Hurd's work is vigorous. Pen ~ fun ~ pavilion www.biquge.info

On the second day after he took office, he rushed to Hong Kong, where he placed job advertisements in Hong Kong newspapers and even lobbied at the homes of talented people he favored.

Zhu Jinglun asked Fang Shan to follow Hurd, nominally to help Hurd, but in fact it was also a kind of surveillance.

From the news fed back from Fang Shan, Zhu Jinglun found that Hurd did not directly contact the British government in Hong Kong, but went directly to poach, the main force of poaching is the East India Company, the East India Company has been ordered by the British Parliament to announce its dissolution, but those people are still there, some left for Britain or India, and a considerable number of them stayed, some want to find their own opportunities in China, and some are hired by the Hong Kong British government, after all, the Hong Kong British government is not rich enough, and the Hong Kong branch of the East India Company has rich experience. Employees who are familiar with China's national conditions are also very good staff members of the British government in Hong Kong.

In addition to poaching people in the East India Company, Hurd also poached people in some foreign firms, and even directly poached people in the port agencies managed by the British government in Hong Kong.

Among the staff left behind by the East India Company, Hurd recruited more than a dozen, and some of the major foreign firms were also recruited, these foreign companies operated in China, and they were also very happy to have their people in the customs of the Chinese local government, maybe they could protect their interests, and even help them develop business.

In less than ten days, HD recruited 30 people, all of whom were qualified through Hurd's personal interview.

After returning to Xin'an with these people, Hurd immediately approached Zhu Jinglun and asked to take over the Xin'an Bureau.

The Xin'an Li Bureau has always been managed by Xin'an Hufang before, including the management of the lottery and the wharf, all of which are managed by Zheng Tong, and now these powers are all handed over to Hurd, Zheng Tong can't have no opinions, and he knelt down in front of Zhu Jinglun with a sad face, and bluntly said that it is very inappropriate to hand over such an important errand as a foreigner to the bureau.

Zhu Jinglun appeased Zheng Tong, the old official, but he was very resolute and asked him to hand over the relevant information.

To be honest, Zhu Jinglun did not agree with Zheng Tong's work, and there was no shortage of things during this time, he had already received protest letters from ministers from more than a dozen countries, and the protests were generally one thing, that is, the county officials of the Xin'an Li Bureau extorted businessmen from various countries, except for the British who did not complain, almost all the countries doing business in Xin'an complained, and it was obvious that Zheng Tong's Huf county officials only knew that the British could not afford to provoke them, and they were not polite to businessmen from other countries.

Zhu Jinglun has already calculated that he didn't punish these bold county officials, how can he still let them stay in the bureau.

Most of the people recruited by Hurd have relevant experience, either working in the port and wharf, knowing how to declare customs and how to collect taxes, or they have reported and paid taxes for others. But after all, they are too few in number, and they are very careful and serious, checking every account, registering every merchant ship, and verifying the registered goods, and there is simply not enough manpower. However, HD has always been recruiting, continuing to advertise in Hong Kong, Macau, and even sending people to India to recruit people.

As for Hurd's efforts, it has also begun to bear fruit, in less than a month, the trade volume has increased by two percent, which obviously cannot be a substantial increase, but an inventory of false and hidden goods, most of which are the export volume of Chinese merchants, who were previously able to smuggle by bribing the county officials of the bureau, but now they are all cleared out, and can only obediently register and pay taxes, and a small part is the smuggling of some illegal foreign businessmen, mainly concentrated in the crows, these crow merchants collude with the local lawbreakers in Xin'an, It is up to these criminals to help them smuggle.

However, Hurd still believes that there is still a smuggling situation, because many high-value and heavily taxed commodities such as crows do not go to Chiwan Port, but secretly send small boats to land on nearby beaches, and even take land transportation from Kowloon, avoiding the supervision of the Xin'an Bureau.

Hurd specifically approached Zhu Jinglun for this reason, hoping to form an anti-smuggling team, but for security reasons, Zhu Jinglun temporarily refused, on the grounds that there was no extra funds, in fact, he didn't want to see the anti-smuggling team, which was armed in nature, was also in Hurd's hands, but for the time being, Hou Jin led 800 to train Hakka warriors who already had a decent appearance to cooperate with Hurd's anti-smuggling.

Seeing that Hurd can advance the work so smoothly, Zhu Jinglun doesn't believe that he is just in danger, you must know that Zhu Jinglun sent Fang Shan to invite Hurd for two months, during which Hurd has not agreed, and now it seems that he is not idle, I am afraid that he has long calculated in his heart how to operate if he comes to take over China's customs, at this time he can be so handy, and a person's success is really no luck.

At this time, Emperor Xianfeng, who was far away in the capital, also received news from Guangdong, and Bai Gui, the governor of Liangguang, reported to the emperor the results of his negotiations with the foreigners, temporarily turned the foreigners away, and also collected a sum of silver from the foreigners, totaling 20,000 taels.

The little eunuch next to him said that this was the first time in the Qing Dynasty to recover the silver of foreigners.

Emperor Xianfeng laughed and scolded Bai Gui for being really a child, but at the same time, he sighed that Bai Gui was a reliable minion.

Not only because of Bai Gui's approach, Xianfeng also felt relieved in his heart, but what satisfied him the most was that Bai Gui smoothly returned those foreign captives to the foreigners, and asked the foreigners for silver, which was a clever move, so that those seemingly shrewd but stupid Qingliu would not attack Bai Gui to show weakness to the foreigners, but attack Bai Gui to insult the dignity of the country, they would think that Bai Gui was a person who coveted the money of the foreigner and released it, not a person who was afraid of the foreigner's release.

Compared with Bai Gui's ingenious approach, Huang Zonghan's approach is extremely stupid, Huang Zonghan was in charge of the governor of Liangguang, captured the Paxia ceremony, and actually sent the Paxia ceremony directly to the capital, which made Xianfeng very difficult, all day long there were clear streams clamoring to sacrifice to the Taimiao, and there were also said that the Paxia ceremony was scraped to teach the foreigners a lesson.

But Xianfeng knew that he could not cut down the Paxia Li to sacrifice to the Taimiao, let alone scrape him to provoke the foreigners, and the biggest trouble was the Taiping army in the Jiangnan area.

Bai Gui's dignified response made the emperor more respectful of Bai Gui, and sent an edict to reprimand him on the surface, and sent his henchmen to Guangdong to reward Bai Gui with a string of imperial court beads to show his favor. Since then, Baigui's position in Liangguang has been more stable.

Bai Gui's position is stable, and Zhu Jinglun's position is stable, and they have been harshly criticized by Guangdong officialdom during this time.

There are a lot of bad things about Zhu Jinglun in front of Bai Gui.

The biggest reason is still a good word, Xin'an has collected too many taxes, and Hengqi, who has recently reduced tariffs, has been troubled by foreigners many times, and he sent people to Hong Kong to urge foreigners to pay the tariffs during their occupation of Guangzhou.

Moreover, Heng Qi also strongly demanded that the customs be reset in Xin'an, and even demanded that the bureau in Xin'an must be under the customs and under the management of the customs.

These were all blocked by Bai Gui. But every time he blocked, he had to make an enemy once, so he finally compromised and agreed to a compromise plan of Hengqi, and also set up a bureau in the former cottage of the South China Sea opposite Xin'an-Nanhai Bureau. Started a competition with the New Anli Bureau.

This move has caused huge problems for the new security bureau.

It's not how good the Nanhai Bureau is or how good the customs clearance service is, on the contrary, Hengqi sent that group of customs officers from Guangzhou, all kinds of food and cards, but they couldn't stand their courage and dared to let them go.

On the one hand, the new Anli Bureau has become more and more regular under Hurd's management, and it is difficult for tax evasion to escape inspection and punishment, and it has also sent troops to vigorously crack down on smuggling. On the one hand, the South China Sea Bureau can directly enter the customs if you give a few pieces of silver, and generously connivance at smuggling.

No matter how well managed a regular port is, it is impossible to compete with such a smuggling port.

Zhu Jinglun became more and more hopeful that the commodity exchange could be opened as soon as possible, and Hurd continued to work hard, but manpower was always a problem, and it was not until he recruited more than 100 people that he had the spare energy to deal with the affairs of the exchange, which was already mid-January 1859.

During this period, Zhu Jinglun was not idle, and successively interviewed the four major merchants, hoping that they would not be involved in smuggling. There are four major merchants, and most of the tea and silk trade will be in Xin'an, which is a trade volume of tens of millions per year.

But the crow trade is not so smooth, the crow trade has always been accompanied by smuggling, behind the formation of a whole chain of interests, now this chain has found the most suitable interface at once, a large number of customs through the South China Sea Bureau, seriously affected Zhu Jinglun's gold income, you must know that this is also a trade volume of tens of millions per year, resulting in a loss of millions.

In addition to meeting with the four major merchants to stabilize the tea and silk trade, Zhu Jinglun also met with the senior directors of foreign banks from various countries on many occasions to listen to their suggestions on expanding the trade in tea and silk fabrics. In particular, the tea trade was really keen to expand, not only because it represented huge tax revenues, but also because with the dissolution of the East India Company, the tea trade had reached a dangerous situation.

At a time when the British East India Company held patents issued by the British crown and was able to monopolize the tea trade, it did not allow any company or individual to get involved in the tea trade in order to protect its own interests and seek high profits, and at the same time tried to prevent attempts to grow tea in India.

With the dissolution of the East India Company and the desire of the merchants of the port to make a profit from tea, they had introduced tea plants to India, and had already cultivated the first tea plantations, and would operate Indian and Ceylon tea plantations for the next half century, defeating Chinese tea production.

This is the first huge crisis that China has encountered since it exported tea to the outside world, and if there is no external intervention and free development, the failure of China's tea trade is just around the corner.