Thanks to the special relationship between Huang Zonghan and Lin Zhe, and Huang Zonghan's tolerance for Lin Zhe, the once tense relationship between Lin Zhe and the imperial court began to ease.

Lin Zhe also gave Huang Zonghan 20,000 taels of silver for the Jianghai tariff silver, and at the same time, he did not rely on the hat of Jiangsu's political envoy to interfere in Jiangsu's government affairs, he still shrank his forces in the surrounding areas of Shanghai, and there was no sign of competing with Huang Zonghan for power in the entire Jiangsu.

Therefore, although Lin Zhe was always preparing to accumulate strength to rebel, and the Qing court was always ready to completely suppress and exterminate Yu Shengjun, neither side tore their faces, and the relationship gradually eased.

In this environment, the Qing court began to focus on Kaili Jin, run a new army, the Qing army began to carry out a large-scale counteroffensive against the Taiping army, in the direction of Hubei, the Hunan army led by Zeng Guofan and several other Qing troops joined forces in Hubei and defeated the Qin Rigang Division, burned more than 4,000 Taiping ships, and the remnants of the Taiping Army's Western Expeditionary Army were forced to withdraw from Hubei and retreat along the river.

Zeng Guofan's Hunan army and other Qing troops continued to pursue, aiming directly at Jiujiang in Jiangxi.

After Huang Zonghan took office as the governor of Jiangsu, he relied on the 3,000 Fubiao he brought from Zhejiang and more than 3,000 other green battalions in the Susongtai area, plus a total of nearly 10,000 people from some local towns, to start a counterattack on Changzhou Mansion, and is currently fighting with the army under Wu Ruxiao in the vicinity of Changzhou Mansion.

Xiang Rong also took the risk of continuing to draw troops from the Jiangnan battalion, and sent more than 8,000 troops to reinforce the direction of Zhenjiang and tried to recover Jintan.

However, Xiang Rong's attack on several prefectures and counties in Zhenjiang Prefecture, Huang Zonghan's counteroffensive against Changzhou Mansion was not very effective, although Wu Ruxiao could not do Lin Zhe, and lost troops under Suzhou City, but he Zhenjiang and Changzhou had at least 30,000 or 40,000 troops, and after these months of training, although the combat effectiveness of the soldiers under his command was still not good, it was much better than at the beginning.

In the face of the joint attack of Huang Zonghan and Xiang Rong, he simply survived, so that the Qing army and the Taiping army fought fiercely for more than a month, but they failed to make much progress. Several of these cities have changed hands many times, and Wuxi has changed hands three times in the Taiping Army and the Qing Army.

The back and forth of the two sides led to the fact that the people of Zhenjiang and Changzhou were almost slaughtered, the Taiping army came to kill a group, and the Qing army came to kill another group. In the past few months, these two mansions have been empty, and some of them have been slaughtered by both sides, while more have flocked to Suzhou, Songjiang and other prefectures.

Since Wu Ruxiao marched east from Zhenjiang, a large number of wealthy gentry and common people in southern Jiangsu fled to the Shanghai area to escape the war, and in the last few months of 1854. Tens of thousands of people flock to the Shanghai area almost every month, leading to an explosion in the Shanghai area.

Due to special diplomatic and political reasons, and at the same time garrisoned by Yu Shengjun, the business area has become the preferred residence of these fleeing people, and those rich businessmen who fled from Suzhou, Changzhou and other southern Jiangsu and even northern Zhejiang are dragging their families and bringing a large amount of money together.

These rich families are all masters who are not short of money, although they will not take out tens of thousands of taels without blinking an eye like the Lin family, but it is not a problem for them to take out a few hundred taels or even thousands of taels of silver to buy a house and settle down.

And this leads to the fact that since the opening of the trade zone, the fastest growth rate is not the industrial or export trade such as raw silk and tea, or even the opium import trade, but the real estate industry!

Hundreds of thousands of people poured into the Shanghai area. Among them, the wealthy people are competing to buy houses in the business zone, which has caused the price of housing and land in the business zone to rise, and the increase has exceeded 10 times in just three months.

Before the Taiping army marched east from Zhenjiang last year, a small Western-style western-style building with a courtyard in a high-end community in the business area was sold for only a few hundred taels of silver, but now it is impossible to buy it without two or three thousand taels.

As for those along the river, the price of any piece of land has risen to thousands of taels or even more than 10,000 taels, especially in the areas along the river of the former British Concession, which has brought together the headquarters of many powerful foreign firms, as well as the yamen of the trade zone and the yamen of the Jianghai Customs, and the land price has climbed to a terrifying figure of tens of thousands of taels.

And even so, land and houses in the business zone are still in short supply. Almost the entire wealthy class in the Gangnam region fled for refuge, and the purchasing power brought by it was staggering.

The area of the business zone is only about 2,000 acres, and the land that can build houses is limited.

More importantly, as the largest landlord in the trade area, Yu Shengjun is in the barracks. Bi Yutong is very insidious only to sell a little at a time, more than 1,000 acres of land, in addition to the beginning of the sale of hundreds of acres in order to return funds, the follow-up is to sell a batch of a batch every once in a while, so far there are also a large number of high-quality plots.

For example, in a piece of land along the river near the west bank of Pidgin, several raw silk firms from Huzhou joined forces to invest 30,000 taels of silver, but Bi Yutong refused to sell, so he had to wait.

The business area is limited. In order to alleviate the land pressure in the trade zone, Lin Zhe used his power for personal gain, and after privately negotiating with the ministers of Britain, France and the United States, he took the initiative to expand the scope of the trade zone, and proposed to expand the wider scope of foreigners' business and life, but also made a request to the ministers of the three countries, that is, except for Yu Shengjun, no army was allowed to enter the trade zone.

This article is actually Lin Zhe's attempt to turn the trade zone into a country within a country, and borrow the power of foreigners to block the Qing army and the Taiping army from the trade zone.

Of course, this article is not only for the Qing army and the Taiping army, but also for other countries, Britain, France and the United States, including any other countries that go to China to do business, are not allowed to send armed troops into the trade zone, and the sailors of merchant ships and warships of various countries need to go ashore for rest, then they need to report to the yamen of the trade zone and obtain approval every time before they can go ashore as ordinary foreigners, and they are not allowed to carry guns, artillery and other weapons to land.

However, Britain, France, and the United States also required Lin Zhe to ensure the personal and financial security of merchants from all countries in the trade zone, as well as the freedom of trade and residence.

At the same time, in addition to the agreement, he also put forward several private requests to Lin Zhe, one is to hope that Lin Zhe will expand the export volume of raw silk, tea and other materials. Due to the continuous influence of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and the Qing war, the amount of raw silk, tea, porcelain and other goods that foreign merchants could purchase in Shanghai did not increase significantly with the opening of the trade zone, but decreased to a certain extent.

They asked Lin Zhe to use his influence to allow more businessmen to transport the materials needed by the major foreign companies to the Shanghai Trade Zone, so as to ensure that the foreign merchants could purchase enough goods in the Shanghai Trade Zone to be sold back to Europe.

In addition, it was hoped that Lin Zhe would come forward to help them propose to the imperial court that the ministers of Britain, France, and the United States hoped to get the opportunity to have face-to-face conversations with high-level Chinese figures.

The envoys of Britain and the United States and other countries said to Lin Zhe with a bitter face that more than ten years have passed since the signing of the Treaty of Nanjing, but they have still not been able to live and do business in Guangzhou, the treaty port, and the US minister to China has not been able to meet the governor of Liangguang from the time he took office to the time he left office.

Some time ago, they went north to Beijing and tried to negotiate directly with the imperial court to revise the treaty. As a result, he was driven back, and now he can only find Lin Zhe.

Lin Zhe knew what they were thinking, didn't he just want to open more treaty ports, and this matter was not good for him. If China only has a treaty port like Shanghai, it will be able to reap more benefits from this trade zone, and if there are more treaty ports, it will not be a good thing for the development of the Shanghai trade zone.

And if you don't do this well, it's easy to get into a commotion, and if you're not careful, you will have to go north to the title of traitor. Immediately, it means that there is nothing you can do about it.

However, Britain and France were not discouraged by this, and could not negotiate a treaty to increase the number of treaty ports to expand the scale of trade, so they could achieve their own goals through war.

Still, while they pondered what excuse to start a second war against China, they were happy to befriend Lin Zhe, the only one in contemporary China who was willing to have direct contact with them, and who did not seem to regard them as barbarian high-ranking Qing officials.

After some negotiations between Lin Zhe and the envoys of Britain, France and the United States, on the twentieth day of the third year of Xianfeng, near the Spring Festival, the 'Supplementary Regulations of the Shanghai Trade Zone' was promulgated in the name of the political envoy of Suzhou

The supplementary charter expands the scope of the business zone from 2,000 mu to 7,000 mu, and adds more than 3,000 mu of land on the north bank of Suzhou Creek in addition to the original business zone. There are about more than 2,000 acres of land in the western part of the business zone.

There are also a bunch of messy details, which are largely a supplement to the original regulations of the Shanghai Business Zone, such as stipulating that countries can only fly their national flags in their embassies, and cannot fly their national flags in unexpected places in the embassies.

Another example is to ensure the safety of the lives and property of the Chinese people in the trade zone, except for Yu Shengjun, no other army is allowed to enter the trade zone, and the sailors of merchant ships and warships from various countries who need to rest and recuperate must report in advance, and after obtaining approval, they must enter the designated area of the trade zone as ordinary people, and they are not allowed to carry any weapons.

Another example is that Britain, France, and the United States all have extrajudicial jurisdiction in China. After the crimes committed by the people of these three countries in the trade zone are investigated and arrested by the patrol police of the trade zone, they are tried by the courts of each country, but sometimes the cases involve both foreigners and Chinese, so the establishment of a joint court is discussed. Specialized in hearing cases involving Huayang at the same time.

However, it still strictly follows the principle that the Chinese should be tried and dealt with by the trade zone, and the criminals of Britain, France and the United States should be tried and dealt with by judges sent by each country.

There are so many dozens of articles, most of which are some detailed additions to the original statutes of the trade zone, which weaken the special rights and interests of various countries in the trade zone to a certain extent, and the yamen of the trade zone has almost all the powers that a government should have.

It even has an army, although the yamen of the trade zone cannot form an army on its own. However, only Yu Shengjun's family is allowed to be stationed in the trade zone, which is undoubtedly equivalent to turning Yu Shengjun into the trade zone's own army.

The signing of the supplementary articles of association of the business zone not only gives Lin Zhe greater control over the business zone, but also expands the scope of the business zone and is extremely beneficial to the development of the business zone.

With sufficient land, the business zone can accommodate more immigrants, in order to completely lay the foundation for industrial development, otherwise with the original business zone of just 2,000 acres of land can not accommodate too much population, the population is insufficient, naturally there will be no industrial development.

In this process, Yu Shengjun's camp office relied on political advantages, relying on various methods such as coercion and coercion with knives and guns, and uniformly requisitioned all the land in the newly expanded trade zone from the original landlords, making Yu Shengjun the de facto landowner of the trade zone.

In the foreseeable future, Yu Shengjun will be able to reap a lot of military spending just by selling land, and the Yamen side of the business zone will also be able to reap a lot of tax revenue from frequent real estate transactions.

The expanded business zone has initially met the conditions for industrial development, and the next step is to encourage the industrial development of the business zone! (To be continued.) )

PS: Vomiting blood Chapter 5!