In 1920, the world economy was in a depression. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 ｉｎfo

The devastation in Europe aside, the end of the war made Americans, Chinese and Japanese miserable. For example, in Japan's steel industry, the price of pig iron soared from 49 yen in 1914 to 406 yen in 1918, an eightfold increase! It is conceivable how much profit the Americans and the Japanese made by relying on the war between the Europeans, and the end of the war made this era of profiteering completely over.

Inevitably, the economic crisis came.

With the exception of the prescient Huntelaar Consortium, almost no one escaped the economic crisis of 1920-1921, and even the Huntelaar Consortium itself suffered considerable losses. However, unlike other conglomerates that could only passively accept it, John reached an agreement with the Chinese government early on to begin a large-scale shutdown of factories and ship ships of relatively obsolete equipment to China.

In this particular time, no one will dispute this.

But John also knew that the crisis would not be too long, at least not for the United States, and that by 1922 at the latest, an era of unprecedented American prosperity would come. Coolidge's prosperous fame, John didn't know how many times in his previous life, and he, together with the great crisis of the thirties, almost became the standard in the historical novels of the starting point!

Therefore, things like splitting and restructuring and selling assets must be done slowly.

If all went well, by 1922 John would have been able to raise hundreds of millions of dollars in cash by selling his assets, and with the accumulation of his years and the dividends from World War I, he would have come up with nearly two billion dollars in cash in total! In 1920, the total national income of the United States was only $60 billion.

The accumulation that the traverser has spent forty years on, is really no joke!

And this is far from the end, the Huntelaar consortium still retains the most developing huge assets, John has also purchased a large amount of land in New York, Texas, California and other places, and will be the most elite location in the United States in the future! The land in New York and California is appreciating at an astonishing rate, and Texas has one of the world's largest oil fields buried under it, and the total value of these lands alone will probably not be less than three billion dollars if you put it ten years from now!

With such a large amount of money, a place has already been booked.

For a large country with a population of hundreds of millions, this money is certainly not enough for them to complete the transformation process of the European and American powers for decades or even hundreds of years, but John firmly believes that with this money, China's development can advance by leaps and bounds for at least 30 years! If it is done well, and the best time of the Great Depression and World War II is seized, it will be even more limitless......

Of course, all this will have to wait another two or three years.

For China in 1920, apart from intensively formulating future development plans, there was not much thought to actually implement them, because they were facing too many troubles. Duan Qirui's ambition was very great, and he hoped to take advantage of the opportunity of the victory in Europe and the recovery of the country, the soaring prestige of the central government, and the return of the expeditionary force to complete the reunification of China -- reunification in the true sense of the word! So from the end of June 1920, the moment the peace agreement with the Russians was signed, the huge expeditionary force that had been retained began another expedition!

From the northernmost part of the Motherland, to the south and southwest of the Motherland!

By intervening in the Russian Revolution, the Northeast and Northwest were completely brought under the rule of the central government, while the revolutionaries in the South and the warlords in the South were still making their last struggle! Therefore, after solving all the external troubles, taking advantage of the fact that the expeditionary force has not yet had a comprehensive and professional opportunity, Duan Qirui did not hesitate to start the operation codenamed "China Unification"!

On August 5, 1920, the last warlord in Sichuan was electrified and left the wilderness.

On September 1, 1920, the Guangdong government was dissolved by telegram and accepted the takeover of the central government. Some of the revolutionary parties left China under the leadership of a certain party leader and fled to Japan.

On October 13, 1920, the warlords of Yunnan and Guizhou were electrified to accept the central government's takeover.

On November 20, 1920, two regiments of army soldiers entered Lhasa and began construction of permanent barracks.

……

On December 31, 1920, the last day of the year, Duan Qirui finally proudly published a speech in the Citizen Daily, announcing that the central government had completed all forms of national unification.

At the beginning of the new year, the central government began a nationwide restructuring.

Perhaps out of necessity or in order to show goodwill to the United States, its closest friend, the central government divided the country into 48 provinces, of which Xinjiang in the northwest was divided into three provinces, and the newly recovered land in the north was divided into six. On the basis of partially retaining the original administrative institutions of the provinces, the central government began to hire returning students from the Huntelaar system on a large scale!

A large number of elites with modern education began to enter the government.

In fact, this matter has already begun, since the first batch of international students began to return to China more than ten years ago, a considerable number of people have entered the government, including scientific and technological personnel who have graduated from universities, and military personnel who have graduated from the West Point Military Academy and the German Military Academy. In many places, these international students have occupied a very important position in the government, especially in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and the surrounding areas, which can be said to have held up half the sky!

According to incomplete statistics, by 1920, a total of 3,400 international students had joined the government.

After the reunification of the central government, with the encouragement of the Huntelaar consortium and the call of the central government, 1,600 people entered politics a year and were immediately appointed to quite important posts. Two years later, as the Huntelaar consortium began to enter China in full, the huge investments and undertakings required the cooperation of highly qualified Chinese officials, and these young officials rose to become the real mainstay of the Chinese government......

But in other words, it will be two or three years later.

The most important thing for China now is to stabilize the domestic situation, not only to digest the newly recovered land and large-scale immigration, but also to digest the newly unified domestic provinces, which will take a long time to unify the decree. Of course, there are some small things, such as the expeditionary force profession that overwhelmed the government after reunification, such as eliminating those mediocre local officials, etc., which are not a matter of a short time.

And......

As the initiator, John? Mr. Huntelaar is busy, too!

For example, after selling a large number of industries, John also has to take the opportunity to prepare for the future, such as spending three million dollars to grab Coca-Cola, for example, instructing the chemists in the Huntelaar chemical laboratory, inventing nylon as soon as possible, and so on......

Of course, there is another important thing, and that is how to deal with the biggest defeated countries of the First World War!

Having bought all the German reparations from China, John is now one of Germany's big creditors, and he has long been prepared for this money, and he must deal with this matter as soon as possible......