What is Japan's cedes us? If we really take back southern North Korea, our army will lose the stage to threaten it. Moreover, just a small piece of land is not worth the imperial investment in military spending to start a war."

Song Biao praised: "So it's still an old minister who is powerful. Your mind is the same as me. Sooner or later we will find an opportunity to teach Japan a lesson, but it really doesn't matter now. It's just that Japan is really incredible. The empire is now

The strength is second only to the United States. It is natural for us to build ships and enhance our military strength. They are so eager to maintain their naval advantage over us. The more they think about it, the more ridiculous they feel!”

Zhang Kangrenze said: "Your Majesty, you don't have to be so angry. Think about it, before the negotiations on the Treaty of Washington, did Japan compete with the United States? The strange thing about Japan is that it is cultural. To be detailed, he That little territory is really not worth our attention, but he thinks he is a world naval power, so let him think about it. In the past two years, his subordinates have been thinking about the emperor's words and have some energy to study the US economy, just like the emperor. , I also think that the problem in the United States is probably getting bigger and bigger. At this time, it is not a bad thing for us to shrink a little fiscally. As long as the central government maintains a long-term surplus and has abundant gold reserves, even if there is another economic crisis in Europe and the United States, we can It was easy to block France. We and France have been economically interdependent in recent years. The main trade has developed between Sino-France and Sino-France colonies, which means that my country's exports to other regions are relatively large. Therefore, As long as there is no big problem in France, we will not have too big problems here, but if the problem starts from France, we will be hurting our vitality."

After all, Zhang Kangren has been the Minister of Finance for fifteen years, and his thinking logic has remained in the inertia of the past, and the issues he thought about were considered only by the Minister of Finance.

Song Biao thought for a while and said, "There is no big problem in France. Ouyang Xi only went to France last year. After visiting, he also paid attention to investigating the economic situation of France. Overall, it is still OK, but the scale of the industry is not

Go."

Since the signing of the Second Sino-French Covenant, the Sino-French colonial markets have been opened to each other, and both sides have retained projects. They basically take their own needs within the entire colonial market and the Sino-French market. France has the advantages of France and China has the advantages of

China's advantage, the greater conflict between the two sides is in the textile industry.

China's textile industry has developed at a very amazing speed. It is indeed due to the French textile industry and has a great relationship with Germany. As China's textile industry continues to advance to a higher level, this conflict also tends to spread.

The most ruthless problem here is that China's low labor costs.

During the years in Ouyang Geng's cabinet, China's per capita income has been on an upward trend, with a steady increase of about 5 per year, which has roughly doubled compared with the World War I period, and the minimum wage protection standard has also increased year by year, but with the United States,

Compared with traditional industrial countries such as France, China's per capita wages are only 1/3 of the United States, France and Britain.

The Empire selected more than 4,000 workers in six cities in the United States. The average monthly income of workers in the United States is around 435 US dollars, while China only has 278 US dollars. The gap between the two sides is even bigger in the agricultural field.

The low wages are still very powerful in driving exports, but it is very unfavorable for the expansion of domestic demand. Although the empire has made a lot of efforts to expand domestic demand, the problem with the empire is that the country is too large and the population is too large, not that.

Good governance.

However, in terms of the empire's current trust asset scale and central gold reserve level, the empire's ability to withstand international economic crises is still very strong, and Song Biao did not worry too much.

Song Biao is now a big worry in Shanghai, and the current land price in Shanghai is too high. Song Biao invites Zhang Kangren to come here today to talk about this. Because of the economic prosperity, Shanghai's credit situation is also inflated, and a lot of capital is

Concentrated in the real estate industry.

Zhang Kangren is quite familiar with this situation, so he discussed it with Song Biao here. Relatively speaking, he should introduce policies as soon as possible to squeeze Shanghai's real estate, credit, shrink credit, and squeeze some bubbles out.

, so as not to pull banks into it because of a crisis like the rubber crisis back then.

In addition, Song Biao also discussed the handling of central trust assets with Zhang Kangren.

This is also a relatively complex issue.

Except for the Soviet Union, the imperial central government is the richest government in the world. The Soviet Union has all the resources of the country, which is of course incomparable. The imperial central government is different. The central government mainly comes from four aspects, one is the early stage.

175 and 125 state investments; second, domestic and overseas property confiscated by the Empire during World War I; third, financial reserve investments of the Empire during World War I; fourth, foreign debts held by the Empire during World War I.

Only four people in the world know how much money is, Song Biao, Ouyang Geng, Zhang Kangren and Ouyang Xi, and the others can only know part of their respective responsibilities.

The trust assets of the empire are mainly handled by four companies, namely China International Trust and Investment Company, China National Trust and Reserve Company, China National Investment Bank Company, and China Industrial Holding Corporation. They are the so-called CITIC, China Reserve, China Investment and China Control Corporation.

The state-owned capital company, the four major companies, handle part of their business as needed, and then entrust foreign banks and domestic banks to manage part of it.

The Chinese Empire is the largest capitalist country in the world, but it also has the largest state-owned company in the world, which is quite dramatic in itself.

These four major companies have their own characteristics in terms of division of labor. CITIC Company is responsible for overseas asset management, CITIC is responsible for maintaining national strategic reserves, and adopting high selling and low buying to maintain the stability of domestic prices. CITIC is responsible for professional investment in domestic and foreign financial assets and

Financial management and bank takeovers to prevent domestic financial crisis, Zhongkong is the product of 175,125 items, and still holds shares in 200 large enterprises.

Even if domestic assets, foreign creditors and military balances are not counted, the total overseas assets held by the imperial central government are as high as US$5.7 billion.

Basically this year, most of the overseas assets held by the central government have been withdrawn from the stock markets of various countries. Such a huge number of assets can hardly be replaced with gold, because there is no such much gold in the world.

.

If it cannot be exchanged for gold, the money can only be kept overseas as foreign exchange.

The Great Depression is different from the First World War. At least, prices have surged in various markets, and companies have lost money when making money. The Great Depression actually loses money when buying anything. Even if it is retained as foreign exchange, it may encounter the risk of currency depreciation.

If it were exchanged for national debt, the empire would have surpassed France and the United States in an instant to become the world's largest creditor country. France was one of the world's largest creditor countries at that time. After all, Germany owed it so much war reparations.

With such a large amount of money, the national fiscal tax revenue will be nearly 1/10 of the interest collected every year, which is equivalent to 1/5 of the central fiscal revenue.

Today I happened to talk about this with Zhang Kangren, so Song Biao asked him what good ideas he had.

Zhang Kangren was silent for a while, and after a moment, he said: "If you are not afraid of Germany's debt, the most stable and stable high returns are used to issue credit in Germany. Secondly, you should consider the national economic situation of France and the United States, France and the United States.

OK, but my subordinates thought it would be better to hold more silver assets. If there was really an economic crisis in 1857, you might as well take the opportunity to use the scale of silver assets to force some countries to return to the silver standard, use silver assets to issue huge credit, and support these countries to survive for the time being.

Economic crises, such as South America and Southeast Asian countries. Britain, the United States and France are trying to control gold assets. So are we. The distribution of world gold reserves is seriously uneven and cannot keep up with the current economic scale of various countries. This is the main factor in the chaos in the international economy.

.My subordinates think that when we issued votes in the Northeast, we could at least guarantee a reserve rate of 13. Now the economic scale of various countries is expanding rapidly, coal and iron are constantly mining, and various industrial products are emerging one after another, the economic scale is getting bigger and bigger, and gold is fundamentally

Can't keep up with reserve demand. There are only two countermeasures to solve this problem. One is to directly decouple the currency from precious metals, and the other is to return to the situation of coexistence of gold and silver standards. The former depends on the credibility of the government. Once a large-scale international war is encountered

, the result is probably even worse. All countries' finances will go bankrupt, and the latter has too high volatility in the short term, which has mostly negative impacts on economic entities in various countries. It is difficult for the subordinates to explain clearly how the specific historical trends will develop, but there is one thing

There is no doubt that the current gold standard can no longer hold on. The empire has huge overseas assets but cannot be converted into gold, which itself is enough to show that the crisis exists objectively."

Song Biao exclaimed with admiration: "I am worthy of being the Minister of Finance for fifteen years, and I can see the problems thoroughly."

By the time he said this, Song Biao had made up his mind to take the opportunity to re-hold silver assets. The empire's silver reserves have always remained at a relatively stable stage. After selling a large amount of silver before the end of World War I, he took advantage of it again in recent years.

The silver price plummeted and re-held, which itself had great silver bargaining power, and the domestic silver production was also relatively high.

If you start holding silver assets now, it will manipulate the world's silver price on a larger scale, which is enough to maintain the appropriate exchange rate of gold and silver in the long term. As long as you maintain this exchange rate, you will not have to let the United States dominate the financial rights after World War II.

Don't let Britain and the US cut off financial rights.

By using silver, China has a way to compete with the financial hegemony of Britain and the United States. Of course, it is only in the short term. In the long run, other methods should be considered. The output of silver itself is a matter of radical change, and it is far less easy to control than gold.
Chapter completed!