Lieutenant General Julius Ringer left Shanghai and went to Hankou to meet General Wu Peifu. He will serve as Chief of Staff of Wu and help the Chinese train and form a newly recruited army here. △ General Wu is thin and should be considered a taller person among the Chinese. He has a long face and his eyes are as brown as the Mongolians. He is 64 years old this year. Because he took over the troops of his old commander, he is regarded as one of the iron-fisted objects of several military forces.

The situation in China is very strange. Although it nominally has a parliament, its actual power is in the hands of several major warlords with military power. The current president is one side, and the former president is one side, while Wu is the main leader of a faction divided from the original Beiyang clan.

The Chinese army was recruited by major forces by themselves, and was not loyal to Beijing's army headquarters, but obeyed its commanders. Beijing had no choice but to do so. Duan Qirui wanted to solve these problems with force for a while, but under the opposition of other forces, he finally reached a compromise. The Army headquarters gave each major force several or more than a dozen divisions, and the Army headquarters added more than one million military pay to each division every year. The provinces controlled by these warlords had to pay 30% of the taxes. The Ministry of Finance of Beijing sent people to supervise the tax situation in each province and did not allow each province to increase taxes privately.

Beijing's intention was to slowly bring finances to the central government, but before these tasks were completed, the war came.

These forces have their own representatives in Beijing, nominally obeying Beijing's leadership, but in fact they have great autonomy and sometimes oppose the central government's policies. Beijing needs to refer to their opinions when formulating policies. If someone insists on opposing them, the policies will be difficult to implement.

But after the war began, these warlords who had only considered local interests expressed their willingness to put national interests first and were willing to hand over their troops to the state for unified command. Most of them still cared about their "fame" and were unwilling to be criticized for "destroying the War of Resistance".

Ringer spent three years in China as a member of the Austro-Hungarian Military Advisory Group from 1924 to 1927, but at that time he mainly worked in North China and Northwest to help General Xu Shuzheng train his "Northwest Frontier Defense Force". General Xu won honor for himself by leading his troops to regain Mongolia and part of the territory of the Far East. After 1931, he held the position of Army Minister. This is also the most important position of all forces, and their interest in it is far greater than that of the Prime Minister.

General Wu's army's "defense zone" is Hunan, Hubei and Henan provinces in central China, and is actually the high-ranking rulers of these three provinces. Although each province has nominal governors, if these governors do not obey his orders, he will force the other party to "resign", which is their usual method.

Wuchang is one of the most developed regions in China with heavy industry. It has the earliest and largest Wuchang steel plant in China, which can produce 500,000 tons of steel every year, which is almost one-third of China's domestic production. The steel plant was originally almost sold to Japan by a profiteer named Sheng. Later, due to fierce opposition from domestic people, the Yuan Shikai government used loans provided by the Credit Bank of Vienna to acquire and repay all the Japanese shares held by the factory. The factory became a "state enterprise" with the majority of state-owned shares and has been directly managed by the Ministry of Transport.

In Hanyang, there is also China's largest Hanyang Arsenal. More than half of the artillery imitated by the Chinese Army itself were produced by this factory. In addition, this industry can produce 100,000 rifles, thousands of machine guns and artillery every year. From the Hanyang Arsenal, it also began to imitate automobiles and internal combustion engines in 1913, and copied China's first aviation engine for the Nanyuan Aviation School in Beijing.

Now Isleia owns about 45% of the stake in this machine factory. It has developed into a large enterprise with tens of thousands of people, which can manufacture 12,000 cars, nearly 20,000 internal combustion engines every year, and enough to manufacture nearly 600 tanks.

There are about five factories in China that can produce cars, but only three tanks and tractor factories. In addition to the Hanyang Machinery Factory, the Zhangjiakou Locomotive Factory can also manufacture internal combustion engines, tanks and tractors. In addition, the Baotou Tractor Factory was newly built in 1934. The Taiyuan Arsenal in Shanxi can produce cars, but cannot produce internal combustion engines. Now General Yan is using German and Austrian aid equipment to carry out large-scale reconstruction and expansion of the arsenal.

There are six aircraft factories in China, but none of them are very large in scale, mainly engaged in aircraft repair and assembly. Beijing’s Nanyuan Aircraft Factory is the largest aircraft factory in China. In addition, Fuzhou’s Navy Arsenal can also manufacture aircraft and internal combustion engines. However, Fujian’s factories are relocating to Guangxi, and production is very abnormal. If foreign aid is cut off, according to Ringer’s estimate, China can only produce less than 600 aircraft a year, which is far from meeting the needs.

Since 1935, with the support of the empire's loan, the Beijing government has begun a package of reorganization plans, relocating and building a series of factories in Chongqing, Xi'an, Baotou, Lanzhou and Zhuzhou in the west. However, since the entire project only began in 1936, it is expected that the earliest factories will not be put into production until next spring.

The equipment of China's CSKA division is not worse than that of the Japanese army. It is basically equipped with the Stair Carcano 6.5mm caliber standard rifle. After the Stair Manlisha was merged by the Isleia Group, the Carcano rifle designed for the Italians also adopts the ten-round magazine-type ammunition supply design of the Isleia rifle. Together with Lee Enfield and Isleia, it is known as the three fastest bolt-action rifles in the world. Rifles with excellent operation can even use it to achieve the rate of fire of a semi-automatic rifle.

However, the equipment of Chinese local troops is much worse. Most of them use Hanyang rifles that have been eliminated, imitating German committee-style rifles, and some Japanese and Russian rifles, with various equipment and poor training for soldiers, especially the serious shortage of artillery artillery.

After the war was revived, General Wu set up three recruit training bases in Yueyang, Hunan, Wuchang, Hubei and Luoyang, Henan, and recruited about 300,000 recruits for training. Now China has not established a complete reserve system, and recruitment depends on temporary recruitment, and many people are forced to join the army.

Linger found that these troops lacked experienced professional officers. Many young officers were recruiting students and did not have experience in military academy. This was a terrible thing, but there was no way. Compared with the twilight Beiyang generals, Linger prefers to deal with intermediate officers who came from Baoding Military Academy or studying in Europe. These people have good military qualities and have received a complete military education. In fact, they know how to fight better than those generals, but due to qualifications, they have not yet reached a high position.

Linger believed that the old Beiyang generals would soon be eliminated by the cruel war, and these middle-aged middle-aged officers would soon become the backbone of this army. He prefers Chinese soldiers, who are actually more hard-working. Although many people are forced to serve in the military, they never complain, and are optimistic and like to joke. Many people are smiling and telling their experience of being "captured and strong".

Chinese soldiers can tolerate bad food, which is something that European soldiers cannot compare with. They are very obedient and can carry out the commands of their superiors without hesitation, even for very dangerous tasks. The problem is that they rarely encounter excellent commanders. The senior officers in Beiyang only care about their own enjoyment and are out of touch with the troops. Some generals have not even inspected their troops for more than half a year. (To be continued, please search Piaotian Si, the novel is better, updated and faster!
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