Hu Xueyan is a businessman by training, and he knows what happens if a firm can't sell its goods, and what happens if most of the country's businesses can't sell their goods. Although Hu Xueyan is not yet aware of the worldwide economic crisis, he can deduce that the excessive export of British steel will inevitably affect the American steel industry.

He found that many steel companies in the United States have serious problems such as overproduction and product backlogs, while British steel is being imported in an endless stream, which continues to impact the pig iron, steel and other industries in the United States. At the same time, large-scale speculation on railroad construction is taking place throughout the United States, and the securities, stocks, and investment markets are crazy and noisy.

Although Hu Xueyan did not have the level of experts and professors of later generations, and was able to deeply analyze the events and the economic laws behind them, his perennial business experience told him that in any business activity, only a few people will eventually get rich. Therefore, Hu Xueyan chose not to move, did not continue to expand railway investment according to Xiao Yungui's intentions, nor did he blindly follow those Westerners who were crazy about investment, he was waiting for opportunities and continuing to collect intelligence.

Due to the dumping policy of Britain, the world's factory products, the already weak American steel industry has been stagnant for a long time, and the growth rate of the cotton textile industry is not fast. At the same time, imports of railroad tracks, pig iron, locomotives, cotton cloth, and other British manufactured goods grew rapidly, and the flood of the American market with British products hindered the development of important industrial sectors of the time, such as metallurgy and cotton textiles. The money from railway speculation confuses people's eyes. The false market boom caused the economic bubble in the United States to begin to burst.

Since the third month of Hu Xueyan's return to the United States, a large number of U.S. steel industry companies have begun to collapse rapidly, like dominoes collapsing. The metallurgical industry was hit hard, then affected the financial sector, with many banks failing and then quickly spreading to other industries. In just two months, more than 5,000 US domestic enterprises have closed down and gone bankrupt, grain production has been overproduced, and grain prices and grain exports have fallen. This, coupled with the fierce competition of British industrial products, contributed to the deepening of the economic crisis in the United States. In turn, the economic development of the United Kingdom was hit by the crisis in the United States. American banks, railroads, and commercial companies financed by Britain went bankrupt. It has also led to a sharp depreciation of the value of securities held by investors in the United Kingdom. In the fall of 1857, a currency crisis also broke out in the United States, paralyzing the entire banking system, and the currency crisis in the United States reached its peak in mid-October. At that time, 62 of the 63 banks in New York stopped making payments. The discount rate has exceeded 60 percent, the stock market has fallen by 20-50 percent, and the shares of many railroad companies have fallen by more than 80 percent. The economic crisis in the United States quickly spread to Britain and continental Europe, triggering wave after wave of bankruptcies.

At this time, Hu Xueyan started his business operation, he did not do anything to save the market, although he had a lot of money in his hands, but he could not save the United States. Americans' own economic crisis needed to be resolved through the guò war, which was the civil war that would soon break out between the North and the South. What Hu Xueyan has to do now is buy up the bankrupt cheap American companies.

Within a month, Hu Xueyan had acquired several steel companies, military enterprises, and textile companies, and successfully acquired a majority stake in a Connecticut-based company called Colt's patented firearms manufacturing company. Hu Xueyan did not know what kind of history it would make next, but he simply injected $1 million and promised the company to represent them in China's firearms market, and Hu Xueyan got a stake. This company then provided a large supply of arms in the subsequent American Civil War, and its impact was extremely far-reaching. At the same time, a large number of experienced American workers were recruited, most of whom were shipbuilders, who Hu Xueyan packed and sent back to China along with the equipment he had acquired from two medium-sized shipyards, and Shanghai, Fuzhou, and Guangzhou needed shipbuilding equipment and a large number of skilled workers, and Hu Xueyan provided employment opportunities.

Shanghai Shipyard is also known as Jiangnan Shipyard, last year the Shanghai Military Department began a huge shipyard merger plan, the government and private joint Xiangsheng Shipyard, Yesong Shipyard, private wholly owned Ruirong Shipyard, private wholly owned Bandung Iron Factory, government and private joint venture Hefeng Dock, Dongjiadu Dock and other docks after many mergers and acquisitions, become the largest shipyard and dock in Shanghai. The new shipyard was introduced as a joint-stock company, and the original private capital was converted into company shares, which continued to be held by private investment businessmen, who became shareholders of the shipyard. The merger of Jiangnan Shipyard was not an act of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's government, but the result of the need for a monopoly in Shanghai's shipbuilding industry to develop at a certain time, Xiao Yungui did not intervene, because the government held a large number of shares than private shares, to be honest, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom government was the largest shareholder of Jiangnan Shipyard.

Unlike the Jiangnan shipyard, the shipyard in Fuzhou and Guangzhou, located in the port of Mawei, began to invest in construction two years ago, but it has proved that Fuzhou has always struggled to form a climate due to the influence of Shanghai's trade routes. At the beginning of the year, Lu Chao'an, who had made outstanding achievements in the development of Quanzhou Port, was transferred to Fuzhou, and then he began to use the shipping in Ryukyu and other places to develop the Fuzhou shipyard, and the momentum was quite high. Guangzhou, on the other hand, is a shipyard program that only started this year, and is far inferior to its two predecessors in terms of technology and talent.

One of the most important tasks of Hu Xueyan's trip to the United States was to bring in skilled workers, technology and equipment for the three shipyards. Xiao Yungui's judgment was that the United States, as a later world power, must not have been too bad in shipbuilding technology at this time, and the technology that the British refused to provide might be able to be found in the United States. But his judgment was wrong, the American shipbuilding industry still relied on the experience and technology of workers at least until 1880, the scientific shipbuilding theory and system were still far away, and the shipbuilding technology of the British at that time was irreplaceable. However, the efforts of Xiao Yungui and Hu Xueyan were not in vain, they laid the foundation for the development and maturity of domestic shipbuilding technology and systems in the future. The road is self-deformed, although there may be some detours, but this is indeed a solid way.

Hu Xueyan's series of garbage-picking acquisitions did not save the United States, but he saved some Americans, and in the two major cities of San Francisco and New York, Hu Xueyan, a Chinese investment became the only bright spot in the economic crisis, and the companies he bought did not have to compete with the British for the domestic market in the United States, which was in faraway China. Many Americans in San Francisco even shouted: "God bless the Chinese, they gave us jobs!" ”

All the companies and enterprises that Hu Xueyan has injected capital, invested in and acquired, without exception have gained a part of China's market share, and the thriving development of China at the moment needs a large number of industrial products and machines, and Japan is also a good dumping commodity place, Hu Xueyan has also piggybacked on Japan while distributing the domestic market share.

Hu Xueyan saw some of the essence of the US economic crisis, and he introduced an unprecedented mechanism, that is, the order share production system, under the enterprises he acquired or injected capital, there were orders and long-term cooperation agreements, and the factory started production, and usually maintained a certain amount of output, and never wasted much production. However, capitalist enterprises are destined to expand production and pursue greater profits, Hu Xueyan began his agent system, he set up a special team to find product sales agents, find sales outlets for products, agents to find retailers, and so on.

Before taking up the post of Chinese minister, Lev Weilian met with this Chinese who is in the limelight in the United States to discuss the possibility of further expanding Sino-US trade, and the United States needs the market to save the economy. Although Hu Xueyan has a part of the privileges granted by Xiao Yungui in his hands, the share of the cake in China, whether it is industrial construction, railway construction or other construction, is limited. Before coming to the United States, Xiao Yungui and Hu Xueyan analyzed the shape of the country, and at present, Britain and France still occupy most of the Chinese market share, followed by the domestic industrial groups supported by Xiao Yungui, and secondly, some countries such as Prussia have also begun limited trade activities. To be honest, the United States' share of the cake cannot be drawn too big, otherwise it will affect the interests of Britain, France or domestic enterprises.

So Hu Xueyan had to politely decline Lie Weilian's suggestion, he had no right to make any promises, and his companies and enterprises could get orders and markets, which were officially authorized by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.

Lie Weilian, who found the problem, hurried to China, even faster than the person sent back by Hu Xueyan to report the news, so Xiao Yungui got the good news from Lie Weilian before he got the news from the United States.

Xiao Yungui secretly rejoiced that Hu Xueyan was a person who was improvised, and did not expand the investment in the railway as he said, otherwise God knows what year it would take to recover those investments, and the civil war between the north and the south would break out soon, and a military control might be able to make the ownership of the railway become the government, there are too many variables, or Hu Xueyan's approach is appropriate, especially the acquisition of the shares of the Colt military factory, Xiao Yungui is happy to know that in the subsequent civil war between the north and the south, he has a bridgehead to dump arms to the United States.

After introducing Hu Xueyan's great achievements, Lie Weilian began to lobby the rulers of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, hoping that the Western King would be able to expand American trade, especially when he heard that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom intended to continue to build railways in Guangdong, Jiangxi, Fujian and other places, and if he could have the right to build railways, perhaps the metallurgical industry in the United States would be saved.

Lie Weilian's lobbying did not get Xiao Yungui's approval, and this guy secretly slandered in his stomach, if the Yankees were given the right to build these railways, I was afraid that Britain and France would directly go to war, and besides, it would save the American economy, and the domestic contradictions in the United States were not prominent enough, could the civil war between the north and the south still be fought?

So Xiao Yungui moved out of Britain and France one after another to talk about things, and finally Lie Weilian couldn't help but threaten in his eagerness, this is the bad news that Xiao Yungui heard, the Manchu Qing side sent a note to the American ships anchored at Dagukou, they were willing to negotiate with the United States about opening the trade port, and invited the United States to mediate the war with Britain and France. (To be continued......)