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"There are three things we need to do now. The first is to defend the territory we've occupied. Not only can we not let the Qing Army invade, we can't let Shi Dakai attack back. If Shi Dakai tries to enter our territory, we must chase him out! "Vézé's words were resolute and decisive. Both his attitude and stance were murderous.
The people from the General Staff Headquarters who had participated in the Central Committee meeting were all rather surprised. Lei Hu had just rushed over from Shaoguan to Foshan to participate in the meeting. He said, "Commander in Chief, the Qing Army's fighting capacity is very weak. Shi Dakai is leading the elite of the Heavenly State. Will he lose?"
"I don't know if Shi Da will lose, but he can't win. For Shi Dakai now, if he can't win, he'll lose. "Vézé's words were straightforward.
"Commander in Chief, can you stop talking in riddles?" Wei Changrong also gave his opinion without any reservation.
Vézé had carefully crafted this analysis of the outcome, but he did not expect Wei Changrong to judge it in such a manner. However, Vézé was thick-skinned. He laughed and said, "Shi Dakai wants to win, or rather, he has embarked on a path where he has no other choice but to win. If Shi Dakai had not run away from the Taiping Rebellion, he would have won Zhejiang. Even if he had not won, he would have had a way out. His departure from the Taiping Rebellion was for the better, not for the worse. That was why Shi Dakai had to conquer Zhejiang. If one only pursued the goal and did not pay attention to the process, what would be the result? We knew it very well when we fought the English. "
The generals had already understood Vézé's meaning when they heard this. When Vézé used the English as an example, they naturally understood it even more clearly. When they were fighting the British, the troops wanted to win more than anything, but they did not have the training to beat the British. In the end, it was a pyrrhic victory. Shi Dakai's attack on Zhejiang was also ill-prepared, but he was determined to achieve a complete victory. Naturally, the result would not be optimistic.
"But the Xiang Army is very weak. I'm afraid the Qing Army in Zhejiang is not as strong as the Xiang Army," Lei Hu said.
Vézé smiled and said, "Strength is a relative concept. Compared to our Liberation Army, the Xiang Army is indeed very weak. However, this army was able to take down Jiujiang, which was guarded by twenty thousand soldiers. It was clear that the Taiping army was not a strong army. Between the Taiping army and the Xiang Army, who is stronger in battle, it mostly depends on their performance on the spot, not on how they will perform. "
Lei Hu thought about the British army and then the Xiang Army and accepted Vézé's point of view.
Vézé continued, "Since Shi Dakai is determined to win, his bottom line is very high. If he can't win, he will choose to retreat. The more he retreats, the less he can win, and the more he can't win, the more he will retreat to a place where he can win. Guangdong is still better, but it is separated by Fujian and Gannan, so Shi Dakai may not be able to reach here. However, he will go to the south of Hunan, so it is more likely that he will go back to his hometown in Guangxi. At that time, I don't know if Shi Dakai will be possessed and think that he can find some victory through us. "
The more he understood Shi Dakai, the faster the halo shrouding Shi Dakai disappeared. When Shi Dakai chose to leave the Taiping Rebellion, Vézé felt that he had seen through Shi Dakai. Now, Vézé felt that he could finally see Shi Dakai from a human perspective.
If a person's bottom line was too high, it meant that the probability of failure was greatly increased. Originally, Vézé felt that Shi Dakai had made a huge mistake when he chose to leave the Taiping Rebellion. But now, it seemed that Shi Dakai had made a huge mistake during the coup in Tianjing. This mistake didn't mean that he had watched the Heavenly King kill the King Of The East, but that Shi Dakai had thought that he could control the situation after the coup in Tianjing. From that moment on, Shi Dakai had forced himself into a position where he had to win and not lose.
Although Yang Xiuqing had failed during the coup in Tianjing, from a strategic point of view, when Yang Xiuqing had been in charge of the Taiping Rebellion, the Taiping Rebellion had been able to accept some failures. When it came to Shi Dakai, he couldn't accept failure. Any failure would quickly strip away the halo around Shi Dakai. A phoenix without feathers was inferior to a chicken. This was a phrase that was tailored for Shi Dakai.
Retracting his thoughts, Vézé said, "The second thing is to guard all the roads leading to Jiangxi and not allow the epidemic to enter Guangdong."
Although the epidemic in Jiangxi was mainly in the northern and central parts of Jiangxi, Vézé was very nervous. As a citizen of the new China, Vézé had never seen a major epidemic before. The most serious epidemic he knew of was SARS. How many people had died in that chaotic China and the entire world was in an uproar? According to intelligence, tens of thousands of people had died in Jiangxi. This number really scared Vézé.
The Viceroy's Office quickly came up with a policy. Knowledge about hygiene and epidemic prevention began to spread in the military and the cities. Washing hands, drinking water, and a lot of related information began to be posted on the city's streets.
"Viceroy, will this cause panic among the people of Guangdong?" Governor Bi Qingshan was very worried about this.
"This will definitely happen. What's there to be afraid of?" Vézé's reply was very, very low-key. Without a universal vaccine and a better medical environment, the possibility of an epidemic appearing in the areas controlled by the Viceroy's Office was not low. From the perspective of a few decades, it could be said that an outbreak would definitely occur. That being the case, Vézé felt that there was no need to hide anything at all.
Bi Qingshan said anxiously, "Viceroy, wash your hands and drink water before and after meals. These are all things that should be done, but you publicly said that if you encounter any patients, you should immediately report to the Viceroy's Office and have the infected people isolated and treated by professionals. Please reconsider this matter! "
"I think it's better for us to be prepared for now," Vézé said.
Bi Qingshan advised, "Viceroy, we should naturally prepare what should be prepared, but the people will think it's rain just by listening to the wind. When you say that we should prepare for an epidemic, they will think that an epidemic has already broken out. If someone takes the opportunity to spread rumors, I'm afraid the situation will be very difficult to clean up. We should not omit any of the necessary preparations, so don't say anything. "
Vézé agreed with Bi Qingshan's words in his heart, but because it was far from Vézé's original plan, he also felt that it was a little embarrassing. Therefore, Vézé smiled and said, "Comrade Qingshan, you're right. It's just that I feel that you don't dare to mobilize the masses. "
"Mobilize the masses?" Bi Qingshan had never heard of this term, so he was stunned and didn't know what to say.
"Let's do as you say?" Vézé didn't dwell on this matter. He first agreed with Bi Qingshan's judgment, and then continued, "Third, we need to do propaganda to Manchu Qing. No matter how effective it is, we can't save the effort that needs to be spent. The main point of our propaganda is that Manchu Qing can't defeat the foreign devils, and are incompetent people who have lost their sovereignty and humiliated the country. "
"Isn't this driving out the Tatars and restoring China? If we criticize Manchu Qing for losing their sovereignty and humiliating the country, isn't that admitting that Manchu Qing is the imperial court? "Wu Qilu, the former director of the political department, asked.
Vézé was very satisfied with this objection. "Driving out the Tatars and restoring China. This is propaganda to our own territory. We are the imperial court in our own territory, and we have to fight outside and conquer the world. But in Manchu Qing's territory, the people feel that Manchu Qing is the imperial court, so we have to work hard to make the local people question the legitimacy and rationality of Manchu Qing. Let's be honest, the people have been oppressed for thousands of years, and they don't care who is the imperial court. Our propaganda power is limited, so we can only do propaganda to those who have read books. Then the content of the propaganda must be that Manchu Qing lost to the foreigners, and lost their sovereignty and humiliated the country. "
Most of the central committee members couldn't understand such a complicated propaganda problem, and Wu Qilu only asked based on his own experience. Vézé's explanation was so clear that Wu Qilu didn't have any reason to continue to oppose. Vézé asked the personnel department to recommend a few people to be in charge of this matter. The decision was Vézé's matter, but it was impossible for Vézé to do it himself. If Vézé was to do this kind of thing, then he might as well work himself to death.
After these three things were arranged, the meeting was over. Vézé went to the steel mill to participate in the project. The reverberatory furnace was built with great difficulty, but without the guidance of the British technicians, it still couldn't produce steel after ten furnaces. On the contrary, the open hearth furnace used in the experiment, although the quality of the steel produced wasn't that great, it could at least guarantee that two furnaces could produce one furnace of steel. Recently, three consecutive furnaces had produced steel. Vézé was naturally very concerned about this. As long as the steel could be produced, Vézé could start to manufacture the cylinders, cranks, and other components of the steam engine. With the steam engine, there would be steamships. Vézé thought of his steamships in the future, when they were equipped with two or three expansion steam engines, they would be able to traverse the Western Pacific, and completely cut off the British's evil hand that extended to China. To accomplish such a feat, China would first have to become an industrial country. As far as Vézé knew, all industrial countries used steel to cast their backbone.
The next day, the human resources department submitted a name to Vézé. That was the candidate for external publicity. Vézé didn't say anything and directly approved it, letting the comrade named Zhang Bingzhao start work.
On the third day, while Vézé and the technicians were modifying the production process, waiting for the new furnace of steel to be produced, Bi Qingshan came to talk to Vézé about the farm tools. It was already August, and the cooperative's farm tools were extremely popular. The production plan had been changed again and again, and Bi Qingshan had requested to increase the stock several times.
After talking about work, Bi Qingshan couldn't help but ask: "Commander in Chief, have you met Zhang Bingzhao?"
"No, I haven't," Wei Ze replied.
"Then you'd better meet him." Bi Qingshan gave such a suggestion.
When Bi Qingshan left, Vézé still felt a little strange in his heart. Did Bi Qingshan approve of Zhang Bingzhao or not? However, it was always difficult to resist one's natural instinct, and Vézé's nature as an engineer quickly came into play. Completely forgetting Bi Qingshan's words, Vézé focused all his attention on the open hearth steelmaking that he thought was the most important task at hand.
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