What excites Feng Yunshan the most is actually the heavy industry of the empire: mineral metallurgy and military industry.

After the Great Iron and Steel Movement of the Chinese Empire last year, because of the sharp increase in the demand for coal, a mining frenzy was inevitable, and the results of the Ministry of Industry surprised Feng Yunshan.

Before the end of this year alone, the empire has produced 92 million tons of coal, far more than the United Kingdom. In terms of steel production, there are 4.8 million tons of pig iron and 330,000 tons of steel, and the output of pig iron is very close to that of the United Kingdom, and the steel has surpassed the United Kingdom.

With the large-scale development of copper mines in the Philippines, as well as the beginning of copper mines and saltpeter mining in Chile in South America, and the large-scale mining of copper mines in Jiangxi and Yunnan entered the peak production period, the brass output of the Chinese Empire soared sharply, which better met the demand of the empire for cables.

As for other cement, phosphate fertilizer mining, etc., it is much more than the United Kingdom. Even in terms of gold mining, as Britain's overseas colonies continued to be lost, the newly discovered gold mines in Australia and the western United States such as New Gold Mountain and San Francisco by the British were all occupied by the Chinese Empire, plus the loss of gold mines in India and other places, Britain could no longer compare with the Chinese Empire, and the Chinese Empire's gold mining was increasing, especially in the South Seas, and the empire had more and more gold.

Moreover, under the banner of purging the remnants of the British army and suppressing the riots of the Indian maharaja army, the field army stationed in India destroyed dozens of temples in various Indian states and seized more than 230 tons of gold, although the value was only 140 million holy dollars, but because it was all hard currency of gold, in this era of gold or silver standard, the gold content of the holy coins of the Chinese empire was fundamentally improved.

Feng Yunshan put two-thirds of the gold into the imperial treasury, and the other one-third was bought by Erma Company at the normal price and deposited in the treasury of the Guangzhou base headquarters of Erma Bank.

And what made Feng Yunshan feel most down-to-earth was the development of the imperial oil industry and the control of oil.

A few days ago, the news has come that the company in the Americas invested only 20 million US dollars, and the Pennsylvania Petroleum Company, which has hundreds of oil wells but has not yet been exploited and applied on a large scale, and dozens of oil companies in Ohio with thousands of oil wells have all been acquired, and signed an agreement with the federal government of the United States to establish the American Petroleum Company funded by the two horse companies, and the American Federation takes the form of state-owned land lease and exclusive development agreement as shares, accounting for 20% of the shares, and the 2 Malaysia companies account for 80% of the shares. Carry out exclusive monopoly oil development.

The Baku oil field, a major oil field in Europe, has also been captured by the Western Expedition led by Shi Dakai, and the entire existing oil field has almost been monopolized by the Chinese Empire, and all oil is under the control of the Empire.

In addition, the Petroleum Research Laboratory established by the Department of Petroleum and Fertilizer has developed many new petroleum refining methods, such as fractionation cracking, and has accelerated the progress of the petroleum refining industry. Today, the holy oil has become the best substitute for lighting in all countries in the world, and at the same time, it has also become the third most valuable goods in the export goods of the Chinese Empire, in addition to cotton cloth and tea.

And this is because the people of many countries have not been exposed to the holy oil and have not enjoyed the benefits of this lighting oil. With the continuous promotion of holy oil, the export business of holy oil continues to grow, and it will surely surpass tea in a year or two to become the second largest export cargo.

The total annual output of the holy oil produced by the empire's major refineries alone has reached 3.2 million tons, accounting for more than 9.9% of the world's total.

Feng Yunshan has reason to believe that after the advent of the era of the internal combustion engine, the cotton textile industry will eventually gradually decline, and at that time, he is afraid that the oil industry will become the most fundamental pillar industry of the empire, as long as he holds on to this item, he will be able to dominate the world powers.

Then, Zuo Zongtang reported on the development of the military industry of the empire.

The main body of the military industry of the empire was mainly composed of the four major machine-building bureaus and the four major shipbuilding bureaus, plus a Krupp steel company.

After years of development, especially the huge financial investment that continues to rise every year, the production scale of the four major machine manufacturing bureaus and the four major shipping bureaus has also become larger and larger, and the types of weapons and military auxiliary equipment produced have become more and more diversified, no longer limited to guns and ammunition, but also unconventional weapons such as steam engine chariots, gas masks, and poison gas making machines that help siege cities.

The main force of the four major machine manufacturing bureaus is the latest advanced guns of the Mauser 1865 rifle produced every year up to 420,000 pieces, and the Mauser rifle of this kind of thinking not only began to use all-copper custom bullets, but also began to use a magazine loaded with 8 bullets, although it is still a single-shot rifle, but there is no need to slowly reload by hand, the rate of fire is not much higher than the original single-shot rifle, plus the gunpowder is used in yellow powder, the range and bullet lethality are also much larger, has far exceeded the countries of this era.

And the Gatling Machine Gun Factory under the Artillery Factory of the Shengjing Machine Building Bureau, finally, the doctor named Richard Gatling developed his third-generation Gatling machine gun, which was actually a miniature machine gun.

This machine gun, designed to shoot continuously per round, has a total of 10 barrels, allowing it to reach a rate of fire of 500 copper-shelled bullets per minute, which is a kind of death that harvests life in this era. In addition, because the machine gun is also equipped with a heat dissipation device, and the copper shell is fixed with bullets, it is more effective than the previous two generations to avoid problems such as exploding and jamming. However, this Gatling gun operation requires 3 soldiers, and its size and weight are far higher than those of other rifles, and it must be erected on a towering large wheel mount to ensure stable shooting, which makes it still relatively maneuverable and concealed. But these shortcomings, for a gun with an okay range and a rate of fire of up to 500 rounds per minute, are simply negligible. The rate of fire of 500 rounds per minute is equivalent to the firepower of 100 soldiers if the hit rate is not taken into account.

In addition to rifles, all four major machine-building directorates began to be licensed by Krupp for the production of Krupp cannons. In fact, Krupp Steel became a company for the production of special steel products from Krupp and a research and development institute for artillery, muskets and new equipment.

Krupp Steel develops the new Krupp cannon, and the artillery factories of the four main machine-building directories are responsible for production. Due to the increase in steel production and the advancement of steel smelting technology, Krupp Steel Co., Ltd. devoted itself to refining and producing Krupp artillery special steel, which was used to make Krupp cannons. It is equivalent to the simultaneous production of five major artillery factories producing Krupp cannons, and in a year, the number of large and small Krupp cannons produced exceeded 3,400 pieces, and thousands of tons of steel were consumed.

In the two years before last year, a total of 128 warships were built and successfully launched, of which nearly one-third were extraordinarily large main warships of more than 4,000 tons, and there were even 11 new-type ironclad battleships and 6 new-type submarines.