Foshan, which was once an important place for iron products during the Ming Dynasty, fell into mediocrity in just a few years after entering the Chu Dynasty.
Many iron workshops in the past have disappeared.
The decline of Foshan's iron and steel industry in a short period of time is not because it has done anything wrong or has done anything. It is simply because this place is not suitable for the development of the modern steel industry.
Foshan's iron-making industry, due to the local lack of iron ore and coal, its iron material comes from some small iron mines in the Xijiang, Beijiang, and Dongjiang river basins. After the iron ore is mined from these small iron mines, it will be refined locally. After crude iron is produced, the removed iron is transported downstream through the Pearl River system to Foshan, where it is then processed into refined iron and even various iron products.
At the same time, the fuel used in Foshan's iron-making industry is charcoal, which also relies on the abundant charcoal resources in the middle and upper reaches of the Pearl River system.
Strictly speaking, Foshan's iron-making industry is a finishing industry of iron materials and subsequent production of finished products. It is not a steel smelting industry in the traditional sense.
This model was fine in the era of handicraft industry. The scale was not large anyway. Although the transportation cost was higher, the price of steel was also high, so Foshan's iron-making industry developed fairly well.
However, after the period of the Chu Empire, a large-scale mechanical production model was adopted. The iron-making furnaces were extremely tall and directly used water-powered blowers to produce iron materials on a large scale.
This brings not only an increase in the production of iron materials, but also a decrease in the price of iron products.
At the same time, because of the large output and the large demand for raw materials, the large steel smelting plants in the Chu Empire were basically built directly near iron ore mines or coal mines, which further reduced transportation costs.
Finally, transportation is often carried out by large ships or even sea transportation, and the transportation cost is much lower than that of small ships.
Stable quality has always been the greatest advantage of industrial production. The quality of the products produced may not be close to the top quality, but it is very stable and will not be the same as that of a manual workshop. If you are lucky, the blacksmith can produce very good products. of iron materials, if you are unlucky, you can only produce scraps.
Stable quality control is a major guarantee for yield rate.
If the yield rate cannot increase, the cost will naturally remain high.
In the end, the iron-making industry in Foshan was unsustainable due to high costs. A large number of remaining private iron-making workshops closed down and were acquired.
Although these ironmaking workshops are not very good, the large number of skilled craftsmen inside are very valuable.
The Ministry of Industry of the Dachu Empire used the acquired craftsmen from these ironmaking workshops as a basis, and then established the Guangzhou Iron and Steel Works in Guangzhou, starting the first industrial steel production model in Guangdong and Guangxi, using water-powered machinery on a large scale to smelt steel. and process iron materials.
It was not just the Guangzhou Iron and Steel Works that absorbed these bankrupt workshops, but also Li's Steel.
The Li family is a traditional large-scale ironmaking workshop family in Foshan. It has been operating ironmaking in Foshan for hundreds of years. After the Chu Empire occupied Foshan, it placed many orders with local ironmaking workshops in Foshan. This process There are many people out there who have very dark hearts and make money they shouldn't by cutting corners and using shoddy products.
Not long after, these illegal businesses were confiscated and exterminated one by one by the Chu government.
The Li family was more restrained and did not do anything shoddy. Therefore, it became the only large-scale ironmaking workshop left in Foshan at that time, and took advantage of this opportunity to win a large number of military orders from the Dachu Empire. .
In addition to providing the military with numerous armors, swords, spears and other cold weapons, it also once provided the military with a number of guns.
Well, there is no doubt that Li's large-scale iron-making workshop can also make guns and cannons. It has previously provided many blunderbuss and red cannons to the Ming Dynasty officials.
These military orders brought huge profits to Lee Iron and Steel.
After the government's Guangzhou Arsenal was completed, because the defense industry needed to be controlled, private capital operations were not allowed in principle. Because the government purchased the weapons production-related business from Lee Iron and Steel, the price was naturally very good.
After receiving a large amount of cash, Lee Iron & Steel completely withdrew from the weapons production industry and began to focus on the production of various civilian iron-making products.
At this time, the Chu Empire launched a large-scale five-year agricultural development plan, which included a subsidy plan for agricultural tools.
In those few years, not only did the government invest heavily, but a machinery factory was set up in almost every county. Many traditional ironmaking workshops among the private sector, if possible, were successfully transformed into new-style machinery factories, and then produced various kinds of machinery. Iron products, especially farm tools.
Lee's Steel is no exception. After their transformation, on the one hand, they used the channels and reputation they had accumulated over a century of operation. On the other hand, they also actively introduced a large number of new hydraulic machinery and other types of machinery and equipment, and reached an agreement with Guangzhou Iron and Steel Works. Through cooperation, we were able to directly purchase large quantities of cheap iron raw materials.
This greatly controls the cost and the output is large enough.
Coupled with official agricultural tool subsidies, Li's Iron's products quickly occupied the Pearl River Delta market and became an important export commodity.
Many maritime merchants would purchase iron products from Guangzhou and then transport them to Southeast Asia and other regions for sale.
In the past few years, Li's Iron has been developing at an extremely rapid rate. Its development speed has even exceeded that of some local machinery factories established by official capital, such as Guangzhou Machinery Factory. In the field of iron consumer goods market, they are not the same. opponent.
Of course, this is also related to the fact that the core of Guangzhou Machinery Factory's business is not the consumer goods market.
Although they also produce various types of farm tools, cooking utensils and other consumer iron products, in fact, just like the large machinery factories directly invested by the Ministry of Industry of the Dachu Empire, the core of their business is the research and development and production of various types of machinery.
Their main products are various types of machine tools!
For example, a large number of mechanical equipment purchased and used in Li's Ironmaking are basically purchased from Guangzhou Machinery Factory, and these things are not cheap, and some need to be specially customized, such as large hydrodynamic lathes, which are huge and It is heavy and requires the manufacturer to transport the parts separately and then install them.
When the Ministry of Industry of the Dachu Empire invested in various factories, in addition to the national defense industry and people's livelihood industry, it played more of a guiding or supplementary role in other industries.
When private capital starts to work and does well, official capital often withdraws and concentrates its resources on other aspects.
The textile industry is a typical example. When the Chu Empire engaged in machine-made fabrics in the early days, in addition to its own needs, it was more about creating a model to attract private capital to invest in it. Private capital represented by Su Qin Textile Company poured into the textile industry. back.
Official capital has also begun to shrink its investment in the textile industry. Although there is still a Hantian Textile Company, the official has basically stopped supporting the company's civilian textile business, and has even issued warnings repeatedly not to use administrative measures again. engage in unfair competition.
Some people may say that the textile industry makes money, so why don't official capital engage in it? If you make money, you can invest it in heavy industry.
This is the difference between countries and companies.
What enterprises pursue is profits, what the country pursues is economic development, employment, and people's livelihood.
Money... to the country, is actually just a set of numbers.
Even if it is money, this mere corporate profit is nothing in front of the huge corporate tax!
Hantian Textile Company's annual profit was only a dozen or two hundred thousand taels of silver. It was a large enterprise with dozens of branches and a total of more than 40,000 employees.
Even in future generations, it would still be a large-scale enterprise.
But what is the tax revenue of the entire textile industry, as well as the development of other industries driven by the development of the textile industry, and how much tax revenue is brought by various types of consumption?
It’s hard to say exactly, but taking Hantian Textile Company as an example, its direct or indirect tax contribution is more than 200,000 yuan per year!
Therefore, the officials of the Dachu Empire basically have no interest in running a business to make money. What they want more is for an industry to prosper, drive the development of more industries, provide more jobs, and provide more tax revenue.
This is also the reason why the official capital of the Dachu Empire basically only invests in the national defense industry and the people's livelihood industry, while for other industries it only provides guidance, creates a model, or makes supplementary investments.
This is true not only in the textile industry, but also in the steel and machinery industries.
Although the Dachu Empire officially invested a lot in the steel and machinery industries, it still encouraged private capital to invest in it.
In the five-year agricultural plan, the agricultural equipment subsidy program not only covers a large number of government-run machinery factories, but also covers participating private machinery factories.
It’s just that there are not many private machinery factories that are qualified to participate.
After all, it’s not easy to run a machinery factory these days, and all kinds of machinery and equipment are quite expensive. It’s even more difficult to scale it up because the investment is too big.
There are still very few private enterprises like Li's Iron and Steel Co., Ltd. that have the courage, capital, and timing to successfully enter the field of new machinery.
And there is no one that can reach the scale of Li's Iron Steel.
Among private machinery factories, the second largest one is only equivalent to one-third of the size of Lee's Steel.
Li's Ironmaking is developing smoothly. The various farm tools and cooking utensils it produces not only have a large sales volume in the Pearl River Delta, but are also exported in large quantities. These have accumulated a lot of experience and more importantly, funds for Li's Ironmaking.
Li's Iron, which has a large amount of capital in hand, in addition to continuing to expand and consolidate its market in iron farm tools, cooking utensils and various iron products needed by the people for daily use, has also set its sights on other emerging industries.
What about cloth, food processing, wood processing, paper making or tea processing, porcelain, etc. These are all inconsistent with the tradition of the Li family.
They don't have this experience and they can't even find a technician because they buy the connections...
These industries that seem to be easy to make money are actually extremely competitive...
Machine-made cloth seems simple. You can just find a machinery factory to purchase new looms and spinning machines, and then produce cloth... It doesn't require any skills. If you have money, you can just find a few people to do it.
But when you do this, others, and countless others, will do the same...
In the land of China, countless textile factories that sprung up overnight belong to this type.
Moreover, this is an officially registered textile factory, which is relatively formal no matter what. In fact, it is more of a traditional family workshop.
Even in rural areas, a large number of new small spinning machines and looms are beginning to appear...
Farmers grow their own cotton, spin and weave their own cloth. No matter how cheap you are, people will not want your cloth. On the other hand, they may want you to sell their own cloth.
Because people produce and sell their own products, there is no concept of cost. For many rural women, it is just a matter of earning some pocket money to support their families. The prices they offer are even lower than your costs...
Under such circumstances, the price of cloth continues to fall. The price of cloth in Guangzhou today is at least several times lower than during the Ming Dynasty.
It’s not that easy to make money anymore.
Any time a business with too low a threshold is actually very difficult to make money, because apart from price wars, there is almost no other way to compete in the market. Prices drop lower and lower, and in the end no one makes any money.
This is true of textiles, and it is true of many other industries as well. Only the manufacturers that were the first to adopt industrialized production were the ones who really made money. People who later saw this industry making money and then flocked in basically lost all their money.
The Li family has also been in the business field for hundreds of years and understands these things very well, so they have little interest in businesses that have no threshold. Even though the textile industry seems to be booming now, they have no intention of investing in it. interest.
What they are interested in now is shipbuilding!
Shipbuilding is not unfamiliar to coastal Guangzhou and even Foshan. After all, Guangzhou is a coastal area and is also a window for trade with Southeast Asia.
The shipbuilding industry here itself is relatively developed.
But this is talking about the traditional shipbuilding industry, or to be precise, traditional Chinese ships, such as Guangzhou Shipbuilding, Fuzhou Shipbuilding and so on.
The shipbuilding market that Lee Iron & Steel is targeting is not traditional offshore ships, but new ocean-going ships.
To be more precise, they want to build a new type of ship that is an improved version of the Galen ship type just like the Guangzhou Shipyard!
This new ship type was initially developed by the Naval Ship Administration Department specifically for the Navy's warships. Later, it was optimized and designed based on these new ship types and converted into transport ships. In addition to the Navy's own use as transport ships, several official holding companies Large-scale ocean trading companies are also loyal customers of this type of ship.
This kind of ship has high technical content, high unit price, and huge profits!
