Yes, Prime Minister of Japan

"I agree with China's position and am committed to peace across the Taiwan Strait."

Li Xinghe said this, blurring his own stance.

Despite being a conference dedicated to peace across the Taiwan Strait, the retreating pro-independence government on the island of Taiwan was nowhere to be seen; instead, diplomats from China, Japan, South Korea, and the United States were bustling about.

Here you can also hear some pro-unification voices in Taiwan, trying to explain the situation on the island: "Neither the KMT nor the DPP is in favor of unification." "Who Taiwanese people vote for is actually a very complicated issue. People's demands are complicated. Those who support unification may vote for the DPP, and those who do not support it may vote for the KMT. But there is no red for everyone to vote for."

However, the situation in Taiwan is similar to that in Japan. If any pro-independence party were to try to emerge, they would have been silenced long ago by the pro-unification and pro-unification groups backed by the United States. Therefore, the situation is clear to everyone, but change is very difficult.

So everything is stuck here, and every country is suffering.

After the morning meeting ended, Wu Haojiang and Li Xinghe sat down in a private meeting room.

Li Xinghe deliberately used his broken noon pronunciation to start spouting nonsense:

"I heard that Ambassador Wu is from Hunan, while I am from Jiangsu, specifically Nanjing, Anhui. As the saying goes, you live at the head of the Yangtze River, and I live at the tail of the Yangtze River, yet we drink from the same river."

Wu Haojiang cleverly said:

"We are indeed close relatives separated only by a narrow strip of water."

The phrase "separated only by a strip of water" is often used to describe the relationship between China and Japan. In ancient times, it was used as a slogan in the Sui Dynasty's conquest of the Southern Chen Dynasty, and it was synonymous with the saying "How can I allow others to snore under my bed?"

Li Xinghe continued:

"Japan's decision to establish a Price Equilibrium Commission, based on the regional cooperation spirit of RCEP, will allow for greater imports of vegetables and industrial products from China to meet the needs of its people. I think this is a legacy of the spirit of the China-Japan-Korea Free Trade Agreement."

Li Xinghe's implication here is that Prime Minister Koizumi is starting to waver and is extending an olive branch to you. Let's go back in time and restart the free trade zone.

Shigeru Ishiba was also secretly following along from the sidelines:

"Starting from the nuclear wastewater investigation, the lifting of the ban on Japanese seafood has been actively promoted, which shows that there is a high degree of mutual trust between China and Japan."

Despite being the person in charge of foreign affairs, he looked like a sleazy old man assisting Li Xinghe.

From the Price Commission to RCEP, from China's independent investigation of nuclear wastewater in Japan to Japan's economic development prospects, Li Xinghe did his best to talk about the current situation in Japan as he understood it, engaging in roundabout maneuvering with Wu Haojiang.

Diplomatic negotiations are just like that – endless nonsense. Only one or two sentences are truly useful, while the preceding ramblings can go on for an entire day.

So Li Xinghe really did spend the whole day talking nonsense with Wu Haojiang.

He couldn't sleep at night either, spending his time in front of the computer.

Through different intermediaries, information from the scene was relayed to China, the US, Japan, and South Korea.

Hirai and Shinsawa Taiho embraced each other and fell asleep softly on the bed, while Li Xinghe continued to work hard, munching on coffee and pills.

I didn't sleep all night.

Li Xinghe continued negotiations with the Chinese side the following day.

The conditions for peace across the Taiwan Strait are being adjusted step by step, from halting the situation to unilateral concessions, and then to acknowledging the status quo. Negotiation teams from China, the United States, Japan, and South Korea are conducting similar negotiations in different rooms.

Li Xinghe hadn't slept for two days, and in front of Shi Pomao, he exchanged witty remarks with Wu Haojiang:

"Your Excellency, I think we should stop while we're ahead. If we continue to pursue this relentlessly, then the United States, Japan, and South Korea have more than 600 fourth and fifth generation fighter jets, and thousands of fighter jets that can directly traverse the East China Sea. The Taiwan Strait crisis cannot escalate into an East China Sea crisis, and the East China Sea crisis cannot turn into a war between China, Japan, and South Korea."

The air forces of the United States, Japan, and South Korea are arguably the only forces with strategic deterrence remaining, given the increasingly weak state of their aircraft carrier battle groups.

Wu Haojiang remained noncommittal, offering only a slight smile.

It's like nobody else has one.

Negotiations continued in this manner until the third day, when a memorandum of understanding was finally reached.

Li Xinghe shakes hands with Wu Haojiang:

"That's it?"

Ambassador Wu said:

"that's it."

Shigeru Ishiba peeked out from the side, trying to join in for a photo.

Finally, after many days of difficult negotiations, the United States and Japan issued a critical condition notice to the pro-independence regime in Taiwan.

As your father, we have done everything we can to protect you. We hope the pro-independence government will not be so ungrateful and will kneel down before its own father.

We'll accept it: the Globemaster III transport planes are being withdrawn, the M1A2 tanks are no longer being provided, and the F-35 fighter jets are temporarily out of the question. All that's left are a few US military instructors; take them or leave them.

"This is practically a Munich Conference of a new era!"

As expected, pro-independence media outlets in Taiwan broke down, lamenting that they were the Czechs who were called into the meeting to sign the agreement.

As the world's hegemon, the United States' last vestige of dignity is to allow itself to issue only one regional security memorandum.

This is a very peculiar dialogue document about the local situation.

The United States made no mention of Taiwan in its entire statement. Instead, it went on to talk at length about how it would restrain the use of force and claimed that it would conduct stricter reviews of arms sales in East Asia and demilitarize the Taiwanese armed forces. The United States is practically a benefactor of the Mio region.

When the public saw the actual actions taken by the United States, it turned out that the US had withdrawn the Globemaster III transport aircraft, reneged on a large sum of military expenses already paid by Taiwan, and stated that it would not sell any more arms to Taiwan in the short term. After doing all this, the US then made a high-profile declaration that it would maintain the situation in Northeast Asia without escalating, acting as a peace angel.

Intelligent people can see that the United States is increasingly losing its footing in Northeast Asia, and is even being dragged around and beaten by the testicles on the edge of Taiwan.

Commentators from all walks of life have come to the same conclusion:

"The United States has actually shown signs of defeat in the standoff in the East China Sea."

Who believes it?

Then came a long series of energy security statements from Japan and South Korea, indicating that China pledged to protect the energy transport routes between the two countries in the Taiwan Strait, that energy and shipping prices in Japan and South Korea would remain stable in the long term, and that the trilateral cooperation mechanism was operating effectively, and so on.

On the Taiwan issue, which is at the heart of the entire regional security dialogue, the answer is simple: maintain the status quo.

So what is the current situation?

The current situation is that Taiwan is becoming an "international cage" in the eyes of Europe and the United States, retreating from the median line of the Taiwan Strait to the point where the island is surrounded, and maritime and air transport is required to make declarations and registrations. The Taiwan Strait, which was once an international waterway, is now effectively in someone else's hands.

Therefore, it is roughly equivalent to the US, Japan, and South Korea signing a defeat agreement.

Initially, the world's inhabitants did not take this standoff within the local area network seriously.

After all, the US and China have to fight a major battle over the Taiwan Strait situation every year, and then European and American countries side with the US, while third-world countries side with China, and the two sides argue on the Internet.

But when the US stock market opened for trading on Monday morning Eastern Time, people realized that something was amiss.

Lying in the guardhouse of the Qingshan Information Building, Chris Elizabeth glanced at her remaining pension savings just before going to sleep, coinciding with the opening of the Eastern US stock market, and then burst into a sharp scream: "My pension! My savings... all gone..."

On this sorrowful night, another heartbroken person has been added to the world.

In Washington, Ayman, who had just woken up, was shocked to discover that various financial backers were all fleeing the stock market.

For many Americans living in the post-pandemic era, with banks failing one after another and large corporations behaving blatantly, putting their savings and retirement funds into the US stock market, which Biden and Trump have been driving up relentlessly and which seems to have no end in sight, is the only logical choice.

At this moment, the US stock market began to educate the public about what a crazy stock market is.

Large amounts of US dollar funds are leaving the market in a stampede-like competition.

US stocks fell sharply as soon as the market opened.

Thirty minutes later, stock markets across the country began to trigger circuit breakers.

The disastrous performance of the US stock market not only blew up the market value of various companies, but also caused a massive stampede of retail investors, creating a serious stock market crisis.

It seems that the situation of the Taiwan Strait confrontation has shown that the foundations upon which the United States, its stocks, its dollar, and its bonds exist have begun to crumble.

In a single day, US stocks, bonds, and currency all plummeted, experiencing massive drops simultaneously. This marked the end of the "Trump-style economics" during Trump's second term, which relied on rampant money printing and saturated currency to propel the economy to its peak—a system characterized by a strong stock market and a strong dollar, but also by extremely high inflation, exploding living costs, and a massive increase in debt to trillions of dollars.

The super economic crisis that the United States has been struggling to weather for eight years has finally begun.

The end of the Taiwan Strait standoff had a minor impact, but it gave people an excuse for a collapse of trust.

"It's all the Democrats' fault!" Trump defended himself on social media, accusing Democratic funders and their backers of orchestrating this 'financial 9/11' against the US stock market. Clearly, the Democrats deliberately created an economic crisis in the US, aiming to detonate the economic bomb in Trump's final year, thus killing two birds with one stone and winning the 2028 election.

However, it could no longer attract much attention, because the economic crisis, like a tsunami and a landslide, swallowed up all ordinary citizens in this great era.

The author says:

Author's Note: Thank you all for your support. Here's 4500 words. The Taiwan Strait standoff is almost over; it's time to start the script for the US economic crisis impacting the world. However, the South Korean storyline isn't finished yet; more will follow.

Chapter 498: Koreans' Jumping Game and Mutiny in Action

On March 13, 2028, US stocks experienced Black Monday.

For Li Xinghe, who was attending the Busan Peace Forum at the APEC World Summit building in Dongbaek, Busan, South Korea, this had no impact. His assets had already been converted into Japanese yen for convenience. With tens of billions of yen in illicit funds and trillions of yen in secret military spending at his disposal, along with his own secret bank and his money not being held in the US stock market, he had no need to worry about the potential harm of a US stock market crash.

But in the morning, the crashing and banging noises kept him from sleeping.

"I'm jumping off a building!"

"We're doomed!"

Outside, the mournful and desolate laughter of South Koreans could be heard. South Korean stock investors jumped from the high-rise buildings of luxury resort hotels next to Dongbaek Peninsula, falling like dumplings into a pot, landing on the ground, air conditioner units, balconies, and Dongbaek Bay.

Having only slept for 10 hours, Li Xinghe couldn't hold back any longer. He jumped out of bed and pulled back the curtains, only to see a half-severed, bloodied body hanging on the balcony, still crying into the house. In the background, one after another, aerial figures were falling from the sky, making Li Xinghe mistakenly think that he had been transported to the zombie apocalypse theater of Train to Busan.

Some of these people were enjoying a spring vacation at a 5-star hotel on the beach yesterday, and today...

Then the sky fell down.

At that moment, Hirai Emi and Niizawa Tai, who were sleeping in the same bed, felt the direct sunlight and groggily woke up, asking:

"Why?"

Li Xinghe immediately drew the curtains, closed the window, and calmly said, "It's nothing, go back to sleep."

Because they were officially a married couple, he slept with Ping Yingmei.

Despite being considered a well-known Chinese-American athlete by the Japanese, Hirai Mi isn't actually very famous, and she didn't make the national table tennis team. Therefore, she spent the last two days accompanying Lee Sung-ha at banquets, meetings, and various discussions. On the other hand, Niizawa Tae-ho visited famous tourist attractions in South Korea, planning trips to Haeundae Beach, Dongbaek Bay, and other scenic spots.

As a member of Japan's diplomatic team, Li Xinghe receives a 200 million yen attendance allowance when traveling abroad, ostensibly for "purchasing gifts," but in reality, he can spend it however he wants.

So after the formal meeting, today's plan was to take Shinsawa Taiho around the neighborhood for some sightseeing.

However, the scene outside today, with people packed like dumplings in a pot, made Li Xinghe hesitate.

These days, the most popular Korean TV shows are stock and cryptocurrency jumping shows. What are we supposed to take our kids out to see on days like this? Flying trapeze artists, and then rate their jumping poses?

Li Xinghe closed the curtains in the room, but the hissing sound outside continued.

Shinsawa Taiho, kicking her little feet, adorably hugged a pillow by the bedside:

"Why did Dad close all the curtains?"

"There's a performance art piece going on outside, I'm afraid it might scare you."

As Li Xinghe spoke, he prepared a Western-style sandwich and milk breakfast in the kitchen.

Hirai was still lazing in bed, her tender, upturned buttocks barely concealed by her panties, pressing Shinsawa Taiho down on the bed, preventing her from moving.

In the morning news broadcast, a local Busan news anchor, her voice trembling with tears, addressed the citizens of Busan: "Due to Black Monday, cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum experienced a massive plunge, with fluctuations exceeding 10% at one point. Many stock and cryptocurrency investors suffered margin calls. Currently, dozens... hundreds of people are attempting suicide by jumping off buildings. I hope everyone... everyone can stay strong... Waaah... I've also been liquidated... I'm finished... Waaah... I owe 11 billion won..."

Li Xinghe sighed, unable to eat anymore.

The stock market crash only affected South Korean stock market investors. However, the triple whammy of a US stock, bond, and currency crash also caused the cryptocurrency paradise meticulously crafted by Trump and Elon Musk, among other newly rich tech and capital tycoons, to collapse. This was truly a devastating blow to South Korean cryptocurrency investors who had been trading for over a decade.

South Korea has a massive cryptocurrency community, with over 40% of young people taking out loans and borrowing money to aggressively invest in cryptocurrencies. And now, almost all those committing suicide are young people.

Soon, the police knocked on the door.

A policewoman asked:

"Hello sir, your neighbor called the police saying there's half a person hanging on your balcony. Please let us in."

Li Xinghe was stunned.

At this moment, Zhao Lieshu, who had been secretly protecting Li Xinghe, appeared immediately. She was in the room diagonally opposite. She stepped out and stopped the policeman, while Ping Yingmei on the bed immediately perked up her ears, jumped off the bed, and went to open the door.

The two women, one with a classic, athletic beauty and the other a gentle, virtuous lady from a good family, left the policewoman bewildered.

Who are you?

Facing the South Korean policewoman, Zhao Lieshu spoke in Korean and Ping Yingmei in Chinese respectively:

“I am his wife.”

“I am his wife.”

The South Korean policewoman was stunned.

Zhao Lieshu and Ping Yingmei exchanged a glance, surprised but not refuting each other. After all, they had met once before.

Although she couldn't understand Chinese, she could tell what the two women were saying just by looking at their expressions, which left the policewoman even more confused.

At this moment, she looked at Lee Ju-yeon behind her.