Whether it is rifles, artillery, or the production of ground radium, water radium, and hand stray bullets, a lot of steel and medicine are required.

Li Weiguo is undoubtedly the one who attaches the most importance to the production of steel and medicines, because he knows that this is the basic indicator of a country's industrial and military capabilities.

In the ninth year of Xianfeng, in 1859, the steel factory of the Shanghai Army located in Jiangwan Industrial Zone had completed the third phase of the expansion project, with an annual output of 880,000 tons of iron, 15,000 tons of steel and 5 tons of special steel.

However, when it comes to the rest of the world, the gap is still very large compared to the traditional European powers.

Every ten years, the British would conduct a ranking of national power around the world, and by 1859, Britain was ranked first in the world with an annual production of 3.5 million tons of iron and 130,000 tons of steel. In second place is France, with an annual output of about 1.7 million tons of pig iron and about 30,000 tons of steel. In 1859, the Kingdom of Prussia (Germany) produced 900,000 tons of pig iron and 11,000 tons of steel, ranking third in the world; the United States produced less than 800,000 tons of pig iron and 7,000 tons of steel, ranking fourth, and Tsarist Russia's pig iron output was only one-fifteenth of that of Britain, less than 250,000 tons, and the steel output was only 300 tons, all of which depended on imports from Britain and France, which was also a fatal reason for Tsarist Russia's loss of the Crimean War.

Because Li Weiguo kept the steel production in the Jiangwan Industrial Zone secret, and the British looked down on the Eastern countries and only counted the Western European and American countries, the Qing Dynasty was not on the list.

Li Weiguo deliberately concealed his industrial strength, because he did not want the British and French powers to be vigilant, and hoped that they would underestimate the enemy, so that the chances of victory in the war could be increased.

At the same time, this is also a game between countries, if the British and French powers know that Li Weiguo's Jiangwan Industrial Zone has such a strong industrial capacity. Then they will do whatever they want, as they did with the Kingdom of Prussia and the United States.

How the British and French powers dealt with the Kingdom of Prussia and the United States is the best example of how the United States, Japan, and the European Union in later generations prevented China's reunification and encircled China's rise.

The rapidly emerging Kingdom of Prussia was now capable of unifying Germany and launching a military challenge to the two traditional powers of Britain and France in Europe. Therefore, Britain and France stumbled Prussia at all costs and prevented the unification of Germany.

In the same way, unlike the Kingdom of Prussia, the United States is far away from Europe and has weak military capabilities, but the rapid rise of economic capabilities has made Britain and France feel tremendous economic pressure, so Britain and France have constantly instigated the struggle between the north and south factions of the United States, like a-stirring stick that keeps harming the United States.

As a traverser. Li Weiguo is too aware of the mentality of the old capitalist powers such as Britain and France, so he keeps his head in obscurity, and if he doesn't make a sound, he will scare the enemy stupidly.

Although Li Weiguo's steel plant has achieved the impressive achievement of producing 880,000 tons of iron and 15,000 tons of steel per year, there are still many problems, the most critical of which are cost and national defense and security.

At present, most of the raw materials for pig iron and steel at the Jiangwan Iron and Steel Plant come from the Shilu Iron Mine in Guangdong Province (now Shilu, Hainan Province). Guangdong Shilu Iron Mine is one of the large-scale high-quality iron mines that Li Weiguo is familiar with, so he invested in the establishment of an iron ore mine in Shilu. Every year, the iron ore is transported back to the Jiangwan Iron and Steel Plant in Shanghai by sea for smelting, because it is by sea. The cost is low, and it is an important iron ore supply base of Jiangwan Iron and Steel Plant.

However, the sea route also means maritime risks, as Li Weiguo has bad relations with Britain, France, the United States and other countries, after the British and French combined fleet arrives in the Far East a year later, the sea passage may be cut off, and the iron ore on Hainan Island can only be sent to Shanghai by land. The distance is long, and the cost will increase significantly.

Of course, Li Weiguo also knows several large-scale high-quality iron ore sites, one is the Shengjing Anshan Iron Mine, but now it is the ancestral land of the Qing Dynasty. Development is not allowed. The other is the Ma'anshan Iron Ore Area, located on several hills between Wuhu and Jinling, which is also a high-quality iron ore area, but unfortunately occupied by the Taiping Army.

In order to solve the problem of iron ore supply during the war, Li Weiguo united with some domestic merchants and established a chamber of commerce to purchase high-quality iron ore from the best domestic Zhili Xingtai and Hubei Daye.

However, whether it is Zhili or Hubei, the road is also relatively long, Zeng Guofan controlled Daye iron ore, under the pretext of preventing iron ore from falling into the hands of the Taiping army, in fact, it was to restrict Li Weiguo from obtaining iron ore. Similarly, Li Hongzhang also used this excuse to strictly control the iron ore transported from Zhili to Shanghai, and set up checkpoints to raise freight rates.

Li Weiguo naturally did not want to see this situation, but Li Weiguo soon had a new plan, and he sent people to look for iron ore in Jiangnan Province and Zhejiang Province to prepare for self-reliance.

After five years of exploration, iron ore and copper ore have been found near Tanshan Mountain and Hangzhou Bay in Suzhou, although the quality is not as good as Shilu, but it is very close to Shanghai, convenient transportation, and can be transported to Shanghai directly through the canal.

Li Weiguo quickly dispatched manpower, material and financial resources, and built the Tanshan Iron Mine and the Lizhu Iron Mine in just half a year, solving the problem of raw materials for the Jiangwan Iron and Steel Plant.

At the same time, there was also an unexpected surprise, Yu Hang accidentally discovered gold and copper mines. Among them, the gold ore reserves are not large, and Li Weiguo does not care, but the quality of the copper ore is good, and the raw material problem of the Jiangwan Copper Smelter has been solved within ten years.

In addition to ordinary pig iron and steel, Jiangwan Iron and Steel Plant can also produce about 5 tons of special steel per year.

The so-called special steel is the steel used in special places, and its hardness, toughness, and corrosion resistance are very high, far exceeding ordinary steel.

This is the advantage of Li Weiguo as a traverser, he knows that adding some rare metals to the steel can improve the hardness, toughness and corrosion resistance of the steel, so he established a special steel mill alone.

Since Li Weiguo only knew theory, the actual work had to be carried out by the technicians and workers of the iron and steel plant, and he even spent a lot of money to buy and steal their Krupp steelmaking technology and materials from the Prussian Krupp factory, and brought them back for research and improvement. Even so, the progress of special steel is not very fast, the output is only about 5 tons, although the hardness, toughness and corrosion resistance of special steel are greatly improved compared with the existing ordinary steel, but there is still a big gap with the special steel of later generations.

But Li Weiguo is not in a hurry, he has taken the first step in the issue of special steel, leading the world, as long as it is slowly improved, I believe that in special steel. The European and American powers will be thrown farther and farther away, and sooner or later they will be thrown out a few streets.

Don't underestimate the special steel of about 5 tons, Li Weiguo used these good steels on the blade, first used special steel to manufacture the lathe, which greatly improved the cutting and processing ability of the lathe and improved the processing accuracy of the lathe. In the past, the accuracy could only be controlled to one decimal place, but now it can be achieved to two decimal places.

Not to mention underestimating the accuracy is only increased to two decimal places, the barrel of the avant-garde rifle can only be processed to 9.1 mm, and the rifle bullet is between 8.9~9.2 because of the insufficient processing accuracy, and the bullet jamming problem often occurs, which affects the normal shooting of the Shanghai soldiers. Now with a lathe accurate to two decimal places, the error of the Patriotic rifle bullet is reduced to between 8.95 and 9.10, and the chance of jamming is 9 times out of 1000. Reduced to 10,000 rounds 3 times, which is a huge improvement.

Jiangwan Iron and Steel Plant has an annual output of 880,000 tons of iron and 15,000 tons of steel.

Obviously, the common people in Jiangnan and Zhejiang provinces do not use much, and most of the steel is used in the production and manufacture of industrial equipment, and most of the steel in the past few years has been consumed by the construction of railways and the manufacture of guns.

By 1859, with the early completion of the third phase of the Shanghai-Dantu Railway, a large amount of steel materials were left that year.

These steel materials are still in short supply in China. Whether it is the Qing army in the north or the Taiping army in the south. They all needed a lot of steel to make swords, guns and artillery, especially Zeng Guofan's Hunan army and Li Hongzhang's Huai army, which expanded their armies on a large scale, but did not have a large steel mill and often bought steel from merchants in Shanghai and other European and American countries.

If it weren't for Li Weiguo's strict control of Shanghai Customs, I am afraid that the steel produced by Jiangwan Iron and Steel Plant would be bought every year.

Treat this current strategic material. Li Weiguo would not sell to the Qing army, nor to the Hunan army and the Huai army, nor to the Taiping army, and after meeting the needs of the Shanghai army, he set his sights on the naval shipyard.

Li Weiguo has been since the establishment of the East China Sea Fleet. Naturally, shipyards had to be built, and even if they didn't build ships, they had to be maintained by the warships of the East China Sea Fleet.

The Shanghai army has a total of two shipyards, one is located near the Gaocang Temple, near the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau, called the Jiangnan Shipbuilding Bureau, there are eight dry docks, two 5,000-ton docks, two 3,000-ton docks, two 2,000-ton classes, and two 1,000-ton classes, which can repair all tonnage warships of the current Shanghai Army's East China Sea Fleet, and can imitate 800-ton British-made frigates.

The other is located in Hangzhou Bay, called Hangzhou Shipyard, with 12 dry docks, two 5,000-ton docks, two 4,000-ton docks, two 3,000-ton docks, two 2,000-ton classes, and four 1,000-ton classes.

However, the imitation of the 800-ton British frigate is not what Li Weiguo wants, although this is already the limit that domestic shipyards can reach, but Li Weiguo is not satisfied, what he needs is not a sail battleship, but a steam ironclad battleship.

Of course, the British Royal Navy, which is now the strongest, does not have the ability to build steam ironclad warships, at best, wooden iron-hulled steam warships.

The iron shell is a layer of iron sheet, but the iron shell is different, it is armor, much thicker than the iron shell, in 1859 France built the world's first ironclad ship Glory, unlocking the era of ironclad ships.

Therefore, Li Weiguo was not far behind, he convened all the shipbuilding elites and issued the task goal of developing ironclad ships.

Li Weiguo has been entangled for a long time in formulating the design concept of ironclad ships, and he knows the direction of the development of ironclad ships, from the direct descendants of sail battleships -- the ironclad ships with guns next to the ships, to the waist gun room ironclad ships that surround the gun room with armor in the middle of the ship, and then the ironclad ships with the surface rotary platform, as well as the coastal defense ironclad ships, all of which have the meaning of survival and play different roles in different periods.

Li Weiguo can directly build dreadnoughts in the modern sense in one step, but the problem is that once dreadnoughts appear half a century in advance, it will not be long before they will be discovered by the European and American powers.

In this way, Li Weiguo built a dreadnought battleship in advance, at most, it would be crazy for two or three years, for a moment's pleasure, and then with the large-scale construction of dreadnought battleships by the European and American powers, then with Li Weiguo's current strength, he will definitely not be able to fight the powers of various countries, which is equivalent to making a wedding dress for others.

Therefore, Li Weiguo was entangled, he was a person who refused to suffer losses, and finally gave up the idea of directly building modern dreadnought battleships, and instead formulated a plan for building offshore defense ironclad ships according to his own strength and the national conditions of the Qing Dynasty, because in a short period of time, Li Weiguo's East China Sea Fleet was still a coastal defensive fleet, so the development of offshore defense ironclad ships was the most cost-effective.

Li Weiguo could not do everything himself, he formulated principles and policies, and assigned tasks, and someone had to carry them out.

And this executor must at least understand Li Weiguo's meaning, and he also has the ability.

Fortunately, Li Weiguo set up a translation bureau many years ago, specializing in translating all kinds of literature and materials from Europe and the United States, from astronomy and geography to humanities, as well as mathematics, physics, chemical engineering, and agriculture.

After five or six years of development, the Translation Bureau now has more than 6,500 translators, who can translate more than 50 languages.

At that time, the pillars of the Translation Bureau were all overseas Chinese translators hired from Hong Kong, Macao and Nanyang with high salaries, and there were also foreigners from all over the world who knew Chinese. Nowadays, the number of local Chinese has increased a lot, and there are many outstanding ones.

At that time, under the management of Rong Hong, the Translation Bureau helped Li Weiguo through the most difficult period, and now there are many talented people in the Translation Bureau, such as the famous mathematicians Li Shanlan and Hua Yufang, and the scientist Xu Shou, etc., all of whom joined the Translation Bureau for the first time, and now they have become independent talents.

Among them, Hua Yufang was born in the official eunuch family, and loved mathematics when he was young, and read all kinds of mathematics books at that time. When he was young, he traveled to Shanghai and interacted with the famous mathematician Li Shanlan, who recommended Western algebra and calculus to him, and then the two were recruited by Li Weiguo to join the Translation Bureau. After five years of hard work, Xu Shou mastered the basic knowledge of chemistry, physics, machinery, mathematics, medicine and other disciplines, especially in mathematics, chemistry and mechanics, and was appointed by Li Weiguo as the director of weapons of the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau and the director of the Jiangnan Shipbuilding Bureau, responsible for the development and improvement of various weapons and equipment of the Shanghai Army, and achieved remarkable results.

Originally, Xu Shou in history was in 1865 to successfully develop China's first steamship Huanghu, but the arrival of Li Weiguo changed the fate of Xu Shou, under the continuous supervision and deliberate cultivation of Li Weiguo, Xu Shou completed China's first self-designed and manufactured steamship on February 3, 1859, but it is not called Huanghu, but called Jiaolong.

The length of the historical Yellow Bird is only 17 meters, the displacement is only 25 tons, the speed is only a pitiful 6 knots, and the endurance is only 100 nautical miles, which is really too chicken.

Now, with the strong support and help of Li Weiguo, the Jiangnan Shipbuilding Bureau has directly built the steam steamship Jiaolong with a length of 42 meters, a width of 8 meters, a draft of 4.6 meters, a displacement of 1,120 tons and a speed of 11 knots.

It's just that the Jiaolong is not a combat ship and is not equipped with weapons, this is just a verification steamship to lay the foundation and prepare for the future development of a steam combat ship.

Li Weiguo gave Xu Shou the task of developing an ironclad ship for coastal defense, and handed over the principle and rough design sketches to Xu Shou.

Although Xu Shou is already very knowledgeable and can roughly understand what Li Weiguo means, it still needs to be verified in practice, after all, there is a huge gap between theory and practice.

In this regard, Li Weiguo was not in a hurry, he gave Xu Shou five years, and in five years he would see the first offshore defense ironclad ship launched. (To be continued......)