The year 1875 came, this year a baby girl in Xiamen, Fujian Province fell to the ground, and his father named him Qiu Jin, that is, the historical Jianhu woman Qiu Jin was born. Almost half a year before the birth of the Jianhu Woman, there was also a baby boy in Xiaowa Village, Haicheng County, Fengtian Province (now Xiaowatun, Dawa County, Panjin City, Liaoning Province), his name was Zhang Zuolin, who was later the leader of the Feng warlords.

And the people who passed away this year also made Lin Hong regret, the Danish fairy tale writer Hans Christian Andersen died, although now Chinese children have Lego bricks from the Royal Toy Company, but fairy tales have always been the best teaching materials for children to learn and think in Lin Hong's view.

1875 was a quiet year, except for catching up with the five-year census and the small National Day, which made the country commotion, the rest of the time the Chinese Empire was like a clockwork that had been tightened, and it did not stop moving forward.

In 1875, through the extensive use of two new steelmaking methods, open-hearth steelmaking and converter steelmaking, the empire's annual steel production reached 8.77 million tons, more than quadrupled from five years earlier, and pig iron production exceeded 10 million tons. Among them, the production of special steel exceeded 10,000 tons for the first time, although these special steels are currently only used in the manufacture of military weapons such as artillery and ship keels, and have not entered the civilian field and the output is low, but it is definitely a breakthrough in this era. Of course, the British are also catching up, in 1875 British coal production has reached 112 million tons (coal is an important foreign commodity of Britain, every merchant ship leaving Britain will be loaded with British coal in the bilge or empty position to go to the world's ports, so its output is also normal), and steel production reached 5.97 million tons, British coal has exceeded the output of the empire, of course, Lin Hong said that there is no pressure on this, the imperial coal output is currently maintained at about 90 million tons, However, all domestic coal mines are sustainably mined (that is, digging and filling) to ensure that the annual domestic coal output is about 60 million tons, if the British really want to compare the numbers, it is not a problem to break 200 million in minutes. As for the production of steel, sometimes it is not just a value, the steel produced in the UK is the old-fashioned steel smelting process and the production efficiency is underground, in addition, 76% of the British steel is exported, who do they sell to in their own market? In Europe, in addition to the Ottomans, even Russia has erected a big wall of tariffs on British industrial products, they can only sell to China, and now someone is helping you to work and produce steel, are you happy, the price is more than any problem, anyway, the treasury is surplus every year, you can't let the money rot in the bank, and the money that enters the market is called money.

As of the middle of this year, the statistics of the Chinese Imperial Shipping Bureau show that the total tonnage of imperial merchant ships has reached 3.8298 million tons, second only to the United Kingdom's 4.4737 million tons, which can be said to be the two national flags with the most in the ocean waterway.

According to the 1868 revision of the Constitution of the Chinese Empire, the term of office of Tseng Kuo-fan's cabinet was about to expire, and who would be the next prime minister became the top priority. The Kuomintang was supported mainly by the big capitalists and factory owners in China, the Democratic Party was supported by the financial banking oligarchs of the empire and the capitalists who were keen on the export of foreign capital, and most importantly, they also had the support of businessmen in the North American colonies and the East African colonies, while the Union Party was a comprehensive political party representing high-level intellectuals, doctors, students, small and medium-sized capitalists, large farmers, etc.

This year, the Kuomintang nominated the prime minister of Zeng Guofan's cabinet Minister of Industry Li Hongzhang, Li Hongzhang is the first prime minister Zuo Yu's closed son and the current Kuomintang leader, to Lin Hong's surprise, the Democratic Party nominated Qin Han, the Minister of War of Zeng Guofan's cabinet, Qin Han is a clone that Lin Hong bought from the system, of course, these systems are the same as ordinary people, but their thinking is more modern, in fact, the Democratic Party is keen on foreign capital export and political and economic aggression, and it is not surprising that Qin Han is a soldier, You must know that the Democratic Party is very angry with Zeng Guofan, who asked him to give the Congo River valley to France! They fervently hope that a strong cabinet government will open up more interests for them. As for the Coalition Party, it is the worst, there is currently no suitable nomination, who let them represent too many interests! However, they are more inclined to Rong Hong, the former deputy minister of education of the empire-

On October 13, 1875, the results of the first general election in the National Assembly showed that none of the three candidates for prime minister had the number of votes required by the Constitution.

On the 24th, the third election of the prime minister of the National Assembly (the reason why I had to wait so long was to wait for the results of North America and South Seas) was also inconclusive, but the League Party was disqualified from running because the votes were divided by the other two parties. The competition between the Kuomintang and the Democratic Party has also reached a fever pitch.

The Kuomintang's political proposition is to strengthen the construction of a clean and honest government, and improving administrative efficiency is an old routine that cannot be used any longer, but there is one thing that is favored by the members of the National Assembly, that is, to strengthen the daily political autonomy of the colonies, and to strengthen the construction of the colonies in sinicization, etc., the role of the colonies is becoming more and more important with the development of the territory, and the colonies provide raw materials and consumer markets, in order to avoid the East and Southwest Territories like Spain and Cuba, it is more and more important to strengthen the political construction of the colonies. Economically, the KMT advocated tariff protectionism, which allowed the KMT to draw the votes of many small and medium-sized capitalists from the League Party.

Politically, the Democratic Party played the slogan of "National Cabinet", promising that the Democratic Party's cabinet would serve every citizen in need, which was also the first time in the history of the world that a service-oriented government was mentioned. That is, to reduce tariffs to about zero and encourage foreign exports and export subsidies.

In particular, the Imperial Preferential System is particularly favored by the parliament and all social strata, and the main contents of the British Imperial Preferential System are: 1. Britain gives preferential tariff treatment to imported goods from the colonies, of which about 80% of the goods can be imported duty-free, and about 20% of the other goods are only subject to a low tariff of about 10%. 2 The United Kingdom guarantees the sale market of agricultural products of the Dominions and colonies in the United Kingdom, and restricts the import of agricultural products from countries outside the Dominions and colonies. 3 British industrial goods were to be treated with preferential treatment when they were exported to the Dominions and colonies. 4 Dominions and colonies were to accept British advice when formulating tariff policy, and to impose high tariffs on goods imported from countries other than Britain. In order to implement the preferential system, Britain signed a series of agreements with the Dominions and colonies to clarify the preferential treatment of British goods in these countries and regions. These agreements generally reduce import duties on British goods to 20% of the value of the goods, which is significantly lower than the tariffs imposed on goods from other countries. In fact, there is no colonial tariff policy in the colonies and dominions of the empire, and all policies of the colonies and dominions are strictly controlled by the cabinet, but the key to the preferential system of the empire is not the dumping of goods but the export of capital, in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China to about 1850, the investment of domestic capital in the colonies was about 30 million Chinese dollars, all of which were Lin Hong's people, and around 1860, with the fierce competition in the domestic capital market, a large amount of capital began to be exported to the outside world, and this figure exceeded 100 million Chinese yuan. However, in order to ensure domestic construction and industrialization, the Parliament enacted the Foreign Investment Act and the Colonial Investment Specification Standard, and began to control capital outflows with a visible hand. Now that the empire's economy is developing more and more rapidly, businessmen are very optimistic about the commercial and economic potential of the empire's colonies and dominions, in fact, Lin Hong has exported capital to Europe and the United States at the beginning, but at that time, the empire's capital output was more like export for the sake of export rather than for profit, and that was the private merchants who were not aware of foreign trade at all. Now in the eyes of the imperial businessmen, the most important thing is to open factories in the colonial dominions, and there is no need to be subject to the inspection and regulations of the Environment Agency as in the homeland, and there is no need to spend more money to buy exhaust gas filters and waste water disposers, so it is imperative to speed up foreign capital investment in the colonies, and the entry of German goods into the imperial colonies has made the imperial businessmen feel the crisis, and it is precisely because of this that the Democratic Party has proposed the preferential system.

In fact, at the beginning, the capital export of imperial merchants in Europe and the United States was Lin Hong's conscious command system, and the capital penetration of clone merchants into Europe was carried out by the current trend of foreign investment, which can be said to be a great progress for the Chinese commercial bourgeoisie