Saint Kyo, inside the Imperial Palace. In the side hall next to the court council chamber.

Li Hongzhang, vice premier of the cabinet, and four other cabinet members, Luo Zenan, Wu Chongyao, Liu Changyou, and Zhou Shengkun, sat in turn, and next to them were Yan Jingming, minister of finance and taxation, Cheng Hengsheng, minister of communications, Zeng Yuheng, minister of mines and metallurgy, Xu Shou, minister of science and technology, Shen Guifen, minister of industry, and Wu Tang, minister of agriculture, and several other important ministers involved in economic development.

Now, these officials, who were originally deputy ministers, have basically turned positive. Even, officials like Shen Guifen, Minister of Industry, have been rewarded by Emperor Feng Yunshan many times because of the rapid development of industry recently, so that hundreds of officials in the imperial court have speculated whether they will be promoted soon.

Feng Yunshan sat in the main seat, and in front of his case, he put a lot of reports, etc., all of which were some economy-related data submitted by various departments, but Feng Yunshan only glanced at them a few times, for these complicated data, he had a headache, he still liked to be simple and direct, and the people below reported it directly to him It was more refreshing.

"Li Aiqing, Guo Aiqing should have received an edict, right?" Feng Yunshan asked. Some time ago, because Wu Chongyao, a member of the cabinet and minister of commerce, was very busy helping the eldest prince Feng Huifang Zhang Luo to mobilize funds and set up various subsidiaries of the second horse in China, he suggested that Feng Yunshan remove the post of minister of commerce.

Feng Yunshan also knew that Wu Chongyao was avoiding suspicion, and wanted to let himself simply hand over the position of Minister of Commerce to the eldest prince, after all, when he was the Minister of Commerce, he also served as the general manager of Nanyang Company, and now this Erma Company is bigger than Nanyang Company, gathering the wealth of the entire royal treasury and the entire imperial court and folk squires, so it is also appropriate for the general manager of this Erma Company to serve as the Minister of Commerce. But Feng Yunshan did not agree, he didn't want Feng Guifang to be contaminated with any things in the officialdom of the Chinese Empire, and now the Erma Company is a consortium based on his Feng royal private wealth, which is completely in the interests of Feng Yunshan himself and the eldest prince Feng Guifang, so he is unwilling to Feng Guifang to become the Minister of Commerce, which will create too many opportunities to abuse power for personal gain, so that Feng Guifang can't grasp it.

As a result, Feng Yunshan asked the cabinet to issue an edict in his own name, which was personally signed, ordering Guo Songtao, the special envoy to Europe, to return to China, and he was ready to appoint Guo Songtao as the minister of commerce. And Guo Songtao's original position as the special envoy to Europe, Zeng Guofan's son Zeng Jize has been brought up by Guo Songtao, and it has been more than wrong to deal with all things in Europe, so it will be handed over to him.

"Your Majesty, Lord Guo has replied and has set off. It is estimated that he will return to China this month and next month at the latest. Li Hongzhang hurriedly replied.

"Let Guo Aiqing go back to Beijing, I want to see him!"

"Wechen obeys!" Li Hongzhang was overjoyed for Guo Songtao. He and Guo Songtao were close friends of Zhongjinshi in the same year, and Guo Songtao was one step ahead of him to join the emperor, but now he is the vice premier of the cabinet, and Guo Songtao is only a special envoy to Europe, and he has been working for ten years, he will inevitably worry that the two will be a little embarrassed to meet. Now that the emperor has appointed Guo Songtao as the minister of commerce, it is obvious that Li Hongzhang guessed that the emperor should be dissatisfied with the original governor of Guangdong and the general manager of the Nanyang Company, Hong Renji, and was ready to let Guo Songtao first serve as the minister of commerce, and then concurrently serve as the governor of Guangdong.

At the same time, Li Hongzhang speculated whether the emperor was planning to reform the Nanyang Company and other trading companies that had been established with the funds of the imperial treasury and merge them into the Erma Company. In that case, it would really turn the small half of the entire imperial court into the private property of the Feng family.

What Li Hongzhang didn't know was that for such a thing, although Feng Yunshan was not the Holy Mother, he didn't want to be like this. The reason why he engaged in a family-style consortium is because the entire historical development trend of later generations is like this, especially in the next 100 years, it is the period when the family or several dozens of families united by the consortium developed the most rapidly, which shows that history is bound to develop in this direction, even if he can think of a better system, but it is estimated that there is no way to go against it. In this case, Feng Yunshan thought that it was better to take the resources into his own hands, at least, he was the emperor of the Chinese Empire, and he had to be good to the whole country and the people no matter what, in this case, it was better than other families completely for their own selfish interests. But before he could do it a hundred years ago, he had to make an end to the huge consortium that had been formed.

And now, it's just getting started. Feng Yunshan's main purpose is to mobilize domestic Han capital to enter the overseas market and seize the capital territory. At this most critical juncture, the first priority is to go out and expand the power, even if there is something inappropriate, it is secondary, and then it will be solved slowly.

"Li Aiqing, you first report the overall situation of the empire. The reports of your cabinet ministries are long and smelly, and I don't have as much energy as you, so I can't read them. Because it was not an official court meeting, Feng Yunshan said it very casually.

Li Hongzhang smiled and hurriedly replied: "Your Majesty, Weichen will report from the aspects of heavy industries such as transportation, minerals and metallurgy, and light industries such as textiles and daily use." ”

"In terms of transportation, first of all, the railway has been vigorously developed. As of last month, more than 18,000 kilometers of rail lines had been built across the empire, of which nearly 5,400 kilometers were double-tracked in the central and eastern regions. These railways carry 40 per cent of the country's cargo each year.

Specific railway lines, the main trunk line has three north-south directions: by the Shengzhi Railway, Suzhou-Zhejiang Railway, Jiangsu-Zhejiang Railway composed of coastal areas through the north-south railway line, from Heilongjiang City through Jilin City to Fengtian, and then from Fengtian through Beijing, Tianjin, Jinan, Xuzhou, Zhenjiang can reach Shengjing, and from Zhenjiang can continue south through Suzhou, Shanghai, Hangzhou to Ningbo; The north-south railway line of the central continent, which is composed of the Mongolian-direct railway and the Guangdong-direct railway, runs from Kulen (now Ulaanbaatar) in Mongolia to Guangzhou through Beijing, Baoding, Kaifeng, Wuchang, Changsha and Shaozhou; It is a railway line running from Xi'an in Shaanxi Province through Hanzhong, Mianzhou, Chengdu, Xuzhou and Kunming to the western mainland of Hanoi.

And the east-west direction is mainly built in three: from Kaifeng on the Guangdong-straight railway as the eastern starting point, all the way along the Yellow River to the west, through Luoyang, Shaanzhou, Xi'an, Qinzhou, Lanzhou, Liangzhou City, Hami, the ancient city, now has passed Wulumuqi, it is expected that in another three or four months, it will be able to reach Huiyuan City in Yili, ten months to reach Kashgar City, and even to Hokhan City, which is the northernmost east-west direction;

The second east-west direction is from Shengjing to the west, all the way along the Yangtze River through Anqing, Jiujiang, Wuchang, Jingzhou, Shinanfu, Chongqing and finally to Chengdu, which is one in the central region;

The third east-west route starts from Hengzhou on the Guangdong-direct railway, goes all the way up the Xiangjiang River in the southwest direction, passes through Yongzhou, Guilin, Liuzhou, Nanning, and Taiping to Hanoi, and finally arrives at Longbo Thorn State in Nanzhang.

This is the main trunk line, and some of the other branch lines have also been built and opened one after another.

In particular, in the last three years, the length of railways built and opened the year before last has increased from 2,100 kilometers to 2,500 kilometers the year before last, to 3,100 kilometers last year, and a total of 3,800 kilometers are expected to be completed this year. ”