When it comes to the world's richest man, there will be Bezos, Buffett, Bill Gates and other very famous businessmen in Europe and the United States who jump into everyone's impression. They are the ones who own the most legal assets in the world, and knowing the fluctuating rankings between them has become a great pleasure for people.
In recent years, the world's richest people have been foreigners, and China has been almost excluded. As everyone knows, during the Kangxi period of the Qing Dynasty 360 years ago, our country also gave birth to the world's richest man, but later because of the war, the family began to fall.
The Wall Street Journal once counted the world's richest people in a thousand years, and China's Wu Bingjian is one of them. He was the last richest man in the world recorded in Chinese history, but his later years were spent in discouragement.
Business aptitude
Born in 1769 in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, Wu Bingjian was originally a Fujian native, and his ancestors grew tea in the local area for a living, and later moved to Guangzhou and still engaged in the business of reselling tea in both places.
His father, Wu Guoying, worked as an accountant in the richest family in Guangzhou, and later he opened his own trading house called Yuan Shunxing. He then entrusted the business to his eldest son, Wu Bingjun, to manage, but he did not expect that Wu Bingjun died of illness at a young age.
After Wu Bingjun's death, Yuan Shunxing was handed over to Wu Bingjian, who changed the name of the business to "Jardine Matheson" and continued to uphold the legacy of his father and brother and properly run the business. Due to Wu Bingjian's talent in business, the company soon stood out in Guangzhou and became a dark horse.
Wu Bingjian lived in an era during the Kangxi Dynasty, and a stable social environment was a good condition for the development of Jardine Matheson. At that time, the domestic economy was still in a state of semi-openness and semi-lockdown, but because Guangzhou was close to the coast, it came into contact with some European and American merchants earlier than the inland areas.
At that time, there were not many businessmen who liked to deal with foreigners, and Wu Bingjian was one of them. During this period, he had excellent relations with European and American merchants, often trading with them for items such as silk and porcelain. And European and American goods he is not all, only choose some of the domestic sales are better.
Moreover, he also lent a large amount of foreign debt to European and American merchants, and in the process of trading, he only wanted silver, and part of the foreign debt he lent was converted into ships, and then gradually expanded his commercial territory overseas.
His forward-looking business philosophy was quickly emulated by other merchants, and Wu Bingjian became the leader who led them on the road to prosperity. Under such an opportunity, the trade exchanges between China and European and American countries have also begun to develop in the direction of prosperity.
Thirteen lines in Guangzhou
Everyone may not know Wu Bingjian, but they will definitely know the Thirteen Lines of Guangzhou. However, the establishment of the Thirteen Lines of Guangzhou is indispensable to the blessing of Wu Bingjian's foreign trade operations over the years.
In 1757, the Qianlong Emperor issued a directive that foreign trade activities were not allowed except in the area around Guangdong Customs. This means that all foreign trade ports in other coastal areas have been closed, and the customs ports in Guangzhou have formed a monopoly situation.
As soon as the holy decree came out, Wu Bingjian was immediately announced by the local inspector, saying that all people with solid families could carry out foreign trade business as long as they paid a certain amount of silver to the national treasury every year.
This policy allowed Wu Bingjian to smell the bright future of foreign trade, and he immediately participated. At the same time, twelve other trading houses also joined this camp, known in history as the "Thirteen Lines of Guangzhou", but in fact, with the increase of merchants, more than thirteen were later.
As a result, Guangzhou Thirteen Lines became the only legal foreign trade zone in China at that time. Wu Bingjian also relied on the relaxation of policies to spread his business to countries around the world.
At that time, his industries involved tea gardens, shops and real estate, and he also invested in the construction of railways in the United States, involved in the securities exchange market and the insurance industry. In addition, he was the largest creditor of the East India Company, and many European and American businessmen had borrowed money from him.
At that time, the annual trade turnover between Wu Bingjian and merchants in Europe and the United States was as high as several million taels of silver, and his Jardine Matheson Bank also became a veritable "multinational enterprise".
Although Wu Bingjian was a profit-seeking businessman, he did not give any bad impression, on the contrary, many foreign businessmen praised him, calling him "honest, loving, and serious." This may be the reason why Wu Bingjian can navigate the complex relationship of foreign trade with ease.
However, the good times did not last long, in the process of dealing with Europeans and Americans, Wu Bingjian was actually calculated by them, and almost lost his reputation in the end. At that time, it was only one step away from the beginning of the Opium War.
The evening view is bleak
The Opium War is a famous war in modern history, and behind this war is the process of Wu Bingjian's transformation from a businessman to a traitor to a country seeker. The tea trade has always been jardine matheson's main business, and wu Bingjian's life has always been a good faith operation.
Wu Bingjian also repeatedly sponsored the business of merchants who frequented the business, but later these people carried opium in the tea leaves for personal gain. At that time, Lin Zexu was ordered to monitor the movement of opium, so that Wu Bingjian was embarrassed on both sides, because neither side could afford to offend.
Finally, in order to calm the people, he sent Wu Shaorong to hand over 1,037 boxes of opium seized from foreign businessmen to Lin Zexu, hoping to close the case quickly. But Lin Zexu did not believe that they had not colluded with foreign businessmen and sent Wu Shaorong to prison. At this point, Wu Bingjian is also losing face.
Later, when the Opium War broke out, Wu Bingjian knew that once the war broke out, if britain won the victory, then the monopoly position of the thirteen elements in Guangzhou would not be preserved. Therefore, after hearing the news of the outbreak of the war, Wu Bingjian directly collapsed on the ground and suddenly felt powerless to return to heaven.
Later, in order to increase the chances of victory in the war for the Qing army, he gathered many rich merchants to donate money and materials to build bunkers, build warships and build cannons, but even so, the Qing army was defeated.
Subsequently, the Qing government signed the Treaty of Guangzhou with the British government, and the Qing army withdrew from the city of Guangzhou, and also had to pay a fine of 6 million yuan. In order to pay the fine, Wu Bingjian took out 1.1 million taels of silver, and the others were shared equally among the merchants in the thirteen lines.
Although the fine was nothing to Wu Bingjian, who was a wealthy country, he was already disheartened by the Qing government at the moment. With the end of the war, the business of the Guangzhou trading house was also affected, and Wu Bingjian's family began to decline.
Under these circumstances, the Qing government still did not forget to squeeze them, all kinds of harsh taxes and miscellaneous taxes struck, Wu Bingjian could no longer support it, and the big family business was like a lone sail in the waves, becoming crumbling. In 1843, Wu Bingjian died in grief at the age of 74.
In the heyday of business, Wu Bingjian was often called "the richest man in China". In 1834, Wu Bingjian also counted his assets, about 26 million taels of silver, equivalent to 5 billion yuan.
Compared with John, the richest man in the United States at that time, this number was more than 4 times more than him, which shows that Wu Bingjian's assets had reached the level of being rich and invincible at that time. What's more, it was calculated that his net worth exceeded the income of the Qing government for half a year at that time.
Ben was a generation of business wizards who could lead the Chinese to impact overseas business, but it was only because he was in the weak and incompetent late Qing government that he died of depression in the misfortune of the sad country, which was a pity.