Mencius once said, "People must insult themselves, and then others will insult them." If it is more serious, it means "If people do not strengthen themselves, they will be insulted."

Even the uneducated netizens can understand this saying: If a person has no face himself, then don’t expect others to give him face. If you are always willing to be a salted fish, you have to be mentally prepared to be slapped in the face sooner or later.

The same principle applies to a company or a country.

If you compare the conscience of the United States with companies such as Tiktok, Huawei, and Haier, you will find that what Mencius said is simply the truth!

To put it bluntly, protesting and condemning every day cannot bring peace, and kneeling down and begging for surrender may not necessarily lead to survival.

However, those enigmatic emperors of the Song Dynasty, as well as those so-called scholars who were well-read in poetry and books but were actually tough inside and timid outside, obviously failed to fully understand the wise words of Mencius -

The Tang Dynasty pushed the Japanese country to the ground in the Battle of Baijiangkou. As a result, the Japanese country knelt down and licked the Tang Dynasty crazily for more than two hundred years. I also tell those who don’t ask questions about the court and eventually stop entering the Tang Dynasty.”

After the founding of the Song Dynasty, the Japanese state never sent "envoys to the Song Dynasty". On the contrary, the emperor of the Song Dynasty often personally received and rewarded the Japanese monks who came to the Song Dynasty through various channels with generous gifts, and also treated Japanese monks who came to the Song Dynasty through various channels. They provide a lot of care for Buddhist worship activities in China.

In the first year of Yuanfeng, the Japanese monk Zhonghui returned home on a merchant ship belonging to the Song Dynasty merchant Sun Zhong. After Song Shenzong received the report, he specially asked Sun Zhong to bring the "national ultimatum" and the rewards to the Japanese court, because the official document contained the word "return gift". , the Japanese court responded indifferently.

Two years later, Song Shenzong, who had not received any feedback, once again asked Song Dynasty businessman Huang Feng to take the opportunity of doing business to go to Japan with a "national ultimatum". However, the Japanese court still decided to "treat it coldly" after convening five consecutive meetings of ministers to discuss countermeasures.

In Japanese historical records such as "Dazaifu Tenmangu Palace Historical Materials", the words "The Song Dynasty's ultimatum arrives" appear many times. According to the analysis, during the Northern Song Dynasty, except for Song Taizu, Song Yingzong and Song Qinzong, other emperors reported to the Japanese court and the Japanese government in various forms. Relevant parties have sent ultimatums, but Japan's attitude has always been quite cold.

To put it simply, those cowardly emperors of the Song Dynasty tried their best to rub their hot faces against the cold ass of Japan, but Japan disliked them in every possible way, perhaps because they were not good-looking, or because they disliked them. The face doesn’t fit the shape of the butt well enough.

The fundamental reason why there is such a situation that the Japanese people regard Su Dongpo as a god but treat the Song Dynasty court as shit is not at all because of the political situation in the Central Plains at that time as some people say, nor is it because the Japanese country considers itself political and political. It has surpassed China in terms of culture, not to mention the fact that the Song Dynasty refused to accept "sending envoys to the Song Dynasty".

Investigating the root cause, there are actually only four words:

The weak have no friends!

During the Heian period and the Kamakura shogunate period of the Japanese state, it was the stage of the rise and development of the Japanese samurai regime. The adoption of the foreign strategy of "leaving the Song Dynasty" had its domestic political and geostrategic considerations, but fundamentally speaking, the reason why the Japanese state did not The main reason why the Song Dynasty court took it seriously was the Song Dynasty itself!

There is a famous saying that "a weak country has no diplomacy." Although its origin is "difficult to verify in detail," this sentence contains an irrefutable truth——

The stronger a country's comprehensive strength, the easier it is to carry out diplomatic activities and the more friends it has on the international stage, while the opposite is true for weak countries. The Song Dynasty's embarrassing relationship with the Japanese country just confirmed this.

Three of the four great inventions were born, six of the "Eight Great Masters of the Tang and Song Dynasties" were born, the fiscal revenue of the imperial court reached an all-time peak, and the Song Dynasty with a population of 80 million was not strong enough!

The wealth of the Song Dynasty was actually only the superficial wealth caused by its chaotic statistics. It blindly gave in in the face of challenges and negotiated peace again and again. In fact, it meant that the Song Dynasty voluntarily gave up its status as the leader of the monster house in East Asia.

Therefore, the Japanese country dared not to take the Song Dynasty seriously, so the Japanese country dared to issue the "Sea Crossing System" that prohibited citizens from going to the sea, the "Prohibition Order" that restricted the purchase of goods from the Central Plains, and the "Purchase Prohibition Order" that restricted the number of merchant ships from the Central Plains to the Japanese Kingdom.

"Determine age".

But no matter what, no matter how bad the Song Dynasty is, it is still its own country. Now that he is the emperor of the Song Dynasty, if the Japanese country does not give face to the Song Dynasty, it will naturally mean that it does not give face to Zhao Huan.

Not giving face is equivalent to slapping the face of the peerless emperor Zhao Huan who once overturned the whole world in his previous life and is preparing to overturn the whole world in this life.

This is new revenge.

Not to mention there are old enemies from a previous life.

Old grudges, old grudges, and now new grudges, especially when fifty-five VIPs are involved, it is easy to attract the dimension-reducing attack of the river crab beast, Zhao Huan feels that it is more cost-effective to kill the Japanese country.

Then, the problem returns to its original origin——

If you want to conduct a cross-sea expedition against Japan, you must have a powerful enough navy, and if you want to build a navy that can conquer the world, you cannot do without warships that can sail across the sea.

But the warships of the Song Dynasty were burned by Zhao Jixiang!

Now if you want to rebuild an invincible fleet, in addition to the original drawings, you also need a sufficient amount of money and manpower. If you want to further improve the warships, you will need more than just money and manpower.

——

For Zhao Huan, money is not a problem. As long as Emperor Zhao Jixiang has not died, he will have a steady stream of small treasury to draw money from. Manpower is also not a problem, because the most important thing in the Song Dynasty is people.

The problem is that if you want to play multi-riveted steamed steel, you need not only a sufficient number of master craftsmen, but also a sufficient number of scientific researchers.

It just so happened that these scholars in the Song Dynasty were spoiled—

At that time, Zhao Da himself was in an unfair position and had no choice but to play the trick of "sharing the world with the scholar-bureaucrats". In fact, just like Liu Yezhu himself who did not believe in the nonsense of "exclusively respecting Confucianism", Zhao Da did not kill the scholars when he should have

They kill all the same and never show any mercy.

But the damn thing is, just as the solemn worship of Confucianism has become the true solemn worship of Confucianism, sharing the world with the scholar-bureaucrats has also become the true shared world with the scholar-bureaucrats. Song Zhenzong Zhao Heng can say that "there are thousands of millimeters in the book"

"The book has its own house of gold, the book has its own beauty like jade", and "Poems of a Prodigy" openly and openly shouts out the nonsense that "everything is inferior, only reading is good".

After that, the scholars of the Song Dynasty were almost useless.

If these scholars in the Song Dynasty were asked to study Shiyun, then they would all be top-notch experts. However, if they were asked to study how steel is made, they would be miserable.

"So, I am just a hard worker."
Chapter completed!