On July 26, 1909, Jiang Jiying, the president of the Shandong Commercial Bank stationed in Shanghai, and David, the vice president of Huamei Machinery in London, began to sell the rubber stocks they had been hoarding for a long time in two places in accordance with Long Qian's urgent order of 100,000 yuan, which attracted heavy attention. The trading volume was as high as 7 million taels of silver in a day. The next day, the hot "Qiongzhou Rubber" company was transferred from the Shandong Commercial Bank to three banks headed by Zhengyuan Qianzhuang, and 15 million silver flowed into Citibank, an American-funded bank that was the guarantor of the deal.

Qiongzhou Rubber is a Chinese business company that suddenly rose last year, and it invested heavily in building a huge rubber plantation in Qiongzhou. In 1909, before the Spring Festival, an event was organized, inviting hundreds of merchants and reporters to visit the "production base" of Qiongzhou rubber. This was an excellent business plan, and the huge number of newspaper reports prompted a sharp rise in the Qiongzhou Rubber Company, and how many companies in China that play rubber have their own huge production bases? Those rubber plantations are actually there. At one point, Qiongzhou Rubber's stock grew wildly, and the market value of the stock was more than ten times that of the new company's investment.

Grand Chi company had intended to acquire Qiongzhou rubber, there has been no result, the red-eyed Chinese businessmen intervened, Zhengyuan money village and other three of the most powerful money village joined forces to buy Qiongzhou rubber at a high price, the business negotiation time is extremely short, the original Qiongzhou rubber has been waiting for the price to sell the self-claimed funds encountered problems, as long as the other party in gold, silver or foreign exchange payment, Qiongzhou rubber is willing to sell at a low price.

The business was negotiated in half a day. The next day. That is, on the afternoon of July 27, the day of the first uprising in Guangzhou, a total of 15 million taels of silver was remitted to a designated Citibank mystery account. Zhengyuan Qianzhuang announced the news of the acquisition of Qiongzhou Rubber Company, which shook Shanghai Beach. That night, Zhengyuan Qian Zhuang held a cocktail party to celebrate this great cause, and the grand occasion was unprecedented.

But only one night later, the "survey telegram" was issued, and the whole country shook, which became the last straw that broke the camel's back. On July 29, under the force of the bears, the price of rubber stocks plummeted. This was accompanied by a significant drawdown in other stocks. The outbreak of the Shanghai financial crisis triggered a rubber crisis that shook the world.

At that time, rubber stocks on the London Stock Exchange were already hot and hard to find, so. Huamei Company threw a large sum of shares in its hand very smoothly. The turmoil did not arise. But Jiang Jiying's actions are completely different.

Until the fall of the Qing Dynasty, there was not even a stock exchange. If you don't even dare to speculate on stocks without a stock exchange, you can only speculate on foreign stocks. At that time, it was the era when the "empire on which the sun never sets", the British Empire, was in full swing. London is the center of global finance and the home of global manufacturing. At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the new hot spot of manufacturing became the rubber industry, which was heating up suddenly.

In 1886, the German Karl? Benz invented the automobile, and mankind entered the age of automobiles that relied on four wheels to speed on the road. Cars are equipped with hollow, inflatable rubber wheels almost immediately to slow down the bumpiness of the car, which not only makes the occupants comfortable, but also prolongs the life of the car. In this way, natural rubber has suddenly become a hot trendy product, and the rubber manufacturing industry has also become a well-deserved high-tech industry. The Englishman Dunlop began building his rubber tyre empire in 1888, and the British colonies in Southeast Asia soon became the world's rubber powerhouses. Since the development of rubber plantations required large-scale investment, the British quickly thought of financial financing, and a wide variety of rubber stocks appeared on the counter of the London Stock Exchange.

In Asia, the British not only did everything possible to attract Nanyang Chinese businessmen to become shareholders, but also directly started the idea of Shanghai, the financial center of the Far East. They first easily approached the foreign-funded banks in Shanghai and persuaded them to guarantee their stocks, and then they hyped up the rubber industry in the newspapers as a "sunrise industry" and "the most promising investment industry in the future" -- the rubber industry, claiming that "buying rubber stocks is buying tomorrow." Newspaper advertisements also took great pains to say that rubber stocks could be directly pledged by foreign banks to replace them with silver taels or foreign banknotes, as if they were pies falling from the sky.

At that time, Shanghai's national industry and commerce were relatively developed, and there were a number of national businessmen with abundant funds but lack investment goals; At the same time, it is also the place where bureaucratic and comprador industries are most concentrated, and "red-top businessmen" and comprador bureaucrats can mobilize a large amount of official money and public funds to speculate without capital and profit; There are also a large number of foreigners who have made a fortune, and they also have a lot of spare money in their hands. Since Xuantong ascended the throne, that is, at the end of 1908, rubber stocks have risen like wild horses, and the shares of old rubber companies such as Langezhi and Weighbridge have doubled in just one or two months, while some small companies that have risen later have been even more crazy, and their stock prices have risen to 18 times the original price. The huge wealth effect has made the rich people in Shanghai flock to it, almost crazy, and ignore the risks of these "rubber stocks" -- the rubber plantations are thousands of miles away in the South Seas, and the stocks are issued in London, thousands of miles away, both of which are invisible and intangible.

If it is just ordinary investors who speculate in stocks with spare money, it is fine, but the rolling dividends of rubber speculation quickly dragged down the "eight major banks" (Zhengyuan, Zhaokang, Qianyu, Senyuan, Yuanfeng, Huida, Xiefeng, and Jinda), and behind the "eight major banks" is the ticket number of a higher-level financial enterprise -- known as "the money village of the money bank". At that time, there were two major ticket numbers in Shanghai, namely the Yuanfengrun ticket number operated by Yan Yibin, a comprador businessman in Ningbo, and the Yishanyuan ticket number operated by Li Jingchu, a bureaucratic businessman in Hefei.

In fact, the initial dragged into the water, only Zhengyuan, Zhaokang, Qianyu three, but the eight big money banks are intertwined, there is a close relationship with each other, due to the "position" is not enough, the original three money banks quickly pulled the other five into the water, and with the expansion of speculation, they have successively involved the two major ticket numbers. As a result, not only the bankers and ticket numbers, but also the bureaucratic comprador capital, commercial capital, and private funds associated with them were also involved, and they borrowed money from each other, sending the money to distant London in exchange for flowery rubber stocks, and some insatiable people even used these stocks as collateral to borrow more money from the bank, the ticket number, and the bank. in order to buy more equities – this is the prototype of the "subprime" leveraged bubble in another time and space.

At that time, cross-border stock speculation was not as convenient as it is today, the stock price rose and fell, and the transmission of information all relied on telegrams, and there was no way to know the detailed information such as the company's fundamentals, and what Shanghai investors could see was just a changing stock price. Fortunately, all they need to know is this: it doesn't matter what rubber is, how it is grown, and where it is used, it is the key that this thing can make a lot of money and make a fortune. Such a surging capital soon made the rubber stocks in Shanghai Tang in short supply. The vast number of Shanghai investors simply take advantage of the relationship. I went directly to London to buy it, and in the first half of 1909, the market value of rubber stocks sold in Shanghai alone was as high as 22 million to 25 million taels of silver. The Chinese Commercial Bank standard invested in the UK also reached 10 million taels. 35,000,000 taels of silver were put into the rubber trade. The financing chain of Shanghai's financial market has been tightened, and apart from rubber speculation, there is almost no silver to finance and lend money in Shanghai.

Shanghai speculators, who are dreaming of making a fortune, don't know it. The risk of rubber speculation has long been doomed in the hot market. In the summer of 1909, under the blow of the mysterious merchants selling the stock market, the Shanghai rubber stock market suddenly collapsed, which affected the London stock market, and the original popular rubber stocks plummeted, and the highest Lange Zhi, which rushed to 1675 taels / share, fell to only 105 taels in less than 1 month, the reason is that the false operation of many rubber plantations was exposed (some so-called rubber plantation companies did not have rubber plantations at all, but just circled a sum of money and left), and the automobile industry also encountered a bottleneck. As a result, Chinese investors, who are heavy investors in rubber stocks, have naturally become the biggest losers. On August 11, when the Battle of Dezhou was in full swing, Zhengyuan and Qianyu were the first to go bankrupt. Shanghai's financing system, which had been strained by rubber speculation, has now collapsed, with money banks having no money to borrow, industry and commerce having no way to borrow money, and the original reputable "bank bills" have suddenly become worthless.

The southeastern political and business circles, which had been highly concerned about the political and military crisis that had suddenly erupted in the country, suddenly fell into a huge chaos. It is said that there are corpses floating in the Huangpu River day and night, and they are all businessmen who committed suicide by throwing themselves into the river in despair.

Some people jump into the river, and some people celebrate. The companies that were the first to sell rubber stocks and sell the once-hot "Qiongzhou Rubber" company at a high price were the biggest gainers. Soon the media revealed that the shareholder behind Qiongzhou Rubber Company was Shandong Commercial Bank!

This is breaking news! The Chinese, who had no shortage of associative power, immediately sorted out the relationship, and it was the Mengshan Army under the command of Long Qian who single-handedly planned the rubber crisis and swept away at least 30 million taels of silver from the southeast! Later, the relationship between Huamei Machinery and Mengshanjun was finally revealed, which led to a strong protest from the British government, which is a later story. At that time, it was still a secret how much money David's Huamei Machinery rolled up in the London stock market. Anyway, people sold stocks at the high point before the crisis, and they made money for sure.

It was not only the merchants who lost, but the Qing court was the biggest loser. Because behind Shanghai's turbulent money bank, the shadow of official and business activities is indispensable. After the crisis broke out, Yan Yibin, the boss of Yuanfengrun, who was the leader of the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce and had a close relationship with Qianzhuang, couldn't sit still, and he found Cai Naihuang, a backstage and Su Song Taidao, to persuade him to use government funds to save the city. Cai Naihuang was greedy by nature, and when he saw Yan Yibin and others coming to the door, he took the opportunity to propose that the two major ticket numbers and the Shanghai business community take out collateral as a guarantee for him to take the lead in saving the market. Yan Yibin and others had no choice but to scrape together the deed and securities worth 3 million taels and hand them over to Cai Naihuang. In fact, Cai has already obtained the approval of the imperial court to save the market, at this time just waiting for the price and selling, seeing the ticket number, the businessmen are in order, so in the name of Su Song Taidao, and HSBC, the Netherlands and other nine foreign banks signed the "Shanghai Loan Contract", financing 2.5 million taels, and allocated 2 million taels from the Su Song Taidao treasury, deposited in the two major ticket numbers. Of course, he didn't do it in vain, but made a lot of "hard money" from it.

However, the matter did not stop there: less than two months later, an even greater difficulty lay in front of a rescue party in Shanghai: Gengzi indemnity. During the battle of the Eight-Nation Alliance, the Qing court paid 300 million taels of silver to the foreign powers, which was shared by the localities every year, and the wealthy Susong Taidao paid 1.9 million taels every year. This money is withdrawn from the annual funds and deposited in the two major ticket numbers of Yishanyuan and Yuanfengrun, but this year's situation is different, this money was taken by Cai Naihuang and the two major ticket numbers to save the city, and the Daoku is also empty, so Cai Naihuang is dumbfounded.

He immediately thought of the imperial court, and wrote to ask the imperial court to transfer 2 million taels from the Daqing Bank to help Su Song Taidao tide over the difficulties. But where did the imperial court, which was struggling to deal with the crisis of the Mengshan Army rebellion, have the silver to bail out the Shanghai stock market? In late September, Zaifeng, who was overwhelmed by the war situation, issued an order to reprimand Cai for "profiting for personal gain" and "disregarding the overall situation." Not only did he not accept the invitation, but he was also dismissed from his post, and he was even ordered to recover his official money within two months. Cai Naihuang had no choice but to ask for money from the two major ticket numbers, at this time the major foreign banks also learned the news, but fearing that the contract would change, on October 1 announced the rejection of the bankers of 21 money banks in Shanghai, which was the deepest source of Fengrun, which was equal to being drawn from the bottom of the kettle, the total number of the few large ticket numbers in China and 17 branches collapsed at the same time, leaving 20 million taels of public and private deficits. However, an even bigger crisis followed, this time from the imperial court. As the backbone of the Bank of Communications run by the Han Westernists, Li Jingchu was originally inseparable from the royal family and the nobles of the Eight Banners Shaozhuang faction, and what is even worse is that at this time Zhang Zhidong was dead, and Sheng Xuanhuai, a comprador official who served as the secretary of the Ministry of Posts and Communications, and Yuan Shikai, who presided over the peaceful war, had a deep contradiction.

Li Jingchu and Liang Shiyi are both officialdom figures, knowing that the world is hot and cold, once they are caught, the consequences are unimaginable, they hurriedly tighten the bank, return the loan to the Bank of Communications, and now the source of righteousness and goodness has become empty. In December 1909, Yishanyuan went bankrupt, and Li Jingchu and Liang Shiyi resigned together. The complacent Sheng Xuanhuai got his wish and took control of the Qing Railway Bureau from Liang Shiyi (Liang was also the director of the Railway Bureau), but the Qing Dynasty was already crumbling.

Of course, these are the things that have not happened in the story of this book until August, but they must have happened.

Because of the collapse of the two ticket numbers, there were about 80 money banks in Shanghai at that time, and 48 of them closed down within half a year, and the financial turmoil also spread from Shanghai to Tianjin, Ningbo and other coastal trade cities.

The impact of this "rubber stock market crash" is far-reaching. It defeated the Manchu court economically, and it was the Mengshan army that single-handedly planned the crisis that came to the rescue of the city and restored the vitality of Shanghai's industrial and commercial circles. The merchants of Jiangsu and Zhejiang, who hated the Mengshan Army deeply, could only knock out their front teeth and swallow them in their stomachs at that time, because the political and economic situation no longer allowed them to resist. (To be continued......)

PS: Maybe book lovers don't like this section. But foreshadowing is a must. The difficulty of the Mengshan Army in building the military is less than that of the economy, and this book does not think it is that kind of book, and the economic content must be there. Moreover, it will pave the way for the governance of Jiangsu and Zhejiang in the future.

Ling, I'm going on a business trip tonight, and the only section of the manuscript will be pre-issued tomorrow. Hope to come back sooner.