In 1909, Huaguo produced a total of 7.55 million automobiles of various types, with total sales of 520 billion yuan. Among them, there are 3.5 million cars, 700,000 trucks, 150,000 passenger cars, and 1.1 million military automobiles, and more than 2 million cars exported to foreign countries, including Russia, Japan, North Korea, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East.

The popularization of the assembly line production mode has brought revolutionary changes to the automobile industry, and there is a high tide of popularization of automobiles in China, which has greatly changed the way of life of the people. With the great changes in the automobile industry, the rubber industry, engine industry, petrochemical industry and other industries are also undergoing profound changes.

China became the world's largest exporter of rubber, both natural and synthetic, and largely dominated the world market, with only the British, French, and Dutch sharing a meagre surplus market using the rubber plantations of the Southeast Asian colonies. This situation did not change until more than 20 years later, when the German Empire finally overcame the technical difficulties of synthetic rubber and achieved large-scale industrial production, breaking the monopoly of the rubber industry in China, but it was too late, and China reaped a huge return through rubber.

More than half of the natural rubber plantations in the colonies of Southeast Asia were controlled by the Chinese, and Britain, France and the Netherlands adopted various methods in order to seize control of rubber. After barely controlling 50 percent of the plantations in Southeast Asia, the colonists stipulated that the rubber produced in the region could only be sold to the British trading houses, but despite this, the local natural rubber could only satisfy about 70 percent of the satisfaction of Europe, and the rest had to be imported from China to fill the shortfall.

In order to reduce the Chinese monopoly on rubber, Britain promoted rubber cultivation on a large scale in Malaysia and Sri Lanka, and the Americans also looked for rubber cultivation areas in South America to reduce their dependence on Chinese rubber. However, after rubber has become an important industrial raw material and the automobile industry has flourished, natural rubber is difficult to meet market demand, and more than 65% of the rubber in the world market still needs to be provided by China.

Through the monopoly of this strategic resource, when the situation was tense, China reduced its rubber exports to the United States, Britain, France, and other hostile countries, but greatly increased its exports to Germany.

Technology represents strength, take rubber as an example, when hostile countries tried to launch a trade blockade against China, they found that domestic industry could not do without China's products! Domestic businessmen are also inseparable from China's huge market, and the trade blockade is self-defeating, which is also the reason why China and the United States still maintain huge economic and trade exchanges and political coldness after the war of the Anti-China Alliance, and it is also the reason why Britain still has dialogue with China and eased bilateral relations after losing a large number of warships, almost losing its global hegemony, and the collapse of its cabinet.

Britain lost some of its colonies and the right to speak in the Far East, and lost its huge influence in China, but unexpectedly, the merchants gained more fruitful benefits because of their trade with China! This benefit is so great that it is more than several times more than ten times the original. Of course, the economic compensation cannot cover up Britain's strategic disadvantage, and the contradictions between China and Britain are irreconcilable, and it is impossible for them to become intimate because of economic exchanges.

There is a saying in later generations that when a rabbit country becomes economically developed, an island will take the initiative to return to the motherland. More than ten years later, the reality slapped a certain rabbit hard, and a certain island is still obsessed with the status quo, and even has a tendency to intensify the separation. This is the best proof that economics does not determine politics!

Another of the most obvious changes brought about by the automobile industry is the rise of the petrochemical industry, where the status of oil has been elevated to the point of no return, and in addition to the most important fuel, various additional products brought by the petrochemical industry are also widely used.

With the advent of the oil revolution, it was not China that benefited the most, but its northern neighbor, Tsarist Russia, and the United States on the east coast of the Pacific Ocean. The world's largest oil production, mature and advanced oil extraction technology, and the early development of the oil industry have allowed the Americans to profit greatly from this wave. Several major consortia used oil to do business with San Francisco conglomerates, and through the exchange of technology and markets for automobile production, they paid for the right to extract oil in some areas.

At the same time, the U.S. government has forced China to increase its rubber sales through oil weapons, and the reality is very ironic, the United States lacks rubber, and China lacks oil. When China threatened the United States with rubber, the Americans took out oil to make China bow its head, and neither of the two countries could help the other, just like the industrial strength of the two countries that were approaching.

Black gold is changing the world, and China has to spend a lot of money on oil imports from the United States every year to get about 70 percent of its domestic demand through the exploitation of domestic oil fields, and in order to fill the gap. When the Dabulgan oil field in Kuwait was exploited, the oil gap in China was reduced from 30 percent to 10 percent, and when the Tyumen oil field in Russia was developed, the oil supply problem in China was solved, and the strategic oil reserve began to be established.

According to calculations, in peacetime, China can meet its demand for oil in various ways, but after entering a state of war, China's oil storage can only be consumed for half a year. If we add in the huge consumption caused by the war and the throughput of large fuel consumers such as tanks, planes and warships, the oil reserves will be exhausted within two months.

This is a strategic problem that must be solved, and Lu Liang's order to the oil department is that the expansion of the country's major oil fields must be completed by 1910 to basically meet the domestic oil supply. However, after the country enters a state of war, implements a wartime planned economy, and a material distribution system, most of the oil as a strategic resource will be used for military purposes, which can relieve tension and pressure, but it will have a huge impact on the national economy and people's lives.

Technology is still the best weapon to change the unfavorable status quo, oil extraction is a complex project, and technological progress and innovation mean an increase in oil production. And the most important thing in Lu Liang's hands is the technical information stored in the steel base. It's just that the transformation of advanced technology into industrial production requires time and patience, and we can only wait for it to be applied to industrial production and manufacture related equipment. Lu Liang also demanded that the report on the oil industry be made a key report, hoping to overcome the technical difficulties before the outbreak of war, so that the Chinese army's tanks would not stop halfway because of lack of fuel.

Roosevelt, who was a little tired from his age and travel, sat on a bench on the side of the road in the square, and another middle-aged man on the bench who was listening to the radio cast a resistant look at Roosevelt, probably because of his similar age and the constraints of Chinese morality, the middle-aged man did not make any radical moves, and then refocused his attention on the radio.

"Huaxia, success, battleship." Roosevelt imitated the Chinese language according to the sound of the radio, he thought that if you want to understand Huaxia, you must start with the Chinese language, but this pictographic language is really difficult to master, since the United States, Roosevelt tried to learn Chinese, the results were disappointing, the progress was very slow, and now he has only mastered some simple words.

Yesterday, a new type of battleship manufactured by the Dalian Shipyard was launched, and Navy Commander Lu Hai presided over the launching ceremony. This battleship will join the active service of the Huaxia Navy after sea trials and become a solid sea fortress of China. The middle-aged man next to him turned off the radio and said in proficient English, and positive emotions such as pride and confidence could be heard from his tone, and finally he said loudly in English in imitation of the announcer's tone on the radio: "Long live the president!" ”

This aroused Roosevelt's interest, not because of the battleships launched in China, but because of this middle-aged man who spoke fluent English, and he was very familiar with the American accent, and there were not many Chinese who could speak English fluently, most of whom still had a London accent. The reason Roosevelt also knew, and almost everyone knew that Chinese President Lu Liang hated including English as an educational subject, and finally compromised with the education department to set up English electives from high school and English majors in universities.

The president's attitude affected his admirers, so that very few of the Chinese knew English, forcing foreigners of all kinds who had dealings with the Chinese country to learn Mandarin or struggle to find a translator who could understand it.

"Hello, my name is Theodore Roosevelt, what do you call me?" Perhaps seeing the foreigner's friendly attitude, the middle-aged man nodded.

"Zhou Ziqi."

"It's an honor to meet you, Mr. Zhou, why are you fluent in English?"

"I graduated from Columbia University in the United States and was a Manchu diplomat in the United States, so I can speak American English. Mr. Roosevelt, because of your former occupation, I cannot talk to you for long. However, I am very happy to meet a former president of the United States on my own soil, backed by a powerful country, and it makes me feel more confident than I used to be. I should be thankful to meet you, it gave me a reason to accept a new job! ”

After Zhou Ziqi finished speaking, he turned around and left, leaving only a stunned Roosevelt, it turned out that the person knew his identity, but why did he say something inexplicable? (To be continued.) )