Master Yuan, start!

"You have to let me go!" Yuan Xiangcheng emphasized, his face deliberately gloomy. "In the future, I will teach you how to read and how to interact with people. How can I do that with bound feet?"

Yuan Xiangcheng did not think about doing anything to promote gender equality or women's liberation. After all, the level of productivity was there, and as long as physical labor was the main form, men naturally had an advantage.

However, if it is possible, things like teaching women to read and not binding their feet should be done. After all, women can also work in factories, right?

If feet were bound, a labor force would be lost for nothing, and this is the key point.

After a not-so-pleasant conversation, Yuan Xiangcheng had Yu sent to the backyard, and he breathed a sigh of relief after returning to the front hall.

"This matter between men and women is really difficult to handle."

Xu Shichang had been waiting in the front hall for a long time. Upon hearing this, he smiled and said, "How come Wei Ting hasn't seen Madam for a long time? Don't you miss her?"

"Juren, you know me, right?" Yuan Xiangcheng spread his hands, quite helpless: "I was bored at home and couldn't stay any longer, so I ran to Korea.

If I had a good wife at home, why would I abandon her and my children and go to a distant land?"

Xu Shichang naturally knew the situation at Yuan Xiangcheng's family. When Yuan Xiangcheng was still Yuan Shikai, Xu Shichang had heard Yuan Shikai complain about his grievances.

"Forget it, let's not talk about this." Seeing that Yuan Xiang was in a dilemma, Xu Shichang no longer mentioned this matter, but instead talked about another important matter.

"Wei Ting, are you sure about the business reform?" Xu Shichang looked around and asked in a low voice.

"Even if we're not sure, we have to do it." Yuan Xiangcheng perked up when he heard they were talking about serious matters. "If we don't do this, how can we compete with those towns in the south?"

"Why not postpone it for a while?" Xu Shichang thought for a moment and slowly replied, "We've just started working on the bonded area, and now there's this customs clearance issue. I'm afraid there's going to be chaos."

"Don't worry, this is a good thing that benefits both the country and the people," Yuan Xiangcheng patted his chest. "Except for those people who collect lijin, all merchants in the world will applaud us!"

What Yuan Xiangcheng and Xu Shichang were talking about was the change of lijin to commercial tax. Lijin was a measure taken by the Qing Dynasty to raise funds to suppress the rebellion.

The central government allowed local officials to set up checkpoints and conduct interrogations, and to extract a certain percentage of the money. This greatly enriched local financial resources in a short period of time and alleviated the pressure on the Qing court.

However, such measures were a severe blow to Chinese business, which was still in a semi-feudal and semi-colonial period.

For a commodity worth 100, if it passes through 1 lijin customs, only 1 lijin will be charged. But if it passes through 10 or 20 lijin customs, then 10 or 20 lijin will be charged.

The existence of customs clearance greatly slowed down the formation of a unified national market in China at that time and was not conducive to reducing material costs.

What Yuan Shikai had to do was to "abolish the lijin system and change it to commercial tax", and change the collection of lijin to commercial tax, and only collect one or ten of them.

Doing so will undoubtedly be of great benefit to business dealings.

The reason why Yuan Shikai wanted to "abolish customs duties and switch to commerce" was that he wanted to use this method to form a unified local market between the three northeastern provinces and Korea.

And using this market as a foundation, they compete with the strong but fragmented business system in the south.

Chapter 172 It’s Better to Buy the Real One

"Wei Ting, there is another matter that you need to make up your mind about." Now that the issue of abolishing customs duties and changing to commercial duties had been agreed upon, Xu Shichang talked about another matter.

"what's up?"

"Didn't the Incheon Shipyard build a few cargo ships a while ago?"

"Well, I know about this. Didn't they get rewarded?" Yuan Xiangcheng nodded.

The two were talking about the Incheon Shipyard's independent shipbuilding. Since the Battle of Mawei, the Fujian Navy was completely wiped out, and the years of hard work of the Fuzhou Shipyard were destroyed.

This group of naval talents originally wanted to rebuild the Fujian Navy after the war, but the Qing government at that time was only concerned with buying warships and had no intention of rebuilding them on its own.

Later, there was the Anti-Chun War, which led to the division between the North and the South, and the Fuzhou Shipyard completely lost its financial support.

A group of Chinese and foreign instructors dispersed and left. Some went to Guangdong to join Li Hongzhang, and some went north to join Zeng Guoquan. The Mawei Shipyard headquarters only retained the most basic ship repair function.

Some of the shipyard's skilled workers and technicians went north to Korea and joined the Incheon Shipyard established by Yuan Shikai.

Later, due to the vigorous development of maritime transport, the Sihai Shipping Company founded by Yuan Xiangcheng purchased ships everywhere, which gave rise to a large demand for thousand-ton cargo ships, and also put the Incheon Shipyard, which had only been established for a few years, on the fast track of development.

These old men of Mawei Shipyard once built the 1889-ton warship "Pingyuan" in 2200, which was the first independently designed and built steel-clad "cruiser" in Chinese history.

　Because of this, the Pingyuan was never launched, and these people came to the Incheon Shipyard with regret.

Fortunately, the requirements for cargo ships are lower than those for warships. First of all, they do not need to be equipped with artillery, and the main engines do not need to be the most advanced. Armored steel plates are not needed, and the exterior can be made of iron or wooden shells.

Therefore, with the joint efforts of naval academy students and new and old technicians, Incheon Shipyard imitated the British ship drawings and successfully launched a 3000-ton transport ship at the Lushun Dockyard for commercial voyages in the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea.

However, what Yuan Xiangcheng didn't know was that these people were still itching to build a cargo ship. After building the cargo ship, they still didn't forget the "Pingyuan".

"They said they were very grateful for the reward from Lord Yuan," Xu Shichang said with a smile, "so they wanted to take advantage of the stability of the situation and build a warship for the National Defense Army to see how it goes!"

Are you still thinking about the Pingyuan plan? Yuan Xiangcheng remained silent, weighing the pros and cons in his mind.

Although the Pingyuan was known as China's first steel-clad warship, it actually had so many shortcomings that it was unbearable.

First of all, Dingyuan is too slow, with a cruising speed of only 10.5 knots and a maximum running speed of only 14 knots.

You should know that during the Sino-Japanese War of 14.5, the Dingyuan, which was criticized by later generations for its slow speed, also had a speed of knots.

Moreover, Dingyuan's tonnage is 7300 tons, while Pingyuan's is only over 2000 tons. It is not as heavy as the other and runs slower than the other.

If it weren't for the fact that it was "domestic", Pingyuan would not be qualified to be compared with the seven advanced warships such as Dingyuan, Zhenyuan, and Jingyuan, not to mention the "Dingyuan" which was named after the Yuan generation.

The second problem is the slow firing rate. Of course, this is a common problem of the Beiyang Fleet and cannot be blamed on the Pingyuan alone.

However, these two points are already fatal for a warship that is going to fight in a naval battle.

The Pingyuan is more suitable for use as a coastal defense warship and is completely unsuitable for inclusion in the Beiyang Fleet's long-distance operations.

However, the words "coastal defense" and "warship" are inherently inappropriate for China at this time.

If one is looking for near-shore firepower, either building a more powerful artillery battery or a less expensive gunboat would be more appropriate than building the Pingyuan.

Therefore, regarding the Pingyuan warship, Yuan Xiangcheng could only silently say in his heart, "Your courage is commendable, but I won't build it again next time."

After a moment's silence, Yuan Xiangcheng made up his mind, met Xu Shichang's gaze, and said something that would be considered extremely incorrect in later generations.

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"Juren, in my opinion, it's better to buy the warships we have now than to build them!"

Sure enough, upon hearing this, Xu Shichang frowned.

"Weiting, I don't like to hear this." After saying that, Xu Shichang stammered, hesitating whether to continue.

However, after a moment, he still felt the need to express his inner thoughts: "It is such an honor to be able to build China's first ironclad ship without relying on foreigners.

Wei Ting, you have always advocated replacing foreign goods with Chinese goods, whether it is gauze, steel, or matches.

Why is it the other way around when it comes to shipbuilding?"

Yuan Xiangcheng smiled bitterly and had to explain to Xu Shichang why it was better to buy than to make.

In fact, the Qing Dynasty in the original time and space was not inferior to Japan in the field of shipbuilding, and was even ahead at one point, at least before the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895.

For example, the Japanese cruiser Akitsushima, which was launched two years later than the Pingyuan, was claimed to be domestically produced in Japan, but most of its materials were imported from the United Kingdom. The domestically produced materials were very few and did not occupy an important position.

From the design drawings to the launching, everything about the Akitsushima was handled by the British. If the Japanese were involved in anything, it was probably only the workers wielding hammers and hammering rivets.

Even though the Pingyuan was a bad ship, it was designed by the designers of the former Fuzhou Shipyard who "copied" the French cruiser and drew the blueprints themselves. The entire construction process was carried out at the Mawei Shipyard under Chinese supervision.

The reason why the Qing Dynasty’s shipbuilding capabilities failed to be transformed into real production capacity to support the Beiyang Fleet.

In fact, it had a lot to do with the intrigues between the central and local governments of the Qing Dynasty at that time, and the fact that the local governments acted independently. Fujian's shipbuilding capabilities could not be integrated by Li Hongzhang, the then Governor-General of Zhili.

And all of these were just constraints on China's shipbuilding capabilities in the original time and space.

In this time and space, due to Yuan Shikai's interference and Japan's early defeat in Korea, China felt the crisis, which caused China's shipbuilding capabilities to lag behind Japan.

In the time and space where Yuan Xiangcheng lived, the design capabilities of the Mawei Shipyard, the manufacturing capabilities of Jiangnan, the 10,000-ton dock at Dagukou in Tianjin, and the power manufacturing of the Incheon Machinery Bureau were all worthy of praise.

However, Yuan Xiangcheng is currently unable to integrate these resources.

China's production capacity is there. If Yuan Shikai built another one in the Northeast, it would be like reinventing the wheel, resulting in a huge waste of resources and funds.

At this time, Yuan Shikai did not have the obsession that "if foreign countries have it, China must also have it."

In the final analysis, the Western world has no concept of technological blockade against China at this time. Instead of spending time and effort to develop warships on its own, it is better to copy them.

There is nothing shameful about copying; plagiarism is also a way for developing countries to quickly catch up with advanced industrial countries.

Therefore, the saying that it is better to buy than to make had no currency in the 19th century.

Moreover, Yuan Shikai did not completely give up on independent research and development. At least on the eve of World War I, he wanted to develop the ability to manufacture cargo ships of more than 10,000 tons and pre-dreadnought battleships in the country.

But it was still a long time before World War I, and instead of wasting money on warships that were destined to become obsolete, it would be better to use it to develop light and heavy industries.

At least, manufactured products such as steel, matches, cotton yarn, wood, and soybeans can really make money.

Once the ironclad ships were built, they were a huge expense. In order to maintain a long-term advantage over the German warships of France and Germany, Britain consumed a huge amount of national strength to build the British Fleet.

However, the arrival of the dreadnought announced that the tens of millions of pounds that the British had invested had all gone down the drain.

Therefore, Yuan Shikai did not aim too high and took things slowly as he had plenty of time.

Also, there is no need to worry too much. If we look at it from a global perspective, if Japan's shipbuilding capacity in this time and space is 1.1, the Qing Dynasty's is 1.

Britain, France, the United States and Germany all score 10 or even 9 points in the shipbuilding industry.

At this time, China was unable to compete with Europe, the United States and other countries in everything except the low cost of workers.

The same warship, manufactured in a European shipyard, can use cheap North American fir wood for its deck and keel; relying on the well-connected railways, it can purchase cheap steel from the Ruhr area; and it can compare nearby to see which Krupp or Armstrong artillery is more suitable for loading on board.

At that time, Europe was the center of industrial civilization, which was far beyond the reach of China.

China today needs to spend money where it counts.

Chapter 173: Go get the Lantern Festival red envelopes

In terms of military equipment, especially naval equipment, Yuan Shikai advocated the policy of imitation and rapid catch-up.

After all, naval equipment is not like that of the army, which is cheaper and more reusable.

At the end of the 19th century, the army did not have many expensive things like tanks and self-propelled artillery. The biggest expenditure was guns and cannons.

Even if a firearm cannot meet the needs of the front-line main combat forces, it can be transferred to the second-line reserve forces, internal affairs forces, or even the rear police forces.

But how to convince Xu Shichang? His coming here means that he has been informed by people from the Incheon Shipyard. There are also Red Confucian members in the Incheon Shipyard.

Yuan Xiangcheng could naturally use his prestige to enforce the order not to build warships.

However, cultivating a democratic atmosphere within the party is a very important part, and the Red Confucian Society is not a one-man show for him.

Therefore, if Yuan Shikai wanted to implement a policy, the best way was to let his comrades understand it and then do it clearly, rather than just following the rules in a confused manner.

After all, his first-mover advantage in history only lasted until after World War I, and the members of the Red Confucian Society had to walk the rest of the road themselves.

"Juren, let me put it this way," Yuan Xiangcheng pondered for a moment, intending to use examples to convince Xu Shichang.