"If you can't advance multiple projects at the same time, but only promote one or two industries, then your industry will be lame!"
"When the time comes, you will find that if there is a problem with your equipment, you have to wait for someone thousands of miles away to repair it, and you need to cross the ocean to buy parts... You have wasted time, and then what about the profit? Nothing is left..."
"How can a factory with no profits survive? Does it all rely on financial subsidies? It can be subsidized for one year, but can it be subsidized for ten years and a hundred years?"
"The Western Region simply does not have the conditions to start the industrial system at the same time!"
"The second difficulty is that industrialization requires a large educated base. They have to be literate, right? You have to be able to read the Chinese characters, Arabic numerals and even simple English on those devices!"
"You have to understand the simplest addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. At least you have to make sure you can cut the material! Right, do you cut one centimeter or 1.5 centimeters with one knife? They all need to be calculated..."
"Does the Western Region have the conditions for such basic education? No matter how low the literacy rate is here in the Qing Dynasty, at least the language and writing are unified... With a little training, they will be mature workers!"
"But those ethnic groups in the Western Regions don't even have a unified language, let alone a written language... Without a large educated group, how can you launch an industrial chariot?"
Xiao Letian shook his head, "Ideals cannot replace reality. These two points are not enough. There is a third point... Industry needs a huge market to absorb productivity. Is there a market in the Western Region? How big is it? Can it guarantee profitability? ?”
"The population of the entire Western Region is only two to three million people. How many industrial products can these people digest? Cao Shuai, you should go to Tanggu Industrial Zone to investigate. Go and see for yourself amidst the roar of the steam engines, the products How are they all made!”
"In a market with a population of two to three million, it's enough to work in an industrial zone for one season, and then spend the rest of the time lying around and eating vegetables?"
"Without convenient roads, you won't be able to sell your excess productivity to the customs... Of course you can dump it to some countries in Central Asia, but that's not enough!"
"How much can the nomadic people and the extremely poor farming people buy?"
"You can't sell your goods to India, right? Or what about the Middle East? Directly compete with British businessmen in the market?"
"How can you industrialize without a huge market that can absorb production capacity?"
"To tell you the truth, I have an extremely pessimistic view of future world peace! In order to compete for the market and dump their excess productivity, the Western powers will definitely launch a war!"
"This market problem is inherently unsolvable. Even Europe, the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, can't do anything about it! Do you think the Western Region can solve it alone?"
"The last one..." Xiao Letian was silent for a moment. "The last one is also the most critical, that is, starting industrialization requires an extremely strong government agency!"
"Without a strong centralized government agency that can suppress all domestic opposition, you cannot change the power of thousands of years of human inertia!"
"Take a closer look at how powerful the Qing Empire's anti-industrial forces are now. The railways have been hacked, the industrial zones have been hacked, and science and technology have been demonized!"
"Land, resources, and population are all controlled by powerful customary and traditional forces... Not to mention far away, there is a large amount of iron ore in the Yanshan Mountains to the north of Tanggu Special Administrative Region, but will those mountain people sell you land for you to mine? ?”
"They won't. They will make trouble, smash and loot... Our prospecting team has been beaten several times, and some people have even been seriously injured!"
"These are ordinary mountain people, and the ordinary landlord class will give you land to build a special zone? When I created the Tanggu Special Zone on my own, I could do it with iron-blooded pressure and deception!"
"Why do I want to lease land from the Manchus to build an industrial zone? Because I know that I don't have the ability to get land from ordinary people. Who can I rely on?"
"Of course he is the emperor of the Qing Dynasty. He is the largest landowner in the world! Only by obtaining land and resources from him can we carry out huge plans!"
"Think about how difficult it is? After all, the Western Region is a place where many ethnic groups live together, and it is also a distant frontier of the Qing Empire. The Qing Dynasty's management ability there is very weak!"
"At this time, are you exercising strong leadership over there? I'm afraid one Aguba will die and another one will jump out!"
Cao Shuai's face was completely pale at this moment. He found that the entire Northwest Army thought things were simple. It turned out that the industrial revolution was so complicated and its advancement was so difficult!
"Can't...can't we give it a try?" Cao Shuai asked desperately!
Xiao Letian shook his head firmly. He turned to Xiang Ying and said, "Tell him... Ironclad ships are the most industrial products currently produced by mankind. Tell him how difficult it is to build!"
"Yes!" Xiang Yingli replied attentively, "When the Zhiyuan was still on the design drawings, we calculated that the number of parts needed for the entire battleship was more than 90,000 pieces..."
"But when we started manufacturing the keel, the number of parts had already climbed to 120,000... Later, as the project progressed a little bit, the drawings were revised several times. When the Zhiyuan was finally launched for trial sea trials..."
"Brother Cao, do you know how many parts are needed for this battleship?"
Cao Shuai shook his head in confusion, and Xiang Ying said, "When the Zhiyuan was launched, the entire ship shared as many as 210,000 parts!"
"Can you imagine that 210,000 parts were put together to form such a battleship? I think you should be able to feel how difficult industry is. Without in-depth scientific management, it is absolutely impossible. possible!"
"Of course, we also need strong national power!" Xiao Letian continued!
"The Zhiyuan currently requires 210,000 parts, but the total number of new ironclad ship parts may approach 300,000... This trend will be irreversible in the future!"
"The application of electricity, investment in new energy, more powerful weapon systems and communication systems...the parts are as small as grains of rice, and so large that they require hundreds of thousands of tons of forging punches to process..."
"In the future, there will definitely be steel battleships with millions of parts, or even tens of millions... Can such a god of war be owned by a small and weak country?"
"Do you really think that the two to three million uneducated people in the Western Region can support such an industrialized system?"
"Among the many elements of industrial development, apart from having more resources, the Western Region has nothing left!"
"Think about it carefully. The reason you said before that Aguba must be defeated was what you said yourself!"
