Chapter 38: My Ningwu Prefecture is Becoming Stronger
The reform failed, and Hu Ping also knew that his official career had come to an end. However, he did not bother to plead for himself, but instead devoted himself to assisting Kang Fan in construction. Hu Ping was very clear: at present, the factories and mines established in various parts of Shanxi were all built as industrial raw material supply bases for Ningwu Prefecture, and their production and operation were all centered around the Ningwu Prefecture industry. As long as Ningwu Prefecture continued to develop and grow, the entire Shanxi would have the driving force for development, and all undertakings would flourish accordingly. Therefore, he must do his best to support Ningwu Prefecture, giving it priority in all aspects, and concentrate the human, material, and financial resources of the whole province to support the construction of Ningwu Prefecture.
Although I am old and worn out, I will still exert all my strength to assist you, my virtuous nephew. Do not worry too much, just do it with an open mind. These were the words of Hu Pingzhou.
Kang Fan was deeply moved.
Hu Ping said: The land of the three Jin, there are many talented people and scholars. After I have traveled all over to persuade them, funds, manpower, materials and other resources can also be concentrated for my use, its power must be great!
It's great. If the governor is generous and rises, under his call, he will be able to lead my three Jin children to create a great career together. The prosperity of Sanjin is not far away! Kang Fan said excitedly.
Hu Ping personally sent a letter, inviting some influential gentry and officials from all over Shanxi to gather in Ningwu Prefecture, along with Yu Hao, He Jia brothers, Zhong Hanqiang, Duonuo Wan, Li Shiping and Mei Xiang's classmates, etc. to discuss important matters together. In the following days, under Hu Ping's chairmanship, the meeting was held in a harmonious and enthusiastic atmosphere. Kang Fan is now famous far and wide, and people not only admired him but also highly valued and strongly supported this move that benefited the whole province of Shanxi, thanks to Hu Ping's strong advocacy. Those who had money contributed money, those who had materials contributed materials, and those who had strength contributed their strength, achieving a thrilling result. With Ningwu Prefecture relying on the rich resources and solid administrative support of Shanxi Province as a whole, its development will be even smoother.
Now, the agriculture, industry and commerce of Ningwu Prefecture have initially taken shape, and all social undertakings are being gradually established and improved. The key to development is still industry. If industry becomes stronger, it will drive the progress of all social undertakings. To accelerate the pace of industrial development, the most important thing is the opening of the Jin-Xing railway line. As long as this railway is built, the construction of infrastructure around the railway line will be much easier. Therefore, Hu Pingzhi again transferred 60,000 troops from all over the province to participate in road construction, adding to the laborers who came continuously from inside and outside the province, as well as the previous 80,000 soldiers, the labor army suddenly increased to nearly 200,000 people, greatly increasing the construction speed.
As massive funds were invested and various construction projects unfolded, Shanxi's huge demand for all kinds of professional talents and materials directly boosted the prosperity of related industries in local areas, neighboring provinces, and across the country. Elite individuals from all over China flocked to Shanxi, and a large number of domestic private and state-owned enterprises that had been suppressed by European, American, and Japanese companies were rescued due to the massive orders they received from Ningwu Prefecture. The impact of Ningwu Prefecture on the whole country grew larger and more beneficial for absorbing human resources and materials from across the nation, accelerating its own development.
At this time, the basic infrastructure construction plan of Ningwu Prefecture has been fully completed. The public facilities, schools, hospitals, postal services, transportation, and living facilities in the four county towns have all taken on a modern appearance. Especially in local education, due to the implementation of an official compulsory education system, students' uniforms, textbooks, stationery, and even meals are provided free of charge, regardless of age, sex, ethnicity, or social status. The elementary school, middle school, Ningwu Professional Technical School, and Ningwu University have become a scene of joy with students gathering in large numbers. Attracted by the superior living conditions and teaching environment, some senior scholars and teachers from home and abroad came to teach here one after another. With sufficient investment in official education funds, the strength of the faculty has gradually increased.
Ningwu Professional Technical School is a secondary vocational school that combines cultural and vocational education, mainly cultivating modern technical workers and agricultural technicians for Ningwu Prefecture. It recruits students with certain cultural knowledge from all over the country.
The first batch of students had more than 200 people with higher cultural foundation, so they only spent more than a year in professional technical training at the school before starting work in June 1899, beginning their new careers. These people include machine tool operators, welders, foundry workers, blacksmiths, electricians, nurses, and agricultural technicians, as well as novel and scarce drivers of steam locomotives, tractors, and cars.
Zhong Hanqiang, the oldest qualified car driver in Ningwu Prefecture, made great contributions to the school's construction. The people who are now teaching in the school's driver training class were his apprentices. Even Kang Fan's six pilots had received short-term driving training here before learning to fly. In this sense, even Kang Fan should call Zhong Hanqiang "Shixiong" (older brother).
Ningwu University is a comprehensive university that integrates education and research, recruiting students with corresponding cultural levels from all over the country to cultivate high-level intellectuals for society. The graduates of this school will become the mainstay of future engineers, teachers, doctors, administrative managers, and other teams in Ningwu Prefecture or Shanxi Province.
The new Ningwu Prefectural Research Center is located on campus, with advanced and complete supporting facilities, gathering a large number of contemporary excellent Chinese returnees and professional technical personnel. It also provides a platform for students to showcase their talents. These can be said to be the Chinese intellectuals who have received the highest level of cultural education in the contemporary era, under the guidance of their classmates from Meixiang, further accepting the baptism of 21st-century scientific and technological concepts, each like having wings, soaring in their respective professional fields!
Everyone works together, studies hard, learns from each other's strengths and weaknesses, and practices while learning, making the research center's R&D strength continuously stronger. To meet the needs, the research center has added two new research departments: aviation and navigation, with more complete institutions, and a batch of research results have been continuously injected into Ningwu Prefecture's industrial sector, promoting Ningwu Prefecture's industrial system to gradually possess strong independent innovation capabilities in continuous development.
Self-developed and produced new industrial equipment began to replace the original imported European and American equipment, finally completing the first technical upgrade in the first half of 1899. After completing the technical upgrade, Ningwu Prefecture's industrial system had the ability to develop and produce high-end mechanical and electrical products such as internal combustion engines, electrical/optical equipment, automobiles, engineering machinery, even aircraft and ships, entering a brand-new development period, creating one miracle after another with leading-edge industrial technology that is nearly a hundred years ahead of its time.
The Jin-Xing Railway was also completed at this time, and the telegraph and telephone lines along the railway were simultaneously built, giving Shanxi Province a modern transportation and communication artery, turning around the backward traffic situation, and further promoting the development of local industries.
The Ningwu Prefecture's metallurgical joint enterprise used its own high-furnace iron smelting and electric furnace steel smelting equipment, which was far ahead of its time, to produce more and better varieties of steel than the Western powers, such as alloy armor steel, electroslag remelted steel, bearing steel, stainless steel, heat-resistant steel, high-strength structural steel, high-speed cutting tool steel, heat-treated steel, carburized gear steel, etc. The growth of the iron and steel industry drove the progress of the entire metallurgical industry, and other types of metal products could be produced accordingly, such as aluminum alloys, copper alloys, etc., providing a wide range of metal materials for other industries.
The chemical joint enterprise, in addition to the routine development and production of various antibiotics, traditional Chinese medicine and Western medicine, has also successively developed and produced various chemical products such as synthetic fibers, rubber, semiconductors, paints, dyes, ink, fertilizers, pesticides, explosives, etc., which have been rapidly applied in all walks of life.
The new wireless telegraph machines, telephones, motors, generators, transmission and transformation equipment, lighting equipment, electrical materials, water level gauges, theodolites, microscopes, rangefinders, telescopes, etc. jointly developed and produced by the Electrical/Optical Equipment Joint Venture are still in short supply due to production capacity constraints. While continuing to expand production capacity, the products being manufactured are being allocated on a planned basis to meet the most urgent needs of various departments, such as administrative agencies, railways, and the military. Kang Fan hopes that the next step will be to develop and produce advanced high-tech electronic equipment such as radar and image intensifiers - night vision devices, but he knows that it is really too difficult to develop these things under current conditions, and more time is needed. Moreover, Mei Xiang's classmates have been working day and night without rest, and adding more tasks would worry about the endurance of these young students, so nothing has been explicitly mentioned yet.
Mechanical joint enterprises, with the strong support of the above-mentioned enterprises, have continuously introduced new agricultural and industrial machinery products, such as machine tools, textile machinery, agricultural machinery, construction machinery, mining machinery, daily necessities, medical equipment, etc. Most importantly, a new generation of power machinery has begun to be put into use in batches: high-performance improved steam locomotives, locomotive cars, and new railway specialized equipment have been mass-produced and comprehensively applied on the Beijing-Taiyuan and Shanxi-Xinjiang railway lines, making the road equipment of these two railways fully updated, transportation efficiency increased several times, becoming a truly modernized transportation artery.
Led by the mechanical joint venture, it gathered elites from industries such as metallurgy, chemical industry, electrical engineering, and optics to develop and produce a series of high-performance internal combustion engines, special materials, and machinery and electrical equipment, establishing its own high-end mechanical manufacturing industry. Later, the trial production of the SX2300 heavy-duty military off-road vehicle and the full-tracked tractor based on it were successfully tested. The SX2300 produced by imitation was named "Iron Horse", with a basic model for both military and civilian use for personnel and material transportation, planning to develop armored vehicles, communication vehicles, command vehicles, maintenance vehicles, ammunition vehicles, postal vehicles, fire trucks, ambulances, kitchen cars, water supply vehicles, fuel vehicles and other military and civilian variants on its basis, in order to form a large and complete series of wheeled vehicles, widely used; The full-tracked tractor, due to the adoption of new small-load wheel torsion bar independent suspension walking mechanism and high-manganese steel rubber tracks, greatly improved its passing ability and riding comfort in complex terrain. In the backward transportation situation of contemporary China where there were no modern highways, this type of vehicle was absolutely an ideal power machine. At the same time, various military and civilian variants of this type of vehicle, such as artillery tractors, bulldozers, excavators, cranes, etc., have also begun to develop, forming another large series of vehicles alongside the "Iron Horse" wheeled series.
The Ningwu-Alpha aircraft, which was improved and designed based on the Ningwu aircraft, used a lightweight yet robust aluminum alloy frame, and the engine had also been improved, with a lighter weight and greater power, making it more suitable for aircraft use. With other improvements, the performance of the aircraft was greatly enhanced, and it immediately entered small-scale trial production. The first three aircraft produced were all used for aerial broadcasting in the vast mountains and fields within the Ningwu Prefecture and Yanping Road jurisdictions. An aviation base was also established near Ningwu County to cultivate pilots and provide logistical support for the fleet. The pilots were personally selected by Kang Fang from among the Shanxi army officers and soldiers, and were taught hand-in-hand at the aviation base.
The subsequent improved models of the Beetle wheel tractor performed even better and were massively put into use in various state-run farms. The structure of large buses, Zhong Hanqiang's van trucks, etc. was relatively simple, so the imitation task was also relatively easy. They were the first batch of cars that were successfully imitated, mass-produced and put into use, named respectively as Benchi and Leying.
It's just that the high-end manufacturing industry in Ningwu Prefecture is still in its early stages of development, and needs to be improved in terms of scale expansion, production technology, project management, technical support, personnel training, supplier selection and cultivation, etc. At present, the output of these products is still very small, and a large part of them are still in the trial period, which cannot meet the actual demand, but it's already exciting enough.
The official roads connecting the county towns and important military and civilian facilities within the jurisdiction have been rebuilt into modern cement highways, with streetlights, drainage systems, green belts, bus stations and other complete facilities. The telegraph and telephone networks covering the entire region have also been built, and the government-run post offices in each county have opened civil communication services. The postal fleet composed of new-style horse-drawn carriages can reach all parts of the region and most areas of the country. Public transportation lines have been opened between counties, but due to the small production volume of new-style passenger cars, they are mixed with horse-drawn carriages. The buses are often overcrowded, while the passenger horse-drawn carriages lost in competition with passenger cars and mostly turned into cargo transport. The first batch of 6 "Iron Horse" series fire trucks and 6 "Leisurely Journey" series ambulances produced were all equipped to the fire brigade of the garrison troops stationed in Ningwu County and Ningwu County Hospital for service throughout the jurisdiction, immediately showing remarkable efficiency, busy day and night...
All signs indicate that Ningwu Prefecture is becoming increasingly powerful!
