Wang Chenhao pinched Chen Nanfeng's handle and forced him to clean up the others, and this trick really worked. Within a few days, Chen Nanfeng disposed of hundreds of people and recovered 370,000 taels of deductions. All honestly pleaded guilty and asked for leniency.

Wang Chenhao knew that this was the result of a compromise between Chen Nanfeng and them, and in response to this operation of the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau, Wang Chenhao did not plan to arrest a large number of people and put them in prison, anyway, what they lacked was the silver of the imperial court, not his Wang Chenhao's. Wang Chenhao's purpose is to eliminate them, not to drive them to a dead end. So when they begged for forgiveness, Wang Chenhao nodded and agreed.

Soon, Wang Chenhao borrowed Chen Nanfeng's hand to complete the rectification of the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau, and the final result was that eighty percent of the redundant officials and department heads of the corpse were laid off, and a total of 430,000 taels of silver were recovered, all of which were taken out by some officials who demanded money to atone for their crimes.

When the dust settled, Wang Chenhao handed back several letters reporting Chen Nanfeng.

"I haven't read the contents of the letter, you can rest assured."

"Thank you for your pity."

Chen Nanfeng took the report letters with trembling hands, and raised his eyes to look at Wang Chenhao with a complicated expression. The young man in front of him was really impressed by the high level of planning.

Wang Chenhao said: "Lord Chen has worked hard to rectify the manufacturing bureau, and I will report it to Lord Zhongtang." I won't pursue the previous things, but from today onwards, I won't allow this kind of thing to happen right under my nose. ”

Chen Nanfeng sighed for a long time, smiled bitterly, and said, "The mind of the adult is really admired by the lower officials. It's just that some time ago, Lord Zhongtang urged the rectification of the manufacturing bureau to no avail, and now, the lower official has no shame to stay any longer, and he also asks the lord to allow the lower official to return to his hometown. ”

Wang Chenhao was stunned for a moment, but he didn't expect Chen Nanfeng to take the initiative to resign.

Wang Shizhen next to him leaned over and whispered: "Before, Lord Zhongtang stayed in Shanghai for more than a month, just to rectify the mess of the Manufacturing Bureau, but the result was fruitless. Now that you have done it in just one week, how dare Chen Nanfeng stay any longer? ”

Wang Chenhao thinks about it, this is equivalent to indirectly losing Li Hongzhang's face, and Chen Nanfeng is also an old and cunning man, so it's strange if he doesn't take the opportunity to slip away. At the same time, the officials and supervisors who were laid off knew that this was a deliberate trick by Wang Chenhao, but they hated Chen Nanfeng even more, making Chen Nanfeng not a human being on both sides, so Chen Nanfeng had no choice but to resign on his own initiative and return to his hometown in advance.

Wang Chenhao then symbolized the persuasion of his surname, and seeing Chen Nanfeng's insistence, he finally nodded in agreement and allowed him to resign and return to his hometown.

Looking at the back of Chen Nanfeng's departure, Wang Shizhen couldn't help but say: "I spent a lot of money to buy this fat shortage, but now I vomit it out, and in the end, the bamboo basket is empty, why bother?" ”

Wang Chenhao smiled: "Who can predict so far? It's hard to be alone in the big dye vat, unless—"

When the second half of the sentence came to his mouth, Wang Chenhao suddenly stopped, he didn't want to show his heart too early.

Unexpectedly, Wang Shizhen said casually: "Unless you change a large vat and pour water." ”

Wang Chenhao looked at Wang Shizhen and saw him smiling. Wang Chenhao knew that this Wang Shizhen should have seen through his thoughts, so he smiled: "It's as easy as you say." ”

Wang Shizhen said meaningfully: "In the past, I thought it was not easy, or even impossible. However, since he followed the adults to do things, he suddenly found that any difficulties seemed to become easy in front of the adults. ”

Wang Chenhao just smiled and didn't answer, this kind of conversation with code words is still as mysterious as possible.

"How does Shizhen think the Manufacturing Bureau should be operated?"

Seeing Wang Chenhao change the topic, Wang Shizhen didn't want to ask deeply, so he had to answer: "Your Excellency already has Beiyang weapons, and you can supply the needs of the Beiyang Army within the year." However, the army equipment production line in the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau is too old and outdated, so it is better to contract it to private businessmen. In this way, you can make the best use of everything, and secondly, the adults are operating under the banner of raising funds from the private sector, so they have to do some cover-up, and if they let the court magnates know that the Bank of America is actually the adult's own, I am afraid it will bring great trouble to the adults. ”

Wang Chenhao nodded and agreed with Wang Shizhen's words. Since it is under the banner of raising funds from the private sector, it has to be a show. If he really exposes his relationship with the Bank of America, I'm afraid that those vampires in the court will not let him go easily.

"That being the case, the manufacturing bureau was divided into two parts. The army equipment manufacturing part is all contracted out, and we only keep the naval equipment manufacturing part. ”

Wang Chenhao set the tone, and Wang Shizhen immediately set about it. The shipbuilding department of Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau came out and changed its name to Shanghai Shipbuilding Heavy Industry.

Due to Chen Nanfeng's resignation, Shanghai Shipbuilding Heavy Industry needs a leader with excellent technology in shipbuilding to preside. Looking at the shipbuilding field of the Qing Empire, since the death of Xu Shou, only Wei Han, the director of the Fujian Shipbuilding Bureau, can provoke the shipbuilding girder.

So Wang Chenhao set his sights on Wei Han. At this time, although Wei Han was the director of Fujian Shipping, he had not made achievements for more than five years. Of course, this is not to deny his talent and ability, since the Fujian shipbuilding funds are drying up, the imperial court does not give orders, and its own shipbuilding costs remain high, so that the private shipbuilding orders are also decreasing year by year, so that the shipbuilding bureau has no ships to build, and naturally there are no political achievements and achievements.

Wang Chenhao took the opportunity to write to Wei Han and asked him to come to Shanghai Shipbuilding Industry to preside over the work. Wei Han had long heard of Wang Chenhao's name, and after learning that he had reorganized the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau to establish Shanghai Shipbuilding Heavy Industry, Wei Han knew that the opportunity he had been waiting for had come, so he immediately set off for Shanghai.

It's just that when Wei Han arrived in Shanghai, Wang Chenhao suddenly received an urgent call from Li Hongzhang asking him to go back, and the two failed to meet. However, Wang Chenhao left Wang Shizhen behind, directly appointed Wei Han as the manager of Shanghai Shipbuilding Heavy Industry, and informed Wei Han of Wang Chenhao's request.

Wang Chenhao's request to Wei Han was that Shanghai Shipbuilding Industry Co., Ltd. should complete the construction of two large docks before the Dengyun-class battleships returned to China, and have the ability to imitate the Dengyun-class battleships, and at the same time require itself to achieve the ability to design and build 5,000-ton cruisers on its own. It is not difficult to imitate the Dengyun-class battleship, because the British side has provided a full set of design drawings, as long as the large dockyard is completed, and then buy back the key equipment from the British for a little research, it can be assembled by itself. For the imitation and assembly of this technology, Wei Han is still sure to complete. Just designing and building a 5,000-ton cruiser on his own, this is still quite difficult for Wei Han.

Self-design and construction required extremely high technical requirements, and the largest tonnage cruiser in which Weihan participated did not exceed two thousand tons. Wei Han is a pragmatic person, he immediately called Wang Chenhao back, saying that he would try his best to invite some friends in the shipbuilding industry at home and abroad to help, but he was not sure that it would be done, and hoped that Wang Chenhao could understand.

Wang Chenhao had long estimated that the domestic technical strength was not enough to design and build large battleships on his own, so he lowered Wei Han's requirements to build a 5,000-ton cruiser, but this still overestimated the domestic shipbuilding capacity, and Wang Chenhao had to find another way.

Wang Chenhao remembered that after the First Sino-Japanese War at the end of the Qing Dynasty, the Qing court ordered more than 30 warships of all sizes from Britain, France and Germany in order to rectify coastal defense, among which the large cruiser Haiqi with a displacement of 4,300 tons and a very strong armament firepower, which belonged to the enhanced version of the cruiser Yoshino.

The cost of the Haiqi was 330,000 pounds, which was within Wang Chenhao's financial range, so he contacted the British Minister Dou Nale to order two 5,000-ton armored cruisers similar to the Haiqi from the British Armstrong Company, and the British were responsible for building the first one, and the second was built by Shanghai Shipbuilding Industry Co., Ltd.

The British side quickly agreed, but because Wang Chenhao did not want a dome armor protection cruiser like the Haiqi, but aimed at the Russian Navy's Amosiv-class armored cruisers, so that the cost of changing from dome armor to armor was much higher under the same firepower and speed. In the end, the British company Armstrong finalized the price at a unit price of 520,000 pounds, including the design drawings of the warship and the technology transfer fee, allowing Shanghai Shipbuilding Industry to build and export on its own.

Wang Chenhao agreed to the price, but asked Armstrong to send a complete set of shipbuilding materials and technicians for the second warship to China first, so as to facilitate the study and accumulation of experience by the engineers and technicians of Wei Han and Shanghai Shipbuilding Heavy Industry. Armstrong agreed.

In this way, Wei Han received strong support from Wang Chenhao, and quickly sent a large number of technicians to the UK. However, to Wei Han's pleaser, Wang Chenhao also persuaded the British Admiralty to allow the technicians of Shanghai Shipbuilding Industry to participate in the construction of the Dengyun-class battleship, so that Wei Han and his technicians also learned the technology of building large battleships and accumulated experience.

The main reason for this result was the change in the situation in Northeast Asia, after the collapse of the navy, because of the financial constraints made the development of its naval force slow, and Britain hoped that the naval power of the Qing Empire could contain the Russian Far East Navy, so the British would agree to Wang Chenhao's request, this kind of technological openness to China was unprecedented in the past.