As soon as this data came out, Feng Yunshan felt a little proud in his heart. Needless to say, the output of cement and the output of phosphate fertilizer, because of the relationship between many small and medium-sized cement plants and phosphate fertilizer factories throughout the country, the natural output can be regarded as the forefront of the world, except for the cement output of the United Kingdom to see if it can be compared with itself, other countries can not compare.

However, at this time, the overall strength of a country mainly depends on the output of steel. There are two indicators, one is pig iron, the other is steel, at this time, because the smelting level is not too good, the relationship between smelting costs, the ratio of pig iron to steel is 20 to 1.

Feng Yunshan began to try to recall the data he knew, and naturally he couldn't remember the details clearly, but he still had a little impression that it was the steel production of European and American powers in the 19th century.

Feng Yunshan remembers that it seems that around 1870, the year of the outbreak of the Prussian War, Britain's coal output at that time was about 100 million tons, pig iron production was close to 6 million tons, and steel production was about 200,000 tons. Prussia, which ranks second, produces about 35 million tons of coal, nearly 1.4 million tons of pig iron, and about 170,000 tons of steel; Thirdly, France, in addition to a large decrease in coal production, has little difference in pig iron and steel production from Prussia, and the production of pig iron is less than that of the United States, but there is more steel. At this time, the fourth-ranked United States produced 35 million tons of coal, pig iron production was close to 1.5 million tons, and steel output was only about 70,000 tons due to steelmaking technology and cost.

In terms of the overall ranking of gross industrial output, France ranks even behind Prussia and the United States.

However, it was only 1859, and France was naturally the second most powerful country. The United States, on the other hand, is much worse than Prussia.

In this way, the Chinese empire must have surpassed the United States and entered at least the fourth place in the world, but I don't remember what the steel production of France and Prussia was in 1859 in history, and it is estimated that there is still a little gap. But its own Chinese empire, like the United States, because of its vast territory and rich resources, grew more rapidly than Britain and France, just like later history, within a few years, the United States caught up with Prussia and France, and even surpassed Britain after twenty or thirty years to become the world's largest economic power. According to the development momentum of the empire today, it has more manpower and wealth than the United States, and what is lacking is only technology and system, and now the system for developing industry has also been formulated, and the technology of this era is not as tightly sealed as later generations, as long as the generation of children who are receiving education now grows up, Feng Yunshan believes that the empire will definitely be able to surpass the United States and catch up with Britain at a more astonishing speed.

What's more, the United States is about to have a civil war between the North and the South, and it will not let the North smoothly unify the whole country, and then make great progress and develop smoothly along the way. The only thing to guard against is that in order to contain itself and maintain its position as the number one in the world, Britain will unite with other powers to suppress the Chinese Empire. Therefore, it was in the interest of the strategy of the Empire to befriend France and Prussia, to have a deeper interest in them if necessary, and to unite them against England. Whoever rises is good for themselves. Moreover, he can trade with them as he does now, and when they go to war, they will not want to help, but both sides will help, make a lot of war profits, and increase their national strength.

But even if it can produce 100,000 tons of steel next year, it is necessary to buy steel from these European powers and complete the domestic industrial base as soon as possible. There are too many railways to be built, plus so many factories and mines to be built, and guns to be produced, all of which require steel, and self-produced steel alone is far from enough. Moreover, doesn't the United States buy steel from Britain every year to develop its own strength, and then buy it from other domestic traders at a high price, anyway, in terms of wealth, except for Britain, no country can compare with itself.

It's a shame to think that in later generations, a coal mine and a steel mill will have an annual output of millions and tens of millions of tons, and now they have fully supported it, and they have been asking people to give money for several years, and the steel output is only tens of thousands of tons. However, Feng Yunshan looked back and was randomly relieved, in the early days of the Republic of China in history, there was no steel production in the current Chinese Empire for a year.

Moreover, with the large-scale construction of railways that are now underway, there is a huge impetus for iron ore mining, as well as steel smelting, coal mining and machine building, and it also provides a guarantee for the flow of raw materials and workers needed by the steel industry, thus promoting the leap of the entire steel industry and even the rapid development of the entire industrial system.

At this time, Besmarck in the United Kingdom has invented the steelmaking method of acid air bottom blowing converter, but it has not been popularized, and Feng Yunshan knows that even if it is promoted, but because this method can not remove sulfur and phosphorus, it can only use low-sulfur and low-phosphorus molten iron as raw materials to make steel, but the iron ore in the entire Western Europe is high-phosphorus iron ore, and the phosphorus content of the molten iron is as high as 2%, therefore, Besmarck's acid converter steelmaking method has become a decoration and cannot be promoted. At this moment, the large-scale steelmaking plants built by his own Chinese empire in the past two years are all using the most advanced alkaline open-hearth steelmaking method for this era, Feng Yunshan asked the Ministry of Police and the Ministry of Public Works to strictly control all the personnel who come into contact with this steelmaking process, and only reliable core personnel can really understand this steelmaking process and principles, for fear that other countries will learn this process. Moreover, even if there are really spies who have learned a rough idea, at most they will only learn an open-hearth method, which was originally invented by the French five years later in history, but the real core technology is to maintain the alkaline environment of this open-hearth. This trick will not appear until another 30 years in history, and as long as you master it and don't leak it, you will inevitably make the steel production of the Chinese Empire proud of the top of the world.

It was the turn of the Ministry of Commerce to report on the foreign trade situation, and Pan Wentao, Vice Minister of Commerce, became excited, and his voice trembled a little, showing his uncalmness: "Your Majesty, according to the arrangement of the first five-year plan, the Foreign Trade Department under the Ministry of Commerce has been upgraded to the Foreign Trade Bureau, with the former director Rong Hong as the deputy director and Wei Chen as the director. The Ministry of Finance and Taxation also transferred the Nanyang Company, which was originally under its direct management, to the Foreign Trade Bureau, and transferred funds and personnel to set up two other foreign trade companies, thus forming three major trading companies in Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Tianjin, respectively, the Nanyang Company, the Dongyang Company, and the Beiyang Company. Among them, the Nanyang Company is now a giant company that rivals the wealth, when it was first established, it absorbed a total of 11.5 million taels of silver from the 13 banks of Guangzhou and various properties, and then His Majesty took out 8.5 million taels from his own treasury to make up the principal of 20 million taels of silver. In recent years, Nanyang Company has developed rapidly, and although it has paid more than 78 million saint dollars for imports on behalf of the Ministry of Finance and Taxation of the Imperial Court, its own assets are still increasing in value. In addition, in the second year of Taisheng, in accordance with His Majesty's will, 80% of the shares that originally belonged to His Majesty were allocated to the imperial court, and now they are allocated to the Foreign Trade Bureau, and another 10% of the shares are issued to the whole country, raising a total of 8 million saintly yuan from capitalists, and then, it is a rapid development. As of the beginning of this month, Nanyang Company owed 3.8 million S$ in arrears, 6.5 million S$ in receivables, and had net assets of S$83.8 million, totaling S$86.5 million in assets; Toyo owed 3.5 million S$ in foreign debt, excluding factory real estate, and owned 52.8 million S$ in movable property; Beiyang Company owes 2.2 million s.00 million in foreign debts, excluding factory real estate, and owns 32.8 million s.8 million in movable property. The net assets of the three major companies under the Foreign Trade Bureau, excluding real estate, are as high as 166.4 million syrup, of which the Foreign Trade Bureau holds 50 percent of the shares of the three major trading companies, Your Majesty personally holds 20 percent of the shares, the Guangzhou Chamber of Commerce consortium holds 20 percent of the shares, and the remaining 10 percent are owned by private capital from all over the country. ”

"Ahem, Your Majesty, last year, the three major companies purchased a total of 125.8 million holy yuan internally, and the export value was 218.7 million holy yuan, and then all the imported goods were worth nearly 159.2 million holy yuan, except for steel, saltpeter, copper, machinery and equipment, warships and other bulk materials needed by the imperial court, the rest of the goods were sold to the Ministry of Commerce and major domestic commercial banks and local chambers of commerce, and a total of 97.2 million holy yuan was obtained, and the total settlement was settled, with an annual profit of 30.9 million holy yuan. Of course, this is not accurate, because last year there were too many goods such as steel, copper ore and warships, close to 100 million holy dollars, so if you count these assets, the annual profit is about 130 million holy dollars.