Chapter 2: The Five-Year Plan (Part 2)

Ma Qianzhu struck while the iron was hot. “Since everyone agrees with this plan, I suggest that our overall construction plan begin with the second phase of the Bairen Beach Hydropower Station project. This overall plan will be named the ‘First Five-Year Plan’.”

In the First Five-Year Plan system envisioned by Ma Qianzhu, the Wenlan River system project served the three major functions of shipping, irrigation, and power generation. The industrial and agricultural system was laid out with the river as the center, which was completely consistent with their initial vision, except that this plan proposed a more specific way of utilizing the Wenlan River.

The future industrial base will be located entirely in the downstream area east of the river. If there is any expansion in the future, it will extend to the Maniao Peninsula to take advantage of the series of ports around Maniao, such as Maniao Port and Hongpai Port. In the 20th century, several large-scale industrial investment projects and development zones in Lingao County were also located in this area.

The transmigrator group planned two major industrial zones: a steel-chemical industrial zone centered on Bopu Port, fully utilizing the advantages of large volume and low cost of sea transportation. The fleet would transport anthracite from Vietnam, pig iron and wrought iron and bituminous coal from Guangdong, iron ore from Tiandu, timber from Fujian, and salt for chemical industry from the Maniao Peninsula…

A machinery industry-light industry zone centered on Bairen City, also located east of the river.

In this way, the transmigrators would only have two industrial zones in the early stage. With few and concentrated industrial zones, the area they needed to protect with armed forces would be smaller, and the lines for transporting electricity, coal, equipment, and finished products would be shorter, allowing transportation and energy consumption costs to be compressed to a minimum.

The steel and chemical products manufactured in Bopu, as well as various raw materials transported from the sea, could be directly transported to the Bairen industrial zone for processing and manufacturing through the Wenlan River waterway, and the finished products could also be transported to Bopu for export by waterway.

The current power supply is mainly from the Bairen Hydropower Station. It is planned that after they can produce their own boilers and power generation equipment in the future, the transmigrator group will set up a thermal power plant in Bopu, using sea-transported Hongji anthracite for power generation, to directly supply power to the high-energy-consuming chemical industry.

The plan of the Industrial and Energy Committee is to achieve the following goals within the first five-year plan:

Complete the construction of a complete steel enterprise, including: an ore dressing plant, an ore sintering furnace, a coking furnace, a blast furnace, a hot blast stove, and a melting furnace. In addition to the existing small converter, another converter will be installed.

The ore dressing plant will have 2 ore dressing machines, 5 crushers, and 2 breakers brought from another time and space.

A small special steel plant that uses the crucible method to produce various special steels.

A rolling mill with:

2 blooming mills, 2 hot rolling mills, 2 hot piercing mills, 2 cold rolling mills, 2 cold drawing steel tube machines, 2 cold drawing bar machines, and 2 cold rolling steel tube machines. It can conveniently cold roll and hot roll various common specifications of steel plates, steel strips, wire rods, and various types of steel sections.

By the end of 1634, this steel complex will reach a daily output of 80 tons of pig iron, 50 tons of crude steel, and an annual output of 100 tons of special steel.

Smelting of non-ferrous metals: 160 tons of crude copper, producing 120 tons of electrolytic copper, 3 tons of nickel ingots, 10 tons of cobalt, 140 tons of lead, 80 tons of zinc, 12 tons of tin, and 20 tons of antimony.

These non-ferrous metals will be mainly imported as ore or crude products and further refined in the metallurgical department.

Although the demand for non-ferrous metals other than copper and lead is not very large, they are indispensable in many key areas. Fortunately, these products were already produced on a considerable scale in the Ming Dynasty, and it is no problem to import a certain amount of crude products from the mainland.

The metallurgical industry seems to be a huge system, but its five-year plan is actually the least difficult. The existing industrial system of the transmigrators can already provide the necessary materials such as cement, bricks, and refractory materials without any difficulty. The most technologically advanced rolling mill all uses equipment brought from another time and space, and can be put into use as long as it is installed in place. As for the blast furnace, it does not pose a major technical challenge to the transmigrators.

“In addition to refractory materials, ore dressing and blast furnace charging also require some special equipment. I hope the mechanical department can provide it. We will need your strong support then,” Ji Wusheng said.

“No problem,” Zhan Wuya readily agreed. “The key is to ensure the supply of steel. I have looked at these equipment, and the difficulty is not great. Some can even be made of wood.”

The goal of the Ministry of Machinery Industry is to complete the self-upgrading system of the machinery industry within the first five-year plan, not only to meet the production and manufacturing of various special equipment within the transmigrator industrial system, but also to complete self-renewal and upgrading.

However, the problems faced by the construction of the Ministry of Machinery Industry are much more complex. Due to the tonnage problem of the ships, the mechanical equipment brought by the transmigrator group is quite limited. Many special equipment were not brought due to tonnage and space limitations. The equipment owned by Zhan Wuya and other machinery experts are all the most basic general-purpose machine tools, with lathes being the largest category.

In theory, these most basic lathes, punch presses, vises, planers, and other so-called “mother machines” or general-purpose machine tools can produce any product, but the reality is far from being that simple.

Since mankind entered the industrial age, a clear development route for machine tools has been: higher efficiency and lower production costs. The processing efficiency of general-purpose machine tools, represented by lathes, has grown very slowly. Unless the number of workers and equipment is increased indefinitely, the output cannot be increased.

The simplest example is the screw, which is commonly used in industrial equipment. This small thing is called a “standard part” in industry. So-called standard parts refer to commonly used parts (components) whose structure, size, drawing method, marking, etc., have been completely standardized and are produced by specialized factories, such as threaded parts, pins, washers, and so on. These parts are used for connection and fastening in various industrial equipment.

This type of standard part was indeed processed with ordinary lathes at the beginning of history, but the processing efficiency was very low. Workers had to cut multiple times during processing, and each time they had to carefully align the tool. The manufacturing cost was also uneconomical—clamping a round bar on it and finally cutting out a small bolt resulted in a great waste of material, and the processing also had high requirements for workers.

Therefore, in actual production operations, standard parts are all manufactured with special machine tools. Even the simplest and most common hardware like iron nails are now produced with special machine tools.

The first task of Zhan Wuya’s Ministry of Machinery Industry is not to manufacture equipment for various industrial departments, but to first complete the equipment support within its own system and manufacture a batch of special machine tools. A new mold factory, a foundry, a standard parts factory, a bearing and chain factory, and a tool factory will be built.

“You don’t know how much this system, once established, will promote industry. The machinery industry can manufacture different special machine tools according to the needs of different products! Combined automatic machine tools!” Wang Luobin said excitedly. “Do you know what big industry is? With this system, we will have a real big industry.”

“Let me give you an example,” Li Yiwo, who had made black guns, explained. “Everyone is very worried about the supply of bullets now. In fact, it’s not difficult to make bullets. I can make them in the machinery factory with the existing equipment, but if I make them like this, I can’t make more than a few dozen a day, and you’ll run out as soon as you pull the trigger. If we build a bullet production line, although we need to manufacture more than thirty machines to form it, we can produce thousands of bullets per hour. This production rate is terrifyingly high.”

“Can we make K98s?” Wei Aiwen asked.

“K98s are nothing,” Xiao Bailang said with a look of disdain. “Even AK47s are not a problem.”

“I’ll just take the K98. Or the MP44 is fine too.” Wei Aiwen was not a loyal Hardt fan for nothing.

“After completing the self-support of the machinery industry department, we will experimentally carry out the reproduction of general-purpose machine tools, or let’s call it self-replication,” Zhan Wuya said. “After all, there will be more than one machinery factory in the future, and the demand for general-purpose equipment will be great.”

Jiang Ye said, “The number of machine tools we have now is not even as many as in one workshop of the factory where I used to work.”

Ma Qianzhu expressed his agreement. “Now we are active on Hainan Island. In the future, when we occupy Taiwan Island, or land on the mainland, we will need to replenish our guns and ammunition, and we will need to develop local industry. We can’t have all the equipment manufactured in Lingao and then transported there. We still need to set up a few more machinery processing centers.”

“I don’t see it that way,” Wen Desi said. “To ensure the long-term stability of our transmigrator regime, the core system of the machinery industry cannot be spread. It must be firmly in the hands of the transmigrator group.”

He further explained, “Suppose a local rich man wants to open a textile factory. We can provide him with the most advanced textile machinery and power equipment of this time and space at a preferential price, and at the same time provide maintenance services. However, besides using these equipment, he can neither repair nor replicate them. Everything must rely on us.”

In his vision, in the future world, only the transmigrator group would have the ability to manufacture mechanical equipment. The rich people or countries of this time and space could buy weapons, equipment, ships, and vehicles manufactured by the transmigrator group, but once these things lost the maintenance and support provided by the transmigrator group, they would become scrap iron. In this way, the industrial lifeline of the entire world would be completely in the hands of the transmigrator group.

“Isn’t this the Adeptus Mechanicus from Warhammer 40K?” Xi Yazhou’s imagination was very rich.

“Can’t science be a religion?” Wen Desi retorted. “We have mastered science and industry that surpasses the level of this time and space. Isn’t it too much to ask to rule the earth?”

“Then we need a Scientific Grey Knights Chapter!”

“You fool, it’s better to establish a Scientific Sororitas. Sisters are great.”

“Who will be the Emperor?”

…

“We’ll talk about that later,” Ma Qianzhu quickly brought the topic back. “Let the Ministry of Machinery Industry talk about how many special equipment they can provide for each department.”