"The Qing Dynasty was defeated in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, and the Beiyang Navy was wiped out. It took decades, billions of taels of silver. Oh, one tael of silver is equivalent to the current one thousand coins. You can slowly calculate this loss. The naval fleet that was created at such a large price, the new army was almost done. Not only that, the Beiyang minister Li Hongzhang had to go to Japan to seek peace in person and signed the extremely humiliating Treaty of Shimonoseki. This treaty would pay 200 million taels of silver to Japan, and also ced Liaodong and the large island outside the sea of ​​Minyue, which we now call Yizhou, which is on the sea of ​​Fujian and Yue. It can be said that he has lost power and humiliated the country, lost land and lost silver."

"What's even more terrible is that the Qing Dynasty was considered a quasi-first-class power country in the world. Although the Qing Dynasty was defeated several invasions by Western powers, these Western powers also felt lucky, because China was large and vast, and the Qing Dynasty was a big country with millions of troops. They relied on ships to attack randomly on the coast, and often did not have time to form a battle. Moreover, after the Westernization Movement, the Qing Dynasty purchased a large number of Western weapons and defeated Western countries in some small and medium-sized wars, and even defeated top-class powers like France. In addition, the ships equipped by the Beiyang Navy were all the main warships of the Western powers at that time. They were not outdated and eliminated old goods, and the combat effectiveness of their navy was also at the top of the world on paper."

"All these things made the Qing Dynasty once regarded as one of the great powers and one of the world's great powers before the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895. The country, from top to bottom, from emperor to empress dowager to ordinary people, began to think that it was like the once humiliated Han Dynasty and Tang Dynasty, after experiencing progress, it counterattacked again."

"However, I never expected that Japan, whose territory is less than one-tenth of the Qing Dynasty and whose population is less than one-sixth of the Qing Dynasty, was a small country that was as big as a giant in the Qing Dynasty, could at best be considered a dwarf, defeating the Qing Dynasty and losing its territory. The aura that the Qing Dynasty had just raised just now scattered, like a donkey from Guizhou, under its seemingly huge appearance, was a vulnerable stinky skin."

"From then on a completely different path. Although Japan did not annex Liaodong with the intervention of other Western powers, they took over the entire North Korea and the Yizhou Island, which was later called Taiwan. This made Japan all over the country think that their Meiji Restoration and external expansion were worth it. After receiving the Qing Dynasty's war reparations, it became even more fanatical across the country. Those remarks that were originally worried that Japan's expansion would bring about failure and disaster disappeared. And Japan disappeared.

The reason why they did not swallow Liaodong was because of the three major powers, Britain, France and Russia, that they did not want Japan to dominate the East, so they forced Japan to spit out the land of Liaodong that the Qing Dynasty had stolen to them. Especially Russia, the great power in the north, had the toughest attitude, which made Japan hate these great powers, especially Russia, and then began to become more crazy military militant. The target was not just China, but wanted to defeat these Western powers and dominate the whole world!”
Chapter completed!