On the whole, France's recovery speed after the First World War is still good, but the current economic aggregate is beginning to approach it, and it should be said that it still suffered the heavy damage of the First World War, and this long effect is a kind of chronic disease of incurable diseases that continues to consume France's vitality.

As China grows faster, the gap between China and France will continue to widen.

According to the estimates of the Imperial Cabinet, by about 1935, there was basically no obvious gap between the average education level of the Empire and that of European countries with a middle level. After 1940, there was no gap between China and the United States in the average quality of the people, and at that time, with the size of the empire's population, the real development period of the Chinese empire would come.

Coupled with the gradual implementation of Project 201 and the gradual improvement of the industrial and technological level of the empire, the current optimistic estimate is that there will be a major watershed in 1930-1935, and from 1930 onwards, the empire will enter a new stage of development, and the imperial generation born after 1911 will gradually grow up, which is the generation that truly receives universal education, and they are the real hope of China.

At that time, the empire's urbanization rate will initially reach 40%, the population with junior high school education will account for 1/4 of the total population, and the population with secondary school education will account for 1/10.

From this watershed in 1930, the empire will enter the Fifth Five-Year Plan and the Sixth Five-Year Plan, and the era of the true great recovery of the Chinese nation will come.

Compared with the powerful Chinese Empire in Song Biao's mind, 1935, the empire was still just on the road, but considering the arrival of the Great Depression in 1930 and the further militarism and aggression of the economy at that time, even if it was not the best time to expand armaments, Song Biao still decided to temporarily increase the size of the navy.

While building four Yuzhou-class battleships in four years, the empire was also preparing to continue to build four 10,000-ton heavy cruisers and four armored cruisers, as well as two aircraft carriers, so as to expand the size of the empire's capital ships to a ceiling of 275,000 tons in 1929, with three aircraft carriers, 22 10,000-ton cruisers, 12 light cruisers of 5,000-7.5 thousand tons, a total of more than 180 destroyers, frigates, and submarines, and a total tonnage of 900,000 tons of naval standard displacement.

From 1907 to the establishment of the Northeast Navy and shipbuilding industry, from 1913 to the gradual large-scale manufacture of warships, plus the reparations of the First World War, the empire continued to accumulate the navy base, and constantly cultivated the central navy of the empire, and now finally has the strength to threaten the navy.

It was not until 1930, after 23 years of enduring humiliation and difficult development, that the Imperial Navy was finally able to threaten the Imperial Navy on this scale, forcing it not to adopt extreme policies at a moment that would determine its fate.

If it is really a naval war between China and China in the end, Song Biao will not hesitate to do it, even if he is defeated, as long as he stifles the expansion of Yueben, China will be the victor in the entire grand strategy.

Just considering the current shipbuilding capacity of the empire, Song Biao considered producing four 10,000-ton heavy cruisers and some light cruisers in France in the form of debt settlement, and he secretly negotiated this matter with Marshal Xia Fei that night.

Just as Song Biao was worried, Marshal Xia Fei also believed that if the Chinese navy expanded too rapidly in a short period of time, it was likely to lead to a violent conflict with the Chinese navy in a certain area.

Marshal Xia Fei's judgment made Song Biao even more worried about the naval war, but he had to send it when he was ready to shoot.

There is no way out, and neither is China, and China must do everything it can to curb its expansion.

In the early hours of the morning, Song Biao took a special train back to Yanjing, on the way, he has been thinking about the answer, and the only answer can only be on the aircraft carrier and submarine, the empire must build more powerful aircraft carriers and submarines, and strike a fatal blow to Yue Ben at a critical moment.

The next morning, after returning to the Central Palace of the Imperial Court, and having enjoyed breakfast with his family despite the hard work, Song Biao went directly to the office without taking any rest, and called the Minister of the Navy Song Wenhui over to discuss the specific shipbuilding plan.

After the establishment of the empire, the military expenditure of the navy has been on an upward trend, and it is a steady rise, which is very little affected by the world naval competition, especially in the last five years, with the gradual improvement of the level of national ships, metallurgy, steam turbines and the overall heavy industry, the empire's naval expenditure has increased most obviously, and the tonnage of shipbuilding has gradually increased.

In terms of the layout of shipyards, the empire cultivated three major shipbuilding bases in Jinzhou, Shanghai, and Fuzhou through long-term support policies, and at the same time established five medium-sized shipbuilding bases in Guangzhou, Luanzhou, Jinzhou, Qingdao, and Wuhu, with the three shipbuilding bases taking the construction of battleships and heavy cruisers as the main military orders, and the five medium-sized shipbuilding bases focusing on light cruisers, destroyers, defense ships, patrol boats, torpedo boats, and other auxiliary ships.

In the next five-year plan, Guangzhou, Luanzhou, and Qingdao will also become new large-scale shipbuilding bases, and Wuhan, Ningbo, and Haizhou will also become new medium-sized shipbuilding bases.

Beginning in 1920, with the steady growth of the national finance, the military expenditure of the Imperial Navy gradually increased from 200 million yuan to 320 million yuan in 1925, making the total naval expenditure in the past five years reach 1.28 billion yuan, with equipment expenses accounting for 1/3 and scientific research expenses accounting for 14%.

It is this scale of military spending that has enabled the Imperial Central Navy to build a large number of new ships in five years, and the main ships at this stage are 4 Aurora-class battleships, 2 Qingzhou-class battleships, and 2 Combined Forces-class battleships, and the shipbuilding costs for the first two Yuzhou-class battleships and the Zhengzhou have been allocated, and it is expected to be officially built at the two major shipyards in Jinzhou and Fuzhou in July and September.

In addition, the empire has three 10,000-ton cruisers: Weihai-class heavy cruisers, Fushun-class armored cruisers, and Xilingol-class light cruisers, 4 Weihai-class and Xilingol-class active cruisers, 2 Fushun-class cruisers, and the Dandong-class light cruisers commissioned in February this year have a displacement of 7,250 tons, and 4 are expected to be built, and their predecessors, the Fuzhou-class and Luanzhou-class, have two each.

On the 5,000-ton light cruisers, the empire has 4 Xiangyang-class ships in service, and there are new Liaoyang-class ships in the plan, and the light cruisers from 3,000 tons to 4.5 thousand tons have Fuyang and Jinyang classes.

In the regulations of the Imperial Navy, cruisers below the 3,000-ton class are not classified as cruisers, and the destroyers in service are Huai'an and Zhenjiang.

After a long 17 years of steady development, the total tonnage of the standard displacement of the Imperial Central Navy has reached 630,000 tons, with 8 capital battleships accounting for 172,000 tons, 10 10,000-ton cruisers accounting for 94,000 tons, 23 other light cruisers accounting for 123,000 tons, 26 destroyers accounting for 31,000 tons, 24 frigates accounting for 27,000 tons, 43 medium and small submarines of the CS-1/2/3 series, other auxiliary ships accounting for 84,000 tons, and 1 aircraft carrier accounting for 22,000 tons.

In this process, some of the old warships, patrol boats, and even some of the old light cruisers were converted and transferred to the coast guard, so that the coast guard also has a maritime armed force of nearly 150,000 tons of low-armed configuration.

These are the full strengths of the Imperial Navy.

It was precisely because of such a naval foundation that Song Biao dared to launch a larger shipbuilding plan, forcing Yue Ben to give up the expansion strategy at the most critical moment.

According to Song Biao's plan, in the next four years, the Imperial Central Navy will add 4 super dreadnought battleships, 12 10,000-ton cruisers, 10 7,000-ton light cruisers, about 20 destroyers, defense ships, and submarines, and two aircraft carriers, and the entire navy will add nearly 300,000 tons of tonnage.

Song Biao's plan far exceeded the original Sixth Five-Year Plan formulated by the Admiralty, and the number of ships built increased by nearly 40%, and Song Biao's ideas on the requirements for warships were also very different from before, which caught Navy Minister Song Wenhui off guard.

The two spent a morning recalculating all the shipbuilding plans, specifications, and expenditures, and finally confirmed that they would add nearly 700 million yuan to the navy's military expenditure, of which about two-fifths were spent on equipment, and about three-fifths of the training, maintenance, expansion of the naval base, personnel expenses, research and development, and other expenses combined.

The largest expenditure is four Yuzhou-class battleships, as a treaty-type super battleship, the cost of a single is 34 million yuan, 35% higher than the 30,000-ton Qingzhou-class, but if you calculate the military expenses and political axe subsidies in the development process of the Yuzhou-class, the unit price will be one of the most expensive treaty battleships in the world.

The 16-inch main gun of the Yuzhou-class battleship is based on the German 15-inch main gun, using the latest metallurgical and forging technology, so that the body barrel is reduced from 7 layers to 3 layers, and the main gun uses a perforated calculator to assist aiming, optical sighting device and electrified bomb conveyor and loader, if the radar project of the Imperial Central Electronics Research Institute can keep up, It was expected that the first generation of military shipborne radar would be officially installed from 1927 to 1930, and for this reason, the Yuzhou-class battleships considered the needs of this modification from the beginning, and the main command tower was designed to be relatively high, and a large space for modification was retained.

The power system of the Yuzhou-class battleship consisted of 8 oil-fired boilers, 4 steam turbines and 6 diesel generators, and the rated output of the main engine was 193,000 horsepower.

Coupled with the progress of welding technology, the empire has invested as much as 173 million yuan in research funds in the development process of the entire Yuzhou-class battleship, and this high scale of investment has also allowed the empire to make great progress in the entire shipbuilding, metallurgy, power, and electronics industries.

Because of the large scale of the use of new technology, the Imperial Central Navy also had more concerns about the Yuzhou-class battleships, and then hoped to wait until after 1933 to consider the construction of two new Yuzhou-class improved Treaty Super Battleships.

Time disappeared in the desolate ears like a shuttle, and before I knew it, it was noon, but Song Biao, who had slept in the train for a short time last night, felt a little tired, his left hand was a cigar from the plateau, and his right hand was full of raw peanuts from the eternal red clay cliff, which disturbed his sleepiness in such a strange way.

When Marshal Xia Fei returns to Yanjing tomorrow, he will discuss with Marshal Xia Fei the specific standards and quantities of ships to be built by France, and finally it is inevitable to discuss the cost, which is why he has to formulate a new plan more quickly.

His worries about the Yuzhou-class battleships are also the same as others, and the excessive pursuit of advanced technology will inevitably produce a lot of immaturity.

After a short moment of thought, Song Biao and the Navy Minister Song Wenhui in front of him asked: "Can we let the Jinzhou and Fuzhou shipyards speed up the manufacturing, strive to be put into service at the end of next year, and build two more ships in the original factory immediately after half a year after all the test matters, and the main guns, boilers, armor and other devices are ready, if it is determined that the design will be modified, one is to modify it as little as possible, and the other is that all the cost of modification and other losses will be borne by the navy." ”

Song Wenhui thought for a while and replied: "Then we didn't achieve the goal of the navy, we considered separating one of the last two super dreadnoughts for Jiangnan Shipyard to produce, their equipment has been updated in place, if there is no contract, the loss on the shipyard side is not small." ”

Song Biao said: "Assign the contract for the manufacture of two aircraft carriers and two armored cruisers to them. ”

Song Wenhui said: "The test work of the aircraft carrier and the manufacture of the first aircraft carrier are the responsibility of the Fuzhou Shipyard, it is better to assign the construction task of the Yuzhou-class to Jiangnan, the contract of the two aircraft carriers and four armored cruisers is also a compensation for the Fuzhou side, not to mention that the two main factories of Fuzhou and Jinzhou are actually Far Eastern departments, and the Jinzhou side also has two Yuzhou-class contracts anyway." ”

Song Biao nodded, thinking that such a plan was also good, so he said, "Then let's do it first." ”

Song Wenhui asked: "What about the new naval military spending, can the cabinet agree?" ”

Song Biao pondered for a moment and said: "This part of the expenditure does not need to be considered by the cabinet, the military department has a surplus of more than 700 million military spending after the end of the Sino-Soviet war, and these military expenditures have not been included in the normal statistical category, and the central military department directly entrusts CITIC to invest overseas, and the vast majority of them are entrusted to the Bank of America Securities Company to invest in the US stock market. ”

Song Wenhui tentatively asked, "What is the approximate total amount?" ”

Song Biao quietly raised his eyes to look at him, knowing that he couldn't help but be greedy and wanted to fight for more military expenses for the navy.

In other words, the timing of this military intervention in the U.S. securities market is really good, it happened to be the post-war crisis stage of the United States, and the bottom was bought when it entered the market, and every year since then it has been a bull market, for these entrusted investments, CITIC has taken 1/3 to buy index stocks, 1/3 to buy small and medium-sized enterprise stocks, and 1/3 to use credit venture capital, taking advantage of the U.S. bull market to follow the Vanderbilt family to earn amazing profits in the U.S. securities market.

770 million yuan was invested, and five years later, it has grown to 1.043 billion US dollars.

This kind of investment behavior is not only China, the U.S. stock market from the end of the post-war crisis at the end of 1922 set off an unprecedented surge, many small countries have bought the foreign exchange reserves of the United States stock index, including the Netherlands, Belgium, etc., and the main foreign exchange reserves of these countries are the pound, as the Bank of England in response to the risk of insufficient gold reserves to adopt a high interest rate hike policy, the reserves of these countries have successively purchased British government bonds, resulting in a large amount of capital withdrawn from the U.S. stock market.

Foreign exchange reserves were forced to take measures by small central banks after World War I with the imbalance in gold reserves, which was the predecessor of the post-World War II linked exchange rate, during which countries were also generally inexperienced in investing and managing foreign exchange reserves, and trust in large conglomerates such as Morgan, Mellon, and the Americas was too high.

It should be said that the great boom in the US stock market before 1929 was not caused by the United States itself, but by the world's anxiety and insecurity about the traditional European market.

Song Biao now estimates that in the next few years, he will be able to gradually recover the secret military spending invested in the United States and use it to purchase warships and increase armament spending.

He didn't answer Song Wenhui's question, but thought about it for a while before saying to Song Wenhui: "The navy will increase military spending by 750 million yuan in the future, and it is necessary to complete a new expansion plan within this range. ”

As soon as Song Wenhui heard this, he knew that the amount of this secret military expenditure was not small, but it was a pity that he did not have the share of the navy.

He thought that the rest were the army and the air force, in fact, he was wrong, the air force could get a part, and the army almost didn't have a penny, and by this year, Song Biao had officially and secretly launched the 7 projects of the 201s series, each of which required a lot of expenses, even if some of them were subsidized to support the enterprise to be responsible, at least in the 201s3 nuclear research project, the empire's expenditure could not be less than 20 billion yuan.

There are always many things in this empire that only His Majesty the Emperor knows, and there are many secret works that only His Majesty the Emperor knows.

The problem of military spending has been solved, and there are still many problems in terms of technical standards.

Song Wenhui didn't know how to discuss with His Majesty the Emperor one by one, he just had a hunch that the Emperor had a lot of new ideas for the construction of the Central Navy, a completely different idea from the previous one, but he couldn't say it clearly.

After thinking about it, he still added to Song Biao: "Your Majesty, the matter of military spending is not a matter anymore, but is the new cruiser design standard lower?" At present, it is not possible to confirm how big the gap between the 6-inch and 8-inch main gun cruisers is, considering that the former has a very fast rate of fire, especially after adopting the new tube retractor, the 6-inch and 8-inch are exactly on the dividing line between the two levels, and the rate of fire is almost twice that of the latter, but from the point of view of threat, it is always the heavy artillery that is more threatening. ”

Song Biao thought about it, and Song Wenhui instructed: "You guys study more, you can directly do the exercise test to see what the results are, overall, I still mean the same as in the past, especially with reference to the tests done by the United States and us in recent years, with the rapid development of the aviation industry, the status of aircraft carriers will become more and more important, and the navy must have a comprehensive and long-term strategic development of this new type of warship, and also fully adapt to the tactical and equipment changes brought about by this new warship." Our initial decision to design the Danton-class light cruisers was also to consider this issue. In order for carrier-based aircraft to take off effectively, the maximum speed of the aircraft carrier must reach more than 33 knots, and the battleship simply followed this speed for a long time. If we take the aircraft carrier as the main fleet core, a formation needs two aircraft carriers, at most two battleships are needed around, once the aircraft carrier advances at high speed, the only warship that can follow the aircraft carrier for a long time is the battle cruiser, but the cost of the battle cruiser is high and the cost efficiency ratio is low, so the best choice is also a light cruiser that can also ensure a speed of more than 33 knots. There is a lot of work worth studying, and the Admiralty must seize the time to make the best judgment and choice, after all, the aircraft carrier has a longer attack range, once the aircraft carrier is the core of the fleet, whether the cruiser chooses 6-inch guns or 8-inch guns, itself is not a very important issue, it is better to leave more space for anti-aircraft guns. ”

Song Wenhui asked: "The emperor means that although the Dandong level has been developed in accordance with this point, its level is still not enough?" ”

Song Biao can't say that, now he knows more about the navy, but he is definitely not a real naval tactician, whether the Dandong-class cruiser with a displacement of 7,250 tons and a top speed of 34 knots is suitable as an escort warship for aircraft carriers, this is really an inaccurate thing, which requires more research, and even a conclusion can only be reached in war.

After a little thought, he and Song Wenhui reminded: "Be prepared, and make mistakes in development again, but if there is no question of whether there is or not, how can we know what is right or wrong?" ”

Song Wenhui immediately received the order and said: "Emperor Shengming, after your subordinates go back, they will start to prepare for the design and verification of the Dandong-class follow-up light cruisers. ”

Song Biao bowed slightly.

Although a large number of secret tests were carried out within the Imperial Central Navy through the two earliest test aircraft carriers, and even an early battleship compensated by the Austro-Hungarian Navy and two old French battleships were used as target ships, on the one hand, the results of the secret experiments were very amazing, and the US Navy also conveyed similar information, but like the United States, Britain and other ambitious naval powers, the dispute between artillery and aircraft carriers within the Imperial Navy was still fierce.

Song Biao is undoubtedly an aircraft carrier faction, and he has always been a world-renowned military commander who favors the use of new technologies and weapons, and has always been good at formulating new tactics around new weapons, or designing new equipment around new tactics.

It is precisely because of the emperor's support that the aircraft carrier faction within the imperial central navy has gradually increased, but it is mainly concentrated among the middle and lower-level naval officers, including Song Wenhui, Sa Zhenbing, and Cheng Biguang, who has retired from the Shipbuilding Industry University, still have a lot of criticism of aircraft carriers.

In any case, the emperor's support was always the most amazing force, and even Song Wenhui and Sa Zhenbing, who had all kinds of doubts in their hearts, had to support the development of aircraft carriers as much as possible within the scope of military spending.

He finalized a four-year plan for the construction of warships with Song Wenhui, and Song Biao continued to count the list of warships that needed to be purchased from France.

Song Biao considered this issue quite deeply, and one of the most important tasks to maintain long-term trust between the two allies is to carry out military cooperation, and military cooperation between China and France has been at a low point in the past few years, and at most it is only in the development and defense of chemical weapons.

From the perspective of the overall situation, if China and France continue to enhance mutual trust and alliance relations after the renewal of the contract, then a certain degree of military cooperation must be carried out, and the French industry has shrunk quite sharply in recent years, and it is urgent to maintain some new orders, and Marshal Xia Fei also believes that the price will definitely be easy to negotiate.

Regardless of whether Song Wenhui supported it or not, he finally put forward this list and asked for the purchase of 14 light cruisers from France, while the 10,000-ton cruisers originally considered were still required to be built domestically.

There is a reason for Song Wenhui's insistence, because the 10,000-ton cruisers of the Empire, whether light or heavy, actually have the characteristics of pocket battlecruisers and pocket battleships, which makes the cruisers of the Imperial Navy have many special surnames in defense design, and on the basis of absorbing the key protection of the German region, a certain balance has been carried out, and special steel for FEC series alloy special ships is completely used.

The Fushun-class armored cruiser is considered a heavy cruiser of the Washington Treaty by standard, with a standard displacement of 9,750 tons and eight 8-inch twin guns, which is problematic in itself, and once the treaty expires, or there is a need for war, its main guns will immediately be transformed into eight 12-inch twin-mounted guns, turning into a pocket dreadnought.

If the Fushun-class armored cruiser can also increase its displacement by 3,400 tons by adding mine protection and other large-scale improvements, it will become a former dreadnought with a standard displacement of 13,150 tons and a full load of 15,000 tons.

In addition to this class of heavy cruisers, although the Weihai class and Xilin Gol class belong to different divisions of heavy cruisers and light cruisers, they actually belong to the compact battle cruiser treaty ship type, and they are designed to retain a very good and easy room for improvement, and in wartime, they can quickly expand their displacement by 3,000 tons through lightning protection and air defense retrofitting and transformation within a few months, and the biggest difference between the two is the difference between the use of 8-inch and 6-inch guns.

In fact, France and Italy are really because of sufficient military spending, so they can only continue to build real light cruisers in a down-to-earth manner, and the United States is too powerful to basically ignore the threat of the British, and there are very few fancy games in this regard, and between China and China are the two most powerful countries to toss.

The empire had a special design and need for cruisers, each built was equal to a battleship, not only the cost was extremely high, but the technology, design and ship steel had to have a continuation surname, and there were more places of secrecy, and the construction in the country could be concealed by making false quotations, and once it was built in France, the whole world would know about it.

Considering that there were indeed many concerns in this regard, Song Biao finally agreed to the plan to purchase only destroyers and defense ships from France, and also to purchase four submarines from France, to see if there were any new breakthroughs in the thinking and design of French submarine manufacturing.

After all, China is not the China of the past.

After years of hard work and rapid development, the shipbuilding industry and warship manufacturing level of the Chinese Empire have reached the standard of competition with the world powers, and through successive cooperation with Britain, France, the United States, Germany, Russia and other countries, it has gradually developed its own characteristics, and there is really no need to buy more warships from France.

Song Wenhui is deeply confident in this, and he believes that there is no problem even if these shipbuilding plans are all implemented in China, and the overall scale of China's shipbuilding industry can be completely digested, but the impact of this sudden surge and pause on the domestic shipbuilding industry is not very good.

(To be continued)