Zai Tian believes that if he can build battleships with such powerful firepower, Britain, France, Germany, the United States, Austro-Hungary and other countries will definitely be able to build warships of the same type or even more powerful. At present, China's industrial capacity cannot be compared with the five appeals. Once such a warship design is detected in advance by other countries, it will likely completely change the balance of the world's naval and trigger an arms race that China cannot bear. Therefore, he hopes to keep secrets as much as possible and delay other countries' time to renew warships.

The emperor issued a strict order, and the ministers around him naturally should be solemnly.

Zai Tian continued: "In addition, the ports in the six cities of Qingdao, Xiamen, Guangzhou, Haiphong, Pontianak and Sishui need to be further expanded, and the construction projects of three ports of Chicken Cage, Dagou Port and Subic are added to adapt to the increasing ship tonnage in the future. Zongli Yamen and the Austro-Hungarian Empire have tried to negotiate on the cooperative development of naval guns. We not only need to improve the firing rate of the twelve-inch main gun, but also need to further develop thirteen-inch and fourteen-inch rapid-firing main guns!"

Previously, the Qing Dynasty's cooperation targets in naval weapons were mainly British. At the same time, due to its cooperation with Germany, it was equivalent to learning from the strengths of the two companies in artillery. Now the Austro-Hungarian Empire has extended an olive branch to us. Considering that the Austro-Hungarian Empire's artillery technology is first-class in Europe and can absorb the skills of a country, why not do it?

After all the ministers received the order, Xu Yongyi stepped forward and said, "Your Majesty, in this way, the fiscal budget will be greatly modified, this money..."

The current government fiscal revenue of the Qing Dynasty mainly comes from three parts: one is agricultural tax, accounting for about 40%; the other is industrial and commercial tax, accounting for about 35%; the remaining is tariffs. Although the fiscal revenue has increased five times compared to ten years ago, there are more places to spend money. Now, two battleships, two armored cruisers, a total of four warships of 10,000 tons or above, and nine large ports are also required to be expanded, which requires hundreds of millions of Longyang to complete. Such a large amount of capital mobilization cannot be avoided by foreigners. After all, the main management personnel of China's customs are still British.

Zai Tian thought for a while: "In this way, the cost of developing naval guns with the Austro-Hungarian Empire is to take education funds; the construction of the two ports of Pontianak and Sishui will mobilize the self-raised funds of the Nanyang Chinese; the construction of the Chicken, the Dog Port and the Subic Bay, the Ministry of Industry calculated that the investment will be made by the court, and the local government will raise by 60%. The other ports can be appropriately increased. Anyway, the construction of the port cannot be concealed. As for the construction of warships, it can be secretly spent from the royal family's overseas funds."

Zai Tian has always had a small treasury of his own. At first, he relied on cooperating with the Germans to produce smokeless powder. In the subsequent cooperation projects of pharmaceuticals, fertilizers, dyes and other people's livelihood industries, the scale of this treasury continued to expand. Later, Zai Tian used the Spanish-American War, the British-British War and this Sino-Russian War to make money in the stock markets and futures markets of Britain and the United States. For example, this Sino-Russian War, no one in the world believed that China would defeat Russia in such a short time, so the Wu family controlled by Zai Tian in the stock and futures markets made tens of millions of pounds profits by shorting rubles, grain, etc.

Of course, others would not know these details. They only knew that the emperor was very rich and how he earned it - it was not a secret. Zai Tian even specially guided and helped some ministers' families to make money in industry and commerce - but as for how many, it was a secret.

Zai Tian believes that the families of these people represent the traditional large landlord class. Once they taste the sweetness in industry and commerce, they will not only ensure integrity, but also drive more landlord classes to devote themselves to industry and commerce. This further drives the country to move from traditional farming industries to industrialization. This initiative will reduce the impact of social industrialization transformation to the greatest extent. It is conducive to social stability and development.

Now, in order to build a ship, Zai Tian said that at least five million pounds have been gone. Oh, rich people are willful.

In the winter of 1902, due to weather, railway construction in the northeast and northwest was temporarily suspended, but envoys from various countries in China discovered that the Chinese began the construction of port terminals with the same high enthusiasm.

According to the plan announced by the Qing government, the mainland of China will increase its ship capacity by 200,000 tons in the next three years. Not only that, Taiwan, North Korea and Kyushu have all started to build ports, and even Luzon, Borneo and Java have begun to expand ports, with the reason being to cope with the possible rapid growth in the future trade demand.

While China began to build railway and port infrastructure on a large scale, Europe, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and Austria began a new round of game around the colonial interests of the Balkans, North Africa and the Central and Near East.

Zai Tian didn’t know what kind of changes the rise of China would bring to the world.

In another time and space, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, due to the decade of the corrupt Qing government, the world's major powers focused on the ancient land of China, and thus gained huge benefits - Russia obtained the Northeast, Xinjiang and Mongolia, Germany obtained the Shandong, France obtained the Vietnam, Guangxi, Guangdong, Jiangxi, Fujian, Britain obtained the Yangtze River Basin, Yunnan, Tibet. Even Belgium and Italy drew a thick tube of blood from this ancient empire. At the same time, the United States obtained the Philippines, and the Netherlands also owned the East Indies Islands.

It is precisely because of eating the flesh and blood of the Chinese people that the great powers not only successfully transferred domestic conflicts, eased the economic crisis in the early 20th century, but even eased the contradictions between the great powers to a certain extent.

For example, the conflict between Britain and Russia in Central Asia was ultimately alleviated by sacrificing China's interests. The same is true for the conflict between Britain and Germany, and it was alleviated to a certain extent through Germany's acquisition of colonies in Shandong.

But in this time and space, nothing is left.

Not only were the great powers unable to suck blood from the Chinese people, but they were even likely to obtain other economic benefits, and they were subtly seized by China, such as colonies and trade.

This invisibly increased the domestic pressure on several major Western imperialist countries. This pressure has now begun to be reflected in the situation of an economic crisis.

At the same time, countries that are eager for colonies and hope to pass on the economic crisis through colonies will inevitably pay more attention to the interests of Africa, the Middle East and the Americas when they cannot enter the East. Among them, the Balkans and North Africa, which are geographically important, are the most intense!

In 1902, after Russia suffered a heavy blow, Germany took the opportunity to obtain the construction rights of the Baghdad Railway from Turkey. This railway runs from Berlin through the Balkan Peninsula, through the Bosphorus Strait and to the Persian Gulf.

It is obvious that once this railway begins to be built, the influence of Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the allies of Germany, will inevitably increase geometrically.

Tsarist Russia has always regarded Constantinople and the Bosphorus as its future spoils. When he learned that Germany had obtained the right to build the Baghdad Railway, Russia immediately warned: Russia has special rights over Constantinople. No other country can have control over Constantinople.

But the arrogant William II certainly would not take the threat of the newly defeated Russians seriously.

Subsequently, Russian Foreign Minister Izworsky said at the meeting at the Hermitage: In the event of the defeat in the war against China, if Russia continues to adopt negative policies on the Balkans issue, then Russia will lose all the results of its efforts over the past century and completely become a second-rate country that is not valued.

Regarding the international pressure that Russia is currently under, Izworsky even hopes to collude with Britain to take joint action in Turkey - just like Britain and Germany joined forces to curb Russia. However, because he was worried that the joint action with Russia would affect relations with China, Salisbury Jr. rejected the Russians' request.

The angry and embarrassed Russia began to prepare for war wildly, trying to realize its ambition to occupy the Balkans through war.

Once Russia's preparation plan was disclosed, it immediately touched the sensitive nerves of the British.

Around 1900, the basic idea of ​​British foreign policy was to tolerate strong countries and avoid wars with strong countries. At this time, what Britain tried hard to avoid was wars with France and Russia, rather than with Germany. The reason was not that Germany was too strong, but that Germany seemed weaker than the French-Russian alliance.

Even though the Russians were bleeding from the war with China, this old "steam roller" still had a strong deterrent in Europe. This deterrent is undoubtedly from his huge army.

At this time, Russia had about one million active soldiers - it turned out that there were one million, one million, and one hundred thousand were knocked out by the Chinese and up to three million and a reserve force of up to three million and a half million. Eighty percent of these troops were in the direction of Europe and Russia. Everyone knew that once these four million troops were put into war, no country on the European continent could afford it.

While the British were deeply distressed by the pressure brought by the Russian violent soldiers, the funny William II ordered his naval ministers to do their best to build warships.

Perhaps stimulated by the Chinese to defeat the Russians at sea, William II became increasingly obsessed with naval construction. To this end, German Navy Commander Tirpitz once again proposed a new shipbuilding plan based on the Naval Law completed in 1898.

"The Germans are crazy!" In his statement to the House of Parliament, British Navy Secretary Baron Fisher roared: "A fleet of 408 million marks, including 17 battleships, 9 large and 26 small cruisers and other small ships still cannot satisfy them. You must know that this size of fleet is enough to compare Germany with France and Russia."

Unlike the hot-headed and delusion-ridden Little William and his Navy Ministers, the German naval veterans were very aware of their vulnerability when building the ocean navy.

Since 1900, the negative impact of the economic crisis has also begun to appear in Germany. The current situation facing Germany is that due to financing difficulties, the expansion plan of the German navy has encountered obstacles. Therefore, many German ministers hope to turn their future strategic goals to the following points: completely defeat France in wars on land to realize the unfulfilled wish of Old Bismarck - "sucking the blood of France"; in Central Europe, the Balkans established a customs alliance led by Germany; in the original French, North Africa established a colonial empire; and increased Germany's economic impact on Turkey and the Netherlands.

This plan will fundamentally bypass the British. German ministers only targeted Russia and France. However, they ignored one thing - in order to colonize and to "the territory under the sun", they needed fleet support.

Therefore, Tirpitz was ambitious and did not hide his ambition to build a fleet that was enough to match the Royal Navy. Within 10 years (1903-1912), the German Navy became a huge fleet of 32 battleships, 10 large and 32 small cruisers, 80 destroyers and auxiliary ships.

Tirpiz even yelled: "The purpose of building this big navy is to make the greatest maritime state dare not challenge it, otherwise there will be a risk of destroying its advantages."

Even if Tirpitz's men were careful not to create the impression that the German Empire had a limited fleet and the British overseas colonies were linked. However, the German Emperor's arrogant, nonsense, and the irresponsible incitement of German politicians like Tirpitz, gave British diplomats, journalists, and intelligence personnel this impression:

First, the German emperor had arrogant ambitions; second, this ambition was not only targeted France or Russia, but would also pose a threat to the overseas colonies of the British Empire; third, due to the German political system, the German emperor could realize his ambitions and adventures at will; fourth, the German navy was the tool to realize this ambition.

Therefore, Germany is the biggest enemy of Britain.

The conflict between Britain and Germany began to intensify.

‘Bang! Bang! Bang!’

Liu Shaoqing fired out all the bullets loaded by the rifle in one breath, and then weighed the weapon in his hand with satisfaction. "It's not bad."

Shen Jing, who had been waiting for a long time, breathed a sigh of relief and walked up excitedly. "Sir Qi Bing, the product you see now is the finalized product after experimenting with three design plans. This rifle uses the air-guided automatic principle invented by Mr. Maxim to use the gunpowder gas generated during the rifle to shoot, complete a series of actions such as unlocking, reshuffle, sending ammunition and relocking. The gun is 1.1 meters long, weighs 4 kilograms, and has a diameter of 6.5 mm. It is supplied by an 8-round ammunition compartment. The only disadvantage is that the range is relatively short, but the accuracy is still reliable within a distance of 200 meters."

Liu Shaoqing smiled: "The distance of 200 meters is enough. After all, this rifle was not developed for long-range shooting. Well, let me know how long it takes to produce 10,000 such rifles?"

I thought quietly: "We need to adjust some equipment, and some parts of this gun need to be produced separately, and there must be matching ammunition. Well, I think, it will be put into mass production in the middle of next year. The first year will be slower, and we will train some technicians, you know. After that, it will accelerate year by year. Well... it will probably be about 4,000 pieces by 2004, and it will double in 2005."

Liu Shaoqing thought for a while, "Okay, I authorize you to start the transformation of equipment immediately. You can make a list of equipment that needs to be repurchased later. Try to start mass production as soon as possible."

Chen Jing immediately said: "Yes!"

Liu Shaoqing looked at the rifle in his hand carefully again, nodded, and handed it to the entourage around him. At this time, a guard stepped forward and said, "Sir, the emperor sent someone to inform me, please go to the palace."

Liu Shaoqing took the towel handed over by the servant and wiped his hands, nodded and said, "I understand, go there immediately."
Chapter completed!