Today, the annual pig iron production in Europe is estimated to be only tens of thousands of tons, and the amount of steel is even less.
There is more coal, but it is mainly concentrated in anthracite coal mined by Datang merchants in the UK. These coals are mainly supplied to Datang's ships in Europe.
Comparing the mere tens of thousands of tons of steel produced by these manual workshops with Datang's millions of tons of steel production capacity, the gap is so huge that one cannot bear to look directly at it.
The reason why Datang was able to obtain such a huge output of steel and coal was not purely due to technical issues. In addition to technological development and the ability to produce steel on a large scale, the Datang Empire also had a huge population and the largest internal consumption in the world.
The market has something to do with it.
After all, the steel must be sold after it is produced. If it cannot be sold, there will be overcapacity, which will lead to an economic crisis or something.
However, Datang's demand for basic industrial products such as steel and coal was huge.
Datang produced so much steel and coal, except for a small part that was turned into steel products for export, most of the production capacity was consumed within Datang. Even so, these basic industrial products were still unable to satisfy the huge empire.
need.
Railways, shipbuilding, machinery, infrastructure and other aspects have consumed a large amount of Datang's steel production capacity, not to mention coal. Countless steam engines, whether they are ships, trains or steam engines in factories, consume every day.
The astronomical amount of coal, coupled with the coal used by residents for heating and cooking, has resulted in Datang's coal production rising steadily, but it is still unable to meet such huge demand, resulting in coal prices remaining high.
Therefore, in the past two years, the empire's basic industrial industries, especially industries represented by steel and coal, have continued to increase production capacity.
In the early years, Li Xuan was worried about the production capacity process, but now Li Xuan looks back and finds that this worry is completely unnecessary.
There are nearly 300 million imperial subjects in the mainland of the Tang Empire as well as overseas mainland and overseas territories. These are the imperial subjects who have the consumption power that the natives cannot match. The 300 million imperial subjects have created a huge consumer market.
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In addition to the consumption power of the people of the empire, although the consumption power of the indigenous people in various countries is a bit low, there is still a huge demand for steel products and the like. After all, the indigenous people also have to farm, and farming requires agricultural tools, which are also among the current
A major consumer area of contemporary steel products.
But Li Xuan also knew that this era of barbaric growth could not last forever, and it might be possible to maintain the current rapid development in recent years.
But when it develops to a certain level, the consumer market will eventually be full. If we continue to blindly expand production, overcapacity will occur.
Once the domestic market reaches production capacity, there will be no second market on earth where the industrial and commercial products of the Tang Empire can be dumped.
The combined size of overseas markets is only a fraction of the domestic market, so no matter how much dumping is done, it will be of no avail.
Especially when Li Xuan saw the report from the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises, several major state-owned steel plants controlled by the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises and some steel plants controlled by local governments have successively launched a new round of large-scale production expansion plans to cope with the future.
There has been huge demand for steel products for several years.
Li Xuan was wary of this.
Because this production expansion plan is really big!
Just a Jiangnan Iron and Steel Company, they are preparing to invest in the construction of a large-scale steelmaking plant with a steelmaking capacity of one million tons. Once the expansion is completed, the steel production capacity of just one Jiangnan Iron and Steel Company can reach 130,000 tons.
One hundred thousand tons.
At present, the empire's steel production totals only two million tons.
What's more important is that the empire's steel companies are not just Jiangnan Steel Company, there are seven or eight that have names.
If you take a closer look, you will find that with so many steel companies added together, after they all complete their expansion, their steel production capacity will reach a terrifying more than 10 million tons, which is five times more than the current steel production capacity.
In addition to steel, the expansion of pig iron production capacity is also large. It is expected that the new round of expansion of production capacity will reach a terrifying 20 million yuan.
Get rid of it, the British steel production before World War I was only a few million tons, and the pig iron production was only more than 10 million tons!
The Tang Dynasty, which had just industrialized for a few decades, had already produced a larger amount of steel than the United Kingdom before World War I. Who would sell this production to?
Although the internal market of the Tang Empire is huge, the industrialization time is only more than 20 years after all. Even if it continues to develop at this speed, the internal demand in ten years is unlikely to reach the level of tens of millions of tons.
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This step is a bit big!
Unless the navy pays for a large number of battleships and develops industries such as the automobile industry that consume a lot of steel, otherwise with the current industrial level of Datang and the application market of steel, if you want to use these tens of millions of tons
It’s really not easy to consume steel.
The steel industry development report submitted by the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises made Li Xuan vigilant.
On that day, he sent this report from the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises to the East Palace, which could be regarded as a temporary homework assignment for Prince Li Hao.
Li Xuan knows very well what overcapacity will lead to, but he knows that others may not know.
Datang's industrialization process was so fast that many of the corresponding economic theories and other soft powers actually failed to keep up.
The only one who can follow the rapid industrialization process of Datang is probably the Department of Taxation. No matter how fast Datang's industry and commerce develops, and all kinds of messy industries emerge one after another, the Department of Taxation can always be relaxed and happy one by one.
Respond and then collect taxes.
The Ministry of Taxation is the largest agency in the empire, with hundreds of thousands of direct employees!
In addition to tax investigators and action team members, there are also a large number of senior talents who spend the whole day thinking about how to collect taxes, plug various loopholes, and improve tax laws.
The tax department, which has been battling with highly intelligent criminals who evade taxes for a long time, wants money, money, people, and guns. Some armed action teams even have small-caliber artillery, so they are not easy to mess with!
But except for the weird one like the Ministry of Taxation, it is actually difficult for many other institutions to keep up with the rapid development of the Tang Empire. For example, the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises has become older and more bloated over the years. The most important thing is
It's because work efficiency is getting lower and lower.
And this is not because they are lazy or deliberately create obstacles, but because the affairs are too many and too complex, and new affairs emerge in an endless stream, making the officials of the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises exhausted to deal with them.