The huge loan was openly paid for in gold, silver, Chinese dollars, or other commodities that the Chinese government was willing to accept, but because the British government could not raise sufficient quantities of Chinese dollars and certain commodities for the time being, it was first paid in gold. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

Because it was only collateral, the gold remained in the UK, temporarily supervised by the Chinese gold force, and could not be taken away unless the UK failed to fulfill the contract. Put simply, if the British government is unable to raise enough silver within a one-year period (the gold-silver ratio is constant at the time of the treaty, about 1:25). If the Chinese side redeems all the gold, the rest will be completely at the disposal of the Chinese side, and it can be spent on the spot or brought back to China.

Well, the above is just a statement on the table, what is going on, only the top of the two countries know, but at least the gold is real.

The total amount of this gold is close to 3,000 tons. The Bank of England is probably the only one in the world that can come up with so much in one go, and Britain's gold reserves exceed 60% of the world's total (China and Britain accounted for three-quarters of the total before the war, and during the war, in order to stabilize the pound exchange rate, nearly 2,000 tons of treasury gold were sold, but its gold reserves still have more than 8,000 tons. The rumors turned out to be true.

According to the terms of the treaty, the loan had to be repaid over a period of twenty years, at an annual interest rate of 5%, with a total of £800 million in principal and interest, and had to be paid in gold, silver, pounds sterling or other commodities that the British government would accept.

This is undoubtedly a frightening amount of money, but Li Hui has no intention of defaulting on the debt, as long as the British can keep their promises and not be hostile to China for the next two decades (including participating in alliances against China, directly participating in China's war, providing assistance to China's belligerents, etc., and other means such as economic sanctions). The Chinese government will honestly fulfill its obligations and pay off the loans. On the one hand, this can quickly build up China's international credit, and on the other hand, it can stabilize Britain, if not absolutely avoid it, but at least greatly reduce the possibility of its intervention in a future Sino-US war.

Moreover, Li Hui was not at all worried that China would not be able to repay the loan, and the first repayment began in the fifth year, at the end of 1899 (that is, in sixteen installments, 50 million pounds a year). By 1899, the rule of the Datong Party in China should have been completely consolidated, the foundation plan had been almost completed, and the annual fiscal revenue would have to be more than a billion yuan, and I was afraid that I would not be able to pay back the money.

Even if the ability to earn foreign exchange is often weak under the planned economic system, the export of antituberculosis pills alone can bring millions of pounds of net profit to the Chinese government in a year, and penicillin, which has been reduced to the point where it can be used in small quantities, has a potential foreign exchange earning capacity ten times that! It can be said that the income from the export of drugs alone is enough to repay the loan and there is a surplus, and the profits of life-saving drugs are quite stable without competition, and they are very little affected by tariffs.

Moreover, if we can really build up international credit, we may be able to win more loans from the West, and then we will be able to follow the example of the United States in postponing the problem by repaying old debts with new debts, and at the same time frantically borrowing money to carry out construction at all costs, so as to promote high-speed economic development. As for what if the debt accumulates to the point where interest can crush people, and the new debt can no longer fill the hole, the First World War should have broken out before that, right?

Well, even if China's early rise affected the world pattern and caused the First World War to break out for a long time, China should have the national strength to be invincible in the world 20 years later, and if you pay your debts, you will not be afraid of creditors coming to your door. It would be a waste to do this only once, and to use it now, but if it is a debt of billions of pounds, it is worth it even if it becomes a public enemy of the world......

It doesn't matter whether Li Hui's wishful thinking can succeed, but the historical line of this world does have a huge deviation that he did not expect.

Britain was undoubtedly the most affected, first of all, Chamberlain Sr. relied on the Treaty of Calcutta and the package of agreements associated with it to win great prestige, and Britain's defeat in this war also gave a sense of crisis to the previously arrogant Britain (and unlike the Anglo-Boer War in history, Chamberlain Sr.'s "imperial" reforms in this war had not yet begun to be tried, so there was no need to take the blame at all, but it increased the expectations of the British for his political ideas). As a result, the number of supporters of the elder Chamberlain in the Liberal Party increased greatly, and eventually led to an early split of the Liberal Party, and also attracted many Conservatives to form a new political party called the "British Industrial and Labor Party", which in Chinese translation is exactly the same as the "British Labour Party" that did not appear at this time......

The old Chamberlain's British Labour Party not only occupied the Chinese abbreviation of the historical British Labour Party, but also because its basic class was very close to the latter, and robbed it of many supporters that should have been won over by the latter, resulting in its failure to form a climate......

However, as in the relationship between the Nazi Party and the Communist Party, the two parties were in fact at odds with each other in terms of their specific ideas. Historically, the British Labour Party advocated that the capitalists give up a part of their profits to appease the workers and alleviate class contradictions, focusing on distribution; Chamberlain Sr.'s Labour Party, on the other hand, focused on revitalizing British industry, especially manufacturing, by making the industrial capitalists more profitable, by making the pie bigger, reducing unemployment and raising living standards, with a focus on production.

But compared to the previous route, the old Chamberlain's route is undoubtedly much more difficult to achieve......

With the high labor cost of Britain, there is no international competitiveness in the face of better quality German goods and more cost-effective American goods, and in order to reduce labor costs, it is necessary to lower the wages of workers, and the argument that the welfare of workers has become a big lie, so it is simply wishful thinking to hope to expand exports to promote industrial development.

Therefore, Chamberlain can only hope to expand domestic demand, but the living standards of the British people are already among the best in the world, so where is there much room for further expansion? Therefore, the old Chamberlain's proposition was not really to "expand" domestic demand, but to "take back" domestic demand, to take back those domestic and colonial markets that had been occupied by foreign goods! (To be continued.) )