It should be noted that Japan’s steel production at this time was only around 100,000 tons, while the Far East Empire might only be at the level of twenty to thirty thousand tons. This really highlights the terrifying steel production of Belgium, and without a doubt, a large portion of Belgian steel was exported to France.

Belgium is rich in domestic coal mine resources, and iron ore basically meets the demand as well. The Belgian Congo also has relatively rich iron ore resources. The combination of these two, along with France’s demand, is the main driving force behind Belgium’s steel industry development.

Of course, the iron ore from Belgian colonies is also one of the important sources of East Africa’s imported iron ore, with Cabinda’s steel industry depending quite heavily on the iron ore from the Belgian Congo.

"Currently, besides satisfying the basic industrial and civilian needs, our steel industry development direction has also achieved significant progress in specialized steel materials. During the Five-Year Plan, steel smelting technology has continuously made advances, resulting in the mass production of various alloy steel, providing a solid foundation for our national defense industry as well as shipbuilding and other sectors, quickly catching up in quality with other countries."

In the early 20th century, the steel industry was undergoing major transformations. Apart from iron ore surpassing coal in prominence in the steel industry, the massive production of alloy steel is also a key feature.

Alloy steel is steel to which elements like chromium, nickel, and tungsten are added. Adding chromium can increase the hardness and elasticity of the steel, adding nickel can enhance corrosion resistance and yield strength, and adding tungsten not only increases strength but also improves corrosion, heat, and wear resistance. The addition of various materials can greatly enhance the performance of the steel.

Cannon made from alloy steel can withstand higher barrel temperatures and greater barrel pressure; more propellant can be used, further enhancing the caliber, thus rapidly ushering the steel artillery into the era of giant cannons.

The leader in this field is Germany. Although the scale of Germany’s steel industry is difficult to surpass that of the United States, Germany is quickly developing its steel quality through technical breakthroughs and talent advantages, beginning to exceed the likes of the UK and France, which was also the important assurance of the performance of German artillery and rifles in World War I.

For example, Rheinmetall was the first to produce tungsten steel artillery, leaving the Allies behind in World War I.

East Africa is also developing rapidly in alloy steel, having already started exploring material research fields in the 1890s, and these explorations have been widely applied during the Five-Year Plan, benefiting the steel industry.

Moreover, East Africa naturally has a resource advantage in this field. In the 1990s, East Africa was already the world’s largest producer of manganese and chromium, with rich reserves of manganese and chromium, as well as nickel, zinc, tungsten, copper, aluminum, and rare earth resources.

This created a good foundation for East Africa’s alloy research, not just applying it in the steel industry to produce specialized steel but also achieving great breakthroughs in copper and aluminum alloy fields. Ernst himself could not guarantee whether East Africa or Germany is the strongest country in the world regarding alloy fields.

East Africa’s focus on new material research was naturally influenced by Ernst. Coupled with East Africa’s advantage in resources and talent, this caused the material field to enter a period of explosive growth as the 20th century began.

Many achievements had long been realized in various laboratories in East Africa, and the industrial development accelerated the successful application of these pre-arranged technologies to industrial production during the Five-Year Plan.

"The development of the steel industry simultaneously promotes the development of the railway, shipbuilding industry, electric power, and automobile manufacturing industries, which is particularly important for the national defense industry."

"There is a strong demand for specialized steel materials from the weapons and vessels used by the army and navy, greatly enhancing the competitiveness of our equipment on the international market. Many countries, including Germany and Austria-Hungary, are importing large amounts of our specialized steel. Our steel industry no longer lags behind most countries in terms of quantity or quality."

"This has allowed our steel industry to not only meet the needs of domestic industrial development during the Five-Year Plan but also begin to step outside and march towards the international market."

"Of course, our steel industry also faces new challenges. Although the steel industry is rapidly developing, there is still a considerable gap compared to the United States and Germany, especially in terms of production capacity."

This is actually a normal phenomenon. The industrialization level of the United States and Germany is significantly ahead of East Africa, so the demand for steel is naturally greater than that of East Africa. Therefore, the fundamental factor deciding East Africa’s steel production is still the country’s own industrialization level.

Of course, in terms of East Africa’s population, there might be a comparison with the United States. Germany hadn’t even reached a population of fifty million by 1900, while East Africa’s population is nearly twice that of Germany, yet steel production shows a contrary result.

"Germany’s steel production is nearing ten million tons, while the United States is approaching nineteen million tons. It’s important to note that the latest census shows that East Africa’s population is nearly ten million more than the United States and almost forty million more than Germany. Thus, theoretically, East Africa’s steel production should surpass that of the United States and Germany, but the reality is quite the opposite. Therefore, although our steel production has made rapid strides during the Five-Year Plan, it is no reason for complacency. Instead, we should take it as a lesson to strive to first surpass Germany and then the United States."

"Certainly, although our steel production is infinitely close to the United Kingdom, it remains ahead of us. So before the end of the Five-Year Plan, our steel industry should continue to exert force, achieving a formal surpassing of the United Kingdom by 1905."

"During the subsequent Five-Year Plan, our steel industry should target Germany as the main goal, striving to surpass Germany during the next five-year plan."

Regarding the ambitious aspirations of the industrial sector, Ernst did not speak much, but in Ernst’s view, surpassing Germany during the next Five-Year Plan would still be rather challenging.

Because Germany’s steel industry is also rapidly developing, perhaps the growth rate is not as fast as East Africa’s, but realizing a leap over Germany in five years seems to be very difficult. It requires East Africa’s steel production to double again during the next Five-Year Plan, and even breaking through the ten million ton mark might still make it difficult to catch up.

Certainly, although Ernst places high hopes on the first two Five-Year Plans in East Africa, he does not hold excessive enthusiasm. Achieving the kind of astonishing achievements seen in the Soviet Union’s first two Five-Year Plans is entirely unrealistic for East Africa.

Firstly, the timing is not right. The Soviet Union’s first two Five-Year Plans coincided with the rare and severe crisis of capitalism, which was a critical opportunity. During East Africa’s first two Five-Year Plans, there was clearly no such opportunity.

Of course, East Africa is not without opportunities. Apart from the capitalist world’s major crisis from previous generations, there is another opportunity of almost no scale - that is WWI and WWII. So it seems the Americans’ luck is far better than the Soviet Union’s.

The Soviet Union did benefit immensely from the first two five-year plans, yet WWII directly inflicted devastating blows on the Soviet Union. By the war’s end, the Soviet Union’s already not prosperous light industry was essentially obliterated, cities were bombed into rubble, a large number of young and middle-aged people sacrificed on the battlefield. Many results of the Soviet Union’s two Five-Year Plans were a mishmash with WWII, whereas the United States made a fortune from both world wars.

Thus, for East Africa led by Ernst to successfully utilize the major development opportunities of global wars, East Africa must absolutely not get drawn into the whirlpool of war.

And according to the calculated timing of previous generations’ WWI, it would be during East Africa’s "Fourth Five-Year Plan" or "Fifth Five-Year Plan", while prior industrial plans, without significant historical opportunities, absolutely cannot be set too aggressively.

So thinking to surpass Germany’s steel production during the next Five-Year Plan is unrealistic. East Africa still has to set reasonable industrial development goals based on its own situation, but now the first Five-Year Plan is yet to end, and naturally, Ernst does not wish to dampen the enthusiasm of government personnel.

The overall progress achieved during the first Five-Year Plan is still immensely significant for East Africa, mostly because the previous industrial level in East Africa was quite low, leaving substantial room for improvement, but this cannot lead to overly optimistic attitudes.