In the Chang'an Imperial Palace, when the army and navy generals had not yet arrived, Li Mingyuan was listening carefully to the annual development reports of various central departments in the Zhongji Palace.

"In 1880, the local crude steel output was 36,000 tons, which was more than five times higher than the annual output of tons.

Li Mingyuan looked at the 1880 steel industry development report data submitted by the Ministry of Industry, and after a few words of appreciation, he continued to encourage: "In recent years, the technology and steel production capacity of heavy industry in European countries have made rapid progress.

At the end of 1878, the annual crude steel output in Britain was 998,000 tons, the United States 744,000 tons, Germany 489,000 tons, France 313,000 tons, and Tsarist and Russian steel 95,000 tons. The local crude steel output is 7,060 tons, and the Japanese crude steel output is 2,000 tons.

Just two years later, at the end of 1880, the world's major industrial countries produced 4.4 million tons of crude steel.

The UK continues to rank first in the world with an annual crude steel output of 1.316 million tons. U.S. crude steel production exceeded one million tons, ranking second in the world with 1.267 million tons, and Germany ranked third with an output of 624,000 tons. Although France ranks fourth in the world with 389,000 tons, the gap with Tsarist Russia has gradually narrowed, and the crude steel output of Tsarist Russia has reached 308,000 tons, ranking fifth in the world, and as the only country in the Far East that has comprehensively learned from the West, Dongying may have been stimulated by the speed of imperial industrial development, and the crude steel output has increased by about 800 tons, reaching an annual crude steel output of 2,800 tons. ”

Li Mingyuan paused for a while, waiting for the heads of various departments in the palace to digest the previous information, and continued, "We have to see the gap with the European powers, the local crude steel output has increased from 7,000 tons to 36,000 tons, and the annual production capacity has increased by 29,000 tons, while the scale of the increase in crude steel production capacity of the United Kingdom, Germany and France is calculated in units of 100,000 tons. ”

"Your Majesty, since the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China, there is only a comprehensive iron and steel enterprise in the local Iron and Steel United Group, 71 percent of the local crude steel production capacity in 1880, and 53 percent of the pig iron output are from the Iron and Steel United Group, if it is required to continue to increase the steel production capacity, there are only two ways to go, one is to choose a suitable location, a new coal, iron and steel complex, and the other is to continue to purchase smelting and forging machinery and equipment, expand the scale of the Iron and Steel United Group, and improve production capacity."

Chen Shen, the general director of the Ministry of Industry, took a step forward and explained.

Hanguo Iron and Steel United Group, located in Yangzhou (Rio Gran do Sul) Xing'an County (Pasu Fengdu), the entire group industrial park includes smelters, forging plants, pig iron plants, Bese hemp steel mills, Simons steel mills, rail factories, iron goods factories, wrought iron works, machine factories, iron casting factories, iron-striking factories, fish fillet hook and nail factories, arsenals, gunpowder factories, needle nail factories, gun factories, artillery shell factories, a total of 17 large-scale iron and steel, military industrial plants, and hundreds of large and small factories related to the supporting facilities, which is the core of Hanguo's heavy industry industry. and the only industrial complex that covers the entire production process.

The construction of such a heavy industrial complex is not a simple matter for a country that develops industry from scratch.

Time pushed back ten years, in 1895 the Meiji government of the East Ying used the Manchu indemnity to establish the Hachiman Iron and Steel Works, to 1901 to start production, Manchu Huguang Governor Zhang Zhidong in 1890 to establish the Hanyang Iron Works, in September 1893 completed and put into operation, and the Hanguo Iron and Steel Group, since the end of 1869 to establish the first small steelworks, after 12 years, gradually ordered medium-sized, large-scale smelting equipment, as well as forging, cutting and other supporting facilities, after paying two to three times more than the salary of ordinary Western experts, hiring steel, Military industry experts, and tasted the bitterness of many failures, only to develop Hanguo United Iron and Steel Group into a heavy industry complex with more than 300 large and small supporting factories,

If the current financial resources of the Han government are used to rebuild a steel complex, it is better to invest funds in the Han Iron and Steel United Group, purchase more and more advanced equipment, introduce more mature industrial technology, try to build it into an incubator for the development of local heavy industry, consolidate the local heavy industry technology accumulation and reserves, and then when conditions permit, draw skilled technicians and experts from the Iron and Steel United Group, and copy a new heavy industry complex based on the plan of the Iron and Steel United Group.

Li Mingyuan preferred another plan, so he agreed, "Then choose the second plan, led by your Ministry of Industry, and discuss with the Ministry of Commerce, the Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, first make a list of machinery and equipment that needs to be purchased, and then put it up for me to review and confirm." ”

"Your Majesty, what is the approximate amount of funds disbursed? Iron and Steel United Group has a lot of money, and it takes a lot of money to pay for foreign experts, technicians, training of local employees, and purchasing new smelting equipment. ”

"Within three years, 4 million Han Yuan (equivalent to 2 million taels of silver) was granted to the Iron and Steel Complex, and there was no more, and the Iron and Steel Consortium had in its hands the Manister steel pipe rolling method and the manganese steel refining method discovered by Hafield, (Chapter 265 above).

Although the government used the Manister steel pipe rolling method and the new manganese steel technology to exchange thirteen technologies related to steel production with the Germans, but during the local ten-year development plan, railways and infrastructure and other industries are in urgent need of steel raw material supply, and the crude steel, pig iron and steel pipes, rails, nails and other products produced by the Iron and Steel United Group are not short of sales, and the funds collected from the sale of steel products are used in the Iron and Steel United Group itself, which can also fill a large gap in funds.

Therefore, the money allocated by the government is only 4 million won for the time being, and it is up to you to find a way to solve the problem if you need to add unplanned machinery and equipment. ”

Manganese has been used as an additive in steelmaking before, when the dose is not enough, the brittleness of the steel can not be changed, and increased to 12 to 13 percent, the embrittlement effect disappears, and then it is heated at 1000 degrees, quenched in water, the steel hardens, the crude steel made by this method is made of rails, the life of the rail is times that of wrought iron, based on the reason of cost saving, month, after the production method of manganese steel was discovered, after two years of trial production and the matching and improvement of related smelting technology, by the beginning of 1881, manganese steel was used as raw material, The project of replacing wrought iron for steel rails to build railways has only been popularized on a large scale.

Following the end of the annual work report of the general director of the Ministry of Industry, the Ministry of Households, the Ministry of Finance and other departments also reported on the results of last year's work.

In 1880, 6 counties and 52 townships were newly established in the mainland region, and a new administrative region of the Yizhou Islands was established in the South Pacific.

At the same time, after the South Pacific region has added more than 5,000 square kilometers of territory, the former capital of French Polynesia, Pahiti, will be used as a base in the South Pacific with the capital of Samoa, Apia, and from a long-term strategic point of view, the status of Pahiti Island is more important than Apia, and it is not an exaggeration to call it the Hawaii of the Han State.

In addition to the good news brought by the increase in local steel production, the Ministry of Households and the Immigration Management Department, which is in charge of immigration affairs, also brought good news: the expenses and revenues of the resettlement operation have reached a balance, and for the first time in the month, they have made a profit.

The main expenses of the migrant transportation operation come from bribery, bribery of officials in the coastal areas of the mainland, transportation to and from the Far East-South America route, consumption of living and medical supplies, funds for the purchase of transport vessels, salaries of crew members and other upfront transportation costs, as well as long-term costs such as food, livestock, simple living huts, and education for newborns provided by the government after arriving in South America.

However, with the accumulation effect of time showing little by little, the potential economic benefits brought by the two years of compulsory labor of newly naturalized residents, as well as the rapid settlement of immigrants in the homeland, gradually accumulate a certain amount of funds by engaging in farming, animal husbandry, industry, marine fishery and other labor, and have the ability to repay the arrears borrowed from the government to purchase agricultural tools and land.

As a result, from 1876 onwards, the amount of borrowed funds recovered by the government gradually increased, and by 1880, after more than ten years of continuous emigration transportation, the potential economic effects contained in it were finally intuitively demonstrated in the summary of the income and expenditure of emigrant affairs.

The balance between the revenue and expenditure of the migrant transport operation has freed the government from a financial burden, and the local infrastructure and the army and navy armament programs have become the other two major financial consumers of the government.

Railways, water conservancy, canals, and other infrastructure projects are costly and have been delayed for a long time, but because some foreign funds and private capital are allowed to intervene, and because the project spans a long time, the government can always find a way to deal with it by crowding out other places.