In the fifth year of Tongzhi in Qing Dynasty (1866), Hu Xueyan assisted Zuo to set up the Fuzhou Shipping Bureau in Fuzhou, and founded the first new shipyard in China history. Shortly after the shipyard started construction, when things in the northwest began, the court suddenly ordered that Zuo be transferred to the post of governor of Shaanxi but Gansu. Before Zuo took office, on the one hand, he recommended Shen Baozhen, the governor of Jiangxi Province, to the court as the minister of ship administration, on the other hand, he strongly recommended Hu Xueyan to assist in handling all the specific affairs of ship administration.
Extended information of Hu Xueyan's political achievements:
In the second year of Guangxu in Qing Dynasty (1876), in order to recover Xinjiang, which had been stolen by the Agubai gang for ten years, the governor of Shaanxi and Gansu in Qing Dynasty left for the west. The victory of this war made Zuo go down in history, and also made Hu Xueyan realize his dream of being a "red-topped businessman".
In the first year of Guangxu (1May 875), the Qing government appointed Zuo as an imperial envoy to supervise the military affairs in Xinjiang. The cost of grain transportation outside the customs alone is about two million and two thousand silver every year. Together with the salaries of officers and men of the Western Expedition Army, it needs eight million and two thousand silver every year. Left thinking of Hu Xueyan.
Although Hu Xueyan was in the era of Westernization Movement, he once participated in the management of Zuo mawei shipyard. Hu Xueyan's business is a "special" business with the help of political and business relations, such as purchasing arms machines for the government and borrowing foreign debts.
References:
Baidu Encyclopedia-Hu Xueyan