Chapter 97

Facing the increasingly rampant and intensified destructive actions of its opponents, the crisis confronting the Great Qing surged like a rising tide, spreading and deepening further, rendering the situation increasingly severe. The international financial market resembled a turbulent ocean, where abnormal exchange rate fluctuations acted like raging waves, mercilessly battering the vessel of the Great Qing's import and export trade and inflicting heavy blows upon it. Amid this storm, the profits of export-oriented enterprises shrank drastically, like snow under the scorching sun. Products that originally relied on price advantages to compete in the international market lost their competitive edge entirely due to exchange rate shifts, causing order volumes to plummet. Meanwhile, import costs soared like a wild horse broken free from its reins, making the procurement of raw materials increasingly difficult and expensive for enterprises. The operations of numerous businesses instantly sank into a quagmire, with strained capital chains and precarious operations. Merely to survive, they were even forced into the helpless measure of massive layoffs. This series of chain reactions severely curbed the strong momentum of domestic economic growth, causing the train of the Great Qing's economic development to decelerate abruptly and face the risk of derailment. Within the Regional Economic Cooperation Alliance, the conflicts deliberately instigated by malicious nations began to ferme…