The relationship between countries is the same as the relationship between people, whether others look up to you, whether you are listened to or not, the key depends on how much strength you have.

In the 21st century, this consideration of strength is multifaceted, such as science and technology, economy, culture, military, etc., but in the 19th century, other aspects of strength are secondary, and what is really valued, or decisive, is military strength.

In other words, a country that is backward in all aspects such as economy, politics, and culture can still be regarded as a great power if its military strength is strong enough, such as Turkey at this time, which is the best example.

At this time, the Chinese Empire was the same, not to mention that the total economic output was still the first in the world, but those were all dependent on the demographic dividend, and the per capita productivity was still extremely backward.

Even if it is a huge population, but ninety percent are farmers who are bound by the land, and the overall wisdom of the people is not fully opened, and it is still in a stage where it has just opened its eyes to see the world, just like a frog at the bottom of the well has just been disturbed by the outside world, forced to jump to the mouth of the well, and found that the outside world is infinitely large, and is curious about the prosperity of the outside world, but also a little afraid of the fierce beasts of the outside world, and is in the intermediate stage of jumping back into the well and jumping out of the well directly.

Such a China still belongs to a semi-civilized and backward country, and it was originally very fragile, after all, it has been too far behind the times, not to mention anything else, because of too many backward weapons, the military strength of the guide is far from that of the great powers, and if you don't pay attention to it, you will be beaten and bullied.

However, the emergence of Li Yongji, especially the golden finger of his space-time trading system, has changed this qiē.

Because in a very short period of time, he has built a modern army using modern weapons, which has achieved many surprising military victories by relying on modern weapons and modern training methods.

After that, he took advantage of the high profits of time and space transactions to forcibly build a number of modern industries and pull up a working class of half-workers and half-armies. This allowed the development of the Chinese Empire to enter a fast lane, so that the little frog that jumped on the mouth of the well suddenly became a big monster, and it could already jump out to compete with other fierce beasts in the outside world.

For such a drastic change in China, the other powers are basically still in a stage of inability to adapt, Russia is the best example, but if Russia can better understand the situation of the Chinese Empire, it will not be so hasty to intervene and go on expeditions, relatively speaking, Britain, France and the United States are better adapted, because their merchants have a lot of contact with the new Chinese merchants. No matter how good Li Yongji's secrecy is, he can reveal some information to some extent.

And now, when China cleanly defeated the powerful Russian Expeditionary Force head-on with its navy, especially when the details of the naval battle of Dongsha Island began to leak out, they began to really see China as a great power, at least, as an Eastern Turkey.

The threat posed by such a great power, and by the absolute dominance of this country, cannot be taken lightly by anyone. Especially the UK.

Although the British Empire is now on the rise, it is also facing many troubles, because it has to maintain colonies everywhere and maintain the supremacy of the empire on which the sun never sets. It's quite a stretch in itself.

In fact, many of the colonies of the British Empire, instead of being helped by Britain, have gradually become a burden. It was the industrial bourgeoisie of Britain itself, and the colonial economy, that really supported the British economy. On the contrary, nearly half of them are in the red.

India is the best example of this, not long after the great Indian national uprising, which dealt a great blow to the British economy, and the huge British East India Company was devastated and affected the British government, which had to personally intervene in India in the name of the state.

In other words, although the British lobster soldiers are still strong, and although the British fleet is still strong, he also faces many challenges, especially many challenges in Europe, such as Russia, which is eyeing up, such as the rising Prussia, such as France, etc., it is impossible to focus its energy on the East, and it is impossible to carry out a large-scale expedition against a country with strong military strength, which is too costly and too much to lose.

On the contrary, befriending China, an ancient country that is on the rise, can strive for more profits, and Britain has indeed tasted the sweetness of the previous trade process, so it is very keen to maintain a more friendly cooperative relationship with China.

However, although he thought so, after all, the pride of the British Empire could not be let go for a while, so the requirements for China were still a little tough and rigid, and it was not until Li Yongji clearly warned the British ambassador that the China expert began to understand the tough attitude of the Chinese emperor.

In the end, Wittoma made a compromise and decided to report Li Yongji's intentions to London again, and it was not up to him to decide whether it would succeed or not, and whether the British conditions could be modified.

In this way, people who become ambassadors in a strong country are actually a very sad thing, because they are weak in the face of a strong country, unable to win preferential policies for their own country, dare not cut first and then play, and lack autonomy; On the contrary, those who serve as ambassadors in weak countries can easily cut them first and then play a prelude, coerce and induce weak countries, and come up with some treaties that are beneficial to their own countries, and generally speaking, as long as they are not too much, the mother country will recognize these treaties afterwards.

Compared with the entanglement of the British envoys, the French and American envoys did not have so many concerns, they just came to congratulate them sincerely, and as for other things such as upgrading diplomatic relations to the ambassadorial level and increasing trade reciprocity, they would not be discussed on such occasions, and there was no need to talk to the emperor.

In short, after this celebration, it means that China has begun to enter the era of trains, although the process is still very slow, but many people are beginning to realize the profit and power contained in it. At least, from now on, no one will question whether the construction of railways is extravagant and wasteful, or that fewer and fewer people will question it.

After receiving congratulations from China and foreign countries and encouraging officials at all levels of the Ministry of Railways, Li Yongji went on to inspect the operation of the new iron and steel plant in Ma'anshan.

The so-called Ma'anshan No. 2 plant was actually just completed half a month ago, although many of the equipment used is still modern, but unlike the No. 1 Iron and Steel Plant, this No. 2 plant was assembled and built by the technicians of the Chinese Empire themselves, and many of the equipment are home-grown, not 100% modern.

Speaking of which, Xu Shou's son Xu Jianyin is generally interested in teaching. On the contrary, he was quite interested in practical technology, and when he heard that steel production was an important weight of a country's strength, he wanted to build his own steel industry.

Fortunately, in the library of the secret base in Area 110, the modern and perfect technical materials are relatively simple if you just check the steel process.

Xu Jianyin studied for more than three months in a row, thoroughly studied all aspects of steelmaking, and even actually inspected the Ma'anshan No. 1 Iron and Steel Plant built by Li Yongji, using actual observations. to prove what you have learned.

Eventually, Xu Jianyin asked Li Yongji to build his own steel plant, and his goal was not a complex converter, but open-hearth steelmaking.

In his opinion, although the steelmaking speed of large blast furnace and converter is fast, the structure is complex, and the quality of the steel smelted is single, and the converter has high requirements for molten iron. In order to maintain quality, only one blast furnace can be used for one converter, which is not suitable for comprehensive promotion in backward China.

Open-hearth furnaces are different, although open-hearth steelmaking is not as productive as converters. However, the technical content is small, the requirements for raw materials are not high, and a large number of raw materials such as scrap steel and ordinary pig iron can be used, and the formula is relatively flexible. And. There are also many types of open-hearth steelmaking products, which are not as single as the steel produced by converters, and the quality is relatively good.

Xu Jianyin's idea was. The blast furnace of ironmaking can actually be made by itself, anyway, this thing is mainly the refractory material of the blast furnace, and as long as the formula of the refractory material is complete, then the refractory produced in this time and space may not be much worse than modern products.

Although the pollution of the blast furnace made by yourself will be greater, and the efficiency will be lower, but at least it is produced from scratch, the meaning is different, anyway, even if it is a modern blast furnace, it is impossible to eliminate pollution, or in other words, if you want to enter the industrial age, it is necessary to bear the pollution for a period of time, and when you are strong, you can go back and govern, it depends on how you grasp this degree.

Many of the equipment of the open-hearth furnace can also be made by himself, but because he can't make alkaline chrome refractories at present, these things still need to be imported by Li Yongji from modern times.

In other words, Xu Jianyin wants to directly build an alkaline open-hearth furnace, no longer an acidic open-hearth, because the acidic open-hearth furnace cannot effectively remove sulfur and phosphorus, and the iron ore near Ma'anshan is rich in these materials, so if you want to make high-quality steel and effectively remove these impurities, you can only use alkaline materials.

However, the open-hearth here is only made of modern alkaline refractory materials, but the open-hearth furnace is all made by a technical team led by Xu Jianyin, plus some masters who are good at burning porcelain, according to the technical data.

In the end, Xu Jianyin's open-hearth steelmaking system became the first steelmaking plant independently designed and built in the Chinese Empire.

After the steel mill was built, it was only a trial operation at first, and only after the output was completely stabilized, did Li Yongji dare to come over to inspect, and Li Yongji also happened to take advantage of the ribbon-cutting train to run, by the way, to inspect this self-built steel mill.

Before entering the factory, I saw a large chimney that kept emitting black smoke, which was undoubtedly the blast furnace produced by the No. 2 Iron and Steel Plant itself.

"Your Majesty guessed right." In response to Li Yongji's question, Xu Jianyin, who was sitting in the carriage, immediately replied, "This is our own blast furnace, which has 406 cubic meters and can produce 1,000 tons of iron per day. ”

"A thousand tons per day? How much? Li Yongji asked.

"Naturally, there is." Xu Jianyin said, "I designed and made this blast furnace in strict accordance with the instructions in the book, and the refractory bricks were made by the master with the highest craftsmanship, and then let the master do it little by little." At first, the output during the test was only one-fifth, but when the furnace is flat, as long as the furnace is not stopped, at least 1,000 tons of pig iron can be produced every day, and there is absolutely no mistake. ”

"And what about the steelmaking furnace?" Li Yongji asked, "In the case of open-hearth, I remember that the steelmaking speed is much slower than that of the converter." ”

"Your Majesty is right." Xu Jianyin said, "I've seen it, the converter steelmaking system that His Majesty asked people to build is indeed advanced, and a furnace of steel can be produced in ten minutes, and the efficiency is terrible." As for my open-hearth steelmaking, because it is not yet possible to realize the melting pool oxygen blowing technology, it can only be a normal steelmaking method, so it takes at least eight hours to make a furnace of steel, and in terms of speed, the speed of converter steelmaking is 48 times that of open-hearth steelmaking.

However, although the speed of open-hearth steelmaking is not as fast as that of converters, we can make up for it with quantity and capacity, so in order to cope with this blast furnace, I produced 24 open-hearth furnaces in one go, each with a considerable capacity. The capacity is much larger than that of the previous converter. In my design, the molten iron from the blast furnace can directly enter the 24 open-hearth furnaces, and the 24 furnaces make steel at the same time, so far, it can ensure that 860 tons of steel can be produced per day, which can almost completely consume the molten iron of the blast furnace, and in terms of output, it is not inferior to the converter steelmaking system of Plant 1. ”

"That's right." Li Yongji nodded, "If the efficiency is insufficient, the quantity will make up for it." It's a good idea, but if you're doing that, you'll need a lot of labor. ”

"That's true." Xu Jianyin nodded, "The number of workers needed in a steel factory like mine is 10,000, which is almost 30 times the number of workers in Plant 1. Of course, the main reason why so many people are needed is that the steelmaking work is too intensive, and it takes four shifts 24 hours a day. It is also necessary to have strict work discipline, which can ensure the output, if there are few people, it is impossible to do four shifts. Worker fatigue will increase, which will increase production accidents. ”

"It's okay." Li Yongji said, "We don't have much else, but there are a lot of people." As long as production can be guaranteed and there are no accidents, it is not a bad thing to recruit more people. ”

Speaking of which. The carriage has approached the gate of the factory, through the window of the carriage, you can see a lot of people gathered in front of the factory in front of the factory, in front of these people, there is a huge incense platform, the incense stand is placed with incense candles and candles, all of which are burning vigorously.

When the people behind these incense platforms saw Li Yongji's carriage approaching, they all involuntarily knelt on the ground, and when the carriage came to a stop, they simply raised their hands and prostrated on the ground together, not daring to raise their heads to look at it.

was stunned by this face, Li Yongji looked back at Xu Jianyin, and the other party's face was a little embarrassed.

"What's going on?" Li Yongji asked.

"This should be a worker who is not working." Xu Jianyin said, "I informed them that His Majesty was coming back and asked them to organize a welcoming ceremony, but I didn't expect them to come out like this." ”

"Understood." Li Yongji nodded.

I really understand, that is the set of the other party, which is all the tricks to welcome the holy decree in the play, that is, the so-called incense case, burning incense and kowtowing.

Although Li Yongji advocated bowing instead of kneeling and kowtowing after registration, thousands of years of traditional thinking made most people still involuntarily kneel and kowtow when facing the emperor, and this kind of thing is not the first time Li Yongji has seen it.

However, most of the people who kneel and kowtow to the ground that they usually meet by chance, and they kneel down and kowtow directly, unlike the people here, who have been notified in advance and prepared, and these people have not learned the formal etiquette of greeting the emperor, so they used the set they learned from watching dramas before, that is, the so-called putting on good clothes, putting on incense cases, burning good incense, and then collectively kowtowing behind the incense platform, but it was a nondescript.

"Majesty, I ......"

"Okay, that's okay." Li Yongji interrupted Xu Jianyin's words, "Everyone is also a fist, okay, let's go down quickly." ”

After speaking, Li Yongji knocked on the car door and signaled that he was going to get out of the car, at this time, the palace maid who had already prepared outside hurriedly bowed and bowed her head, and then stretched out her hand to open the car door from the outside.

Knocking on the car door means that you want to get out of the car, and the female guard is out to open the door, which is the etiquette to get out of the car.

In fact, this set of getting off the bus etiquette was not before, in the past, Li Yongji drove the door by himself, but after Yin Susu was pregnant and the Queen Mother presided over the Yonghua Palace, the royal etiquette style became bigger, and there were rules in all aspects, such as this dismount, someone must open the door outside, it is said that it is to highlight the royal majesty.

Li Yongji didn't adapt to it at first, but after all, this is the rule set by his mother, and he is very resolute, he feels that there is no need to fight with his mother for this little thing, and it is indeed convenient and very face-saving, and it is indeed conducive to highlighting his identity, so he will follow.

Therefore, today's emperor travels without being as light and simple as before, but a large number of people hugging and hula in front and back, and because of this, those workers kneeling at the door of the factory can see the emperor's whereabouts from a distance.

After Li Yongji, who was wearing a black tweed coat, stepped out of the carriage, an old man at the front of the crowd kneeling on the ground suddenly raised his head and shouted: "Greetings to the Holy Majesty, long live my emperor, long live, long live!" ”

After the old man finished shouting, the people behind him also shouted: "Long live my emperor, long live, long live!" ”

This sound is uniform, at first glance, it seems that it has been trained many times, and because of the large number of people, just looking at this dense number of people, Li Yongji, who has many experience in leading troops, deduced that this is at least more than 3,000 people. So the sound was so loud that Li Yongji's ears hurt a little.

Fortunately, Li Yongji also had a way to deal with this situation, so he waved his hand majestically: "Okay, let's be free of courtesy." ”

"Thank you!" The old man in the lead kowtowed again, and then stood up again.

When the old man stood up, the others followed suit, which highlighted the identity of the old man in disguise.

When asked later, Li Yongji found out. It turns out that this old man's name is Liu Qi, known as the Seventh Master, who is seventy-eight years old this year, and is the oldest master here, and he is highly skilled, and he is proficient in iron-making, brick-making and kiln-making, etc., and is an old qualification. In addition, many of the technical backbones of this steel plant are his apprentices, which is why he has such prestige among the workers.

As for those who come to worship. Most of them are unqualified workers, but not everyone can come, such as sweeping the floor, only those front-line workers are qualified to come. Of course, this also shows from another point of view, the old-fashioned steel mill is indeed a large employer.

Li Yongji came here this time mainly to inspect the steel plant, not to put on a show, so he didn't make any speeches. just simply encouraged everyone, and then let everyone disperse, and continued to take Xu Jianyin and Liu Qi with him. and the secretary Soho and a few guards, Chang Zai, entered the real steelmaking plant together.

After changing into heat insulation clothing and wearing a hard hat, as soon as you enter the heat insulation room of the factory, you can immediately feel the high temperature coming inside, and then continue to walk, after walking up to the second floor, you can see a huge furnace lined up below, and there is a red liquid in the furnace, which is the open hearth and the molten steel inside.

While walking, Xu Jianyin next to him introduced that these open-hearth furnaces were large and small, although the initial molten iron received was the same, all of which were imported from the blast furnace, but because of the different additional materials in the later stage, the quality of the steel produced was also different.

In other words, the 24 open-hearth furnaces here actually produce different steel qualities and types, some of which specialize in high-carbon steel for cutting tools, some of which produce medium-carbon steel, and some of which specialize in low-carbon steel.

According to Xu Jianyin, the steel produced by these different furnaces has different uses, such as high-carbon steel, which is mainly used to produce various knives and farm tools; Medium carbon steel is mainly used to make steel bars for parts and construction; As for mild steel, it mainly produces springs and seamless steel pipes.

In this way, the No. 2 factory does produce more types of steel, although it only produces three types of carbon steel, high, medium and low, and has no ability to produce alloy steel, but it undoubtedly increases the types of steel and improves the scope of application.

You must know that almost all the steel produced by the No. 1 steel plant from the modern society is high-quality low-carbon calm steel, which is used to produce rails and seamless steel pipes for making gun barrels and barrels, but if it is used to produce knives, it is slightly insufficient, and it needs to go through a series of forging treatments in the later stage to make qualified steel for knives.

Similarly, the steel bars used to make building materials are best medium carbon steel, if you use low carbon steel, the strength and hardness are slightly lower, and medium carbon steel just meets the needs of steel building materials.

In fact, although a lot of modern technology and a lot of modern materials are used, the technology here is not small after all, and the steel plant that Li Yongji directly transmitted from Hyundai, so the quality is actually slightly inferior.

For example, although the products produced by No. 1 Iron and Steel Plant are single, due to complete deoxidation, the production is high-quality calm steel, which has a dense structure, small segregation, uniform quality, strong yield resistance, and is an excellent steel for rails and pipes, almost reaching the level of modern steel.

However, in this steel plant, although open-hearth steelmaking is used, modern technology is also used, such as calcium carbide, silicon carbide and other deoxidizers will be added in the steelmaking process, but after all, it is not an oxygen blowing type, and most of the steel produced is semi-calm steel and boiling steel, in terms of quality, it is worse than the steel of No. 1 plant.

Of course, even if the quality of low-carbon steel is slightly worse than that of Plant No. 1, there are more types of tapping, and after all, it is steel, which is much stronger than pig iron, and the quality of ordinary steel in this era is much better.

After a visit, Li Yongji was very satisfied, after all, this is the first steel plant to produce independently, which is of great significance.

According to preliminary estimates, such a steel plant, with a daily output of 860 tons of steel, can produce 310,000 tons of steel in a year if it is not stopped, and with the capacity of the No. 1 factory, it is still very easy to produce 500,000 tons of steel per year.

Moreover, the most important thing is that such a No. 2 steel plant can be built repeatedly, Li Yongji only needs to continue to provide some alkaline refractories, which is not as big as the No. 1 steel plant, and even if it is an alkaline refractory material, he is also looking for someone to organize a breakthrough, and it will not be long before the alkaline refractory bricks can be produced by himself.

"Your Majesty, as long as I am given sufficient manpower and material resources, I promise that I can double the production scale and output of the factory in half a year, reaching 1,600 tons of steel per day." Xu Jianyin said with pride, "If you continue to give me full support, if you can break through the technical difficulties of alkaline refractories within one year, then at most three years, just this Ma'anshan base, I can guarantee a daily output of 10,000 tons of steel!" ”

"Very good, ambitious!" Li Yongji exclaimed, "Steel is the top priority of a country, and it is necessary to have this ambition." Well, don't worry, I will ask the State Council to fully support your steel project, ask people to give money, ask money to give money, and give priority to ensuring steel construction. As for the name of the plan, well, let's call it the Great Steelmaking Plan, simple and clear. ”

"Thank you!" Xu Jianyin was overjoyed and said, "In this way, I will be completely relieved." ”

"Well, you can rest assured." Li Yongji narrowed his eyes, but he remembered something else in his heart.

Indeed, steel is the top priority of the modern state, and now it seems that open-hearth steelmaking has not yet appeared, only Siemens invented the regenerator technology, and it is still too late.

Ah, it seems that we have to find someone to go to France and kill the Martin who invented open-hearth steelmaking, even if we can't stop the emergence of open-hearth steelmaking in the end, it would be good to delay it. By the way, this guy Siemens is also very dangerous, hug the grass and beat the rabbit, let's kill it in advance.

Who else? No matter, go back and ask Zhang Xinda to find some information, and see what kind of awesome people are in Western society in this era, chemists and physicists like Nobel, it's too dangerous, just kill them all in advance!

Although this is a bit unauthentic, but how to say, science has no borders, but unfortunately scientists have nationality, since I myself do not lack technology, and I am not sure that I can attract big bulls from other countries for the time being, so I will simply strangle it.

That's right, this is a war of technology, and whoever can master more advanced technology in advance in the future will be able to master the future, and for the rise of China, I can only be sorry for others. (To be continued......)