Starting in Saarhu, it is a bit difficult to make a comeback.

Chapter 272: War without smoke (please subscribe for monthly tickets)
Amsterdam in the Netherlands was the largest port in Europe at this time, and it was also a true commercial capital.

Modern financial products such as banks, bonds, stocks, and futures were already quite mature in the Netherlands in the 17th century.

However, as the most economically powerful Chinese empire in the world, although it started much later than the Dutch, it had a higher starting point.

Last year, in order to raise funds, China issued the largest bond in history, the Suez Canal Bond. The first issue alone was worth 2 million Huaxia silver coins.

Even the Netherlands can only catch up to this size of economy.

However, it is said that the fund-raising scale of the upcoming Huaxia Railway Bonds will be as high as 3 million Huaxia silver dollars.

Your Majesty wants to build a railway from the capital to Ili, and then from Ili to Moscow that completely runs through the east and west of China.

China's first railway from Kaiyuan to Beijing has started construction.

The Capital Stock Exchange was also officially listed. Liaodong Bank, East Ryukyu Company, Manila Gold Mine, Waguo Mining, Liaodong Military Industry, Jianghuai Salt Industry, Jiangnan Silk and Liaodong Glass became the first eight stocks to be listed.

For most people in this era, stock futures are new.

However, Li Xianzhong recognized his youngest brother's talent in finance very early, so he often secretly taught him the common sense of financial warfare.

As for counterattacks against the Europeans, the East Ryukyu Company has already begun preparations.

Due to Li Xianzhong's hegemonic monetary policy, the Chinese silver dollar has now become the world's common trade currency.

Even in the Netherlands, Chinese silver coins can be used.

But to defeat the Dutch financial and monetary system, silver dollars alone were not enough.

Because once the Dutch discover that the East Ryukyu Company has interfered with the Dutch financial system on a large scale, they are likely to ban the circulation of Chinese silver coins.

So they must have a lot of Dutch guilders on hand.

Currently, one Chinese silver dollar can be exchanged for 4.3 Dutch guilders, and the exchange rate has not changed much.

So Li Xingzu decided to take action on the exchange rate first and find a way to devalue the Dutch guilder.

Only when the Dutch guilder depreciated could the silver dollars in his hands be exchanged for more Dutch guilders.

Although the Dutch guilder is a paper currency, it is based on the gold standard.

The Dutch issued as many banknotes as they had gold.

In this era, banknotes linked to different gold and silver have no credit, such as the former "Ming Dynasty Treasure Banknotes".

However, there is an exchange difference between gold and silver between the East and the West.

在欧洲1两黄金可以兑换15两白银，到了波斯地区可以兑换12两白银，华夏目前是兑换10两白银（最夸张的时候是4两白银）。

Because silver was precious and gold was cheap in the Ming Dynasty, Europeans often brought large amounts of silver to the Ming Dynasty to exchange for gold.

The Spaniards moved almost all the silver produced in Mexico to the Ming Dynasty, exchanging the silver for the commodities or gold they needed.

But the exchange rate is fair, and Europe also has a situation where gold is expensive and silver is cheap.

As long as the East Ryukyu Company uses a large amount of gold to exchange it for silver in Europe, it can also earn the price difference.

Over the years, China has obtained a large amount of gold from Manila, Japan, India and Persia.

The purpose is to let Europeans one day experience the consequences of being robbed of exchange rate differences.

Therefore, the East Ryukyu Company has a large amount of gold stored at its headquarters in Amsterdam, as much as 300 million taels.

In addition, more gold was shipped to the Netherlands via merchant ships.

In the precious metals trading market in Amsterdam, a large amount of gold was suddenly exchanged for silver.

In just three days, 3 million taels of silver in Amsterdam's inventory were exchanged for gold.

And they continued to exchange them, causing the entire Dutch silver inventory to be emptied.

At this time, silver began to rise, and soon it changed from 1:15 to 1:12.

But even if the exchange rate between silver and gold rises to 1:12, it still cannot stop a large amount of gold from flooding into the market to buy silver.

After the 1000 million taels of silver poured in from the United Kingdom, France and other places were exchanged, the silver in the entire Western Europe was almost exhausted.

And it continued to rise to 1 to 10, smoothing the exchange gap between the East and the West.

If the Dutch cannot invest more silver, the exchange rate of silver will continue to rise.

Although the Chinese silver dollar is not pure silver, its purity is as high as 88%. The Dutch were previously unwilling to circulate silver dollars because Li Xianzhong insisted on using the 88% pure Chinese silver dollar as one tael of silver.

At this moment, facing the imminent collapse of silver, the Dutch government had no choice but to announce that the Chinese silver dollar could be circulated directly as silver.

The Netherlands, which has been trading with China all year round, naturally has a lot of silver dollars in its hands. The investment of a large amount of silver dollars finally prevented silver from continuing to rise wildly.

At this time, the exchange rate between the Dutch guilder and the Chinese silver dollar changed. Due to the crazy rise in silver, the Dutch guilder began to depreciate.

100克白银从兑换6.67克黄金，变成了兑换10克黄金，足足上涨了1/3。

With the rise of silver, the Dutch guilder, which implemented the "gold standard", also depreciated significantly against China's silver currency.

From the original 4.3 to 1, it depreciated to 5.7 Dutch guilders for 1 Chinese silver dollar.

Li Xingzu and Zheng Zhilong exchanged the 2000 million Chinese silver dollars in their hands for 1.14 million Dutch guilders.

As the exchanged silver returned to the Dutch in the form of Chinese silver dollars, the price of silver began to plummet, and the Dutch guilder also began to rise, returning to 1 to 4.5.

Zheng Zhilong said excitedly: "If we convert Dutch guilders into Chinese silver dollars at this time, we can make a profit of 530 million. The Dutch will suffer heavy losses this time!"

Li Xingzu smiled and said, "Uncle Zheng, are you ready to stop now?"

"The fun has just begun. A mere 530 million is barely worth the freight we paid to transport so much gold."

He soon had 1E guilders deposited into a Dutch bank.

Of course, in order to avoid arousing suspicion from the Dutch, he ordered businessmen affiliated with the East Ryukyu Company to open dozens of accounts in their personal names.

Afterwards, he asked Zheng Zhilong to use the East Ryukyu Company's properties in Europe as collateral to borrow 1.3E Dutch guilders in multiple installments from the Dutch Bank.

The Dutch Bank has just received a large amount of deposits, and now they can lend them out quickly, which they naturally want.

Although the loan amount is huge, these businessmen affiliated with the East Ryukyu Company have enough assets as collateral, and there is no risk that the Dutch banks will not receive the loan.

All procedures comply with bank lending procedures.

In addition, Zheng Zhilong asked dozens of people to borrow money separately, and each loan ranged from tens to millions, which did not attract the attention of the bank's "risk control".

At this time, Zheng Zhilong was a little confused. He said: "If we save 1 million and loan another 1.3 million, why not directly loan 3000 million. Wouldn't it cost a lot more interest?"

Li Xingzu said with a smile: "Although Amsterdam Bank only reduced its deposits by 3000 million, we still have 1.3 million bank deposits in our hands that can be withdrawn."

“Do you think the Dutch still have that much money in their banks that they can withdraw?”

Zheng Zhilong then sent people to various branches of ABN AMRO to withdraw money.

Where do banks have so much daily reserve funds? Although ABN Amro sought a day's time on the grounds that large withdrawals required an appointment one day in advance.

But soon rumors began to circulate that Amsterdam Bank, running low on cash, was an empty shell.

Countless panicked Dutch citizens also rushed to banks to withdraw money.

Dutch people were queuing up everywhere to withdraw money.

Although the bank tried every means to delay it, such as making reservations in advance and limiting the flow every day.

But this is obviously "there is no three hundred taels of silver here", which will only cause greater panic.

Within a few days the bank's reserves were exhausted.

The banks had no choice but to close their doors, causing great panic.

ABN AMRO's shares began to plummet on the stock exchange market, from the original 20 guilders to 6 guilders.

Being dragged down by ABN AMRO, the entire stock exchange market panicked, causing other stocks to fall as well.

The market was rife with panic selling, causing stocks to plummet.

The largest stock market crash in history broke out in the Netherlands because this day fell on March 3 in the Western calendar, which also happened to be a Friday.

So Friday the 13th is often called "Black Friday".

As early as when there were changes in the silver trade, the Dutch government was concerned that China's East Ryukyu Company was behind the trouble.

However, the Netherlands is a country that relies on commercial credit for survival.

The East Ryukyu Company did not violate the relevant laws of the Netherlands, and it was not easy for them to take action.

But now it seems that the run on the Dutch bank and the stock changes are all caused by the Chinese.

Obviously their goal is not just a Dutch bank, they want to completely destroy the Dutch finance.

So the Dutch government decided to rescue the market.

Since the Chinese are using the Dutch Bank to make a fuss, they will take action to support the Dutch Bank.

As long as Dutch banks are stable, then the stock market will be stable too.

Since Li Xingzu had previously spent more than two million taels of gold to purchase silver, the Dutch government was able to issue a lot of additional Dutch guilders.

So the Dutch government released news: As its gold reserves grow, the Dutch government will print 1 million Dutch guilders.

We will use this money to support the Dutch Bank and ask the Dutch people to believe that there is no problem with the funds of the Dutch Bank.

Sure enough, after the Dutch government spoke out, the crowd that ran on the Dutch banks dispersed.

But the shareholders of ABN AMRO changed. They were surprised to find that a Chinese named Li Xingzu took the opportunity to buy 1000 million shares of ABN AMRO on Black Friday.

The outstanding shares of ABN Amro are 2000 million shares, accounting for 60% of its total share capital.

At present, Li Xingzu’s personal shareholding accounts for 30%, becoming the largest shareholder of ABN AMRO.

The Dutch Bank is equivalent to the central bank of the Netherlands, and it is actually controlled by a Chinese.

This is unacceptable to all Dutch people.

Among the non-tradable shares of ABN AMRO, the Dutch government holds 20%, and several large business groups in the Netherlands also hold 20%.

So the Dutch government issued a statement: 20% of the government's shares would be handed over to Dutch businessmen for custody.

This will allow Dutch businessmen to continue to obtain a controlling stake in ABN AMRO.

Li Xingzu had long expected this kind of "cheating" behavior by the Dutch.

So the third prince of China made a high-profile announcement: He wanted to take control of ABN AMRO Bank, and on Monday he would acquire a large number of ABN AMRO Bank shares.

As soon as the market opened on Monday morning, ABN Amro's share price soared from 5 guilders last week to 6 guilders, and then climbed all the way up to 20 guilders at the close of the day.

This price was five times that of last Friday. Many Dutch people could not withstand the temptation of high prices and sold their stocks one after another.

Li Xingzu's shareholding ratio rose to 38% in one morning, and he was about to surpass the Dutch.

Once the shareholders of ABN AMRO discuss it, they must not let the Chinese succeed.

So at noon they announced that they would conduct a counter-takeover, and ABN AMRO would increase its shareholding by purchasing shares.

In addition, the Dutch Republic also played the emotional card and called on all Dutch people not to sell their stocks to the Chinese.

The Dutch are not stupid. On the contrary, they are all shrewd businessmen. Now that Li Xingzu and ABN AMRO are rushing to buy stocks, ABN AMRO Bank's stocks will naturally rise sharply.

How could they possibly sell? Not only did no Dutch people sell their stocks, many people rushed to buy them in order to make a huge profit.

Sure enough, ABN Amro's stock price continued to rise after the market opened in the afternoon, and soon rose to 50 Dutch guilders per share.

At this time, ABN AMRO shareholders were also very excited, because by the close of trading they had received 13% of the shares from the stock market, and now they already hold 53% of the shares.

Completely shattered the Chinese conspiracy to control the Dutch Bank.

However, some careful Dutch people discovered that Li Xingzu only had 200 million shares of ABN Amro shares left, only 6%.

Li Xingzu generously stated that his acquisition failed and he was unable to obtain a controlling stake in ABN Amro.

Only then did the Dutch realize that they had been fooled. The Dutch bank that Li Xingzu acquired for 6 guilders sold 40 million shares at an average price of more than 800 guilders, making at least 2.5 million guilders.

This is equivalent to the income of the entire Netherlands for more than 2 years.

And they discovered that the controlling owner of the Dutch East India Company had become Li Xingzu.

It turns out that he didn’t just buy ABN Amro shares on Black Friday.

Dutch stock trading does not require that the number of shares acquired be disclosed to the public.

Li Xingzu played a trick of "building plank roads openly and secretly building warehouses" and directly controlled the East India Company.

Then he used the remaining 200 million shares of ABN Amro in his hands to drive ABN Amro from a high price of 50 yuan back to 20 yuan.

This caused a large number of Dutch stockholders to go bankrupt.

The shareholders of ABN Amro and the Dutch government behind them lost everything.

Of course, the most depressing thing is the Dutch East India Company. This most famous Dutch company suddenly became a Chinese company.

Li Xingzu knew that it was impossible to exchange all the more than 5 million Dutch guilders in his hands into Chinese silver dollars or gold.

So they simply acquired a large amount of East India Company shares to achieve a high proportion of holdings.

In this way, China seized the Dutch East Indies, including Jakarta, from the Dutch East India Company without wasting a single soldier.

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(End of this chapter)