"In the past year, there have been three machine reeling factories in our business zone have been completed and put into operation, and there are six other machine reeling factories under construction, two are expected to be put into operation in the first half of this year, and four will be put into operation in the second half of this year!" Lai Changying, the general office of the industrial and commercial office of the business zone, said to Lin Zhe and many other officials of the yamen of the business zone:

"The silk reeling industry has invested a total of 260,000 taels, in addition, after the expansion of the business area at the end of last year, our industrial and commercial office has received a total of 12 Huayang commercial banks want to invest in the silk reeling industry, including many Jardine Matheson and other ocean banks, the above 12 Huayang commercial banks intended to invest in 480,000 taels!"

"After the expansion of the business zone last year, due to the low land price and small cost of building a factory in the newly expanded area, it has not only attracted many businesses to invest in the silk reeling industry, but also has widely promoted the development of other industries......

"It is worth noting that with the use of steam engines in the silk reeling industry, the considerable economic benefits brought by the above-mentioned many new factories also choose the machine as the driving force, and the development of various factories and marine machines has led to the development of the machinery industry, and there have been a number of small-scale repair machine factories in the business area, and the Linde repair machinery factory jointly established by Xinde Foreign Bank and Lin's firm has been completed and is about to be put into operation, the factory has the ability to repair all kinds of machine equipment, and I also heard that the factory is planning to build its own steam engine!"

Listening to Lai Changying, the general office of the Department of Industry and Commerce, talking at length about the current industry and commerce in the business zone, especially the development of industry, Lin Zhe himself also looked at the stack of dozens of pages of industrial status and development reports in his hand.

The office system of the business zone is different from that of other countries in contemporary China and even abroad, and even from the modern state administrative system of later generations. Because of Lin Zhe's special existence, when the establishment of the business zone was established, he brought some management systems from many later generations, and most of the administrative personnel hired by him were personnel from previous major commercial banks, and they also brought some management system experience from many contemporary foreign banks.

The combination of the two has resulted in the administrative system of the yamen in the business zone not like a government, but more like a large-scale enterprise administrative system.

For example, the industrial report in front of me definitely does not have the ambiguous words and flowery words in the domestic charter documents. On the contrary, the whole article is full of various numbers and boring straightforward descriptions, which can make people's heads dizzy.

It is completely different from those contemporary domestic regulations that are ornate and only talk about big truths, but there is no dry goods after reading it.

Lin Zhe just flipped through the report. It will be able to see every detail of the industrial development of the business zone over the past two years.

Judging from this report, there is no doubt that the main industrial development in the business zone is still concentrated in light industry, especially the silk reeling industry.

As Lin's firm took the lead in investing in the machine qì silk reeling factory, the quality of its factory silk is far superior to that of traditional handmade silk due to the reduction of costs. As a result, the price of zhì is several layers higher than that of soil silk, and after the factory silk of Lin's machine qì silk reeling factory became a hit, the profits harvested made countless commercial houses extremely red.

Almost overnight, the entire Shanghai area has set off a 'factory silk' wind, and those foreign companies that come to China to import raw silk are giving priority to buying these factory silk, so they will not hesitate to pay two or three percent higher than the price of native silk.

As a result, a large amount of capital has poured into the investment machine, and so far the total amount of capital invested by the major commercial banks in the silk reeling factory has accounted for more than 80% of the total industrial investment in the current business zone.

Moreover, almost all of those who can invest in the Qì silk reeling factory in the trade zone are Chinese and foreign businessmen with strong capital.

The silk reeling factory may seem like a labor-intensive light industry, but in fact, it is a real capital-intensive industry for contemporary domestic merchants.

Invest in a machine qì silk reeling factory. It is necessary to buy machinery from Europe, build factories, and then purchase land, and train workers, and the initial investment is tens of thousands of taels of silver

This is for those who are smaller, the capital is not strong enough raw silk firm is difficult to take out such a large amount of cash to throw in, in order to invest in the opportunity to reel silk, many smaller raw silk firms gradually united to set up a joint stock factory.

In less than two years, the silk reeling industry in the business zone has shown a blowout development, which has also caused a negative impact, that is, it has dealt a fatal blow to the traditional handmade silk reeling workshops in the surrounding areas of Shanghai. The handmade silk reeling industry in Huzhou, Nantong and other places has begun to shrink, and even the purchase of enough cocoons is not enough, why?

Because these cocoons were bought at high prices by the big trading houses that had set up silk reeling factories, many small-scale handicraft workshops would gradually reduce their profits without cocoons. And then gradually bankruptcy.

The rapid development of the machine silk reeling factory in the trade zone is inseparable from the 'trade zone raw silk association' supported by Lin Zhe, which invited almost all the raw silk firms in the trade zone to participate, guide the members of the association to purchase machines, and open factories to provide sales channels. And the raw silk is unified for the top quality, and the raw silk is divided into five grades: 'excellent', 'superior', 'ordinary', 'middle and lower' and 'inferior'.

In addition, because the association brings together all the mill silk producers, in order to avoid vicious competition among the members of the association, and then let those foreign companies that purchase raw silk suppress the price of mill silk, so the minimum price is set every year, for example, the minimum price set by the association for high-quality mill silk this year is 380 taels of packs.

It is strictly forbidden for members of the association to reduce the price below the lowest price without authorization, of course, if you have the confidence to buy a higher price, the association will naturally not care about you.

Due to the establishment of the Raw Silk Association, most of the raw silk transactions will be recorded, which has a great effect on cracking down on the smuggling of raw silk exports, and the Jianghai Patrol Police Department, which is responsible for the seizure of smuggling, has connected and seized eight batches of raw silk smuggling exports, and seized more than 2,000 bags of raw silk smuggled for export and thousands of boxes of tea and porcelain, with a case value of more than 1 million taels.

It's just that these goods are from those big ocean companies in the trade zone, and after the seizure, the consuls of various countries took turns to fight, and even those Chinese businessmen also put great pressure on the Jianghai Patrol Police Department through the Guò Industrial and Commercial Department, so in the end, although they were forced to directly confiscate these smuggled products due to external pressure, the Jianghai Patrol Police Department still gave a high fine to the owners of these smuggled products, and the fine alone was a cumulative fine of 150,000 taels of silver.

These high fines also had a great deterrent effect on potential smugglers, the most obvious of which was that in November 1854, the tax revenue of Xinguan in the Jianghai Customs Trade Zone was only 100,000 taels of silver, but by February 1855, the monthly tax had reached 130,000 taels of silver.

The sharp increase in customs duties is absolutely not due to the sudden increase in the total export value by such a large amount, but because the efforts of the yamen in the trade zone to crack down on smuggled exports have increased by a large margin.

In order to strictly investigate smuggling, the Jianghai Patrol Police Department has purchased more than 20 vessels, many of which are steamers, and they patrol the Huangpu River and the mouth of the Yangtze River almost day and night.

In addition to the pillar industry of raw silk, the development of other industries in the trade zone is also progressing steadily, there are more primitive modern industries such as match factories and soap factories, as well as many traditional handicraft workshop-style industries such as wood factories and tea brick factories.

In terms of heavy industry, it is still concentrated in the military industry, and it relies on official support more strictly, for example, in order to make its own small-caliber rifled rifles and artillery, it needs to invest a lot of money to purchase equipment, introduce foreign technicians, and train industrial workers, and where do these funds come from?

In order to build a large-scale arsenal for himself, so that the neck of the ordnance supply will not be cut at any time, Yu Shengjun has invested 100,000 taels of silver in the Linde Machinery Factory, and even sold them several plots of land next to the original Linde Machinery Factory at a very low price to expand the factory.

However, after a large amount of investment, Lin Zhe still has not seen the hope of small-caliber rifled rifles in service, and the Linde Machinery Factory has created a sample gun, but there have been many problems, and it is still under the leadership of several foreign engineers to continue to design, and overcome some technical difficulties.

In terms of artillery, it is easier, because a number of skilled foreigner technicians have been hired from Hong Kong, Macao and other places, and the front-loading smoothbore guns in these years are not high-precision things, as long as the quality of the front-loading guns manufactured is strictly controlled according to the management methods of modern factories, the front-loading guns made will not be worse than there.

Since the first 12-pounder cast iron cannon was built at the end of last year, mass production has begun in small quantities, and Yu Shengjun has stopped importing artillery from foreign companies and has switched to Linde Machine's own products.

Although it has not yet been fully completed and put into operation, but the scale of the expanded Linde Machinery Factory is very terrifying, the cumulative investment will exceed 100,000 taels of silver, it is the largest investment enterprise in the business zone, after the completion of the will have a supporting iron-making plant, gunpowder factory, gun factory, cannon factory, sawmill, shell factory, bullet factory, repair factory and a series of division of labor departments, after the completion of the production of workers need at least 3,000 people.

In addition to the Linde Machinery Factory, Lin's Commercial Bank also set up a joint venture with Xinde Foreign Company to build a machinery factory.

With the increasing number of machine reeling factories in the trade zone, steam ships are widely active in the coastal areas of Shanghai, and all kinds of machine equipment are not new to the merchants in the trade zone, but once some of them are broken, the whole Chinese region can not find a place to repair.

Under Lin Zhe's reminder, Lin's firm immediately found Lin's firm's strategic partner Xinde & Co., and together they founded a joint venture Shanghai Machinery Factory, specializing in repairing various machines including steam engines, and even preparing to start making their own steam engines and other equipment.

Although it is not known when the Shanghai Machinery Factory will be able to build the steam engine, this does not prevent Lin Zhe from starting to build the first domestic steam warship! (To be continued.) )