Sixteen, plotting against the ship's administration

  In the end, Sa Zhenbing still reported to the imperial court that the "Haitian" should be repaired. Even if it couldn't fight after repairs, at least it could be used as a training ship. Of course, this was mainly related to the face of the navy. If it were scrapped like this, the future development of the navy would be even more difficult.

  With Yuan Shikai's support, the imperial court finally agreed on a plan for the renovation of the "Haitian".

  Ye Zu? and Sa Zhenbing specially invited Wei Han, who was in charge of the Fujian Ship Administration Bureau, to serve as the general supervisor responsible for the hull repair project of the "Haitian" warship. They also dispatched chief engineers Zheng Qinglian, Gao Erqian, Ding Pinglan, Zheng Shouqin and others from the Fujian Ship Administration to participate in the repair work at the Hudong Shipyard.

  The abundant talent reserves of the Fujian Ship Administration Bureau made Lin Xiang envy, and he did not expect that the poorly managed and nearly bankrupt Matou Shipyard would hide so many capable people. He began to secretly plan to take over the Fujian Ship Administration Bureau.

  He can now make demands, first the Qing government owes him more than 200,000 taels of silver in salvage fees, and secondly, repairing the "Haitian" will require nearly 500,000 taels of silver. Now that he has opened his mouth to ask for money, Sa Zhenbing can only turn to the imperial court, but the Qing government, which is now penniless, responds with a straightforward two words: "None!", letting Sa Zhenbing think of a solution himself.

  Looking at the worried and bitter old Sa, Lin Xuan said: "I'll give you an idea. Don't you still have a Ma Wei shipyard in your hands? Plus the public property of the Ship Administration Bureau, it's worth at least 1.5 to 1.6 million, right? Such a large shipyard is actually losing money year after year, and it's really being wasted in the hands of those incompetent bureaucrats. Anyway, the Ship Administration also intends to raise capital from merchants, I'm willing to do my part, sacrificing my family for the country! Who made us Fujian people, and we still have a burning patriotic heart?"

  "How come I didn't see it?"

  "That's because your eyesight is too poor!" Lin Chong laughed and then turned to ask Wei Han, the director of the Fuzhou Shipyard: "Director Wei, do you want to make the Fuzhou Shipyard as good as my ship factory?"

  Wei Han swallowed a few mouthfuls of saliva and nodded vigorously.

  Lin Shuangzheng said with a serious expression: "If we can change the ship's policy to be managed by merchants, I guarantee that it will be completely new within three years!"

  These naval veterans couldn't help but feel a surge of excitement, for the Fuzhou Shipyard embodies the dreams of generations of sailors. Who wouldn't want to see it thrive?

  The current governor of the naval administration is Wei Guangtao, the former Viceroy of Liangjiang, who can still be talked to.

  However, the Governor of Liangjiang Wei Guangtao was transferred to Fujian, but his position was still precarious. The reason is that he offended the imperial commissioner Tie Liang who was on a southern inspection tour.

  In 1904, the unknown Tieliang, a minister of the Board of Revenue, was ordered to go south under the pretext of inspecting the implementation of new policies in the south and the training of the new army, but actually to collect money for the imperial court.

  Yuan Shikai's Beiyang Standing Army was organized into the Third Division, but then nothing more was heard of it. The Russo-Japanese War was raging in the north, and border defense was tight, so the imperial court urged him to speed up the training of his new army to guard the capital region. Old Yuan threw up his hands, saying "I have no money, what can I do?" So the anxious Empress Dowager thought of this plan.

  Although Tie Liang's official position is not considered too high, he has the backing of Empress Dowager Cixi, Prince Qing and Yuan Shikai, so he is actually quite powerful.

  Since the Taiping Rebellion, the Qing court had to decentralize its military and financial powers to local authorities in order to suppress the uprising. Later, after the Second Opium War, the First Sino-Japanese War, and the invasion of China by the Eight-Nation Alliance during the Boxer Rebellion, the imperial authority declined day by day. Especially when the eight countries invaded China, the governors and governors of the southeastern provinces openly criticized the "imperial edict" and "edict" that were once sacred and inviolable as "fake edicts", which was seen by many as a sign of the weakness of the Qing central government.

  At that time, the Governor of Liangjiang, Wei Guangtao, also thought so. The land of Liangjiang had become a forbidden place for the Hunanese warlords since Zeng Guofan's time. Except for Zhang Zhidong who occasionally took over twice, no one else had taken it easily. When Ma Xinyi of the Huai Army sat in the Governor of Liangjiang, he was openly assassinated just a few days after taking office. Although the case was finally settled as a personal vendetta and dropped, discerning people could see the shadow of the Hunanese warlords behind the event at a glance.

  After this, the two Jiangs never again escaped the grasp of Hunan people.

  Wei Guangtao is now the only surviving meritorious old minister of the Xiang Army, and after Liu Kunyi, he became the leader of the Xiang faction. He has the qualifications to ignore the Qing government, and when he took office in 1903, he openly violated the Qing government's instructions on the unity of military and political affairs, openly recruiting 3,000 local braves in Hunan with his family members, and entrusted them to his trusted subordinates. After Tie Liang's southern expedition, he also instructed the provincial governors under the jurisdiction of the Governor-General of the Two Rivers to quickly compile fake Qing books to make up for the deficit, just to fool around. In Wei Guangtao's view, this time Tie Liang's southern expedition will be like the previous efforts of the Qing government to centralize power, and it will come to nothing.

  But this time Old Wei miscalculated, after Iron Liang arrived in Jiangnan, he didn't conduct an audit, instead he followed the Yangtze River and inspected the military drills of various Xiang Army camps along the way, Governor Iron wanted to rectify the military equipment.

  Will this thing turn out okay?

  The military discipline of the various Xiang Army in the late Qing dynasty was corrupt, and officials only cared about embezzling salaries, while soldiers only cared about eating, drinking, whoring and gambling. Who still has the mind to train? I'm afraid most people don't even know how to use the rifle in their hands. It's also strange that Wei Guangtao didn't have a single capable subordinate under him, just a bunch of useless people, who exposed their incompetence when it came down to business.

  Tie Zhong finally understood, at the time of roll call, some battalions had less than half of their men present, and some even had fewer than a quarter of the number on their roster. Moreover, they rarely trained, and couldn't even form a proper line. Lord Tie was so angry that he almost got his nose twisted out of shape. On this trip to Jiangning, he impeached all the military officers under Old Wei that he met, dismissing them from office and wiping them out completely.

  Tie Zhong's memorial reached the throne, and Wei Guangtao was already unable to bear it. The imperial court issued a decree rebuking him, leaving him with no temper at all. Who let his subordinates be a bunch of useless things! Fortunately, the imperial court still gave old Wei some face, issuing an edict that Wei Guangtao would be transferred to Fujian as governor, and Zhou Fu, the governor of Shandong, would take over as governor-general of the two Jiangs. The 40-year history of the Hunan clique's rule in the two Jiangs was coming to an end.

  Riding on the momentum of taking down Wei Guangtao, Tieliang effortlessly took away the dominant power of the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau from Zhang Zhidong, who was then the Governor-General of Huguang, and reclaimed more than 8 million taels of silver that Zhang and Wei had prepared to raise for a new factory. Moreover, he collected over 4.75 million taels of silver from Jiangnan and Huguang. As a result, the Qing central government unexpectedly rendered the local governors and viceroys powerless. Tieliang struck while the iron was hot and subsequently reclaimed most of the localities' most important source of revenue: land tax.

  The silver collected by Tiande was again let out to Laoqing and Yuan Shikai, who conspired together, and most of it flowed into the Beiyang.

  The imperial court needs money to train soldiers.

  In the northeast, Japan and Russia are engaged in a fierce battle.

  In early March, the new commander of the Russian Pacific Fleet, Makarov, arrived in Port Arthur to take up his post. Makarov was a renowned Russian naval officer who had written "Tactical Questions of Naval Warfare", which was well-known in Western naval circles. He was also an expert on mine warfare and had commanded the battleship "Konstantin" during the Russo-Turkish War, sinking and damaging several enemy ships.

  As soon as Makarov took office, he implemented a series of defensive measures while requiring the fleet to take the initiative to attack and regain control of the sea. Based on his understanding of the sea area, ship situation, and fortifications, he decided to lay mines in the eastern coastal waters of the Liaodong Peninsula to prevent Japanese troops from landing there and threatening Port Arthur from the side and rear.

  He also accelerated the repair of damaged ships, dispatched fleets to go out to sea, strengthened joint naval and land warfare training, and required the Vladivostok fleet to send troops south to Japan to actively harass Japanese maritime transportation lines and constrain the actions of the Japanese Combined Fleet. Makarov's measures improved the Russian army's passive situation, giving officers and soldiers confidence in defeating the Japanese.

  However, on April 13th, Makarov was killed when his flagship "Petropavlovsk" struck a mine while returning to port. A total of 649 officers and men died with him. To this day, it remains a mystery whether the mine that sank the ship was laid by the Russian Pacific Fleet or the Japanese Combined Fleet.

  In short, Makarov, who came from a background in mine warfare, ultimately died in a mine warfare battle. The new commander, Vizevich, believed that the Pacific Fleet was not sufficient to engage the Japanese Combined Fleet and that relying on Port Arthur's fortifications could ensure the safety of the fleet while waiting for the arrival of the Baltic Fleet.

  Therefore, he no longer took the initiative to attack, and from then on, the initiative in naval warfare fell into the hands of the Japanese again.

  On June 13, the Vladivostok naval squadron was ordered to sail south to support the Pacific Squadron at Port Arthur. En route to Port Arthur, they sank two Japanese transports, causing panic among the Japanese transport fleet. When the Russian squadron attempted to join forces with the Port Arthur squadron, it was intercepted by a Japanese fleet led by Admiral Uryo. In the ensuing battle, the Russian cruiser "Ural" was sunk, and the cruisers "Rossiya" and "Gromoboi" were damaged, forcing the "Novik" to run aground near Sakhalin Island, while the remaining ships were driven back to Vladivostok. For over a month afterwards, the Russian squadron blockaded at Port Arthur did not dare to make any moves.

  Lin Hui ran to the Hanyang Iron Factory, because the equipment imported from Germany had arrived one after another and began to enter the installation and debugging stage. The railway line for transporting coal from Pingxiang to Zhuzhou is expected to be opened in two months, and with the use of water transportation by tugboats, the cost of transporting coal from Pingxiang to Hanyang can be reduced to more than six taels per ton. After introducing the latest steelmaking technology from Germany and Belgium, the amount of coke consumed per ton of steel also dropped to about one ton, if production is normal, the cost of steel at the Hanyang Iron Factory will drop to around twenty taels, according to current market prices, each ton can have a profit of six or seven taels.

  Lin Zong is now worried about the sales problem. At present, the domestic consumption of steel per year is only around 70,000 to 80,000 tons. However, this time Han Yang Iron Factory has added two blast furnaces with a daily output of 200 tons each, one converter with a daily output of 75 tons, and two open-hearth furnaces with a daily output of 150 tons each, plus some continuous rolling equipment. The total production capacity is over 400 tons per day. After deducting the maintenance time, the annual steel production is around 120,000 tons. Without considering imported steel, domestic demand cannot absorb this production capacity.

  Lin Xiao must develop the domestic steel market. In this era, railways are the largest consumer of steel, followed by shipbuilding and machinery manufacturing, while other civilian markets account for less than 20% of total steel consumption. However, in China, the daily civilian market accounts for more than half of the total amount.

  The building market in this era still has very limited use of steel, and the number of houses built domestically can be counted on one's fingers. This market cannot be formed overnight. In terms of mechanical manufacturing, the heavy machinery, machine equipment, and mining equipment that use the most steel are not manufactured domestically at all. As for shipbuilding, the annual consumption is about 6,000 to 7,000 tons, but the production capacity of medium and thick plates, which are in greatest demand, has not yet been achieved by Hanyang Iron Works.

  After weighing his options, Lin Xiu could only focus on railways and bridges for now.

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