Bao Nian hooked up with the big thieves from all over the country to prepare to deal with Heyuan, and the contact between the bandits and thieves could not be hidden at all, and soon the news was fed back to Lu Liang's side. The advantage of encircling the local forces is that they cannot hide anything from Lu Liang on the ground in Guangdong, and the bandits not only collude with Bao Nian, but also many wealthy gentry and big merchants have many contacts with them, and the secrecy work of the bandits is very unprofessional, and the news of dealing with Heyuan has spread all over the upper echelons of Guangdong, including Lu Liang, of course.

Lu Liang didn't care about those chickens and dogs, even if he added more than 10,000 green battalion soldiers, it didn't matter, the second regiment of the first brigade had arrived at Heyuan and began to carry out defensive deployment, the two regiments combined were more than 4,000 people, as long as the ammunition could keep up, there was no opponent in Guangdong.

Heyuan successfully shifted his attention to himself, and Lu Liang continued to concentrate on the construction of various factories and projects, and at the end of the year, Bao Nian and the bandits had not moved. When the fleet led by William returned from the United States, the first year-end meeting of the Ziqiang Group was held.

It was the end of 1900 when the fleet led by William arrived in Huizhou, and the arrival of ten steel transport ships in Huizhou caused a huge sensation, and the crowd that came to see the excitement crowded on the shore. The 5,000-ton sea ship is a steel monster for these peasant workers who have never seen it before.

Because this is Ziqiang Group's own sea vessels, it is the first steel fleet belonging to Lüliang, even if they are only civilian ships. At present, there is only one 10,000-ton wharf and two 7,000-ton wharves in Huizhou Port, and the fleet can only enter the port in turn, unload and sail to Guangzhou Port to dock.

"William, welcome back, great work!" Lu Liang personally greeted these genetic people who worked hard for themselves on the dock, no matter whether they were moved by their words or not, they also had to say what they felt in their hearts.

"Report to the chief, ten freighters have been brought back safely, but the ships are in urgent need of maintenance and repair, and it is best to repair them in our shipyard before sailing to Guangzhou to dock." Sure enough, William had no emotional fluctuations, and questioned Lu Liang's arrangement mercilessly.

"Agreed, but the shipyard currently has only three slipways, one of which is building a ship, only two slipways can be used, and the shipyard workers are not skilled enough, and the maintenance and repair of these ten freighters may take some time. Let's rotate, the base can also be maintained and repaired, but it needs to be carried out by genetic people, and the progress will not be fast, and the waiting ships are temporarily docked in the open sea, and there will be no typhoon at this time, but the wind and waves at sea are still not small. "The conversation with the gene man is never detached from the content of the work, even when talking to the sexy Lu Min." After the arrangements are made, we will hold a year-end summary meeting in the group headquarters building tomorrow, and you will have to prepare for the situation in the United States. ”

"Yes, Chief!" William gave a military salute, then turned around to arrange for the fleet to unload, maintain, and dock. 50,000 tonnes of grain will be stored in warehouses as a strategic reserve for future emergencies. The base now has no resources to collect and produce synthetic food on the seabed, and machinery, minerals, and ships have occupied all of the base's production capacity.

At eight o'clock in the morning of the next day, the group's year-end meeting was held on time, and all the participants except Lu Liang were genetic people. Confidentiality was involved, and the squire was not invited to attend, so it can be said that the meeting was held in secret. The gene man is the pillar of Lu Liang's career, his role is to make major decisions, grasp the direction of development, specific things, such as the management of the factory, the management of farmland, the leadership of the army, communication with the outside and so on are all responsible for the gene person, so Lu Liang's subordinates give people the impression of rigidity and inflexibility, the squires and businessmen who cooperate are very uncomfortable, and some people who want to seek improper benefits from cooperation will also be blocked back by the gene people. However, this style of behavior is subtly influencing the workers, and the genetic people demand this from them. The various reports of this summary meeting were all carried out by the gene people in charge of all aspects.

Lu Yi saluted and spread out the documents, he first had to make a report on the group's heavy industry. "In terms of heavy industry, the factories built include cement plants, power plants, steel plants and coking plants and other supporting factories, machinery factories, engine factories, chemical plants, petroleum refineries, automobile factories, locomotive factories, special steel factories and synthetic rubber factories under construction. The next task of the factory was to expand the production capacity, and it was planned to more than triple the production capacity in 1901 to initially meet the development needs of the Guangdong region, as well as the needs of the army. The construction of the factory under construction was planned to be completed in the first half of 1901, and the speed of construction was accelerated thanks to the technology, genetic people, materials and machinery of the base, plus the experience of factory construction some time ago. The existing problem is that most of the current factory products are used in the construction of the group, the construction of various light industry factories and the manufacture of hot boats, and the production capacity can still be satisfied, but the expansion of the scale will cause a backlog of products, it is recommended to start the railway construction plan in Guangdong as soon as possible, and the number of light industry factories must be increased in order to digest the products of heavy industry factories; Another problem is that the Huizhou area can no longer accommodate larger-scale heavy industry factories, and too much concentration will cause logistical difficulties, serious pollution and other problems, the terrain in the north of Huizhou is not conducive to large-scale construction, it is recommended to expand to the east or west, in view of the proximity to Guangzhou in the west, it is not conducive to the secrecy of the factory, it is better to expand to the east; The third problem is that our group has built a large number of factories, but the transportation problem needs to be solved urgently, one is the raw materials and machinery provided by the base to be transported to the factories and construction sites, and the other is the export of factory products, although Huizhou has built a number of cement roads, and there are more under construction, but the road is not the best solution, and the trucks of the automobile factory have not yet come off the assembly line, the volume is too low, we still need to build a branch railway in Huizhou; The fourth problem is the lack of qualified industrial workers, the speed of worker training cannot keep up with the speed of factory construction, most of the workers have only been trained for less than three months when they enter the workshop, which is difficult to guarantee the literacy rate, and workers have become the biggest factor restricting the expansion of factory capacity. ”

Lu Liang waited for Lu Yi to finish thinking for a while, and said: "The most critical of these problems is the workers, we can provide enough workers, and there are enough people who come to work, but the training problem cannot be solved in a day or two." I propose to adopt the method of apprenticeship to train workers, first solve the problem of worker literacy, technical training in the workshop, take the way of mentors with apprentices, a genetic person technician with a number of apprentices, for theoretical and practical teaching, this is the training method adopted after the founding of the People's Republic of China for the rapid realization of industrialization, the conditions at that time were much worse than now, and millions of industrial workers were still trained in a short period of time. Therefore, what we have to do is to solve the problem of existence first, and our middle and senior technical personnel are not lacking, and the technical information is also complete. In terms of territory expansion, Huizhou is Chaozhou and Meizhou to the east, and we can use Huizhou's way to win over the local forces there, and there are their representatives in the Ziqiang Chamber of Commerce, and this problem is not difficult to solve. As for the railway, the railway planning of the entire Guangdong region has been completed, and we will begin to build a railway in Huizhou after the year, a short-distance railway from Huizhou to Guangzhou, and then a branch railway extending to the factories, a branch line to the base material transit center, etc., which requires the locomotive factory to speed up the construction speed, the first train can be manufactured through the base, but the subsequent locomotives must be provided from the locomotive factory. The construction of cement roads should be increased, not only in the Huizhou area, but also in the vicinity of Guangzhou in the west, and in the east as far as Chaozhou and Meizhou, and the local relations should be handed over to the squires and businessmen in the Ziqiang Chamber of Commerce, who are happy to see that the road is repaired and the transportation is convenient, and they do not need to spend a penny. Road construction requires a large number of laborers, and for them they do not need training, they can be recruited freely. For a long time foreseeably we had a large number of projects underway, and we didn't have to worry about them having no jobs. ”

The meeting recorder wrote down all of Lu Liang's words, and the only genetic people who had orders and obedience in their minds would start to execute them immediately after the meeting, and they had no concept of rest and vacation.

After the report of heavy industry, Lu Er made a report on light industry: "In light industry, it is now the largest source of wealth for our group in addition to the gold and silver produced by the base, and the cotton yarn factory, garment factory, printing and dyeing factory contributed 12 million silver dollars this year, which is only for the sake of sales in Guangdong, and other factories such as flour mills contributed a total of 3.2 million silver dollars. Huizhou has stopped the construction of light industry factories, the new enterprises have all moved to the three industrial bases on the outskirts of Guangzhou, because of the coordination of the Chamber of Commerce, the current construction land has been fully settled, the surrounding newly established building materials factory has also begun production, there are currently more than 200,000 construction workers on the construction site, and they will become the first batch of factory workers after the completion of the factory. It was expected that the construction of the first batch of thirty factories would be completed in April 1901, and that the two hundred factories in the three industrial bases were planned to be completed by the end of 1901, and that the production capacity of the industrial bases would meet the needs of the entire interior, of course, this was calculated taking into account purchasing power, local barriers, etc. The main problem is raw materials, the raw materials required by the Guangzhou industrial base will no longer be provided by the base, the use of market purchase, the cost will be much higher than now, and the procurement and transportation of raw materials need to invest a lot of energy; The second problem is transportation, and the transportation of a large number of products after production is also something that has to be considered; The third problem is the external threat, our large-scale construction has long attracted the attention of the official, but because the Eight-Nation Alliance's war of aggression against China is underway and the strong suppression of the Self-Strengthening Chamber of Commerce, the government has not yet made a big response, but it is difficult to say what will happen after that, the local governors and the imperial court will resist our piece of fat, and the local forces are not monolithic, the comprador class is powerful, they will not watch us encroach on their market, and foreigners, this is the biggest threat to us at present, Our products are a direct threat to foreign companies. ”

The problem pointed out in Lu Er's report is very realistic and very likely to occur, "the procurement of raw materials is solved by the local forces of the Chamber of Commerce, their contacts and relationships are much wider than ours, we are mainly responsible for transportation, and the first shipping fleet can partially solve the transportation problem after the establishment of the first fleet, in addition, we also ordered the purchase of merchant ships from the British Jardine Matheson, Swire & Co., and the German Lihe Foreign Company, using the name of the American Ambrera Company, and it is expected that the first batch of ten second-hand merchant ships will arrive in May. The full delivery would be at the beginning of 1903, when the fleet would have 50 transport ships of more than 3,000 tons, plus the ships produced by the ever-expanding Ziqiang shipyard, the construction of railways and highways, and the employment of steamships China Merchants and the Foreigner Shipping Company, and the transportation problem would be fundamentally solved. As for external threats, the Qing court and local forces and compradors deserve our attention, but they do not need to devote all their energy, and they can leave the problem to the Chamber of Commerce and let them solve it on their own. What we have to pay attention to is the foreigners, they use giant ships and cannons to open the country, but the market is swallowed up by us, we will not give up, the most likely is to invest in force to solve, from the perspective of the international situation, it is not ruled out that they will organize a multinational coalition again in the short term, which requires us to increase military investment and continue to expand the army. On land, I'm not worried, the gap in strength at sea is too big, I mean temporarily avoiding the enemy's powerful fleet, setting up powerful batteries along the coast, forcing them to engage in a land duel with us, and the Cleveland-class light cruisers can conduct harassing battles in the open sea, and with their leading performance, they can definitely pose a big threat to them. The military staff has come up with a solution to the war response, and we must not let them affect our construction. "Conflicts with Western powers are inevitable, and with their banditry style there is a very likely war, and it will not be long.