Benefiting from its unique geographical location, Shanghai has maintained rapid economic growth since its birth.

As early as the fifth year of Xuande in the Ming Dynasty, that is, in 1430 AD, the Ming Dynasty Yingtian Governor set up a county government here. At that time, Shanghai County was still under the jurisdiction of Nanzhili, which was later Songjiang Prefecture. By the end of the Ming Dynasty, the Shanghai area had gradually developed into a famous "southeast city" with many shops and restaurants. In 1842, as part of the Treaty of Nanjing, it was listed as one of the five treaty ports, and the United States, Britain, and France successively opened concessions in Shanghai, which brought humiliation to this land and made Shanghai a veritable "Far Eastern adventurer's paradise". Later, the Republic of China regained the concessions and extraterritoriality of various countries, and Shanghai has maintained its original integration of Chinese and Western, free and open urban environment because of its early experience, which attracted businessmen, aristocrats, literati and artists from all over the country and the world, and also brought a lot of capital and emerging technologies to the local area.

By the end of last year, when it was officially designated as a municipality directly under the central government by the government of the Republic of China, Shanghai's local transportation facilities such as water conservancy, energy, wharves, and trams had already developed quite well. Thanks to the guidance of the central government of Seris and the advantages of its own industrial base in the early days, the whole city now has a large number of silk reeling factories, textile factories, leather shoe factories, edible oil mills, food processing factories, flour factories, watch companies, bicycle factories and shipyards, including a large number of industrial and mining enterprises, including permanent brand bicycles, Shanghai brand watches, butterfly brand sewing machines and other famous brand enterprises that are well-known throughout the country. Shanghai's Huangpu District, centered on these well-known enterprises, has gradually become the upstream "heart engine" of the entire Yangtze River Delta emerging light industrial zone.

After inspecting the Baoshan Iron and Steel Base under construction, Chen Zeyu visited various factories, enterprises, schools, and Wusongkou Fortress units under the East China Sea Fleet in the following days.

As one of the early open port cities of the Republic, Shanghai received special support from the central government in terms of funds and talents, and a system of primary and secondary schools at all levels was established one after another a year ago. In addition, Shanghai's institutions of higher learning also occupy two seats in the Republic's 866 Plan, which is an educational plan formulated by Mr. Ouyang Geng of the Ministry of Education, which refers to the establishment of a number of high-standard secondary and higher education institutions throughout the country. Among them, 660 secondary institutions are located in 660 cities across the country starting from the county seat, and due to the lack of domestic high-level education resources, the government has temporarily set up only 8 institutions, and after two years of intense construction, all of them have been completed. They are Chung Hua University and Yenching University in Beijing, University of Technology in Xi'an, Jinling University in Nanjing, Fudan University and Tongji University in Shanghai, University of Science and Technology in Huzhou, and Sizhejiang University in Nanyang.

Among them, Shanghai has monopolized two institutions of higher learning established by gathering the elite resources of the Republic, which can be imagined how much attention Chen Zeyu's central government attaches to the development of this region.

On January 15, accompanied by Shanghai Mayor Chen Wenhong, Chen Zeyu participated in a baseball game with the students after visiting the facilities of Tongji University, the last of them.

In the cheers of all Tongji teachers and students, the former SUPERBEN showed his strength on the baseball field again, with excellent skills and people-friendly style, Chen Zeyu on the field brought everyone a tough temperament to overcome obstacles and at the same time let everyone realize his other side again.

Chen Zeyu didn't know that because of his "impulse" today, baseball, which was not very popular in China, became more and more popular, and his unique signature action of throwing the ball was also frequently imitated by young people on major campuses......

Just when Chen Zeyu was sweating with the students on the baseball field of Tongji University, he didn't know that there was an Englishman who was also in a hurry because he had been "missing" for several days.

After visiting various enterprises and schools in Shanghai, Chen Zeyu arrived on January 16 by Wusong Railway, and then inspected the Wusong Port Fortress on the other side of Changxing Island.

As a coastal defense fortress guarding the entire Yangtze River channel into and out of the East China Sea, Wusongkou Fortress has naturally become one of the most important defense nodes in the Republic's many coastal defense fortifications in its long coastal defense line. Its importance in the entire coastal defense system of the Republic is second only to the Lushunkou Fortress in Liaodong.

After giving an exciting speech to the fortress unit in accordance with the usual practice, Chen Zeyu, accompanied by Huang Jiliang, commander of the East China Sea Fleet, inspected the entire coastal defense system of the Wusongkou fortress.

The entire fortress is extremely strong in terms of defense design, and the armament is mainly composed of eight giant 355 mm shore defense guns, in addition to twelve 240 mm coastal guns, a large number of 150 mm and 105 mm guns, and various types of machine guns. Under the protection of reinforced concrete up to 3 meters thick, each firepower battery is connected by a circular iron slide rail, which not only protects each coastal gun from the enemy's naval guns, but also ensures the external firing range of each firepower point to the greatest extent.

In terms of firepower arrangement, the eight 355-mm permanent fortified batteries in the fortress radially surround the water surface of Wusongkou in the center, forming a terrifying and tight circular fire network.

The coastal forts, including all 240 mm guns, were made of reinforced concrete, and most of the fortifications were built underground, with only the triangular tops exposed. All of the battery's weapons and personnel are hidden underground, and it has amazing protection. In addition, each battery was equipped with searchlights for night firing, and the remaining large number of small and medium-caliber rapid-fire guns took into account the rest of the surrounding wilderness and nearby dead ends.

It is worth mentioning that the elevation angles of all the machine guns placed in the fortifications are specially designed to fire not only at the horizontal plane, but also at any target from the air. In addition, the interior of the fortress also has extensive passages and various basements, which store a large amount of food, drinking water, ammunition, medical supplies and power facilities. Under the conscious guidance of Chen Zeyu, the entire Wusongkou Fortress's architectural defense ideas were extremely advanced.

A large amount of capital and technology investment means that the fortress has a strong overall defense capability, and Huang Jiliang, the commander of the East China Sea Fleet, proudly stated in front of Chen Zeyu that any invasion from the sea will be indestructible in front of this fortress!

In terms of establishment, the garrison of this fortress in front of him is subordinate to the newly established East China Sea Fleet in the Republic Navy sequence.

Excluding the Pacific Fleet, which will be formed by the Republic in the future, the East China Sea Fleet is the most important naval combat force in the Seris Navy today, excluding the South China Sea Fleet. In addition to the 20 underwater submarines assigned to it, the surface combat ships of the East China Sea Fleet are mainly composed of four Luzon-class battleships, namely "Shantou," "Quanzhou," "Nanning," and "Guangzhou," and "Taipei," "Kunming," "Fuzhou," "Ningbo," "Wenzhou," "Qinzhou," "Hangzhou," "Hefei," "Dongtai," "Xuzhou," and "Zhengzhou" It is composed of 11 Taiwan-class armored cruisers, as well as a large number of torpedo boats, tugboats, and logistics supply ships, with a total displacement of more than 200,000 tons.

As for the new "Dreadnought" Ryukyu-class battleship that had just been completed and put into service at the Sizhejiang Shipyard, because the shipyards on the mainland did not yet have a dock capable of maintaining it, after careful consideration by the Admiralty, the new battleship was finally allocated to the South China Sea Fleet of the Republic under the reluctance of Huang Jiliang, commander of the East China Sea Fleet.

In this regard, even Chen Zeyu has no choice, he is not a god after all. Any country has its own laws when carrying out industrial construction, and it is impossible to establish its downstream production enterprises without the layout of upstream industries such as mines and iron and steel, and the same is true for shipyards that maintain and repair warships.

This is the case like the Qianqing Dynasty, because there is no large dock in China to repair and maintain the two capital ships of Dingzhen and Zhen, and in the end, Beiyang can't do it if he wants to brush the anti-rust paint for the two ships in China. On the contrary, the Japanese have done a good job in this regard, including their navy, which has always continued the policy of "buying as many ships as they can build", and the benefits to their domestic shipbuilding industry cannot be fully described; at the same time that the French Bai Laoyi designed and built the "Hashidate" Sankei ship for them, their own domestic shipyards simultaneously possessed the ability to build the "Matsushima" and "Itsukushima" two ships of the same class. After the test of actual combat, the correctness of this thinking has long been self-evident.

Because of this stimulus, Huang Jiliang, commander of the East China Sea Fleet, has been pouring bitter water on Chen Zeyu in the past few days when he accompanied Chen Zeyu to inspect the troops, constantly complaining that the shipbuilding industry in the north has dragged down the East China Sea Fleet. While reporting the situation of the troops to Chen Zeyu with a bitter face, he kept asking the government departments about the arrangements in this regard.

While Chen Zeyu felt funny, he also had to comfort him, and said that the follow-up ships of the Ryukyu class, "Zhoushan" and "Nantong", would soon enter service in the East China Sea Fleet, which could be regarded as satisfying Huang Jiliang.

Chen Zeyu didn't tell him that this "soon" still has to be slightly put in quotation marks. Strictly speaking, it is not a lie to him, according to the construction cycle of the two warships, by the time the two Ryukyu-class battleships, the "Zhoushan" and the "Nantong", have been launched, mounted, and tested at sea, and finally put into service, several shipbuilding bases on the mainland should indeed be initially established.

According to Chen Zeyu's plan, after the completion of the first batch of steel industry construction in China, several shipbuilding enterprises in the mainland will begin to enter the construction stage at the same time. In addition to the shipyards set aside for private capital operations, in the republic's plan, in the future, the mainland will mainly concentrate capital and manpower and technology to build four key shipbuilding enterprises, which will be Dalian Shipyard in Liaoning, Changxingdao Shipyard in Shanghai, Mawei Shipyard in Fujian, and Zhanjiang Shipyard in Guangxi. In addition, the Sizhejiang Avalanche Shipbuilding Heavy Industry in Nanyang is a total of five shipyards, and they will form five key shipbuilding bases to support the domestic shipbuilding industry in the future.

Among them, because it is expected to be supported by the raw materials of the nearby two steel plants in Baoshan and Anshan, the construction of the two shipyards in Dalian and Changxing Island among the four shipbuilding bases will be able to start first, while the remaining two shipyards in Mawei and Zhanjiang are expected to be slightly later.

In terms of capital structure, except for the Changxing Island shipyard in Shanghai, which is still participated by Chen's Avalanche Group -- in fact, the second phase of the Avalanche Shipbuilding Heavy Industry Co., Ltd. on the mainland, the remaining three shipbuilding bases, including the Dalian Shipyard, will be built by the government with funds, and the management will also follow the official supervision and commercial management system of several state-owned iron and steel groups.

In addition to these four planned shipbuilding bases, the Republic will also build simple dockyard repair and maintenance facilities in the docks of each major fleet to meet the actual operational needs of the various naval forces in the future.

Compared with Huang Jiliang, commander of the East China Sea Fleet, Chen Zeyu himself is actually more interested in the construction of national defense forces on the mainland. In the final analysis, Seris is still a continental country, and as the top leader of this country, Chen Zeyu has been "red-eyed" in Siberia with polar bears for a long time.

As with the Navy, the Government of the Republic has also reorganized its former combat forces into subdivisions to facilitate future territorial defense operations. After last year's expansion, the Republic's 1.15 million army units were finally divided into eight military district commands.

Among them, the Shenyang Military Region, which is responsible for the defense of the northeast, has the strongest troops, consisting of 12 integrated divisions and 280,000 combat troops. The distribution of the remaining troops is roughly based on the war situation in various places, including the Ulaanbaatar Military Region, eight integrated divisions, more than 180,000 people; Lanzhou Military Region, eight integrated divisions, more than 180,000 people; Chengdu Military Region, four integrated divisions, more than 90,000 people; Sizhejiang Military Region, four integrated divisions, more than 90,000 people; Nanjing Military Region, six integrated divisions, 140,000 people; Jinan Military Region, four integrated divisions, more than 90,000 people; Central Garrison Military Region, four integrated divisions, more than 90,000 people; The above eight military regions have a total of 50 integrated divisions and 1.15 million army combat units.