Just as East China ** was studying the positioning and reorganization of the Marine Corps, Russian negotiator Witt and his group arrived in Harbin again, and the negotiations between East China ** and Russia began again.

During this negotiation, Russia's attitude became much more pragmatic, and Witt did not have any control from St. Petersburg, so the negotiations were obviously much smoother than the last time.

The first thing the two sides negotiated was the amount of compensation. In the last negotiation, the amount of compensation issued by East China ** was 1 billion rubles. Now, the negotiations must be increased based on this amount. Bi Jing was the first to be unable to withstand it, so Qin Zheng proposed the amount of compensation of 1.5 billion rubles.

Witt first said that Russia could agree to add another part of the compensation amount to the last time, but believed that the compensation of 1.5 billion rubles was too high. Witt also admitted frankly that Russia's domestic economy is basically collapsed and now it can only be maintained by French funds. If East China insists that the compensation amount is 1.5 billion rubles, Russia will definitely go bankrupt and therefore cannot repay such a huge compensation. At that time, even if East China can occupy Russia's Far East, even if it seizes the entire Siberia, it will not be able to obtain a compensation of 1.5 billion rubles from Russia.

At the same time, Witt also pointed out that although the financial situation of East China is better than that of Russia, this war also involved a large amount of manpower and material resources of East China, and caused huge consumption to East China. Ending the war as soon as possible is also beneficial to East China. Therefore, Russia hopes that East China can reduce the amount of compensation to 1.2 billion rubles, which is the limit amount of compensation that Russia can accept.

As for Russia's attitude, Qin Zheng and Qingdao negotiated, they finally determined that East China ** could accept a compensation amount of 1.2 billion rubles, but 200 million rubles of which must be paid in gold rubles, while the remaining 1 billion rubles are converted into four currencies: pound, franc, US dollar, and German mark. This is also the bottom line of East China **. If Russia refuses, then the negotiations can be broken. East China ** would rather bear the risk of not being able to obtain a ruble compensation than make another step back on this basis.

After receiving the conditions from East China **, Werter couldn't help but smile bitterly. The blow from East China ** was indeed quite uncomfortable for Russia. Although East China ** gave in and accepted a compensation amount of 1.2 billion rubles, the request for 200 million rubles was to be paid in gold rubles, which made it difficult for Russia to refuse and accept.

The golden ruble is a gold currency issued by Russia in 1897, with a face value of 5 rubles, of which 1 ruble is approximately 0.774 grams of gold. In fact, the issuance of the golden ruble is a great achievement of Witt in Russian politics.

It turned out that after the mid-19th century, with the rapid development of European countries, the turnover of industrial and trade funds also expanded sharply, so gold's position in currency circulation became increasingly important. Britain began to implement the gold standard as early as 1823, stipulating that one pound was equal to 7.322 grams of gold. Due to Britain's outstanding position in the world economic system at that time, it also established an international gold standard system centered on pound and based on gold. Other countries also followed suit. Canada adopted the gold standard in 1853, and the United States and Germany adopted the gold standard in 1873. After the 1870s, other major European and American countries successively adopted the gold standard instead of the gold-silver duplicate or silver standard.

Until the 1890s, Russia still adopted the silver standard, which made the ruble weak in the international financial market and made Russia at a long-term disadvantage in foreign trade and credit. With the large introduction of foreign capital by Russia, when accepting loans and repaying loan interest, it urgently needed to calculate it using the internationally common value scale. Therefore, Russia's overall economic and fiscal development needs prompted Werther to decide to implement monetary reform in Russia and change to the gold standard. At this time, Russia had accumulated more than 1,000 tons of gold, which also provided sufficient capital for Russia's monetary reform.

On January 14, 1897, the Russian State Council approved the proposal of Witt to implement the gold standard in Russia. So on January 15, the Ministry of Finance issued a general order to implement the currency gold standard from now on, confirming that gold and rubles can be exchanged freely and issued gold rubles. At this time, the total value of gold in the Russian treasury was about 1.5 billion rubles. Based on such a huge amount of gold, Russia also successfully completed the monetary reform of the gold standard, and it was also Witt's largest political capital.

However, after 1900, Russia invested in competition with Northeast China, expanded its military preparations, and launched a fierce confrontation with Japan, so it had to borrow heavily from the outside world. Before the Russo-Japanese War began, Russia's foreign debt was as high as 4 billion rubles, of which 3 billion rubles were purchased by France. Therefore, Russia had to pay France 330 million rubles to maintain its credit for the rubles in the French financial market.

After the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War, Russia suffered consecutive defeats in the war, resulting in serious deterioration in the domestic economy and the ruble depreciated significantly in the international financial market. Russia could only rely on continuously paying gold rubles to maintain its international credit. Now Russia's gold rubles are less than 500 million rubles.

Now East China ** requires payment of 200 million gold rubles and almost half of Russia's existing gold rubles, which is definitely unacceptable to Russia. But rejecting this condition of East China ** means that Russia can only choose between paying 1.5 billion rubles of reparations and breaking negotiations.

The negotiations are broken, and refusing to pay a gold ruble means that Russia needs to pay an extra 300 million rubles. This loss is also unbearable for Russia, because East China does not charge rubles, but requires it to be converted into pounds, francs, US dollars, and German marks. Now the ruble has depreciated significantly in the international financial market, which will cost Russia a greater price. These foreign currencies need to be exchanged with real money or silver or commodities.

If you pay gold rubles, it means that Russia only uses 1 billion rubles of foreign currency, which undoubtedly makes Russia easier, but it will lose nearly half of the gold, which will bring difficulties to Russia's economic recovery after the war. Therefore, this is indeed a dilemma. However, for such a major choice, Werther cannot decide, and can only report to the country and ask St. Petersburg to make a decision.

Three days later, St. Petersburg replied to Vitt that he could accept the conditions of East China ** and pay 200 million gold rubles. After all, now we have to take care of the situation and pay less. Moreover, there are a large amount of gold mines in Russia. Even if the gold rubles are lost, it can be replenished even if they dig a little more. But Russia also put forward a condition that the remaining 1 billion rubles must be converted at a ratio of 0.774 grams of gold, rather than at the value of rubles in the international financial market. Because the rubles depreciate in the international financial market by more than 30%, if they are converted at a ratio of 0.774 grams of gold, Russia will save more than 300 million rubles.

Soon, East China ** also responded and could accept Russia's request. In fact, East China ** has received about 180 million pounds of compensation from Britain, France, Japan and the Netherlands. It can not only make up for the cost of the war, but also nearly half of the surplus. Therefore, East China ** is actually not short of money now, and of course it will not be considered to be low. Moreover, for countries like Russia, it is absolutely impossible to let go of a single horse, and it will take as much as it should.

However, the requirement to pay 200 million rubles was actually to increase the gold reserves of East China. Bijing Gold is a hard currency for international trade. Even in the old time and space, the gold standard was no longer implemented, but gold was still the most valuable capital, and countries have also hoarded gold in large quantities. Therefore, for East China, gold is of course the more gold is the better.

Moreover, the actual silver standard system in East China is still implemented, but neither silver dollars nor paper money can be circulated internationally. Of course, since the establishment of East China, the main market is still domestic, and the import of foreign countries is mainly to purchase machinery, arms, grain, etc., but the demand is not large, and the utilization of foreign capital has attracted investment from East China. Therefore, although the foreign trade of East China is still in a deficit, it can basically maintain the trade balance by relying on the war reparations received before and the income from selling resources.

However, after the Far East War, the foreign trade of East China will definitely expand. The original main imported machinery will definitely expand. At the same time, it will also import a large number of other industrial products. In addition, the introduction of foreign capital will also be further expanded. If East China still implements the bank standard system, it will undoubtedly cause serious impact on East China's foreign trade and will not be conducive to the internationalization of East China's currency.

Of course, after the Far East War, East China received huge compensation, and foreign exchange was sufficient and could support import expenditures for a period of time. But in the long run, East China would sooner or later change the monetary system, from the silver standard to the gold standard, or the gold-silver duplicate system. Then, now we need to reserve a large amount of gold to make full preparations for future currency reform.

200 million gold rubles, about 155 tons of gold, are naturally quite considerable. You should know that the gold inventories in East China is less than 80 tons. Therefore, the actual value of these 200 million gold rubles to East China is far greater than the value of the currency it represents.

The remaining 1 billion rubles, even if it is converted at a ratio of 0.774 grams of gold worth 1 ruble, is about 105 million pounds. This is already a huge amount of compensation, and there is no need for East China ** to insist on using international financial exchange rates. What Witt said is not wrong. Now East China ** also needs to stop war and restore peace.
Chapter completed!