Last year, the military fleet blocked Ningbo and then sent troops to land, but at that time, Britain and France were very tough, and they also sent warships in tit for tat. At one time, the two fleets confronted each other. In fact, as early as a few years ago, Li Xiucheng had already occupied Ningbo, and it was because Britain and France forced Li Xiucheng to withdraw from Ningbo that Zhu Jinglun had a plan in mind before occupying Ningbo. If Britain and France did not object to him, they would occupy the port of Ningbo conveniently. If Britain and France were tough, it would not be impossible to give in.
I really saw that after the attitude of Britain and France was so firm, Zhu Jinglun discussed with Chen Zhiting that he had planned to withdraw his troops. Anyway, sending warships was also to coordinate Li Xiucheng’s offensive against Zhejiang. At that time, with Zuo Zongtang’s withdrawal to Jiangbei, Li Xiucheng had already controlled Zhejiang, so it was of little value to forcibly retain Ningbo.
However, I didn’t expect that Britain and France did not oppose the military occupation of Ningbo at this time. After some new requirements such as protecting trade, they acquiesced in the military occupation of Ningbo and withdrew their warships.
Zhu Jinglun was a Frenchman, so he backed out, because with the end of the American War, the Lincoln administration stationed heavy troops on the Mexican border, aiming at Britain and France, especially France.
In 163, at the height of the American War, Emperor Charles Louis Napolé on Bonaparte of France encouraged Maximilian, Archduke of Flantz Karl of Austria, to accept the invitation of Mexican Constitutional Monarchy, and the British also supported this plan because the government of President Juarez of Mexico refused to repay the debt owed to Europe at that time, and Britain was the main victim. In Britain and France, Maximilian’s wife encouraged Maximilian, a noble with great ambition and few talents, to become the emperor of Mexico.
Then France sent troops to land in Mexico and drove President Juarez to the mountains. Americans are republics. Naturally, they don’t want a decadent European monarchy around them. What’s worse, they are controlled by Britain and France. They can’t spare their hands in the political war. They immediately threatened the Chen-Bing border and strongly supported Juarez. They sent him a lot of arms and materials.
Zhu Jinglun, this is the reason why Britain and France backed down. The Anglo-French Congress will try to solve the American contradiction. After all, Mexico is much closer to Britain and France than Ningbo.
It took several months to find out whether the main reason was that the troops opposed by Britain and France in China occupied Ningbo mainly because of their interests, mainly because of the attitude of the British. At this time, France followed Britain in its foreign policy in Asia, but when Li Xiucheng firmly controlled Zhejiang, Britain and France decided that it would be more in line with their interests to hand Ningbo over to the state.
First of all, a port base in Ningbo and Zhejiang mainly relies on Zhejiang commercial goods, but the Taiping rebels have taken control of Zhejiang. If the Taiping rebels further seek to control Ningbo and Britain and France resolutely defend Ningbo, the two countries will make great achievements. They found that the Taiping rebels are equipped with much more muskets and cannons than in the past, and they are big businessmen. If the Taiping rebels were captured by the forces of Britain and France, even if they gave up the judgment of Ningbo, Britain and France, I am afraid that Tianping Tianguo’s government would tamper with Ningbo’s trade issues, and I am afraid that it would not be so smooth for them to safely transport Zhejiang raw silk and other goods from Ningbo.
Finally, the two countries held close consultations and decided that Ningbo would be controlled by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, or it would be better for the big countries to control it, or at least it would be more efficient for the big countries to control it in foreign trade. In addition, the big countries and the special allies of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom let Britain and France think that it would better protect Ningbo’s trade, but they also made their own demands, that is, the British would continue to control Ningbo Haida University, which guaranteed this, so the big countries had obtained Ningbo administration when they were ready to give up.
This made Zhu Jinglun understand that the British people’s attitude towards land is even less important than they thought. So if Ningbo can give up, can Hong Kong also give up?
Chen Zhiting has another idea. "Does the emperor mean that the pig house will be changed to Hong Kong?"
Chen Zhiting obviously thinks wrong. Zhu Jinglun cracked down on coolie trade in order to seek land in Hong Kong.
Zhu Jinglun shook his head. "The coolie trade is about dignity, and human dignity is the most important thing. Our people can’t let people sell like pigs and dogs. This matter is not used to negotiate concessions."
Chen Zhiting doesn’t understand that "foreign interests are important, but if you don’t give some benefits, you will not submit."
Zhu Jinglun sighed, "From what happened in Ningbo, I saw that what foreigners are most afraid of or care about is trade, but we have to have priorities. First, if we want to ban the sale of piglets, the second is to take back the sale of piglets in Hong Kong. One day, someone will die of humiliation. If Hong Kong doesn’t take back the death one day, it will be able to take back the death, but the British are not afraid of the threat of war. They can’t. If they are allowed to fight against us in the piglet trade, they may lose more trade benefits. I think they will be willing to negotiate with us. Only then
Chen Zhiting nodded. "The emperor means that we can threaten foreigners to lock up the country!"
Zhu Jinglun sighed. These squires still pay too little attention to business. They are always closed.
"It’s not that a locked country needs to crack down on a British trade."
Chen Zhiting doesn’t understand. He knows that foreigners are most afraid of banning trade and can attack the British alone. This is not true. He knows too well that those foreigners will dare to ban anything if they lose money one by one. British businessmen will pretend to be people from other countries unless they are banned as a whole.
Chen Zhiting told Zhu Jinglun about his worries. He felt that he had prepared for a rainy day, even thinking that Ying Yi might be opportunistic, but he still saw some disappointment in Zhu Jinglun’s eyes.
Zhu Jinglun said that "cracking down on trade is not only a way to prohibit tax increases, but also a way."
Chen Zhiting said, "If you increase taxes on the British, can they still pretend to be people from other countries?"
Chen Zhiting really doesn’t understand that if he can crack down on trade, the British can avoid the cover of British businessmen and businessmen from other countries or directly let businessmen from other countries sell their businesses on their behalf.
Zhu Jinglun knows very well in his heart that Chen Zhiting is not a successful candidate for the prime minister of modern government, and the Eastern world has not yet trained such talents. There are indeed a large number of such people, such as Ito Bowen, ōkubo Toshimichi and others, in the era of Japanese reform. However, unlike the Japanese elite, Japanese scholar-officials have too strong cultural pride, so it is difficult to learn from the West with an open mind, while Japanese reform elites like ōkubo Toshimichi basically abandoned their samurai costumes, cut off their samurai-specific bun and threw away Tatsu Yamashiro. It is a rare thing to let China scholar-officials throw away their writing brushes, not to mention let them think about problems in western business society.
But if Hurd were here, it should be easy to find a suitable response.
Zhu Jinglun doesn’t want to tell Chen Zhiting the answer directly. He is the emperor. What he says is easily superstitious by these people.
So he said, "I didn’t expect the specific method. You might as well discuss it. Hurd is British, so you might as well listen to his opinion."
In this way, Chen Zhiting and others were sent away. Although scholars like them are relatively unified in their thoughts, if people who really want to do things do things regardless of personal matters, they call it a country when they don’t think they have personal affairs. Therefore, regardless of whether Hurd has a class or not, they went directly to Hurd House to discuss with Hurd overnight.
In Hurd’s view, this problem is not a problem at all, and it is too easy to solve. He not only suggested to them how to do it, but also explained the reasons for doing it, which was a demonstration to officials such as Chen Ting that a westerner thinks like a standard answer to a problem.
Hurd couldn’t figure out that Zhu Jinglun expected that it was just a tax increase. He told Chen Zhiting that it was a violation of the provisions of the trade treaty signed with Britain. It was an agreed tax. Without Britain’s consent, it was impossible to increase the tax rate on the British. Hurd thought that it was more likely to cause a war.
If there is no tax increase, it will hit British trade, so we can start with Britain’s exclusive trade. At present, Britain’s biggest export to China is nothing more than opium. So Hurd suggested imposing excessive tax on Dajing Tobacco Museum.
Officials like Chen Zhiting are in favor of cracking down on opium trade. Although they feel very unhappy that they can’t face up to the British tax, it is only then that the hateful part of the agreed tax is understood. However, Chen Zhiting will not feel too humiliated if he adopts alternative methods to crack down on the British, especially if people hate the opium trade.
So the tension between Hong Kong and the DPRK caused by the coolie trade soon caused a chain reaction. The first wave was the British opium trade.
It was Hurd who warned Chen Zhiting that opium trade was Britain’s largest trade with China at present, which made it easy for the British government to take a tough stance. Therefore, it was necessary to put pressure on the British government in public opinion. He suggested that a public opinion war should be waged to encourage the British state-owned conscience media to publicize coolies and the darkness of the opium trade, so that the British government had to have moral misgivings even if it wanted to protect the opium trade, and finally had to conduct diplomatic negotiations with the British government to resolve disputes.
Section three hundred and ninety-six Public opinion war takes effect
Chen Zhiting’s impression of Hurd was not bad before he left, but it was not bad because Hurd was a foreigner, but this time Hurd left a good impression on him. Please look at it!
First of all, Mrs. Hurd is an emotional intelligence expert. He can handle it well in Britain and China, especially among Manchu officials and Han officials, which many China officialdom officials can’t do. Now he can also handle it properly among big officials. His way of speaking makes Chen Zhiting easy to accept. There is respect for Chen Zhiting, the prime minister, without the arrogance of other foreigners.
Secondly, when giving advice to Chen Ting, Hurd’s language was more subtle than that of China, and he was also from China. In addition, his attitude was completely in a big position, which made Chen Zhiting particularly satisfied. He inadvertently agreed that Hurd was a qualified guest and slowly dismissed his vigilance.
However, it never occurred to Chen Zhiting that if Hurd was from China, no matter what purpose he was giving advice to the enemy, he would never accept it. Even if the Manchu officials surrendered, Chen Zhiting thought that the People’s Day was tainted, but Hurd, an Englishman, gave him advice on how to deal with the British, but he took it for granted, as if it was the right thing to turn people’s hearts to China.
Because of Hurd’s way of speaking, Chen Zhiting almost accepted Hurd’s main suggestion, and soon he asked the Ministry to formulate an excessive tax rate for opium trade. After so many years of training, Chen Zhiting still knows a lot about business. He also considered that smuggling would be rampant if taxes were increased, and stressed to the Ministry of Punishment the need to intensify efforts to crack down on opium smuggling
As expected, once the transaction tax of tobacco shops, the main distribution channel of opium, was raised to 300%, foreigners were the first to sit still, especially those ocean companies, such as Yihe Foreign Company and Qichang Foreign Company, which started from opium business, jointly put pressure on the governor of Hong Kong and lobbied the big official Hurd as their key target. They thought Hurd’s influential figures in big officialdom were the best bridge.
However, they ignored the history that Hurd people have always been anti-smokers. Hurd also suggested to Prince Gong Yixin that opium tax should be levied, and it is not clear whether Yixin accepted this proposal or not. However, Li Hongzhang and other foreign ministers later confirmed that this method, such as Zhang Dong and others, came from opium.
Hurd is a wise man. He not only refused to allow foreigners to ask him to petition the emperor directly, but showed his attitude openly to the outside world. He attacked the opium trade and the darkness of the coolie trade in a high-profile newspaper. This is that he is showing his position to the big officials and the people. Although he is an Englishman, he is on the big side.
No one knows how many foreigners cursed Hurd’s attitude, but it did win the favor of many adults at the moment, especially some big officials who had previously disliked him, and recently they have been in close contact with him.
Businessmen are the most difficult group to compromise in the face of interests, especially those opium dealers who come to the East to take risks. They constantly put pressure on the Hong Kong government and their ambassadors.
However, the attitude of cracking down on coolies and opium trade was very firm. Even when the Hong Kong government refused to extradite coolies who fled to Hong Kong, the big navy finally took action.
Intercept every merchant ship leaving Hong Kong and ask for inspection. Once coolies are found in the cabin, the ship will be detained immediately. It is difficult for robinson to ride a tiger at this time, but he can’t admit defeat. On the one hand, he can’t stand the pressure of powerful interest groups. On the other hand, he knows that his political career will end if he mishandles it. More importantly, it is also a matter of the dignity of the British Empire. He sent a Hong Kong fleet to escort merchant ships in tit-for-tat manner.
At that time, the dispute caused by coolie trade not only affected the British opium export quickly, but also rose to the edge of military conflict.
Newspapers have reported the incidents one after another, and many people are worried that there will be another war. After all, the wars in China have been too frequent in recent years, and the unfavorable news has caused the exchange to boil for a while. It is not too much buying and selling, but panic. Many people sell off and have a lot of bills, and the prices of stocks and big government bonds have fallen.
Wade, the British envoy to Guangzhou, was much softer than robinson, the governor of Guangzhou. He wanted peace more, so he negotiated with Yangsi many times. Unfortunately, Yangsi received him patiently, but refused all his requests to meet the emperor, even Chen Zhiting could not meet him.
Obviously, when the big government deals with it in a less positive attitude, it either has no sincerity to solve the problem or deliberately delays it.