"In 1914, the victory of the "Jiaoao Incident" made China valuable development space. The Longhai Industrial Group, which was fully expanded in the two years before the war, immediately put its full production capacity into large-scale industrial production after the "Jiaoao Incident". In the face of unprecedentedly huge domestic and foreign markets and huge profits, domestic politicians, military leaders, landlords and gentry all devoted themselves to industrial production, and the Longhai Industrial Group's machines were sold to all parts of China, until January 1916,

After more than 30 large-scale enterprises were put into production every day, and the workshop-style factories reached 100, the Chinese financial industry took full advantage of the opportunity of this war to develop the domestic economy quickly. By the time the war entered the second year in 1915, China's real GDP expanded by 100% (non-book value). As of the first half of 1916, according to the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, the industrial output value exceeded the agricultural output value for the first time. As a result, China has changed from a backward agricultural country to an emerging industrial country..."

"A Centennial History of the Eastern World" - Shitiange December 2013

China has entered a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society since the Opium War. In the following 60 years, its semi-colonialization has continued to deepen. Faced with the increasingly severe crisis, under the advocacy of Han ministers and the urgent force of reality, the Qing government carried out three reform movements. The "New Deal" in the late Qing Dynasty, which began in the early 20th century, can be said to be the most thorough and comprehensive "New Deal" measure.

In the late Qing Dynasty, the Qing government launched the "New Policy" in the year of increasingly severe internal and external troubles. The first time it implemented policies and measures to encourage industry and commerce, and encourage industry and commerce was centered on revitalizing industry. It was also the "New Policy" reform movement aimed at enriching the country and strengthening the people. Therefore, with the strong advocacy and support of the Qing court, local governments in various provinces launched the industrial movement to revitalize their hometowns.

In the late ten years of the Qing Dynasty, under the leadership of Yuan Shikai and others, the Qing government did a lot of work in industry, such as establishing functional institutions, formulating a series of economic regulations, improving the social status of merchants, establishing chambers of commerce, and organizing associations to develop industry and commerce. This formed the first industrial and commercial development in modern China. The development of industry and mining has made rapid progress, and factories such as textiles, food, mining, water, electricity, metal processing, cigarettes, papermaking, glass, etc. were established one after another.

However, in the process of Yuan Shikai presided over the "New Policy", a large Beiyang bureaucratic industrial group distributed in North China was formed with it as the core. Especially in Hebei, a huge Beiyang bureaucratic industrial group. In the tide of the development of China's industrial and commercial industry after the European War, the "North China Consortium" gradually formed and became an important industrial group in China.

But even so, in China, it is well known that the real industrial leader is Longhai Industrial Group led by ** Company. This industrial group that spread along the Longhai Railway has the largest number of workers and machines in China. Similarly, it also has unimaginable privileges for other companies. In addition to the many industrial preferential treatments in railway affiliated areas, more importantly, the other privileges owned by Longhai Industrial Group even directly promote the company-centered industrial group to develop at a faster speed.

Arsenal!

In China, from the late Qing Dynasty to the early Republic of China, the military industry was monopolized by the government, at least local governments. However, this monopoly was broken in the third year of the People's Republic of China with the sound of cannons. As early as the beginning of the second year of the Republic of China, ** companies in the early days began to use relatively complete machinery and equipment to start producing weapons through measures such as restructuring the mother machine and rebuilding fixtures. However, they were in a secret state at that time.

It was not until Li Zicheng became the General Commander of Huaihai that, on the grounds of "public security needs", when he returned the Jinling Machinery Bureau to the Army Department, he submitted a request in the name of the General Commander Office to "the ** Company repairs weapons to meet the needs of the Jiangsu Army for repairing weapons and to appropriately add weapons." This was how "Lianyun Made" was created.

After the "Jiaoao Incident", the strategy made the Office need urgent needs on the battlefield, and signed a decree that allowed the Jiangsu Army to purchase "military supplies" including weapons from the people. What followed was a large number of "Lianyunfabrication" that emerged in front of the world. In this process, due to the subcontracting of weapons parts, "Lianyunfabrication" was renamed "Lianhaifabrication".

After the end of the Jiaoao Incident, while the Chinese people were happy, the Army Department unexpectedly discovered that they were unable to do without "Longhai Made". The types covered by "Longhai Made" are numerous. All kinds of weapons can be produced from pistols to heavy artillery. Military supplies such as helmets, kettles, engineer shovels, military uniforms, and military boots are even more affordable. Therefore, although there have always been voices opposing private enterprises to get involved in military production, in the end, facing the situation of "no bans" in the face of "bans cannot be banned", especially after Li Zicheng became the Prime Minister, with the issuance of the "army manufacturing license", "Longhai Made" thus had a "legal identity".

It is also thanks to this that such as Longhai Gun Manufacturing Company, Longhai Ground Defense Company, China Aircraft Manufacturing Company, and Yingyoumen Shipyard, which specializes in naval equipment production, have become the four pillars of the Longhai military industrial system. Unlike traditional Chinese arsenals, these enterprises are all large-scale military industrial enterprises, with military industrial production capacity dozens of times that of traditional enterprises. Relying on the extremely large weapon production assembly line in this era, in the past few years, the continuous "Longhai Manufacturing" has been transported to the whole country along the Longhai Railway, while more "Longhai Manufacturing" have been exported far to Russia, Britain, France and other countries. During the war, the profits of military industrial production were huge.

In this process, the reputation of "Longhai Manufacturing" has become famous from China to overseas. For example, the three-year heavy machine gun manufactured by Longhai Gun Manufacturing Company has become the flagship product of Longhai Military Industry. Just like other equipment, the largest foreign buyer is Russia.

The European war made the Maxim machine gun famous, and all participating countries except France used it widely. Within six months after the outbreak of the war, almost 75% of the casualties of the participating troops in the war were shot and killed by the Maxim machine gun. It was also the emergence of the Maxim machine gun that forced all countries to reform the military system and tactics.

The fierce war caused the consumption of machine guns to rise sharply. Compared with other industrial powers, Russia's industry was relatively backward. Its machine gun consumption surged with the war. As the only factory in Russia that can produce machine guns, the Tula Arsenal produced an average of 48 machine guns per month before the war. In the first five months after the outbreak of the war, a total of 828 machine guns were produced, but for the Russian army of 5 million people, this was just a drop in the bucket. At the same time, the Russian arsenal organized production based on the use of 50 million bullets per month by machine guns participating in the war, and the actual monthly bullet consumption had long reached 200 million rounds. Therefore, since January 1915, an "ammunition shortage" appeared on the front line of the Russian army, and its domestic arsenal was even more poor.

Due to the backward domestic industrial foundation and insufficient raw materials, and other factories lack machine gun manufacturing experience and skilled workers, the potential of Russian machine gun manufacturing is nowhere to be discovered. At the same time, ordinary workers, even technicians and engineers in Russian arsenals think they do not need to understand the British order. But on the other hand, all the drawings of the Maxim machine gun obtained from the United Kingdom are in British units. A Maxim machine gun has 282 parts, the largest part is 508 mm and the smallest part is only 12.7 mm. The production process

It requires 2422 processes, 830 templates and 40 sets of machine tools. Russian technicians with low levels of education often do not comply with metrological specifications, resulting in excessive defective rates. In addition, all Russian machine tools rely on imports. After the war began, due to the increase in demand for machine tools in various countries, Russia can buy fewer and fewer machine tools. Therefore, not to mention increasing machine gun production, even the basic output is difficult to meet. Although Russian arsenals can increase production as much as possible, because domestic supply cannot meet the demand, Russia has to buy Maxim machine guns from abroad.

Subsequently, General Guilmonius, the Russian military representative to London, signed a contract with the British Colite Company to order 10,000 Maxim machine guns, each priced at 2,362 rubles, which is three times that of Russian-made machine guns. Russian ammunition can be used, but for Colite Company, it is extremely difficult to complete the order. In fact, even after completing the order, it will have to face various difficulties to ship to Russia.

Just when Collitt was limited by production capacity and domestic orders could not be completed. After accepting orders for up to 50,000 rifles issued by the UK, the representative of Longhai Gun Manufacturing Company in London took the initiative to find General Gilmonus and said that Longhai Gun Manufacturing Company could provide Russia with 10,000 Maxim heavy machine guns within half a year. For Longhai Gun Manufacturing Company, both gold pounds and gold rubles are extremely attractive.

Faced with the urgent need in China and the producers who came to visit, Guilmonius did not refuse. After signing the production contract for 5,000 machine guns, Longhai Gun Manufacturing Company immediately began to organize production, and at the same time subcontracted a large number of parts to enterprises with production capacity along the line. In just one and a half months, the 5,000 three-year heavy machine guns made using German mg08 machine gun drawings that can fire Russian ammunition were delivered to the Russian military representative to China.

As a result, Longhai military industry began to enter the world military industry market, completely getting rid of the export of raw materials in the early stages of the war, and becoming a well-known arms manufacturer. In the following year, it not only completed the export of primary military products such as machine guns, bullets, shells, etc. from the beginning, but even began to export escort destroyers to the UK.

The reason why many orders can be completed is that in addition to the company providing a large number of drawings and technology as support, it is more important that during the production process, these companies propose weapons that meet their needs for different customers. Although in this seller's market, they still adhere to the principle of "customer first", and the research centers and research institutes under each company make targeted improvements to the needs of buyers.

The Huayin Weapon Testing Ground maintains a mysterious color under the cover of green trees and mounds. This test ground was in the early stage of the outbreak of the war. The company used drawings to come here from the German experts hired by the German company in internal ballistics, external ballistics, ammunition, ground cannons, anti-aircraft cannons, light weapons and other experts to help build this test range and guide the testing of conventional weapons and equipment in the Longhai military system. In the following two years, experts did a lot of useful work.

To build a shooting range, we must first conduct geodetic measurements on the site. The shooting range formed a survey team of more than 200 people. Under the guidance of experts and technical personnel sent by the Surveying and Mapping Bureau of the Jiangsu Army General Staff, we overcome various difficulties. In just four months, we completed the 688 square kilometers of measurement task.

During the construction process, tens of thousands of workers from the Labor Corps worked hard day and night. In just a few months, they built test facilities such as laboratory and 1 shooting position, 9 gun positions, 5 watchtowers, 18 kilometers of shooting target lines, as well as high target racks up to 28 meters, and large vertical targets of 6 meters×8 meters; communication and traffic support conditions were built, and the construction of the temporary shooting range was initially completed.

In the fourth year of the Republic of China, in the early stages of construction of the weapons test field, the temporary shooting range was gradually under construction. At that time, the shooting range did not meet the test conditions and completed 82mm mortars, 105mm howitzers and many other finalized test tasks, and most of the weapons exported to the outside were completed here.

In the following year, the test area of ​​the test site was continuously improved. Although the construction of the test site continued, weapons testing must be carried out for various weapons companies, especially for some key projects.

Longhai Ground Defense Company is an enterprise that produces various types of artillery. In addition to artillery, it also undertakes some "extra projects", and most of these additional projects are implemented in cooperation with other enterprises. This may be the benefit of "company integration". It can fully mobilize all the company's resources and give full play to their respective advantages to jointly coordinate and develop certain key projects.

Behind a mound, the roar of the engine continued to echo in the air, and in the mud, soldiers wearing army field uniforms followed a "steel monster" moving in the mud from time to time. The square steel box like monsters was moving forward in the mud. Although the ankle-deep mud on the test field made the soldiers move slowly. Not far away, several armored vehicles transformed by lightning cars had already fallen into the mud. Several armored car soldiers were trying to rescue the armored vehicle from the mud with wooden boards and even wheatgrass there, but that kind of rescue was futile. The steel box was plunged into the mud half a meter deep, and then, in the stunned everyone, smoke from the tail of the steel box spewed out of the mud half a meter deep.

"How about it?"

Turning his head and looking at Yu Siyuancuo, the former military officer who had just returned from Britain, asked proudly. Half a year ago, he sent back a secret telegram from the UK, which mentioned the British's "land cruiser". That is, "tank" - a water cabinet, the British's confidentiality title.

"How about the British tank?"

How about the British tank? Faced with this question, Yu Siyuan really didn't know how to answer it for a while. As a military officer in the UK, although he realized the importance of the tank in war with the sensitivity of the soldiers, the British tanks were just performed on the grass, with a distance of only a few hundred meters. The tank in front of him drove more than ten kilometers in the mud, going uphill and into the storm, showing its good passing performance in every way. At least those seemingly "invincible" armored cars are far from being compared with them.

"This, this is really hard to say..."

Just as he finished speaking, he heard a sound of machine guns that were tearing cloth in his ears. The gunshot sounded like tearing cloth and chainsaw. He was not unfamiliar with this kind of machine gun. This is a unique equipment of the Jiangsu Army - a two-purpose machine gun. However, most of the troops abroad have replaced the third-type Maxim machine gun, and this machine gun has always been equipped with lightning armored vehicles. It is no surprise that it is used on this tank.

As the target dropped, the machine gun targets in the distance fell one by one with the machine gun fired, and the small turret on the tank kept rotating as the tank drove.

"turret?"

Noting the rotation of the tank turret, Yu Siyuan discovered the first advantage of this small tank compared to the British tank - the rotatable turret, which means it can have a 360-degree shooting range.

"Like the lightning armored cars, they are all double-machine gun turrets, but their turrets are smaller, thicker, and thicker. The front, side and rear of the turret are all 13 mm armored steel, but the angle is different, the top is 8 mm, and the body is the same. The top is 6 mm... The weight of 5.8 tons ensures that it can pass through most of the current domestic bridges. According to our information, the British tank weight is too large and not suitable for China's road conditions. Too heavy tonnage will also increase the cost..."

After listening to this explanation, Yu Siyuan understood why this tank was "pocket-sized", but looking at this tank, he still saw some limitations - only equipped with machine guns.

"If there are fortifications in front of you, this tank..."

"Charge!"

Qian Mu corrected that compared with the British-style tank, the company prefers the term "chariot", and this project was originally called "Armored Carriage No. 1 Project".

"Well, chariot, how did he destroy the fortifications of the enemy along the way? The British used 57mm naval guns on armored cruisers, and it... This chariot only has machine guns! This means that perhaps it can tear open the enemy's defense line, but the fortifications along the way also require infantry to conquer!"

"this……"

When manufacturing this "No. 1 tank", the company only manufactured it according to the drawings, but it just mastered its manufacturing process, and did not consider other issues at all, artillery...

"And, if you encounter Xiang..."

After thinking for a while, Yu Siyuan pointed to the armored car lying in the distance and said.

"When I encounter targets like tanks and armored cars, I think I can't conquer them with a machine gun. You must know that according to our intelligence, the British are likely to use tanks on the Somme battlefield. In the future, who knows whether we will encounter this guy on the battlefield? So, I think our tanks should at least have the ability to destroy tanks. Of course, this is just a personal opinion!"

"This suggestion is very good and pertinent. Why? Another major battle in Europe is about to begin? Will the Expeditionary Force be the main force?"

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Chapter completed!