The Qing Dynasty is about to end

Chapter 606: State and Capital, Industry and Revolution

The office on the second floor of the converter workshop of the steel plant under the Xuzhou Steel, Coal and Railway Administration.

Chief Engineer Besemai placed a piece of cooled slag on his desk. The gray-brown slag shone with metallic luster under the light. "This batch of alkaline refractory bricks is much better than the previous batch," he deliberately slowed down his speech so that the interpreter could follow. "It seems that they can last longer. Maybe the furnace lining will only need to be replaced once every 100 batches of molten iron. This will increase our production by %..."

Before he finished speaking, a dragon of fire several feet long suddenly spurted out of converter No. 1. The foreman in the asbestos apron pulled the copper bell violently, and the workers in rattan helmets pushed the ladle car on the rails. Molten steel at several hundred degrees Celsius poured into the casting pit, and the steaming white mist instantly engulfed half of the workshop.

Maria raised Luo Yaoguo's "Telescope" (mobile phone) and took a picture of the scene. Then she turned around and took a picture of Luo Yaoguo, Moore and Friedrich who were watching the molten steel coming out of the furnace.

"How many tons of steel are there in this furnace?" Moore asked.

"About 5 tons!" said Besemai.

"Ten thousand jins," Bai Siwen gritted his teeth and whispered, "In less than two quarters of an hour."

Ten thousand kilograms of steel in two quarters of an hour! The Qing Dynasty in Xi'an could never catch up with such production efficiency!

The Qing Dynasty must flee quickly and cannot stay in Shaanxi.
"Oh my God..." Wen Xian took out a handkerchief to cover his mouth and nose. He had already calculated in his mind that according to the time it takes for the Beisemai converter to smelt a batch of molten steel, this Beisemai converter alone can produce more than 200 tons of steel a day! Considering the time required for equipment maintenance and replacement of furnace linings, based on 250 working days a year, this converter alone can produce 5 tons of steel a year!
Before the UK began using the Basmer converter to make steel, its annual output was only 12 tons of steel.
In other words, the successful operation of the Beisemeier converter at the Xuzhou Iron and Steel Plant has brought the steel production of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and Britain to the same level - the steel production accumulated by Britain after so many years of hard work is only equivalent to two Beisemeier converters.

The second phase of the Xuzhou plant's project plans to simultaneously launch two larger Beisemai converters. This yellow peril is really getting bigger and bigger!
At this moment, he seemed to have seen the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom "helping" Australia to liberate its productivity.

Luo Yaoguo grabbed the wet towel next to the cast iron observation window and threw it to Moore: "Cover your mouth and nose. If you inhale slag powder into your lungs, you will cough up blood."

This "Master Karl" seemed to have not heard anything, and he wrote quickly on the parchment book with a pencil, while asking: "What is the average daily working hours of the workers in the converter workshop? What is the standard of compensation for work-related injuries?"

Luo Yaoguo smiled and pointed to the lively and cheerful scene in the workshop: "Teacher Karl, just look at how happy those workers are and you will know how they are treated."

Friedrich, who was standing by, had already calculated in his notebook: "The current price of one ton of steel in Europe is more than 300 silver dollars. Even if we take into account that the Besmer converter has been put into use, the price cannot be less than 200 yuan. In other words, the value of that furnace of steel exceeds 1000 silver dollars."

Moore said with emotion: "The profits are so huge. This proves that it is completely feasible for the state to invest in building large factories."

Bai Siwen interjected coldly, "The investment in the steel plant must be very considerable, right? It has an iron plant, a coke plant, a railway, a coal mine, an iron mine, and a city for the workers to live in. There are also schools and hospitals. How can it be enough without several million silver dollars?"

Luo Yaoguo turned to this Qing Dynasty legacy and said, "A few million is not enough. The total investment for the first phase of the Xuzhou Steel-Coal-Railway General Administration project is 1000 million Taiping silver dollars!"

When the whistle of the steam locomotive bound for Haizhou Port sounded at the eastern foot of Yunlong Mountain, Moore suddenly asked in English: "What is the collateral for the Shengku public debt?"

Maria's translation was drowned out by the noise of wheels rolling on the rails.

Luo Yaoguo unfastened the brass buckle of his briefcase and took out a sample of a government bond. The three characters "One Hundred Yuan" were stamped in red. "The freight revenue of the Beijing-Shanghai Railway for the next five years," he flicked the face of the note, "and the salt tax revenue of the Lianghuai Salt Industry Bureau for the next five years."

"That's all?" Friedrich took the sample bond and looked at it carefully. "With just these collaterals, can we issue bonds worth 50 million Taiping silver dollars? And the interest rate is so low?"

The reason why Moore and Friedrich were concerned about the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's public debt was because today's conversation involved the source of funds for the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's industrialization.

The productivity of industrialization is astonishing, and the investment is also astonishing. The total investment in the first phase of the Xuzhou Steel-Coal-Railway Bureau project alone was as high as 1000 million Taiping silver dollars!
The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom had already invested in many large projects comparable to this one, such as the Beijing (Tianjin)-Shanghai Railway, the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau in Shanghai, the Jiangnan Pharmaceutical Bureau in Shanghai, the Tianjing University, the Xuzhou Chemical Industry Bureau in Xuzhou, the Kaiping Mining Bureau in Northern Zhili, etc. The large projects to be invested in the first five-year plan alone would cost more than 100 million Taiping silver dollars.

Historically, the Qing Dynasty's Westernization Movement lasted for so many years, but only cost more than 50 million taels, while Japan spent about 150 to 200 million taels on Westernization during the same period!

Therefore, the failure of the Westernization Movement of the Qing Dynasty and the defeat in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 were largely due to insufficient spending. Luo Yaoguo certainly had to learn from this lesson, so his investment was huge, planning to invest several billion to 10 billion in the next 30 years!

This money, of course, could not have come from the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's financial revenue.

"What is the financial situation of the Kingdom of Heaven?" Moore asked, "Can you tell me?"

"Of course, that's public." Luo Yaoguo took the budget booklet from Maria. The mulberry paper specially made by Suzhou Official Paper Bureau was covered with tiny calligraphy. "Last year, the actual revenue was 71.2 million, of which 50 million was used to support 300,000 elite land forces and more than 20 large and small steam warships. Another 8 million was spent on supporting more than 40,000 officials registered in the Ministry of Personnel. The rest was basically used for education expenses."

Friedrich paused, writing: "Your country has twenty times as many officials as the Prussian central government?"

"The number of people on the list of the Ministry of Personnel is not even counting the officers!" Bai Siwen interrupted sarcastically, "There are more than 20,000 more than during the Daoguang period of the Qing Dynasty."

Luo Yaoguo smiled faintly and said to Friedrich: "Our population is also twenty times that of Prussia!"

Of course, the more than 40,000 registered officials mentioned by Luo Yaoguo are only the "officials" who serve in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom court or are assigned to local areas by the Ministry of Rites. They do not include the "clerks" who serve in local areas or in the court. The number of the latter would be ten times higher!
However, most of them (local officials) do not receive money from the central government's treasury; that is local fiscal expenditure.

In addition, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom also had two "non-governmental organizations" - the Datong Society and the Zhenyue Sect - as well as a large number of local militias, and their funding did not come from the treasury.

The funding for the True Contract Sect mainly came from the West Coast and Southeast Asia, while the funding for the Datong Society came from Luo Yaoguo's early investment in the Shanghai commercial port (society property) and the "donations" of the True Contract Sect. As for the funding for the militia, it came from local fiscal appropriations.

"But your fiscal revenue and expenditure are not optimistic." Wen Xian felt something was wrong after listening to Luo Yaoguo's introduction of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's fiscal revenue and expenditure. "How could your bonds sell so well? Who is buying them?"

"I don't know about that," Luo Yaoguo smiled and shook his head, "Public bonds are bearer bonds, so anyone can buy them."

Of course Luo Yaoguo knew who was buying the government bonds?

The biggest buyers of Taiping Heavenly Kingdom bonds were the True Covenant Bank and the Prophecy Foundation. The former's funding came from Chinese immigrants from Southeast Asia and gold diggers from the West Coast—it was a bank endorsed by God! The latter's funding came from the money Luo Yaoguo earned from selling prophecies, which was also a large sum!
It is precisely because of these two foreign financial supports that Luo Yaoguo's industrialization investment can be so large.

The turbid waves along the coast of northern Jiangsu hit the side of the paddle steamer. Friedrich smoked his pipe while looking at the long coastline of northern Jiangsu. "Does King Wu also believe that a workers' state will inevitably emerge in Europe in the future? Is this because the proletarians of various countries will eventually unite?"

"On the contrary, it is the backlash of industrial capital pushing nationalism to the extreme." Luo Yaoguo took a sip of coffee. "Although industrialized manufacturing has already begun, industrialized wars have only begun. The war against Russia that just ended was not a real industrialized war, and nationalism was not pushed to the extreme. The reason for the outbreak of the war was simply the Tsar's personal ambition, not the Russian industrial capital's desire to obtain resources and markets through war. So the Tsar could stop this war whenever he wanted. The same is true for Britain and France."

While flipping through the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's industrial plan, Moore asked, "You predict that future industrialized wars will destroy the European bourgeoisie?"

"Not all, but part of it," Luo Yaoguo said with a smile, "This is obvious. When industrial capital faces overcapacity and insufficient raw materials and markets, it will inevitably push nationalism in its respective countries to extremes. Wars on an industrial scale are no longer wars between a few soldiers and nobles, but total wars involving the entire population. This means..."

Friedrich's eyes lit up: "It means the workers will have weapons in their hands!"

"Yes!" Luo Yaoguo nodded. "Only by allowing workers to master weapons can countries maintain wars with huge casualties! And to trick workers into joining the barracks, extreme nationalism is needed. This means..."

Moore said: "War will not stop until the rulers feel that the gains are not worth the losses."

"Right!" Luo Yaoguo laughed, "War can be promoted by the rulers. It means to promote, not to start! But it cannot be stopped by the rulers. Once a large-scale imperialist war begins, what awaits them is victory or revolution!"

(End of this chapter)