"How can there be such a system?" , Tang Shaoyi was still a little suspicious when he saw his expression, but he was not a fool, and he knew that Li Hui was unlikely to continue to give an in-depth explanation at the meeting, so he could only remain silent.

However, Li Hui still said a few more words, "Actually, the British should not be as stubborn as you think, otherwise they would not have been able to stand tall for hundreds of years." Moreover, Britain's colonial expansion has reached its limit, and its control has decreased significantly in the past few years, and it is estimated that a large-scale uprising will break out in the colonies in two or three years, and I don't believe that the British government can continue to haunt us at that time, and this war may not be fought for so many years. ”

"Really?" , Tang Shaoyi was a little surprised, but he was more suspicious, after all, he was a newcomer, and he didn't have much confidence in Li Hui's foresight.

"In fact, if you look closely, you will find that Britain has become less and less active in the development of colonies in recent years, which is different from before, and it can only show that the power of this 'empire on which the sun never sets' has expanded to the limit. As with other mega-empires in history, once you have expanded to the limit, it is difficult to escape the fate of prosperity and decline, and this is exactly what we can take advantage of. After Li Hui explained a few words with a smile, his tone suddenly changed, staring at Tang Shaoyi and said, "Shaochuan, today is the first national congress of our party, I hope to encourage everyone to speak freely, and the questions just now should not be the only one you have, I just made an exception to answer them one by one, and it will not be like this again in the future." You must keep in mind that the diplomatic department only needs to complete the tasks assigned by the central authorities, and you do not need to worry about other things; whether you can win the war or not is the matter of the military, whether there is enough money is the business of the financial departments, and the overall overall planning is the matter of the central authorities. Except for information that may affect your ability to complete the task, don't ask! You have to remember that as long as you complete the task well, it is a credit, and if there is a real difficulty, you can also come to me to explain, if it is really impossible to overcome, I will not embarrass you. ”

After Li Hui finished speaking, the atmosphere in the venue suddenly became a little depressing, but this made the subsequent resolutions on some specific issues obviously much more efficient.

Although the Datong Party now nominally controls most of China, in addition to the old base area in Jiaodong, the ruling forces are temporarily limited to large and medium-sized cities and coastal areas along the river, and even these relatively stable ruling areas actually have many remaining problems to be solved, and the most urgent of them is to deal with the "legacy" of the Westernization Movement.

Objectively, these Western-style enterprises constitute the only little industrial base in China, but due to the lack of common sense of industrial construction and the constraints of objective conditions at that time on the part of the leaders of the Westernization Movement, the location of many Western-style enterprises is not very reasonable, such as the arsenal built in a big city like the Tianjin Machinery Bureau.

Therefore, after the new government takes over these enterprises, what it needs to do is not only to improve management and update equipment, but also to shut down and transfer them appropriately according to their specific conditions.

Among them, the Hanyang Arsenal, which later became China's largest arsenal in history, had a catastrophic fire a year ago, when almost all the buildings and equipment purchased were burned down, and then because of the continuous Sino-Japanese war and Li Hui's rebellion in Jiaodong, the funds for reconstruction were delayed and so far it is still a ruin.

So Li Hui ordered the company to be cut off without any psychological barriers, and then build a new machinery factory on the original site, anyway, Wuhan itself is not a suitable place as a military base.

However, the Hanyang Iron Works, which had more problems in the past, have been retained, considering that it is quite inconvenient for the steel produced by the Tangshan Iron and Steel Works to be transported to the south, and the nearby Daye Iron Mine is still the only iron-rich mine found in China, so the cost of iron smelting is only a fraction of that of the Tangshan Iron Mine, and it would be a pity not to use it, especially since the Hanyang Iron Works has been built, and the cost of renovation is lower than that of building a new one from scratch.

Although the content of harmful impurities in the ore produced by Daye Iron Mine is high, as long as the appropriate smelting equipment and technology are used, the steel produced is used to make low-end products such as rails and farm tools, which is not much of a problem.

As for coal, it is enough to develop the Pingxiang coal mine in Jiangxi Province in advance, and this can also greatly alleviate the dilemma of coal shortage in the south, which can be described as killing two birds with one stone.

Daye iron ore reserves are far less than Tangshan, so the scale of the expansion project of Hanyang Iron and Steel Plant is far from being comparable with Tangshan Iron and Steel Plant, after the completion of the expected annual output of 300,000 tons of crude steel, which still takes into account the advantages of Daye iron ore high grade, if the use of Tangshan ore, the annual production capacity is estimated to be more than 100,000 tons.

Of course, there are small benefits, as the first phase of the Tangshan Iron and Steel Works will not be completed until at least the end of 1898, while the expansion of the Hanyang Iron and Steel Works, taking full advantage of the convenience of the system, will be completed in about a year.

Moreover, the cost of Hansteel is much less than that of Tangsteel, and the expansion cost is only a few tenths of the first phase of the latter, even if the expansion of Daye Iron Mine, Pingxiang Coal Mine and even the construction of railways and wharves are included, the total investment is more than 7 million taels of silver, of which less than 3 million taels need to be permanently consumed.

Li Hui also realized that although large enterprises can greatly reduce production costs because of the advantages of scale effect. However, under the same technical conditions and management level, the investment efficiency of small factories is actually higher than that of large factories, and if the investment amount is comparable, the total production capacity of small factories is actually higher than that of large factories.

In addition, the construction period of small factories is shorter, if you want to quickly increase industrial production capacity in a short period of time, in fact, small factories (of course, this "small" is only relatively speaking) is more suitable than large factories.

Perhaps inspired by Hansteel, Li Hui added a lot of relatively small new projects to the foundation plan, and the total investment was further increased, even exceeding 300 million taels of silver.

In the Westernization Movement, Wuhan was only a rising star, and Shanghai was the leading boss, especially the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau, China's largest arsenal, which can be said to be the greatest achievement of the Westernization Movement.

The Tianjin Machinery Bureau, where Li Hui had stayed, was the second largest arsenal in China before the First Sino-Japanese War, and it was ranked after the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau, but the gap between the two was infinitely large, and it could even be said that all the other arsenals in China, including the Tianjin Machinery Bureau, were not as good as the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau (to be continued. )