This is also an important reason why Li Hui decided to postpone the war against the United States, although the United States is extremely valuable, but with the current capacity of the Chinese government, it will take at least a few years to complete the resettlement and reclamation of land in the northeast, northwest and South Seas, considering that during this period there is still a huge amount of construction of basic farmland and water conservancy and basic roads, bridges and ports across the country, in fact it will only take longer, and if there is still a war during this period, it is not known how long it will take to complete. Pen, fun, and www.biquge.info

During this period, even if they could obtain land from the United States, they could not afford to develop it, and the people in China would not be able to benefit from it, but would have to bear a heavy burden of war (if you start a war with the United States, the scale will not be small in any case, and it may also lead to a world war). ）。 If the lives of the people in China were okay, then Li Hui would still be ruthless enough to make them make a little sacrifice, but after learning that the people were still so sad, he would not be able to make up his mind anyway.

Speaking of which, Li Hui has always been in the developed eastern provinces, and the conclusions drawn based on his impression are actually not applicable to the whole country, because even the poorer areas on the eastern coast tend to have better economic conditions than the average in the central and western regions. In today's era, at a macro level, the economic gap between urban and rural areas, between the south and the north, between the coastal and the inland, and between the plains and the mountains is even larger than that of later generations, how can Li Hui, who does not know this, find that the gap is only 20%?

China suspended its expansion, but the United States did not have much better, because not long after the end of the economic crisis of 1893, the largest economic crisis in history of unprecedented scale, which even Wall Street bankers did not anticipate in time, plunged the entire Western world, including the United States, into dire straits......

In a sense, this great crisis was actually caused by Li Hui, although he did not intend to create such an outcome, but it was indeed expected and happy to see it happen.

As early as after knowing that the system needed to collect gold and silver in reality, and only consumed but did not produce, Li Hui realized that this was a huge hidden danger to the Western powers.

Nowadays, most countries in the world adopt a gold standard or silver standard monetary system, using the natural high value of gold or silver to maintain the credit of paper money. Li Hui's system permanently collects gold and silver from this world, and when the quantity reaches a certain level, it will inevitably lead to the scarcity of gold and silver, which will then push up the price of gold and silver, and then the number of people who exchange paper money for gold and silver will increase, and the number of people who exchange gold and silver for paper money will decrease, resulting in the outflow of precious metal reserves in various countries, and the amount of paper money that can be issued will naturally decrease, which will inevitably lead to deflation, which is precisely what the market economy is most afraid of......

Deflation, refers to the shortage of money supply involved in circulation, the intuitive manifestation is that prices are falling, money is worth a lot, from the perspective of ordinary people, this should be a good thing, but for the business entities under the market economy (not only industrial enterprises, but also individual craftsmen, shops and farms and other units that pursue profits. But it's a deadly poison. Since it is a market economy, the enterprise is naturally chasing profits, but in the case of deflation, the price of products falls, and the raw materials and labor costs paid before are at a high level, which will inevitably directly lead to a decrease in profits.

If only the prices of some commodities fall, then the problem is not terrible, some enterprises will close down and reduce production capacity, when the supply and demand relationship is reversed, prices will naturally rise, and the rest of the enterprises will be relieved. But if there is a general price fall, the result is a frenzy of bankruptcies in almost all industries, and then because of the massive unemployment of the workers, the purchasing power of society is sharply reduced, and the goods are even more unsold, leading to a vicious circle, which is the chronic disease that capitalist society has never been able to eradicate - an economic crisis manifested as a (relative) excess. Moreover, unlike the spontaneous economic crisis, which has a somewhat positive effect of survival of the fittest, this kind of economic crisis, which is mainly caused by external factors, is completely destructive, and the damage caused to the economies of Western countries is greater and deeper.

Li Hui began to collect gold and silver very early, but the amount he collected was limited at first, and after the outbreak of the Yiwei Revolution, China was suddenly cut off from the Western world, so the domestic collection of gold and silver did not immediately have much impact on the price of gold and silver in the international market, and it was not until the signing of the Sino-British Treaty of Calcutta that the situation began to change......

The problem is not in the huge indemnity paid by the United Kingdom, although there are nearly 3,000 tons of gold, but nearly half of it is spent on the introduction of Western equipment, talents and even direct acquisition of enterprises and flows into the Western market, while the remaining half is all replaced by silver, although this led to a sharp rise in international silver prices, but it did not immediately plunge the Western powers into an economic crisis, because the world's first-class powers used the gold standard instead of the silver standard, and silver was not directly related to currency issuance. Therefore, only some of the markets related to it have been hit harder, and it has not affected the overall economy.

There are even a handful of countries that have profited from this, such as owning more than half of the world's silver stock (the situation before 1900 was that Britain held most of the gold reserves, while the United States held most of the silver reserves). But the elder Chamberlain and his allies, who had anticipated it in advance, undoubtedly benefited more because they had made the most correct response. The key is that once industrial capital has abundant cash flow, it has the courage to argue with financial capital, and with their support, the Labour Party (right) formed by Chamberlain Sr. grew rapidly and soon became a force to be reckoned with in British politics.

However, if you want to ask who has the most profits, then there is no doubt that it is the "ink gate" that caused all this, even if Li Hui did not dare to take risks, only around the gold and silver 1 for 10 system pricing to make a steady profit without losing money, the gold price is too high to throw the gold cashier, the silver price is too high to throw the silver to collect gold, and the capital invested in speculation is also limited to 500 tons of gold / 5000 tons of silver, but still reaped extremely rich profits, because the market economy has always risen and fallen too much...... (To be continued.) )