~.-~    1908 is the year of China, the year of the Olympics, and the year of peace.

In this year, the young Eastern Emperor received a generous gift from Haotian: a pair of twin sons. From this moment on, the most populous country and nation in the world no longer had any questions about the inheritance of national order;

In this year, China, which has recently become a hot topic in Western society, held the largest, highest-level, most successful and most memorable Olympic Games in human history, showing its style to the world in all aspects;

In this year, the dark clouds of war that once shrouded the world, gradually began to turn to peace with the continuous and unremitting efforts of Eastern countries. After the Olympics, public opinion in various countries seemed to have reached a tacit understanding and launched "peace" propaganda with great fanfare. Faced with the peaceful trends set off at various places, even if they are as confident as the Emperor of Germany, they have to make corresponding gestures.

After repeated discussions, or debates, the eight countries of China, Britain, Germany, France, the United States, Austria, Italy, Russia and Turkey drafted the Beijing Protocol in Beijing, agreeing that on the basis of the military expansion plans that have been officially issued by various countries, there will be no additional plans to further expand their arms, and the plans that have been promulgated will be "executed" for four years.

As the treaty was introduced, the clouds of war shrouded over Europe gradually dissipated, and the tense Western Europe began to return to peace;

In this year, with China, Russia, the United States and Germany as the four major locomotives, the world's economy has been advancing at an unprecedented speed, and major stock markets have risen together, and unprecedented prosperity has come to the whole world;

In this year, Japan's new parliament voted to pass the new "Japanese Constitution", which clearly established the four permanent principles of "peace, constitutionalism, democracy, and rule of law", and Japan formally established the modern constitutional monarchy system;

In December of this year, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that the 1908 Nobel Peace Prize would be awarded to Emperor Zheng Yu of the Chinese Empire for "easing down the international situation, mediating international disputes, and calling for peace and development" and "making outstanding contributions to the cause of peace for mankind."

In this year, China's nominal growth rate of industrial output value reached 29.4%. After deducting the industrial product price index, the actual growth rate also reached a record 21.5%. The per capita annual labor remuneration soared from 20.04 Huayuan in 1906 to 28.78 Huayuan, and the total domestic output value was equivalent to 50.55% of the United States in the same period.

In this year, after five consecutive years of rapid growth in the United States, the annual nominal growth rate reached 13.33%. The actual growth rate also reached 6.55%, and the GDP reached a record high of US$35.68 billion, an increase of 38.3% over 1904;

In this year, the nominal growth rate of GDP in major European industrial countries reached an average of 6.15%, which also reached a high in the past two decades.

As announced by the New York Times on New Year's Day in 1909, the New York Times announced: "...a kind of permanent, irreplaceable, and will continue to flourish. It seems that it has arrived in our ~~-update, first-time... the economic crisis that was once considered invincible has become the historical trace... Peace and prosperity will be the theme of the 20th century."

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In the fourth year of Huaxing, May 1, 1909 AD.

Beijing. China Palace.

Zheng Jizhong and Zheng Jiyong, who had just turned one year old, were wearing light yellow baby clothes. Looking at the people in front of them with different expressions, their black bean-like eyes dripping around, and they made giggling from time to time.

Xiaohu, the son of Qiu Haiyang and Zhou Xiaoyu, who was just one year and eight months old, looked at the two chubby children and smiled foolishly. Ji Hongxing looked left and right, and couldn't help asking: "Is this on the left... the boss?"

Zheng Yu smiled and shouted: "Jizhong, stand up!"

The child who was giggling and looking at everyone was standing up and looking at his father.

"Go in step!"

Zheng Jizhong's Luo Bu's legs flew back and forth, walking forward as if they were decent.

"Awesome!" Qiu Haiyang gave a thumbs up. "It's still your majesty's tiger! I'm almost one and a half years old and I'm incomparable."

Zheng Yu smiled and shouted again: "Zheng Jizhong, turn right!"

Zheng Jizhong looked left, right, and walked down the left.

The people next to him had already laughed.

"Boy..." Zheng Yu laughed and scolded. "Forget it, wait until you go back and train..."

Liu Ziye gave him a blank look, picked up his son and kissed him in a demonstration manner, which made Zheng Jizhong laugh continuously.

Zheng Jiyong looked around, opened his arms and walked forward, muttering: "Hug, hug..."

Zheng Yu smiled and said, "Jiyong, stop!"

Zheng Jiyong turned his head to look at his father, looked confused, smiled foolishly, and rushed to Zheng Yu.

"Zheng Jiyong, stop!"

"Zheng Jiyong, stop!"

Zheng Jiyong looked at his father and kept laughing. Finally, he ran a few steps and threw himself into Zheng Yu's arms.

Zheng Yu smiled bitterly: "This child is even more confused than his elder brother..."

Zhou Xiaoyu covered her mouth and laughed: "How could you teach children like this? You train soldiers like this... You are only one year old, so how could you come from this."

"I never beat or scold me." Zheng Yu smiled. "I have always been a temptation to them... But these guys seem to be a bit sure to me. I haven't played tricks recently... I can't let them see each other."

Zheng Jiyong picked up the casual shoes on his father's feet and wanted to bite them. Zheng Yu quickly picked him up and pinched his face: "This one cannot be eaten... it will die if you eat it."

Zheng Jiyong seemed to understand but didn't understand, but just kept laughing.

"Your Majesty, the ceremony is ready." The female official from the palace hall came over and bowed, "Please move."

"Everyone, let's go." Zheng Yu nodded to everyone, "Look at what these two kids want to do in the future."

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The ceremonial ceremony of arresting the week is actually very simple, similar to that of the people. It is nothing more than putting a bunch of things in front of the children and letting the children catch them.

Zheng Jizhong looked at the things that were scattered in front of him with his black eyes. He always saw the left and right, and saw the left from right, and laughed foolishly. Finally, he grabbed the wooden toy pistol and played with it in his hands, and danced around with both hands.

Everyone looked at each other, and Zheng Yu nodded: "It seems that this kid wants to join the army..."

Liu Ziye felt a little regretful, but he also knew that these two children would definitely attend military academy for at least a few years, so he didn't care too much. He just smiled and picked up Zheng Jizhong and coaxed the wooden pistol in his hand.

It was Zheng Jiyong's turn to play, but the kid picked up one and put it down, and went back and forth several times. Finally, he picked up one and refused to let go.

"This kid! It must be a wealthy slave!" Zheng Yu laughed and said, "Okay! But seeing this kid is so confused, I don't know if he can keep it..."

"A slave to the money is always better than a prodigal son." Qiu Haiyang said intriguingly, "I am a fool, but I actually caught fruit. I am a foodie..."

Xiaohu didn't know if he understood it, so he smirked for a while. His eyes turned and ran to Zheng Jiyong.

Zheng Jiyong was playing with abacus, and Xiaohu walked up and suddenly went to grab the abacus.

Qiu Haiyang saw that something was wrong and wanted to stop him, but Zheng Yu pulled him and waved his hand. Qiu Haiyang's face turned blue and he wanted to kick him twice when he looked at his son. Zhou Xiaoyu was about to scold his son, but Zheng Yu stopped him.

Xiaohu pulled hard, after all, he was eight months old and his body was developing well. He was snatched away.

Zheng Jiyong was stunned, but he rushed over and pushed the little tiger down on the mat, took the abacus back and hugged it in his arms.

Xiaohu started to cry. As a result, Zheng Jiyong also sat on the ground and started crying.

The more Qiu Haiyang looked at his son, the more angry he became, but Zheng Yu smiled: "It is a good thing for children to be active, don't over-discipline... OK, I think Xiaohu is a good child. As parents, you must not discipline the children like raising quails."

Qiu Haiyang smiled bitterly, Zhou Xiaoyu hugged her and coaxed her for a while, and Xiaohu burst into tears and laughed. Not long after, a few children were together and looked at me and I looked at you, giggling foolishly.

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night.

The prince in Xiyuan's first year-old banquet ended and the two birthday stars fell asleep early. The tired Liu Ziye also rested early, but Zheng Yu sat upright in the study outside.

"...The interbank lending rate among members of the New York Bank Clearing House has risen to 8.3%, and the winning result of the latest US Phnom Penh bond (treasury bond) is 7.9%! Although the US stock market is still strong, it has actually seen sharp turnovers in the past three months, and there have been signs of weakening in the past two weeks..."

"According to the analysis of the Tianyan Group, the bursting of the speculative bubble in the United States this time should have occurred in the past three months. This time the bubble lasts for a long time. The overheating of the real economy is also very high, especially the size of the stock market is already large, and too much credit funds are involved, especially the general leveraged financing... They believe that once the stock market collapses, a chain reaction may break out, which may eventually lead to continuous bankruptcy of American financial institutions and endanger the real economy."

Zheng Yu nodded without comment and stared at Ke Shan: "How much impact will our country's economy be?"

"my country's exports last year were as high as 2.66 billion Chinese Yuan, of which 630 million Chinese Yuan were exported to the United States, which does not seem to be large, but they believe that too much funds in the US stock and bond markets come from London. Once there is a breakdown, it will trigger financial chaos in Europe and directly lead to the collapse of the London and Paris markets, which will also affect our exports to Europe. Next, the economic suspension of industrial countries will reduce the demand for commodities, and the exports of colonies will decline, and imports will naturally be affected."

"This chain reaction will eventually be transmitted to the empire through exports." Ke Shan took a deep breath and said word by word. "The export department is related to too many industrial chains, and the workers on these chains constitute a large part of our domestic demand. Not to mention the impact on confidence..."

Zheng Yu was silent for a moment and asked again: "Where is the domestic one? The central bank has raised interest rates four times in a row, and the stock market is still rising. It seems that those European and American funds are dizzy... How have we withdrawn the funds that we should reduce their holdings?"

"The market funds have been withdrawn as planned." Ke Shan said, "but the target of direct reduction of holdings by major shareholders is too great. We have been doing it step by step over the years. Now we can only get market funds from other accounts."

Zheng Yu knew that the other party was telling the truth.

The stock market he built was actually an unprecedented special variety.

On the one hand, it strictly supervises the information disclosure of listed companies and investor qualifications, especially prohibits ordinary residents from entering the market directly, strictly controls domestic participants to professional investment institutions and wealthy people. On the other hand, foreign investors are equally liberalized according to national treatment.

Through listing, many outstanding companies that are key support have raised funds, while some companies in the Royal Family's exit have gradually changed their equity structure through market education, from the original absolute holding of the Royal Family to a diversified structure, and the Royal Family's shares have gradually withdrawn.

Players in such a market are mainly middle and upper-class people with considerable economic capabilities and certain cognitive abilities. Then there are professional investors responsible for managing mass funds. The competition between these people is relatively small compared to the market volatility dominated by retail investors.

But Zheng Yu knew that this kind of "relatively small fluctuations" was not absolute. When institutional investors generally began to become corrupt and began to implement the "herd principle". When a herd effect appeared, the market dominated by this institution may fluctuate more violently than the retail market.

In recent years, the national economy, especially industry, has been growing rapidly, and the companies that were first listed are carefully selected high-quality companies, which soon formed a money-making effect and attracted more and more social funds to enter the market. The rise in the stock market has brought about a wealth effect, and the paper wealth of the people holding stocks or funds continues to rise. They have more confidence in consumption and investment, and have also played a positive role in economic growth.

The rise in the stock market has also driven up housing prices in some core areas of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, thus starting to form a wealth effect in real estate.

These effects of mutual influence have accelerated the country's economic growth on the one hand, and on the other hand, they have begun to form speculative bubbles similar to those of the United States. A large number of European and American funds poured into the Chinese stock market or invested in real estate in China's core cities have further encouraged the formation of this bubble.

The wealth effect. Coupled with the social security of ordinary workers, the increased willingness to consume, and the continued rise in wage levels over the years, residents began to consume more food, and began to change their dietary structure, eating more meat, eggs and poultry, while poultry and livestock need food to feed them. The final result is that the agricultural product price index rose by 4.65% this year. The increase in wages and the rapid development of industries have also pushed up the industrial product price index, with an increase of up to 6.5% this year.

Although industrial and agricultural inflation data are lower than the wartime data in 1905, it is an unprecedented high level compared to peacetime. You should know that in this era of gold standard, the average annual inflation in the United States in the past 30 years has been only 0.07%.

For a country like China, where the per capita income level is still too low, high inflation is undoubtedly a nightmare. Industry that continues to grow too fast is also brewing more and more crises. In order to curb inflation and cool down the economy, the People's Bank of China has pushed the benchmark loan interest rate from 3.5% to 5.5% in one go within a year, and the government has also begun to conditionally cancel some structural fiscal interest subsidies to reduce fiscal spending.

Zheng Yu knew very well that this global speculative bubble lasted much longer than the one in 1907 in history, with a much deeper foundation, but a much heavier degree, and the impact after the rupture was destined to be more far-reaching.

The reason why it was delayed until now was that China absorbed a lot of investment from Britain to the United States in history before and after the war, and at the same time, it absorbed a large amount of funds from the United States, reducing the expansion rate of the US speculative bubble in the past few years. On the other hand, the Russian war and subsequent reparations and reconstruction absorbed too much French capital, which made the second largest capital exporter not have much energy to inject capital into the United States. In addition, China used several shears of government bonds and stock markets in the European and American markets to absorb massive amounts of funds. Although this speculative bubble has been brewing, it has never taken shape.

After the war, the reconstruction of China and Russia was launched one after another, and the huge "five-year development plan" launched by China gradually advanced, and the demand for imports for the United States and Germany increased significantly. Coupled with the military expansion plans of various countries, the speculative bubble finally stimulated.

By 1908, although China had several peaceful "goal mediation" and peaceful calls to cool down the situation in Europe, the global economy was no longer restrained.

This super bubble finally reached the brink of breaking.

"Tianyan judged that the domestic market has no margin mechanism and is still fully delivered, the leverage ratio of the stock market is very low, and stock pledge is not allowed. The situation where credit funds are involved in stock market speculation is only a few individual cases. The large adjustments in the market will not affect credit. However, if the real economy is impacted and lasts for a long time, it may cause banks to continue to shrink credit, which will have an impact on some related real estate loans in recent years, especially when mortgaged for factory land for expansion, and the impact of corporate loans focusing on exports is greater."

"Where is the position of the investment fund?"

"They are still cautious," Ke Shan said. "After all, they have experienced the bursting of speculative bubbles in the European and American markets, and those people are also connected to several major research institutes. In addition, the central bank's several interest rate hikes are itself a warning. At present, the space of the main ones has dropped to half, and the dozen most agile have already been short, and a lot of funds have been transferred to treasury bonds. Currently, the buyers in the market are mainly wealthy individuals and foreign capital who have made money and made sweet money in recent years."

"The storm is coming, the wind is filling the building..." Zheng Yu was silent for a long time, and his eyes turned to the night sky outside the window. "What should come will come after all. Since that's the case... I informed the outside, it's time to take action..."

"There are still many investment companies produced by the old emperor in our country that have strong positions..."

"Zhuo Feng, I said back then that the domestic market should make decisions, don't expect to rush up and down, and don't always think about asking about the next move of the center. This sentence is still counted now, and the same will be true in the future." Zheng Yu stared at Keshan. "The securities trading law is not a decoration... We make money and we must also use it on the country, but others are difficult to say... The market is determined by the rules in the end, and even we can only follow the rules. Don't think that we are omniscient and omnipotent... Whether the decision is correct or wrong, they must bear responsibility for investors. Don't always think about talking from the palace or the government."

Ke Shan bowed deeply: "Yes, Your Majesty."

"I notify several other institutions to carefully deduce the latest international and domestic political and economic trends, and give a report within one month. This time, the century-old plan of the empire must not go wrong. In addition... I notify Xu Shuai that I will wait for him in Shanghai." (To be continued. If you like this work, you are welcome to come to Qidian to vote for recommendations, monthly votes, and your support is my greatest motivation.)

~.-~


Chapter completed!