I want to be emperor

Chapter 582 Maritime Trade and Shipbuilding
Foshan, once an important place for iron products in the Ming Dynasty, fell into mediocrity in just a few years after it entered the Great Chu Dynasty.

Many iron workshops in the past have disappeared.

The decline of Foshan's iron and steel industry in a short period of time is not because of what it did wrong or what it did, but because this place is not suitable for the development of a modern steel industry.

Foshan iron industry, because of the lack of iron ore and coal in the local area, its iron materials come from some small iron ores in the Xijiang, Beijiang, and Dongjiang river basins. After these small iron ores are mined, the iron ore will be refined locally to produce After the crude iron is removed, the iron will be transported downstream to Foshan through the rivers of the Pearl River system, and then processed into refined iron and even various iron products.

At the same time, the fuel used in Foshan's iron and steel industry is charcoal, which also relies on the rich charcoal resources in the upper and middle reaches of the Pearl River system.

Strictly speaking, Foshan's iron and steel industry is a refined processing of iron materials and subsequent production of finished products, not a traditional iron and steel smelting industry.

Such a model was fine in the era of handicraft industry. Anyway, the scale is not large. Although the transportation cost is higher, the price of steel is also high. Therefore, the iron-making industry in Foshan is developing fairly well.

However, after the period of the Great Chu Empire, a large-scale mechanical production model was adopted. The iron-making furnace was extremely tall, and water-powered blowers were directly used to produce iron materials on a large scale.

This brought about not only an increase in the output of iron materials, but also a decrease in the price of iron products.

At the same time, because of the large output and the high demand for raw materials, the large iron and steel smelting factories of the Great Chu Empire were basically built directly near iron mines or coal mines, which further reduced transportation costs.

Finally, the transportation is often carried by large ships or even by sea, and the transportation cost is much lower than that of small ships.

Stable quality has always been a great advantage of industrial production. The quality of the products produced may not be related to the top, but they are very stable. They will not be the same as manual workshops. If you are lucky, the blacksmith can make them very well. If you are unlucky, you can only produce waste products.

And stable quality control is a great guarantee for the yield rate.

If the yield rate cannot increase, the cost will naturally remain high.

In the end, the iron-making industry in Foshan became unsustainable due to high costs, and a large number of remaining private iron-making workshops closed down or were acquired.

Although these iron workshops are not very good, the large number of skilled craftsmen in them are very valuable.

The Ministry of Industry of the Great Chu Empire used the acquired craftsmen in these iron workshops as a basis, and then established the Guangzhou Iron and Steel Works in Guangzhou, which started the first industrialized production of steel in Guangdong and Guangxi, using hydraulic machinery on a large scale to smelt steel. And process iron materials.

It is not only Guangzhou Iron and Steel Works that has absorbed these workshops in the hands of bankruptcy, but also Li's Iron and Steel Manufacturing.

The Li family is a family of traditional large-scale iron-making workshops in Foshan. It has been operating iron-making in Foshan for hundreds of years. After the Great Chu Empire occupied Foshan, it placed a lot of orders with the local iron-making workshops in Foshan. This process There are a lot of black hearts in the Internet, and they use cut corners and shoddy methods to earn money that shouldn't be earned.

It didn't take long for these illegal businesses to be ransacked and exterminated one by one by the Dachu government.

Li's, on the other hand, was more restrained, and did not engage in shoddy things, so it became the only large-scale iron-making workshop left in Foshan at that time, and took this opportunity to win a large number of military supplies orders from the Great Chu Empire. .

In addition to providing the military with a large number of armor, swords and spears and other cold weapons, it also provided the military with a batch of guns.

Well, don't doubt that Li's large iron workshop can also make guns and cannons. It has provided a lot of bird guns and red barbarian cannons to the Ming Dynasty government before.

These military orders have brought huge profits to Lee's Steel Manufacturing.

After the government's Guangzhou Arsenal is completed, because the defense industry needs to be controlled, the principle of private capital operation is not allowed in principle, because the government bought the arms production-related business from Lee's Iron and Steel, and the price is naturally very good.

After receiving a large amount of cash, Lee's Iron and Steel Co., Ltd. completely withdrew from the weapon production industry and began to devote itself to the production of various civilian iron products.

And at this time, it happened that the Great Chu Empire launched a large-scale five-year agricultural development plan, which included a subsidy plan for farm tools.

In those few years, not only the government invested heavily, but also a machinery factory was set up in almost every county. Many traditional iron-making workshops in the folk, if conditions permit, also transformed smoothly and became a new type of machinery factory, and then produced various Ironwork, especially agricultural implements.

Lee's Iron & Steel is no exception. After their transformation, on the one hand, they have used the channels and reputation that have been in operation for a century, and on the other hand, they have actively introduced various types of mechanical equipment represented by a large number of new hydraulic machines, and reached an agreement with the Guangzhou Iron and Steel Plant. With cooperation, it is possible to directly purchase a large amount of cheap iron raw materials.

Such a great cost control, and the output is large enough.

Coupled with the official subsidy for farm tools, the products of Lee's Iron and Steel Co., Ltd. quickly occupied the market in the Pearl River Delta, and became an important export commodity.

Many maritime merchants would purchase iron products from Guangzhou, and then ship them to Southeast Asia and other regions for sale.

In the past few years, Li's Iron and Steel has developed at an extremely fast speed, and its development speed has even surpassed some local machinery factories established by official capital, such as Guangzhou Machinery Factory. In the field of iron consumer goods market, they are not opponent.

Of course, this is also related to Guangzhou Machinery Factory, whose core business is not the consumer goods market.

Although they also produced all kinds of agricultural tools, cooking utensils and other consumer iron products, they were actually the same as the large-scale machinery factories directly invested by the Ministry of Industry of the Great Chu Empire. Their business core was to develop and produce various types of machinery.

Their main products are all kinds of machine tools!

For example, a large number of mechanical equipment purchased and used by Li's Iron and Steel are basically purchased from Guangzhou Machinery Factory, and these things are not cheap, and some need to be customized, such as large hydrodynamic lathes, which are huge and It is heavy and requires the manufacturer to transport the parts separately and then install them.

When the Ministry of Industry of the Great Chu Empire invested in various factories, in addition to the defense industry and the people's livelihood industry, it played more of a guiding or supplementary role in other industries.

When private capital starts to operate and does well, official capital often retreats on its own and concentrates its resources on other areas.

The textile industry is a typical example. When the Great Chu Empire was engaged in machine-made cloth in the early days, in addition to self-demand, it was more to create a model and attract private capital to invest in it. The private capital represented by the Su Qin Textile Company poured into the textile industry. Rear.

The official capital also began to shrink investment in the textile industry. Although there is still a Hantian Textile Company, the official has basically stopped supporting the company's civilian textile business, and even issued repeated warnings not to use administrative means. engage in unfair competition.

Maybe some people will say, the textile industry makes money, why not engage in official capital, and if it makes money, it can be invested in heavy industry.

This is the difference between a country and a company.

What enterprises pursue is profit, what the country pursues is economic development, employment and people's livelihood.

Money... For the country, it is actually just a set of numbers.

Even if it is money, this mere corporate profit is nothing in front of the huge corporate tax!
Hantian Textile Co., Ltd.'s profit for a year is only a dozen or two million taels of silver. This is a large enterprise with dozens of branch factories and a total employment of more than 20 people.

Even if it is placed in later generations, it will be a proper large-scale enterprise.

But how much is the taxation of the entire textile industry, as well as the development of other industries driven by the development of the textile industry, and the taxation brought by various types of consumption?

It’s hard to say exactly, but taking Hantian Textile Company as an example, its direct or indirect tax contribution is more than 20 per year!
Therefore, the officials of the Great Chu Empire basically have no interest in running a business to make money by themselves. What they want more is for an industry to prosper, drive the development of more industries, provide more jobs, and provide more tax revenue.

This is also the reason why the official capital of the Great Chu Empire basically only invests in the defense industry and the civilian production industry, while it only guides other industries, builds a model, or makes supplementary investment.

This is not only the case in the textile industry, but also in the steel and machinery industries.

Although the Great Chu Empire officially invested a lot in the steel and machinery industries, it still encouraged private capital to invest in it.

In the five-year agricultural plan, the farm tool subsidy program not only covered a large number of government-run machinery factories, but also covered the participating private machinery factories.

It's just that there are not many private machinery factories that are eligible to participate.

After all, it is not easy to run a machinery factory these days, and all kinds of machinery and equipment are also quite expensive. It is even more difficult to build a large scale, and the investment is too large.

There are very few private enterprises like Li's Iron and Steel who have the courage, capital, and timing to successfully enter the new machinery Changsha.

As for the scale that can reach the size of Li's Iron and Steel, there is no such thing.

Among the private machinery factories, the second largest one is only one-third of the size of Li's Iron and Steel.

Lee's Iron Manufacture is developing smoothly. Its various agricultural tools and cooking utensils not only have a large number of sales in the Pearl River Delta, but also export in large quantities. These are the accumulation of a lot of experience and more important funds for Lee's Iron Manufacture.

Holding a large amount of capital, Lee's Steel Manufacturing, in addition to continuing to expand and consolidate its own market in iron farm tools, cooking utensils, and various types of iron products needed by the people in daily life, also set its sights on other emerging industries.

What kind of cloth, food processing, wood processing, paper or tea processing, porcelain, etc., these are not in line with the traditions of the Li family.

They don't have this experience, and they also buy that network, and they can't even find a technician...

These seemingly easy and profitable industries are actually extremely competitive...

Machine-made cloth, this looks simple, just find a machine factory to purchase new looms, spinning machines, and then produce cloth... It doesn't require any technology, and if you have money, you can find a few people to do it.

But when you do it, so do others, and countless others...

In the land of Huaxia, countless textile factories that sprang up overnight belonged to this kind.

Moreover, this is an officially registered textile factory, no matter what, it is a relatively formal one, but in fact it is more of a traditional family workshop.

Even in the countryside, a large number of small new spinning machines and looms have begun to appear...

Farmers grow cotton by themselves, spin yarn and weave cloth by themselves. No matter how cheap you are, they will not want your cloth.

Because they are self-produced and sold, there is no concept of cost. For many rural women, it is good to earn some pocket money to subsidize the family. The price they offer is lower than your cost...

Under such circumstances, the price of cloth continued to drop, and the price of cloth in Guangzhou today is at least several times lower than that in the Ming Dynasty.

It is not so easy to make money.

At any time, it is very difficult for a business with too low a threshold to make money, because apart from price wars, there is almost no other way to compete in the market, and the price is getting lower and lower, and in the end, everyone has no money to make.

This is true for textiles, and it is also true for many other industries. Only the first manufacturers to adopt industrialized production can really make money. After seeing this industry making money, people who swarm in after seeing that this industry is making money basically lose their money.

The Li family has also been in the business field for hundreds of years, so they naturally understand these things, so they are not interested in those businesses that have no threshold. Even though the textile industry seems to be booming now, they have not invested in it at all. interest.

What they are interested in now is shipbuilding!

Shipbuilding is no stranger to coastal Guangzhou and even Foshan. After all, Guangzhou is a coastal area and a window for trade with Nanyang.

Even the shipbuilding industry here is relatively developed.

But this is talking about the traditional shipbuilding industry, or to be precise, traditional Chinese ships, such as Guangzhou Shipyard and Fuchuan.

The shipbuilding market that Lee's Steel is targeting is not traditional offshore vessels, but new ocean-going vessels.

To be more precise, they want to build a new type of ship that has been improved from the new Galen type just like the Guangzhou Shipyard!

This new type of ship was originally developed by the Naval Ship Administration for the Navy's warships. Later, it was optimized and designed based on these new ship types and converted into a transport ship. In addition to the Navy's own use as a transport ship, several official holdings The large ocean-going trading companies in China are also loyal customers of this type of ship.

This kind of ship has high technical content, high unit price, and huge profits!

(End of this chapter)