At the end of March, Chen Zeyu visited Shanghai, an important economic city in the south, again.

The group inspected the Baoshan Iron and Steel Plant, which had just completed the construction of the first phase of the project a month ago, and visited the Changxing Island Shipbuilding Heavy Industry Co., Ltd., which is in the midst of intense construction, and the Krupp-Avalanche Joint Heavy Machinery Manufacturing Plant, which is a joint venture between China and Germany. Later, accompanied by the German consul, Chen Zeyu had a meeting with the German businessmen in Shanghai, briefed them on the general economic policy of Seris in the next few years, and encouraged them to invest more and set up enterprises in the interior of the Republic...... Finally, Chen Zeyu invited everyone to go around the newly opened Jiangnan Stock Exchange in Shanghai.

Walking into the Jiangnan Stock Exchange, you can see that all the halls inside are crowded with people buying and selling bonds and stocks, and behind the chaos is the increasingly prosperous economic expansion of the republic.

In fact, as early as 1869, Shanghai already had its first stock exchange, which was mainly responsible for the circulation of shares of foreign companies, and the control of several exchanges was always in the hands of foreign companies. By 1891, several foreign banks in Shanghai invested in the establishment of the Shanghai United Securities Exchange Company, which is known in history as the "Shanghai Zhongye Public Office", so that the East had the first relatively complete large-scale bond and stock trading venue, and began to attract local Chinese capital and companies to join the exchange's trading and investment activities. Of course, the control of the Zhongye Public Office was still firmly held by foreign foreign firms, and this situation lasted until around 1896, when Chen Zeyu officially entered the Central Plains, his government of the Republic began to rectify the domestic financial market, and successively issued a number of relevant restrictions and regulations for foreign companies, so that a large number of securities trading companies represented by the Shanghai Zhongye Public Office gradually lost the prosperity of the past. Of course, the right to supervise operations and financial activities were not incompatible, and at the end of 1898, the government of the Republic officially established its own financial exchange, Jiangnan Securities.

After several months of operation and the newly introduced securities trading regulations in China, the development of the Jiangnan Stock Exchange in Shanghai has also been on the right track, with the increase in the number of participants and enterprises, up to now, the exchange has hundreds of companies of bonds, stocks in the circulation of operations, the enterprises involved are not only the domestic steel and railway and other popular industries, many emerging industrial groups such as aviation, machinery, shipbuilding, textile, food processing and other enterprises are listed on the exchange. In addition, many foreign companies with strict capital operation have also joined Jiangnan Securities after passing the strict review of the exchange, and issued their own bonds and stocks on the exchange.

With the operation of stock exchanges in various parts of the Republic, the domestic national capital market has gradually opened the prelude to take-off, and with the passage of time, many local enterprises with potential in the private sector have also issued their own stocks one by one, and their respective development has become increasingly prosperous. As far as ordinary people are concerned, corporate bonds and stocks with good reputations have also begun to become the investment methods they are accustomed to competing for, and it can be said that they are truly making effective use of the scattered private wealth in the country.

……

On April 3, 1899, at 8 o'clock in the morning, Chen Zeyu, the head of state of the Republic, and his entourage were invited again to the Jiangnan Stock Exchange in the center of Shanghai before leaving Shanghai.

In 1899, perhaps the biggest thing for Ceris and domestic investors was the growing rubber stock boom around the world. Because the world industry is optimistic about the demand for rubber and the price of rubber itself has risen one after another, the stocks of major domestic rubber production enterprises have increased to three to five times their original value in almost a short period of time.

This crazy rally soon triggered people's buying sentiment, and more and more investors began to participate in the stock rally, and indirectly contributed to the repeated increase in the market value of several companies.

Unlike the catastrophic rubber stock boom in the previous life, this time the republic has carried out quite strict regulatory measures in various securities markets, compared with the large number of leather bag companies that have emerged in the market in other countries, the Ceris government has issued a large number of securities trading regulations during this period, so that there is no malicious speculation in the domestic trading market. Of course, the domestic government has no control over the rise of foreign rubber markets, and in fact, at the same time, the shares of the major rubber companies on the London Stock Exchange have exceeded their respective values by more than ten times the value of the previous month......

It should be said that during this period, although the rubber market is still largely controlled by Seris, but under the influence of the international market, Nanyang Indonesia and other places and the British in the Indian colonies in Southeast Asia have also opened up their own rubber planting and production enterprises, because of this year's rubber trend, many companies are developing quite smoothly, of course, malicious speculation of leather bag companies is also not uncommon, it must be said, which is also indispensable Chen Zeyu's operation.

In early March, Chen Zeyu used his London branch of the Ceris Development Bank to invest more than 7 million pounds in the local stock market, and bought all of the British-funded rubber companies in the market that "they think can stand the test." The results did not disappoint him, with the recent rise in rubber stocks, these stocks in his hands have now exceeded their original value by nearly ten times, and all of them were sold off in the local stock market before noon today, and a total profit of 69 million pounds, equivalent to nearly 700 million Chinese dollars, was calculated.

What made Chen Zeyu dumbfounded was that on the day the stock in his hand was sold, the rubber market in the London Stock Exchange actually rose instead of falling! Before the market closed in the evening, these rubber stocks even rose by nearly 23.5% in market value again, which made Chen Zeyu feel a cold sweat on the British securities market.

The reluctant head of state of the republic was left with only one thought at the moment - when would the London stock market, which was backed by rubber stocks, collapse......

You must know that the total trading flow of the London Stock Exchange last year was only about 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

It was in this situation, and at the same time, under Chen Zeyu's dumbfounded eyes again, that the price of rubber stocks on the London Stock Exchange turned again! Before the market closed on the evening of the 24th of that month, the entire rubber stock series had nearly doubled again, and even the London Stock Exchange sector had soared, and its total market value reached 2.5 times that of Chen Zeyu's sale, which means that since the beginning of March, these stocks have soared nearly 24 times compared with the original price!

This result directly made Chen Zeyu himself "cry", but despite this, he did not dare to invest a large amount of money in the British stock market again at this moment. Anyway, he has already earned more than 60 million pounds from the British, and he can't be too greedy, no, the young Führer grimaced in front of his eldest son, and gritted his teeth in his heart to comfort himself.

While the British were still crazy about rubber, in southern Africa, the "drastic upheaval" caused by a giant gold mine diverted their attention again......

……

Nature's most beloved nature, yellow, orange, and heavy wealth, gold, often likes to hide itself in extremely inhospitable and barren regions - the rugged rock walls of western North America, the arid Australian desert, the icy Alaska, and the West Transvaal wilderness of South Africa, where only salt-tolerant weeds grow.

In 1884, just a few months after the signing of the London Agreement (First Boer War) between Britain and Burenville, an event of great importance in the history of South Africa took place in the Transvaal Republic, where the Boers lived, and the British could not regret the London Agreement.

In a remote pasture between the Transvaal's capital, Pretoria, and the desolate Vaal Valley, two German prospectors discovered the world's largest gold mine in Withollands, or Rand for short.

The area was covered by several huge gold veins, the most important of which was a 30-kilometre-long gold-bearing conglomerate that contained more than 40% of the world's known gold deposits at the time! The discovery immediately shocked the world, and gold diggers from all over the world flocked to South Africa to try to change their lives by mining gold sand with their own hands, sweat and diligence, as in Australia or the western United States.

Like the Kimberley City, where diamonds were found, they built another pioneer city, Johannesburg, out of tents and simple houses.

However, it is very unfortunate for these hopeful gold prospectors that the main part of the Rand gold mine, like the Kimberley diamond mine, is of relatively low taste. Moreover, many veins are buried hundreds of meters or even thousands of meters underground, and the rich ores that are shallow on the surface are quickly exhausted, and the remaining deep veins are even more than the original precious metal value in terms of mining technology at that time......

However, the appearance of one person changed all that in an instant!

Ben Alices, who is also our protagonist Chen Zeyu, when he was in his last year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States, published his graduation thesis "Heap leaching carbon slurry process and precious metals", which directly pointed out the role of the future leaching method for precious metal mining.

After several years of development, the leaching gold mining process has also developed more and more mature, and since 1898, for the first time, the Boers in South Africa abandoned the old habits of the past and began to introduce this mechanized gold mining technology on a large scale, which is known as the Ben Heap Leaching Slurry Process. One by one, the conservative Boers began to step out of their pastures and erect countless mines in Johannesburg, which had been neglected by their predecessors.

Johannesburg has been rejuvenated by the new method of leaching gold mining, and the intoxicating sounds of mass blasting and mechanical noise have begun to be heard again, and the sale of explosives that had been deserted has been re-enlivened in the Transvaal.

In order to monopolize the country's mineral interests, the Boers later funded the formation of their own Transvaal mining community, the RAND Corporation, and the unique natural conditions soon made this enterprise a world-class international mining oligarchy.

At that time, the world silver crisis had just passed, and the major capitalist countries of the world were changing their ways and carrying out their own gold standard monetary system reforms, and the demand for gold increased significantly. As a result, gold mined by the RAND Corporation poured into the vaults of London, Brandenburg, Paris and Amsterdam, where it was minted into countless gold coins and standard weight-bearing gold bars.

Relying on the output of the RAND Corporation, the Boers began to gain a heart-stopping excess wealth, and at the same time, relying on the huge profits from the gold mines, as well as import duties on the machinery, explosives, workers' food, and other consumables needed for gold mining, the Transvaal government also changed the current situation of fiscal and tax constraints in a short period of time. South Africa's Transvaal government earns more than 10 million pounds a year just by counting taxes from its own mining industry, and the gold income earned by the RAND Corporation, which is monopolized by locals, has long since become an astronomical figure that has silenced everyone.

It can be said that a humble gold mine has turned the originally short and poor Boer peasants into a glorious super tyrant in an instant.

Stimulated by the development of the new mineral industry, the original backward and conservative feudal manor economic system of the Boers was also affected by an unprecedented impact at the same time, and the mining industry quickly replaced the traditional agriculture and animal husbandry of the Boers and became the economic foundation of the Transvaal Republic......