The Qing Dynasty

Chapter 574: Embracing the Glittering Gold Mountain
Fearing that Yang Shixiang might misunderstand his meaning, or that he would still only value literati and scholars, including Chinese and Western scholars, Teng Yuzhao made a special emphasis.

The rewards covered by this fund will be divided into five categories, including officials, scholars, engineering and technical personnel, industrialists and businessmen who vigorously develop and promote Westernization, and technical workers with outstanding achievements.

The annual selection is open to all sectors of society, creating a good atmosphere for respecting knowledge, respecting talents and vigorously developing modern industry and commerce in Zhili and Shandong provinces, and even in all provinces in the country.

This will encourage local gentry to invest their funds in education and industrial development at all levels.

Because now it's not just Teng Yuzao, Zhou Xuexi and Li Yulin are the ones who feel the most deeply.

Zhili was now in urgent need of a large number of skilled workers in order to develop its Westernization cause, and there was a serious shortage of them almost everywhere.

To this end, Zhou Xuexi and Li Yulin had to offer nearly twice the salary and poach people from Qingdao, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Wuchang, and even Hong Kong and Macau.

Fortunately, the salary offered by Zhili was so attractive that not only the ordinary new factories in these places, but also the factory technicians using modern machinery and equipment such as spinning mills and the Shanghai Steamship Navigation Company, and even the technicians and even engineers from the Machinery Bureaus in Shanghai and Jinling, as well as the Hanyang Iron Works and Hanyang Gun Factory, all came to Zhili to apply for jobs in large numbers.

It even attracts some people from several major cities who have studied abroad at their own expense and returned to China.

This situation forced some strong companies to significantly increase wages, while some small companies encountered difficulties in production and operation due to the lack of skilled workers.

Even Zhang Zhidong sent a telegram to Teng Yuzao, jokingly saying that Teng Yuzao was disloyal.

Although Teng Yuzhao was helpless in this situation, he had no other choice. He could not just watch the Zhili Westernization Movement, which was in such a good situation, stagnate due to the lack of skilled workers.

Due to the limited number of skilled workers in the country, Teng Yuzhao had to turn his attention to foreigners.

He has now begun to recruit a large number of talents from old powers such as Britain, the United States, France, Germany, Italy and Austria, from professors and engineers to technical workers.

In a word, all knowledgeable and technical personnel are needed, and all of them will be highly paid.

Now, the largest financial expenditure in the entire province of Zhili, apart from railway and new city construction, is to pay the salaries of these recruited talents.

For such a large salary expenditure, Teng Yuzao is not worried about no return. He firmly believes that his investment will soon bring him huge rewards.

After the railways, the next area is municipal administration.

Many of these former Chinese students studying in the United States had already been appointed as officials through donations or direct appointments before arriving in Zhili, and some of the highest-ranking officials were prefects.

A large number of these people have been entrusted with important tasks by Teng Yuzhao. Of course, this is also because many of the positions they currently hold are equivalent to official positions of corresponding grades, or are official positions of a certain grade.

As for some newly emerging positions, Teng Yuzhao simply classified the incumbents into grades and formally reported them to the Ministry of Personnel.

For example, in terms of municipal management, Teng Yuzao established the position of mayor of the special city in the new city and established a special city.

This special city is very different from the cities of later generations. It is only responsible for managing all matters within the planned urban area of ​​the new city. Everything outside the urban area is under the management of Tianjin County.

A special city is equivalent to the prefecture level. The mayor of the special city arranged by Teng Yuzhao is named Wen Bingzhong. He thus became the first mayor of this ancient country, which is enough to make his name go down in history.

Wen Bingzhong, whose courtesy name was Xunchen, was born in Shanghai and his ancestral home was Taishan. He was a member of the second batch of Chinese children studying in the United States.

After returning to China, he worked as a cotton merchant for a while and later worked at the American Consulate in Ningbo.

Historically, he was an advisor to Empress Dowager Cixi on education and led a delegation to visit the United States twice.

A few years later, Liangjiang Governor-General Duan Fang established the Jinan School in Nanjing to recruit children of overseas Chinese, and Wen Bingzhong was appointed as the principal of the school.

There was a reason why Teng Yuzao chose Wen Bingzhong as the mayor of this special city.

This Shanghai native not only knew how Qinchuan managed Western cities, but also lived in the concessions after returning to China, and had a good understanding of the Western powers' management methods that combined Chinese and Western elements in the concessions.

In Teng Yuzhao's vision, the new city will eventually become a world-class metropolis similar to Shanghai in the Bohai Bay.

Shanghai was called the Paris of the East by the great powers. Teng Yuzao wanted to build the new city into the New York of the East, so he appointed Wen Bingzhong as the mayor of this special city.

Regarding the construction of the new city's municipal administration, Wen Bingzhong does not have much to report to the public for the time being.

The reason was that not only had the new city not been completed, but also Teng Yuzao had only been appointed mayor of this special city for a short time, only about a month, and some personnel had not yet been found for the management agency that needed to be established, so it did not operate efficiently.

However, Wen Bingzhong's report still made everyone present's eyes light up.

The structure of the municipal administration of this new city was drawn up after repeated discussions between Wen Bingzhong and Teng Yuzhao.

Except for the position of mayor, the relevant management agencies and functional settings are based on the operating model of the French Concession in Shanghai.

Teng Yuzao did not completely copy the municipal institution settings of later generations right away. This was mainly to take into account the habits and acceptance of the people. Many things still require a process of gradual acceptance and change.

The special municipality has several agencies under it, including the General Administration Bureau, Patrol Police Bureau, Medical Administration Bureau, Taxation Bureau, Education Bureau, Municipal Planning Bureau, Health and Sanitation Bureau, and the Special Municipal Court.

The Patrol Bureau is not only responsible for public security management, but also has traffic police who are responsible for traffic diversion management, which surprises many people.

The uniforms of traffic police are currently the same as those of patrol police, except that they wear an armband with the word "traffic police" on their left arm to distinguish them.

Since horse-drawn carriages carrying goods are prohibited from running on this now built street in the new city, only new cars, four-wheeled carriages and rickshaws are allowed to run.

Although the Zhendan Industrial Development Company has purchased corresponding land from the Governor-General's Office and established two joint venture automobile companies with the American Ford and the newly merged German Daimler-Benz, the factory is still under construction and only the two cars purchased from the German Mercedes-Benz and Daimler companies are currently on sale.

What surprised Teng Yuzao was that the joint venture between Aurora Industrial Development Company and Ford was not established in the name of Ford Motor Company, but in the form of Ford himself investing in technology and a small amount of capital. This was because the first automobile company established by Ford and his partners in the United States, which only produced 25 cars, had gone bankrupt two years ago, in the year of Gengzi.

Just when Teng Yuzao was about to vigorously promote Westernization in Zhili and hoped to introduce an automobile joint venture, Henry Ford, who was worried about the funding issues for his new company, called Conger, hoping that Conger could help him contact Teng Yuzao and get his continued funding.

The appearance of Henry Ford made Teng Yuzao overjoyed. Teng Yuzao knew very well that Ford was definitely a company with great development prospects at that time. It was the first automobile company to use assembly line operations.

Teng Yuzao immediately told Conger that in view of his friendship with Conger and his admiration for President McKinley's efforts for peace, he was very willing to invest in the United States. He was willing to cooperate with Henry Ford to open an automobile company, and to start the world's largest company.

Conger was very excited by Teng Yuzao's extremely cordial attitude. He not only notified Henry Ford immediately, but also expressed to President McKinley Teng Yuzao's gratitude for the friendship of the United States and President McKinley himself.

Not only Henry Ford was extremely excited to receive Conger's telegram, but President McKinley was also extremely excited. This showed that his actions had won the friendship and respect of this extremely powerful local official in the Qing Dynasty.

In order to make this happen as quickly as possible, President McKinley personally intervened, which enabled Teng Yuzao and Henry Ford to quickly reach a cooperation intention.

When they discussed the specific cooperation matters, both Henry Ford and McKinley were surprised.

Teng Yuzao said that he would cooperate with Ford himself through his own "Aurora Industrial Development Company" to set up an automobile company in Detroit, USA.

Moreover, the conditions for cooperation are extremely favorable, that is, the funds are entirely provided by the Zhendan Industrial Development Company, with an initial investment of one million taels of silver, equivalent to more than half a million US dollars.

He only needed Ford to pay $30,000 to obtain 10% of the company's shares. The company would be registered in Ford's name, and Ford would permanently serve as the company's general manager. All operations would be entirely up to Ford himself. If additional funds were needed to expand production, Teng Yuzao also promised to satisfy him as much as possible.

The only condition was that after the company was established, it had to build factories in both the United States and Tianjin. The car models produced by the Tianjin branch's factory had to be synchronized with those of the American company, and all necessary human and technical support had to be provided.

Henry Ford naturally agreed to such favorable conditions immediately, because up to now he had only raised $28,000 in funds.

You know, more than half a million US dollars was definitely a huge amount of money at that time, even in the United States at that time. This meant that the company of which he was the lifelong general manager would immediately become the largest automobile company in the United States.

At the same time, he has more funds to research and develop new cars.

Just when Henry Ford was extremely excited, Teng Yuzao was also secretly rejoicing in his heart, because he knew that Ford would bring out his fastest Ford racing car in the world this year, making Ford immediately a famous company, and in a few years, it would produce the Ford Model T that would be popular in Europe.

His investment would soon bring rich returns, and Ford no longer belonged to the Americans, it actually belonged to him, Teng Yuzao.

The joint venture with the Germans also made Teng Yuzao very happy.

Because at that time, these two German companies were not the famous Mercedes-Benz Automobile Company in later generations. They were two unrelated German automobile companies.

One was a company founded by Karl Benz, Max Ross and Friedrich and Wilhelm Esslinger, and was the first company in the world to launch a mass-produced car.

Now, although it has become the world's largest automobile manufacturer, its strength is still very weak.

Gottlieb Daimler also founded his own car company, and he co-developed the first Daimler car with Maybach, which was making more powerful and easier to control cars.

What excites Teng Yuzao is that although the cities where Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz lived were only 80 kilometers apart, they had never met each other and were both pursuing their own careers.

This gave Teng Yuzao an opportunity, and he instructed Zhou Xuexi to negotiate joint ventures with the two German automobile companies that were in urgent need of funds and sales. This forced the two companies to compete with each other to lower prices in order to reach a cooperation with Zhendan Industrial Development Company.

Because the Aurora Industrial Development Company guaranteed that it would vigorously promote all the cars produced by the joint venture in the vast Qing Dynasty.

However, the final result of this matter disappointed Teng Yuzao, because due to the intervention of the German emperor, the two companies had to merge into Mercedes-Benz more than 20 years in advance and start joint venture negotiations with Aurora Industrial Development Company.

This made Teng Yuzhao's idea of ​​taking advantage of others fail.

However, this still made Teng Yuzao very happy.

Because Mercedes-Benz has created countless world firsts, including the first supercharged car, the first mass-produced diesel car, the first mass-produced car equipped with a four-stroke fuel injection engine, the first 5-cylinder engine, the first turbocharged diesel car, etc.

In addition, this automobile company in a joint venture with the Germans must still ensure the production of the latest models in both countries, and technical support and personnel training will still be the responsibility of the Germans.

The only regret was that Teng Yuzao paid 500,000 taels more than the joint venture with Ford.

At this time, Teng Yuzao finally realized that to work with these powerful companies now is to embrace a glittering gold mountain.

It was precisely because of these two joint venture automobile companies that in order to promote the automobile, which was almost completely new to the Chinese people at that time, in advance, Teng Yuzao had to import five cars from Germany and the United States. Not only did he keep one for himself, but Yang Shixiang, Zhou Fu, Xu Shichang, Yang Shiqi, Huang Chujiu, Xi Ligong and Ning Xingpu each had one. The remaining two were handed over to Wen Bingzhong as their official cars.

This is also the reason why there are patrol police to manage traffic in the new city. Even on the main roads that have been built in the new city, road fences are used to separate bicycle lanes and dedicated roads for rickshaws, four-wheeled carriages and bicycles.

Even if nothing happened to these expensive imported cars, Teng Yuzao would still require them to drive around the new city for a few laps, just to attract people's attention and make them gradually accept the cars.

As far as Teng Yuzao knows, it was not until last year that a Hungarian brought two American-made Oldsmobile cars to Shanghai, setting the precedent for China's automobile trend.

These were two cars with black wooden bodies, one with a folding hood and the other with an awning, and they looked very much like a carriage.

There are two rows of seats in the car, the first two rows are for the driver and the back row is for the passenger seat.

The wheel has wooden spokes, a solid tire, and is equipped with a kerosene lamp and a hand-held horn.

The brand of Cixi's car was Duryea, but she had to wait until the next year on her birthday when Yuan Shikai gave her an American car.

However, Teng Yuzao was not going to give Yuan Shikai this opportunity again. He would ask the joint venture factory with Mercedes-Benz to specially build a luxury car next year to make the old Buddha happy.
(End of this chapter)