Fujian Shipyard

  Lin Xiang has been staying in Tianjin for most of the time recently. During the Russo-Japanese War, his accurate prediction of the war situation made Wang Shizhen, Duan Qirui, and Feng Guozhang, all trusted generals under Yuan Shikai, sigh in admiration.

  The imperial court finally agreed to change the Mawei Shipyard to a commercial one, and Lin Ruzhen was appointed as the ship policy adjuster and general manager of the Mawei Shipyard. However, in order to grasp the Fujian ship politics in his own hands, he still went to great lengths, resigning from the post of military commander-in-chief and taking up the post of ship policy adjuster with the rank of provincial governor.

  No way, you can't have both civil and military talents, nor can you take care of both north and south at the same time.

  Because the Russians have been eyeing Mongolian local territory, in 1900 they took advantage of the situation and sent troops to occupy part of Tannu Uriankhai land. The Qing court was increasingly worried about the security of Mongolia. After the Russo-Japanese War, Dung's army was transferred to Datong, and later moved to Hetao, Lin Shou would not be able to follow the army to Ningxia.

  Following the old general Lin Jianfan of the three generations of the Lin family, he took over as the commander-in-chief of the Dongjun Army and the Ningxia Town General. Yuan Shikai still took good care of the Dongjun Army, after all, this was also a collateral branch of the Beiyang Army. He petitioned the imperial court to expand the Dongjun Army's organization to 12 battalions, with more than 6,000 people at full strength.

  Although the scale has expanded, Cong Jun's main source of troops still comes from Lin's Righteous Village, so this army is absolutely loyal to the Lin family without much problem.

  The main weakness of the Qing dynasty was that the national concept and ethnic concept of the army were very vague, with soldiers being loyal to their commanders rather than the state, and the loyalty of the army to the country was almost zero, including the newly established Beiyang Army. This is also a bad result caused by the Manchu people weakening the national concept for hundreds of years.

  For the Han people to hold military power, the Qing court also had no choice but to do so, using and preventing at the same time. Yuan Shikai now only has three divisions of the Northern New Army in his hands, which has already made the Manchu nobles of the imperial court uneasy and become the target of attack.

  Fuzhou, Mawei Shipbuilding Factory.

  Lin Xiao accompanied by Xu Jianyin and Shen Xinan, visited the shipyard together. Standing in front of Luo Xing Tower, looking down at the seemingly cold factory area, he couldn't help but feel a sense of emotion.

  December 23, 1866, under the efforts of Zuo Zongtang and Shen Baozhen, China's first modern shipyard was fully constructed in Mawei Zhongqi. In order to establish a modern machine-built shipyard under the conditions of China's industry and technology being almost blank at that time, Zuo and Shen adopted the method of introducing technology, equipment and engineering personnel from Europe, and hired Frenchman Giquel as the supervisor of the shipyard. After several years of construction, China's first official professional shipyard emerged on the banks of the Ma River, covering an area of over 600 mu. Its equipment was complete, facilities were perfect, and its scale was grand, ranking first in the Far East region.

  Since January 1868, the Fujian Shipyard began to build China's first thousand-ton wooden warship "Wannianqing", which was completed the following year. By 1874, under the guidance of foreign technicians, the shipyard had built a total of 15 warships and merchant ships of various types. Among them, the "Yangwu" warship built in 1872 had a displacement of 1,560 tons, equivalent to the level of a second-class cruiser abroad. In 1875, the shipyard dismissed foreign technicians and entered the stage of independent shipbuilding, successfully building the "Yixin" gunboat, indicating that Chinese people had mastered modern shipbuilding technology. In 1877, the shipyard updated its shipbuilding technology and began to produce iron-wood hybrid paddle steamers. Ten years later, it built China's first domestically produced steel-hulled armored warship, the "Pingyuan".

  Within 20 years, the shipyard achieved technological progress from wooden-hulled ships to steel-hulled ships. The emergence of steam-powered ships was a major achievement in modern world technology. Zuo Zongtang and Shen Baozhen recognized that setting up a factory and developing it required cultivating talent. Therefore, while establishing the factory, they also founded the Shipyard School. This was China's first school to focus on modern science and technology as its main curriculum, introducing Western teaching materials, courses, and management systems. The Shipyard School was divided into two departments: the front department trained shipbuilding and engine-building personnel, while the rear department trained navigation and engine management personnel. The school emphasized practical knowledge and began selecting outstanding students to study abroad in batches from 1875, directly receiving Western technological education. Over several decades of operation, the school continuously cultivated technical personnel, promoting the progress of shipyard technology, and also produced a large number of outstanding talents for modern China's naval construction, transportation, machinery, mining, telecommunications, railways, diplomacy, education, and other fields, driving China's modernization process from multiple aspects. Yan Fu, Deng Shichang, Sa Zhenbing, Wei Han, Liu Bocang, and Zhan Tianyou were among the outstanding representatives of this group.

  On August 23, 1884, the French Far East Squadron launched a surprise attack on the Mawei shipyard, causing significant damage with heavy gunfire. After the battle, the shipyard workers worked hard to repair and resumed normal production within a month.

  By 1905, the Fujian Shipyard had built a total of 40 ships with a gross tonnage of over 4.7 tons, accounting for 70% of China's total domestic shipbuilding output. In 1874, during the resistance against Japanese invasion of Taiwan, the first modern Chinese navy - the Fujian Fleet - was formed mainly with ships built by the Shipyard in its early years.

  Due to the lack of investment, this shipyard, which was once prosperous and claimed to be the largest in the Far East, now looks dilapidated. The three docks are empty and lifeless, with some rusty shipbuilding materials piled up on one side, and weeds growing around the docks.

  Lin Xiao couldn't help but let out a sigh in his heart at the sight of all this.

  Lin Xiao and his entourage, accompanied by Shen Yueqing, began to visit the factory area. Some technical personnel transferred from Hudong Shipyard also started to evaluate the facilities of Ma'anshan Shipyard.

  Due to the small number of jobs, most workers were laid off, and now there are only over 800 people left in the factory. Most workers spend their working hours idly chatting in front of the machines, and few people notice Lin Xiu's arrival.

  Back at the shipyard office building, technical personnel who went to various branches for assessment returned one after another. The situation was not as bad as it seemed on the surface. The technical data of Mawei Shipyard over the years has been well preserved, and more importantly, the shipyard once had more than 3,000 workers who could operate machines proficiently. The reserve of technical personnel with secondary and higher education in China is absolutely first-rate. Surprisingly, the Qingzhou stone dock built by Minister of Navy Shi Yansheng less than a decade ago can accommodate 15,000-ton ships for repair, which cannot help but make people admire his extraordinary vision.

  The biggest problem of Mawei Shipyard is the lack of investment, most of the equipment are outdated and need to be updated. Two out of three slipways under the shipyard are simple mud slipways, and the other one, a wooden slipway, can only build ships with a tonnage of 3,000 tons at most. Even after being transferred to private ownership, Mawei Shipyard would find it difficult to get large commercial ship orders.

  In general, the technical strength and talent reserve of the Shipyard are second only to Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau among domestic foreign affairs enterprises. After re-planning and technological transformation, it may not take a year to resume production. What Lin Zong is worried about now is the Shipbuilding Academy, China's first modern higher technical school, which has been suspended due to lack of funds and now has only around 40 students. How to restore vitality to the Shipbuilding Academy is a big problem.

  In view of the navigation capacity of the Minjiang River, the re-planned Mawei Shipbuilding Factory will mainly build medium and small-sized ships with a tonnage of less than 10,000 tons. According to the transformation plan, the original two mud shipways and one wooden shipway will be rebuilt into permanent concrete shipways, and the original two 1,500-ton mud docks will be rebuilt into two 3,000-ton steel-concrete structure docks. The wooden shipway will be transformed into a 5,000-ton permanent shipway. On the other hand, many facilities in the factory are old and need to be replaced.

  Lin Xiang decided to renovate and update the main equipment of the Mawei Shipyard by domestic factories, although the self-made equipment would cost more than 300,000 yuan compared to importing from abroad, and also had a great impact on the construction period of the shipyard renovation. However, Lin Xiang believed that this expenditure was still worthwhile. By doing so, it not only enabled the country to possess the manufacturing capacity for heavy machinery but also cultivated a large number of technical workers.

  In order to guarantee the iron and steel demand of the Mawei Shipyard, it is necessary to mine the iron ore in Datian, Zhangping and other places, which requires building a railway connecting Fuzhou, Sanming, Longyan and Zhangping.

  Fujian is a mountainous region, with inconvenient transportation and great difficulty in building railways. Fortunately, the Qing government has always been encouraging industrial and commercial investment. With Lin Sheng's efforts, Fujian merchants and some overseas Chinese collectively raised over 80 million silver dollars to establish the Fujian Railway Company.

  In order to manage railway funds, Fujian Industrial Bank was specially established.

  According to the survey results, the construction plan and route of Fujian Railway are basically consistent with those in later generations. The railway line runs along the main river valleys and mountains, although the distance is slightly longer, but it actually reduces the difficulty of construction.

  In May 1907, the Fujian railway from Fuzhou to Nanping and Xiamen to Zhangping began construction respectively. Although various Western powers had been eyeing China's railway rights, they restrained each other, and the call for self-raised funds to build railways gradually rose among the people. The Qing government finally approved the provinces to start building railways with their own funds.

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