Chapter 163 The foundation of the new career

In March 1884, the Netherlands took advantage of the outbreak of the Sino-French War to carry out a "last" coercion on the Lanfang Company, hoping to completely transform the southeastern part of Borneo into a colony of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

They thought it was the last time, but they stabbed a hornet's nest.

The Sarawak Autonomous State allied with Lanfang Company. Shortly after the Netherlands sent troops to attack Lanfang Company, the Saudi army also began to send troops. Large-scale military conflicts broke out between the two sides in Yamaguchi and Kundian. Finally, the Dutch were forced to withdraw from Borneo as a result, which expanded the Sarawak Autonomous State into the British Borneo Autonomous Federation.

Of course, this matter does not have much impact on the whole world. After all, the decline of the Netherlands has long been an indisputable fact.

After the great victory in the Sino-French War forced France to ban the full most-favoured-nation privileges, the international prestige of the Qing Empire has been significantly improved.

At the end of July 1885, Hu Chuyuan returned to Shanghai and reached an agreement with the American minister. The United States took the initiative to give up the full most-favoured-nation treatment, and the two sides enjoyed part of the most-favoured-nation treatment.

In August 1885, Hu Chuyuan and his wife visited the United Kingdom. Although he failed to persuade Britain to give up the most-favoured-nation privileges, he reached a preliminary agreement on issues such as tax autonomy, the China-Myanmar border and the China-India border, and reached an agreement with the United Kingdom, the United States and France to transform the Shanghai, Tianjin and the coastal defense concession into an international public concession, from China and the United Kingdom. The United States and France each sent a board of directors, and selected three board members from Chinese and foreign businessmen and local representatives to manage the international public concession on a seven-person system.

In September, Hu Chuyuan arrived in Moscow and held a final negotiation on the issue of Yili in Xinjiang Province. Finally, he officially recovered Yili at the cost of paying 600,000 Qingyuan as a symbolic surname.

In October, Hu Chuyuan arrived in Berlin, Germany, held talks with Prime Minister Bismarck and signed the new Sino-German Reciprocal Trade Agreement.

Subsequently, Hu Chuyuan visited Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain and Austria-Hungary, and successively signed new trade agreements to allow businessmen of all countries to trade in the international public concession. At the same time, Chinese businessmen also have the right to trade ashore in various countries, removing the last obstacle for domestic merchants to bypass foreign banks and trade with various countries. No way.

Hu Chuyuan returned to China in the spring of February 1886. Shortly after he returned to Shanghai, Zuo Zongtang died of illness in Jiangning. Hu Chuyuan rushed to Jiangning and met Zuo Zongtang for the last time.

After that, Zeng Guoxuan was transferred to the governor of Liangjiang, Lu Chuanlin was appointed as the governor and admiral of Shanxi, and Liu Jintang was appointed as the governor of Zhejiang. The main force of the Hunan army was under the command of Zeng Guoxuan. Ye Zuguiping, a Fujian native, was transferred to the Admiral of the South China Sea Fleet, and Ye Fu, a native of Guangdong, was promoted to the Admiral of the East China Sea Fleet.

At this stage, the imperial court still adopts the strategy of different division and governance in personnel arrangements as usual. China is also in a relatively stable stage in its overall economy and politics.

In April 1886, Hu Chuyuan fine-tuned the export price of raw silk, up 7%, which was regarded as temporarily letting go of the Japanese horse and giving himself a special quiet time.

It was during this period that he continued to strengthen the rectification of China's tea industry, hemp industry and porcelain industry, and the investment scale gradually reached 100 million yuan. He successively built Nanning Railway from Jingdezhen, Qimen County, Huizhou, Huzhou to Hangzhou and Ningbo, as well as Zhenghe County to Fuding County, Dehua County through Yongchun County and An. The railway from Xixian to Quanzhou and Shaxian to Fuzhou.

Through coordination and negotiation with Ronglu, he began to invest in the Wuchang-Nanning railway, and Xu Run's Liangguang Commercial Bank invested in the construction of the Nanning-Guangzhou railway.

With the improvement of the railway network and the improvement of port facilities in various places, including Jiangnan Commercial Bank's investment of more than 4 million yuan to dredge the Yangtze River Channel and the Minjiang River Channel, the CIF price of Chinese tea in Europe has been roughly the same as that of Indian tea.

On this basis, Hu Chuyuan began to block Indian tea in the UK through private subsidies, and vigorously explore the markets of the United States, Germany, France, Spain, Australia, etc., and at the same time, he increased the scale of tea trade with Russia.

On the other hand, through his capital advantage, he also acquired Indian tea fields and Ceylon tea fields from Siko, formed a new British tea company, controlled the local sales and export scale of Indian tea, and implemented a squeeze strategy for other Indian tea companies.

Third, he also improved channel sales by controlling Yihe Yanghang, controlling Lipton food stores in the UK, investing in Yihe chain stores and so on.

With this series of measures and the improvement of the Sino-British trade treaty, in 1886, the export scale of Chinese tea increased by more than 17.3% compared with the same period last year, and returned to 90% of the share of the international tea export market.

With the opening of Zhejiang Yue Porcelain Factory, Quanzhou Porcelain Factory and Jiangnan Jingdezhen Porcelain Factory, China's porcelain industry has also begun to pick up and recover. With the reduction of costs, the increase of patterns and quality, the sales of porcelain in Nanyang and China have begun to increase significantly, and high-quality export porcelain has been obtained in the U.S. market. Great recognition and sales.

In the hemp industry, bamboo industry and other handicraft industries, the total export volume of traditional handicrafts is also gradually increasing. In particular, Jiangxi Zhuxi, Maxi and Xia Mabu have a lack of other competitors in the world, which has also filled the market gap in Europe and the United States.

With the improvement of this large economic environment, China's economy has obviously begun to pick up.

At the beginning of 1886, Hu Chuyuan gave up the independent ownership of banknotes in the north and personally contacted various companies to jointly establish a new Beiyang Bank with Shanxi Shengchang Ticket Number, Wantong Ticket Number, Dadefeng Ticket Number, Shanxi Commercial Bank, Beiyang Commercial Bank and Shandong Commercial Bank.

In May 1886, Hu Chuyuan went to Wuchang to meet with Ronglu, the governor of Huguang, and persuaded Huguang Commercial Bank, Sichuan Commercial Bank and a number of joint shares to set up China Commercial Bank.

CITIC holds a certain stake in two banks and provides them with margin and start-up capital, as well as the required technology.

In September 1886, Hu Chuyuan persuaded Prince Chun, Prince Li and Prince Su, and coordinated with the feudal officials in various places to establish a new Daqing Banking Bureau, and set up eight branches in Tianjin, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Yunnan, Wuhan, Chengdu, Xi'an and Fuzhou, which were under the jurisdiction of the governors.

Since then, China Finance has completed the first step of the reform of the financial system, completely changing from the silver and copper mixed standard to the silver standard, setting up a new Shanghai Stock Exchange and precious metals exchange in Shanghai, and setting up futures exchanges in Tianjin, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Fuzhou.

In December 1886, also under the persuasion of Hu Chuyuan, the six provinces of Jiangnan (Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Jiangxi, Fujian, Taiwan) first stopped collecting miscellaneous taxes in various places.

In April 1887, Liangguang, Shandong and Huguang successively cancelled the miscellaneous taxes. Under the secret control of Hu Chuyuan, Qingzheng Axe was forced to unify the business tax and business tax throughout the country, no longer collect the business tax, only collect the business tax in shops, and increase the amount of commercial tax to thirteen and one to make up for the reduction and exemption of business tax.

In 1887, with the unification of financial markets in various places, the Qing court levied a banknote printing tax of 24.75 million yuan for the whole year, and the profits tax paid by commercial banks reached 51.92 million yuan.

No matter what the Qing court thinks, Hu Chuyuan's influence on China's economy has become greater and greater. Under his influence, China's economy has indeed begun to recover and has a trend of developing towards the prosperous era of Kang Qian.

Similarly, with the expansion of Hu Chuyuan's agriculture-oriented pragmatic school, Zeng Guoquan, Mei Qizhao, Liu Kunyi, Tan Zhonglin, Ronglu, Lu Chuanlin, Zhang Zhidong and others are all pragmatic officials. The scale of investment in agriculture in the six provinces of Jiangnan, Huguang, Liangguang, Shandong, Sichuan, Yungui, Zhili and Shanxi is expanding. The vast majority of funds also come from CITIC.

Although the money was borrowed by the governors, the accounts had to be calculated on the head of the Qing Zheng Axe. By the end of 1887, the actual total loan of the Qing Zheng Axe to CITIC Bank reached 430 million yuan, with an average loan interest of 11.4%.

Hu Chuyuan did not issue treasury bonds and bank bonds, but continued to use the deposit method, issuing a five-year deposit with a fixed interest rate of 7%. He only relied on the middle price difference, and he made a net profit of 18.92 million yuan every year.

On the other hand, even if the national miscellaneous taxes have been reduced or exempted, the total fiscal revenue of Qingzheng Axe in 1887 also reached 194 million yuan, and the proportion of feudal officials in each province is about 30%, which can basically maintain the military pay and foreign affairs expenditure of the provinces.

These accounts will be calculated by the Qing court itself. Whether it is Prince Chun, Prince Li or Prince Su, everyone is particularly dependent on Hu Chuyuan, and Hu Chuyuan has basically become a communication bridge between the feudal officials and the Manchu central government, as well as the European powers and the Qing court.

At this time, the Qing court is not as crazy as the last stage. They are very clear that as long as Hu Chuyuan has no intention to rebel and just wants to make money, it is also of great use to the court. It can help the court make money and help the Qing Dynasty to restore the prosperous era of Kangqian, which is not a good thing.

At least in their opinion... Hu Chuyuan has only one Fuzi camp in his hand to protect himself, and he has no military power to rebel.

Hu Chuyuan also made a private affair with Prince Su. If one day, the court could not accommodate him, he went to the United States with his wife. He bought hundreds of thousands of acres of land around the Bay of San Francisco and was building the most luxurious manor.

He has hundreds of millions of dollars in assets in the United States, and he can be regarded as one of the top three millionaires in the United States.

If the Qing Dynasty does not keep him, he will stay elsewhere, and he will have to rely on the country for life and death.

He can't do it.

In this case, whether it is the Qing court or Cixi, Suo's surname is used as a person like Hede. As long as he can fill the warehouse of the imperial household department with silver and help the Qing court and foreigners mediate at the critical moment, he is the most useful person.

Of course, Cixi is not in a hurry to do it, and Prince Chun and Prince Li are not in a hurry to do it. There is another particularly important reason... They all have a bomb on their heads that is about to detonate, and they may not detonate - in two or three years, Cixi will have to return to the government, but looking at the appearance of Cixi, nine out of ten will not be returned.

At this time, Hu Chuyuan, who was holding a large amount of money in his hand, became the focus of the competition between the two sides. Even if he did not show his good, he could not be forced to rush. In case he was completely turned to the other side, it would be difficult to clean up. Anyway, Hu Chuyuan was not only rich, but also supported by foreigners, but also Hunan, Jiangxi and Yunnan. The department's treasury housekeeper.

This account will be calculated by Cixi, and Prince Alcohol will also be counted.

Hu Chuyuan himself will also grasp a kind of moderation. He did not arrogantly completely take all the banknote issuance rights in China's financial industry, but deliberately created many banknote issuing banks such as Beiyang Bank, Nanyang Bank, China Merchants Bank, Changjiang Bank, Jinshang Bank, Huishang Bank and so on.

The two sides found a balance. Hu Chuyuan made his money, and the court used him to do things.

In addition, Hu Chuyuan is also a very important donor. Every year, he will donate a total of more than 20 million yuan to the five governors' offices of Liangjiang, Fujian and Zhejiang, Liangguang, Huguang and Zhili, which will be used by the governors to set up volunteer schools, colleges, schools, national schools, engineering centers, and agricultural and Sang schools in various places.

Every year, he donates 10 million yuan through the Ministry of Household to use the Qingzheng Axe in the name of the imperial court in Shanxi and Hebei, not in his own name.

Every year, he will also donate six million yuan of silver to the Ministry of Internal Affairs under the control of Prince Su for the restoration of Qingyi Garden, and millions of yuan of silver to the Prime Minister's National Affairs Office for holding large-scale exhibitions of the Qing Empire in various countries.

He doesn't care about reputation. Instead, he is very low-key. He pays money, others are famous, he pays money, and Prince Su pleases him.

As for Prince Su, Prince Li, Prince Chun, as well as feudal officials in various places, officials of the third grade and above, whether they have real power or not, Hu Chuyuan will give a sum of money during the Spring Festival, more than hundreds of thousands of yuan, and less must be tens of thousands of yuan.

For the new Jinshi, he has to give gifts and money. As long as he is a person with a little ability, he can basically find a real gap through him.

For those foreign envoys, counselors and international students abroad, Hu Chuyuan will also give a allowance every year.

For the generals and officers of the Hunan Army, the Jiangxi Army, the East China Sea Fleet and the South China Sea Fleet at all levels, he will also have money to send it, but the money will be sent more hidden. Even if a Huai army boss like Liu Mingchuan and Pan Dingxin, Hu Chuyuan will have money to give it.

The Yunnan Army and the Gui Army have money, and even some of the generals of the Green Battalion can get gift money, all kinds of names and channels. In short, the recipient knows that it is Hu Chuyuan's will.

Hu Chuyuan donated silver and bribes, and Hu Chuyuan spent 55.78 million yuan on this in 1887 alone.

Similarly, his business is getting bigger and bigger with everyone's secret support, and the scale of the industry has already expanded to a surprising point.

(to be continued)