As the saying goes, "A loss is a blessing." A person who can become a great instrument usually understands this truth in particular, for example, Zeng Guofan told his descendants: "Contentment with the heavens and the earth, greed for the universe, loss and blessings." The super-rich Li Ka-shing also often "suffers losses" in the business, but often has unexpected gains.
The protagonist in today's story is also a person who is quite capable of "suffering losses", he relied on "losses", step by step to become the richest man in the late Qing Dynasty, and even became a world-class rich man, admired by foreigners, who is he? And how did it succeed?
In 1769, a baby boy fell to the ground in Guangzhou, and his parents named him Wu Bingjian. Because he was born in a merchant's family, Wu Bingjian was particularly sensitive to business and accounting from an early age, but at that time, Wu Bingjian's brother was better than him, so his father chose Wu Bingjun as the heir, but his brother died young, and the burden of the Wu family was all on Wu Bingjian, and he could only take over all the business hard.
Fortunately, Wu Bingjian was a fairly capable person, and the Wu family's Jardine Bank was quickly run by him, and at the same time, Wu Bingjian also found a new way to get rich - to cooperate with foreigners.
Here is a brief background of the year, since 1757 (Qianlong twenty-two years), the Qing Dynasty has ordered the implementation of the "closed country" policy, only to retain Guangzhou as a port for foreign trade, so Guangzhou Thirteen Lines became the only legal "foreign trade special zone" in China at that time, in the next 100 years, Guangzhou Thirteen Lines alone, to the Qing government to provide 40% of the tariff revenue, so the Qing government generously gave them a lot of preferential policies, encouraged them to maintain business with foreigners.
Wu Bingjian saw these preferential policies, and as soon as he took the position, he actively carried out business exchanges with foreigners, and soon negotiated a business with a foreign business, and the other party promised to transport a batch of high-quality cotton to Wu Bingjian within 1 month. However, Wu Bingjian planted a big heel at the beginning - Wu Bingjian, who is based on integrity, did not expect that the other party would actually "pit" him, and the cotton sent was all defective products, and no one would buy it at all.
Everyone was urging Wu Bingjian to hurry up and find each other trouble, but he chose to bear the loss alone, and everyone said that Wu Bingjian was a fool who was afraid of foreigners and ate such a big dumb loss, but they did not know that Wu Bingjian actually had his own plans.
The fact that "Wu Bingjian suffered a big loss" soon spread throughout most of Guangzhou, and even the foreigners heard about this matter, and they could not imagine that the big boss of the Wu family would make such a mistake, so they ran to know him, and when they came and went, the foreigners understood Wu Bingjian's personality and knew that he was an honest and reliable businessman, so they sought him out to cooperate.
A businessman from Boston, USA, signed an order of nearly 100,000 silver dollars with Wu Bingjian in one breath, but the raw silk market fluctuated that year, and the merchant lost everything and directly owed Wu Bingjian a huge debt of 72,000 silver dollars, and he not only could not afford to pay back the money, but even did not have the money to return to China. Just when the creditors came to him for trouble, Wu Bingjian came to him with the IOU, directly tore the IOU to pieces, and solemnly said: "You are my number one 'old friend', you are the most honest person, but unlucky." "And gave him a sum of money to return home."
Everyone present froze, especially the American businessman, who thanked Wu Bingjian one after another and immediately rushed back to the United States in order to make a comeback. The more widely this matter spread, Wu Bingjian's fame became more and more famous, and foreigners who sought his cooperation simply had to queue up.
As early as 1834, Wu Bingjian's private assets reached 26 million silver dollars, more than half of the Qing Dynasty's state inventory, which is really admirable.