"Thank you Queen Mother!"
"Your Majesty Yehenara Guixiang pays homage to the Queen Mother and pays homage to the Emperor."
"The Queen Mother is a thousand years old, and the Emperor is long live."
"Guixiang, get up and talk."
"嗻."
"You are now in charge of our arsenal in the Qing Dynasty, right?"
"For these arsenals in Shengjing, my Qing Dynasty invested 40 to 50 million taels of silver. Why is the productivity still so low?"
"The cost is still so high."
Prince Gong stood up and attacked.
"The weapons sold to us by the foreigners were fully rebates and profits from the arsenal in our hometown, and we made enough money from top to bottom."
"Why do we want to build an arsenal?"
"Isn't it just to save money? Isn't it just to be self-sufficient?"
"But our Qing Dynasty has invested so much silver. As far as I know, our investment in your arsenal will not be less than the Tenglong Empire's investment in their arsenal."
"Looking at the gap again, the Tenglong Empire's weapons and equipment beat Britain, France, Russia and the United States, plus I, the Qing Dynasty, were losing ground."
"France and Tsarist Russia lost a lot of colonies because of this."
"Let's look at the investment of 8 million taels of silver in each production line of Shengjing Manufacturing Bureau. At its peak, the annual output of rifles was only more than 4,000 units, and the average cost of each rifle was nearly a hundred taels of silver."
"Compared with the cost of weapons produced by the Qing Dynasty Arsenal and foreign guns, the price-performance ratio is outclassed in the entire Shengjing City. The Lin Mington gun I ordered from the United States, including water legs, insurance, etc., only costs 12 taels of silver."
"The Senai De gun I bought from a foreign merchant only cost 10 taels of silver."
"Even the Chinese Type-2 rifle sold to Germany by the Tenglong Empire is much better than the above two weapons in terms of accuracy and quality."
"Their Chinese weapons can beat the weapons we use by several blocks."
"The main reason is that as far as I know, they only sold it to Germany for more than ten taels of silver."
"Whether it is the cost of outsourcing our foreign guns or the cost of the weapons sold by the Tenglong Empire, they are only one-tenth of what I made in-house in the Qing Dynasty, and their performance far exceeds that of our self-made weapons."
"What exactly is your weapons manufacturing bureau doing?"
As soon as Prince Gong finished speaking, the whole audience was excited. They had all heard that the weapons they made were expensive, but they didn't expect them to be so expensive.
Yehelana Guixiang broke out in cold sweat on his forehead after hearing this. He knelt down with a thud and did not dare to raise his head.
"I will do my best to reduce costs."
"I don't need to hear this empty talk."
Yi Xin's tone became more severe.
"What I want is a solution."
Guixiang's heart tightened. He knew that Yi Xin was not someone who was easy to fool, so he had to bite the bullet and explain, "Back to the prince, it's mainly because of the high procurement cost of raw materials and labor costs..."
Yixin suddenly interrupted Guixiang: "Humph, these are all your excuses. Isn't it expensive for the Tenglong Empire's arsenal to make weapons?"
"The people of his Tenglong Empire were also separated from our Qing Dynasty. Their ordinary people now live much better than our Qing Dynasty people."
"You are the general manager of the arsenal. You should be able to solve these problems."
Guixiang did not dare to refute and could only continue to explain: "I am already thinking of solutions, such as optimizing the production process and improving the skill level of workers..."
"These are not fundamental issues." Yi Xin interrupted him again, "What I want is results, not excuses and reasons."
Guixiang knew that Yixin had lost patience with him. He could only keep shirking the blame and shirking responsibility. "I will do my best, but these problems cannot be solved in a short while..."
"Are you perfunctory with me?" Yi Xin's tone became more severe, "Do you know how heavy your responsibility is? The safety of the country lies in your hands."
Guixiang's heart tightened, he was shocked by Prince Gong's words.
Since Yehenala Guixiang became the person in charge of the arsenal, he has made a lot of money.
Now he has purchased land in a wealthy country and married many beautiful wives.
He was used to living a lavish life and he couldn't bear to give up these benefits suddenly.
Guixiang promised again: "I will do my best to live up to the expectations of the Queen Mother and the Emperor."
Guixiang looked at his sister, hoping that her sister could put in a good word for him.
Cixi didn't know the specific data before. Just after listening to what Prince Gong said, she knew how much money her brother had embezzled.
The Qing Dynasty is getting worse day by day, and her brother is poaching her own corner.
"The Queen Mother, Your Majesty, and Your Majesty, please listen to me and give you detailed calculations."
"My lord, what you just said was very one-sided."
"The Tenglong Empire, as well as the arsenals of Britain and the United States, have their own production lines, and there is no need to outsource their equipment."
"The production lines sold to us by foreigners have all been used before, and a part will break every few days after they arrive in our hands."
"Our people don't know how to repair it. If it breaks, we have to find foreigners. Important parts have to wait for them to be shipped back from abroad."
"How do you think this productivity can be improved?"
"The second thing is that the main parts of the Tenglong Empire's rifles are made by themselves, as are the foreigners. But in Qing Dynasty, many of the raw materials have to be outsourced, which adds up to a lot of money."
"Thirdly, our workers have limited professional skills and are not skilled workers, so their production efficiency cannot be improved."
"Your Majesty, I'm really in trouble. People who don't know think I've embezzled a lot of money. In fact, I haven't received a salary for a long time. The whole family is so poor that it's almost impossible to get rid of the blame."
"Look at how skinny your nephews and grandnephews have become."
Xiao Lizi almost laughed out loud when he heard this.
A few days ago, he met several of Guixiang's grandchildren, all of whom were short and fat.
You are already as fat as a pig, but you are still thin?
Fortunately, he was a professional and didn't laugh out loud.
Yixin was not familiar with Guixiang's family, so he was really fooled.
Ci Xi coughed a few times.
"Cough cough cough..."
"Prince Gong, foreigners can't always give us second-hand goods for the machines we spent so much money on, right?"
"Look at the Yiai family, we need new ones. The old ones we bought will be damaged here today and there tomorrow. All the extra money has been spent."
"We won't save money that shouldn't be saved."
"嗻."
"And if we don't have skilled workers, we send people out to study. With so many international students coming back, what do they do to feed each one?"
"Didn't Lin Yizhong go to the arsenal? Didn't he study design and not be able to repair this machine?"
"Go back to the Queen Mother, what fake foreign devil knows nothing but knows how to mess around after arriving at the arsenal."
"I thought he was just here to mess around, so I asked him to go back and take a rest. I haven't seen him come to the factory for several days."
"Um?"
"Yu Lin, your classmate is unreliable, isn't he?"
"Queen Mother, this is definitely not the case. I will go to Lin Yizhong to ask for clarification. I cannot listen to his side of the story."
Guixiang was frightened by Shisan Gege's words again.
All of this was made up by him. How could it stand up to Shisangege's investigation? The secret would be exposed as soon as he checked.
