In 1873, Zeng Guofan, who was supposed to have died on March 20 last year, was still strong and worked hard in Zhongnanhai without knowing that his death had passed. He is actually a little old as the prime minister of the empire, after all, the first two were in power in their forties, but in Lin Hong's view, the first prime minister and the second prime minister belong to the role of inheritance and transformation in the development history of this country, and what Zeng Guofan wants to do is stability and innovation.

By the time 1865, the Chinese Empire had actually completed full industrialization, the structure of the national economy had also been transformed, and the problems of population and land that plagued China had been well solved in the colonies.

1 May - The opening of the World Expo in Vienna was a major event, with the last financial statistics in history showing that the total investment of the Expo was $9.56 million, but the proceeds were only one-sixth of its expenditure, and it is considered one of the major examples of fiscal failure of the 19th century. It is also the first time for China to participate in the World Expo, and China's participation method is also a wonder of the Sage Club itself. Because the representative of the Chinese is an Englishman named eocobowra. He was not sent to represent China by the imperial court or a certain imperial court official, but by the Englishman Hurd, the general secretary of the Qing Dynasty at that time. After the Opium War in 1840, China's customs and foreign trade were handled by foreigners. In order to expand business ties between China and foreign countries in order to make greater profits, Hurd sent Bao La to represent China at the Sage Meeting.

Now the Chinese delegation has a strong lineup, rich products and is widely received. In addition to traditional commodities, ceramics, silk, tea, and tea, China exhibited a number of high-tech technologies at the Expo: fertilizers and radios.

For thousands of years, both Europe and Asia have used manure as the main fertilizer. Since the 18th century, the world's population has grown rapidly, and the industrial revolution in Europe has caused a large number of people to pour into cities, exacerbating the shortage of food supplies and becoming a cause of social unrest. Chemists began scientific research on the nutrition of crops in the mid-18th century. At the beginning of the 19th century, the two major theories of plant nutrition were "humus" and "vitality". The former believes that the carbon required by plants does not come from carbon dioxide in the air, but from humus; The latter believed that plants could produce the components of plant ash with their own unique vitality. China is a big agricultural country, needless to say, the demand for chemical fertilizers, phosphate fertilizers and potash fertilizers are now the most widely used in China. In fact, these two fertilizers are not rare in Europe, but what is rare is the soilless cultivation and planting method exhibited in China this time. The European agricultural, chemical, and biological communities are interested in this new way of growing.

As for wireless telegraphy, it attracted worldwide attention as soon as it was exhibited. In fact, the wireless telegraphy on display was not of use value in the early stage of the experiment, but the concept of this concept refreshed the understanding of teletelegraphy around the world. And politicians in various countries have also seen the great role of wireless telegraphy in the military, and the role of instant communication in the military is absolutely important, but it is a pity that the wireless telegraphy on display has not yet been able to be used.

The biggest event in 1873 was the signing of the Three Emperors Alliance. The Three Emperors Alliance was an alliance between Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia. When the Ottoman Empire slowly collapsed, Russia was eyeing the Balkans, especially when there was a powerful Chinese empire to the east, and expansion to the south was its only option. Austria, on the other hand, had considered the Balkans to be its territory since its expulsion from Germany, and Britain, outside of the continent, would not allow Russia to occupy the Balkans, because Britain had always feared that a Russian outlet to the Mediterranean Sea would pose a great threat to its colonial empire, especially Egypt. After the defeat of Germany in 1870, France, another great power on the European continent, has always regarded the loss of Alsace and Lorraine and the proclamation of Germany by Kaiser Wilhelm in the Hall of Mirrors of the Palace of Versailles in Paris as a great disgrace.

Therefore, the signing of the Three Emperors Alliance was really the trend of the times, Germany needed to prevent French retaliation, Russia needed to open the Dardanelles Strait into the Mediterranean, and Austria wanted to protect its interests in the Balkans. As for the Balkan issue, Russia and Austria were in dispute, so Germany was in a mediating position between the two in order to maintain the alliance of the Three Emperors. The Three Emperors Alliance is not directed against any country, but it is directed against any country. In addition to the Balkan issue, Germany hoped to use the Triple Emperor Alliance to deter France, and Russia hoped to open up the route from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea and rebuild the Black Sea Fleet, which was obviously against Britain.

The second major event in 1873 was the global economic crisis, which was also the reason why Zeng Guofan was so busy. The direct impact of this economic crisis on the empire was not small, but the indirect impact was not small. The main reason is that the imperial businessmen are indifferent to the financial market and the positive development of industry, the traditional Chinese businessmen are basically in the stage of producing goods for sale, and the most important people in the financial market are the people of several major consortia, especially this time, the royal consortium took the major consortia of the empire to short the stock market and short sell short to the economic crisis and strong assistance.

The world economic crisis of 1873 was triggered by the bond trading in Vienna on May 9, and the stock depreciated by hundreds of millions of dong in 24 hours; This was followed by a total credit paralysis and the suspension of trading in securities. The exchange crisis in Vienna soon spread to other exchanges in Europe. On September 18, with the collapse of the Zey-Cook Financial Company, which owns a large number of bonds of the North Pacific Railroad, the Bank of New York stopped allocating funds to railroads and industry, and a far-reaching worldwide economic crisis finally erupted on September 18.

Since 1825, the capitalist economy has had crises at regular intervals. But the crisis of 1873 was "the greatest crisis in the history of capitalism" "in its length and intensity" compared to previous crises.

Unlike in previous crises, light industry has been the hardest hit by crises. In the United Kingdom, for example, the cotton textile industry was once the main source and sector of the first four crises. Although the crisis of 1873 initially manifested itself as a chaotic exchange and a credit crisis, the decisive overproduction took place mainly in the field of heavy industry. Whether it was the United States and Germany, which were the first to erupt in crisis, or later the United Kingdom, heavy industry was at the center of the boom and crisis phase of this economic cycle. During the crisis, the U.S. textile industry shrank by only 18-20%; Cotton consumption in Germany fell by 10% in 1875, and in 1876 the situation improved again, and cotton mills consumed even more cotton than in the pre-crisis boom; The cotton textile industry in Britain continued to develop in 1873 and 1874, with neither production nor exports declining.

What really caused the empire to lose a lot of money in this economic crisis was the capital investment abroad, and even with the regulation and early warning of the central bank, there were still some big capitalists who suffered heavy losses in the capital markets of the United States and Germany. The former is the free land of the world's capital market, and the latter is the younger brother supported by the empire, and these two places are where many Chinese capitalists go. Fortunately, the loss is still within an acceptable range, so that those businessmen will not jump off the building or anything, but there are more people jumping off the building abroad.

This economic crisis will not have much impact on a country as large as the empire, on the contrary, the empire's factories can get more industrial machinery from Europe and the United States from this overproduction of heavy industry for factory expansion and production expansion, as for the production of goods do not have to worry about market sales, after all, the current empire itself is a market with a population of nearly 700 million (plus the population of Dongying Province), and the empire has a larger colonial market.

Just when Zeng Guofan was worried that German goods would flood into the imperial colonies in large quantities and thus have an impact on the imperial colonial markets (note: China and Germany had an agreement at the Cairo Conference to allow Germany to buy raw materials from the Chinese colonies at low prices and allow German goods to be sold in the imperial colonies at low prices, as for the domestic market, although the imperial government promised that the Chinese market would be fully opened, tariffs and high freight costs stopped many European and American goods, and the full opening of the Chinese market was actually an opening under high tariffs), a saltpeter war broke out in the South Pacific