On October 13, 1872, there was a sudden frenzy of selling of shares of railway companies in the Austro-Hungarian Viena stock market. The concentrated sell-off was the shares of British Rail. The big sellers were all aristocrats and capitalists who were closely connected to the upper echelons of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Throughout 1872, the price of railway stocks in the Eurobond market was slowly declining. Although China's national policy of overhauling railways has pushed up British Railways' shares, the stock market has reacted sharply to the news and has been very forgetful. The stock price was wiped out in less than 10 days. Three months later, not many people can still remember such an event.

So the effect of the concentrated sell-off in the morning was that everyone was trying to get the news, and after lunch, a piece of news began to circulate in the stock market like crazy. China did not import British locomotives or components throughout 1872.

When bad news happened, investors in the stock market immediately regained their excellent memory. At the beginning of the year, the good news that China was going to build a major railway made some investors believe that British Rail would be able to make good turnover. Even as the pace of railroad construction in the United States continued to slow throughout 1872, investors with a penchant for railroad stocks maintained considerable confidence. Now that two pieces of bad news have arrived at the same time, the entire Viena stock market has fallen into a full-blown sell-off frenzy.

The signs with the latest stock prices are being refurbished every moment, and the shares of the British railroads are falling wildly, and the American railroads are starting to plummet. The sell-off began to expand at an unprecedented pace. Traders rushed back and forth, scrapped or empty documents were thrown into the air by those angry investors or traders, and snowflakes fell from the sky one after another. Investors who hold railroad stocks huddle around their desks, lean on the wall, or simply sit on the floor, place their trading orders on the wooden floor of the exchange and hurry to fill out the contents of the sale of railroad stocks.

After dinner, the investors who had already sold their railroad stocks released another piece of news. Ignoring the British ambassador's insistence on demands, China has curtailed its imports of cotton and woollen textiles from Britain. As soon as this news came out, the big wave of people had already determined what to sell tomorrow.

The collapse of the Viena stock market triggered a direct chain reaction in European and American stock markets, with panic in the financial markets of London, Paris, Frankfurt and New York, and railway stocks falling one after another. In addition to the collapse of railway company stocks in the UK, the stocks of the cotton and wool industries also plummeted.

By December 1872, the stock market had barely hit rock bottom. The main problem in Britain and the United States has been the wave of failures of companies, banks, and securities companies.

On the Chinese side, three meetings were held, and for the third time, the number of immigrants outside the border was reduced to 50,000. The Mongolian issue has become one of the key points of the country for 73 years, and other work continues.

Britain is not as good as China, the problems encountered by Britain come from abroad, the United States and Germany have greatly reduced the amount of imports to Britain, and the export-oriented Britain has been greatly affected. In order to protect their domestic industries, the United States and Germany, two "emerging market" countries, have increased their already high tariff barriers. The U.S. tariffs are already at 43 percent, and there is not much room for increase. When Germany was still Prussia, it started the North German Customs Union, and the Franco-Prussian War was fought so fiercely, which was related to the fact that South Germany still had some nostalgia for the Rhine League, which had been destroyed. The newly formed Germany imposed tariff barriers to protect its own industry.

Although France also implemented trade liberalization, France was saddled with 5 billion francs in war reparations after the Franco-Prussian War, and was short of funds. As for Russia's ......, it would be nice if Russia could not apply for loans from foreign countries. To expect Russia to become a dumping ground for British goods is to overestimate Russia's financial strength.

In 1847, the total value of cotton textiles imported to India by the British was only £3,132,000, which increased to £6,677,000 in 1855. In 1844, the tax collector and administrator of Mandura County, India, wrote: "Many of the 5,000 weaving families in Mandura do not have the means to sustain themselves on more than one meal a day. As early as 1834, the Viceroy of India, Bendink, reported to London: "The miserable situation is unparalleled in the history of commerce, and the bones of the cotton weavers have turned the plains of India white." ”

Between 1857 and 1859, British exports of cotton textiles increased from £39 million to £48 million. India accounted for nearly 90 per cent of the increase. In 1860, Britain exported almost twice as much cotton to India as it did to continental Europe and the United States. Exports to China, Japan, Java and other places are also large, accounting for more than 60% of exports to the European continent.

The demand for textiles in Java has reached its limit, and the biggest reason why the Meiji government was able to overthrow the shogunate was that foreign goods entered the Japanese market and took too much gold and silver from the Japanese market. After Britain signed a secret treaty with China against Japan, China allowed Britain to control Japan's customs and commercial operations.

"Generally speaking, there are not many countries in the world where the UK can benefit in the short term." I trust Foreign Minister Li Xin to frankly introduce the latest information of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Standing Committee members. A large part of this information was also entrusted to Uncle Ma, who immersed himself in the British Library, and after summarizing the information he had read, he also gave a copy to China.

After listening to this, several people blinked their eyes, not understanding what this meant. Wei Ze is happy in his heart, with the habitual thinking of Chinese, it is indeed not easy to understand what this means. The British economy is not good, and China has a Maoist relationship! Of course, the Chinese in the 21st century can clearly see the problem. The economy has reached such a point that war could not be the easiest option.

If you can open up the Chinese market, you will have a market for British goods. More importantly, the British economy has confidence. For industrial countries. More important than money is confidence. After the end of the crow, the whole of Europe thought that the Chinese market had been completely opened, and all the production enterprises were desperately producing and hoarding goods, ready to go to the Chinese market to make a big profit. They were disappointed, and ended up with an economic crisis in Europe. It also planted the seeds of the two crows.

There was another thing that Wei Ze thought was ridiculous, he had thought that China would be the first to find a reason for war in 1875 and take action against the British. In the midst of this war that Weeser imagined, he struggled for a few days about how to find a pretext for war. The general direction of the present is not at all wrong, China and Britain are once again on the track of war. But the reality of progress is completely different from Weese's imagination. It's a good lesson, and Weeser wants to avoid such a low-level, but easy-to-make mistake in the future.

"I think the British will do something against us to force us to continue buying British goods." Li Xin, former minister of commerce, explained to the Standing Committee.

When the members of the Politburo Standing Committee heard this, everyone became angry, "We have the final say on whether to buy their things or not, can the British still dare to hit our door?" ”

Since Weezer had decided not to think about the problem in any preconceived notions, he interjected, "This matter will not start immediately, everyone hurry up and finish the work at hand, and the war matter is waiting." ”

Li Xin didn't expect Wei Ze to say this, he glanced at Wei Ze with a puzzled expression. But just after looking at it, Li Xin immediately ended his report and did not stimulate the mood of the Standing Committee members again.