sulfonamide couldn't deal with, doctors could only frankly explain the situation to the family members. Family members who had received higher education like the French Minister of Commerce also understood what that meant.

So Morrison did not refuse the request of a desperate father, because Morrison himself was also a father. If his most loved child also fell into such a desperate situation, painfully dying slowly under the torture of bacteria, let alone asking a Chinese minister with a medical doctor degree for help, even asking the devil for help, Morrison would not hesitate.

After an examination, Morrison looked at the team doctor. The team doctor's originally nervous expression had dissipated a lot. It could be seen that the experienced team doctor already had a treatment idea. After the examination was completed, the two went to a room where they could talk alone. The team doctor said, "Penicillin should work."

Morrison nodded. What he thought in his heart was not that he could shock the French, but that there were more directions for cooperation when visiting Germany later. After becoming a prisoner of Versailles, the German government opened its mind and started cooperation with China in many fields. Especially in the high-tech field, many German experts worked in China.

Penicillin was the technology for penicillin extraction solved by German chemists helping Chinese colleagues. Morrison, a medical doctor graduated from the University of Edinburgh, knew very well how excellent this new drug, which had a good therapeutic effect on most bacterial infections in the world today, was. At this stage, China's penicillin output was not large enough. Morrison believed it was because China's chemical technology was not advanced enough and encountered other difficulties. Germany had the ability to provide technical support in this regard.

"Then let's do it," Morrison said.

The doctor immediately said, "Minister, even a skin test for penicillin has caused death."

Morrison felt the doctor was too conservative. Even if he forgot his medical experience, he still had medical knowledge. Leaving that child alone, he could only last for a day or two. At this time, the parents wouldn't really blame the doctor. Moreover, Morrison had seen the child's medical record; he didn't have a particularly allergic constitution, so his luck shouldn't be that bad.

"Let's go explain this to Mr. Minister," Morrison ordered.

As Morrison thought, Mr. Minister was not particularly surprised after hearing about 'death from allergy.' Especially hearing that the proportion of allergic people was less than 15%, the Minister hesitated slightly and expressed willingness to accept treatment.

So the treatment began. First was the skin test. The child's skin was bloodless at this time. After a small dose injection, the skin next to the injection site never showed red spots or swelling.

More than ten minutes later, the French nurse next to him reached out and touched the child's forehead in surprise, then said to the doctor next to her in French with surprise, "Sir, the patient's fever has started to subside!"

The doctor also saw the change in the patient's skin color, but he didn't believe that this drug with unknown ingredients had such potent efficacy. The purpose of the skin test was to see if the patient was allergic to the drug, so the dosage was very low, and theoretically, it shouldn't have any effect. The French doctor reached out and pressed the patient's forehead, only feeling the originally burning skin cooling down rapidly.

While surprised, he felt that the patient's body temperature stopped dropping after lowering to a temperature still within the fever range. This meant the patient was not cured. Even so, the French doctor was very surprised. He immediately began to examine the patient. Except for the body temperature starting to drop, the patient showed no signs of improvement, but no signs of deterioration appeared either.

The French Minister of Commerce knew nothing about medicine and could only stand by and watch anxiously. After the French doctor finished the examination, Mr. Minister asked hurriedly, "How is it?"

The doctor completely distrusted his Chinese colleagues and distrusted drugs with unknown ingredients even more. But before graduating from medical school, doctors had taken an oath to take treating patients as their primary goal. So after hesitating for a moment, the French doctor replied, "Sir, I agree to continue injection treatment."

The treatment principle of penicillin is that penicillin can destroy the cell wall of bacteria, while human cells have no cell wall. Perhaps because bacteria in this era had never encountered such a potent antibiotic as penicillin, they were defeated as soon as they engaged. In less than an hour, the Minister's son's body temperature returned to normal. After the abnormal high fever subsided, the child's skin color was as pale as paper. In the Minister's eyes, his son looked like a pale corpse at this time.

However, in the doctor's eyes, this child was out of danger. As long as treatment continued, he would recover soon. So facing the Minister's urgent inquiry, the doctor comforted the Minister.

At this time, the child groaned slightly and opened his eyes with difficulty. Now the Minister was sure that his son, who had fallen into intermittent coma due to high fever, finally woke up. Waking up meant there was hope.

By past 10 PM, the exhausted Minister finally left the ward. By the bedside, the Minister's wife, who was once mentally and physically exhausted, fell asleep lying on the bedside.

The Minister did not rest but invited Morrison into the car. The two arrived at a tavern next to the Champs-Élysées. This was obviously prepared for high-end customers. The interior decoration was very elegant, and the waiters and the drinks provided were of high grade.

"Minister Morrison, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. But precisely because of this matter, I think it is no longer appropriate for me to continue negotiating with you. Please understand."

Morrison nodded. If the French Minister of Commerce continued to negotiate with Morrison, even if there was no private transaction between the two, the Minister would be questioned.

The French Minister of Commerce raised his glass, toasted Morrison, and then said, "But I want to have a private conversation with Mr. Morrison to understand China's attitude."

Morrison immediately elaborated on China's attitude again. Having met with the French upper echelon before, Morrison fully explained China's diplomatic principles to the French side. At this time, the two sides had basic mutual trust, and the communication was very smooth. Both sides agreed on the basic view of Sino-French trade: 'Both China and France should grant each other Most Favored Nation treatment.'

But the subsequent communication began to be unsmooth. Morrison found that the French side wanted to sign Most Favored Nation treatment only between China and France, and hoped that China would not reach Most Favored Nation trade relations with other countries.

Morrison answered immediately, "China's ideal in trade is this: we hope to maintain Most Favored Nation treatment with all countries."

Hearing this, the French Minister of Commerce confirmed the meaning of Morrison's words. China wanted to take the 'Mercantilist route' in foreign trade. That is to say, trade is trade, and China does not intend to use trade as a weapon.

The mercantilist route is not strange for a small country like the Netherlands, but it is uncommon for a big country like China to adopt mercantilist policies. So the French Minister of Commerce talked with Morrison about this matter again, confirming that China indeed did not intend to use foreign trade as a policy weapon.

Since it was China's policy, the French Minister of Commerce didn't say much more. Not using trade as a weapon didn't mean China would be kneaded at will by others. If the other party didn't give China Most Favored Nation treatment, China wouldn't give that country Most Favored Nation treatment either.

After talking, the exhausted Minister stood up to take his leave. He was tired and ready to go home to rest first. The Minister left the car for Morrison and told Morrison that today's drink money would be charged to his account, so Morrison could continue to enjoy the fine wine.

Sipping the fine wine, Morrison recalled his previous conversation with He Rui on China's future international trade. He Rui not only had no idea of engaging in trade protectionism but also proposed the idea of a 'Global Trade System.' In He Rui's thinking, China hoped that countries in the future world would go one step further from Most Favored Nation and upgrade their trade system to full free trade.

Morrison marveled at He Rui's 'whimsical ideas' and corresponding boldness. After all, the gap between this idea and the current world situation was too big and too far. If he told this idea to the French Minister of Commerce, the other party would probably think He Rui was crazy.