Time flies, and in the blink of an eye it is already the end of February 1933.

Before the severe cold in the north has passed, the weather in Zhanjiang is damp and uncomfortable. The morning ferry to Potou was packed, and the dark blue overalls proved that the ship was full of workers from Zhanjiang Zhonghua Shipbuilding Company. Because they are all workers, the ferry is lively before it starts.

"What, I heard that the company is going to choose someone to study in Shanghai?"

"Well, there is such a thing. It is said that it is necessary to strengthen the welding technology, let us pick a few hundred good hands to go to Shanghai to learn. ”

"Didn't you already send someone to Qinzhou to study, why do you still want to go to Shanghai? Could it be that we are going to build battleships too? ”

"You think it's beautiful, how can a battleship be so easy to build! But then again, this welding is a good thing. Now Jiangnan and Qinzhou have even started to build civilian ships with electric welding, which is much faster than usual, so the manager said that our side should catch up as soon as possible. ”

"Ho Tou, look. Huang Tou already has several welders in his class, and we only have one here, or you can see if there are any places to recommend me in Shanghai, I promise to study hard and come back to give you a long face. ”

"Stinky boy, put away your little fancy. The wages of welders are high, but they are not so easy to learn! The manager said, all the intermediate workers who went back to the training were selected, and we can't lose the face of our Chinese factory, you are not qualified as a junior worker. ”

"Didn't I sign up for the intermediate worker training class in the factory?"

"That's going to have to wait until after graduation."

Bingwen, who was dressed in civilian clothes, and several comrades-in-arms of the inspection group just boarded the ferry, and they heard everyone talking about the electric welding training class, and the corners of their mouths couldn't help but hook up a smile. Since Germany built the German-class pocket battleship with electric welding technology, electric welding has suddenly become one of the hottest technologies in the past two years, and various technical schools and factories across the country have opened training courses. With the popularization of electric welding technology in the shipbuilding industry, Zhanjiang Zhonghua Shipyard, as a rising star, was naturally unwilling to be left behind, so it successively sent people to Qinzhou and Jiangnan to learn technology.

Two full years have passed since the Saudi crisis, and although the shipping lanes and oil security have been temporarily guaranteed after the Qingdao Treaty, Bingwen still feels a pity when he thinks of the fact that he led the 21st Task Force and the British Navy to hide and seek in the vast Indian Ocean. War is indeed not a good thing. However, no one can deny that war is the great test for soldiers and troops, and if this hurdle is not passed, the Second Fleet will always be inferior to the First Fleet, which fought to the death against the Japanese Navy in the Yellow Sea.

However, there was no way, the navy did not have the ability to defeat the British blockade at that time, and even if many exercises confirmed that the aircraft carrier had the ability to destroy battleships, it was not enough to destroy them. In the case of the landing of the Marine Corps, it is not possible to protect it. No superficial defeat is a real victory. The president knows that, too. So in the end, they chose to negotiate and continue to keep the lifeblood of oil and sea traffic under the nose of the United Kingdom.

The peace talks turned the four-month Saudi crisis into the "Qingdao Treaty", and on the surface, Britain only lost a naval supply depot in Addu Atoll, which was ready to give up due to lack of fresh water, but in fact, the impact of the crisis is far from over, and India alone has made the empire of the sun never set anxious!

With the secret funding of Chen Guofu and Shi Xiaolou, Chandra officially announced the formation of the "All India National Democratic Party" after tearing up with the Congress Party. Although the British army was defeated and had to withdraw from the Tata steel plant, the Indian National Party basically controlled the rural areas of West Bengal, Bihar and Chhattisgarh, and the number of troops has grown from a few thousand to 30,000 at present! It became the third largest force in India after the Muslim League and the Congress Party. In order to deal with him, the British army continued to launch clean-ups and round-ups in the past two years. However, the more than 1,000 Korean soldiers who rushed to support the British army suffered a lot. So the British army has recently begun to support Nehru again, hoping to use the Congress Party to eliminate Chandra and his "Indian Nationalist". In the past two years, the Muslim League has also seized the opportunity to accelerate the seizure of territory, and has made clear the slogan of establishing an Islamic state.

What worries Britain the most is that India's poor party is beginning to grow, and they can be seen in Kerala and Tamil Nadu in the south, and Punjab and Rajasthan in the north. At one time, news also spread that Nehru was preparing to visit Moscow.

Although both China and Britain issued warnings at the time, Portugal immediately realized that the geopolitics of Asia had undergone fundamental changes after learning of the Treaty of Qingdao, and the United States also reported that it was ready to make the Philippines independent, so it simply took the initiative to sell East Timor to Japan for 100,000 pounds, which also made Portuguese-Dutch relations tense for a time.

£100,000 for food and resource-rich Timor-Leste. The excitement of the whole country has also fueled domestic calls for further southward expansion, and some Japanese newspapers have even repeatedly hinted that they should continue to move south and annex the richer Dutch East Indies, especially the Balikpapan oil fields of the Anglo-Dutch Shell Company and the Sumatra oil fields of the Chinese Gulf Oil Company. The oil-starved Japanese were frenzied, and in the end there were even fanatical officers who proposed that British Guinea and Australia should be "liberated" together.

Naturally, this kind of remark could not be recognized by the Japanese leadership, but it repeatedly made it clear in public that Japan would not go south, and that East Timor was only the "last time," but the haze could never be dissipated from the Dutch East Indies and the South Seas.

However, in addition to some tension in Nanyang, the world has also ushered in the quietest period. The economic improvement of various countries is still far away, the growth rate of the Soviet Union is frightening, and Europe and the United States continue to live and die, and the country has also entered a period of peaceful development. Soon after the signing of the Qingdao Treaty, the president formally implemented the long-awaited economic stimulus plan, with the help of which the national economy resumed growth by the end of 1931, when the economic crisis had come to a standstill, and thousands of projects such as roads, railways, and power plants were in full swing. The army has also benefited from the plan, the army has added two infantry divisions, the 1st and 2nd divisions have also been reorganized into armored divisions, and the tender for new aircraft for the air force is in the final stage, and what awaits them is definitely tens of thousands of equipment.

The Navy's third and fourth Beijing-class battleships were finally delivered, and the transformation of 2 Sichuan-class aircraft carriers and 2 Anhai-class aircraft carriers was also successfully completed.

For this small **, starting from the order of the Anhai class from the United States, the Navy has been going for 20 years!

From the perspective of 20 years ago, it is satisfying enough to be able to get out of the shadow of the First Sino-Japanese War and rebuild such a huge naval force. But with the London Naval Treaty of 1936 just three years to go and Italy, France, Japan and Germany all beginning to secretly design new battleships, the Navy realized that it had to prepare for a new naval race as soon as possible! Therefore, officers were specially organized to visit various shipyards across the country to make preparations.

The ferry slowly approached the pier, and when I looked up, I saw a forest of chimneys and billowing black smoke. Zhanjiang Zhonghua Shipyard is a large-scale company integrating steel, shipbuilding and machine tool manufacturing on the basis of the Guangzhou Bay Repair Factory in France, jointly invested and built by Jiangnan Industrial Group and Qinzhou Shipyard, and is known as the "Southwest Four Ships" together with Qinzhou, Mawei and Guangzhou Huangpu.

The factory is located in the Potou District across the sea from Zhanjiang City, and you can clearly see the factory area with chimneys and thick smoke billowing from the ferry. As in most industrial cities, there has always been a faint smell of sulphur in and out of the city since the chimneys became more and more numerous. However, the people of Zhanjiang not only did not dislike it, but supported the majority, because after the factory settled down, the local life and development were much better than during the French lease period.

Different from other domestic enterprises, because the two investors themselves are the top manufacturing enterprises in China, and after 20 years of technology and talent reserves, the development speed of Zhanjiang Zhonghua Factory is very fast. Although the ore sources here mainly rely on Luzon and Vietnam, the steel output still exceeded 2 million tons per year, 500,000 tons of shipbuilding per year, and 20,000 sets of various machinery and equipment in just six years, which has reached the scale of a medium-sized shipyard in the United States.

In addition to the scale, they also attached great importance to technological improvement and took advantage of the economic crisis to purchase a large number of advanced equipment. These include a set of German armor steel heat treatment machine tools, ultra-thick steel plate cold rolling mill, a 30,000-ton free forging jointly developed by China and Germany, a 10,000-ton hydraulic press from Hanyang, a large extruder and so on. If it weren't for the fact that the skilled workers were not as solid as those in Europe and the United States, and the design and new technology research and development were not as good as Jiangnan and Mawei, the shipyard would have reached a higher level.

In addition to the factory's own security, the National Guard was stationed in Zhanjiang at an early stage, and the Navy began to build a construction base on the Donghai Island next door five years ago, and the Second Marine Brigade is currently stationed at the base.

After seeing the factory receptionist waiting at the door, Bingwen took the delegation to the depths of the factory without saying a word. They came mainly to inspect the quality of products, the degree of national standardization of spare parts, the technical ability of workers and so on. Two of the most important are to check the progress of the Tarzan-class destroyer project, which was delivered to the shipyard last year, and the pace of construction of the shipyard's latest super-large slipway.

After entering the wide-roofed semi-enclosed dock, two Tarzan-class destroyers, which had been half-built, appeared in front of them. As the first destroyer in China to adopt electric welding technology, the navy would have taken a great risk by placing it in the Zhonghua factory, which is slightly inferior in technical capabilities, and if it were not for Yang Qiu's clear statement that he would take advantage of the opportunity of peace to train the manufacturing capacity of the national factory by building military products, the navy would definitely give priority to Jiangnan and Mawei, which have stronger technology.

Every warship is a treasure of the navy, not to mention a fleet-type ocean-going destroyer imported from France. So Bingwen and everyone immediately wanted to get inside to take a clear look, but before they could enter the cabin, a familiar figure suddenly poked its head out of it.

"General Hakan?"