I've seen a lot of historical celebrities, and Lin Zhe doesn't have too many feelings.

Don't you see that Li Hongzhang is an official under his hands, and then a large number of famous generals in the Hunan Army and the Huai Army, and most of the heavy losses in the late Qing Dynasty are mixed under his own hands, such as Zuo Zongtang, who is also an official in the empire now.

After Zeng Guofan announced his return to the empire, a large number of officials and generals in the Hunan military system entered the imperial system, but there were few who continued to hold military power, and most of them chose to quit the army when the Hunan army was reorganized, and then served as civilians.

Zeng Guofan was appointed governor of Hunan at that time, and then briefly entered the cabinet as minister of agriculture and forestry, but a few months later he resigned and retired from politics.

The others were similar, Zuo Zongtang also continued to serve in the army at the beginning, but he and other generals from the Hunan Army could not adapt to the pace of the Imperial Army at all, so he soon retired from active duty with the rank of major general of the army.

However, this person is different from Zeng Guofan, he can't be idle at all, and after retiring, he did not go into hiding, but transferred to the local government.

Now he is the governor of Shaanxi, and he is a relatively good person in the Hunan military system.

Most of the other Huai Army or high-level generals or officials of the Huai Army are still active in the military and political affairs of the empire, such as Liu Mingchuan, Wu Changqing, Pan Dingxin, Zhang Shushan and others, or serve in the military or in the political arena, but these people are naturally impossible to be as showy as in history, and none of them are senior officials or senior generals, and Zuo Zongtang's governor of Shaanxi is the highest.

Everyone else is hovering in the middle tier.

That's why people are still like that. But history has changed, and so has the trajectory of their lives.

Clearing up the confusion of thoughts. Lin Zhe praised Nie Shicheng a few words, and then ended the audience with a sentence of 'I look forward to you making better results'.

Subsequently. Lin Zhe continued to move forward accompanied by a large group of people.

During today's inspection, watching the artillery drill is just an addition, and the real big thing is to watch the test firing of several candidate rifles, and what rifles the Imperial Army will choose as the new generation of rifles in the future will depend on today's test firing.

In addition to a vote of military and political dignitaries, the responsible persons of a number of domestic weapons manufacturers were also present, and the three major domestic weapons companies all participated in the bidding for the design of the new gun, and the Royal Arms Company even participated in the two design plans at the same time.

When he arrived at the place, Lin Zhe saw five rifles of different styles. These five rifles are the last five designs selected by the Army Ordnance Division.

At the front of each rifle, there are detailed performance descriptions, the first of which is the first design of the Royal Arms Company, and its feeding mechanism is a reference to the Winchester M1866, but the whole gun almost breaks the appearance of the traditional rear-loading rifle of the 1864 rifle, and the appearance is quite unsightly.

Although Lin Zhe doesn't know much about guns, he knows what the rifle of later generations should look like, and as soon as he saw this strange design, Lin Zhe directly gave this gun a big cross. It's even too lazy to look at specific performance data.

The second, also of the Royal Arms Company design, looks similar to the 1864 rifle, but with an extra magazine. It is clear that this gun was improved from the rifle of the 1864 model.

Looking closely at its performance data, Lin Zhe is even more certain.

The gun weighed 4.63 kilograms, and its barrel length and other figures were the same as those of the 1864 rifle.

See this. Lin Zhe was a little dissatisfied with the Royal Arms Company, these two design schemes. One is a strange design that doesn't follow the normal path. And one is the improved design of the 1864 model, if it is only improved, the army can still use the selection of new rifles, and it will be over if you directly add a magazine to the 1864 rifle.

The third rifle is a design of the Huguang Arms Company, and from this gun, it seems to be a completely new design, and its bolt is a continuation of the design of the 1864 rifle, but the magazine is a double-row magazine, and the design load reaches eight rounds, and if you count the remaining ammunition in the chamber, then the number of bullets reaches nine.

Lin Zhe is not an expert in firearms, and if he only looks at the data on paper, he can't tell whether it is good or bad at the first time, so he can only pass by and continue to watch.

The fourth is the design of the Northern Arms Company, most of the guns are similar to the 1864 rifles, but the guns look shorter and lighter, weighing only 4.4 kilograms, which is the lightest of the five designs, and the other rifles weigh more than 4.5 kilograms, and some even reach 4.6 kilograms.

Its ammunition feeding method is a single-row exposed magazine feed, with a capacity of only five rounds, and the design of the bolt is also decent, without much change.

But when Lin Zhe saw this gun, he was attracted to it, because just from the appearance, this gun was almost the same as those rifles in his impression.

Regardless of the performance data and the like, just from the appearance, this gun is almost the same as what Hanyang made in my memory, medium formal, 38 rifle and the like.

The fifth rifle is the design of a domestic private machinery company 'Guangsheng Machinery Company', not to mention the quality of the gun design, just to be able to stand out from so many establishments, it is enough to prove that the Guangsheng Machinery Company is not bad, and it also represents a big step for domestic private capital to get involved in heavy industry and even the national defense industry.

The empire has been established for many years, and the economic system adopted is very typical of modern national capitalism, which encourages commerce and trade, and there are no state-owned enterprises in the empire, even if it is a royal enterprise that undertakes a certain task of state-owned enterprises, its essence is not a state-owned enterprise, but an ordinary enterprise.

In addition to some enterprises, many of the royal enterprises are joint ventures, such as the Linde Machinery Company, which supplies steam engine products to the empire, which is a very typical joint venture between the imperial capital, foreign capital and private capital.

A similar situation is even more evident at the Bund Hotel in Shanghai, where more than a dozen companies or families participated in the investment at the beginning of its preparation, which can be regarded as a typical example of the dispersion of shares in Chinese enterprises in the early days.

This kind of business environment in the empire also means that the imperial government will not restrict private capital from entering the heavy industry and defense industry, on the contrary, they will continue to encourage private enterprises to enter the heavy industry and defense industry.

In this regard, the first breakthrough was made in the shipbuilding industry.

The steam engine used in the earliest warships was a product of Linde Machinery, which was a joint venture, not a simple royal enterprise.

In addition, unlike artillery, guns and other offensive and defensive enterprises, which are all 100% controlled by the royal family, shipyards are dual-use enterprises, which build warships and also produce civilian ships, so they are more complicated.

Among the top 10 shipyards in China, except for Shanghai Shipyard, which is wholly owned by the royal family, two of the other shipyards are operated by the royal family and private equity joint ventures, while the other shipyards are all private or private and foreign-funded joint stock enterprises.

At present, the Shanghai shipyard, which ranks first in China, is wholly owned and operated by the imperial family, and can barely be regarded as a state-owned enterprise with imperial characteristics.

The second place is the Qingdao Naval Shipyard, this shipyard is more complex, in the early years it was the internal repair institute of the Navy, and later the Navy invested in the purchase of machinery and equipment, built a dock, used to build warships, and was very successful in the field of building warships, with a 15,000-ton, a 10,000-ton, two 6,000-ton docks and a number of small docks, the battleship Chiyou was built by the factory.

However, although the shipyard is very successful in the field of building large warships, the technical investment is also very high, and they are limited by the restrictions of military shipyards and cannot undertake civilian ships, so although it claims to be the second largest shipyard in China, it has actually been in a state of loss.

In addition, in the first two years, Lin Zhe was very dissatisfied with the atmosphere of building repair shops and machinery factories under various names within the army, and it would be good for the army to fight, why should you learn from enterprises to engage in production, if you do research, you can fight over those large enterprises with assets of tens of millions?

It is better not to say that the products and prices produced by the factories run by the army itself are not satisfactory, but the army still pinches its nose and procures.

In order to combat this trend, Lin Zhe issued a direct edict calling for a ban on military-run enterprises, factories and other profit-making activities.

Under this wave, the army's research institute was merged into the Royal Academy of Sciences, and the navy's number one company, Qingdao Naval Shipyard, was also forced to sell, and finally was purchased by the Royal Asset Management Office and a number of other private shipyards, but the imperial capital occupies 80% of the shares, in an absolute controlling state.

Guangzhou Shipyard, which ranks third in China, is also a model of royal capital holding and other private capital participation.

As for other domestic shipyards, such as Songhu Shipyard, Tianjin North Shipyard, Hanyang Shipyard, Huangpu Shipyard, etc., which also undertake the manufacture of warships, these are all private shipyards.

In the field of warships, it is the field of defense industry that private capital has recently entered.

However, in addition to shipbuilding, private capital in other fields has not been able to enter for the time being, this is mainly because the monopoly of the three major domestic weapons companies on ordnance is too strong, although they do not hinder the entry of private capital, but if you want to compete with them, the amount of money and manpower that needs to be invested is not a small amount.

However, although the threshold is very high, but still can not stop the desire of private capital for military orders, Guangsheng Machinery Company, a private enterprise engaged in the manufacture of equipment in the steel industry, thanks to the surging development of the domestic steel industry, its scale is also rapidly expanding, with its own accumulated technical strength, is also trying to get involved in the field of military industry.

At the beginning, they only bought the manufacturing license of the 1864 rifle, and made a small number of 1864 rifles for the army, and if they did not have this kind of authorized manufacturing, they could only earn a processing fee, and they naturally would not be satisfied with this situation.

Therefore, this time the military invited bids for a new generation of standard rifles, and they also spent a lot of money to design a new gun to participate in the bidding. (To be continued.) )