The Sino-Japanese economic and trade war is not going to happen sooner or later, but it has been fighting since the signing of the "Sino-Japanese Trade Treaty" in 1872. It started in Yantai, Shandong, and expanded to Qingdao, Shanghai, Nagasaki, Kobe, and Osaka. The most intense areas are

In Incheon, North Korea, Chinese businessmen had always had the upper hand. It was not until the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1899 and the Qing government signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki that the balance was completely lost.

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Song Biao inspected the development of the coal mining industry in Fushun for two days. Although the Far East Consortium was determined to develop the coal mining industry from the beginning, after the annual meeting in 1907, the investment direction gradually shifted to other mining and textile industries that were in short supply.

Industry, international trade, finance, minerals, textiles, grain and animal husbandry processing, metallurgy, port shipping, real estate, military industry, and chemical industry will be developed as the main ten pillar industries in the long-term stage.

As for the machinery, electrical, shipbuilding and other industries, the Far East Consortium currently has basically no strength to get involved. They are jointly operating with foreign small and medium-sized enterprises based on their local advantages and waiting for new opportunities.

In fact, in Song Biao's mind, the textile industry was as important as the coal industry, but the former had more pressing problems in the past ten years.

After inspecting Fushun, Song Biao continued to take the railway to Liaoyang to inspect metallurgy, machinery, chemicals, cement and other industries, and then took the newly opened Haijin Railway to Jinzhou. Along the way, he inspected the Liaodong Bay cotton planting area, Jinzhou, Haicheng, and Panjin.

In important areas for the promotion of new cotton, the New Deal Agricultural Bureaus in various places have cotton art institutes to promote long-staple cotton introduced from abroad.

The new Jinzhou Prefecture was actually located near Gaoqiao Town on the east side of Jinzhou Port. It was between Jin County and Huludao. When Yuan Shikai was the governor of Zhili, Song Biao had already negotiated with the Governor of Zhili to handle Jinzhou.

Regarding the issue of zoning, the original Jin County will continue to be a county. The entire Jinzhou Prefecture is divided into six counties, all of which are divided into six counties.

It is a major cotton promotion area. In order to promote cotton planting, Jinzhou Prefecture cooperated with the Far East Consortium to adopt the method of exchanging three acres of land for one acre, and moved local residents on a large scale north to Mudanjiang Prefecture of Jilin Province to expand the land area of ​​local farmers in Jinzhou Prefecture.

Jinzhou Official Reclamation Bureau and Military Reclamation Bureau were established for large-scale planting.

Due to the cheap land price, the Far East Consortium purchased a large amount of land in the Gaoqiao and Jinzhou Port areas and applied for it as industrial and commercial land. It invested in the port here and hired German architects to plan and invest in the construction of the new Jinzhou City. It will be used as a base to build Jinfu, Jinhai,

There are five railways in Chijin, Fengjin, and Jinjing. Due to the excellent port conditions, the local area has two large port areas in the south and north from the initial design. The two port areas were built at the same time. North Port is a business area port, and South Port is an industrial area.

Concentrated area.

Because of the cold weather, Song Biao did not see vast tracts of cotton fields when he took the train all the way to Jinzhou Prefecture, but it was still significantly different from the Guannai area. The land here was obviously much larger in terms of the number of field ridges.

Each longdi has at least about one ridge.

Most of the land in Guandong is like this. One ridge is a long land, a military reclamation area, and an official reclamation area adopts the method of absorbing experience from the United States from the ground up to invest in the construction of agricultural machinery and follow the road of large-scale agricultural planting. The horse breeds equipped for the military and official reclamation areas are also

Most of them are Sidon River draft horses, which are large in size, strong in pulling power, and can withstand cold and rough feed.

Each official reclamation and military reclamation has a horse breeding station, and new horse breeds are cultivated for a long time according to the introduced horse breeds as required. Currently, the local Mongolian horse breeds are mainly used to improve the local Mongolian horse breeds with Belgian draft horses and Sidon River draft horses, and the breeding is more suitable for the Northeast.

Medium and heavy draft horses according to local characteristics and requirements.

Horses are indeed too important to China. Not only will the army need horses in large quantities in the next fifty years, but agricultural production will also still need horses in large quantities in the next fifty years.

At present, the three eastern provinces mainly import a large number of stallions from Europe and Russia through the Far East Railway, mainly European medium and heavy draft horses. About 3,000 stallions are introduced every month, and they are distributed to various breeding stations to match roughly five to

Ten local mares.

The rapid economic development of the three northeastern provinces must first ensure a large number of labor force. Even if the population increases rapidly, taking into account industrial, commercial and urbanization, the three northeastern provinces will still be in a situation of large land and sparse population for a long time in the next 50 years. The industrial and agricultural labor force

Both agricultural planting and rural transportation require a large number of horses. In addition, the agricultural characteristics of the three northeastern provinces are more similar to Europe, and there is a large demand for military draft horses. This further forces the three northeastern provinces to comprehensively strengthen draft horses.

Cultivation, reproduction and promotion work.

For example, in Heilongjiang Province, half of the land belongs to official and military reclamation areas. The cultivation of these lands basically requires a large number of draft horses. Even military reclamation and official forest farms also require a large number of draft horses for transportation.

Relying on building railways to improve transportation is too expensive and difficult to construct.

Due to the high demand for horse breeds, it is currently impossible to talk about which specific stallions will be introduced in the three northeastern provinces. Belgium, Germany, and Russia are the main places where stallions are introduced. This is also related to railway transportation.

There are relatively few official and military reclamation areas in Jinzhou, and there are more than 20 horse breeding stations scattered around. Fuzhou, 60 kilometers away from Jinzhou, has the largest horse breeding base and military reclamation and pastoral area in Asia. Previously, the Qing government established

There are three traditional military horse ranches in the region, which are located in Xiaolinghe and Panjin Yingkou. They have a huge number of horses. With the large and small Linghe, Panjin, and Yingkou

After Song Biao took over the reclamation of land, these three major horse farms were canceled and concentrated in the northern area of ​​Fuzhou. The Liaoxi Military and Animal Husbandry Bureau was established to have unified jurisdiction, covering an area of ​​about 7 million acres of mid-mountain land and grassland.

Initially, half of the land in northern Fuxin and eastern Horqin Prairie was beyond the jurisdiction of the three eastern provinces. At the request of the three eastern provinces, they have now been placed under the jurisdiction of Fengtian Province.

The expansion of land jurisdiction in the three eastern provinces is relatively obvious, and the central court of the Qing government has always been very tolerant of this. Including the transfer of Chifeng to the Liaoxi Military and Animal Husbandry Bureau of the three eastern provinces, the Qing government did not object. The reason why Song Biao

The insistence that the Chifeng area be included in the three northeastern provinces actually values ​​the local mineral resources.

In the past three years, the jurisdiction of Fengtian Province has expanded by nearly a quarter, and all the newly added land has been assigned to the Liaoxi Military and Animal Husbandry Bureau.

With the establishment of the Military and Animal Husbandry Bureau in Western Liaoning, the two official ranches in Jinzhou's jurisdiction were cancelled, freeing up more than three million acres of land. Jinzhou's cotton planting industry began to prosper rapidly. Jinzhou's special geographical location and port

The conditions have subsequently become a key investment and development area for the Far East Consortium.

Song Biao's first stop when he inspected Jinzhou was not the 1st Cavalry Brigade of the Northeastern New Army, which was undergoing training here, but Zhang Bishi's Jinzhou Yuchang Textile General Factory. This textile factory was a large-scale factory established by Zhang Bishi in Jinzhou, together with the Far East Textile General Factory.

The factory jointly invested 20 million

Yuan. In addition, loans of 14 million silver yuan were borrowed from various banks. Zhang Bishi accounted for 70% of the shares and the Far East Textile General Factory accounted for 30%. It is currently the textile factory with the largest investment in the three eastern provinces. After it is fully put into operation, it will have 800,000 spindles and 200,000 spindles.

Production capacity of cotton yarn bales.

Even though there are so many new industrial enterprises in the three northeastern provinces, there are very few companies with huge investments. Even if there are, most of them are leading enterprises under the Far East Consortium that support the industrial and commercial development of the entire three northeastern provinces.

A big Nanyang businessman like Zhang Bishi must have something special. The first person to propose the development of Jinzhou was not the Far East Consortium nor Song Biao, but him. Before investing in the three eastern provinces, Zhang Bishi specially sent people to communicate with Song Biao.

After that, he personally visited Song Biao and was very enthusiastic about investing and setting up a factory with the Far East Trading Company. Rong Xingqiao and Pan Sichi initially planned to invest in a textile factory in Jinzhou. After Zhang Bishi made his own inspections, he decided to set up a factory in Jinzhou.

There are three reasons why Zhang Bishi set up a factory in Jinzhou. First, hundreds of miles around Jinzhou are good places for growing cotton; second, Jinzhou's port conditions are excellent; third, Jinzhou is located at the throat of the Beijing-Fengcheng Railway, so he set up a factory here.

, you can purchase cotton from Zhili and the three northeastern provinces at the same time, and sell it to Zhili, the three northeastern provinces, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Nanyang and North Korea at the same time.

In addition, Zhang Bishi calculated a lot of accounts, even taking climate costs into consideration. In the end, he purchased a large amount of real estate in Jinzhou to build a new factory. He also invested in the establishment of a port with the Far East Consortium and established his own shipping company and real estate company.

The development over the past few years has finally proved that they do have vision and foresight. At the annual meeting of 1907, the Far East Consortium decided to further invest in a large-scale textile factory. In addition to Shenyang New District, the second choice location was also moved from Jinzhou to

Jinzhou.

Hearing that Song Biao's special train was about to arrive at Jinzhou Railway Station, Zhang Bishi took his family and key employees of the factory to wait at the train station very early. When the dark blue train stopped on the platform, Zhang Bishi, who was already over sixty years old,

He couldn't wait to lead everyone forward to greet him.

After waiting for a few minutes, Song Biao walked out of the special train and saw Zhang Bishi and others outside the wall of soldiers in front. He had seen them twice before. Song Biao had always been deeply impressed by Zhang Bishi, not to mention Zhang Bishi was there.

In China, he always wore the official uniform of a third-rank official of the Qing Dynasty and a poinsettia crown. When he stepped out of the train, he was dozens of steps away, and Song Biao could recognize the richest man in Southeast Asia in the crowd.

After the guard camp and the local garrison were released, Zhang Bishi led a group of dozens of people and hurried forward. He bowed his hands to Song Biao and said, "I'm going to the Ministry of Commerce to inspect other places. The Minister of Commerce, Zhang Bishi, has met the Governor-General."

Song Biao looked at Zhang Bishi succinctly, smiled because of his official uniform of the third grade, and said to Zhang Bishi: "Zhang Shang, I came to Jinzhou this time just to talk to you about something important. Let's go first.

Let’s take a look at the textile factory.”

Zhang Bishi immediately replied: "The lower officials have already made arrangements, and I have asked you to get on the sedan chair. The sedan chair and carriage have been prepared, but I don't know how you would like to travel instead?"

Song Biao said: "Take the carriage, there are animals available, why do you have to work hard for others?"

After saying this, he pointed to the many blue-gray carriages prepared by the military department in front, and motioned for him and Zhang Bishi to leave the platform together.

After leaving the train station, Song Biao took the carriage prepared by Zhang Bishi and rode quickly all the way to Yuchang Textile Factory. Twenty million silver dollars was needed to build a factory. How could the scale of this factory be small? What's more, this factory was in Jinzhou.

, when the factory was built in the port a few years ago, the area was still empty except for fishing villages, and land prices were low.

The entire factory covers an area of ​​more than 400 acres and has six factory areas, including cotton processing, spinning, weaving, printing and dyeing, and sizing. In order to solve the problem of high prices of imported dyes, Zhang Bishi not only commissioned Far East like other textile factories

The Textile Corporation purchased directly from Germany and the United States through the Far East Commercial Bank. At the same time, it invested in the Far East Dye Factory founded by the Far East Chemical Corporation and participated in the development of the dye industry in the three eastern provinces.

Most of the staff and technicians were hired by him from Nanyang and the Netherlands, and there were also many newly hired Japanese technicians. The apprentices were trained locally. In the past few years, they have slowly developed and started gradually. Relying on low prices and

Moderate quality occupies a very good market in Zhili and the three provinces.

Song Biao followed Zhang Bishi on a tour of the textile factory. After walking around among the roaring machinery and equipment, there were many things that he did not understand. Because of the large-scale import of machinery and equipment from the United States and France, these equipments were

It is currently the most advanced. Some even adopt

Powered by an AC motor, the machine rotates at extremely high speeds, rattling, turning laterally, and rolling up and down, especially those textile machines. Thousands of textile heads are constantly weaving up and down rapidly, and local workers are busy working in the machine room.

It seems like taking a very big risk.

Although the principles of machinery are very simple, in terms of specific design, the textile machines at this time were developed after a hundred years of gradual improvement. The design is highly complex, taking into account various situations and needs.

, so much so that even Song Biao felt a headache at first glance.

Standing in this large factory, Song Biao had to lament that the era of manpower and handicrafts had passed. Now is the era of large industry. If it cannot keep up with this pace, it will definitely become a backward country.

A textile factory with an investment of 20 million silver dollars is considered a medium-sized textile factory even in the United States. However, there are many factories of this size in the United States, and in China, there are currently only two. The other one is the Far East Textile Corporation, which is also located in Shenyang New District.

factory.

Although the cumulative investment scale of the Shanghai Textile Bureau, taking into account the gradual depreciation rate of silver, does not add up to less than the current 20 million silver dollars, the investment deductions and false claims of the government-run factories combined are estimated to be only a few dollars at most.

Millions of dollars of funding have been put into practice.

After visiting the factory, Song Biao and Zhang Bishi took a walk on the tree-lined road in the factory area. While walking and talking, they asked about the current situation of Yuchang Textile General Factory.

After chatting for a while, Song Biao said to Zhang Bishi with deep feelings: "It is not easy to rise as a national industry. Equipment is easy to buy, but it is difficult to train workers. I see that most of the workers here are young, and you need foreign technicians to help with everything. But

I don’t think it will be easy to run your factory."

Zhang Bishi sighed and said: "In the past, I mostly did business in Nanyang. I ran tin mines, ran shipping companies, set up many reclamation parks, sugar factories and rubber factories. Only this time the textile factory was the most popular."

Difficulty, I just don’t know what the situation is like at the Far East Textile General Factory run by Pan Sichi in Shenyang New District? I heard that he mostly uses Russian technicians there. Although the cost is high, the progress is going smoothly."

Song Biao said: "Pan Sichi recruited some skilled workers and technicians from Shanghai, and established a branch factory in partnership with Russian businessmen. In addition, he recruited more Russian technicians, so the operation will naturally be smoother. He opened a Shenyang factory last year

Textile technical school

The effect of training technicians locally is good. It is going smoothly for him, and he is sure to make money, but there is not much profit. First of all, Japan has always adopted a low-price strategy in our country's market, and the prices of some types are even lower than those of the General Textile Factory.

Cost price, Japan is in their
To be continued...