Chapter 754: Sino-US Naval Competition
readx; At the meeting, the Thai side demanded the legal recovery of the lost territories, including not only those occupied by France, but also those occupied by the British, as well as Cambodia, a former vassal state. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info And this made the UK very opposed.
As for the German representatives, they were much more calm, and their attitude towards the situation in Asia was that the more chaotic the better, and it was better for China and Britain to also break out into conflict and then join the German camp, and they didn't really care much about the Vichy French colonies in Asia being able to maintain their rule, so they almost didn't express any opinions, or even acquiesced to China's direct occupation of these places.
The French are much helpless, now France has surrendered to the Germans, the establishment of the Vichy political axe, and this Vichy political axe has lost all the right to speak in France, now France is divided into German occupation areas, free zones, Vichy political axes can rule independently only two-fifths of the current French mainland, but they also have a certain administrative power in the German occupation area.
And this Vichy France is also the legitimate political axe of France recognized by all countries in the world except Britain, and China, the United States, Canada and other countries are recognized by Vichy France. Even Britain was now oscillating between Vichy France and Free France, with the British wanting Vichy France to join the anti-German coalition and fearing that Vichy France would become a puppet regime for Germany.
Although most of the countries recognized the political axe of Vichy France, everyone knew that Vichy France had lost its right to speak and had no capital in the competition for this world war.
On the one hand, he resolutely opposes the occupation of Indonesia by Benedict, and equally opposes Thailand's occupation of Cambodia and Vietnam. At the same time, he opposes China's excessive involvement in Southeast Asian affairs. The United States hopes that the Asian region will maintain the pre-war situation.
The situation in Asia is destined to be impossible to satisfy all countries, first of all, the Indonesian direction, which is impossible to launch Indonesia in any case, and the Thai side is also unlikely to give up the French territories that have been recovered, and the three reading power forces in Vietnam will not give up the great opportunity of national reading power.
In fact, the decision on the situation in Asia is in China's hands.
After many talks, China finally reached a preliminary understanding agreement with all parties, Thailand withdrew from Cambodia, but still retained the old territory occupied by France, and Cambodia established the Reading Power State.
As for the way Vietnam is handled, the opinions of various countries are relatively unanimous, that is, they hope that Vietnam will be reunited, and it will be divided into three countries, and the British do not want Vietnam to be reunified, and they themselves do not want it, nor do they want it, nor do they want it, and China does not want it.
In addition, China has long been prepared for this, and in these three regions it has supported the national reading power armed forces, and the reading power front, the Annam royal family, and the Jiaozhi Guangfu Army are not alliances, but mutual reading forces.
As a result, Vietnam established the Republic of Vietnam in northern Vietnam, the Kingdom of Annam in central Vietnam, and the Republic of Cochin in southern Vietnam.
In mid-November 1940, the Republic of Cambodia, the Republic of Vietnam, and the Republic of Cochin were established one after another, and the Kingdom of Annam also proclaimed the rule of Reading Power.
After the establishment of these countries, there are naturally many contradictions and conflicts, and the possibility of war is very large, but this is all a later story, and for the time being, the situation on the Indochina Peninsula is still under China's control.
As soon as these countries were established, they joined the Asian Economic Association one after another, and then prepared for the political axe and formed the army, and in this process, a large number of Chinese faces intervened, and almost all the newly formed armies had the presence of Chinese [***] affairs instructors.
The Indochina Peninsula now appears to have solved the problem, but in fact it has not, the contradictions between Thailand and Britain remain, the United States has maintained a cautious and oppositional attitude towards French Vietnam, and China's assertiveness in the region has worried Americans and British.
Even Britain and the United States regarded this incident as a move of Chinese expansion, and the United States had already transferred its navy from the Atlantic to the Pacific region, and in order to cope with the expansion of China and China, the United States had already carried out a large-scale military expansion in 1940, with the army increasing from 100,000 to more than 1 million, and the navy successively placing numerous orders for warships.
By the end of 1940, Britain and the United States had even said that "both Ben and Soviet Russia believed that China's entry into the war was not far off, and it could already be seen from China's diplomatic offensive and arms expansion that if it were not for the purpose of provoking a war, how could China have started to build six aircraft carriers in one go."
The arms race between China and the United States has become superficial, and while the European countries are engaged in a life-and-death war, and when the country is saying that 'Ben occupied Indonesia,' China and the United States are engaged in a large-scale arms expansion in order to enter the war.
As the two largest industrial countries in the world, the scale of the arms race between China and the United States can be described as enormous, especially in the naval aspect, in order to ensure sea supremacy in wartime, the Chinese Navy has successively implemented the eighth phase of the development plan, the eighth phase of the supplementary plan, and the ninth phase of the development plan.
The expansion plan of the U.S. Navy was not slow at all, starting with the first Vincennes Act in 1934, the Navy Act in 1936, the second Vincennes Act in 1938, the third Vincennes Act in 1940, and the Two Oceans Navy Act. These naval expansion bills allowed the U.S. Navy to grow rapidly in the late thirties and early forties.
However, unlike the Chinese Navy's eighth and ninth phases of the plan, which focused on aircraft carriers, although the US Navy has realized that aircraft carriers are already an important combat platform for the Navy, they still attach importance to battleships and believe that battleships are still the decisive factor in determining victory or defeat at sea.
The Navy Act of 1936 approved plans for the construction of two North Carolina-class battleships and one aircraft carrier, the Second Vincennes Act of 1938 approved plans for the construction of three South Dakota-class battleships and one aircraft carrier, and the Third Vincennes Act of 1940 approved plans for the construction of one South Dakota-class battleship, two Iowa-class battleships, and three Essex-class aircraft carriers. And the two-ocean naval bill passed by the Americans after the fall of France was even more huge, with four Iowa-class battleships, five Montana-class battleships, four Alaska-class large cruisers, twelve Essex-class aircraft carriers, and then dozens of light and heavy cruisers, more than a hundred destroyers, and more than forty submarines.
The scale is much larger than China's ninth development plan, and the Americans are not only building a large number of aircraft carriers, but also a large number of battleships, and it is expected that as many as a dozen battleships will be built and have already started, and they are preparing to use these warships to fight against the Chinese navy at the same time. And the four Alaska-class large cruisers are designed to counter the Chinese Shaohao and Fuxi-class large cruisers.
Although the current size of the Chinese Navy's aircraft carriers exceeds that of the United States Navy, if it does not continue to build, it will not be easy to wait for these dozen or so aircraft carriers of the United States to enter service, so while the United States is expanding, China is also expanding the ninth phase of the plan, and the four aircraft carriers scheduled for the first half of the year have increased to six.
Then, in the second half of the year, the ninth phase of the development plan was revised, and the construction plan of four aircraft carriers was added again, bringing the number of aircraft carriers under construction in China or about to start construction in the short term to as many as ten
After three large-scale expansions of the Navy's Ninth Development Plan, the Initial Plan, the Revised Plan, the Ninth Navy's Development Plan is actually not the same concept as the original, with 10 aircraft carriers, three large cruisers, more than 20 cruisers, more than 100 destroyers, and nearly 100 submarines, constituting the largest expansion plan of the Chinese Navy in decades.
The large-scale naval arms race between China and the United States has also greatly stimulated the British side, but as for the British side, there is nothing to do, anyway, the German navy is just like that, and the British navy has no problem without expansion, and as for the Asian side, they are powerless.
In order to keep up with the pace of expansion of the Chinese and American navies, Ben passed the armament enrichment plan in 1939, that is, the Maru Four Plan, and it was expected to build two high-speed battleships, that is, the third and fourth ships of the Yamato-class class. In addition, a program for the construction of an aircraft carrier was adopted, that is, the Taiho-class aircraft carrier. On the eve of the invasion of Indonesia in 1940, it was said that "the Marushiro Additional Plan was formulated, and most of the Maruchai plans consisted of auxiliary ships, submarines, and other small warships.
In the second half of 1940, stimulated by the massive expansion of the navy of China and the United States, Ben once again formulated the Marugo Plan, which called for the urgent construction of two aircraft carriers, a large number of submarines, and other auxiliary ships.
Compared with the construction of more than a dozen aircraft carriers and hundreds of destroyers and submarines by the Chinese and American navies in one go, the scale of the expansion plan of the navy is much smaller, and there is no way to do it, because the scale of the industrial economy of the navy is too different from that of China and the United States, and even if there is an appropriation, there is not enough slipway to carry out the construction of many capital ships.
After the time entered 1940, it was said that some of the strategic concepts of the navy had changed, first of all, they slowed down the development of large warships, because they found that the battleships were fine, but there was actually not so many aircraft carriers, which was mainly limited by the production of their carrier-based aircraft, and there were only so many aircraft, and it was useless to have more aircraft carriers. Second, it is now said that "the navy has attached great importance to the development of small warships, and there is also the development of submarines; although the overall scale of construction is not as large as that of China and the United States, it can be seen from the time when their resources are tilted towards this aspect."
On November 27, Chen Jingyun led a group of high-ranking military and political officials to Shanghai to attend the commissioning ceremony of the Tianshan aircraft carrier, the largest tonnage warship ever built in China.