1627 Rise of the South China Sea

Chapter 3632

Whether it was to win Hai Han's support or the royal family had already awakened, they had shown an extremely tough attitude towards the shogunate in the conflicts that had occurred in recent days. Some daimyo who were already dissatisfied with the shogunate also began to speak out and express their support for the royal family.

Some feudal states even began to organize troops to enter the Kyoto area in the name of assisting the imperial family in maintaining order in Kyoto, and they confronted Nijo Castle.

For those who wanted to overthrow the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate, imperial power was an excellent reason and shield, and they could use support for the royal family to cover up their actions.

If the royal family wanted to take back power from the shogunate, they had to rely on the efforts of various factions in the country. Therefore, Emperor Go-sai in the Imperial Garden tried his best to provide convenience to those local daimyo who were willing to send troops to Kyoto. He gave them transfer orders and stationed them, and turned a blind eye to some of their more radical behaviors, as long as they were willing to stand in the front line to deal with the shogunate.

The royal family may not be unaware that some of the ambitious people among them just want to use themselves as a springboard to fight for power and profit, but in the eyes of the royal family, aren't these ambitious people also playing the role of a springboard?

Hai Han would naturally welcome such a chaotic situation.

As more and more gamblers began to place bets at the table, the stakes of this game had become so high that no one could afford to lose. Even the Tokugawa shogunate, as the banker, would end up going bankrupt if they lost.

Regardless of who wins or loses in the end, Hai Han, the organizer of this gambling game, will take a considerable portion of the bets on the table. The bigger the bet, the more it will take. If everyone gambles their lives, then Hai Han will also make a lot of money from this increasingly complicated civil war.

Of course, part of the commission had already been taken by Shi Diwen, and converted into various arms orders and handed over to the arsenals and shipyards in Hai Han.

For the Executive Committee, the continuous arms orders from Japan are undoubtedly a sweet trouble. On the one hand, the huge profits will provide sufficient development funds for Hai Han's military industry, but on the other hand, the production capacity of various arsenals and shipyards has reached saturation, and the delivery period of some equipment has even been scheduled for one or two years later, which cannot meet the requirements of the orders.

"Expanding production capacity is of course the most fundamental solution, but given our current conditions, it is still impossible to achieve this in a short period of time."

In a conference room on the shore of West Lake in Hangzhou, Bai Kesi was explaining to his colleagues on the executive committee why the expansion of military industrial production capacity had not yet shown results.

"Building factories, adding equipment, training workers, these preparations all take a certain period of time, and we cannot expand blindly. Otherwise, once the number of arms orders declines, the idle production capacity will become a loss-making business for us."

"What we can do now is to digest these orders as quickly as possible and hand over some of the simpler projects to private institutions for production, just as we did during the Zhoushan Forum."

"Especially for warship orders, if we hand over all the export-oriented warships to private shipyards, and the government-run shipyards are only responsible for supervising the construction and the final weapon assembly, then the delivery period of the orders will be shortened by at least three to five months compared to now, which is very suitable for the requirements put forward by Japan."

Having said that, Bai Kesi took out another document and showed it to everyone.

"This is the latest report I just received yesterday. The private shipyard in Fujian has begun to deliver the previous warship orders. Although only the orders for refurbishing old ships have been completed so far, the construction of new ship orders is also progressing smoothly." "I think the shipyard in Fujian is fully capable of helping the state-owned shipyard alleviate the problem of insufficient production capacity. The local area already has the corresponding production conditions for small and medium-sized warships such as the Exploration-class and Expedition-class. Making corresponding adjustments to production tasks can also allow the state-owned shipyard to free up production capacity to build advanced warships for our army's own use."

Bai Kesi's proposal included transferring some shipbuilding equipment and related technologies to several designated civilian shipyards in Fujian, and providing corresponding guidance. In the future, these shipyards will be responsible for the basic construction of export-type combat ships. When conditions are ripe, they will also accept some shipbuilding orders from the Hai Han Army.

With almost no questioning, everyone voted unanimously to pass the motion.

In fact, even without this batch of urgent Japanese orders, it is a general trend to adjust the production capacity of warship orders. After all, it is not just the neighboring countries that are in urgent need of adding warships. Hai Han's own external expansion also requires a large number of warships to meet the needs of the navy, and the production capacity growth rate of the official shipyard has been unable to keep up.

However, this production transfer involves interests from all aspects, as well as some advanced shipbuilding technologies that only Hai Han possesses. It is impossible for shipyards to reallocate production capacity solely through spontaneous market regulation. The Executive Committee must step in and issue industry guidance policies to allow private shipyards to reap the benefits.

As for which shipyard they were assigned to, that depended on the sensitivity of each shipyard, as well as their connections and public relations with the Hai Han high-level officials. The shipyards from Fujian were undoubtedly the best in this regard.

When Bai Kesi finished his business that day and returned to his residence, the butler served him hot tea and reported that a visitor from Fujian was waiting to meet him.

Bai Kesi was obviously very clear about the other party's identity and purpose, so he asked the butler to call him to the study for a meeting.

After entering the study, the visitor bowed deeply and greeted Bai Kesi with the etiquette of a junior.

This man's surname is Liang and his name is Zhong. He is the shopkeeper of the Hangzhou branch of Fumao Trading Company. This Fumao Trading Company is one of the main businesses of the Xu family in Fujian. Its branches are spread all over Hai Han's jurisdiction at home and abroad. The scale of its business is quite large, and it is considered a big trading company in Hai Han.

Liang Zhong's father, Liang Quan, was once an old subordinate of Xu Xinsu and the old shopkeeper of Fumao Trading Company. Liang Quan was the middleman for most of Xu Xinsu's transactions with Hai Han, so he had a lot of contacts with Hai Han's top brass. Although Liang Quan has passed away, the high-level connections he made have been passed down to his son Liang Quan.

The reason Liang Quan came today was related to the shipbuilding proposal that Bai Kesi put forward in the Executive Committee. However, he was not in a hurry to ask whether the proposal was passed or not, but first presented Bai Kesi with a gift list.

"Master Bai, this is a small gift from the shipyards in Fujian. I hope you can accept it!"

After he finished speaking, seeing that Bai Kesi did not express anything, neither nodding nor refusing, he handed the gift list to the butler with both hands, and the butler placed it on the desk in front of Bai Kesi.

Bai Kesi slowly put down the teacup and raised his hand to open the gift list.