In the years of the Crimean War, Zhou Lang has been very worried about economic problems.

China is such a big country, and Britain can not be compared, the British have now basically completed the industrial revolution, and China's machine production has obviously exceeded Britain by as much as two times, but China has not even completed the industrial revolution in the eastern region, a large number of handicrafts and machine industry coexist, and can make money.

The British Industrial Revolution did not rely on its own market, but on the pull of the troika of the European market, the American market and the colonial market, although the scale of foreign trade has been growing in recent years, in fact, the proportion of exports in China's production has not been large, and the proportion of export commodities in China's total value has not exceeded 10 percent.

However, this 10 percent is a useful supplement, and with this 10 percent, China's economy may be growing positively, and without this 10 percent, it may be negative growth.

The war in Europe has greatly affected foreign trade, and Zhou Lang is really worried about the outbreak of an economic crisis, which will have an impact on the industrial revolution that is on the right track.

The economic crisis did appear, but it did not affect all industries, only in local areas, the biggest impact was tea production, and the hardest was a large number of tea farmers.

Because in all industries, the tea trade is the most dependent on foreign exports, when there is no overseas demand, Chinese tea is self-sufficient, with the development of the economy, the purchasing power of Chinese has increased to a certain extent, but because of this improvement brought about by the growth of tea consumption is very limited, the huge expansion of tea production, mainly driven by foreign consumers, the per capita tea consumption of the British has exceeded China, the entire European and American markets consumed tea, has been compared with domestic sales.

Due to China's sudden opening-up, the consumption of imported tea in the West is increasing year by year, China's tea production is rising year by year, in the past only Fujian large-scale production of tea, Guangdong and other provinces are only a small amount of planting, now it is spread out in the areas of tea growth in the country, Fujian, Jiangxi, Anhui, Hunan, Hubei, Guangdong have large-scale tea exports, the annual output of tea is about 5 million quintals, which has caught up with the Guangxu era in history, domestic sales of 3 million quintals, export sales of 2 million quintals.

Due to China's monopoly, the price of tea has been kept in a relatively reasonable position, a load of the lowest grade coarse tea, in the past, was about 20 taels of silver per load, and later it was 20 yuan, or 1 gold tael. And this kind of coarse tea, one acre of land can produce one load, which is much higher than the added value of growing grain. However, tea is not in competition with grain, and tea is mainly grown in mountainous areas, which makes the mountainous areas suitable for growing tea even more expensive than the watered land on the plains in the tea-producing areas.

Too much dependence on foreign markets led to the outbreak of the Crimean War, which affected tea exports, and the industry immediately fell into crisis. The government has introduced support measures to encourage domestic sales and exempted tea from taxes. But it still does not help, a large number of tea farmers go bankrupt, the impact is huge, because there are already a lot of families who rely on planting tea for a living, household statistics have 2,340,900 tea farmers, 6.5 million tea farmers. Now that the foreign market has been affected, the price of tea has plummeted, from the average price of 20 yuan a load to 13 or 4 yuan, which makes many tea farmers unable to make a living, so they have to change jobs, and a large number of tea plantations are abandoned.

Twelve, three, four dollars and a load of tea, it seems that it is still more efficient than growing grain, but tea is a cash crop, is an industrial chain, far more complex than the grain industry, tea farmers can take away the benefits are only the least part, the middle to go through tea sellers, tea houses, tea houses, foreign merchants four levels of middlemen, in order to extract profits, fall into the hands of tea farmers, it is only four or five yuan (1 through 1,000 Wen).

After the outbreak of the tea crisis, the tea industry was also affected, not only the livelihood of a large number of tea farmers was embarrassed, but many tea merchants also left the industry. The powerful big tea merchants began to integrate the entire industrial chain, and Jin merchants like Da Shengkui had the ability to bypass all the middlemen and go directly to the tea producing areas to purchase tea raw materials, process and package them in their own factories, and then export. After a crisis, the tea industry was greatly concentrated.

In addition to the tea trade, other industries have been affected somewhat, such as the silk weaving industry, the cotton textile industry has been affected, but it is not as serious as tea, one is mainly dependent on domestic sales, the other is the continuous expansion of the domestic market, and soon digested the excess capacity, in addition to the price drop some, the entire industrial chain has not been so affected by the tea industry.

The reason for the rapid expansion of the domestic market is naturally not because of the natural growth of the economy, but because of an innovative means of transportation, which is the railway.

The construction of railways has greatly reduced transportation costs, raised transportation speeds, accelerated logistics flows, and saved costs in transportation links, so that consumers can purchase more goods, and the market has expanded.

Therefore, for the construction of a unified market, there is no more promoting way than the development of transportation. In the past few years, it has been the peak period of China's railway construction, and in the era of railways, the economic growth of various countries has often been driven by railway construction.

The mathematical principle of economic growth is actually the improvement of efficiency, and the emergence of railways, replacing the past carriages, packers and porters, brought about an increase in transportation efficiency is hundreds of times, in this sense, it can be called an economic revolution.

China's first railway is the Nanjing City Railway, the second is built to the Mongolian steppe, the third is the eastern port of Haizhou to the west to the Ili, Kazakhstan last passage to the Black Sea, the construction of these railways, so that China's railway technology quickly matured, explored a set of railway construction, operation and maintenance specifications, and continued to improve, now can drive 100 tons of goods, at a speed of 30 kilometers per hour. From eastern China to the Black Sea, it used to take months, but now it takes a week.

This level of efficiency improvement cannot be stopped by any force, and the biggest obstacle originally came from the Canal Company. However, in the northern provinces, which could not be reached by the canal, the interest in building railways was very high, and after Zhou Lang delegated the approval power of commercial companies to the provinces, the provinces approved the railway companies of the provinces one after another.

These companies were formed on a commercial basis, issued shares and bonds to raise funds, and used the power of financial markets to build railways at a rapid pace. It has led to the rapid development of mining, smelting and machine production industries, and has led to an economic take-off, which has offset the economic impact of the shrinking overseas market to a certain extent.

Shanxi's railway was the first to open to traffic, Shanxi Railway Company built a north-south railway line, from Linfen in the south to Taiyuan and then to Datong, and then negotiated with the Royal Railway Company, the Royal Railway Company from Zhangjiakou to lead a branch line, in Datong and Shanxi Railway. The benefits of this railway were very obvious, and the Jin merchants got rid of the horse team and pack team, and then began to do business by train. Coal from Datong began to be mined on a large scale, transported from Zhangjiakou to Beijing and Tianjin, and then shipped from Tianjin to the south.

Coal to the industrial revolution in the steam era meant grain, and the mining of coal in Shanxi instantly reduced the price of coal in China by 20 percent, greatly reducing the cost of using the steam engine, which in turn promoted the popularization of the steam engine.

After the completion of the two trunk lines, the Royal Railway Company began to build a third, or rather, extension of the grassland railway to the south, from Tianjin to Nanjing, so that Beijing and Nanjing can communicate with each other, and the two largest cities in China can be directly connected, which is not only of obvious political significance, but also has great economic potential.

The railway, which runs through the North China Plain and is in direct competition with the Grand Canal to the north, is when the Jiangbei Canal Company begins to panic and their stock price plummets, and investors are apparently more optimistic about the new railroad and lose interest in the slow canal. At the time of life and death, at this time, they also did not care that the Royal Railway Company was a "Qin property" in which the emperor personally participated in the shares, and stopped it at any cost, such as whether they agreed to the railway passing through their canal.

This matter is still deadlocked, and the Canal Company is also desperate, with millions of family assets in one, and several major shareholders are ready, and I heard that the coffins have been bought. And it's not just a canal company, there are a lot of forces mobilized behind the scenes, and all the chambers of commerce and Cao Gang who make a living on the canal have said hello and opened incense halls, preparing to die a group of people to block the southward movement of the railway.

This is really a Chinese-style business war, the intelligence collected from Caifeng made Zhou Lang cry and laugh, this is indeed a business war, the confrontation between two large concession companies, this level of confrontation, there are all over the world, each with its own characteristics, the British railway and canal also have conflicts, so many years, the British have never developed the railway, Trevisick invented the railway for more than 20 years, is there really no British person of insight to see the importance of the railway? It's just that the British canal company is too strong, and many canals are dug by the local nobles, and only the local nobles can expropriate land on a large scale.

Trivisick is just a kid of a mining family and can't be promoted at all. Britain's first railroad is now in operation, the Darlington Railway, which was built by George Stephenson and his sons. And after decades of gestation, the time has come for the birth of the railway. There has been another large number of social elites who have been shouting for the railway flag for many years, and the backbone of them is a group of writers and lawyers. Writers have long outlined the future of Britain's rail network, with lawyers providing legal support.

Under the preparation of this public opinion, Stephen Sun and his son first cooperated with Darlington's wealthy businessmen. It was Edward Pease, a wealthy businessman, who accomplished the most difficult issues such as the establishment of the "Stockton to Darlington Railway Commission", the financing of the construction of the railway, the consent of the landowners along the railway, the struggle against the anti-railroad construction, and the determination of the route of the railway, before Stephenson and his son were able to begin the construction of the railway.

There is no doubt that this first railroad succeeded in the small city of Darlington, where the resistance was weak, which brought more allies to Stephenson. This time his allies are no longer small-scale local powerhouses like Pease, but the emerging classes of Liverpool and Manchester's big cities, entrepreneurs and business tycoons.