The completion of the railway project from Dihua to Akdoka brought joy to the Chinese high command. This diplomacy is so difficult! Finally, they secretly plotted against the Russians.
As for whether the loan will be recovered, it is simply a secondary issue compared with the benefits that this railway will bring.
In order to show the importance it attaches to this transnational railway, on the third day after the signing of the agreement, the Government Affairs Council arranged for a construction army of 3 engineering divisions with a total of 45,000 people to go to the northwest to speed up the construction of the Lanzhou-Dihua railway;
After the railway design plan was released, China would directly send five engineering divisions directly to the territory of Soviet Russia, striving to complete and open this "Eurasian artery" to traffic before July 1941.
When China reported its plan for the "Eurasian Artery" to Soviet Russia, Stalin laughed in the Kremlin and said: "This China is very interesting."
China is indeed very interesting. For example, China agreed to export 2 million tons of rice, 1 million tons of flour, 1 million tons of corn, and 200,000 tons of edible oil to Soviet Russia every year starting from 1940, which greatly eased the food supply of Soviet Russia.
question.
Soviet Russia's agriculture was based on collective farms. After the early enthusiasm dissipated, Soviet Russia's grain output continued to decline and had long fallen below the food safety line. Moreover, the workers on the farms were usually hungry, and their enthusiasm for work was gone.
How can it be improved? This situation in Soviet Russia is very similar to the people's communes of later generations in China. They cannot feed themselves or the country at all. Even if Soviet Russia has a high degree of agricultural mechanization, it still cannot solve the problem of food shortages.
question.
However, in the agreement with China, China had a very strange requirement: it signed a five-year steel import contract with Soviet Russia for a total of 5 million tons, but China required the supply of 2 million tons in 1940 and in other years.
800,000 tons per year, 600,000 tons in the last year.
The explanation given by China is: "China was constructing more than a dozen railways and several large bridges at the same time. 1940 and 1941 were the peak periods of steel consumption. However, China's own steel production was less than 600,000 tons (actual
Produce more, but keep it secret).”
Although the Soviet Union did not agree with China's explanation, the steel production in 1939 was already 12 million tons, so the quantity in the contract was not a big problem. Considering that the Soviet Union needed China's advanced aircraft technology, the contract was signed even if there were doubts.
.
In fact, asking for steel from Soviet Russia was just a "prank" by Wu Aihua. Among the major countries in the world, Soviet Russia's steel output is only the same as Germany, far behind the United States. China's main source of steel imports is the United States.
Fortunately, until 1940, the United States was pursuing "isolationism", and the United States also liked to make a lot of war profits. Because of this, Wu Aihua increased the purchase of steel and machinery from the United States starting in 1937, especially steel.
, the annual import volume increased from 500,000 tons in 1936, 1 million tons in 1937, 2 million tons in 1938, to 4 million tons in 1939, and the amount of steel required to be delivered by the United States in 1940 was even more astonishing.
6 million tons.
Therefore, when it comes to relations with China, American steel giants have the best relationship with China. Therefore, in addition to steel, American steel giants have also helped a lot in terms of crude oil and machinery imports.
Naturally, the payment for these heavy industrial products in the United States consists of, first, a large number of light industrial products produced in China, second, cash in U.S. dollars, and third, installment payments. For example, for a 1 million-ton steel transaction, the payment is usually obtained from a U.S.-funded bank loan and is paid by China.
The principal and interest must be paid in three or five years. If a mortgage is required, that is also good. China has no shortage of collateral. Port construction rights, airport construction rights, mine development rights, waterway development rights, etc., whatever is required is mortgaged.
The premise is that if China cannot afford the payment, you can come and "build" it.
Wu Aihua knew very well that without steel, there would be no hope of winning World War II!
In addition to importing large amounts of steel like a madman, Wu Aihua also focused on the construction of China Iron and Steel Group, Baotou Iron and Steel Group and Maanshan Iron and Steel Group in the "Three-Year Plan".
Therefore, after resolving the negotiations with the Soviet Union, Wu Aihua made an appointment with Premier Zhou Enlai and Speaker of the Central Parliament Chiang Kai-shek to inspect the projects under construction one by one.
70% of the iron ore and coal required by Fuzhou Iron and Steel Group comes from French colonial Vietnam, and the other 30% comes from small iron ore and coal mines in Fujian and Guangdong. This steel group contributed 200,000 yuan by the end of 1938
tons of crude steel and 300,000 tons of pig iron.
In the "Three-Year Plan", Fuzhou Iron and Steel Group will reach a production of 1.5 million tons of crude steel and 1.5 million tons of pig iron by the end of 1941, for a total output of 3 million tons.
Fuzhou Iron and Steel Group has been under construction since 1936, especially with the most advanced smelting technology in the world (produced by the system). Therefore, the output and quality of Fuzhou's special steel occupy a certain position in the world. However, its special steel
Most of them are for personal use and not for export, so the outside world doesn’t know.
However, Baotou Iron and Steel Group and Ma'anshan Iron and Steel Group were Wu Aihua's "trump cards" in fighting during World War II!
In later generations, there are almost no citizens of the Celestial Dynasty who do not know Baotou, and there is no one who does not know what Baotou is most famous for. Steel, non-ferrous metals, and rare earths are the three major brand resources of Baotou. In later generations, Baotou's steel output can reach 1,000
More than 10,000 tons, and the output of non-ferrous metals has reached more than 1 million tons. As for rare earths, no matter what happens in the future, Wu Aihua is prepared to develop them in an orderly manner and will never export them abroad. This is a real strategic resource.
In the "Three-Year Plan", Baotou will be built into a large-scale heavy industry base with an annual production of 2 million tons of iron, 2 million tons of steel, and 50,000 tons of aluminum, of which aluminum is an important material for manufacturing aircraft.
The construction of Baotou actually originated in July 1937, when Wu Aihua led his troops to North China. But throughout 1937, infrastructure construction was mainly carried out. In 1938, the first blast furnace and the first converter began to ignite smelting. That year
It produced 50,000 tons of steel; in 1939, it contributed 200,000 tons of steel production to China.
Beginning in the second half of 1938, Baotou ushered in a new construction boom. According to the plan, a production scale of 600,000 tons of steel will be formed by the end of 1939, and a production scale of 1.2 million tons of steel will be formed by the end of 1940.
Finally, by the end of 1941, just before the outbreak of the Pacific War, a production capacity of 2 million tons was established.
In addition to steel and non-ferrous metals, Baotou's light industry is also developing very well. For example, the textile printing and dyeing industry, leather industry, food processing industry, etc., because of the extensive use of advanced industrial technologies, most of the products of these factories are exported.
For example, the canned beef produced in Baotou sold 50,000 tons and 150 million cans to Germany in 1939. Germany has an army of 5 million, and each soldier can receive 30 cans of canned beef from China every year.
If Baotou is a comprehensive industrial base based on heavy industry, then Ma'anshan is completely a steel base.
Ma'anshan is one of the seven major iron ore areas in China in later generations, but the mining history of Ma'anshan iron ore is relatively early. In 1918, the 7th year of the Republic of China, Ma'anshan built the first mining area railway about 2 kilometers long, and began the iron ore mining industry.
Mining of ores.
Ma'anshan's total iron ore reserves are about 1.6 billion tons, of which the mineable amount is 1 billion tons. The average iron content of the ore is 36.5%. The mining and smelting value is very high. Compared with the overall poor quality of China's iron ore, Ma'anshan's
Iron ore is high-quality iron ore.
Because Ma'anshan is very close to Nanjing and is located in the south of the Yangtze River, it has a convenient location. Therefore, in the "Three-Year Plan", Ma'anshan Iron and Steel Group will be built into an annual production of 3 million tons of iron and 3 million tons of crude steel, with a total steel output of
One of the world's largest steel companies with a production capacity of 6 million tons.
In order to complete this construction task, 500 steel experts were hired from Germany alone. As for various construction personnel, the number was as high as 200,000. When these people arrived in Ma'anshan at the end of 1938, a medium-sized building was almost immediately formed.
City.
In terms of construction schedule, the output will be 1 million tons in 1939, 2 million tons in 1940, and 3 million tons in 1941.
If these three major steel bases are successfully built as scheduled, China's steel output will reach more than 13 million tons. This number is absolutely incredible in the history of China's steel production!
In the later China, through the efforts of "National Steelmaking" in 1960, its output reached 13.51 million tons. Needless to say, its quality was that most of the good steel was smelted into rotten iron. Since then, the output has continued to decline until
It only grew steadily to 13.33 million tons in 1969.
Does Wu Aihua's "steel-making" so enthusiastically count as the "Great Leap Forward" of steel? It counts, but it doesn't.
Counting, it refers to the speed of development, which is crazy in all countries in the world; not counting, it refers to strength. Wu Aihua's "merit system" has a series of smelting technologies, and these technologies are even far ahead of this era. Fortunately,
Wu Aihua did not frantically bring out the steel technology of the 1980s, but only brought out the smelting of a few special steels from the 1945s, which at best was at the level of the 1960s.
In fact, although steel production seems to be so much, it is actually nothing. For example, if iron ore has not been discovered in a certain area before, its steel production will be zero, but once it is discovered, it will only take one to two years, or
In three to five years, a steel enterprise with an output of millions of tons can be built. As for this construction speed, it is related to the considerations of investors, but has little to do with steel production technology.
The reason for the problem of the "Great Leap Forward" of later generations of the Chinese dynasty was that every village was engaged in steel projects, which were completely made by local methods. How could the quality of the steel produced pass the standards? That kind of steel was placed in the Tang Dynasty
It might be okay to use it in the Han Dynasty or Song Dynasty, but if it is used to produce modern machinery, the requirements are too high.