Yes, Prime Minister of Japan

Being mired in an economic quagmire means burying your competitors in the same business with you in the quagmire.

Destroying the enemy's will is difficult, but destroying the enemy's body is very easy.

I thought my armored vehicle had run over a speed bump.

Go talk to my 155mm howitzer!

Soon, the Ukrainian investment group reaped its rewards for the year, procuring wheat from all over the country and delivering 400 million tons of wheat, worth 1200 billion yuan or about 3.6 trillion yen on the international market.

Compared to the low cost of planting, the profits from this business naturally satisfied Li Xinghe, and he granted Hu Zhantian's Ukrainian investment group permission to continue expanding its business. They invested in farms, mines, machinery factories, shipyards, and ports in Ukraine, and if they couldn't invest, they killed the owners and then invested in those.

Ukrainians have been relentlessly criticizing this rampant warlord group.

"You son of a bitch!"

They went to Kyiv to report the incident and made a scene.

Zaluzhni's solemn commitment:

"I'll give them a call and solve the problem."

Then, the Odessa Center had a long phone conversation with Zaluzhne's office.

After Zaluzhny received bribes from the Ukrainian investment group, he ordered the recognition of the Odessa Lions Division as an official Ukrainian army.

As long as they hang the Ukrainian flag, it's not considered violent debt collection! It's official grain collection.

Thus, the armed grain seizure continued as usual, with the Odessa Lion Division continuing to fire and requisition grain. For those local wealthy individuals who dared to resist, they were fined 200 RMB per ton of wheat upon export.

"You son of a bitch!" the Ukrainian continued to curse, but there was nothing he could do.

After the grain harvest, large numbers of immigrants recruited from East Asia disembarked from the plane and, according to the asset management group's arrangements, began to clear abandoned land and dilapidated villages in the towns and villages to restore production. The first batch of more than 30,000 people has already arrived.

Their arrangement was naturally to join the church and obtain Christian status.

Joining church is great, they promise marriage and child support.

In this regard, everyone has adopted the most traditional approach.

Each batch of immigrants who signed the cooperation agreement had to stand at the village entrance and be inspected by the village women. A woman would take a liking to a man and pull him by the rope; if the man thought it was suitable, he would lift the rope, and that meant they had hit it off.

Alex's cousin, Father Ivan, explained it as:

"This is called a sacred marriage."

Of course, the Christian church has a long tradition of arranging marriages for its members, which is not a transgression.

During the church wedding ceremony, Father Ivan said to the woman:

“You should bear him children and regard him as the head of the household.”

This is a Slavic social tradition.

He then said to the man:

"You should do the work for her, cultivate and hone your skills with hard work and sweat, and raise the children."

This is a Chinese cultural tradition.

A single ceremony arranges the marriages of 30 couples, thus forming many temporary families. It is very much in line with Christian tradition.

Marriage certificate?

Ukraine's internal affairs department has little control over Odessa, which is a church.

After the mass wedding began, Manager Alex told Hu Zhantian:

"We have already prepared teaching materials in both Ukrainian and Chinese."

So proactive?

In reality, it's just because that's how it's been done for the past few years. Europeans come and use textbooks in English, Polish, or German, while Americans come and use American textbooks.

Ukrainians are already very familiar with how to do this.

When Europeans come, talk about values; when Americans come, talk about developing valuable mineral resources; when Chinese come, talk about trade and economics, and boast about Chinese civilization—it's all the same old routine.

After explaining, Alex, the manager who had previously worked for both Britain and the United States, made a philosophical statement:

“Long ago, Ukraine was a wasteland. The Viking tribes of the north migrated south, and Kievan Rus' was born here, only to be destroyed by a constant stream of nomadic armies. Since then, the Mongols came, and the Ukrainians were Mongols. The Tatars came, and the Ukrainians were Tatars. The Lithuanians came, and the Ukrainians were Lithuanians. The Poles came, and we were Poles. The Russians came, and we were Little Russians. Now, Europe and the United States continue to exert influence, and we are becoming Europeans again. This is not fundamentally different from the changes before. In the end, we will still be ourselves, but we will no longer know who we are.”

This is the perspective of ordinary people in Ukraine after the Russo-Ukrainian war froze.

To paraphrase that famous meme:

'Optimists learn English, pessimists learn Russian, despairers learn Chinese, and madmen learn Hindi.'

In fact, Hu Zhantian was only one of the last to arrive. Before he brought his Ukrainian investment group to Odessa, pioneers from various European countries and the United States had already conducted similar cultural transformation experiments in several Ukrainian regions, teaching Ukrainians English, creating their own Ukrainian script, and implementing various reforms in an attempt to gain a comparative advantage over Russia through so-called 'institutional advantages' and 'civilizational advantages,' and achieve a strategic reversal in the Second Russo-Ukrainian War.

But clearly, this nonsensical so-called experiment is merely a new pretext for colonization and expansion, and the result can only be even more failures. (The last two lines appear to be random characters and are not translated.)

Ukrainians will always be Ukrainians. They may change their language or their flag, but they will always be the same people.

Manager Alex and his cousin, Father Ivan, held the same attitude towards the Chinese's potential success as the Europeans and Americans had failed; they believed the Chinese would most likely fail in Ukraine as well.

But it doesn't matter, that's Ukraine. As long as you have food to eat, you'll keep working. Even if Satan came to Ukraine, you'd still have to learn to work and bow to life.

Father Ivan also said:

"It's just a matter of learning the differences between English and Chinese. In fact, most of us still haven't learned Ukrainian and we still speak Russian in our daily lives. Of course, I believe we will switch to Chinese in the future."

Hu Zhantian couldn't understand this confused and bewildered attitude, but he felt even more lost.

Hu Zhantian dictated his recent experiences in Ukraine to He Yang in India, Park Yoo-shin in Singapore, and Zhang Xiaoqian in Taiwan.

He kept sighing:

"What an amazing land! Holy crap, holy crap, holy crap!"

Hu Zhantian's repeated use of the phrase "Holy crap!" three times reflects his profound fascination with the post-apocalyptic wasteland of Ukraine.

I don't understand it, but it's very interesting.

……

Tokyo.

The famous Yokosuka No. 6 dock has begun to restart as a designated site for the construction of official warships.

This is where the Enterprise, sent by the United States, will be received for its final months of comprehensive overhaul and maintenance.

Li Xinghe stood on the port, looking at the huge dry dock.

Lin Youzi then presented the proposal submitted by the Navy:

"We're basically breaking even. We've just given away a bunch of stockpiled junk, or shells and drones that cost only a fraction of their selling price, and in return, we've secured $300 billion worth of meat, wheat, and agricultural products, plus orders for two nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. Although they're based on blueprints for an improved Ford-class carrier, they're still more advanced and modern in design compared to the Nimitz-class carriers Yamato and Musashi. And if their catapult technology remains unchanged, we can either consider improving it ourselves, or we can switch from their lousy electromagnetic catapult to the more traditional and stable steam catapult."

The problem isn't that the US's electromagnetic catapults are truly inadequate. Rather, it's that the frequent bankruptcies and career changes of related companies and technical personnel after the pandemic have meant that the electromagnetic catapult system on every Ford-class aircraft carrier requires constant calibration, debugging, and purely manual adjustments just to barely make the catapult system compatible with the carrier.

Old America was purely a handicraft industry.

"The United States is really weak."

In the end, Lin Youzi's worldview was almost completely overturned.

Li Xinghe really dared to ask for a price, and Vance really dared to sell the ship.

Li Xinghe smiled and shook his finger:

"For Vance at this point, what they probably need is money and a focus on US Treasury bonds."

Where can we find the money?

At this time, the United States encountered the European problem that was giving them a major headache.

The biggest problem is that European capital is fleeing the United States.

Don't be fooled by the way Europeans act like bitter, divorced women, haughtily criticizing the US while simultaneously groveling and desperately trying to salvage the situation, clinging to a US that has decided to distance itself from the global community—like madwomen at a divorce settlement. Behind the scenes, however, signs of European capitalists secretly fleeing the country are becoming increasingly apparent.

Money, after all, cannot be lied about.

These old capitalists in Europe, especially the most shameless City of London, have orchestrated the escape of nearly 7 trillion euros in US Treasury bond purchases over several years, which, at the devalued exchange rate, amounted to nearly 14 trillion US dollars.

Where did all this money go? Vance can't think of any other place besides it going to China and the Asia-Pacific region.

We can't say they're out of their minds and went all the way to Russia to buy those worthless Russian government bonds, can we?

So Europe at this time was really cunning. While it kept pulling the US along verbally and its political forces didn't want a divorce, it was secretly transferring assets to the East, and its financial sector was already trying to make money from both sides.

Li Xinghe also had a lot more euros in his hands.

While they were chatting, the neighboring No. 5 and No. 4 docks had already begun the construction agreement.

Naval personnel who flew in from the United States have begun working with the Japanese Ministry of Defense, the Joint Armaments Agency, and the Japan Shipbuilding Industry Association, which contracted the site, to expedite the construction of the new aircraft carrier.

The code names of the two aircraft carriers under construction have already been displayed in front of the two dry docks:

"Building code name: Lexington".

"Building code: Saratoga".

Clearly, the new designations given to these two aircraft carriers are seen by the US Navy as a kind of restart after a period of struggling and uncertainty. A fresh start, from the conversion of the battlecruisers Lexington and Saratoga into aircraft carriers, and from the success of the Ninth Fleet Questioning exercise.

Over the past few decades, the naming conventions for aircraft carriers have undergone significant changes, with the names of US presidents and prominent figures now occupying a much larger share of the naming slots. Names like Lexington, Saratoga, and Yorktown have either been shelved or transferred to other ship types, such as amphibious assault ships. Now that the Navy hopes to revitalize its fleet, it naturally begins with restoring these names.

I beg God, please get America back on track.

Although they all received money from Li Xinghe, and Li Xinghe would later compensate them with ample high-priced kickback orders and retirement benefits, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the three service branches had not yet completely degenerated into nothing. They still harbored a certain fantasy of 'temporarily borrowing the strength of the Japanese shipbuilding industry to maintain the US's two-ocean fleet'.

Li Xinghe smiled as he looked at the American personnel who were talking incessantly to the shipbuilding engineer.

"They actually hope to reverse the standoff in the Pacific with these two iron behemoths. That's ridiculous."

Lin Youzi, who was standing next to him, came up with a bad idea:

Aren't you afraid we'll detain you?

Li Xinghe clapped his hands with a smile:

"Haha, that's the funniest thing. They think that as long as we don't get a nuclear reactor, even if the ship is built, we won't be able to start it, so they think this is a good idea."

Yes, the construction blueprints received by Li Xinghe's large shipyards are readily available, but for the power plant section of the nuclear reactor, they only provide a very simple framework design, or even a completely blank blueprint. The US response is that the nuclear reactor is proprietary US technology and cannot be given to Li Xinghe. They instruct the shipyards to first complete the main framework, and then cut open the steel plates and install the nuclear reactor in the power plant section when the ship is towed back to the US. If Li Xinghe wants it, the US can share a purchase link.

And then sell it again in a few years.

After all, Li Xinghe had a history of seizing ships.

Those three firepower projection battleships were ordered by Vance, but after a fight between Li Xinghe and Vance, they fell out, and Li Xinghe refused to give them the ships and instead used them to fire fiercely in the vast South China Sea.

The nuclear reactor issue is a strategy that the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Navy believe can be used to counterbalance Li Xinghe.

Japan lacks the relevant shipborne nuclear reactor technology, nuclear-powered submarines, and nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. They build the hulls, send them back to the United States, install the nuclear reactors, and start them up on their own before the US military pays the final payment.

If Li Xinghe wants to renege on his promise after building the ship, then all he has is two big iron shells. Without the improved design of the power compartment and the installation technology of the nuclear reactor, is he going to switch back to conventional power now?

Impossible. The design of the power compartment, the overall electrical layout, and the exhaust duct design of conventional power carriers are vastly different from those of nuclear-powered carriers.

Lin Youzi humorously said:

"I can go to China to buy nuclear reactors."

Li Xinghe also suppressed a laugh:

"The United States did not know that China had a shipborne nuclear reactor, which was perfectly matched to this 10-ton aircraft carrier. It was designed very well and could be used in a very appropriate way."

To be precise, the United States knew that the Type 005 aircraft carrier used a nuclear reactor. However, from Japan's perspective, the task of designing and installing a shipborne nuclear reactor was something that Li Xinghe, who had no experience in designing and building nuclear-powered ships, would not have possessed.

The last time the Nimitz needed fuel rods from a military A4W pressurized water reactor, although the process was very unpleasant, Li Xinghe ultimately found a way to resolve the fuel rod issue; rumors circulated that he had sought help from Britain or France. Therefore, they still don't know that Li Xinghe can coordinate with Beijing on nuclear reactor issues.

Meanwhile, U.S. military negotiators were still intensely discussing the construction process of the two new aircraft carriers, fantasizing about the restart of the U.S. Navy.

Meanwhile, Li Xinghe was already plotting to embezzle two large ships, much like the scoundrel next door who was eyeing his sister-in-law's mistress.

"I want the money, I want the ships, and I want precise control over the two aircraft carriers. We won't let them go into service until Vance steps down."

As a renowned Minotaur master in East Asia, Li Xinghe stated, "I want the company, and I also want Lexington and Saratoga."

Chapter 962: Partitioning Poland, Acquiring Enterprise Shipgirls, Selling the Baja California Peninsula (4600 words)

"On a lucky day in September, Princess Shang Qiujia has been admitted to the Royal Hospital..."

Fuji Television is reporting on the latest major news.

Li Xinghe's fertility genes kicked in, and Shang Qiujia became pregnant again.

The Japanese Imperial Family has just had Nakahito, and now they have another child; it is truly a blessing.