In March 1884, the Netherlands took advantage of the outbreak of the Sino-French War to carry out the "last" coercion against the Lanfang Company, hoping to completely transform the southeastern part of Borneo into a colony of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

They thought it was the last time, but instead they poked a hornet's nest.

The Sarawak Autonomous State and the Lanfang Company formed an alliance, and soon after the Dutch sent troops to attack the Lanfang Company, the Saudi army also began to send troops, and large-scale military conflicts broke out between the two sides in Yamaguchiyang and Pontianak one after another, and finally the Dutch were forced to withdraw from Borneo as a result, so that the Sarawak Autonomous State expanded into the British Borneo Autonomous Federation.

Of course, this incident did not have a big impact on the whole world, after all, the decline of the Netherlands has long been an indisputable fact.

After the great victory in the Sino-French War forced France to abolish the full most-favored-nation privilege, the international prestige of the Qing Empire was significantly enhanced.

At the end of July 1885, Hu Chuyuan returned to Shanghai Yongyuan and reached an agreement with the American envoy that the United States would voluntarily renounce the complete most-favored-nation status and the two sides would enjoy partial most-favored-nation treatment in reciprocity.

In August 1885, Hu Chuyuan and his wife visited Britain, and although they failed to persuade Britain to give up its most-favored-nation privileges, they reached a preliminary agreement on tax autonomy, the Sino-Burmese border, and the Sino-Indian border, and reached an agreement with Britain, the United States, and France to transform the Shanghai, Tianjin, and Haiphong concessions into international public concessions.

In September, Hu Chuyuan arrived in Moscow to hold final negotiations on the issue of Ili in Xinjiang Province, and finally formally recovered Ili at the cost of paying 600,000 Qing Yuan, a symbol of his surname.

In October, Hu Chuyuan arrived in Berlin, Germany, where he held talks with Chancellor Bismarck and signed a new Sino-German Reciprocal Trade Agreement.

Subsequently, Hu Chuyuan visited Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain, and Austria-Hungary, and successively signed new trade agreements, allowing merchants from various countries to trade in the international public concessions.

Hu Chuyuan returned to China in the spring of February 1886, and shortly after he returned to Shanghai, Zuo Zongtang died of illness in Jiangning.

Subsequently, Zeng Guoquan was transferred to the governor of Liangjiang, Lu Chuanlin was appointed as the governor and admiral of Shanxi, Liu Jintang was appointed as the governor of Zhejiang, the main force of the Hunan army was under the command of Zeng Guoquan, Ye Zuqiping, a native of Fujian, was transferred to the South China Sea Fleet as the admiral, and Ye Fu, a native of Guangdong, was promoted to the admiral of the East China Sea Fleet.

At this stage, the imperial court still adopted the strategy of dividing and ruling in different places and balancing the various departments in terms of personnel arrangements, and China was also in a relatively stable stage economically and politically as a whole.

In April 1886, Hu Chuyuan fine-tuned the export price of raw silk and raised it by 7%, which was regarded as temporarily letting go of the horse and giving himself a particularly quiet time.

It was during this period of time that he continued to strengthen the rectification of China's tea, hemp and porcelain industries, and the scale of investment gradually reached 100 million yuan, and successively built the Nanning Railway from Nanchang to Hangzhou and Ningbo via Jingdezhen, Qimen County, Huizhou and Huzhou, as well as the railways from Zhenghe County to Fuding County, Dehua County to Quanzhou through Yongchun County and Anxi County, and Shaxian County to Fuzhou.

Through coordination and negotiation with Rong Lu, he began to invest in the Wuchang-Nanning railway, and Xu Run's Liangguang Commercial Bank invested in the construction of the Nanning-Guangzhou railway.

With the improvement of the railway network and the improvement of port facilities in various places, including the Jiangnan Commercial Bank's investment of more than 4 million yuan to dredge the Yangtze River waterway and the Minjiang River waterway, the CIF price of Chinese tea in Europe has been roughly the same as that of Indian tea.

On this basis, Hu Chuyuan began to block Indian tea in Britain through private subsidies, and vigorously explored the markets of the United States, Germany, France, Spain, Australia, etc., and at the same time increased the scale of tea trade in Russia.

On the other hand, he also used his capital advantage to acquire Indian tea fields and Ceylon tea fields by Swire & Co., to form a new British Tea Company, control the local sales and export of Indian tea, and implement a squeeze strategy against other Indian tea companies.

Third, he also improved channel sales by holding Jardine Matheson, holding Lipton Food Stores in the UK, and investing in Jardine Matheson chain stores.

With this series of means, coupled with the improvement of the Sino-British trade treaty, in 1886, the scale of China's tea exports increased by more than 17.3% over the same period last year, and the share of the international tea export market was restored to 90%.

With the opening of Zhejiang Yue Porcelain Factory, Quanzhou Porcelain Factory and Jiangnan Jingdezhen Porcelain Factory, China's porcelain industry has also begun to pick up and recover, with the reduction of costs, the increase of pattern and quality, the sales volume of porcelain in Nanyang and China began to increase significantly, and the export porcelain has gained greater recognition and sales in the American market.

In the hemp industry, bamboo industry and other handicraft industries, the total export sales of traditional handicrafts are also gradually increasing, especially the lack of other competitors in Jiangxi bamboo mats, hemp mats and summer linen cloth in the world, but also to fill the market gap in Europe and the United States.

With the improvement of this general economic environment, China's economy has obviously begun to pick up.

At the beginning of 1886, Hu Chuyuan gave up the monopoly right of paper money in the north, and personally contacted various companies, and joined forces with Shanxi Shengchang Ticket Number, Wantong Ticket Number, Dadefeng Ticket Number, Shanxi Commercial Bank, Beiyang Commercial Bank, and Shandong Commercial Bank to establish a new Beiyang Bank.

In May 1886, Hu Chuyuan went to Wuchang to meet with Rong Lu, the governor of Huguang, and persuaded the Huguang Commercial Bank, the Sichuan Commercial Bank, and a number of ticket numbers to jointly establish the China International Commercial Bank.

CITIC holds a stake in both banks and provides them with margin and start-up capital, as well as the technology they need.

In September 1886, Hu Chuyuan persuaded Prince Alcohol, Prince Li and Prince Su, and coordinated with the feudal officials in various places to establish a new Daqing Banking Bureau, and set up eight branches in Tianjin, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Yunnan, Wuhan, Chengdu, Xi'an, and Fuzhou, which were under the jurisdiction of the governors of various places.

Since then, China's financial sector has completed the first step of reforming its financial system, completely changing from a mixed silver and copper standard to a silver standard, setting up a new Shanghai Stock Exchange and a precious metals exchange in Shanghai, and setting up futures exchanges in Tianjin, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Fuzhou.

In December 1886, also under the persuasion of Hu Chuyuan, the six provinces south of the Yangtze River (Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Jiangxi, Fujian, and Taiwan) were the first to stop collecting taxes on local gold and miscellaneous taxes.

In April 1887, Liangguang, Shandong, and Huguang successively abolished the tax on gold and miscellaneous taxes, and under the secret control of Hu Chuyuan, the Qing government was forced to unify the merchant tax and the merchant tax throughout the country, no longer collecting the merchant tax, only collecting the merchant tax in the shops, and raising the commercial tax to 13 draws to make up for the reduction and exemption of the merchant tax.

In 1887, with the unification of the financial markets in various places, the Qing court collected 24.75 million yuan in money printing tax throughout the year, and the profits and taxes paid by various commercial banks amounted to 51.92 million yuan.

No matter what the Qing court thought, Hu Chuyuan's influence on China's economy was already increasing, and under his influence, China's economy did begin to recover, and there was a trend of developing towards the prosperous Kangqian era.

Similarly, with the expansion of Hu Chuyuan's agriculture-oriented pragmatism, Zeng Guoquan, Mei Qizhao, Liu Kunyi, Tan Zhonglin, Rong Lu, Lu Chuanlin, Zhang Zhidong and others were all feudal officials of the pragmatic faction, and the scale of investment in agriculture in the six provinces of Jiangnan, Huguang, Liangguang, Shandong, Sichuan, Yunnan-Guizhou, Zhili, and Shanxi was expanding, and the vast majority of funds also came from the CITIC system.

By the end of 1887, the total amount of money borrowed by the Qing Axe to the CITIC Bank had reached 430 million yuan, with an average loan interest rate of 11.4%.

Hu Chuyuan also did not issue treasury bonds and bank bonds, but continued to use the deposit note method, issuing five-year deposit notes with a fixed interest rate of 7%, and he only relied on the difference in the middle price, and he made a net profit of 18.92 million yuan every year.

On the other hand, even if the national gold and miscellaneous taxes were exempted, the total fiscal revenue of the Qing government axe in 1887 reached 194 million yuan, and the proportion of the feudal officials in the provinces was about thirty and a half percent, which was basically able to maintain the military salaries and foreign affairs expenditures of the provinces.

These accounts, the Qing court itself will calculate, whether it is Prince Alcohol, Prince Li or Prince Su, everyone is particularly dependent on Hu Chuyuan, and Hu Chuyuan has basically become a bridge of communication between the feudal officials and the Manchu central power, as well as between the European powers and the Qing court.

At this time, the Qing court was not like the madness in the last stage, they knew very well that as long as Hu Chuyuan had no intention of rebelling and just wanted to make money, it would be of great use to the court, and he could help the court make money, and help the Qing Dynasty restore to the prosperous Kangqian era, which would not be a good thing.

At least in their opinion...... Hu Chuyuan only has one Fuzi battalion in his hand to protect himself, and he has no military power if he wants to rebel.

Hu Chuyuan also made a private deal with Prince Su, if one day, the court could not tolerate him, he and his wife went to the United States together, he bought hundreds of thousands of acres of land in the San Francisco Bay area, and was building a most luxurious estate.

He has hundreds of millions of dollars in assets in the United States, and he can be regarded as one of the top three richest people in the United States.

The Qing Dynasty didn't keep him, it had its own place to stay, and he couldn't live or die at home.

He can't do it.

Since this is the case, whether it is the Qing court or Cixi, the surname Suo will use him as a person like Hurd, as long as he can fill the warehouse of the imperial court with silver, and can help the Qing court mediate with foreigners at critical moments, he is the most useful person.

Of course, Cixi is not in a hurry to do it, and Prince Alcohol and Prince Li are not in a hurry to do it, so there is a particularly important reason...... They all have a bomb hanging on their heads that is about to detonate, and it may not be detonated - in another two or three years, Cixi will have to return to the government, but looking at Cixi's appearance, the ** of ten will not be returned.

At this time, Hu Chuyuan, who was holding a large amount of money in his hand, became the focus of contention between the two sides, even if he did not compete to show goodwill, he could not be forced to be anxious, in case he was forced to completely fall to the other side, things would not be easy to clean up, no matter what, Hu Chuyuan not only had money, but also the support of foreigners, and was the big housekeeper of the treasury of the three families of Hunan, Jiangxi and Yunnan.

This account, Cixi will calculate, and Prince Alcohol will also calculate.

Hu Chuyuan himself will also grasp a kind of proportion, he did not arrogantly completely take over all the banknote issuing rights in China's financial industry, but deliberately created a number of note-issuing banks such as Beiyang Bank, Nanyang Bank, China Commerce Bank, Yangtze River Bank, Jinshang Bank, and Huishang Bank.

The two sides found a balance in this way, Hu Chuyuan earned his money, and the court used him to do things.

In addition, Hu Chuyuan is also a very important donor, he will donate a total of more than 20 million yuan of silver to the five governors of Liangjiang, Fujian and Zhejiang, Liangguang, Huguang and Zhili every year, which will be used by the governors to set up schools, academies, schools, Chinese culture museums, engineering museums, and agricultural and mulberry schools in various places.

Every year, he would donate 10 million Qing Yuan through the household department for Qing Zheng Axe to relieve disasters in the name of the imperial court in Shanxi and Hebei, rather than in his own name.

He also donated 6 million yuan of silver to the Internal Affairs Office under the control of Prince Su every year for the restoration of Qingyi Garden, and donated millions of silver yuan to the Prime Minister's National Affairs Yamen for holding large-scale exhibitions of the Qing Empire in various countries.

He doesn't care about reputation, but is very low-key, he pays money, others are famous, he pays money, and Prince Su pleases.

As for Prince Su, Prince Li, Prince Alcohol, as well as the feudal officials in various places, officials of the third rank and above, regardless of whether they have real power or not, Hu Chuyuan will send a sum of money during the New Year's Festival, at most hundreds of thousands of clear yuan, and as little as tens of thousands of clear yuan.

For the newly promoted Jinshi, he has to give money, as long as he is a person with some ability, he can basically find a real shortage through him.

For those ministers, counselors, and international students who are abroad, Hu Chuyuan will also send an allowance every year.

For the generals at all levels of the Hunan Army, the Jiangxi Army, the East China Sea Fleet, and the South China Sea Fleet, he also has money to send over, but the money is much more hidden. Even if it is a Huaijun boss like Liu Mingchuan and Pan Dingxin, Hu Chuyuan will have money to give.

The Dian army and the Gui army all have money, and even some of the general soldiers of the green battalion can get gift money, all kinds of names, all kinds of channels, in short, the person who receives it knows that it is Hu Chuyuan's intention.

Donate silver and bribes, Hu Chuyuan spent 55.78 million yuan on this in 1887 alone.

Similarly, his business has also grown bigger and bigger with the secret support of everyone, and the scale of the industry has already expanded to a shocking extent.

(To be continued)