Chapter 390 Daming's Seven-Year Scientific Research Plan
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Regarding the tax reform issues of the Ming Dynasty in the next few years, the Jiangning meeting was discussed for several days.
Although there are still many details that have not been finalized, especially the setting of some specific amounts and thresholds, which also need to take into account public sentiment. However, these tasks do not affect the overall situation and can be continued to be refined by professionals from the Ministry of Household Affairs. Anyway, there is still a long way to go before the final pilot.
Two months' time.
But in the end, Zhu Shuren would also take a strong stance to prevent the representatives of the interests of the big landowners and factory owners from helping to get through.
The main cabinet ministers who attended the Jiangning meeting still have many national issues to discuss after the tax reform issue.
Fortunately, Zhu Shuren understands the principle of eating one bite at a time, and it is easy to be distracted when he takes a long step.
Therefore, none of the remaining issues involve the construction of systems and reforms. They are all specific transactional issues. Only in this way can resistance be suppressed to a minimum.
Beginning in mid-May, the agenda for the second and third stages of the Jiangning Conference was gradually brought to the forefront.
The topic in the second stage is about Ming's industrial policy and the direction of scientific and technological research and development support in the next seven-year plan. There is no conflict or contradiction in this topic, and the atmosphere of the discussion is relatively relaxed.
Because Shi Kefa was old and did not understand these things, he would not participate in the discussion. Therefore, it was mainly Zhu Shuren, Zhang Huangyan, and the minister of the Ministry of Industry, Fang Yizhi who also joined the cabinet. Even Zhu Shuren's concubine, a professor of the Ming Academy of Sciences, came to the discussion.
Fang Ziling will also participate in some issues.
The third phase of the topic is about the construction plan for the newly occupied territories in the next seven years, plus some state-owned engineering projects, as well as the investment plan of the Ming Dynasty Ministry of Internal Affairs——
Although there were many bad policies in the Qing Dynasty in history, Zhu Shuren was still willing to learn from the good things that the Manchus did in order to control them by learning from the barbarians.
The imperial expenses of the Qing Dynasty were actually not smaller than those of the Ming Dynasty at all, and there were so many emperors' southern tours that wasted people and money. However, the reason why the Qing Dynasty stabilized its financial situation was that, in addition to the frequent extortion of the Zhizao Mansion and Lianghuai salt merchants, a
The most important one to rely on is the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
Although the existence of the Ministry of Internal Affairs has various disadvantages of exploitation and monopoly, it can be regarded as "competing with the people for profits." However, these fertile industries do not benefit the poor people. They are nothing more than competing for profits with the wealthy merchants and gentry among the people.
Before Zhu Shuren came to power, the Shen family was the richest man in the Ming Dynasty. There were so many royal properties (the royal family is not the royal family, but the property of the Prince of E's Palace) and the private property of the Shen family. Nowadays, an internal affairs office is needed to coordinate the management. In addition, the Ming Dynasty's original
If small fish and shrimps such as Huangzhuang Huangshang are merged and operated together, they can roughly play the role of the state-owned assets management department in future generations.
With the Ministry of Internal Affairs, it would also be easier to make long-return-cycle investments in remote newly occupied territories that ordinary private businessmen still disdain to invest. After discovering this wonderful effect, Zhu Shuren certainly had to learn from the Qing Dynasty's Ministry of Internal Affairs, and make more
Be bigger and stronger and use it for yourself.
…
"The tax reform has been tentatively decided. Today we will discuss first how the imperial court should guide the Ming Dynasty's scientific and technological research direction and industrial technology development in the next seven years.
The ultimate goal is to continue to enrich the country and strengthen its military, but at the same time, it must also serve the possible use of troops against Myanmar and Vietnam in the future. Let’s see what shortcomings need to be made up for now.”
After the second phase of the agenda was launched, Zhu Shuren took the lead in setting the tone for the meeting, allowing everyone to speak freely.
After everyone exchanged glances, considering that this topic was ultimately about serving the military, Zhang Huangyan, the Minister of War, finally spoke first.
Zhang Huangyan didn't have any vision for science and technology. He just put forward two things based on the current military shortcomings:
"Based on the losses reported by General Lee in the border conflicts, the biggest problem in today's ordnance technology in the war with Myanmar and Vietnam is that the firearms are not waterproof and moisture-proof.
Although Wuchang-made rifles have been improved for several generations and gradually strived for excellence, the problem of flintlock rifles failing to fire in hot and humid environments has never been cured.
Nowadays, our new generation of Ming Dynasty border troops are all made from Wuchang. There are fewer and fewer veterans who are good at using a variety of weapons. We can only count on those who are at least forty years old and originally returned to the south.
Only veterans with experience in the previous battles between Liu and Sichuan and Xiangxi can skillfully switch weapons in the battle with the southern barbarians to ensure that the combat effectiveness is not weakened.
However, more and more of these soldiers died in battle, died of illness and old age, and gradually withered away. If we wait another three to five years before attacking Burma, and the more we take action, the number of people we can count on will be even smaller. In the end, we still need to strengthen our weapons.
To protect against heat and humidity, you may have to train your soldiers and practice various weapons, not just bayonets and muskets."
After Zhu Shuren heard this feedback, he subconsciously looked at Li Dingguo, who was only allowed to attend the meeting for the first time today, and asked a few questions.
I also got a positive answer from Li Dingguo, saying that the Ming Dynasty frontier army in Yunnan did have difficulties in this regard. Now Li Dingguo relies on the old veterans of the Western Army in Zhao'an, including Sun Kewang who struggled as a guerrilla in the mountains of Guizhou.
The troops are now fully utilized.
However, these people are also older. After all, it has been 19 years since Chongzhen's death. These former peasant soldiers surrendered at least 19 years ago, so they have more than 20 years of military experience.
After Zhu Shuren confirmed it, he couldn't help but have a headache. This problem is indeed difficult to solve. Because the reliability of firearms in hot and humid environments has always been a long-standing problem, it was basically impossible to completely solve it in the age of muskets.
Historically, the Western world's colonial occupation of tropical inland rainforests did not fully develop until the second half of the 19th century, which is also related to this.
In the Americas, muskets could only help the colonists to tightly control the interior of Mexico. Further south, in the tropical rainforests of Central America, the European colonists' control was much weaker (coastal ports were still controllable).
In Africa, the central rainforest and black Africa also began to be colonized after 1850, such as the famous Belgian Leopold Enclosure of the Congo. The French made similar progress in Southeast Asia and the Indochina Peninsula.
Who would have thought that until 1841, during the Opium War, the problem of fighting in heavy rains had not been completely solved by the flintlock rifle. When the British army was in Sanyuanli, it was not because they encountered heavy rain that a considerable part of the flintlock rifles could not be used.
Although Zhu Shuren knew history and the evolution of science and technology, he couldn't directly give guidance on research and development. The practical information in his belly had long been used up.
So he could only outline and say a few words: "This matter cannot be solved overnight, and it may not be possible to cure it completely for decades. Therefore, I, the Ming Dynasty, will not be able to push Myanmar to death or beat it in the future.
Just let them know where to go and when to go.
To solve the problem of the reliability of the musket, on the one hand, the Academy of Sciences should continue to add a waterproof structure to the ignition mechanism of the musket, and on the other hand, it should imagine new firing methods.
However, the waterproof mechanism can only increase the probability of rain protection, but cannot solve the problem of an environment where the air is too humid. The final cure must be taken from a chemical perspective.
Didn’t we make nitrocellulose a few years ago and use it for rifled sniper bullets? Let the people at the Chemical Engineering Research Institute think more about whether the method of making sulfuric acid and nitric acid can further reduce costs, increase efficiency, and increase output.
Equipping more elite troops with smokeless gunpowder firearms, and combining it with smokeless gunpowder to completely innovate the firing mechanism, it is estimated that the principle of fusillary must be completely changed to cure the problem."
Naturally, people from the Academy of Sciences took note of Zhu Shuren's instructions, and they would of course make arrangements according to the instructions of the regent after returning.
In the original history, the West actually invented the first flash cap percussion gun in 1815, replacing the flintlock principle. It was the British who first invented it.
Early flash cap guns were relatively similar to flintlock guns, using percussion flash caps. Later, after the emergence of smokeless gunpowder, more efficient and reliable striker-type flash caps were developed, which can be regarded as the needle-priming mode of modern guns.
Completely integrated.
However, the historical 1815 prototype flash cap gun took several years of trial and error. By the time it was produced, the Napoleonic War was already over.
Relying on the Vienna System created by Prime Minister Metternich, the European continent maintained overall peace for nearly a hundred years. No all-out European war broke out until World War I, so the British were too lazy to spend money to replace the flintlock muskets used in the Napoleonic Wars.
At that time, the British were still using flintlock rifles. In the final analysis, they just couldn't bear the money and felt that it was unnecessary to completely replace them with flash caps. It wasn't until more than ten years later that the British and French forces helped the Ottomans attack Crimea and fight against the Rakshasa people.
Only then could we urgently replace the flash cap guns before the war.
So from this point of view, Zhu Shuren ordered the military industry department to develop early-type waterproof flash cap technology to improve the reliability of the musket, but there are no overwhelming technical barriers and generation differences.
The "Wuchang Made" produced by Daye Arsenal during the Qing Dynasty was roughly equivalent to the Western Charleville Model 1763. It has accumulated rich experience in this regard.
To advance to the British Manton 1815 model, the gap in theory is only fifty years. In fact, in the West at that time, from the end of the Seven Years' War in the 1760s to the French Civil War in the 1780s and before the independence of the United States,
All countries have little sense of crisis, and military research and development was also suspended for a time.
So in fact, in the war years, this was only a thirty-year technological generation gap. Now with Zhu Shuren's guiding ideology and route guidance, it is possible to bridge the thirty-year technological generation gap with hard work.
…
After roughly planning the technical shortcomings that can be supplemented in the fields of metallurgy, machinery, and processing.
Zhu Shuren feels that technological advancement at the direct military level is basically enough.
The focus of the remaining scientific and technological work in the next few years should be to explore the potential of those fields with dual military and civilian uses. After all, peace construction is still the main focus now, and the science and technology tree cannot be too biased towards militarism.
If certain technical goals can be slowly achieved using dual-use military and civilian technologies, there is no need to focus on relying solely on military technology to rush for success.
For example, when discussing the issue of "reliability of rifles in tropical humid environments", Zhu Shuren discovered that if the mass production cost and production scale of smokeless gunpowder could be reduced from the civilian chemical industry, it would be much easier than designing the musket itself.
It is much more cost-effective to build complex waterproof structures.
Because those complicated mechanical structural designs of muskets would be useless if moved to the civilian field. In the future, when gunpowder materials become available, these historical detours and tinkering will no longer be necessary.
But if we actually do a good job in the chemical industry, the profits will be sustainable and the people will also benefit. In the future of the Ming Dynasty, water conservancy project construction and large-scale civil engineering will be carried out. As long as the gunpowder and explosives technology trees are pushed back, it will be harmless.
Based on this common understanding, the follow-up agenda of the science and technology planning meeting moved more smoothly. Everyone naturally reached a consensus:
In the next seven-year plan, the field of science and technology that Ming Dynasty needs to strengthen the most is the chemical industry.
The formulation, preparation, production efficiency and mass production optimization of smokeless gunpowder and other explosives are of course the first priority.
Tropical disease prevention and control drugs, tropical anthelmintic drugs, and insecticides made from other compounds are also a sub-direction worthy of efforts. Because the inland tropical rainforests in Myanmar and Vietnam are really terrifying.
Although the Ming Dynasty has conquered these remote areas before, it has not yet had a record of stationing stably throughout the year and maintaining its rule. Even if the Ming army originally reached Vietnam, it could only gain a foothold in the winter and had to leave in the summer, otherwise
They will be killed in batches.
Including fifteen years ago, when Zhu Shuren asked Zheng Zhilong and Zheng Chenggong to recover Da Yuan, it was said that Da Yuan was cooler than Vietnam, but it was just at the junction of the tropics and subtropics. But in the end, Zheng Zhilong still paid the price of dying of illness on Da Yuan Island, and so did Zheng Chenggong.
It was all because he was young and strong at that time that he was fine. All military operations at that time were carried out in winter, and troops had to be withdrawn until summer.
It can be seen that the problem of stationing in the tropics in summer is a difficulty that the Ming Dynasty has never overcome. In the past seven years, it will focus on solving this problem, and through the advancement of medicinal chemistry, it can completely achieve all-weather and all-season deterrence against tropical countries.
Let them know from now on: Ming Dynasty can deal with them at any time if it wants to.
In addition to explosives, tropical disease drugs, and insecticides, Zhu Shuren himself also designated a direction for the next seven years in the chemical field, which is the development and utilization of rubber and improving the properties of rubber products.
The reason why we chose rubber is because Zhu Shuren knew that in history, in the early days of industrial development, new materials such as rubber were important for waterproofing and airtightness.
Early steam engines suffered from severe air leakage and required sealing rings for various cylinder nesting joints. With the advent of rubber, it may be possible to use lower industrial processing precision requirements in the future to enter the industrial era ahead of schedule.
Zhu Shuren knows very well that many of the productions in the early chemical industry were based on formulas, experiments, and reaction modes and production methods. Even if there was no steam engine and the industrial age had not entered, mass production could still be achieved. Whether or not there was a steam engine would only affect the reaction at most.
The power source of the furnace reflects the scale of production.
There are so many indigenous chemical productions in later generations. India's Asan and Bati can even manufacture battery materials or recycle heavy metal compounds in small family workshops without any machinery. It can be seen that the chemical industry's dependence on power sources is very low.
Therefore, even if the Ming Dynasty did not have steam engines, Zhu Shuren was confident that he could click on the chemical technology tree first and produce a bunch of chemical products from the 1830s or even the 1850s. As long as the "recipes" such as reaction equations and reaction environments can be summarized, other technological shortcomings
Being lame doesn't affect it at all.
Historically, in the West, Goodyear came up with nitrated rubber and vulcanized rubber in the 1830s, which solved the problems of rubber dissolving at high temperatures and rapid aging due to changes in temperature differences.
In Zhu Shuren's view, since the Ming Dynasty's indigenous method of producing sulfuric acid and nitric acid has begun, and this indigenous method of nitric acid can be used to make nitrocellulose smokeless gunpowder, then we should expand the use of sulfuric acid and nitric acid to vulcanize and nitrate rubber.
After thorough research, it is just a layer of window paper that has been pierced.
Historically, the British had to wait until the 1780s for Watt to improve the steam engine. When Watt built the steam engine, he did not process rubber to ensure the sealing of the steam pipes. If the Ming Dynasty had improved the rubber sealing technology first, then maybe it would only have reached
The Western machining design level of 1750~1760 could have produced a Watt steam engine.
This can also be regarded as a roundabout way to make up for shortcomings.
Under this guiding ideology, in the next seven-year plan, Ming Dynasty’s national scientific research strength will be almost entirely tilted towards the field of chemistry. As for other general civilian technologies, private investment and state encouragement are sufficient.
Zhu Shuren’s decision-making guidance for the meeting was quickly distributed to the Ming Academy of Sciences and also to the Ministry of Industry and Household Affairs.
When the Ministry of Industry raised resources, Fang Yizhi was absolutely clueless and immediately allocated them to his younger sister. When the Ministry of Household Affairs provided money and budget, the Ministry of Household Affairs did not dare to delay at all.
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PS: I was busy with other things this morning, so today’s chapter may be a little confusing, so please bear with me. I’ll try to make the plot more vivid later on. This book will have a maximum of 2.2 million words to complete. If it’s faster, it may be 2.1 million words, it depends on the situation.
Everything that needs to be explained in the follow-up will be explained clearly. After all, it has been written to this point. It will definitely start well and end well, so everyone can rest assured.