Tianjin, Hebei Province, was not a big city in the pre-Ming Dynasty, but because it was the transfer station of the Beijing-Hangzhou Canal and its transportation location was relatively important, it began to build a city and a garrison, the Tianjin garrison.
Before the Ming Dynasty, there was not even a city here. During the Yuan Dynasty, this place was a grain transshipment center and a sea salt production center.
To put it simply, before the Chu Empire controlled Hebei, Tianjin was not an important city. It only had a certain military strategic status, and this military strategic status was brought by Youzhou City.
In the past hundreds of years, the political and economic center of North China was Youzhou, which was the capital of Yan, the capital of Liao, the capital of Jin, the capital of Yuan, and the capital of Ming.
But all this changed after the success of the Northern Expedition of the Chu Empire.
After the Great Chu Empire captured Youzhou City, it felt that there were a large number of Ming Dynasty old people and children in Youzhou City. In order to suppress this place and suppress the local old people and children and other forces, the Great Chu Empire at that time conducted a close surveillance of the people in Youzhou City. Migration, a large number of them were forcibly moved to Liaodong, Monan and other places.
At that time, the Forbidden City in Youzhou City was demolished... The Forbidden City in Youzhou City had already gone through the war. There were several fires at that time, which burned several halls, and the remaining buildings were also demolished. At that time The Great Chu Empire dismantled a large number of curios and even precious building materials and transported them to Jinling City by ship to build the Jinling Palace.
After the war, fire and demolition, only an empty shell remained of the Forbidden City in Youzhou, which was used as a military camp for many years.
At its peak, there were 50,000 to 60,000 Chu soldiers stationed in the Forbidden City in Youzhou.
After the war, a series of forced relocations, and more importantly, the Chu Empire did not place the newly established provincial government of Hebei Province in Youzhou City, but in Tianjin City, which has more convenient canal transportation and is also a coastal port.
And develop industry and commerce in Tianjin city.
As a result, Youzhou City lost its political and economic status and quickly evolved from a very large ancient city to an ordinary city.
Today, in the 29th year of Chengshun, there are only more than 100,000 permanent residents in Youzhou City, of which tens of thousands are still in the garrison. The total number of civilians and civilians is estimated to be around 100,000.
In contrast, Tianjin City, which inherited its status as the political and economic center of the northern region, has risen rapidly in the past two decades and has become the political, economic and even cultural center of the entire North China region.
The urban population has reached more than 500,000 people, and the entire Tianjin Prefecture population has reached more than 2 million.
In the seventh year of Chengshun, a prefecture was established in Tianjin. In the fifteenth year of Chengshun, the Chu Empire adjusted a few important large cities to further strengthen its political status. The prefects of Guangzhou Prefecture, Songjiang Prefecture, and Tianjin Prefecture were added to the third rank.
These three prefectures are currently the only three third-grade prefecture-level institutions in the Great Chu Empire. They are one level higher than ordinary provincial capitals, because the prefectures where ordinary provincial capitals are located, or the major economic offices are all Jia Cong. Third grade title.
The only ones with a higher level than them are Yingtian Mansion and Hantian Mansion, which are from the second level. However, they are the capital and companion capital, and their nature is quite special. Their level has always been equivalent to the provincial level. Even the top leaders of these two prefectures are not called prefects. , but called Fu Yin.
The reason Tianjin has achieved a high political status and a large population is naturally due to its rapid industrial and commercial development in the past two decades.
Ever since the Chu Empire took over North China, it has decided to build Tianjin as the industrial center of the north. It invested and built three major factories here, namely the Tianjin Arsenal, the Tianjin Machinery Factory, and the Tianjin Iron and Steel Works.
The initial core strategic mission of these three major factories was to provide weapons and equipment to the army in the northern region, and to be used in the subsequent war to quell the Eastern Diaspora.
These three major factories later evolved into North China Arms Company, Tianjin Machinery Company, and Tianjin Iron and Steel Company.
Surrounding the three major enterprises are many other enterprises, such as the Tangshan Mining Company next door, which initially provided support for Tianjin's industrial production. However, as it later grew and expanded, it also became a large enterprise in its own right, integrating coal mine development. , iron ore development and other non-ferrous metal development, it also owns a Tangshan Iron and Steel Plant.
Taking advantage of the rich mineral resources in Hebei, and the Ministry of Industry mobilized a large amount of resources to do so.
In addition, there were also huge military needs brought about by the pacification of the Eastern Capture War. These allowed Tianjin's industry and commerce to achieve rapid development in just a few years, becoming one of the five major industrial bases of the Chu Empire and maintaining it. Until now.
The five major industrial bases are Hantianfu Daye Industrial Base, Yingtianfu Dangtu Industrial Base, Jiangnan Province Susong Industrial Base (from Wusongkou, Suzhou to Shanghai County, Songjiang Prefecture), Guangzhou Industrial Base in Guangdong Province, and Tianjin Industrial Base in Hebei Province.
These five major industrial bases currently contribute more than 80% of the industrial output value of the Chu Empire.
Although Tianjin can only be ranked at the bottom of the five major industrial bases, and its output value is far behind the leading Susong Industrial Base, the scale is still very large.
This can be seen from the numerous towering plumes of smoke seen along the way, the gray sky permeating the city, and the layer of gray soot on many buildings and even roads.
Even in the royal train, Luo Zhixue could smell the smell of burnt coal...
If this was considered serious pollution in later generations, various environmental protection measures would have to be carried out. However, in the Chu Empire in the late seventeenth century, this was a symbol of advancement!
That smell of burnt coal is the smell of the industrial age!
Various messy factories powered by steam engines, steel plants that directly burn coal to make iron and steel, and cheap industrially produced briquettes used by people living in high-density living. When these are combined, you can smell this kind of coal. taste.
If you change the place, you won't be able to smell it if you want to.
Even in Xuzhou, which now receives great policy support from the Chu Empire and is positioned as the industrial center of Jiangbei and even the Central Plains region, the air is not so rich and has such a pure smell of burnt coal.
In the Great Chu Empire, top officials in countless places dreamed of having this kind of coal smell in their jurisdictions.
Because behind this smell of burnt coal represents a large number of factories, a large number of employed people, and a large number of service industries. When these are integrated together, it becomes a developed industrialized city!
If you can build such an industrial city while in office, your subsequent promotion will be like a rocket. It will not be impossible to enter the imperial study room after a few years.
Unfortunately, it’s hard for them to do that!
If you want to develop industry and commerce and people's livelihood economy, you also need to look at the local transportation and resource conditions.
Putting aside everything else, just one traffic can exclude most places.
Next, you must have sufficient resources. It is best to have coal and iron ore, because with these two things, you can make steel. With steel, you can develop various machinery industries nearby.
Steel is the upstream industry of industry, while coal and iron minerals are the source of industry!
But minerals are purely a gift from God. It doesn’t matter whether you say it or not. What if you don’t have mineral resources?
Then we can only think of other ways and use other advantages to engage in other industries.
For example, Wang Tu took advantage of the unique climate advantage of the local mountains in Heyuan Prefecture to engage in tea planting and processing, soybean planting, yuba processing, and other economic crops. Grain planting and processing, relying on the economic crop industry, initially A limited processing industry developed.
With this foundation in place, Wang Tu has begun to introduce support for other industries around the planting and processing of economic crops.
For example, small machinery and equipment, daily hardware, small-scale shipbuilding, shipping, daily chemicals and even the very common textile industry.
These days, the entry barrier for the textile industry is very low, and it is quite profitable. It is also a labor-intensive industry, and it can be produced and sold by itself, so it is very popular with local governments and private capital.
Although there are behemoths in the textile industry such as Su Qin Textile Company and Hantian Textile Company in the Great Chu Empire, even these two super textile companies do not occupy more than ten percentage points of the textile market share.
In addition to these two major textile enterprises, there are countless various textile enterprises, ranging from spinning to weaving, to printing and dyeing, ready-made garments, etc., ranging in size from large to small, and their number can be found in almost every city in the Great Chu Empire.
If you pick any house at random, there may be a textile factory in it, but the scale may be large or small.
Even in Heyuan Prefecture, a poor place in the mountainous area of northern Guangdong, there used to be more than a dozen textile factories or workshops with a complete industrial chain of spinning, weaving, printing and dyeing, but the scale was very small. It was not even a factory, let alone a factory. It's a workshop.
Wang Tu is engaged in the textile industry in Heyuan. In fact, he doesn't want to do it very well. It's just that the textile industry has a low threshold and is easy to start. Moreover, if it is produced and sold locally, it is also very reliable.
The large companies such as Su Qin Textile Company have gained most of their market share in big cities. In small and medium-sized cities, they have never had any advantages...
Unless you go directly to open a factory, it is impossible for you to outperform the local small and medium-sized textile companies.
Because many local governments, in order to support textile companies on their own territory, often provide substantial tax exemptions, official procurement, and provide various conveniences... To put it bluntly, they are setting up trade barriers to protect local textile companies, thereby protecting employment and promoting the development of other industries. .
Therefore, the products of large-scale textile companies have never been the mainstream of small and medium-sized markets in various places. The mainstream of textile markets in various places has always been local small and medium-sized textile companies.
Heyuan Mansion where Wang Tu is located is no exception!
The strength of Suqin Textile Company and Hantian Textile Company is that they can rely on their cost and quality advantages to occupy part of the market share in big cities, while at the same time occupying a small share of small and medium-sized cities with relatively convenient transportation.
It seems that there are not many places, but there are many places, a little here, a little there, and then the total is very scary.
This is no exception in Tianjin. In Tianjin's huge textile market, let's talk about the cotton yarn market in detail.
Su Qin Textile Company only accounts for about 13%, and Hantian Textile Company is even less, estimated at only 78%.
However, the local Lida Textile Company in Tianjin occupies about 26% of the market share.
The market share of Tianjin Lida Textile Co., Ltd. exceeds that of the leading and second-ranked domestic textile companies, and is greater than their combined total.
However, the market of Tianjin Lida Textile Company is only limited to Hebei. At most, it radiates to part of northern Shanxi and parts of Liaodong and Shandong. Other places are basically LTL...
However, Su Qin Textile Company occupies a large market share in other big cities, such as Jinling, Songjiang, Suzhou, Guangzhou, Hantian, etc.
How to go global is also a problem faced by Tianjin Lida Textile Company!
But these are all follow-up matters. For Tianjin Lida Textile Company on July 15, the 29th year of Chengshun, nothing was more important than welcoming the Holy Emperor.
Because their company is a leading textile company in Hebei and even North China, its headquarters production base was included in the Shengjia inspection list.
To this end, their company started various preparations more than a month ago.
Three days ago, the company's base headquarters was shut down on a large scale and a comprehensive sanitation and cleaning work was carried out. Only a small number of carefully selected production lines were retained for inspection as representatives!
Well, Shengjia came over to inspect. You can't let Shengjia just look at the equipment, but not the workers. Why is an empty factory so good-looking...
But you can't really let Luo Zhixue enter the chaotic and even extremely dangerous production workshop to inspect. There are too many potential dangers and uncertainties. If an accident occurs, no one can bear the responsibility.
Especially these days, textile factories are still very dangerous and can explode at every turn...
During the production of textile factories, a large amount of dust, lint, etc. will be produced. If the air circulation is not normal, it will burn quickly when encountering static electricity or open flames. If the burning is too fierce, it will explode.
For the same reason, flour mills are also prone to fire and explosion accidents...
Although the factories of Lida Textile Company all have fans driven by steam engines through belts to maintain air circulation in the workshop, the dust content does not exceed the standard.
But it’s impossible to really let Luo Zhixue watch it.
Coupled with factors such as large numbers of people and confusion.
Therefore, Lida Textile Company discussed with the local government and simply stopped most of the production lines, and then transferred a group of worker representatives who had passed various rigorous reviews to form a separate elite production line.
Then the workshop was renovated urgently. There should not be too many mechanical equipment, only the necessary ones, and a few more powerful fans.
When the Holy Spirit comes to inspect, he will only look at this workshop and only this workshop.
Ever since, there was the textile workshop that Luo Zhixue saw now!
This very large workshop covers an area of hundreds of square meters, but only has about a dozen pieces of machinery and equipment. The gaps between the spinning machines are very large... Every worker is full of energy, and you can tell by looking at their clothes that they have been freshly ironed. 10 brand new factory uniforms with materials and workmanship comparable to formal dresses...
Luo Zhixue took a few glances and saw that one of the workers was still wearing shiny leather shoes under his uniform trousers.
Even though Luo Zhixue has been the emperor for twenty-nine years, he can still tell at a glance that this worker's uniform and this pair of leather shoes add up to dozens of dollars in age...
Whose workers are so heroic?
Looking up, he saw that he was a middle-aged 'worker' in his thirties. Although he was wearing a mask and could not see his expression, he could see his thin skin and tender flesh just from his exposed forehead.
If he were a front-line worker, Luo Zhixue would dare to eat the spinning machine in front.
This person is now meticulously operating the spinning machine in front of him...
Unfortunately, the new spinning machines these days are all fully automatic spinning machines driven by steam engines. Except for a few processes, the machines operate by themselves most of the time, and spinning workers do not need to operate them all the time.
It is normal for a worker to take care of several or even a dozen spinning machines at the same time.
However, this man just pretended to be standing in front of the spinning machine, as if he was concentrating on operating the spinning machine... He didn't even know what he was touching with his hands.
Luo Zhixue glanced at it and then looked away, commenting secretly in his heart: This acting is not good...
However, Luo Zhixue just made a slight comment in his heart, but he still had a smile on his face, and it was impossible to point out others' flaws on the spot...
It’s not easy for everyone. It’s not easy for me to come all the way to inspect. It’s not easy for someone else to shut down a super large one for several days and open a special production line for greeting customers. There’s no need to embarrass others.
Furthermore, this is a serious private enterprise, and the boss will let whomever he likes go to the production line...no one else can control it!
Not to mention, the boss of Tianjin Lida Textile Company was actually wearing an engineer uniform. He respectfully introduced various equipment and factory conditions to Luo Zhixue, and from time to time he even started working on the machinery and equipment for Luo Zhixue. Give a demonstration.
After finishing his inspection of the factory production line, Luo Zhixue had a brief conversation directly with a group of officials in the conference room of Lida Textile Company, expressing his joy at the development achievements of the domestic textile industry, and also expressed High expectations for the future development of the textile industry.
After finishing the inspection of Lida Textile Company, Luo Zhixue took a large group of people to the Tianjin Song Glass Company, which is in the same area and not far away. This is also a private enterprise, and it is also a company. A small number of companies specialize in high-tech fields.
Even if you look at the words "glass company" on someone's name, you might think that they are producing ordinary civilian glass with low technical content. In fact, the glass they produce is of high technical content.
What is its flagship product?
telescope!
Its seventeen-type single-tube hand-held telescope is the standard telescope for the ground troops of the Chu Empire. When grassroots officers lead troops to fight, everyone has one...
Multiple models of nautical monocular telescopes in the Type 12 series are standard telescopes for all warships and even auxiliary warships of the Great Chu Empire Navy. They are indispensable equipment for the lookout soldiers of the Great Chu Empire Navy.
As for the civilian navigation industry, the telescope products of Tianjin Song Glass Company were already used on a large scale even before the military procurement.
In the field of telescopes, regardless of whether they are for military or civilian use, the Song Glass Company always beats similar domestic companies. Even the Hankou Telescope Factory, which is directly under the Ministry of Industry and monopolized the military telescopes of the Dachu Empire in the early days, was beaten and retreated. .
Now it can only rely on military support orders and the civilian ordinary telescope market to survive.
If the military had not maintained procurement diversity, it would have abandoned the Hankou Telescope Factory long ago.
Because there is a huge gap between the two. The telescopes made by Song Glass Company are cheap, not to mention of good quality, while the telescopes made by Hankou Telescope Factory are not as cost-effective as they are good quality.
Therefore, for telescopes on navy warships, the main telescope is generally from Song Glass Company, and only the auxiliary telescopes are from Hankou Telescope Factory.
Being able to achieve the leading position in the field of military and civilian telescopes shows the strength of Song Glass Company in the field of optics. Now they are also relying on their advantages in the field of telescopes to make a strong move into the fields of microscopes and experimental glassware.
Microscopes and experimental glassware, this is also a very big market!
Major laboratories need microscopes and experimental glassware. At the same time, various teaching institutions also need a large number of microscopes and glassware. Even ordinary middle schools will purchase a small amount of microscopes and glassware in order to allow students to better understand the world. For teaching purposes.
Moreover, these equipment related to experiments are not cheap and may seem inconspicuous, but in fact the market value is not small, enough to support several large enterprises.
Microscopes and glassware have always been the territory of Zhenjiang Optical Instrument Company, but in recent years, Song Glass Company has eroded a lot of market share.
In order to cope with the competition, Zhenjiang Optical Instrument Company also went to make telescopes...
As a result, the top two players in the optical field have been fighting for the market and the leadership position in the optical field. In the past three or four years, the competition has been very fierce...
Well, what makes Hankou Telescope Factory helpless is that the competition between the two giants has destroyed its originally small market of microscopes and experimental glassware.
In the fields of telescopes, microscopes, test vessels, etc., the Hankou Telescope Factory has been completely suppressed by the two giants... Although it will not go bankrupt, it can only survive in the low-end market and special military support areas.
Tianjin Song's Glass Company, a strong enterprise and a typical enterprise in the high-tech field, is naturally Luo Zhixue's key inspection target.
Don't think that making glass doesn't have much technical content. They are playing in the field of optics. Even in the 21st century, the field of optics is a completely high-tech field.
In the 21st century, what industrial equipment is the most famous?
There is no doubt that the lithography machine!
Anyone who pays attention to the news online will know about this thing and that it is used to make chips.
In fact, making chips requires n number of processes and equipment. However, our gap in the field of photolithography machines is relatively large, and it is too difficult to catch up in a short time. Therefore, our reputation is quite greater.
In the process of producing chips, the photolithography machine is mainly responsible for ultraviolet exposure!
This involves a very important and core component: the optical lens.
The polishing accuracy of this optical lens reaches the picometer level... When a lens of tens of centimeters is enlarged to the size of an entire country, its surface undulations are only tens of centimeters!
The field of optics is a serious high-tech field. This is true in the 21st century, and it is also true in the Chu Empire in the late seventeenth century.
Moreover, the development of the field of optics is a prerequisite for the development of many disciplines... Without the development of the field of optics, you cannot talk about the development of modern medicine, biology, astronomy and other disciplines. All other disciplines such as physics and chemistry need to use the field of optics. .
Because many experiments require the use of a microscope!
Otherwise, why do you think Luo Zhixue came to inspect... Could it be that he really wanted to look at ordinary glass!
People came to see the latest scientific research microscope developed by Song Glass Company.
By the way, let's take a look at the military telescope... Well, this is really just by the way.
(End of chapter)
