At a defense industry conference, Luo Zhixue first encouraged the defense industry, and then hammered the defense industry and the military, telling them to develop and use defense equipment in a down-to-earth manner and not to mess around.
At the end of the meeting, military representative and Chief of Staff General Han Ziping made a promise on behalf of the military that he would increase support for the defense industry and selectively equip some advanced equipment.
And provide certain research and development funds for some projects.
Han Ziping didn't mean what he said.
Increase support?
This is actually good in itself, but it is worth talking about who to support and what projects to support.
For example, in the field of optics mentioned earlier, the military has always provided support to Hantian Telescope Factory. Otherwise, the military telescopes of Hantian Telescope Factory would not be able to compete with the military telescopes of Song Glass Company and Zhenjiang Optical Instrument Company.
In the field of various guns and even warships, the military has always had a policy of supporting a number of manufacturers and will not adopt a winner-take-all model of giving all orders to one manufacturer.
In order to ensure the same equipment product, at least two or three manufacturers must have R&D and production capabilities.
The military has never put all its eggs in the same basket. This is not only to avoid supply problems, but also to avoid losing competition in the defense industry after monopoly and not being enterprising.
For example, the Type 16 front-loading rifled rifles that have been purchased in recent years are mainly purchased from Tianjin Firearms Factory, but they are also purchased from Dangtu Arsenal and Hantian Arsenal, but in smaller quantities.
Specifically, it is the Type 16 front-loading rifled rifle used by the Guards, which is a product of the Tianjin Firearms Factory under Hebei Arms Company.
The Type 16 front-loading rifled rifles used by the Army and Marine Corps hunters are products from Dangtu Arsenal, a subsidiary of Jiangnan Weapons Company.
The short-barreled lance version used by the cavalry is provided by the Danghantian Factory under the Huguang Arms Company.
In addition, the Army also purchased a batch of reduced-caliber, 13mm-caliber Type 16 front-loading rifled rifles from the Guangzhou Arsenal, a subsidiary of the Guangdong and Guangxi Arms Company, for testing.
For the Type 16 muzzle-loading rifle series alone, the military purchased them from four factories.
As for the remaining Shaanxi-Gansu Arms Company, although they did not produce rifles, they ordered most of the cavalry revolvers from their Chang'an Arsenal.
Generally speaking, the military adopts a balanced strategy. When purchasing the same large type of weapons, it purchases from five companies as much as possible to ensure that the five major weapons companies have more or less orders to ensure basic research and development. and production capacity.
Of course, this kind of procurement support can only starve the laggards to death at most, and it is impossible to make big money.
In the field of rifled rifles, Tianjin Firearms Factory takes the cake.
In the field of rifled cavalry pistols, Chang'an Arsenal has eaten the fattest meat.
There is no other reason than that the stuff they produce is good.
Now General Han Ziping said that we need to increase support and so on... To put it bluntly, it is actually a cliché.
In fact, the military has always had R&D funds and the like. When the military wanted to obtain a new weapon, the Ordnance Department would propose a weapon concept, solicit design plans from major weapons companies, and then select them. A research and development contract is signed for the design plan, the military allocates research and development funds, and the company conducts follow-up research.
Therefore, it is also polite to provide certain R&D funds for some projects.
In short, Han Ziping still firmly believes in the military's opinion: it is okay to purchase rifled firearms in small quantities and test equipment now, but if you want to equip them on a large scale, you have to bring down the price...otherwise, don't expect large-scale orders.
There is no such thing as saying that the order will be placed first and then the price will be reduced!
Luo Zhixue had no opinion on this.
The military's ordnance procurement and overall replacement cannot be finalized in a day or two, or even in a year or two. This involves tens of millions of funds, and the military cannot be too cautious.
He just needs to express his position, and then the military will say some kind words, and then the day will be over.
As for the follow-up, the defense industry and the military must continue to talk, talk in depth, and wait until the two sides are almost done talking and both sides can accept it. Then they will enter the actual procurement stage of equipment.
As for now, we still have to let the Guards take a look first.
When the Second Division of the Guards, equipped with breech-loading rifled rifles, came up with epoch-making tactics based on the new rifles and defeated their opponents, the military really paid great attention to it. At the same time, the defense industry continued to advance and costs were reduced. Only then can we talk about a complete makeover.
After the military-industrial meeting, Luo Zhixue rested for the night and continued his inspection the next day.
Today's inspection target is quite important, even more important than Hebei Arms Company.
Although the various weapons products of Hebei Arms Company are very important, their Type 18 breech-loading rifled rifle in particular is very good and can even be said to be epoch-making.
However, Hebei Arms Company's driving force for overall industrial development is actually very limited.
You can't go farming and producing products with guns.
The most important thing is that Hebei Arms Company is just an assembly company...the machinery and equipment used in their production, and even raw materials, have to be outsourced.
For example, the Type 18 rifle!
The steel used in the barrel material is provided by the Tianjin Iron and Steel Company next door.
The various machine tool equipment used to process the gun barrel are provided by major domestic machine tool manufacturers, especially Hantian Machinery Factory, and the steam engine that is the source of processing power is a product of the Tianjin Machinery Company next door.
Although some technologies and materials are self-developed, most still rely on external manufacturers.
After all, the industrial development of the Chu Empire is getting faster and faster these days, and various fields are becoming more and more subdivided. It is no longer possible for a large comprehensive enterprise to cover all industrial fields.
In various fields of industry, cooperation between manufacturers is very close and interlocking.
The company Luo Zhixue is going to inspect today is an upstream company in the industrial system: Tianjin Iron and Steel Company.
Tianjin Iron and Steel Company not only produces steel literally, it is also the largest mining company in the northern region and a various metallurgical company.
It has numerous mines, mainly coal mines, iron mines, and a small amount of gold, silver, and copper mines, as well as numerous metal smelting plants that produce various precious metals such as gold, silver, and copper.
Of course, the steel business is still their core business!
The Tianjin Iron and Steel Plant is responsible for their main core business. The factory mainly produces iron, but its steel production volume is also large, and the quality of some new alloy steels is quite good, which is favored by the military industry.
The steel used in the barrels of the Type 16 and Type 18 rifles is the latest steel product developed by Tianjin Iron and Steel Works.
Without this thing, Tianjin Machinery Factory would not be able to produce rifled rifles on a large scale.
In addition, Tianjin Iron and Steel Plant is also the main manufacturer of manganese steel in China!
The R&D personnel of the Dachu Empire discovered manganese more than ten years ago, and then found that adding this stuff to steel can strengthen the hardness of steel, so they began a long period of research on manganese steel.
However, the early leader in this field was Hantian Machinery Factory, and until now their research in the field of manganese steel is still among the top in the country. The manganese steel alloy cutting tools produced by this company are a series of machine tool products of Hantian Machinery Company. important guarantee.
However, the manganese steel played by Hantian Machinery Company is relatively high-end and expensive. At the same time, in order to ensure the performance of their own machine tools, they have never sold manganese steel separately.
Other domestic machine tool manufacturers also need high-strength manganese steel cutting tools. Where do they get their manganese steel?
A considerable part of it is provided by Tianjin Iron and Steel Works.
Although the technology of Tianjin Iron and Steel Plant in the field of high-strength special alloy manganese steel is not as good as that of Hantian Machinery Company, the performance of the manganese steel produced in the processing field is even worse.
But this does not prevent them from becoming the largest manufacturer of special manganese steel in China, and their products are not only used in mechanical tools, but also in various fields that require wear resistance and high hardness, such as bearings.
Because apart from Hantian Machinery Company, they are the only ones who have this technology and have a series of technology patents.
Hantian Machinery Company has always hidden its own special alloys and has not sold them to outside customers at all. Therefore, a large amount of the market has been captured by Tianjin Iron and Steel Company.
Hantian Machinery Company does not sell its own special alloy steel, so it is difficult to say whether Hantian Machinery Company's approach is good or bad.
The disadvantage is that not selling out will lead to competitors appearing one after another... After all, high-performance manganese steel for industrial use is a rigid need for various machine tool companies and some other companies. Your Hantian Machinery Company does not sell to them, but they do. What should I do if I want to use it?
What else can I do? I will continue to fight for death for ten years!
This is how Tianjin Iron and Steel Company's special steel business has developed. A large number of machine tool manufacturers and wear-resistant product manufacturers would rather work in vain or even lose money to place orders with Tianjin Iron and Steel Company... Are they just counting on Tianjin Iron and Steel Company to one day It is possible to produce special steel that rivals or even surpasses Hantian Machinery Company.
The good thing is that Hantian Machinery Company has monopolized manganese steel for many years. After other companies came up with manganese steel, Hantian Machinery Company still had a huge lead in the field of manganese steel.
This has driven their various cutting processing equipment, wear-resistant parts and other businesses to become popular all over the world, and brought huge profits. They have used these profits to continue to invest in the research and development of various special metals and machine tools, ensuring the guarantee of machine tools. products, the absolute leader in wear-resistant products.
This series of measures has made Hantian Machinery Company the largest and most technologically advanced machine tool manufacturer in the country. It has held the leading position for nearly 20 years and has never been shaken by other companies.
Lee's Iron Manufacturing Company was very ambitious back then and invested heavily in the field of machine tools to do something big, but what about now?
Kong has the reputation of being the third largest machine tool manufacturer in the country and has a large shipment volume, but it can only work in the mid- to low-end field. It works hard all year round and makes less than Hantian Machinery Company.
According to statistics from the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, in the field of cutting processing equipment in recent years, Hantian Machinery Company's shipments have not been large, accounting for only about 8%.
But these 8% of shipments allow them to occupy 40% of the entire cutting processing equipment market revenue!
More importantly, the family alone monopolizes more than 90% of the profits in the field of cutting processing equipment!
The profit in the entire market was only 100 yuan, and Hantian Factory alone took 90 yuan... The remaining dozens or even hundreds of machinery manufacturers divided the remaining 10%...
This is data that makes other machine tool manufacturers despair!
I worked very hard to make the product, but in the end I could only sell it at a bargain price. If everything went well, I would make some hard-earned money, but if I was not careful, I would still lose money.
Others are just lying down and making money, eating well and drinking spicy food every day.
A subsidiary of Lee's Steel, also known as Lee's Machine Tool Company, last year released a so-called high-end equipment that claimed to impact the mid-to-high-end slanting market.
Equipped with the latest manganese steel cutting tools developed by Tianjin Iron and Steel Plant, it has all the necessary accessories and provides various after-sales preferential services.
The price is only one-fifth of the Hantian Machinery Company's products with the same specifications. Well, it is also one-fifth of the Hantian Machinery Company's entry-level products.
This is really about making the equipment and selling it at a bargain price... This customer is still disgusted with it, and not many units have been sold in a year.
Why?
Why else? The performance is not good enough!
The customers of machine tool equipment are not individuals, but various enterprises. When purchasing things, they will not listen to your lies at all, nor will they look at your appearance. They just use the data to calculate directly.
Many processing fields have rigid requirements for equipment and cutting tools. If the requirements are not met, processing cannot be done at all, or processing is barely possible. However, the tool loss rate is too high, and the yield rate of processed products is low, which ultimately leads to an increase in the overall cost of the enterprise. .
I took an abacus and calculated, my dear, after using your cheap product, the overall cost will be higher than using the expensive products of Hantian Machinery Company... What a joke!
Because of the strength of Hantian Machinery Company in the cutting processing market, it is said that the second largest machine tool company in China, Wuhu Machine Tool Company, Li's Machine Tool Company and other machine tool equipment manufacturers have recently taken the high-level route and want to pressure Hantian Machinery Company to let go. Their range of manganese steel cutting tools and various patents for machine tool equipment.
The name is beautiful: for the overall industrial development of the empire.
Of course, Hantian Machinery Company is not weak either. It has made various strong counterattacks and even directly reduced the price of one of their entry-level products, which caused other machine tool manufacturers to cry out.
Competition in the cutting processing market and the wear-resistant parts market has led to the dominance of Hantian Machinery Company, and has also led to the continued development of advantageous metallurgical enterprises such as Tianjin Iron and Steel Company in the field of special steel.
However, the field of special steel is actually only a small part of Tianjin Iron and Steel Company's business... After all, they are a comprehensive, very large enterprise integrating mining and metallurgy.
In terms of scale and output value, Tianjin Iron and Steel Company is a well-deserved giant in the entire northern region.
Their main products are not special steel, but coal and ordinary steel.
Needless to say, coal is very profitable. The demand for coal within the Dachu Empire is increasing significantly every year. Under such market conditions, as long as the coal is dug out and can be transported, then it can Make money while lying down.
Tianjin Iron and Steel Company owns a large number of coal mines. It not only owns several coal mines in Hebei, but also owns some coal mines in Tangshan and accounts for more than half of the output of Datong Coal Mine. At the same time, the company also has several large coal mines in Liaodong.
The coal produced by its large number of coal mines not only meets their own coal needs for smelting, but the rest is provided to various enterprises and the civilian market.
Every year, coal mines bring a large amount of revenue and huge profits to Tianjin Iron and Steel Company.
In addition to coal, it is ordinary steel. The large amount of steel produced by Tianjin Iron and Steel Company is widely used in railway construction, building construction, mechanical processing, shipbuilding and other fields in the northern region, accounting for more than 70% of the steel market in the northern region. market share.
Just looking at this market share shows how profitable they are.
For such a large basic enterprise, and its important subsidiaries, such as mines, are not located in Tianjin, Luo Zhixue's inspection can only go to their company headquarters and Tianjin Iron and Steel Plant.
During the inspection at the headquarters, we mainly looked at some information introductions, and nothing else was interesting.
The inspection at the steel plant mainly involves looking at the factory buildings and large smelting equipment, or at most some of their metallurgical research laboratories.
There was no dazzling large number of products to see, and the whole process seemed a bit boring. However, Luo Zhixue and the many officials who accompanied the inspection looked through some introduction materials and listened to the business and technology introduction of Tianjin Iron and Steel Company. But he was very attentive.
Because behind the groups of data, they represent the industrial base and the people's livelihood economy.
The huge influence of Tianjin Iron and Steel Company is far beyond the comparison of enterprises such as Hebei Arms Company.
During the inspection, Luo Zhixue also gave a simple open-air speech to representatives of workers and technical research and development personnel in the steel plant.
In his speech, he thanked the workers for their hard work and encouraged the workers to work hard and the technicians to study hard to provide the empire with more and better steel. He also said that the empire will try its best to increase the income of the workers and improve their lives in the future!
It is said that the development of the empire's industry is not only for the sake of national strength, but also for the prosperity of the people. The empire will always put workers, farmers and other groups first.
This speech was also the first time Luo Zhixue gave a public speech to ordinary people during his northern tour.
Unlike before, it seemed that many meetings were held and many speeches were delivered, but they were all targeted at some local officials and business managers.
This is the first time that a speech is directly directed at ordinary workers and technicians. The content of the speech is simple and straightforward. A large amount of space is devoted to praise, encouragement and support, without any critical words.
Luo Zhixue's first speech also attracted warm welcome from the workers' group...but the reason was not the content of his speech. Ordinary people actually could not understand the political significance of these speeches, and they did not care much about it.
People cheered just because of his identity!
Luo Zhixue is the emperor of the Chu Empire!
Moreover, the Great Chu Empire was a serious centralized monarchy!
This also resulted in Luo Zhixue's status being 10,000 times more powerful than any president or king in later generations.
Even every sentence he said was comparable to the law, or even more authoritative than the law.
The emperor's words become the constitution, and his words and laws are not a joke, but a reality.
Such an emperor smiles at ordinary workers and grassroots technicians and praises, encourages and comforts them in an amiable tone. The effect is better than those high-ranking officials saying a thousand words and ten thousand words. too much.
Coupled with the concept of loyalty and filial piety advocated by Confucianism since ancient times and the enlightenment policy that has been strongly implemented since the founding of the Chu Empire, the loyalty education in the Chu Empire is very deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.
Therefore, after the speech, the scene of many people shouting long live was very shocking.
Moreover, this kind of shouting long live is different from the ceremonial cheers of officials who are just out of etiquette. The cheers of the people are sincere.
Of course, this kind of sincerity has nothing to do with recognition, and it's not about revealing one's heart.
Probably... you just shout when you see others shouting, otherwise you won't fit in with the crowd... Then everyone shouts together, immersed in the atmosphere of loyalty to the emperor and patriotism, and moves themselves!
If you have been touched for a long time, you will take this set of things for granted and regard them as your own behavioral rules. At the same time, you will also ask others to do the same.
Even if you don't agree with these things in your heart, you will support these things.
Because everyone else says so and does what they do, if you have to stand out and be an outlier, doesn’t it mean that you don’t fit in?
Everyone is talking about loyalty to the emperor and patriotism, sacrifice and dedication. You said that your small family is more important than everyone else, and your own life is more important than the emperor’s face. Do you want to have fun together?
Even in the end, when someone needs to be dedicated and sacrificed on the battlefield, if you say "loyalty to the emperor", you will have no way to retreat!
Rejecting that would be a disgrace to yourself and your family!
Because others will think that your behavior is disgusting and needs to be spurned.
Therefore, sometimes not everyone of the soldiers of the Chu Empire who shouted "Long Live Your Majesty" on the battlefield and fought to the death for His Majesty was willing to sacrifice. Most of them were actually coerced by the general environment.
This is a very typical feature of human society, that is, people will be affected by the environment and the people around them, and then do things that are not in line with their instinctive interests.
The Japanese Bushido spirit and Western religious beliefs are very typical examples.
Everyone is saying this and doing this, but if you don’t follow what they say or do, it’s equivalent to cutting yourself off from society!
Heretics never end well!
In any case, the effect of Luo Zhixue's open-air speech in the Tianjin Iron and Steel Plant was very good. Not only was the on-site effect good, but the subsequent impact was also very good.
The accompanying officials from the Chaoyang Newspaper Department of the Ministry of Ethnic Education urgently prepared a report that night and published the full text of Luo Zhixue's speech as a key report on the front page of the next issue of Da Chu Di News.
When the new issue of Da Chu Di Newspaper Card was published all over the world, the report caused quite a positive impact.
The speech delivered by His Majesty the Emperor in public, in which he praised, encouraged and supported workers and grassroots technicians, was not an ordinary speech in the Chu Empire, but a very serious political statement!
When the Da Chu Di newspaper published Luo Zhixue's speech, it started with: "Fengtian will carry the emperor," the edict said.
This means that this is an imperial edict that is announced to the people of the world. It is the most politically significant imperial edict format in the Chu Empire. Only major events and policies will use this format of edict and publish it in the Da Chu Di newspaper. Go wide and inform.
Whenever such an imperial edict is published, the local government will organize personnel to widely read the contents of the imperial edict to the people... The government sends people to the countryside to read the imperial edict, and explain various people's livelihood policies and basic legal provisions of the empire. The Chu Empire was a very serious political matter, and it was also one of the core affairs of ethical institutions in various places.
This was also an important measure in the Da Chu Empire’s education policy.
Because after Luo Zhixue's speech is officially published, its influence will be extensive in the follow-up, penetrating into all aspects of the Chu Empire!
Many things don't matter if you talk about them in private or even discuss them in court, but if they are said in public, the meaning is different.
Once it is said publicly, whatever the emperor says will be whatever it is!
Since the emperor has further affirmed the positive role of industrialization, further affirmed the importance of the worker group, and further cared about the income and life of the worker group.
Then the ministers must have corresponding political consciousness and implement what the emperor said!
Just three days later, Han Deyuan, the co-organizing minister and the Minister of Household Affairs, formally submitted a letter requesting that the rights and interests of workers be legally protected and a series of relevant laws and policies to effectively protect the interests of workers, such as minimum wages and maximum working hours, be formulated.
