Chapter 1874 Limited vision
Due to the limitations of his environment and the level of information he has access to, Li Bo's perspective on the problem is undoubtedly relatively narrow. War and peace, closeness and alienation between countries are by no means accidental events, and with his current limited It is indeed difficult to see clearly the current complex international relations.
The game situation between the four countries of Ming Dynasty, Haihan, Qing Dynasty and North Korea has gradually emerged in Northeast Asia, and North Korea can only temporarily play a weak role. The military strength of the other three countries is far better than that of North Korea. According to the To "arrange" North Korea according to their own interests and needs, and take turns to act as the suzerain of North Korea. Among them, the Ming Dynasty relied on the prestige accumulated over the past two hundred years to form a control over Korea, while the Qing Dynasty used force to break the situation. In the Dingmao Rebellion in 1627, it broke the vassal relationship between Korea and the Ming Dynasty and forcibly intervened.
As for Haihan, although he was the last force to enter this area, he was also the fastest to replace the former because he was more prepared in terms of strategic planning. Regardless of whether it was the Ming Dynasty or the Qing Dynasty, when they faced the new opponent Haihan, their shortcomings in force were inevitably exposed. In this era where fists speak, Haihan's iron fist will undoubtedly make it difficult for them to parry, even if they are unwilling to do so. It can only temporarily give up its position as the regional hegemon.
Li Bo's problem is that he only saw the different attitudes shown by these three countries when dealing with North Korea, but did not understand the international situation reflected by the various attitudes. The domineering Ming Dynasty, the unreasonable Qing Dynasty, and the unparalleled shrewd Haihan, no matter which country is actually a good partner for North Korea, they just have different ways of squeezing North Korea.
In real comparison, Ming Dynasty has the least demands from North Korea. In recent years, it has almost no desires or demands. After Hou Jin invaded North Korea in 1627, he required North Korea to pay annual coins, and Haihan clearly marked the price of all aid provided to North Korea, turning military aid into a business. However, North Korea believes that the Ming Dynasty's laissez-faire towards Hou Jin in recent years is a sign of unwillingness to save them, and this attitude has made them increasingly alienated from their former suzerain country, and even developed some hatred.
Li Bo is one of the Koreans who holds this idea. In his view, the evil neighbors in the north are all unreasonable barbarians. Their use of force to attack North Korea is due to evil intentions. The Haihan people were not originally the suzerains of North Korea. It is reasonable for North Korea to meet certain conditions before it is willing to provide military protection. The attitudes of these two companies are reasonable. However, as the suzerain state of North Korea for more than two hundred years, the Ming Dynasty turned a blind eye to the crisis facing North Korea, which in his opinion was really unjustifiable.
So when today's reception banquet, the military attachés of the Ming Dynasty showed their "concern" for North Korea. Li Bo couldn't help but feel a little unhappy when he thought about it afterwards. He thought that the attitude of these military attaches was too hypocritical and that their concern for North Korea was completely a performance. . Little do they know that what these military attachés really care about is not the life and death of North Korea, but whether there are relatively easy-to-operate business opportunities there that would allow them to enter the market and make profits.
Li Pu tried hard to recall his speech and performance at the banquet, but he still didn't dare to confirm whether he had made any gaffe or inappropriate behavior. After thinking about it, he simply called his entourage to invite Jin Shangjiu over.
Jin Shangjiu slept until he was woken up in the middle of the night. Hearing that the Crown Prince was urgently summoning him, he quickly got dressed and hurried over. After listening to Li Pu's question, he was a little dumbfounded. He thought that the prince might have been drunk and confused, and he couldn't even remember what he had done before.
However, Jin Shangjiu did not show any impatience and responded respectfully: "Your Majesty, you had a great time chatting with officials from various countries at the previous banquet, and there was nothing inappropriate about it."
Li Pu frowned and thought to himself that he only remembered chatting with Ming officers about some inexplicable topics. Why did he later chat with officials from other countries?
Jin Shangjiu continued: "The Crown Prince asked a lot of envoys from Annan and other countries about the human geography of the South China Sea last night. It seems that he has entered the state."
Li Bo was even more confused now. He couldn't even remember who he had talked to, and how could he remember the content of the conversation. But it's a pity to think about it. These topics may be beneficial to my future study, life and social interactions in Haihan, but I can't recall them at all.
With a glimmer of hope, Li Bo asked Jin Shangjiu: "Master Jin, do you remember what issues I discussed with envoys from other countries?"
Jin Shangjiu bowed and responded: "I only heard a few questions intermittently. The Crown Prince asked how many countries there are in the South China Sea, what is their size, and how far are these countries from Haihan Kingdom."
The corners of Li Pu's mouth couldn't help but twitch a few times. Asking these questions really exposed his ignorance. He himself was not a well-read person. What he had studied before was mostly Confucianism such as Confucian classics and history, and he had very little exposure to knowledge such as astronomy and geography. Moreover, given North Korea's location and navigation level, its understanding of the South China Sea is indeed very limited, and it only knows some country names.
Increasing understanding of the outside world is one of the main purposes of Li Bo's study abroad this time. However, asking envoys from other countries for this information on an occasion like yesterday's dinner does seem to be a bit exposing his shortcomings. But Jin Shangjiu felt that there was nothing wrong with doing this. Instead, he thought that Li Bo had entered a learning state at this time. He could not have imagined that Li Bo's performance last night was because of drinking, not because of his eagerness to learn.
After Li Bo roughly asked about the situation at yesterday's banquet, he let Jin Shangjiu leave. Regarding the blank period in his mind, Li Bo could only secretly make up his mind to control drinking too much in the future, so as not to delay business like yesterday. Fortunately, according to Jin Shangjiu, he did not act out of character at the time, which was probably the best of misfortunes.
After Jin Shangjiu left, Li Pu fell on the bed and thought over and over again about yesterday's conversation with Shi Diwen and others before slowly falling asleep.
The next day, Li Hao slept peacefully until almost noon before getting up. According to the arrangement, his schedule today is to visit Dinghaigang Shipyard with Shi Diwen in the afternoon.
After the Anti-Qing War, North Korea has fully realized the role of shipbuilding and navigation in defending the country, so it has also regarded the construction of surface armed forces as the next key development direction. Although the shipyard in the lower reaches of the Datong River, which is funded by Haihan and developed by North Korea, is still under construction, there are four shipbuilders among the overseas students sent to Haihan this time, which also shows that North Korea How seriously officials take this matter.
Dinghaigang Shipyard located on Zhoushan Island is not the largest shipyard under Haihan's rule, and it cannot even make it into the top three. The main purpose of building the shipyard here was not to build combat ships, but to provide such a facility to provide repair and maintenance for the East China Sea Fleet stationed here and the Northern Fleet that would subsequently move north to Shandong. However, after Haihan occupied Lushun, he quickly built a shipyard in Lushun Port to save the ships of the Northern Fleet from having to travel all the way back to Zhejiang for maintenance. In fact, the Zhoushan Islands were one of the maritime trade distribution centers in the East China Sea before Haihan arrived, so the shipbuilding industry here is relatively developed, and there are many private shipyards capable of building seagoing ships of four to five hundred materials. However, after Haihan established a government-run shipyard in Dinghai Port, he quickly used various means to attract civilian shipbuilders with outstanding skills.
The official responsible for managing the Dinghai Port Shipyard is Zhang Qianxiang, the second son of Zhang Tiangui, the technical director of the Shengli Port Shipyard. He is also a standard industry insider and technocrat. One of Zhang Qianxiang's major achievements during his management of Dinghaigang Shipyard was to equip it with the technical capabilities to manufacture expedition-class warships.
Although this is only the smallest model of the Haihan Navy's active warships, and its construction is not as difficult as high-end warships, not just any shipyard can have the corresponding technical capabilities. The number of senior technicians required, dry docks dedicated to building warships, supporting facilities for processing shipbuilding wood, and standardized shipbuilding processes, etc., are all rigid standards that ordinary private shipyards cannot achieve.
"We started building this shipyard three years ago, and it has only been more than a year since it actually built production capacity. However, the operation efficiency here is very high. Since the shipyard was built, more than 1,000 ships have been launched from here. Thirty ships.”
Shi Diwen proudly introduced the situation of the shipyard to Li Bo: "Several expedition-class warships built here have now entered service in the Northern Fleet. By the way, the Haihan Navy that previously fought in your country, Among them are the warships we built here.”
Shi Diwen's introduction is not a boast. Currently, there are as many as a thousand employees in the Dinghaigang Shipyard. All the slipways and docks are not empty, and they are all working at full capacity to build ships of all sizes.
Li Pu curiously pointed to a place in the distance surrounded by canvas and asked: "Excuse me, Mr. Shi, what kind of ship is being built there?"
Shi Diwen nodded to Zhang Qianxiang next to him and said: "Director Zhang, come and explain to the prince."
Zhang Qianxiang stepped forward and bowed to Li Pu and said: "Your Majesty, a naval warship is being built there. Due to the need for technical confidentiality, the outside is covered with canvas. Your Majesty, would you like to go in and take a look?"
Of course Li Bo would not object to this suggestion, so under the leadership of Zhang Qianxiang, Li Bo and his party were able to enter the military dock and observe the construction process of the Haihan warship.
Different from the slipway where civilian ships are built outside, this enclosed place is a dry dock that Li Bo has never seen before. There is a sealed gate about one foot high on the seaside. The gate will not be opened until the warships in the dock are completed and launched. The expedition-class warship currently under construction in the dock has completed about 50% of the hull construction. It seems that it is still too early to be completed.
"The keel laying of this ship started one and a half months ago. The construction period is expected to be five months. It will be completed and launched around the first month of next year. If the military's sea trial acceptance can be successfully passed, it will be put into service as soon as March next year." Zhang Qianxiang also became excited when it came to his work: "We have three such shipyards here. If they operate at full speed, at least six expedition-class warships can be launched every year, which can basically meet the normal expansion and maintenance of warships of the Northern Fleet and East China Sea Fleet. Upgrade.”
Although Dinghaigang Shipyard currently has the ability to build expedition-class warships, in fact, the weapons and equipment on the ship are still inevitably limited by the supply of Sanya. To form combat effectiveness, the warships built here must still be subject to the unified arrangements of the Ministry of National Defense. .
However, for Li Bo, what he is concerned about is whether such shipbuilding technology can be introduced into North Korea, or whether the country's shipbuilders can learn these advanced technologies and bring them back to North Korea. The four shipbuilders he brought were all staring at the Haihan craftsmen who were working on the hull, as if they wanted to learn some advanced techniques from their operations.
Of course, Zhang Qianxiang also took note of the North Koreans' performance, but he was not worried that the North Koreans would be able to learn the skills after just a few glances here. Haihan's shipbuilding technology is a systematic project. The real high-value technology actually lies in ship design, process arrangement, component standardization, complete supporting facilities, etc. When it is actually constructed on the slipway or dock, it is actually the processing that has been processed When good parts are assembled together, the technical difficulty is not very high. If you are a craftsman with certain professional skills and the opportunity to receive formal training, you can start working in less than a month.
The shipbuilding technology training that Haihan provided to North Korea was mainly about operational skills in the construction process in the early stage. If the craftsmen selected by North Korea have relatively strong abilities, they will have the opportunity to learn more advanced technologies. As for advanced technologies such as ship design, Haihan does not believe that the craftsmen selected by North Korea have such a technical foundation, so there are currently no plans in this area. Of course, if such a talent really emerges, Haihan will definitely try to naturalize him.
Shi Diwen very generously allowed North Korean craftsmen to come up close to observe the details of the construction and the hull structure, to show that Haihan had no selfish intentions for the technical training project he had promised. This kind of move also won Li Bo's favor, thinking that this was a sign that Haihan kept his word. It's just that he has limited vision and knowledge, and he doesn't know that the main reason why Haihan is so generous is that he is too far ahead in technology, so he can show these things to them without fear.
Another thing Zhang Qianxiang did not explain to the North Koreans is that the reason why the shipyard was fenced was not to worry that the shipbuilding technology would be stolen by outsiders. After all, the Dinghaigang Shipyard was originally a military-controlled area, and no one else could get there. Nearby, the reason for the fence is not to let the outside world know the construction progress of the warships, so as to estimate the changes in Haihan's naval power.
(End of chapter)