It can be said that Queen Victoria has become a mature woman. She will not believe the lies of Xiao Letian and Princess Sissi. If there are no equal conditions, it can only mean that these two people are cheating.
As expected, Princess Sissi's face turned slightly red, "I can't hide anything from Her Majesty the Queen. There are indeed a few things that Xiao Letian has asked of you..."
"Your Majesty, you also need to consider the difficulties of the head of state. For this Franco-Prussian War, Xiao Letian squeezed the Chinese people who were not rich in the first place..."
"Wait? What does this mean? How can the sky be three feet higher?" The Crown Prince obviously never stopped thinking about this Eastern proverb.
Princess Sissi smiled and said, "This is an old joke in China. In ancient China, corrupt officials plundering people's wealth was called land scraping, which meant scraping away the most fertile part of the land and turning it into their own..."
"So when people describe an official as greedy, they say that the sky is three feet high in the place he governs. Doesn't this mean that he has scraped down the earth by three feet?"
It turns out that’s the case. Both the Crown Prince and the Queen looked like they suddenly realized, “Go on!”
"Your Majesty, it is precisely because the foundation of the Chinese race is too weak that Xiao Letian has struggled to develop from the poor island nation of Ryukyu, and his finances are in great crisis!"
"Before the Franco-Prussian War, he also fought a tragic Far Eastern War. Before the Far Eastern War, there was a maritime conflict with France... How to solve military expenditures? Not through tax collection and civilian dismantling!"
"The Chinese people's finances are already very difficult at the moment. He must bring a large amount of cash back to Asia in order to stabilize the currency market..."
"Xiao Letian did admit that I control the British Empire's gold. He will definitely not bring any gold back to Asia this time... but the head of state hopes to exchange it for 30 to 40 million taels of silver and return to Asia!"
"There is no other meaning. With these tens of millions of physical silver, his rule will be stabilized immediately. When the people's sentiment is stabilized, he will be able to rule the country with peace of mind..."
"Maintaining a stable Chinese ethnic group in the political arena is very beneficial to the British Empire. After all, the pace of Tsarist Russia's eastward expansion and the United States' ambitions in the Pacific... both require a stable Chinese ethnic group to restrict and balance!"
"So, I hope the Queen can open the silver exchange business in the City of London to the Chinese... Xiao Letian wants to bring a sum of silver back to Asia!"
After hearing this condition, both the Queen and the Crown Prince breathed a sigh of relief. The silver standard is a unique currency system in Asia and is completely different from Europe.
Silver is valuable in Europe but not as stable as gold, and the amount of silver mined is increasing year by year after industrialization. The exchange of silver will not affect Britain's dominance at all.
But even if politicians agree in their hearts, they still have to make a constipated expression on their faces, as if they don't want to!
"Will China be short of silver? As far as I know, Xiao Letian bought a lot of silver mines from Mexico and South America! Isn't it enough for him..."
"Your wise Majesty, you should know the truth behind this better than I do. For the silver ore purchased in the market to be turned into currency, a series of processes are required..."
"This is a long-term matter, and what Xiao Letian wants is to quickly stabilize people's hearts... This requires tens of millions of taels of silver to be shipped back from Europe at once!"
"This visual impact can shut up all the opposition forces in one fell swoop. What he wants is for the Chinese people to be stunned!"
"And now, apart from the European currency market that can withdraw tens of millions of taels of physical silver at once, which other country has this strength?"
"And in these European countries, only the City of London has the right to make decisions! And doesn't the City of London still have to listen to you?"
"It's just silver, why would the British Empire care about such a small thing..."
Girls are really outgoing. This man-stealing woman has gone to great lengths for the men outside her. She has never tried to please anyone so much for the princess of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Xiao Letian really conquered the princess's heart. Princess Sissi's mouth was filled with honey, and she fooled the queen so hard that she couldn't even find her!
Tens of millions of taels of silver are nothing to the British Empire. The Queen finally waved her hand, "Don't bother me with this kind of thing. Silver is an industrial product of free trade. He can exchange it for as much as he likes. It’s not such a precious thing!”
The Queen's confidence actually comes from the overall development of human mining technology in the late Industrial Revolution!
In the early days of the Age of Discovery, European colonists directly robbed bloody gold and silverware. Especially in South America, these barbaric European bandits directly robbed gold and silver products from the natives.
The colonial rule at this time was actually the most primitive plundering economy. However, as the colonial wealth was plundered, the colonists began the second type of colonial economy, which was a rough mining and planting model.
In South America, the Spaniards discovered the largest silver mine in the world, the Silver City of Potosi!
This city, which was born because of silver mines, produced half of the world's silver production. The direct consequence was that international silver prices plummeted.
From the end of the Ming Dynasty to the middle of the Qing Dynasty, unless affected by war, silver in China experienced a slow inflation process during the peaceful period. The fundamental reason for this was in South America and Europe!
The global silver supply increased several times, and Chinese goods were actually exchanged for increasingly cheaper silver. This indirectly gave birth to the British gold standard system.
The Queen doesn't care at all about the outflow of silver. In the eyes of Europeans, silver is just an expensive industrial heavy metal!
But for the emerging Chinese, silver is the basic currency that can stabilize the economy. If gold cannot hold it, then the bottom line of silver must be held!
As long as the Queen relents, everything will be easy to handle. Not all British politics are hostile to the Chinese. Politicians are also divided into left, center and right. As long as the Queen does not interfere with Xiao Letian, he can easily take advantage of the chaos.
Being able to get free trade rights for global silver is already a big gift package!
Xiao Letian's conditions were not just a silver trading right. Princess Sissi poured a cup of tea for the queen, and then spoke again.
"Your Majesty, I still have some private matters that I need to trouble you with... Of course, they also involve some requests from the head of state!"
The queen was obviously in a good mood today. She smiled and said, "Tell me, let's see how many things our little princess wants to bother me with..."
"Your Majesty, you know that I have a dodo nature reserve on the island of Mauritius... Of course, it is also Xiao Letian's investment!"
"The land rights transfer has been completed long ago, and the first batch of Chinese immigrants have arrived and started building residential areas... However, during this development process, we encountered a big problem!"
"That's the wild Indian Ocean, where so far three boats have sunk and hundreds of migrants have lost their lives... For the love of God, I'm begging you to help me!"
