Newspapers all over China, without exception, are debating the results of the general election of the National Congress, which has just ended.

Acting President Xu Shichang's unexpected defeat, Duan Qirui's entire ups and downs as president, as well as the expectations of the new premier Zhang Lan, and the low profile of the new vice president, vice premier, and minister of military affairs Xiao Yimin, are all nothing compared to the shock brought to the people by the series of new bills passed by the first session of the two houses.

The promulgation and implementation of the "Press and Publication Law" alone has deprived many opposition forces of the most important weapon of public opinion propaganda, and the "Press and Publication Law" has set one high threshold after another under the general principle of press freedom.

National newspaper and press and publication entities have a three-month adjustment period, and must re-register and renew their business licenses within three months.

For example, the new law clearly defines that all newspapers, publishing houses, and printing houses are press and publication enterprises with cultural business surnames, and must comply with the principle of market access, have the legal personality of a reading enterprise, enjoy freedom of the press and the freedom of employment, and must also bear corresponding legal and social obligations; Press and publication enterprises must have office space, distribution departments, printing houses and perfect articles of association, press and publication enterprises reading legal persons, news practitioners, must be registered with the provincial press and publication management department, news reporters must participate in the provincial political axe press and publication management department held by the qualification examination, the results can receive a unified national press card.

The promulgation and implementation of the "Press and Publication Law" means that all the many newspapers that are in the form of family workshops and are free from the management of the political axe will be eliminated, and measures such as the examination and registration of legal person qualifications, the re-examination and renewal of unified qualification certificates for journalists, and the filing of information on employees have completely cut off the subversive tools of the [***] forces, and the many tabloids that have relied on rumor-mongering, deception, slander and slander for many years to survive will no longer have room for survival.

The reason why the "Press and Publication Law" caused tremendous controversy in the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the National Congress, but was finally passed with 73 percent support, is entirely because the law does not violate the principle of press freedom, but is of great historical significance for regulating the national press and publication market and promoting the rapid development and improvement of the publishing industry.

To sum it up in a popular sentence: as long as you have the money to invest in the press and publishing industry, have a fixed office space and printing house, have your own employees, and obtain a legal business license, then you want to scold the political axe, scold the officials, and scold the enemy There is no problem, provided that you bear your own responsibility, if the person you scolded is wronged, and file a lawsuit with the court accordingly, you have to honestly go to the court to respond to the lawsuit, show evidence to defend yourself, and whether you can win the lawsuit depends on your ability.

Regrettably, due to the disagreement between the two houses of the bourgeoisie, the Labor Security Law, which had been in force throughout Sichuan Province for two years, could not be passed, but the law was allowed to be implemented on a trial basis in the provinces south of the Yangtze River under the jurisdiction of Nanjing, and the bill became the "Trial Draft of the Labor Security Law."

According to the effect of the law in Sichuan Province for two years, as long as it can be popularized and implemented in the provinces south of the Yangtze River, it is only the major benefits and positive political impact that will result from it, which is a great victory for the Mingzhu Party and Xiao Yimin himself, and the economic development of the entire South China will surely leave North China far behind, not to mention the effective alleviation of labor-management relations, the resolution of social contradictions, and the stabilization of social order. Enhance the credibility of the political axe and other benefits.

Another regret is that the Ministry of National Defense, which was established through legislation, has been openly and covertly opposed by the generals of the Beiyang Army, and it will take another year of preparation before it can be implemented, and the "nationalization of the armed forces" advocated by Xiao Yimin still needs to wait for a year before it can see the light of day.

For this reason, Xiao Yimin did not hesitate to reduce the number of the southern army in exchange for the approval of the reorganization plan, and successfully unified the entire [***] army under the name of the "Republic of China National Defense Force".

As a result, the Southern Army, which was nominally under the direct control of the Central Military and Political Department, could only be reduced to 25 divisions, numbered "36th and 60th Divisions of the National Defense Forces," and the army-level establishment became a strategic unit, which would only be set up during the war and abolished after the war.

However, on the whole, the new plan for the establishment of the national defense force is just a gimmick with nothing on the surface, and it can only fool ordinary people, and the unruly Beiyang generals will not really implement it in their own troops at all; if it were not for Duan Qirui and Xiao Yimin's stubborn grasp of the money bag of military spending, I am afraid that the Beiyang generals who regard the army as their own private property will not even bother to look at the new number in the name of the national defense force, and even if the Beiyang armies reluctantly change to the new number in order to smoothly obtain military spending, they will not really reorganize their ranks in accordance with the regulations.

After the reorganization plan was announced, it seemed that the southern army under the command of Xiao Yimin suffered a big loss, but in fact, Xiao Yimin was eager to suffer this loss, because Tang Jiyao in Yunnan, Lu Rongting in Guangxi, Yang Zengxin in Xinjiang Province, and Zhang Zuolin in Northeast China did not agree to this plan.

After repeated discussions, Duan Qirui and Xiao Yimin made a certain compromise, agreeing in principle that the above provinces should organize themselves and uniformly use the name "border guards," which belong to local troops, and that the military expenses of the border defense armies should be borne by themselves during non-war periods.

Xiao Yimin took this opportunity to stuff the two provinces of Xikang and Hainan into it, and the overseers who got the benefits knew that they were tired, and they were embarrassed to refute Xiao Yimin's face, and finally they all raised their hands to pass, and they were all happy for a while, so Xiao Yimin was able to put the eight divisions that had been reduced under the guise of "border guards", and still fought the idea of the Shandong and Shaanxi armies in their hearts, and then tried to put the five divisions on the heads of the "coast guard force" and the "army aviation unit" that had been established.

In this way, the existing army under Xiao Yimin's command not only does not need to be reduced, but can also have two more divisions.

On 1 March, the five-day "Nanjing Military Enlargement Conference" came to a successful conclusion, and Chen Jiongming, who had received the numbers of the 59th and 60th Divisions of the National Defense Forces, returned to Guangzhou with joy, and the generals of Yunnan and Guangxi provinces, who had received Xiao Yimin's approval, were completely self-managing and self-developing.

After visiting the major factories and enterprises in Nanjing, which had been put into operation one after another, Xiao Yimin and more than 10 generals, including Bao Jiqing, Xu Xiaogang, Zhong Ying, and Zhou Daogang, who had returned to Sichuan and Xikang provinces together, boarded the 2,500-ton new-class destroyer "Bashu," newly equipped by Navy Commander Liu Guanxiong.

On the morning of 4 March, Xiao Yimin and others boarded the Wuhan wharf and, accompanied by Shi Xingchuan, the overseer of Hubei, visited the Hanyang Arsenal with great interest.

With the support of the Nanjing Xingying and Sichuan military enterprises, the Hanyang Engineer Factory has long been a different from what it used to be, with 32 spacious and neat production workshops, replacing the original old and messy workshops, two pistol production lines with a monthly output of 2,000 imitation German C96 military pistols, and three imitation Mauser rifle production lines with a monthly output of 2,400 pieces, and a full set of 75 artillery shell production equipment and rifle bullet production equipment imported from the United States and Britain at the beginning of last year initially reached the design capacity of 5,000 shells and 100,000 rifle bullets per month. The quality of the product has improved dramatically.

The Hanyang Arsenal has also successfully learned from the experience of the Sichuan military industrial enterprises and subcontracted the production of weapons spare parts to more than 40 private manufacturing plants in the Wuhan area, with the result that the production efficiency and management quality have been steadily improved, and the Beiyang armies, which are in dire straits, and the local garrison units of Hunan, Hubei, and Henan provinces, have become the largest buyers of the Hanyang Arsenal.

The Hanyang factory has also summed up many years of production experience through its own efforts, introduced equipment from Sichuan, expanded the types of weapons production, and once the production line of imitation German MG08 water-cooled heavy machine gun that is being intensively debugged is put into operation, it will further enhance the manufacturing capacity of the Hanyang factory, and the Hanyang factory, which has a glorious history, will reach a higher level.

However, the person in charge of the Hanyang plant and Shi Xingchuan and other Hubei generals deeply regretted that several major military enterprises in Sichuan were still unwilling to transfer the production equipment and technology of the 75 artillery and light machine guns.

In this regard, Xiao Yimin specially convened a meeting of Hubei generals and the person in charge of the Hanyang factory to explain:

"It's not that I'm unwilling to transfer equipment and technology, but that I vetoed your proposal three times, and the reason is not at all the so-called competition for the market that has been circulated by the outside world, and it's not the church apprentices who starve to death as the workers and masters say, the real reason is that the production equipment and technology of the major factories in Sichuan have seriously lagged behind, and through the assessment of our weapons research institute and more than 100 foreign weapons experts, the equipment and technology of all artillery production plants in China, including casting, forging and special smelting technology, have lagged far behind European and American countries. It can be said that except for the seventy-fivemm light infantry gun produced by the Yucheng Jialing Group, all other artillery, including light machine gun production equipment and technology, is outdated!

"I have to do a lot of things when I return to Sichuan this time, and one of the important tasks is to convene a meeting on the development of military enterprises, you can send people to participate, everyone is a brother enterprise, there is nothing to scruple about, here, I can first reveal to you that the two artillery production lines and a full set of production technology we have imported from Europe have been shipped to Yucheng at the beginning of last month, and in another month and a half, we will be able to trial produce four advanced 75 field guns and 120 caliber heavy artillery.

"These four new types of artillery not only greatly reduce the weight, but also have a longer range, greater power, higher accuracy and higher firing frequency, and it is no exaggeration to say that they have completely reached the advanced level in the world at present. Therefore, we still have to be patient, as long as the Yucheng Jialing Group is successfully put into production, the next step will be your Hanyang factory, which has been included in the military development plan of Nanjing Xingying.

In the past two years, the Ordnance Research Institute in Chengdu has been studying more than a dozen models of German M1913 and MG15 light machine guns, French Hatch Chase light machine guns and Chanhard M1915 light machine guns, Denmark's Madsen light machine guns, American M1918 light machine guns, and British Lewis light machine guns. So far, I have finally come up with four sets of design plans, and have produced sample guns, just waiting for me to go back and make a final decision.

"But so far, I don't have much confidence, because once this time it is finalized and mass-produced, there will be no changes in the next ten years. Ladies and gentlemen, Sichuan's military production has been going smoothly for several years, but in fact it is difficult! The research and design of light machine guns and heavy machine guns alone has taken more than 300 Chinese and foreign technical experts for two years, and I still don't know whether it has borne fruit. If you don't believe me, and you still want to introduce the backward light machine gun production lines and production technology in Sichuan, I can reply to you now: no problem, send someone to Chengdu Huaxi Factory to contact, or it won't be long before you can pull it back. ”

The participating generals, the person in charge of the Hanyang plant, and the technical experts listened to Xiao Yimin's words, and they were moved and did not put forward any more special requirements, because they knew the difficulties and hard-won ones.

However, just when Xiao Yimin was about to board the warship, Shi Xingchuan, who saw him off, was embarrassed to pull Xiao Yimin aside and whispered to buy the two light machine gun production lines of the Huaxi Factory, and repeatedly explained that they were all strongly requested by the person in charge of the Hanyang Factory and technical experts, and also said that everyone thought that the light machine guns produced by the Huaxi Factory and equipped with the Sichuan Army on a large scale were actually very advanced, and the Hanyang Factory was willing to spend one million yuan to introduce these two semi-new and old production lines and a full set of drawings.

Xiao Yimin couldn't cry or laugh, shook his head and immediately agreed, but he was saddened by the suspicion and short-sightedness of Hubei.

(To be continued)