On 1 March, the representatives of the Maritime Association left Beijing and returned to their hometowns, as did the representatives of Macao in Beijing. Most of the maritime representatives still chose the old post station system when they returned to their hometowns, and only Zheng Zhilong, Liu Xiang, Yang Tiansheng and others chose to return to the south by boat together.

The reason why these pirate leaders, who were originally wary of each other, were willing to put aside their worries and return together was naturally to discuss how to negotiate the affairs of Quang Nam on the return journey. Even if some of them had other ideas, they wouldn't do anything stupid now, because there was a better goal waiting for them to achieve.

In today's huge contingent of people leaving Beijing, it is the contingent of Macao representatives in Beijing that stands out a little from the crowd. The team was sandwiched between two battalions of sergeants, which made everyone else on the road far away from the group.

Zhu Youzhen was in a four-wheeled carriage in the middle of the team at the moment, and he had come to bid farewell to Isabella who was heading south. Although it is difficult for the current court officials to interfere in the affairs of the palace, it is still a bit shocking to let a concubine leave the capital and act in another capacity.

Therefore, Isabella's trip still took the way of secret travel. Zhang Xianzhong, who performed well in the battle against Houjin, and Guiyuan, a senior Jinyi Qianhu Guiyuan, served as Isabella's escort to the south, and assisted Isabella and Bishop Antonio in grasping the situation in Macao.

In addition, the 2nd Haiphong Battalion also selected 600 Japanese sergeants, led by several Portuguese generals who had pledged allegiance to Isabella, and set out from the sea for Macao.

Although this trip to the south was taken very seriously by Isabella, this was the beginning of her real journey to the Portuguese throne, and she naturally set off with great interest and excitement.

However, she also understands that if she wants to get the support of Antonio and others, and wants to get a real crown, the most important thing is the love of the man next to her.

Therefore, even at the last moment of leaving the capital, she still pestered Chongzhen in the carriage, wanting the emperor to remember her beauty from time to time. For Chongzhen, the young Isabella is like a passionate and unrestrained flame, which makes him can't help but fall into it.

After all, in front of anyone in the harem, he has to always remind himself that he is Chongzhen and Zhu Youzhen, and he can't do anything too out of the ordinary. But in front of Isabella, he didn't need to make such psychological cues, which made him more willing to stay with the Portuguese girl.

So Chongzhen, who was entangled with Isabella in the carriage, was accidentally sent out of the capital five miles away, and after being urged by Lu Qi outside the carriage several times, he reluctantly let go of Isabella, kissed her on the lips, and then said goodbye and left from the carriage.

After getting out of Isabella's carriage, Lu Qi hurriedly drove over a carriage without any decorations, waiting for Chongzhen to get on the carriage and return to the capital.

Before Zhu Youzhen got into the car, he looked at Zhang Xianzhong and Gui Yuan, who were standing aside and came to say goodbye to him, and couldn't help but stop getting into the car, and said to the two: "You escort Isabella to Macao this time, the first is to protect the safety of the imperial concubine; The second is to obey the command of Deputy Envoy Liu, and to take over Macao in its entirety, especially the artillery factories in Macao..."

In March, the Cabinet promulgated a national policy to promote the development of productive forces over the next five years and a decree to comprehensively review the ability of the central and local government officials to govern. The voice of the reformist officials was greatly raised, while the voices of the old-fashioned officials were suddenly lowered.

Cao Yubian, Li Biao, and Qian Longxi deeply felt that the situation in the DPRK and China had changed greatly, so they successively wrote to Zhishi, wanting to get out of the current whirlpool of political disputes. Zhu Youzhen followed the rules and agreed to their request to return to his hometown.

At the same time as the personnel adjustment of the DPRK and China, the war between gold and silver, which lasted for a year and a half, finally came to an end, and with the help of some defective silver speculators, the gold ratio to silver not only broke through 1:15, but also approached the price of 1:19 for a time.

The three banks of the central government, the Ministry of Communications and the Shanxi Bank won a great victory in this currency war, not only paying off their debts in one fell swoop, but also winning tens of millions of yuan in profits. The capital of the three banks has risen from nearly 50 million silver dollars a year ago to more than 10,000 yuan now.

The businessmen who invested in the three banks have made almost more profits in the past two years than they have made in the past 10 years combined. Although these profits are still only a paper figure and cannot be fully put into their wallets, this steady and high-speed speed of making money has already made the investing businessmen excited.

And what surprised these businessmen the most was that the development of the banking business brought them not only monetary benefits, but also political benefits. In the past, even an ordinary official could call them around, but now they can even discuss it on an equal footing with the household officials as long as they hang up the bank's signboard.

This change in political status made these merchants realize that as long as the bank sign stood in the way, their property could be protected in a certain sense. As a result, the businessmen involved in the bank's investment began to concentrate entirely on the bank's business, hoping to truly operate it into an industry that could be passed on to future generations.

In the mansion on Wangfujing Street, where the signboard of the head office of the central bank is hung, 17 shareholders of the three banks are discussing a meeting on the cooperation between the three banks and the future direction of the bank's development.

Ever since the Emperor summoned representatives of the three banks and proposed to them a plan to issue paper money overseas to replace the various currencies now used in overseas trade, a new world was immediately opened for these merchants.

Swapping printed paper for real money in someone else's hand is a very tempting idea for any businessman. This is even more profitable than when they raised the price of gold against silver.

After all, it also takes money to reserve gold, and the cost of issuing banknotes overseas is almost negligible. The most important point was whether the overseas vassal states and traders were willing to exchange gold, silver, and other goods for the paper money they printed.

It may be a difficult problem for individual businessmen to solve, but it is not a problem for the three major banks that are now linked to the imperial court. This is because when the trade ports were opened two years ago, the imperial court had already cooperated with the central bank to set up currency exchange points at each trade port.

The function of this currency exchange point is to exchange different types of gold and silver coins carried by merchants from various countries into a unified standard of Daming Yuan, and only Daming Yuan can carry out legal trade in various trade ports. With the continuous growth of the trade volume of various trade ports, Daming Yuan has established a basic credit with merchants from all over the world.

Therefore, after consulting with the customs officers, the merchants of the three banks believed that the key to promoting paper money overseas was that paper money could buy various commodities produced in the Ming Dynasty. The Ming merchants who received banknotes overseas could allow the bank to draw a fixed proportion of remittance from it through unified settlement and exchange, which was a good business that would make sure it would not lose money.

Zhang Guoji, who had just been appointed by the Ministry of Household Affairs as the president of the Export-Import Bank of Daming, described to more than a dozen shareholders of the three banks the glorious prospects of the future of the Export-Import Bank of Daming, and suddenly changed the topic and said: "Shareholders of the bank, although everyone is not investing in the same bank, I think that the three banks now have a common goal.

What is this common goal? It is to determine that the currency pricing power of the Ming Dynasty is in our hands. Don't look at the fact that we just won the gold and silver price war, but we didn't actually win completely.

As of March 1, our three banks had 120 tonnes of gold reserves, 302 tonnes of gold deposited with the Central Bank by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and 57 tonnes of gold deposited with the Central Bank. In other words, our gold reserves with the imperial court together are about 155 tons.

One tael of gold is a ton of gold, and gold is more than 4.13 million taels. According to the ratio of 1:15, it is converted into silver, which is more than 6,000 taels. Because of the rise in the gold exchange rate this time, we have appreciated by nearly 30 million taels of gold, which is more than 4,200 million yuan.

This may seem like a staggering amount, but according to our research, there is about the equivalent of this amount of gold, which is stored in the private sector. In other words, although we have won the war, we have not fully gained the power to price gold.

As long as we sell more than 10 tons of gold, then there will be a lot of gold sold in the market, then we will not be able to anchor the 1:15 gold-to-silver ratio, and we will suffer huge losses if we have a lot of gold.

Therefore, if we want to keep our assets growing, we must break away from the market dominated by huge amounts of silver, and replace silver with paper money as the currency in circulation. Only by expelling silver from its status as a currency in circulation can gold truly become a solid and unchanging wealth.

The separation of paper money and silver should not be used only in overseas trade areas, but I think it should be implemented domestically when the time is right. Please think about it carefully, we are now issuing less than 200 million yuan of banknotes in the Ming Dynasty, but the total amount of trade in China last year, the statistics of the Ministry of Households alone have exceeded 650 million Ming Yuan.

In other words, more than half of the trade still uses silver, copper coins and other currencies, or even barter. This is a huge loss for our bank. But if we want to increase the amount of money issued, we must increase the margin of precious metals, and at the moment, the amount of margin we have increased is far from keeping pace with the growth of trade.

If the currency on the market could not meet the needs of trade, then according to the practice of His Majesty and the imperial court, the fourth, fifth... Banks to expand the number of banknotes issued by collecting capital deposited in the private sector. This practice is obviously disadvantageous for our three banks.

Therefore, our three banks must unite and use the huge capital of our union to suppress the money business in various places, and eliminate as many enemies as possible in the future. One is to speed up the hoarding of gold, not only to buy gold domestically, but also to search for gold mines overseas.

As long as we have more than 300 tons of gold in hand, then the exchange ratio of gold and silver can be really stable. And when we have more than 600 tons of gold on hand, then we can adjust the price of gold at will. And if we can reach more than 1,200 tons of gold reserves, then I think the Ming Yuan should be separated from silver, and denominated in gold alone..."