Looking at Andrei, Zhao Dongyun smiled as usual, he has dealt with Andrei a lot in the past six months, this person was just an ordinary diplomat on the Russian side at first, but half a year ago this person and Zhao Dongyun began to contact, and bought a large number of weapons and ammunition and other war materials for Russia, this person's status in Russia has also risen sharply.

Now he has become the top head of Russian diplomacy in Jinzhou, and at the same time has become the plenipotentiary representative of the commander of the Russian Far East Army, Kuropatkin, in Jinzhou, responsible for coordinating and negotiating the arms trade with Zhao Dongyun.

After being in contact with this person for a long time, Zhao Dongyun also found that this person is not full of nonsense like traditional diplomats, and he will not talk about the topic for a long time, this person likes to talk directly about the most critical topics, but don't think that he is reckless, in fact, in his negotiations with Zhao Dongyun, he will definitely not give up lightly.

"General Zhao, you should also know that our army is currently engaged in a tug-of-war in Liaoyang and Japan, and the demand for machine guns, barbed wire, and artillery shells and bullets is very large, and we need more machine guns and bullets!" André went on to reiterate what he had always said: "Price-wise, you can rest assured! ”

Zhao Dongyun continued to smile and nodded, and then said, "Mr. Andre doesn't need to worry, try these spring teas sent by my hometown first!" ”

Almost every time Andrei came to his headquarters, he said almost the same thing, that is, he wanted to get more weapons, ammunition and other war materials, and this time was no exception.

It's just that Andrei said that he asked for more machine guns, which is a bit more difficult, why? Because Zhao Dongyun didn't have so many machine guns on hand!

In the trade of military materials between Zhao Dongyun and the Russians, although it was mainly heavy machine guns at the beginning, it was only the beginning, and the follow-up trade was mainly based on artillery shells and bullets, supplemented by barbed wire, cement, and grain. Zhao Dongyun obtained about 200 heavy machine guns from the Russians through various channels.

Half of these heavy machine guns were purchased and hoarded by Zhao Dongyun from Germany in advance last year, and the nearly 100 follow-up guns were imported from Germany one after another, but the number that could be obtained has not been much.

In addition, the Beiyang Army is also the main buyer of German heavy machine guns, not to mention a few years ago, at the end of this year alone, Yuan Shikai ordered 100 heavy machine guns in one go, and after the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War this year, he ordered 100 more, plus the heavy machine guns ordered by other southern provinces one after another, it can be said that the heavy machine guns of the Germans are not worried about the market in China.

Not to mention that after the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, Russia itself directly imported a large number of heavy machine guns from Germany due to its limited production of heavy machine guns.

In this case, in fact, it was difficult for Zhao Dongyun to import large quantities of heavy machine guns from Germany through the guò import route.

As for other countries, there are heavy machine guns, Britain, France, and the United States have them, but there is also a problem of caliber and bullet supply involved, the Russian side was originally equipped with heavy machine guns imported from Germany, and later obtained a large number of German-style heavy machine guns from Zhao Dongyun, and now at the critical juncture of the war, there is no time for the Russians to change the caliber of this kind of thing, so it is best to continue to maintain the existing machine gun system, so it is difficult for the Russians to use the heavy machine guns in other countries.

This is just one of the aspects, in addition to the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, the price of ordnance in the international market has risen almost in a straight line, especially the price of heavy machine guns in the Far East, almost one price a day, and now the price of heavy machine guns has at least doubled compared with the beginning of this year!

And Zhao Dongyun is just a second-class dealer, the purchase price is so expensive, his profit is naturally low, plus the heavy machine gun is actually not very profitable, even if he makes a lot of effort to get a hundred machine guns, it would be good to earn 100,000 taels of silver, but he casually poured tens of thousands of shells, and he earned more than this number, and the shells are still the products of Fuyuan Machinery Qì Factory.

Therefore, in contrast, Zhao Dongyun is more willing to sell consumable ammunition such as artillery shells and bullets, rather than machine guns that are troublesome and cannot make a few dollars.

However, as a qualified and conscientious arms dealer, the requirements of customers naturally need to be met as much as possible, so Zhao Dongyun said: "Mr. Andre, you should know that there is a shortage of heavy machine guns in the Far East market today, not only are we purchasing, but I am also buying all the heavy machine guns that can be seen, so it is really difficult to get a large number of heavy machine guns!" ”

Andrei said, "General, don't you have an arsenal? Couldn't a heavy machine gun be produced? ”

Zhao Dongyun shook his head and smiled bitterly: "Not for the time being!" ”

In the second half of last year, the Fuyuan Machinery Factory had actually obtained the patent authorization for the MG01 heavy machine gun of the German Arms Company and the patent authorization for Makqin, but it is one thing to have a patent authorization, another thing to be able to imitate it, it is another thing to be able to imitate it, and it is another thing to be able to produce it on a large scale, so don't think that if you buy a patent license, you will be able to produce heavy machine guns in large quantities.

Although people have given you a full set of design drawings, and even the raw materials for making guns are ready to be imported, there are still quite a lot of technical difficulties in making these parts, and it is not easy to even assemble them.

The reason is also simple, this MG01 heavy machine gun is too sophisticated, and the existing equipment of the Fuyuan Machinery Factory is not accurate enough, and it was looted by the Germans when purchasing these equipment.

Fortunately, in 1904, although there was a nominal arms embargo against China, not to mention that this arms embargo had already existed in name only, even if there was still this arms embargo, there would be no such thing as a technical blockade.

With the equipment, but also under the design of a group of foreign engineers, the first MG01 heavy machine gun of the Fuyuan machine factory came out not too late, in fact, it was developed in December of this year, and named the Fuzao 01 heavy gun, but this is just a foreign gun, not even a small-scale trial production.

No, in the first half of the year, the Fuyuan Machine Qì Factory has been tossing and trying to produce on a small scale, and the output is naturally tragic, only one or two were made in a month, and only six were built last month, and most of them were used for various tests, and only four were provided to Duan Qirui's fourth town last month.

In other words, after more than half a year, the Fuyuan Machine Qì Factory now only has a total of four Fuzao Type 01 machine guns, which is not even a small-scale trial production, let alone large-scale mass production.

Zhao Dongyun therefore had to explain: "The production of heavy machine guns at the Fuyuan Machine Factory has not yet entered the right track, and I am afraid that it will not be possible to supply a large number of them in a short period of time!" ”

Unexpectedly, Andrei shook his head: "General, please forgive me for being rude, but I still need to point out that your idea is wrong!" As far as I know, your family's Fuyuan machine factory has purchased a large number of related equipment, and you can carry out large-scale mass production at any time as long as you want! ”

Zhao Dongyun didn't interject after hearing this, but continued to wait for Andre to continue.

I only heard Andre say: "Now it is not possible to mass produce for a long time, according to my guess, it is estimated that it is due to the lack of relevant engineers and a large number of orders!" ”

Zhao Dongyun has to say that this person is right, the machine gun department of the Fuyuan machine factory has a large number of equipment, and the reason why it has not been able to enter mass production for a long time is mainly because of the lack of technical reserves, and technology is a talent to put it bluntly, among the large number of technical personnel in the Fuyuan machine factory, the low-level technical personnel are mainly Chinese, basically the Fuyuan machine factory is recruiting technical talents from all over the country and even to Nanyang to join, plus the Fuyuan machine factory itself has opened a factory-affiliated technical school, Therefore, there is no shortage of technicians in the middle and lower levels.

However, there are only a handful of middle and high-level technical experts, especially the top technical experts who can be responsible for the research and development of an entire project, and only seven or eight of them are hired from abroad with high salaries, not to mention that these people's salaries are too high, and even high salaries are difficult to invite real technical experts from abroad, and only some middle-level engineers are attracted to Tangshan by high salaries.

Therefore, this has caused fewer top experts in the Fuyuan machine factory, and even fewer are good at heavy machine guns.

As for the order is also a problem, the Beiyang system has imported a large number of heavy machine guns from Germany in recent years, to be honest, the demand for heavy machine guns has been greatly reduced, even if there are dozens, dozens of small orders, as for those southern provinces to train the new army is not as attentive as Yuan Shikai, if it is not for the imperial court forcing them to not even be willing to change the new rifle, let alone buy expensive heavy machine guns that consume bullets, so even if there is, it will definitely not be much.

However, with such an order for dozens of heavy machine guns, it is absolutely impossible to maintain a production line of heavy machine guns. If the order is not enough, a large number of workers will be recruited and trained to start the production line, and in the end they may lose all their money.

Therefore, it is better to continue to conduct small-scale trial production like now, and it is estimated that there will be dozens of outputs in a year, which is enough to replace the normal loss of Beiyang, and it is not necessary to expand the output.

Seeing that Zhao Dongyun showed a look of agreement, Andre continued: "General, we need machine guns and bullets, and the general needs money, and your factory needs orders and engineers, these can be solved!" ”

Zhao Dongyun asked, in an inquiring tone: "Mr. Andre, what do you think?" ”