Chapter 224: Five-Year Plan (Part 2)
Ma Qianzhu struck while the iron was hot: "Since everyone agrees with this plan, I propose we begin our overall construction plan with the Bairren Rapids Hydroelectric Station Phase Two project. This overall plan will be named 'The First Five-Year Plan.'"
In Ma Qianzhu's envisioned First Five-Year Plan system, the Wenlan River project would serve three major functions: shipping, irrigation, and power generation. Laying out the industrial and agricultural system centered on the river matched their original concept perfectly—this plan simply proposed more specific ways to utilize the Wenlan River.
The future industrial base would be located entirely in the river's downstream eastern region. Future expansion would extend toward the Manao Peninsula to utilize the series of ports around Manao—Manao Port, Hongpai Port, and others. In the 20th century, several major industrial investment projects and development zones in Lingao County had also been located in this area.
The transmigrator collective planned two major industrial zones: a steel-chemical industrial zone centered on Bopu Port, fully leveraging seaborne transport's advantages of volume and low cost. Fleets would bring in anthracite from Vietnam, pig iron, wrought iron, and bituminous coal from Guangdong, iron ore from Tiandu, timber from Fujian, and salt for chemicals from the Manao Peninsula...
A machinery-light industry zone centered on Bairren City would also be located on the eastern bank.
This way, the transmigrators would initially have only two industrial zones. Fewer and more concentrated industrial zones meant a smaller area requiring armed protection, shorter lines for transmitting power, coal, equipment, and finished goods, and minimized transport and energy costs.
Steel and chemical products manufactured at Bopu, along with various raw materials shipped by sea, could be transported directly to the Bairren industrial zone for processing via the Wenlan River water route. Finished products could then be shipped back to Bopu for export by water.
Current power supply came mainly from Bairren Hydroelectric Station. The plan was that after they could self-produce boilers and generating equipment, the transmigrator collective would establish a thermal power plant at Bopu, using seaborne Hongji anthracite for generation, directly supplying the high-energy-consumption chemical industry.
The Industry and Energy Committee's plan was to complete the following goals within the First Five-Year Plan:
Build a complete steel enterprise, including: ore processing plant, ore sintering furnace, coking furnace, blast furnace, hot blast stove, and iron smelter. Besides the existing small converter, install one more converter.
The ore processing plant would have two ore beneficiation machines, five crushers, and two breakers brought from the other timeline.
A small specialty steel plant, using the crucible method to manufacture various specialty steels.
A rolling mill with: two initial forging machines, two hot rolling machines, two hot piercing machines, two cold rolling machines, two cold-drawn steel tube machines, two cold-drawn bar machines, two cold-rolled steel tube machines. This would allow convenient hot and cold rolling of various standard steel plates, strip steel, wire rod, and various section steels.
By the end of 1634, this steel complex would reach daily production of 80 tons of pig iron, 50 tons of crude steel, and annual production of 100 tons of specialty steel.
For non-ferrous metal smelting: 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, 20 tons of antimony.
These non-ferrous metals would be mainly imported as ore or crude products, then further refined by the metallurgy department.
Though demand for non-ferrous metals other than copper and lead was not huge, they were essential in many key areas. Fortunately, these products were already produced at considerable scale during the Ming dynasty, so importing certain quantities of crude products from the mainland posed no problem.
The metallurgical industry's system looked massive, but its Five-Year Plan was actually the least difficult. The transmigrators' existing industrial system could already provide cement, bricks, refractory materials, and other essential materials without difficulty. The most technically demanding rolling mill would entirely use equipment brought from the other timeline—once installed, it could go into operation. As for blast furnaces, these presented no major technical challenges for the transmigrators.
"Besides refractory materials, ore processing and blast furnace feeding require some special equipment. We hope the Machinery Department can provide them. We will need your strong support then," Ji Wusheng said.
"No problem," Zhan Wuya readily agreed. "As long as steel supply is guaranteed, I've looked at this equipment—it's not difficult. Some can even be made of wood."
The Machinery Industry Department's goal within the First Five-Year Plan was to complete a self-upgrading system for the machinery industry—not only meeting production and manufacturing needs for various specialized equipment within the transmigrator industrial system, but also achieving self-renewal and upgrading.
But the Machinery Industry Department's construction faced far more complex problems. Due to ship tonnage limitations, the transmigrator collective had brought quite limited mechanical equipment. Many specialized machines could not be brought due to tonnage and space constraints. The equipment in the hands of Zhan Wuya and other machinery people consisted only of the most basic general-purpose machine tools, with lathes being the largest category.
In theory, these most basic lathes, presses, vises, planers, and other so-called "mother machines" or general-purpose machine tools could manufacture any product. But reality was far from that simple.
Since humanity entered the industrial age, machine tools had followed a clear development path: higher efficiency, lower production costs. General-purpose machine tools represented by lathes had very low growth in processing efficiency. Unless you infinitely increased workers and equipment, output could not rise.
Take the simplest example: screws commonly used in industrial equipment. These small things are technically called "standard parts." Standard parts are commonly used components whose structure, dimensions, drawings, markings, and so forth have been completely standardized and are manufactured by specialized factories—threaded parts, pins, gaskets, and so on. These parts are used for connecting and fastening various industrial equipment.
Such standard parts were indeed originally made using ordinary lathes, but processing efficiency was very low. Workers had to make multiple cuts during processing, carefully aligning the tool each time. Manufacturing costs were also uneconomical—clamping a round bar and eventually cutting out a small bolt wasted enormous material, and processing required highly skilled workers.
So in actual production operations, standard parts were made using specialized machines. Even manufacturing something as simple and common as iron nails was done with specialized machines in modern times.
The Machinery Industry Department's first task was not manufacturing equipment for other industrial departments, but first completing equipment matching within its own system—manufacturing a batch of specialized machine tool equipment. New construction would include a die factory, a foundry, a standard parts factory, a bearing and chain factory, and a tool factory.
"You do not know how much this system will promote industry once established. The machinery industry can manufacture different specialized machine tools according to different product needs! Combined automatic machine tools!" Wang Luobin said excitedly. "Know what large-scale industry means? With this system, we will have true large-scale industry."
"Let me give an example," explained Li Yiwo, who had made black-market guns. "Everyone is very worried about ammunition supply now. Actually, manufacturing bullets is not that difficult. I could make them at the machinery plant with existing equipment. But making them that way, I could not produce more than a few dozen rounds per day—you'd use them up with one trigger pull. If we manufacture a bullet production line, though it requires building over thirty pieces of equipment, it can produce several thousand rounds per hour. That productivity is terrifyingly high."
"Can you make the K98?" Wei Aiwen asked.
"K98 is nothing," Xiao Bailang said dismissively. "AK-47 is no problem either."
"I just want K98, or MP44 would be fine too." Wei Aiwen was truly a loyal Wehraboo.
"After completing the Machinery Industry Department's self-matching, we will experimentally reproduce general-purpose machine tools—or call it self-replication," Zhan Wuya said. "After all, there will not be just one machinery plant in the future. Demand for general equipment will be huge."
Jiang Ye said: "Right now we have fewer machine tools than one workshop at the factory where I used to work."
Ma Qianzhu agreed: "Right now we are operating on Hainan Island. In the future, when we occupy Taiwan or land on the mainland, we will need to replenish weapons and ammunition and develop local industry. We cannot manufacture everything in Lingao and ship it over, right? We will still need to establish several machinery processing centers."
"I see it differently," Wen Desi said. "To ensure our transmigrator regime's stability for generations, the core system of machinery industry cannot be dispersed. It must be firmly controlled by the transmigrator collective."
He elaborated further: "Hypothetically, if some local rich man wanted to open a textile factory, we could provide this timeline's most advanced textile machinery and power equipment at preferential rates, along with maintenance services. But beyond using this equipment, he could neither repair nor replicate it. Everything would depend on us."
In his vision, only the transmigrator collective would possess the capability to manufacture mechanical equipment in this future world. The wealthy or nations of this timeline could purchase weapons, equipment, ships, and vehicles manufactured by the transmigrator collective, but once these things lost maintenance support from the transmigrator collective, they would become complete scrap iron. This way, the entire world's industrial lifeline would be fully in the transmigrator collective's hands.
"Is that not just the Adeptus Mechanicus from Warhammer 40K?" Xi Yazhou's imagination was rich.
"Can science not be a religion?" Wen Desi countered. "We have mastered science and industry beyond this timeline's level. Demanding to rule Earth is not excessive, is it?"
"But we would need Grey Knights of science!"
"You idiot—better to establish an Order of Scientific Sisters. Sister girls are great."
"Who will be the Emperor?"
...
"We will discuss that later," Ma Qianzhu quickly brought the topic back. "Machinery Industry Department, tell us how much specialized equipment you can provide for each department."
(End of Chapter)