I want to be emperor

Chapter 763
Tianjin, Hebei Province, was not considered a big city in the pre-Ming period, but because it was a transfer station of the Beijing-Hangzhou Canal, the traffic location was relatively important, so it began to build a city and set up guards, that is, Tianjin Wei.

Before the Ming Dynasty, there was not even a city here. During the Yuan Dynasty, this place was the transshipment center of grain and sea salt.

To put it simply, before the Great Chu Empire controlled Hebei, Tianjin was not considered an important city. It just had a certain military strategic position, and this military strategic position was brought about by Youzhou City.

In the past hundreds of years, the political and economic center of North China was Youzhou, which was the capital of Yan, capital of Liao Dynasty, capital of Jinzhong, capital of Yuan Dynasty, and capital of Ming Dynasty.

But all this changed after the Great Chu Empire succeeded in the Northern Expedition.

After the Great Chu Empire captured Youzhou City, it felt that there were a large number of Ming Dynasty survivors and children in Youzhou City. Many of them were forcibly relocated to Liaodong, Monan and other places.

At that time, the Forbidden City in Youzhou City was demolished... The Forbidden City in Youzhou had already gone through wars, and there were several fires at that time, which burned down several halls, and the remaining buildings were also demolished. The Great Chu Empire dismantled a large number of curios and even precious building materials and transported them to Jinling City by ships to build the Jinling Palace.

After the war, the fire and the demolition of the Forbidden City in Youzhou, there is only an empty shell left, which will be used as a military camp for many years to come.

At most, there were [-] to [-] Chu soldiers stationed in the Forbidden City in Youzhou.

After the war, a series of forced relocations, and more importantly, the Great Chu Empire did not place the newly established provincial capital of Hebei Province in Youzhou City, but in Tianjin City, which is more convenient for canal transportation and is also a coastal port.

And develop industry and commerce in Tianjin.

As a result, Youzhou City quickly evolved from a super-large ancient city to an ordinary city after losing its political and economic status.

Today, in the 29th year of Chengshun, the permanent resident population of Youzhou City is only over 10 people, of which tens of thousands are still garrisoned.

In contrast, Tianjin City, which has inherited the status of the political and economic center of the northern region, has risen rapidly in the past 20 years and has become the political, economic and even cultural center of the entire North China region.

The population of the urban area has reached more than 50, and the population of the entire Tianjin Prefecture has reached more than 200 million.

In the seventh year of Chengshun, a government was established in Tianjin. In the 15th year of Chengshun, the Great Chu Empire adjusted a few important large cities to further strengthen their political status.

These three prefectures are currently the only three government-level institutions of the third rank in the Great Chu Empire. Three ranks.

The only ones who are higher than them are the second-rank Yingtian Mansion and Hantian Mansion, but they are the capital and accompanying capital, and their nature is quite special. , but Fu Yin.

The reason why Tianjin has a high political status and a large population is naturally because of its rapid industrial and commercial development in the past 20 years.

Ever since the Great Chu Empire took over the North China region, it had already decided to build Tianjin as the industrial center of the north. It invested in the construction of three major factories, Tianjin Armory Factory, Tianjin Machinery Factory, and Tianjin Iron and Steel Factory.

The initial core strategic mission of these three major factories was to provide weapons and equipment to the army in the northern region, and to use them for the subsequent war to pacify the captives.

These three factories later evolved into North China Arms Company, Tianjin Machinery Company, and Tianjin Iron and Steel Company.

Surrounding the three major enterprises, there are many other enterprises, such as the Tangshan Mining Company next door, which initially provided support for Tianjin's industrial production, but later developed and expanded, and became a large enterprise itself, bringing together coal mine development , iron ore development, and other non-ferrous metal development, and it also owns a Tangshan Iron and Steel Plant.

Taking advantage of the rich mineral resources in the Hebei region, coupled with the fact that the Ministry of Industry mobilized a large amount of resources to smash it down.

Moreover, there is also the huge military demand brought about by the pacification of the Eastern Captivity War. These have allowed Tianjin's industry and commerce to achieve rapid development in just a few years, and it has become one of the five major industrial bases of the Great Chu Empire. until now.

Five major industrial bases, namely Daye Industrial Base in Hantianfu, Dangtu Industrial Base in Yingtianfu, Susong Industrial Base in Jiangnan Province (from Wusongkou in Suzhou to Shanghai County in Songjiang Prefecture), Guangzhou Industrial Base in Guangdong Province, and Tianjin Industrial Base in Hebei Province.

These five major industrial bases currently contribute more than 80.00% of the industrial output value of the Great Chu Empire.

Although Tianjin can only be regarded as the bottom of the five major industrial bases, and its output value is far behind the leading Susong Industrial Base, its scale is still very large.

These can be seen from the many towering smoke and dust seen along the way, as well as the gray sky over the city, the many buildings and the layer of black coal ash on the road.

Even if he was still in the special train for the imperial use, Luo Zhixue could still smell the charred smell...

If this is placed in later generations, it will be severely polluted, and various environmental protection measures will definitely be carried out, but in the Great Chu Empire in the late seventeenth century, this is a symbol of advancement!
That smell of charcoal is the taste of the industrial age!

All kinds of messy factories powered by steam engines, steel factories that directly burn coal to make iron and steel, and industrially produced cheap briquettes used by people living in high-density living. When you combine everything, you can smell this kind of coal char taste.

Change the place, you can't smell it if you want to.

Even Xuzhou, which is supported by the great policies of the Great Chu Empire and positioned as the industrial center of Jiangbei and even the Central Plains, does not have such a strong and pure smell of coal burnt in the air.

In the Great Chu Empire, the top officials in countless places dreamed that this kind of charred smell would appear in their jurisdiction.

Because, behind this charred smell, it represents a large number of factories, a large number of employed people, and a large number of service industries. When these are integrated together, it becomes a developed industrialized city!
If you can create such an industrial city while in office, subsequent promotion will be like being a rocket, and it is not impossible to enter the imperial study after a few years.

Unfortunately, they are difficult to do!

If you want to develop industry and commerce, and if you want to develop the people's livelihood economy, you also need to look at the local traffic conditions and resource conditions.

Leaving aside other things, just one traffic can exclude most of the places.

In addition, you must have sufficient resources, preferably coal and iron ore, because with these two things, you can make steel, and with steel, you can develop various machinery industries nearby.

Iron and steel is the upstream industry of industry, while coal and iron ore are the source of industry!

But minerals are purely God’s reward for eating, so it doesn’t matter if you say it yourself, what if you don’t have mineral resources?
That can only be to think of other ways, to use other advantages to engage in other industries.

For example, in Heyuan Prefecture, Wang Tu took advantage of the unique climate advantages of the local mountains to plant and process tea, soybeans, bean curd sticks, and other economic crops. Grain planting and processing relied on the economic crop industry. A limited processing industry developed.

With this foundation, Wang Tu has already started to introduce and support other industries around the planting and processing industries of economic crops.

Such as small mechanical equipment, daily hardware, small-scale shipbuilding, shipping, daily chemical industry and even the very common textile industry.

These days, the textile industry has very low barriers to entry and is quite profitable. It is also a labor-intensive industry and can be produced and sold by itself, so it is very popular with local governments and private capital.

Although there are behemoths in the textile industry such as Suqin Textile Company and Hantian Textile Company in the Great Chu Empire, even these two super textile enterprises do not occupy more than ten percent of the textile market share.

In addition to these two major textile enterprises, there are countless various textile enterprises, from spinning to weaving, to printing and dyeing, to garments, etc., with large and small scales, and the number is almost every city in the Great Chu Empire.

If you pull out a mansion at random, there may be a textile factory in it, but the scale is different.

Even in Heyuan Prefecture, a poor place in the mountainous area of ​​northern Guangdong, there used to be more than a dozen textile factories or workshops, with a complete industrial chain of spinning, weaving, printing and dyeing, but the scale was very small, let alone a factory. It is a workshop.

Wang Tu is engaged in the textile industry in Heyuan, but he doesn't really want to do it well. It's just that the textile industry has a low threshold and is easy to do. Moreover, it is very reliable to produce and sell locally.

The big enterprises of Suqin Textile Company basically obtained most of their market share in big cities. In small and medium-sized cities, they have always had no advantage...

Unless you run directly to open a factory, otherwise you will not be able to work in those small and medium-sized local textile enterprises.

Because in order to support textile enterprises on their own sites, many local governments often provide substantial tax exemptions, official procurement, and various conveniences... To put it bluntly, they set up trade barriers to protect local textile enterprises, thereby protecting employment and stimulating the development of other industries. .

Therefore, the products of those large textile enterprises have never been the mainstream of small and medium-sized markets in various places. The mainstream of textile markets in various places has always been the local small and medium-sized textile enterprises.

Heyuan Mansion where Wang Tu is located is no exception!
Suqin Textile Company and Hantian Textile Company are strong because they can rely on cost and quality advantages to occupy a part of the market share in large cities, and at the same time, a small amount of market share in small and medium-sized cities with relatively convenient transportation.

It seems that there are not many in every place, but there are many places, a little here, a little there, and the sum is very scary.

This point is no exception in Tianjin. In the huge textile market in Tianjin Prefecture, let’s talk about the cotton yarn market in detail.

Suqin Textile Company took up about 13.00% if it was exhausted, and Hantian Textile Company was even less, estimated to be seven or eight percent.

However, the local Lida Textile Company in Tianjin has a market share of around 20.00%.

The market share of Tianjin Lida Textile Co., Ltd. has beaten the leading and second-ranked domestic textile enterprises, which is more than their sum.

But, the market of Tianjin Lida Textile Company is limited to Hebei, at most it radiates to a part of northern Shanxi and parts of Liaodong and Shandong, and other places are basically zero-load...

However, Suqin Textile Company has a large market share in other big cities, such as Jinling, Songjiang, Suzhou, Guangzhou, and Hantian.

How to go out is also a difficult problem for Tianjin Lida Textile Co., Ltd.!
But these are all follow-up matters. For Tianjin Lida Textile Co., Ltd. on July 29, [-] Chengshun, nothing is more important than welcoming Shengjia.

Because their company is a leading textile enterprise in Hebei and even North China, its headquarters production base was included in the Shengjia inspection list.

To this end, their company started various preparations more than a month ago.

Three days ago, the company's base headquarters shut down a large area and carried out a comprehensive sanitation and cleaning work. Only a small part of the carefully selected production lines were kept as representatives for inspection!
What, Shengjia came to inspect, you can't let Shengjia just look at the equipment, but you can't see the workers, what's so good about the empty factory...

But you can't really let Luo Zhixue go into the chaotic and even extremely dangerous production workshop to inspect. There are too many potential dangers and uncertain factors. Once something unexpected happens, no one can bear the responsibility.

Especially the textile factories these days are still very dangerous, they explode at every turn...

During the production of textile factories, a large amount of dust, cotton wool, etc. will be produced. If the air circulation is not normal, it will burn quickly when it encounters static electricity or open flame, and it will explode if it burns too violently.

By the same token, flour mills are also prone to fire and explosion accidents...

Although the factories of Lida Textile Company all have fans driven by steam engines through belts to keep the air circulating in the workshop, the dust content does not exceed the standard.

But it's impossible for Luo Zhixue to really see it.

Coupled with factors such as the large number of people and confusion.

Therefore, after discussing with the local government, Lida Textile Company simply shut down most of the production lines, and transferred a group of worker representatives who had undergone various strict inspections to form a separate elite production line.

Then the workshop was urgently refurbished. There should not be too many various mechanical equipment, only the necessary quantity should be kept, and a few more powerful fans should be added.

When Sheng Jia comes to inspect, he will only look at this workshop, and only this workshop.

Hence, there is the textile workshop that Luo Zhixue sees now!

This super-large workshop has hundreds of square meters, but there are only a dozen or so pieces of machinery and equipment, and the distance between the spinning machines is very large... The workers are all full of energy. Ten brand new factory uniforms with materials and workmanship comparable to dresses...

Luo Zhixue took a quick glance, one of Nima's workers was still wearing shiny leather shoes under the trouser legs of his uniform.

Even though Luo Zhixue has been emperor for 29 years, he can still tell at a glance that this worker's uniform and this pair of leather shoes add up to tens of Chu yuan...

Whose workers are so proud?
Looking up, it was a middle-aged 'worker' in his thirties. Although he was wearing a mask and couldn't see his expression, he could see his delicate skin and tender flesh just from the exposed forehead.

If he was a front-line worker, Luo Zhixue would dare to eat up the spinning machine in front of him.

This person is now meticulously operating the spinning machine in front of him...

It's a pity that the new spinning machines these days are fully automatic spinning machines driven by steam engines. Except for a very few processes, most of the time the machines are operated by themselves, and the spinning workers do not need to operate them all the time.

It is normal for a worker to take care of several or even a dozen spinning machines at the same time.

However, this man just pretended to be standing in front of the spinning machine, concentrating on operating the spinning machine... he didn't know what he was touching with his hand.

Luo Zhixue took a glance and then looked away, secretly commenting in his heart: This acting is not good...

However, Luo Zhixue only commented a little in his heart, but his face still had a smile on his face, and it was impossible to point out other people's lies on the spot...

It’s not easy for everyone. It’s not easy for you to come from a long distance to inspect it. It’s not easy for others to shut down a super-large one for several days and open a special production line for driving. There’s no need to embarrass others.

Furthermore, this is a serious private-funded enterprise, and the boss can let whoever he likes on the production line... No one else can control it!

Not to mention, the boss of the Tianjin Lida Textile Company is really wearing an engineer's uniform. He respectfully introduces various equipment and the situation of the factory in front of Luo Zhixue. Demonstrate it.

After inspecting the production line of the factory, Luo Zhixue had a brief talk with a group of officials directly in the meeting room of Lida Textile Company, expressing his joy for the development achievements of the domestic textile industry, and even more High expectations for the future development of the textile industry.

After finishing the inspection of Lida Textile Company, Luo Zhixue took a large number of people to transfer to Tianjin Songshi Glass Company, which belongs to the same area and is not far away. This is also a private enterprise, and it is also a private company. A small number of companies specializing in high-tech fields.

Don't look at the words "Glass Company" that people hang, and think that they are producing low-tech ordinary civilian glass. In fact, the glass they produce is high-tech.

What is its flagship product?
telescope!
Its [-]-type monocular handheld telescope is the standard telescope for the ground troops of the Great Chu Empire. When the grassroots officers lead troops to fight, each of them has one...

The various types of nautical monoculars of the twelve-type series, the standard telescopes of the warships of the Great Chu Empire Navy, and even the auxiliary warships are indispensable equipment for the watchmen of the Great Chu Empire Navy.

As for the civilian navigation industry, before the military purchases, the telescope products of Tianjin Songshi Glass Company have been used on a large scale.

In the field of telescopes, regardless of whether they are for military or civilian use, Song’s Glass Company beats similar domestic enterprises. Even the Hankou Telescope Factory, which was directly under the Ministry of Industry and monopolized the military telescopes of the Great Chu Empire in the early days, was defeated steadily. .

Today, they can only rely on military support orders and the ordinary civilian telescope market to survive.

If the military hadn't maintained the diversity of procurement, it would have abandoned the Hankou Telescope Factory long ago.

Because the gap between the two is too great, the telescope made by Song’s Glass Company is not only cheap, but the quality is good, while the telescope made by Hankou Telescope Factory is not cheap, and it can’t even compare in quality.

Therefore, the main telescopes on naval warships are generally made by Song Glass Company, and Hankou Telescope Factory is used only for auxiliary telescopes.

Being able to achieve the leading position in the field of military and civilian telescopes shows the strength of Song's Glass Company in the field of optics. Now they are still relying on their advantages in the field of telescopes and have begun to enter the field of microscopes and test glassware.

Microscopes and laboratory glassware, this is also a very big market!
Microscopes and test glassware are needed in major laboratories, and a large number of microscopes and glassware are also needed in various teaching institutions. Even ordinary middle schools will purchase a small amount of microscopes and glassware in order to allow students to better understand the world. For teaching purposes.

Moreover, the equipment related to the experiment is not cheap, and it seems inconspicuous, but in fact the market value is not small, enough to support several large enterprises.

Microscopes and glassware have always been the territory of Zhenjiang Optical Instrument Company, but in recent years, Song's Glass Company has eroded a lot of market share.

In order to cope with the competition, Zhenjiang Optical Instrument Company also went to make telescopes...

Ever since, the top two in the field of optics competed for the market and also for the position of the leader in the field of optics. In the past three or four years, the competition was extremely fierce...

Well, what makes Hankou Telescope Factory helpless is that the competition between the two powerhouses has disrupted its small microscope and experimental glassware market.

In the fields of telescopes, microscopes, and test vessels, the Hankou Telescope Factory has been completely suppressed by the two powers... Although it will not go bankrupt, it can only survive in the low-end market and special military support fields.

Such a powerful enterprise as Tianjin Song's Glass Company, and a typical high-tech enterprise, is naturally Luo Zhixue's key inspection target.

Don't think that there is no technical content in making glass. They are playing in the field of optics. Even in the 21st century, the field of optics is a full-fledged high-tech field.

In the 21st century, what kind of industrial equipment is the most famous?
There is no doubt that the lithography machine!

Anyone who pays close attention to the news on the Internet will know about this thing, and know that this thing is used to make chips.

In fact, manufacturing chips requires n many processes and equipment, but we have a relatively large gap in the field of lithography machines, and the difficulty is too great to catch up in a short time, so we are quite famous.

In the process of producing chips, the lithography machine is mainly responsible for ultraviolet exposure!

A very important and core component is involved here: the optical lens.

The grinding accuracy of this optical lens is at the level of picometers... A lens of tens of centimeters is enlarged to the size of the entire country, and its surface fluctuations are only tens of centimeters!

The field of optics, which is a serious high-tech field, is true in the 21st century, and it is also true in the Great Chu Empire in the late seventeenth century.

Moreover, the development of the field of optics is a prerequisite for the development of many disciplines... Without the development of the field of optics, you can't talk about the development of modern medicine, biology, astronomy and other disciplines, and other disciplines such as physical chemistry need to use the field of optics .

Because many experiments require the use of microscopes!
Otherwise, why do you think Luo Zhixue came to inspect... Could it be that he really wanted to see ordinary glass!

People came to see the newly developed microscope for scientific research developed by Song's Glass Company.

By the way, let's look at the military telescope...well, this one is really just by the way.

(End of this chapter)