Feng Yunshan still remembered that not long ago, he saw the intelligence that the people from the Secret Service Department had brought back from Europe, showing that Britain produced a total of 60 million tons of coal, 3.8 million tons of pig iron, and about 125,000 tons of steel in the year before last, that is, in 1860. Today, with the output of these materials in the Chinese Empire, except for pig iron, the rest of the coal and steel have surpassed Britain, and pig iron will surpass Britain in less than three years.

Cheng Hengsheng remembered another piece of data, and he reported to Feng Yunshan: "Your Majesty, it is indeed difficult to count the various quantities and details of steel consumption. At present, the empire is in a period of great development of iron and steel plants, and more and more steel plants are being built in various places, and it is no longer the years when the empire was just established, and the main steel plants are funded by the Nanyang Company and other imperial courts. Nowadays, the merchants and wealthy people in various places have seen the profits of these industries, and have broken away from the land to invest in the establishment of factories and mines, and the imperial court has relatively encouraged private enterprises to set up factories in various places, so it is difficult to count the steel output of the century, not to mention the steel consumed by these factories and mines?

However, Wechen has been in charge of the affairs of the Railway Department and has some understanding of the steel rails used in the construction of railways. It is now the tenth year of Taisheng, since the establishment of the empire, a full 9 years have passed, during this period, the entire empire has built a total of more than 12,800 kilometers of railways, a total of about 1.3 million tons of steel, most of which are rails.

According to the data of Premier Zeng, the total self-produced steel of the Chinese Empire in recent years is about 1.2 million tons, and the imported steel is about 325,000 tons, totaling 1.525 million tons. In other words, the consumption of steel such as steel rails used in the construction of railways in the empire reached about 85%.

Of course, there are also many scattered small steel mills, private blacksmith shops and other workshops that also produce a small amount of steel, which may add up to about 20,000 or 30,000 tons. Many other machine factories use cast iron or pig iron, which relieves a lot of pressure, otherwise steel is in short supply. ”

Feng Yunshan didn't expect that it would cost so much steel to build the railway, it seemed that it was just two simple steel rails and some fixed snap bolts, but he didn't expect that it would consume such a huge amount of steel in the empire. No wonder the Manchu Qing Dynasty didn't build much of the railway, not because they didn't want to build it, but because they couldn't afford it. At the end of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, the steel output was almost negligible, and nearly 10,000 tons of steel were imported every year for domestic construction. Even later in the late 19th century, the Hanyang Iron Works, known as the largest in Asia, founded by Zhang Zhidong, produced 60,000 tons of steel per year, including more than 20,000 tons of rails, which accounted for 90% of the entire Manchu steel output. It is no wonder that the entire Manchu Qing Dynasty, in the construction of railways for more than 30 years, they funded the construction of only more than 5,500 kilometers of railways, and the remaining 3,700 kilometers were built by foreigners by selling the right of way and land and mineral interests. And that's it, it's still at the beginning of the 20th century, and it's still 40 years away.

Feng Yunshan secretly thought that in the past 40 years, as long as his Chinese empire is still there, if nothing else, the output of steel must at least reach the level of the United States in later generations.

The reason why Feng Yunshan remembered the history of steel development in the United States in later generations was because he had nothing to read books on Carnegie biography, which also made him somewhat aware of some specific data in the development of steel in the United States.

In 1870, the United States produced nearly 1.5 million tons of pig iron, but because of steelmaking technology and cost, the steel output was less than 70,000 tons, but after the vigorous development of a group of American steel entrepreneurs like Carnegie, especially the introduction of the most advanced Bessemer steelmaking method and Siemens-Martin open furnace refining method by the steel king Carnegie, the United States steel industry has made great progress, and the output has risen sharply year by year: by 1880, ten years later, the United States steel production alone reached an astonishing 1.24 million tons; Five or six years later, in 1886, it doubled to 2.6 million tons; In 1890, it continued to increase significantly to 4.28 million tons, and by 1899, ten years later, it had already exceeded the 10 million ton mark.

This is simply not an opponent of the same magnitude compared to the Manchu Qing Dynasty, which could not produce even 10,000 tons of steel before the construction of the Hanyang Iron Works at the same time.

And now all of this will be reversed. With its vast territory, the huge advantage of occupying the world's largest population, and today's military strength, the Chinese Empire will completely snatch the development dividends of the United States. And the development of these steels will no longer appear in the United States, but in the Chinese Empire! Because, this world is completely different from the world in the previous life, that is, there is its own variable.

By steel, Feng Yunshan thought a lot.

Not only the steel industry, but also the oil industry, now in the Chinese Empire has been in full swing to vigorously develop, relying on the advantages of the previous life from the refining and chemical enterprises, relying on the technology of the three-legged cat, has helped the empire to set up a basic oil refining industry, and now in terms of lighting oil, the holy oil of the Chinese Empire has been exported to almost all countries in the world that need it. At this moment, the fuel oil industry and the chemical industry, which are the most valuable in the real oil industry, have not yet arrived. Feng Yunshan believed that as long as technology continued to advance, and with the presence of his own prophet, it should not be long, at least much shorter than the time required in the previous world.

In history, the upcoming second industrial revolution in the world will bring the world from the age of the steam engine to the electric age, and the textile industry, which was originally dominated by Britain, will become the electrical, chemical, petroleum, and even automobile industries dominated by the United States and Germany. But now, this inevitable trend of history will not change, but the difference is that because of its own reasons, the time of the second industrial revolution will be advanced, and the dominant country will change from the United States and Germany to the Chinese Empire.

The inevitable development of the second industrial revolution is to let these heavy industries develop, and the profit-seeking nature will make capital and production more and more concentrated in the hands of a few large capitals, which is an inherent requirement for the development of production. Whoever takes the lead will be the ultimate winner, and the same is true for the country. Therefore, Feng Yunshan felt that his mission now was to bring the Chinese Empire to glory and embark on the broad road of the American imperialism in later generations.

Since God has allowed him to come into this world, he must be worthy of such an adventure. For the United States, Feng Yunshan felt that the Chinese Empire would be like the later Japan against China, defeating the other side, seizing the luck of a country, and seizing the opportunity to develop, and then the strong would become stronger and the weak weaker.

And the first one is to increase the steel output of the Chinese Empire, especially for military and domestic construction, especially for railway construction!

In this way, the Great Leap Forward of Steel in later generations is not completely unreasonable.

Suddenly, Feng Yunshan had the idea of intervening in person and launching a different steel leap forward!