There is a saying in China that money can make ghosts grind. English Shakespeare once said that gold can make the fake become real, and the ugly into beautiful. But is gold really that versatile? The answer is no! At least now Xu Jie's problems cannot be solved by relying solely on the pound and gold!

When Yan Boxun successfully sold the two King-class ships out of the country and was about to contact the Germans to continue to increase the order for a fast battleship, the Germans suddenly shook their heads and refused. Even though Yan Boxun claimed that he could buy a new ship at a higher price, Tirpitz, who had become the German Minister of the Navy, politely declined. For the reason, Tirpitz said this.

"Mr. Yan, we are very happy about your country's choice to order our warships, but here, I have to say sorry, now the large slipways of the major shipyards have been filled with orders from our country and your country, and the remaining empty slipways and docks need to be used for repairing old ships, and with the start of a large number of warships, we have no more skilled workers to transfer, the entire German shipbuilding system has reached the limit, if you can agree to start construction at the beginning of the year, Then the cooperation between us can continue. Tirpitz said apologetically.

When Yan Boxun explained in detail in the telegram, Xu Jie realized that after doing this, the naval shipyards of European countries had approached a limit. There is no extra capacity to continue to take orders. Historically, even at the craziest time of Germany, the number of dreadnought warships that started construction at the same time in a year did not exceed 5! Even if the British Empire, which had reached a certain level of NB at that time, claimed to be the second and third strong navy at the same time, it did not have the ability to start construction of more than 8 warships at the same time in a year during the peak of military expansion before World War I.

Lack of money is certainly one aspect. But having enough money doesn't mean it can solve all problems, especially now that it's only 1900, and there is a lot of money to expand industry. But in fact, the production capacity is still limited by the times, for example, Germany, after undertaking the order of 3 capital ships of the Huaxia Navy, only started construction of 2 dreadnought battleships for its own navy in 1900. In other words, the limit of the German Navy now is to start construction of 5 ships a year. The Italian Navy started construction of four ships at the same time, two for the Chinese Navy and two for its own Navy. The British's production capacity is high though. But people's demand is also high! The number of dreadnought battleships that began work in the center in a year was 5, and three were built for themselves. At the same time, it continues to complete some unfinished pre-dreadnoughts and quasi-dreadnoughts.

In addition to these three countries, the only countries left to produce dreadnoughts are France, Russia and the United States. Needless to say, Russia is an enemy, and France and the United States are also not friends, right. There is also one called Austria-Hungary. Forget about this country, it costs more than 2.5 million pounds to build a 20,000-ton United Force heavyweight battleship, which is enough for Germany to build a Bavaria! Such a cheating country is naturally not within the scope of Xu Jie's choice.

"It seems that I have to rely on myself. I don't know if the Jiangnan Shipyard's branch on Changxing Island will be completed next year, but now it seems that it can only be built by itself. Xu Jie smiled bitterly. However, this is also a very powerful boost to the development of the shipbuilding industry. With the development of the navy and the development of the ocean-going shipping industry, as early as the Beiyang era, the shipbuilding industry in the provinces under the jurisdiction of the Beiyang has begun to grow explosively.

After the end of the Sino-Japanese War. Beiyang has already controlled the regions from Liaodong, Zhili, Shandong, Fujian, Zhejiang, Taiwan and Liangguang, and the entire eastern coastal areas of the country have basically been under Beiyang's control. The Beiyang Fleet and the Foreign Ocean Fleet are actually one family. In order to expand the scope of activities of the entire Beiyang Fleet to the entire coastal area, the provinces under the control of the Beiyang began to build a large number of related supporting facilities.

Lushun and Weihai, as the main bases of the Beiyang Fleet, naturally had to be expanded, and the docks and corresponding workshops for the repair of new warships were put in the first place. Dalian also broke ground as the largest shipyard built by Beiyang itself, and built a King-class armored cruiser for foreign sailors before the Sino-Russian War. Shanghai, as the largest and most modern city in the Far East at the time, also had a good industrial base. And according to the experience of later generations, Xu Jie was preparing for the shipyard on Changxing Island while completing the project in the north, and broke ground before the Sino-Russian War.

As the place where Liu Mingchuan operated for many years, the island of Taiwan was the most modern and industrialized in the country at that time, and as the main base of the foreign fleet, the expansion of military ports in Taipei and Kaohsiung and related supporting equipment was also carried out on a large scale after the First Sino-Japanese War. Kaohsiung, in particular, has a large dock for outfitting and refurbishing 18,000-ton warships at this stage, equipped with special workshops and workshops. In the next three years, a new dockyard for repairing 25,000-ton warships will be completed, preparing for the shift of the center of gravity of the Huaxia fleet to the south.

The shipbuilding industry is a system engineering that drives many related fields such as mechanical engineering and metal smelting. After the end of the First Sino-Japanese War, Beiyang received a large amount of reparations and did not invest it in the field of light industry, which can quickly bring considerable benefits, but used it as a heavy industry development fund to continue to improve its own metal smelting and machinery manufacturing, on the one hand, to strengthen the production efficiency of the original factories, such as the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau, Tianjin Machinery Bureau and Xu Jie's factories directly under the Northeast Wuwei Army set up in the Northeast, on the other hand, it is to mix private capital and even some foreign capital to establish factories in open cities such as Shanghai and Guangzhou. Most of these factories are biased towards basic industries, such as the Far East Boiler Yard, which was jointly built by the Germans in Shanghai and provided boilers for Huaxia's self-built ships and some components for the warships of the Huaxia Navy. It can be said that it is a general-purpose type for both military and civilian use.

After several years of preparation, Huaxia's industrial foundation was laid, but it was still unable to complete the construction of a dreadnought on its own. And there is still a long way to go, for example, it is impossible to produce the engine spindles needed for dreadnoughts, the bearings for large turrets, the steam turbines, and the Krupp secondary carburized armor. The field of large-caliber artillery is relatively fast, and it is possible to make a 12-inch 40L main gun. But there is still a big gap compared to the British in terms of performance, as for optical instruments? The clothes of the Germans are not comparable with the original Zeiss goods, but they are basically enough. As for the motor and internal combustion engine, this China started relatively early, although there is a gap between the basic industry and the West, but it is not lagging behind in terms of design concepts, and it can be regarded as catching up with the last train of the second industrial revolution.

Thanks to the monthly ticket support of the book friend LM1876TF and the evaluation vote of the book friend Yan Qilin~~~ (to be continued......)