Back when Zhang Tie's father was still in Huaiyuan Prefecture, he had started a small airship company—something of a second venture. But after coming to Great Xia, the company could no longer keep going. There was only one reason: Great Xia's airship manufacturing standards and technology were a whole stretch ahead of those on the Weiyi Subcontinent. It was not merely a matter of superior technology. Even in a place like You Province, the airships produced by the large manufacturing bases and factories concentrated in Spirit Maple Commandery and Morning Sun Commandery cost considerably less than those made by Zhang Tie's father's little company, thanks to the effects of mass production.
They could not match others in quality, nor did they have any advantage in price. Products like that naturally had no market, so Zhang Tie's father's small airship company had no choice but to shut down.
In fact, throughout Sun River Prefecture in You Province, only Huaiyuan Airship Manufacturing Plant, under Huaiyuan Hall, still barely possessed some competitive strength in You Province in terms of scale and technological capability. The other small and medium-sized airship manufacturers that had moved from Huaiyuan Prefecture could not compete with Great Xia's local airship manufacturers. Those smaller businesses had only three paths: be acquired by Huaiyuan Airship Manufacturing Plant, join forces and concentrate on becoming its downstream suppliers, or close down.
As Huaiyuan Hall's strength moved from the Weiyi Subcontinent to Great Xia, it too faced the painful growing pains of integration required to adapt to Great Xia's development needs in every respect. On one hand, those growing pains meant overcapacity in certain industries and surplus labor. On the other, they meant that the products they made lacked a competitive edge in Great Xia and lacked products with core competitiveness.
Besides airship manufacturers,