In Guan Xuqing's long-term strategic planning, the situation is grim, not to mention the desperate development of Japan and Russia, which are eyeing the tiger, to catch up with Britain, France, Germany, and the United States, which are already far ahead, the two major wars that will change the fate of the world in the future are bound to be seized, but just like participating in a big gamble, if you want to reap rich returns from it, it is necessary to have a strong gambling capital Guan Xuqing is now like having high gambling skills, but not enough chips, and sighing to himself, "It is difficult for a good woman to cook without rice"

Fortunately, he is only 17 years old, if history has not changed, the arrival of the First World War is still more than 20 years away, and he still has a lot of opportunities to raise gambling capital, and among these gambling capitals, the country's industrial strength is undoubtedly the most important, from the supply of guns and ammunition, the supply of military clothing and food, and other materials, to the replenishment of heavy artillery and warships, and the deployment of the army from south to north and from east to west all need huge industrial strength as a backing

Most people in this era do not have a clear understanding of this point, and the large-scale Franco-Prussian and Austro-Prussian wars in this period often decided the outcome of the war by one or two battles, and the quality of the army became the criterion for judging a country's strength

However, throughout the two world wars, the impact of industrial power on the war was vividly reflected, if it were not for the dense domestic railway transportation network, how could Germany in the First World War support the oppression of the eastern and western fronts at the same time when the army was at a disadvantage, often a division on the banks of the Seine in Champagne had just completed a defensive campaign

Three days later it appeared again on the black soil of Ukraine and surrounded a division of the Russian Guards Corps; However, the United States, which has always been known for its fear of death, was able to defeat Japan, which was recognized as having first-class soldiers' quality and rich combat experience, in the Pacific War, relying on its huge industrial strength. In the Battle of the Coral Sea, Japan lost the light aircraft carrier "Fengxiang" and the aircraft carrier "Xianghe" was seriously damaged, and the United States lost the aircraft carrier "Lexington" and the aircraft carrier "Yorktown" was seriously damaged

However, the US newspaper wrote that "we have won an unprecedented victory", and US President Roosevelt also believed that as long as the battle could be ended with a casualty ratio of 2:1, the United States would win, because the United States' shipbuilding capacity was more than four times that of Japan, and another fact also confirmed this view, after the Battle of the Coral Sea, the two aircraft carriers "Shozuru" who were also seriously injured and lost their combat capability failed to participate in the subsequent Battle of Midway because there were too few slipways in Japan that could provide repairs for large aircraft carriers. The Yorktown was repaired at almost any major shipyard on the East Coast of the United States, and it took only 72 hours to complete the basic repair when it returned to port, and finally became a surprise force for the American army in the Battle of Midway, causing the Japanese Navy to suffer a "decisive defeat"

This shows that industrial strength plays a decisive role in a large-scale war, and no country can remain undefeated in such a world war, even if Poland is destroyed in two weeks, and the Third Reich defeats France in three months, everyone will have to compete to see who can build more planes and tanks, and who can build warships and submarines faster

For the initial stage of how to develop a country's heavy industry, Guan Xuqing has combined the experience of various countries and some later studies to do in-depth thinking, there are many fast and successful examples, such as the Soviet Union after the October Revolution and Japan after the Meiji Maintenance, Guan Xuqing summed up three very valuable experiences, one is the scale of the enterprise, ten scattered small factories, not as good as a group of the same size, only a large-scale group has international influence and competitiveness, in addition, Large-scale industrial groups often become a benchmark for industry technology and system, driving the development of the entire industry, and compared with sporadic construction, the large-scale industrial groups built in a centralized manner can improve the efficiency of talent utilization, and avoid the waste caused by vicious competition and repeated construction of large-scale industrial groups are often the concentrated embodiment of a country's industrial strength, just as someone once said that as long as China can become a Siemens, a Krupp, it will achieve modernization. But it also says this truth

In addition to the accumulation of capital, talents, and technology, a large number of orders are also the driving force behind its expansion, which is inseparable from two major policies, one is the regional tilt policy, and the other is the industrial tilt policy; The regional tilt policy is very easy to understand, just think about the circle drawn by Grandpa Deng in the South China Sea in the future, you can know one or two, that is a typical regional tilt policy, enterprises need to develop enclosure to expand the scale, need convenient highway and railway traffic conditions, need taxation, talent recruitment and other policy support and industrial tilt policy can be understood in this way, manpower is sometimes poor, the same is true of the country, whether it is capital, technology or talent reserves, there is a limit, if they are evenly distributed in various industriesThe result may be that all industries are mediocre and achieve nothing, especially in a country like China, which lacks funds, backward educational conditions, weak basic conditions, and low level of talent reserves, can only "concentrate on doing big things", and invest funds and talents in some industries with development advantages and development potential, and the most successful example of the implementation of the industrial tilting policy in a short period of time is Japan, before the Meiji Maintenance, Japan was also closed and backward, and a large amount of domestic gold was arbitraged and lost. The talent reserve is far inferior to that of China at that time, but the Japanese obviously understand that industrial development does not lie in many, but in refinement, according to the situation of its island country with many excellent bays, since the sixties of the nineteenth century, it has concentrated on the development of the shipbuilding industry, and almost all the industrial development in the country is for the shipbuilding industry, and almost all the funds and talents have been invested in it, so that Japan's shipbuilding industry has leapt from a state of ignorance to the level of building the world's advanced warships in just twenty or thirty years; The second economic leap led by the automobile industry in the twenties of the twentieth century, and the third economic leap led by the electronics industry after the end of World War II, were the result of Japan's consistent implementation of the policy of industrial tilt

The third important experience is that the economic system here does not refer to the planned economy or the market economy, but refers to the relationship between enterprises and the government, and the tilting of regions and industries is not completely without drawbacks, taking the Soviet Union as an example, because of the sinister international situation after the October Revolution, the Soviet government at that time focused its industrial development on the field of heavy industry, mainly the military industry. And thus made great progress, for the later defeat of the strong German army under unfavorable conditions laid a solid foundation, but the implementation of the industrial tilt policy, is bound to make the government involved in the operation of the enterprise, as far as it is concerned, in fact, it is a violation of the law of the market Many heavy industry enterprises in the Soviet Union in the later period due to excessive reliance on the government's support and leadership of the enterprise, lost the independence and market autonomy of the enterprise, resulting in the rigidity of enterprise operation, the lack of initiative of enterprise employees, product research and development contrary to market needs, This is due to the economic constitution caused by history has proved that under the strong intervention of the government, it is difficult for state-owned enterprises that ignore the initiative of talents and violate the laws of the market to succeed, and many people of insight have realized this in history, such as in Japan, this problem was solved by selling government-run enterprises cheaply, Mitsubishi, Mitsui and other famous consortia of later generations came like this, and the injection of private capital can bring more autonomy and initiative to enterprises, and the nature of businessmen to pursue profits is also the guarantee that enterprises always follow the laws of the market

For these three experience, Guan Xuqing attaches great importance to the good from the beginning, he adheres to the standard of the Ministry of Industry under the name of more than a dozen government-run enterprises, are large-scale, group development of the road, not only technology and talent in the country second to none, but also each is quite distinctive, such as Jiangnan manufacturing production products are known for fine, and always chase international advanced technology, and Tianjin Machinery Bureau is known for its rough, large-scale, standardized production, often a product design to them, will be the simplestThe economic outlook is presented, taking the railroad rails designed in Guangxu eleven years as an example, the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau uses the best rebar, and adopts German-style connection technology, its quality is almost comparable to the rails produced in Britain and the United States, and the Tianjin Machinery Bureau uses the cheapest cast steel, using a simple nut butt, the same length, its cost is less than one-third of the rails of the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau, and under normal geological and climatic conditions, its service life is almost no different from other such as the Fujian Shipbuilding Bureau specializing in shipbuilding, The Northeast Machinery Bureau specializes in the research of boilers, steam engines and other power, and Sun Desheng specializes in munitions metallurgy, and they have each embarked on their own path to success

In addition, Guan Xuqing also followed the example of Japan in later generations, and invested a large amount of money and manpower in the shipbuilding industry, which purchased a large number of French equipment, hoping to lead the world in the field of navy

As for how to properly handle the relationship between technology and the expansion of scale, and to maintain a kind of healthy competition, it is necessary to properly handle the third problem, that is, how to privatize these enterprises that are deeply branded with bureaucratic capital, so that they can truly return to the laws of the market, and that they are no longer the qualifications of a certain official to be promoted, and the products produced are not regardless of the cost, but only the problem of indiscriminate filling of the number of stubborn problems that really needs to be solved urgently but is difficult to solve. The government-run enterprises in this period were not as wasteful and resentful as in history, on the contrary, they played an important role in two foreign wars, but Guan Xuqing clearly knew that this was a superficial phenomenon, or it could be said that it was a symptom rather than a cure, and such a "public-owned" enterprise itself had many drawbacks, such as enterprises were susceptible to administrative intervention, rather than being governed by market laws; The sustainability of enterprise development is insufficient, and it is easy to produce a situation where the development direction is chaotic; The privatization of these enterprises is the only feasible and reliable long-term solution, however, this is bound to touch the interests of a number of bureaucrats, especially the Western-style officials who have devoted a lot of energy to these government-run enterprises, and their backlash is bound to be extremely violent

Just when Guan Xuqing was preparing to develop industry on a large scale and accumulate "gambling capital," there were problems in both the south and the north, needless to say, the frequent harassment by Russia had already given Guan Xuqing a big headache, and small-scale riots and rebellions also occurred in Vietnam and northern Vietnam provinces in the south

The Russian Guan Xuqing in the north has already sent Li Hongzhang to negotiate with the Russians, frankly speaking, Guan Xuqing has no bottom in his heart at this time, if Russia tears up the most divided border line between the two countries, in the face of the wolf-like Tsarist Russia, he really did not think about whether to fight or not, after all, the British troops in India and Malaysia have been peeping at Burma that has just been included in the Qing Dynasty for a long time

The situation in the south is much simpler, it is all done by some former Vietnamese officials who cherish their homeland and are dissatisfied with the loss of their status in the government, and the scale is only dozens or hundreds of people looting in the countryside

For the two provinces of Annan, Guan Xuqing is actually not very worried, a place, China has enough influence on it since ancient times, compared to Tibet and Mongolia, to the early years of the Ming Dynasty, here is still a province of China, and Annam has also set six consecutive prime ministers are all Han people from China, like the ancestral hometown of Fujian Chen family has served as the prime minister of Annam for three consecutive dynasties; Second, culturally speaking, the Yue people do not have their own script, they have always used Chinese characters, many Yue people in the north and the people in Guangxi and Yunnan are fundamentally the same ancestor, many people can speak Chinese, and the south is under the colonial rule of the French for more than 30 years, the resistance force is almost exhausted, and the people's identification with the homeland can almost be said to be none, and this land is deeply influenced by Confucian culture, and its basic ruling system is almost the same as that in China, all of which are local clan systems. Guan Xuqing used the Han Chinese and local clans as the basis for his rule, and selected low-ranking officials from among them, thus firmly controlling the land