Although the arrogance exuded by Li Hui's words made all the generals of the Beiyang Naval Division more or less dissatisfied, the good news of the greatly strengthened firepower of the fleet still made many people cheer.

Of course, there were also smart people who raised questions, and Fang Boqian, the pipe leader of the Jiyuan, looked at Li Hui with a slightly mocking look and sneered, "It's not that we haven't mentioned the request for more flowering bombs to Lord Zhongtang, but every time it was not accepted due to lack of funds. I don't know how the adults solved this problem, but let alone reducing production to save money, the navy has not even been able to meet the needs of training with cheap solid ammunition in the past two years, if we rely on this method to save money, won't we be able to guarantee even a minimum level of training? ”

In the face of Fang Boqian's questioning, Li Hui couldn't see the slightest nervousness on his face, but he smiled and pointed out a fact that few people in later generations knew, "Actually, the navy's funding has been increasing in the past two years, right?" ”

Weng Tong and Shang Zhu's two-year cessation of appropriation has always been considered to be the most direct reason for the Beiyang Naval Division's defeat in the naval battle in later generations, but few people know that Lao Weng only forbade the Navy (not only Beiyang) to purchase weapons and ammunition during these two years. By the time of the First Sino-Japanese War, it was close to 2 million taels of silver a year (including more than 1.4 million taels of coastal defense funds actually received, plus more than 400,000 taels of maintenance and personnel salaries allocated by the Navy Yamen)

Li Hui said that it was indeed true, but Liu Buyun, the leader of the Dingyuan Pipe, was suddenly furious after hearing it, "The money on the account is a little more, but now the imperial court is not allowed to buy outside, so it can only buy ammunition from the Tianjin Bureau at a high price, which is already of high quality and inferior price, and the price has actually increased again since last year!" ”

What Liu Buyun said is true, because the production costs of China's military enterprises in this era are much higher than those of foreign enterprises because of poor management and personnel quality, and the cost price of domestic products of the same type of weapons and ammunition is actually more than twice as high as that of imported arms sold to China from thousands of miles (of course, there are exceptions; in general, the higher the technical threshold and the greater the difficulty of production, the greater the price gap with imported products). ）。

And as mentioned above, these domestic products are not only high in price, but also in poor quality, take the shells produced by the Tianjin Machinery Bureau as an example, just to be able to close the minimum requirement, more than half of the products can be brushed off, and there is even an embarrassing thing that a batch of shells are all unqualified at the worst time, so the procurement cost of the Beiyang Navy Division is equivalent to more than doubling on the basis of the already high level.

In addition, because China's industry was just starting at the end of the Qing Dynasty, even if it was a so-called domestic product, raw materials and equipment were heavily dependent on imports, and the continuous depreciation of silver in the past two years significantly increased the cost of outsourcing, and also objectively continued to push up the production cost of domestic ammunition. Due to the influence of these factors, the amount of money allocated to the Beiyang Navy Division by the Qing Dynasty in the past two years has increased, but the actual and usable shells of the Beiyang ships are less than one-third of the previous ones, and they cannot even meet the needs of basic training

Li Hui entered the Tianjin Machinery Bureau shortly after the crossing, even if he didn't know these before the crossing, he must know now, the reason why he asked questions to arouse the anger of the generals of the Beiyang Navy Division was actually just to leave a deeper impression on the other party. Now that the goal has been achieved, Li Hui stopped talking, and immediately said his own solution to the problem, "In other words, the current problem of the Navy is not that the funds are insufficient, but that the ammunition produced by the Tianjin Bureau is too expensive, as long as this problem can be solved, there will be no obstacles for the Navy to have enough flowering shells, right?" ”

In fact, Li Hui had already talked about this problem when he met with Li Hongzhang, but the solution he proposed now is very different from what he said at the beginning. To say that at the beginning, Li Hui was still very confident in improving the management of Tianjin Machinery Bureau, who knew that Li Hongzhang promised well, when Li Hui really wanted to do it, he did not allow Li Hui to eliminate those incompetent and chaotic related households, and second, Li Hui was not allowed to reduce the salaries of those guys, how can this reform continue?

As a result, Li Hui could only make minor repairs to the original system, and in terms of personnel, he could only take those guys who had no background. Relying on these measures to treat the symptoms but not the root cause, although Li Hui has helped Tianjin Machinery Bureau to improve product quality and reduce production costs, it is far from enough to change the current dilemma of Beiyang Naval Division

At the same time, with the success of the research of system technology one by one, the variety of products that the system can produce is becoming more and more complete, and more and more advanced and cheap, and it is not long before Li Hui has the ability to solve the ammunition supply of the Beiyang Navy Division on his own, so a more urgent idea of quick success naturally emerged in his heart

"Dongyang, you mean that through the Tianjin Machinery Bureau, all the components of the blasting shells are ordered directly from abroad, and then the Tianjin Bureau assembles them and sells them to us as self-made shells?" , Liu Buyun was stunned when he heard this, he never thought that he could exploit the loophole so blatantly.

Li Hui smiled slightly, saying that there was no need to make a fuss at all, "Actually, this is not unusual, take the Pingyuan as an example, the shipmaster claims to be completely self-produced, but the artillery, armor and boilers on her are not all imported from abroad?" If there is such a successful precedent, why can't we follow suit? ”

In fact, not only the shipyard, including Tianjin, which of the various manufacturing bureaus in China can completely not buy out? If they have the ability, they will let all the domestic manufacturing bureaus stop outsourcing! Liu Buyun finally figured it out completely, and a smile appeared on his face again. At this time, Fang Boqian, the pipe leader of the Jiyuan, was probably dissatisfied with Li Hui's saying that the combat strength of the Jiyuan was not as good as that of the Pingyuan, and he opened his mouth to refute, and Liu Buyun, who was worried that this guy would interrupt the current topic, immediately glared at Fang Boqian and snorted angrily, and the cowardly suddenly wilted. Obviously, even if he has relied on Li Hongzhang's favor in the past two years, Fang Boqian is still very afraid of Liu Buyun, the former boss

At the same time, Li Hui said another good news, and by the way, he also opened up a financial route for himself, "I still have some connections overseas, and I can directly contact the manufacturer, saving the cost of transit, and the purchase price will be cheaper." However, you have to ask if there is a corresponding source. ”