The winter of 1939 was particularly cold, and the Minister of the Navy, Chen Shaokuan, left the Admiralty in Tieshi Hutong early in the morning and went to the presidential palace in the Xinhua Gate for a meeting. ●⌂ Tip novel, x. There are very few pedestrians on the street, only some early cleaners are clearing the snow on the road.

After the Japanese army approached the Great Wall, most of the organs of the State Council and government departments had moved to Xi'an, and the Beiyang government was ready for a long war of resistance, and only the army, navy, general staff, and military base camp still insisted on working in Beijing. President Duan Qirui insisted on staying in Beijing, so most of the personnel in the presidential palace were not evacuated.

The streets of Beijing are much colder than before the war, most of the rich have fled to the northwest, about a quarter of the shops on both sides of the streets have closed, and the streets of Beijing, where the sons and daughters who used to hang out have disappeared, but the number of soldiers in military uniforms has increased.

In the reception hall of the lobby on the first floor of the Presidential Palace, a group of army and navy generals with at least one golden star on their shoulders were already sitting on the sofa and chatting in groups, it seemed that Duan Qirui had not come over yet, and there was still some time before the meeting began. Chen Shaokuan greeted the generals he knew well in the living room one by one, and then sat down where the admirals were.

"Chief Chen, I heard that the Germans intend to transfer the shipyard in Qingdao to the Admiralty, is there such a thing?" Yang Xuande, director of the Torpedo and Mine Department of the Naval Ordnance Bureau, asked after seeing him sit down.

"In this sense, the Qingdao shipyard is a private shipyard, but the government can't come up with the money for a while, and is negotiating with the Germans to see if it can be offset with war bonds." Chen Shaokuan said: The manufacture of torpedoes and mines in China was mainly done by the original two shipyards, the Mawei Shipyard in Fuzhou and the Dagu Naval Shipyard, and due to the relocation of the Fuzhou Shipyard, the defense and minelaying in Bohai Bay was mainly produced by the Dagu Shipyard. Production is far from sufficient. At present, Dagu Shipyard is carrying out new renovation and expansion of the shipyard under the guidance of German and Austrian experts.

Before the war, the Admiralty had a total of four shipyards in Bohai Bay, Tianjin Dagu Shipyard, Yantai Naval Shipyard, Weihai Shipyard and Qinhuangdao Shipyard, but due to insufficient investment over the years. These four shipyards are all very small, and they can only build small ships such as patrol gunboats or torpedo boats with a displacement of less than 400 tons, and they are not able to build large ships.

After the start of the war, the naval bases in Weihai and Yantai were raided by the Japanese aircraft carrier fleet and suffered heavy losses, and the two main battleships "Zhenhai" and "Jinghai" were severely damaged and forced to hide in Qingdao for repairs.

With the development of the domestic economy, the Beijing government reached a state of maintaining a balance of payments after 1928, and finally began to strengthen military production in some capacity. However, the amount invested in the military industry is only more than 10 million. Most of these funds were used by the War Department to expand the production scale of the three major arsenals of Linxian, Deokxian and Hanyang. Although the Admiralty argued, the annual appropriation could only sustain the renovation of the two shipyards in Fuzhou and Shanghai, Jiangnan.

It was not until the end of 1934 that the Admiralty began to receive large grants for the relocation of the Fuzhou Shipyard and the Jiangnan Shipyard, the Mawei Shipyard was moved to Qinzhou, and the Jiangnan Shipyard and the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau were moved to Hanyang as a whole and merged with the Hanyang Arsenal. It was not until this period that the Admiralty had some funds to expand and renovate the four naval shipyards in the north, including the Dagu Shipyard. Before the renovation and expansion of these shipyards was completed, war broke out.

The Yantai and Weihai shipyards were not attacked. With the strengthening of China's naval aviation, the Japanese warships did not dare to enter the vicinity of Bohai Bay lightly after suffering several air strikes. The Chinese Navy has also completed the expansion of four shipyards in the Bohai Bay, and according to the plan, the Weihai and Qinhuangdao shipyards are smaller and can only build light ships with a displacement of less than 3,000 tons. The Dagu and Yantai shipyards were able to build cruisers with a displacement of less than 10,000 tons, and each of the two shipyards imported a submarine production line from Germany and Austria.

If the Qingdao shipyard can be obtained, the Chinese Navy will have the ability to build 40,000-ton warships in the north.

After the outbreak of the war, the Japanese fleet operated arbitrarily along the coast of China, causing great problems for the defense of the army. The Japanese army was able to land at any point along the eastern coast of China and concentrate superior forces, which finally made the Beiyang government truly realize the importance of the navy. If it weren't for the Japanese army's naval support and landing in northern Jiangsu, the Battle of Songhu might have lasted even longer. The Chinese Army was not inferior to the Japanese in terms of equipment and training, which was one of the main reasons why the Japanese army was unable to continue its westward advance after the capture of Nanjing. Although Wuhu was also occupied by the Japanese army immediately after the fall of Nanjing, on the Tongling front, the Wehrmacht took advantage of the favorable defensive terrain of the mountains and blocked the westward advance of the Japanese army after repeated fierce tug-of-wars.

In the Huai River Valley, although Xuzhou fell, the Japanese attack was blocked on the line from Shangqiu to Fuyang, and two armored divisions of the Chinese Army and one Austro-Hungarian "volunteer armored division" became the backbone of the defense. The Chinese side is working to expand the production of tank factories in Baotou and Hanyang, and has built three new tank factories in Zhangjiakou, Xi'an and Chongqing.

Due to insufficient production capacity, China's monthly production of tanks is only about 60 units, which is far from meeting the needs of the war. The Japanese side is not much better, the army needs to compete with the navy for the resources of armor steel, and there is also a huge gap between Japan's machinery industry and world powers such as Europe and the United States, so the Japanese army's tank production is not much stronger than China's.

China is getting stronger and stronger in the war, and because of its abundant human resources, even if the size of the army reaches 10 million, it will not have a big impact on domestic production, which is the biggest advantage that no country in the world can have. After more than two years of adjustment, the Chinese side has now stabilized the situation of the war, and in fact, after the spring of 1939, there was no large-scale battle between China and Japan, except for the unexpected fall of Guangzhou.

The Japanese were unable to launch another major offensive, and the Chinese were temporarily unable to counterattack. The whole battle was in a stalemate.

With the commissioning of new and expanded factories in the pre- and post-war emergency armaments program, China's steel production reached 3.5 million tons in 1939 and was expected to exceed 4 million tons in 1940, surpassing France and Italy as one of the world's great powers. As industrial capacity grew, so did the confidence of the military and the people in defeating Japan.

After the full-scale outbreak of the war, although the material aid received from Germany and Austria was cut off, the technical assistance of Germany and Austria to China did not stop, with the help of a large number of German and Austrian engineering and technical personnel, China's industrial and technological level is developing rapidly, and in some fields, in fact, it has been able to achieve the same level as Germany and Austria, especially in the field of metallurgy and machinery manufacturing, which is rapidly approaching the world level.

But the development of China's navy lags far behind the world.

As the saying goes, "a hundred years of navy", this actually refers to the development of a country's shipbuilding industry needs a long time to develop, a hundred years is a bit exaggerated, but to build a first-class naval country, the shipbuilding industry needs at least twenty or thirty years of rapid development. With the strong support and subsidies of the government, it took more than 30 years for Japan's shipbuilding industry to finally become one of the world's first-class shipbuilding countries, which has created a world-class navy.

In fact, the equipment of the Japanese Navy has lagged behind the world until it was able to build the "Kongo" class battleships, and they have been taking the road of "buying-copying-improving", before that, the performance of the main warships designed and built by the Japanese Navy itself lagged behind the entire era, and after the European war, it gradually caught up with the pace of the world.

"Shipbuilding capacity symbolizes a country's comprehensive industrial capacity, and it cannot be successful overnight, and the Chinese Navy still has a long way to go if it wants to become one of the world's great powers." Chen Shaokuan thought, but if the Qingdao shipyard in the hands of the Germans can be obtained, it will enable the Chinese Navy to achieve a leapfrog development.

He was certainly not willing to give up.

"Chief Chen, the president has arrived in the conference room, and the meeting is about to start!" Wang Chongwen's voice interrupted his musings. (To be continued......)

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