Four, five, five, and five profiteering and crisis arrived at the same time

The scorching sun has gradually brought New York out of the hazy and humid spring, and the flow of people on the streets of Manhattan is once again lively. (Full text reading, all in. (.i. Want. Wen. Learning Network)

The scrambled walk of the Wall Street elite in crisp white shirts contrasts sharply with the workers who still go to work unhurriedly.

Neither the United States, nor they were, could have imagined that the first half of 1906 would be so tormented.

The turmoil in South America in March, the Panama Canal haze in April, the San Francisco earthquake, and the Caribbean Sea impact in May have all cast a layer of uncertainty over the country's future, and according to authoritative forecasts, the US economy may experience negative growth for the first time in the first half of the year.

This news, which has heightened people's worries about the future, is intuitively reflected in the depressed atmosphere in the stock market, and the slowly declining arrows, at this moment, everyone's eyes are on the government, hoping that President Fairbanks can do his best to solve the current crisis.

Fairbanks in the White House knew very well that it was not a solution to continue the confrontation with the Chinese, and compared with the collision of ships, the Grand Canal of Panama and Nicaragua was the core matter, so he even did not hesitate to exert military pressure on the Nicaraguan government to forcibly take back the right to excavate.

But the effect is not good, in addition to China's resistance and the threat of guaranteeing the right to dig with war, the main reason is that the Nicaraguan government has already sold the right to dig to the Colombian government, which has a grudge against the United States because of the loss of Panama, and the Colombian government originally wanted to take this opportunity to pressure the United States, but did not expect that the Chinese would come and pick the peach.

Things suddenly become extremely complicated, Nicaragua is not a small Panama after all, once the Nicaraguan government strikes, it will inevitably cause the whole of Latin America and South America to be hostile to the United States, and the Chinese may also garrison Nicaragua because they want to ensure the right to dig this canal, if it eventually turns into this situation, resulting in the arrival of the Chinese Army on the American continent, then it will be a great disaster for the United States.

A series of pressures, such as economic pressures, tough domestic demands and war not ready, made Fairbanks miserable, so after Ouyang Geng turned around and proposed to compensate, but the level of negotiations must be raised to resolve the current series of disputes between the two countries, the White House immediately agreed to restart negotiations.

On May 20, Tang Shaoyi, the foreign minister of the Chinese Empire, returned to the United States, but this time he was not greeted with flowers and applause, but with endless accusations and insults from American newspapers.

In the face of such overwhelming ridicule and abuse, the Chinese negotiating delegation led by Tang Shaoyi seemed to turn a deaf ear, but joined four ocean-going freighters carrying relief supplies to stay in San Francisco to help the local Chinese, while the hospital ships sent by the Navy also began to provide medical support to the injured people, including the United States.

Although the number of Chinese living in the United States is now very small because of the huge absorption method adopted by Li Mo back then, there are still about 50,000 Chinese living in San Francisco and the western United States, and they are the biggest victims of this catastrophe.

The care of the motherland from afar has made the Chinese people grateful, and the rescue of the navy's hospital ship regardless of nationality has finally opened a ray of light for Sino-US relations in the haze.

Although Fairbanks was very anxious to restart the negotiations, it was a humanitarian act in San Francisco, and American citizens were rescued, so they could not be overly rushed, and then waited until June 5, after the German maintenance ship arrived off the coast of Cuba, Tang Shaoyi and his party finally arrived in Washington.

Every negotiation is a contest of national strength, so when Tang Shaoyi arrived in the United States, on the first day of the talks with US Secretary of State John Hay, he put forward a precondition, demanding that the United States be allowed to stop the blockade of the port of Havana and allow Chinese maintenance ships hired by Germany to enter and repair the Heilongjiang.

John Hay also demanded that the Chinese government take the lead in making reparations and promised not to interfere with the Cuban regime and provide military assistance to Cuba, which made the talks full of gunpowder from the beginning. 【 I want: super fast update 】

On June 10, after many consultations and communication with China, Tang Shaoyi agreed to pay a total of $2 million in compensation to the United States, and after expressing the promise that the Chinese government would not interfere in the decisions made by the Cuban people, the United States also opened the port of Havana in due course, and the Caribbean turmoil that had accumulated for more than a month gradually dissipated.

On June 11, the talks finally entered the core issue of canal excavation rights, but unexpectedly, at this time, Tang Shaoyi suddenly demanded that a series of issues such as the treatment of Chinese workers in the United States, the revocation of the Chinese Exclusion Act, and the ban on the use of Chinese laborers in the Panama Canal were added to the negotiations, which caught the Fairbanks-led US government off guard.

In fact, until the end of the negotiations, many people did not understand why the Chinese government suddenly became entangled in such a trivial matter, and there seemed to be some misprioritization.

A series of entanglements and various issues have once again brought back the haze that had just dissipated, and every contest and every detail at the negotiating table made the US stock market jump up and down as if it had gone crazy.

In the end, the US government was a little overwhelmed by Tang Shaoyi's negotiation tactics that were not to get to the point, and had to agree to all issues except the Chinese Exclusion Act.

Although the Chinese Exclusion Act is still like a piece of psoriasis between the two countries, Li Mo also knows very well that this is not in a hurry, and the United States has been canceling this discriminatory bill very late in history.

On August 1, after finally settling all the details, Tang Shaoyi offered the US government a sky-high price of $200 million for the transfer of canal excavation rights

This figure made the whole world stunned, and once again aimed at the madness behind Tang Shaoyi, maybe only that young emperor in the world had the courage to offer this kind of price

In the face of such a sky-high price, the US government certainly did not joke with taxpayers' money, rejected the outrageous offer, and pushed the price to $30 million.

In the face of an almost tenfold and irreconcilable price difference, the two sides insisted on their own opinions, but at this time came the news that was extremely unfavorable to the United States, the American Development Company, which had just obtained the right to dig the Nicaragua Canal, used 10 freighters and under the protection of two cruisers to pull the first batch of 8,000 engineers into Nicaragua, rolled up its sleeves and prepared to start construction.

The United States was in a hurry, and even Mahan personally set off, this old soldier, the founder of the theory of sea power, visited some important members of Congress at the expense of his reputation, and as a representative of the United States Navy, Xiao ~ said that he came to Congress to elaborate on the importance of the Panama Canal to the United States, and then dragged his faltering pace, visited a large number of bankers, and called on all walks of life in the United States to defend the canal.

No one knows whether his lobbying efforts were effective, or whether Fairbanks made up his mind, and the U.S. government raised the price to $100 million

This is Li Mo's bottom line in his heart, but Tang Shaoyi felt that it was not enough, and then gritted his teeth and dug out 10 million US dollars from the mouths of the Americans to recover the loss of paying 10 million US dollars in purchase fees to Colombia.

On August 20, when the world contract was finally finalized at $110 million, the whole world was in an uproar, and while envy and jealousy of China's huge profits, no one could have imagined that the United States would show such determination and decisiveness

They did not expect that one of them had been abandoned in extreme disappointment, and it was sold to the Colombian government for only 500,000 US dollars, and the right to dig the canal as a tool for counterattacking the United States had skyrocketed by 200 times, so that the call for the current government to step down almost drowned the entire country.

Although the Colombian government was a little disappointed that they could not rely on China to regain Panama, the income of 10 million US dollars actually made them very happy, because they relied on the face of all Spanish descendants, and when they bought the right to dig from the Nicaraguan government, they just wanted to disgust the United States from the side, and by the way, attract the United States to buy and recover some Panamanian losses, but in fact, they knew very well in their hearts that the Colombian government was not capable of digging this canal in terms of financial resources or resources.

Now that I can get 10 million, it has exceeded my expectations too much, and I was in a good mood and immediately bought all four Russian ** ships in the hands of the Chinese Navy at a price of two million US dollars, among which the Russian flagship Pressure Mountain III is even more powerful than any battleship in the United States at present.

However, this arms purchase agreement aroused strong protests from the United States, and under tremendous pressure, the Colombian government accepted the Chinese government's proposal and promised not to deploy the four warships in the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic.

When the dust finally settled on the agreement, no matter who could feel that the United States' control over South America was beginning to decline, in order to recover this loss, as soon as possible to regain the initiative, President Fairbanks, who gradually came out of the haze, also persuaded Congress to recover 40% of the shares of the Panama Canal held by Thomas Mining Company at a price of 70 million US dollars, and completely put the Panama Canal in the hands of the United States.

For the United States, this is an extremely disappointing negotiation, especially the Nicaragua Canal digging rights can actually be bought by the United States a long time ago, just because the Colombian government suddenly stepped in and finally failed to realize, at that time all walks of life in the United States believed that as long as the Panama Canal was accelerated, the Colombian government's right to dig would continue to depreciate, and even only tens of thousands of dollars could be won after the canal opened, but they did not expect that because of their own slowness and sluggishness, they would eventually pay such a high price.

For the United States, compared with paying money, this crisis also made them see their own weakness, understand that economic strength does not mean that the country is strong, especially after seeing the power of the Chinese visiting fleet, deepen the understanding of the power of the battleship, so the US Congress passed the appropriation budget again with lightning speed, in the case of the first two South Carolina-class battleships have already been built, add two more, and for the first time put forward the concept of the two-ocean fleet, and at the same time require the Navy to immediately start developing the next generation of battleships.

However, technical deficiencies, especially serious shortcomings in power, caused the four South Carolina-class battleships to be full of problems from the beginning, but in any case, the United States finally embarked on the path of accelerated armament

The huge economic power of the United States finally began to exert its power, and a crisis highlighted the embarrassment of the two oceans of the United States, so that the United States understood that the Panama Canal project must be accelerated, and when it was no longer possible to use Chinese laborers, Fairbanks followed the example of Limer and proposed to Japan the decision to pay off part of the debt with 100,000 laborers.

On September 25, when 10,000 people who were originally working in the Panama Canal and the government promised to arrange work for them in China, 15 cargo ships arrived in Shanghai at the same time as Tang Shaoyi, who had returned, it immediately caused a violent response.

A crisis that began in South America and spread to the Caribbean ended with the United States spending a lot of money, and when Tang returned home with tons of gold (in the era of the gold standard, gold was the only settlement unit for international bulk transactions in an era when currencies were not freely convertible), the foreign minister was immediately praised by all walks of life, and his personal reputation skyrocketed.

Although the 70 million that Thomas got still needs to be returned through a slow transfer from the bank, this can no longer stop Li Mo from starting a round of expansion.

However, the aftermath of the matter is far from over, and Hua, who has just made a huge profit, has suffered a sudden and heavy blow.

On October 1, 1906, the day of China's National Day, news came from the United States that in order to curb China's development, the US government made a decision to restrict the export of important machinery, including large machine tools and complete sets of processing equipment, to China.

Because the United States has always been an important source of machinery imports in China, especially more than half of the equipment of private industrial and mining enterprises need to rely on the United States, so even Li Mo has not restricted the import of American machinery, although he attaches great importance to the diversification of international procurement of large national enterprises, but he generally does not ask about private procurement, so the United States is still a large importer of industrial equipment, accounting for half of the total number of Chinese machinery imports.

This news undoubtedly had a huge impact on the emerging private industry, Tang Shaoyi returned to China only a few days later, and went to Europe again non-stop, and began to negotiate with Germany on increasing the export quota of machinery.

For Germany, which is closer to Britain, any income is extremely important, and this huge pie of surprise has greatly encouraged the German business community, and when it has no time to produce at home, it even pulled Austria-Hungary in and increased its exports to China at full speed.

This quietly emerging change made Germany and Austria-Hungary rapidly move closer together, and the relationship between Britain and France began to ease, and the confrontation between the core of the two blocs has begun to take shape.

Naturally, people from all walks of life in China are strongly dissatisfied with this decision of the US Government, believing that this is another hostile action taken by the United States, and many people even believe that they should not have sold the right to dig the canal if they knew that this was the case.

Under these circumstances, business leaders from all walks of life in Shanghai, one of the core of China's domestic economy, and the association organization of Hexing, have issued statements announcing that they will boycott American goods from now on.

Under the impetus of certain departments, newspapers began to publicize the hostile behavior of the United States, so that this trend quickly spread to the whole country, and Chinese businessmen in Nanjing, Beijing, Dalian, Hangzhou, Guangzhou, Changsha, Wuhan, and even Luzon, Hong Kong, and Canada launched a vigorous boycott of American goods.

By January 1, 1907, U.S. exports to China had fallen by 40 percent in just two months, which made American manufacturers miserable, and Li Mo did not expect that this wave of boycott that had appeared in history in 1905 because of the ban on Chinese workers would appear more than a year later.

The huge gap left by the American machinery manufacturers cannot be made up by itself and Germany in a short period of time, and the economic downturn is almost certainly a scratch of the surface for the United States, but it is undoubtedly a heavy blow to China.

However, there is another side to any crisis, although it has temporarily inhibited the pace of domestic industrial construction, but China's own machinery manufacturers have gradually grown up with the efforts of the next ten years, and most of the civilian goods have been able to produce themselves, just because of the suppression of cheap American goods so that the output has not been large, this crisis has promoted the domestic products to quickly seize the gap after the departure of American goods.

On January 2, the Chinese Emperor Li Mo broke his silence for the first time and published an article in the newspaper entitled "National Self-reliance, Self-improvement of Domestic Products", saying that he and the Prime Minister's Office will do everything in their power to meet the needs of domestic construction, and at the same time hope that all walks of life in China will carry out independent research and development, and all private enterprises can provide support to the government if they encounter lack of technical strength and financial problems.

At the same time, Li Mo strictly ordered Huang Chen, Minister of Industry and Commerce, and Tang Xiao, Minister of Equipment and Support, and even mobilized the Ministry of Science and Technology to start accelerating the progress of domestic machinery manufacturing research and development, cooperating with the pace of domestic enterprises' own research and development, and took the initiative to ask large heavy industry groups under his control and large state-owned enterprises to provide technical and human assistance to local private enterprises.

At the same time, Li Enfu also struck the economic stimulus policy while the iron was hot, and while organizing increased procurement from European countries, he began to provide large loans and technical support to domestic private manufacturers to help them grow rapidly.

Like the increasingly fierce arms race in Europe, the economic confrontation between the two sides of the Pacific Ocean is also full of gunsmoke, and both sides have suffered heavy losses in a short period of time, and the whole world has been drawn into a great competition, whether intentionally or unintentionally, in which no one knows the future.

At the same time, the world has once again seen the decisive ability of Li Mo and the Chinese government to deal with the crisis, and at this time the US government did not realize that because after paying nearly 200 million US dollars in a row, coupled with the restriction on manufacturers to export sensitive equipment, etc., the domestic funds in the United States began to tighten, and a surprise crisis has quietly come.