Sheng Xuanhuai and Hu Xueyan were two great merchants in modern Chinese history who were famous and wealthy. Sheng Xuanhuai is the founder of Shanghai Jiaotong University, Tianjin University and Zhangyu Wine, with countless industries such as ships, mines, telegraphs, railways, textiles and so on; Hu Xueyan is a famous "red-top businessman", shipping administration, money houses, pawnshops, herbs, raw silk, machinery, and even foreign loans, and a variety of industries are all operating in a prosperous manner.
However, in the direct competition between the two giants, Sheng Xuanhuai finally had a higher skill. He used the "information technology" weapon he mastered to let Hu Xueyan die in one breath.
01 Office Telegram Sheng Xuanhuai is highly calculated
The reason why Sheng Xuanhuai and Hu Xueyan were able to call the wind and rain in the business circles of the late Qing Dynasty was inseparable from the supporters behind them, Sheng Xuanhuai's supporters were Li Hongzhang, and Hu Xueyan was Zuo Zongtang.
In the 1870s, Western powers frequently demanded the establishment of telegraph lines in the Qing Dynasty. At this time, Hu Xueyan immediately sniffed out the mystery behind the telegram, and he suggested to Zuo Zongtang: Li Hongzhang is planning to run a telegraph line, and Zuo Gong is about to take office as the governor of Liangjiang, why don't you take the lead and preemptively start a telegraph to beat Li Hongzhang?
Zuo Zongtang was deeply impressed, and immediately went to the imperial court and put forward a request to open a telegram. Li Hongzhang immediately got the wind and was very angry. Sheng Xuanhuai suggested to Li Hongzhang: Now the imperial court is very controversial about the telegraph, and the princes and ministers are quarreling, and they all aim their spearheads at Zuo Zongtang. We will now make sufficient preparations, and when they are finished arguing, we will directly ask the empress dowager for instructions, and we will be able to take him one step ahead.
Li Hongzhang was deeply impressed and immediately sent Sheng Xuanhuai to Shanghai to prepare for the construction of the telegraph line. At the imperial court, as Sheng Xuanhuai expected, except for endless quarrels, Zuo Zongtang's recital did not follow at all.
On the other hand, Sheng Xuanhuai made preliminary preparations, and after consulting Li Hongzhang, he set up China's first telegraph line between the Dagu Beitang Haikou Fort and Tianjin, which belonged to the Li Hongzhang Defense Zone.
After the successful erection, Li Hongzhang specially asked the Prince of Alcohol to provide on-site guidance, which was greatly praised by him. Li Hongzhang also took advantage of the heat to strike iron, and immediately asked Empress Dowager Cixi to set up a telegraph bureau. Soon, the imperial court appointed Sheng Xuanhuai as the general office of the telegraph bureau and presided over the telegraph work.
02 The Yangtze River line wins another move
After the establishment of the Tianjin Telegraph General Bureau, Sheng Xuanhuai began to open sub-bureaus in Zizhulin, Dagukou, Jining, Suzhou, Shanghai and other places, and at first everything went very smoothly, except that when the Yangtze River power line was erected, Zuo Zongtang, the governor of Liangjiang, directly vetoed it.
Behind the wrestling with Sheng Xuanhuai, there is no doubt that Hu Xueyan is still Hu Xueyan. At the same time, Hu Xueyan also suggested that Zuo Zongtang go to the imperial court again and let him erect the Yangtze River power line.
Zuo Zongtang presided over liangjiang, which was extremely difficult for Sheng Xuanhuai to shake, but he also tried to give Hu Xueyan a salary. Sheng Xuanhuai specifically found the Danish Great North Company and the British Great East Company, which were producing and supplying telegraph equipment at that time, promised to buy telegraph equipment at three times the price, and asked them to promise not to supply Hu Xueyan.
The Great North Company and the Great East Company had a grudge with Hu Xueyan, and coupled with the fact that Sheng Xuanhuai offered such an attractive price, they also agreed to deal with Hu Xueyan together.
In the face of the uncooperative attitude of the two foreign companies, Hu Xueyan was also helpless, but a month later, the Great North Company actually sent a batch of equipment. Hu Xueyan was overjoyed and immediately ordered the start of construction. But who thought that this was another plan of Sheng Xuanhuai, Hu Xueyan's project was one-third of the way through, and he had to stop work again. It turned out that the equipment sent by the Great North Company had serious quality problems.
After Hu Xueyan failed to frame the line, Sheng Xuanhuai immediately asked Li Hongzhang to "mend the knife" - he wrote a letter to impeach Hu Xueyan. The imperial court then decreed that Sheng Xuanhuai would preside over the yangtze river line, and Zuo Zongtang would have to give the green light.
03 Run storm to bring down opponents
The raw silk market in the late Qing Dynasty was once monopolized by Hu Xueyan, who had to buy a large amount of raw silk every year, control the price, and make a fortune.
Sheng Xuanhuai, who controlled the telegraph bureau, this time had a keen grasp of Hu Xueyan's raw silk trading trend through his own telegraph system early.
Therefore, while he bought raw silk himself and sold it to Hu Xueyan, he continued to enlist compradors from commercial houses around the world to ask them not to buy Hu Xueyan's raw silk this year.
Hu Xueyan's raw silk inventory has been in stock for many days, and the capital occupation is serious and painful. At this time, two things that made things worse followed: first, the harvest of raw silk in Europe and Italy, coupled with the outbreak of the Sino-French War, made Hu Xueyan lose a huge loss of 10 million taels in the raw silk market, and he had previously spent 20 million taels of silver just to open a silk factory; second, the 800,000 taels of loan he raised for Zuo Zongtang's battle was also due.
Although the borrower of this money was the imperial court, Hu Xueyan was the one who handled it, so the creditor's foreign bank only asked Hu Xueyan for money. In previous years, this loan was usually compensated to Hu Xueyan by the provincial cooperative salary in case he repaid it. But this year, Sheng Xuanhuai found the Shanghai Daotai Government through connections and let it deliberately delay its hair for 20 days.
As a result, on the one hand, the foreign banks were dunning money day after day, and on the other hand, the silver that the Shanghai Daotai government had not arrived for a long time and could not be urged repeatedly, hu Xueyan could only temporarily embezzle the silver in his own money bank and temporarily repay the loan.
However, at this time, Sheng Xuanhuai, who mastered the telegraph system, already knew everything about Hu Xueyan's every move, and he took advantage of Hu Xueyan's "money shortage" to entrust people to withdraw money from his Fukang Bank.
At the same time, he also released a rumor that Hu Xueyan had lost all his money in the acquisition of raw silk, and had also embezzled the deposits of Fukang Bank, and now he still owes debts to foreign banks and is about to collapse.
As soon as this news came out, it caused panic among the people, and there was a crowded wave of people in Fukang Banks everywhere, and Hu Xueyan had to sell the raw silk in his hand at a low price in order to survive the run tide, but in the end it still did not help.
In December 1883, the Qing court ordered Hu Xueyan's assets to be secretly inspected in order to pay off debts; in February 1884, the Qing court ordered Zuo Zongtang to seal up Hu Xueyan's pawnshops and businesses in Hangzhou. In September 1885, Zuo Zongtang died of illness in Fuzhou. In November of the same year, Hu Xueyan, who had lost his last hope, also died in poverty and hatred.
Sheng Xuanhuai finally won the final business battle with Hu Xueyan through "information technology".
Reference: Hu Xueyan: The Merchant of the Red Roof