Break out of the courtyard

After donating cultural relics in the capital and participating in the National Day performance, Zhang Heping secretly went to the west.

The anti-gravity levitation device and technology were handed over to the mainland more than a year ago, and the related underground production base was only recently completed. That's why Zhang Heping was invited to go there to guide the development of the new equipment.

By the time he returned to Shenzhen, the Southeast Asian financial crisis had fully erupted!

The most direct feeling in Shenzhen is that Southeast Asian investors are withdrawing their funds, external demand is plummeting, and export trade is being hampered.

The financial crisis had a wide-ranging impact, and the Peace Group's foreign trade business was also greatly affected.

In addition, there are the Hong Kong stock and futures markets, which experience dramatic ups and downs.

On the contrary, the Hong Kong dollar's pegged exchange rate was protected from international speculators because HSBC and Standard Chartered Bank had hundreds of billions of US dollars in liquidity from their major shareholder, Peace Group, and Bank of China had hundreds of billions of US dollars in foreign exchange reserves from mainland China as collateral.

Zhang Heping returned to Shenzhen and stayed there for only a few days before being summoned to the capital to participate in an emergency economic meeting as an advisor.

The conference lasted for three days and three nights, and set out policies such as shifting from export to domestic demand, the rise of the central region, the development of the western region, and the construction of new rural areas, involving funds of up to 10 trillion RMB.

Although the Americans have repeatedly promised to help China join the WTO, those promises have not yet been fulfilled.

Moreover, China has signed bilateral trade agreements with many countries, and even if it were to join the WTO immediately, it would not be able to quickly solve the problem of declining external demand.

Following this economic conference, Peace Motors Limited, which had been privatized by the Peace Group, began a high-profile announcement in Shenzhen and Hong Kong that it would apply for listing on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange!
Today, Peace Automobile Company has automobile production plants in Beijing, Shenzhen, Shenyang, Wuhan, Chongqing, and Chengdu, covering pure electric, hybrid, and gasoline models.

The reasons for launching the company on the stock market are threefold: first, to raise funds to expand production and create more jobs; second, to divest capital at a high price in preparation for future transformation into anti-gravity levitation vehicles; and third, to capitalize on the benefits of the rapid development in central and western China.

In addition to Peace Motors, many other companies under the Peace Group have announced plans to go public.

However, Peace Motors, which was once listed in Tokyo, Japan, is the most famous.

Furthermore, in order to gain a voice in space-based early warning systems, space-based computing centers, and space-based weapon systems, and to retain Zhang Heping to continue research and development and upgrades, China gave Heping Group the green light in many industries.

For example, a full-fledged financial license in China!
……

November 6th, Wednesday.

As soon as the news of Jack Ma's election victory and re-election as Chief Executive reached Hong Kong Island, a series of explosive news stories emerged.

Among them, the news that Xiao Ke will visit Hong Kong Island to discuss space and medical cooperation with Zhang Heping, and the news that Zhang Heping will go to the United States to visit the Stargate teleportation experiment, have attracted the most attention.

What's most intriguing is that the Peace Group didn't refute these false rumors, and the Zhang family didn't let out a word about them either.

The reason for this is that Zhang Heping has been called away to another meeting to discuss the production of new equipment!

While the investment in construction in the central and western regions is substantial, it hasn't been neglected when it comes to upgrading military equipment!

In recent years, thanks to the various new technologies and products promoted by Zhang Heping, China's export trade has remained strong, resulting in a relatively comfortable fiscal situation.

If it weren't for the joint efforts of countries like Japan, Europe, and the United States to suppress the Chinese economy and the Peace Group through foreign trade, the modernization of military equipment would have been much smoother.

In addition, due to asset restructuring in mainland China, Chen Shuting has been staying at her home in Shenzhen recently, remotely managing various tasks.

Faced with the raging Southeast Asian financial crisis and international financial giants, Zhang Heping and Chen Shuting seemed to take it lightly, but in fact they had already made preparations in advance.

Take the internet sector stocks, which have the largest price fluctuations, for example. Whenever internet stocks in Hong Kong fall too sharply, Peace Group will release an announcement to boost the price.

For example, last month, the Peace Group issued its third announcement, announcing a 10% discount on its space cloud server business!
As soon as this announcement was released, people and companies who couldn't afford servers and thought cloud servers were too expensive immediately placed orders to build websites.

Individuals and companies that had previously purchased cloud servers have also joined the buying frenzy, beginning to upgrade their respective network services.

This action caused the stock prices of internet companies, which had been suppressed by capital, to bounce back immediately!
That said, this bubble in Hong Kong stocks is mainly concentrated in the internet sector.

Because of the Peace Group's computer and mobile phone products, the internet-related industries expanded rapidly. Furthermore, the Peace Group intentionally guided and facilitated the listing of four major internet companies—Peace Media, Peace Entertainment, Peace Financial Services, and Peace Online Shopping—through backdoor listings, causing the Hong Kong stock market's internet sector to surge even further!

Rather than saying that those foreign speculators are shorting Hong Kong stocks, it would be more accurate to say that they are targeting the internet sector within Hong Kong stocks, and even the Peace Group that fueled this internet bubble!
Therefore, the timely release of positive news for internet stocks by Peace Group can be seen as a counterattack against those short sellers!
……

The outside noise did not reach the World Advanced Technology Research Institute.

Zhang Bei, Zhang Long, and Zhang Hu are still busy with the construction of the Moon Palace base. However, after the secrecy level of the Moon base was lowered, Xie Wan and Xie Ting, along with Zhou Xirou, also joined the Moon Engineering Department, following the three Zhang brothers in and out every day.

Using the excuse of promoting the pilot program for nine-year compulsory education in Heping, Grandma Zheng stayed in Shenzhen to keep an eye on the development of the pilot schools in Guangdong Province, and incidentally, she also tried to matchmake her grandniece Zhou Xirou with Zhang Bei.

Zhou Xirou is 5 years younger than Zhang Bei. She has a gentle temperament and a pleasing appearance, typical of a girl from Jiangnan.

I was pulled into the lunar engineering department purely out of curiosity, and since the department was expanding at the time, I just joined the lunar infrastructure team.

After another shift change, Zhou Xirou followed the queue and quietly left the Lunar Engineering Department, boarding a bus parked in the tunnel outside.

As usual, Zhou Xirou sat down in the empty seat next to Zhang Bei with a slightly flushed face.

Xie Wan, who was sitting next to Zhang Long, turned to look at Zhou Xirou on the left side of the aisle and asked, "Sister Xirou, are you going shopping later?"

"No, I'm going to the library to find some mechanics books to study," Zhou Xirou said, leaning back in her chair and turning her head to reply.

"Are you still worried about the instability of the underground palace's structure?" Xie Wan glanced at Zhang Bei to Zhou Xirou's left and said softly, "Didn't we say before that the moon's gravity is weak and the current brick and stone structure is sufficient?"

“Yes, I know!” Zhou Xirou smiled and said, “I just want to learn some mechanics first, and then I want to learn how to repair robots.”

Zhou Xirou didn't mention her worries about lunar earthquakes and meteorite impacts, because Zhang Heping and other experts had certainly already considered these issues. If she were to bring them up rashly, she would only become a laughing stock.

Zhang Bei, sitting next to him, remained silent. He was mainly distracted by releasing his mental energy to go out for training, and he was also silently observing Zhou Xirou's purpose in approaching him.

Compared to Xu Ning and Li Tong from the Brain-Computer Interaction Research Institute, Zhou Xirou's purpose in approaching Zhang Bei was much simpler. There were no missions or grand principles involved; she only cared about whether they could get along.

The group left the underground base by car and then went to their respective classrooms according to their job roles to discuss the lunar infrastructure work they had just completed.

After the summary was completed, the robot operators went home.

Zhang Bei, Zhang Long, and Zhang Hu walked ahead, each using their spiritual power to wrap a rice-grain-sized pebble, chasing and playing on the ground ahead.

Xie Wan and Xie Ting each took Zhou Xirou's arm, chattering away about girly topics.

When the six returned to Villa No. 1, Zhang Bei asked the bodyguard again, "Has my dad come back?"

"No!" the bodyguard replied simply, but this matter was far from simple.

Zhang Heping has been away for more than half a month and hasn't even made a single phone call home, which is quite curious.

Zhang Bei and Zhang Long weren't worried about their father's safety. Firstly, their father was powerful enough, and secondly, they could still contact his former bodyguards.

Although the bodyguards were kept out of the way and couldn't enter the secret factory, they could see Zhang Heping using his mental power to control paper and transmit security signals on the roof every day.

With his father Zhang Heping away from home, Zhang Bei, as the eldest son, had promised his father to take good care of the family, so he could not stay in the underground base for long.

For a moment, Zhang Bei suspected that his father, Zhang Heping, was doing it on purpose, wanting him to have more interaction with Zhou Xirou.

Sure enough, as soon as Zhang Bei and Zhang Long got home, their mother, Tang Xin, announced that they would go out to eat that evening and do some shopping while they were there.

In this way, Zhang Bei could no longer hide in the basement to train his mental strength, and Zhou Xirou no longer needed to go to the library to study, giving them more time to spend together.

Therefore, Zhang Bei didn't know if his father had deliberately gone out, but he knew his mother was serious and genuinely wanted to bring him and Zhou Xirou together... (End of Chapter)