Compared with the geographical location of Anshan Fushun Benxi, Tangshan, located in the coastal area, is obviously convenient in transportation, once the construction of Tangshan Port is completed, its products can easily cover the coastal areas with the most concentrated population and wealth in the country, and it is also convenient to import high-quality iron ore from abroad to reduce costs, which is not comparable to the planned "Anshan Iron and Steel" or "Benxi Iron and Steel". Although the latter can narrow the gap by laying railways and building a new port of Dalian, it can only be narrowed, not eliminated

After figuring this out, Li Hui finally understood why in later generations there would be "China's first steel production in the world, the second is Hebei, China, and the third is Tangshan, Hebei." Such ridicule, Tangshan is indeed a treasure land for the development of the steel industry!

In light of the current situation, Li Hui also saw another advantage of establishing the first coal-steel consortium in Tangshan, which was that construction could begin more quickly. Because the current Tangshan has been controlled by the rebel army, construction can start soon, and the coal and iron rich area in Liaoning has not yet arrived, and the project can only be started after the third division of the Japanese army is completely wiped out. As the saying goes, "Time is money." The advantage of Tangshan Iron and Steel Plant being able to build earlier is far greater than it seems.

If there is no system, the technology and equipment are imported from abroad, Li Hui will definitely be much more cautious in the development of industry, first solve the problem, and then gradually expand the scale and upgrade the technology, but now with the help of the system, the "obsolete technology" has almost all been studied, and the technology, personnel and equipment he has are not inferior to any other power in the world, if he is still so cautious, but he has made the mistake of dogmatism.

As a result, Li Hui has taken a very big step, and the first phase of the Tangshan Iron and Steel Plant has a designed production capacity of 1 million tons of crude steel per year, which is enough to make China's steel output jump to the sixth place in the world. As for the way out of so much steel, the railway construction alone is enough to ensure that the supply of steel exceeds demand for a long time

Of course, the required investment is also quite scary, if there is no system, 100 million taels of silver may not be enough, this is still estimated according to the standard of self-construction by the great powers, and does not include the cost of Kaiping coal mine expansion and iron mine and port construction

Fortunately, with the help of the system, the investment budget of the steel plant was successfully reduced to more than 30 million taels of silver, and less than 10 million taels of it were paid to the system in cash (but because of the high proportion of technical and management personnel required by the steel industry, Li Hui recruited more than 1,000 biochemical technicians as the backbone at once, spending as much as 2 million taels of silver, and then had to spend 200,000 taels per month, if this cost is also included, it will be raised a lot). Expenses such as wages are all paid in the credit currency "yuan", and Li Hui only needs to turn on the money printing machine to solve it. With the scale of China's economy, such an amount will not cause serious inflation, especially since Li Hui has decided that China's economic system will be dominated by a planned economy model in the future, and as long as the supply of daily necessities is controlled, there is no fear of too large fluctuations in prices.

Focusing on the planned economic model was not a decision made by Li Hui on the head, but the best industrialization route he chose based on the results of the pilot project in Jiaodong over the past two years and the many lessons learned in history.

If we only consider the production of bulk industrial products, the investment efficiency of the planned economy is much higher than that of the market economy, the Soviet Union's two five-year plans have become the world's second largest industrial country, China's weak foundation has only taken one five-year plan to lay the foundation of an industrial country, and Japan's Meiji Restoration has passed so many years, and steel is still almost entirely dependent on imports, and the advantages of the planned economic model are obvious.

Of course, there are many defects in the planned economy, and some of them cannot be solved by allowing the existence of a partial market economy as a supplement, such as the ability to earn foreign exchange through exports.

The reason why it is said that it is the ability to earn foreign exchange through exports rather than product competitiveness is because the competitiveness of products under the planned economy model is not necessarily weak, and Germany has changed to the planned economy model after the mustache came to power, and the competitiveness of German products has declined? However, even if the competitiveness of products is not weak, as long as a country implements a planned economic model, its ability to earn foreign exchange through exports cannot be too strong.

The reason is very simple, since it is called a planned economy, it must be a self-contained system, most of the production cycle is carried out internally, and only a small part needs to be exchanged with the outside world, so there is no need to open the market to foreign countries. In fact, importing too many non-essential goods from foreign countries not only wastes valuable hard currency, but also greatly interferes with the normal implementation of economic planning, so that unless there is a motive other than industrialization, the planned economy countries will not let go of imports, even if they have money.

But the question is, foreign countries are not stupid, you don't open the market to me, why should I open the market to you? Therefore, the exports of countries with planned economies will almost certainly be blocked by trade barriers, but it is polite to have higher tariffs, and it is not surprising that they will not be allowed to enter directly

If it is a country like Germany that has completed industrialization, the decline in the ability to earn foreign exchange through exports is not too bad, anyway, except for oil and some rare resources, Sandezi can almost produce itself, and the price of resources is still very cheap before and after World War II, if it is not for the fact that he could not afford to pay off so many foreign debts before, Sandezi actually did not have to start a war at all.

And like the Soviet Union and China in history, which is still catching up with the world's advanced level, it is very fatal to encounter this situation, because if they want to promote industrialization faster, they must import from the developed countries of the West can not produce high-precision machine tools and other key equipment necessary for technological upgrading, if there is not enough gold, silver and foreign exchange, the speed of industrialization will be greatly slowed down, and there are strong enemies outside, if they are not handled well, there may be no then

However, Li Hui is not worried about this problem, seeing that the rebel army can sweep the whole country, with the current China is still relatively strong, the gold and silver that can be seized will never be less, and the more hard currency available, the greater the advantage of the planned economy, not to mention that Li Hui also has systematic help, which can further improve the efficiency of investment, which is equivalent to further amplifying this advantage. What's more, now is not the era of globalization, the era of free economy has come to an end, except for the United Kingdom, other countries have set up trade barriers, plus Li Hui's next series of measures will offend the Western powers, even if the market economy is engaged, people will not open the market, so what are the advantages of the market economy?

Therefore, it is only natural that Li Hui will eventually choose the economic model dominated by the planned economy (to be continued). )