Chen Zhiting gave up his hand and left, his previous impression of Hurd was not bad, but it was not good, because Hurd was a foreigner, but after this time, Hurd left a good impression on him. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

First of all, Hurd himself is a person with high emotional intelligence, in history he can be between Britain and China, especially in the Manchu Eight Banners magnates and Han ministers, which many Chinese officialdom officials can not do, and now he can also handle the Ming officials quite decently, the way he speaks makes Chen Zhiting easy to accept, everywhere reveals respect for Chen Zhiting, the prime minister, without the slightest arrogance of other foreigners.

Secondly, when Hurd gave advice to Chen Zhiting, in addition to being more subtle in language, even more Chinese than Chinese, in addition, the attitude he showed was completely on the position of Daming, which made Chen Zhiting particularly satisfied, and inadvertently agreed that Hurd was a qualified guest secretary, and slowly dispelled his wariness of him.

But Chen Zhiting did not think that if Hurd was a Chinese, no matter what purpose he was for giving advice to the enemy, he would never accept it, even if the Manchu officials surrendered to Daming, Chen Zhiting thought in his heart that there was a stain on that person's character, and Hurd, the Englishman, gave him advice on how to deal with the British, but he completely felt that it should be taken for granted, as if Yiren's heart should be like this.

Because of Hurd's tone of voice, Chen Zhiting almost completely accepted Hurd's main suggestion, and soon he asked the Ministry of Household Affairs to formulate an excess tax rate for the opium trade, so many years of training, Chen Zhiting has a considerable understanding of business, and he even considered that once the tax is raised, smuggling will be rampant, and he also emphasized to the Criminal Department the need to intensify the crackdown on opium smuggling.

As expected, as the main sales channel of opium, after the transaction tax of tobacco houses was raised to 300 percent, the foreigners were the first to sit still, especially those ocean companies that started with opium films, Jardine Matheson, Qichang and other companies jointly put pressure on the governor of Hong Kong, and also began to lobby the Ming officials, Hurd was the target of their key research, and they believed that Hurd, as an important and influential figure in the Ming officialdom, was the best bridge.

But they ignore that Hurd himself has always been an anti-smoker, historically, Hurd also suggested to Prince Gong Yixin that he should levy a tax on opium, and use this tax to build a navy, Yixin did not accept this suggestion is not clear, but Li Hongzhang and other foreign ministers did use this method later, such as Zhang Zhidong and others to run foreign affairs, a large part of which came from opium gold.

Hurd is such a smart person, not only did he not agree to the foreigners' request for him to come forward and petition the Ming Emperor directly, but he showed his attitude to the outside world in a bright way, and he criticized the darkness of the opium trade and coolie trade in the newspapers in a high-profile manner, which was to show his position to the Ming Dynasty, telling the Ming officials and the people that although he was an Englishman, he was on the side of the Ming Dynasty.

No one knows how much foreign scolding Hurd's attitude provoked, but for a while he did win the favor of many Ming people, especially some Ming officials who originally looked at him unpleasantly, and recently they have begun to have close relations with him.

Businessmen are the hardest group of people to compromise when it comes to profit, especially these opium dealers who have ventured to the East, who are constantly putting pressure on the Hong Kong government and their ambassadors.

However, the Ming Dynasty did not give an inch, and its attitude towards cracking down on coolies and opium trade was very resolute, and even when the Hong Kong government refused to extradite coolie traffickers who had fled to Hong Kong, the Ming Navy finally acted.

Began to intercept every merchant ship sailing out of Hong Kong, demanded an inspection, and seized the ship as soon as coolies were found in the cabin. Robinson was difficult to ride a tiger at this time, but he could not admit defeat, and on the one hand, he could not stand the pressure of powerful interest groups, and he knew that if he did not handle it properly, his political career would be over. More importantly, this is also a matter of the dignity of the British Empire, so he sent the Hong Kong fleet to escort merchant ships-for-tat.

For a time, the dispute caused by the coolie trade not only soon affected the export of British opium, but also quickly rose to the brink of military conflict.

Newspapers have reported related events, many people are worried that there will be another war, after all, China's wars have been too frequent in recent years, and the unfavorable news has made the exchange boil for a while, not more than buying and selling, but under the panic, many people began to sell bills related to the Ming Dynasty, whether it is a few stocks, or the Ming treasury bonds, the price has begun to fall.

The British minister in Guangzhou was Wei Tuma, his attitude was much softer than that of the Hong Kong Governor Robinson, and he hoped for peace, so he negotiated with the foreign affairs department many times, but unfortunately the foreign affairs department received him patiently, but he refused all his requests to meet the emperor, and he could not even see Chen Zhiting, who was still the secretary of the book.

Obviously, the Ming government was dealing with him with a less positive attitude, and the purpose of dealing with him was either to lack the sincerity to solve the problem, or to deliberately delay time.

What the British did not know at this time was that a special special team had set out for London, and their special mission was very simple, that is, to publish some reports in British newspapers, and when necessary, they would use money to bribe, and their purpose was very simple, that is, to create a public opinion in Britain that British merchants had been engaged in dishonorable trade in China for a long time, and to put pressure on the British government to have some scruples when protecting the interests of these merchants.

The advertorial has long been written, some of the content is written by Hurd himself, and some are asked to ask some other foreigners to criticize the opium trade and coolie trade from the perspective of foreigners, needless to say, there is a strong anti-opium trade voice in Britain, and the opium trade has long been despised by the elite, but in Hurd's pen, he directly compares the coolie trade with the slave trade, believing that the two trades are the same in nature, and Britain is the biggest force promoting the abolition of the slave trade in the world, during the American Civil WarAs soon as Lincoln announced the emancipation proclamation, he immediately won the support of British public opinion, so that the British government supported the attitude of the South, and immediately did not dare to mention it again.

By the time the task force quietly landed in London three months later, relations between the British and Ming had already been strained, and the British government had already received reports from the Governor of Hong Kong and the Ming Minister, and learned of the situation in the Ming Dynasty, and they judged that the situation was very tense, and the Cabinet had already held several meetings, and even formally discussed the possibility of war.

In Hong Kong, the situation continued to be tense, the Ming and British fleets have confronted each other many times, several times almost misfired, and finally the Ming Navy maintained restraint, did not forcibly search the merchant ships escorted by the British Navy, but tracked these merchant ships, forcing the British fleet to escort until Singapore, which greatly increased the financial expenditure of the British fleet in Hong Kong, but also made the financial difficulties of the Hong Kong government, you must know that this period of time is not only the Ming bonds, the bonds issued by the Hong Kong government, are also constantly falling, This has seriously affected the Hong Kong government's ability to raise funds.

In this situation, for the British government, running Hong Kong has become more and more a disinterest-free behavior.

At this time, some British newspapers began to report intensively about the coolie trade and the opium trade, they reported according to Hurd's tune, and many British reporters also carried out their own processing, describing it in vivid colors, as if they had seen it with their own eyes, and exaggerated the suffering of Chinese coolies during transportation, and the treatment they suffered in the mines and estates of the colonies, and came to the conclusion that Chinese coolies were treated more inhumane than the black slaves of the past. This is not what a civilized world should do.

The most fatal thing about these reports is that although some of the reports are exaggerated, they are basically the facts and can stand up to investigation, so they quickly caused a wave of public opinion, along with the tension in the East, the discussion of the government war, which continued to heat up in Britain, and soon caused a big discussion.

The special team sent by the Ming government was very effective, because most of them were businessmen, and they also had a large number of Western advisers to follow, so that they had the means and experience to understand how to manipulate public opinion. Even if the British government knew that the Chinese were making trouble behind their backs, they could not stop it, because they were a country of free speech, and the first person to oppose the newspaper was none other than the newspaper association itself. They fought-for-tat battles of public opinion, but the news reported by the pro-government newspapers was quickly drowned in critical public opinion, after all, the British knew that what those businessmen in China were doing was not a good thing in the first place, and those people did not have a good reputation in Britain.

Most of the elite of the British Empire regarded themselves as gentlemen, and some celebrities soon came forward to warn the government that if it continued to protect the dishonorable trade of British merchants in the East, it would affect the country's reputation. In the early days, the Bank of Bahrain was also involved in the opium trade, but they soon retreated into the background, fearing that the opium trade would affect the reputation of the Bahrain family.

Therefore, the majority of the gentry class still knew right from wrong, and under their general mentality of upholding justice, the government became more and more unable to suppress unfavorable public opinion, and had to issue a statement saying that the British Empire was determined to protect legitimate trade, but for the time being the means of war were not considered, and they would adopt friendly negotiations with the Ming government, in order to peacefully resolve the inhumane phenomena in the coolie trade on the basis of protecting British merchants.

As for the opium trade, the British government did not respond, because as a trade that earns tens of millions of taels of silver foreign exchange for Britain every year, once it is banned, Britain's trade deficit with China will not be balanced, and they will have to return to the point where ships of silver are transported in exchange for Chinese tea, which is unacceptable to them, and opium is not just a business for them, but a necessity for trade balance.

This is why the British fought a war with the Manchu Dynasty for opium, but they never recognized that they fought for opium, and always insisted that they were for trade, and at that time their trade goods were basically free opium.

Because the opium trade was not good, but it was of strategic importance to Britain, and it was precisely because the opium trade balanced the trade balance that the British were able to monopolize the eastern trade step by step, and the former sea coachmen Dutch, the rising stars of Sweden and Denmark, and the French who were always unconvinced of the British were all the reasons for the past.

It is also the most fundamental reason why the British now have difficulty parting with the opium trade.

But Zhu Jinglun has now moved this reverse scale. (To be continued.) )