Charlotte followed her own plan and settled directly in Xi'an.
However, he did not forget his work, and sent Zhu Jingyuan's response to the Tianzhu transaction via telegram the next day to his father, the Prince of Wales.
In addition to the conditions directly stated by Zhu Jingyuan, there was also Charlotte's own explanation.
Directly exempting the remaining loan, this is the final condition, and Daming will not pay any additional price.
Moreover, no matter whether it is now or in the future, no matter how much is left on the loan, Daming's condition is to forgive the loan.
If the loan is repaid normally, Daming will not impose any conditions.
At the end of the Yinzhou War, Ming Dynasty provided large loans to Britain and France respectively.
Part of the loan obtained by Britain was used to repay war reparations to the Ming Dynasty, part was used to help Britain and the United States survive the financial crisis, and part was used for the recovery and infrastructure construction of the United States.
Today, less than half of this loan has been repaid, and the remaining amount is still quite huge.
If it is directly exempted, it will certainly directly reduce the financial burden on the UK.
The Prince of Wales looked very confused.
In addition to loan forgiveness, the Prince of Wales also wants a large sum of money.
Just judging from what his daughter said, the attitude of the Ming Dynasty people was very clear. Either the British would accept this deal, or both parties would continue to wait and would not accept other conditions.
The Prince of Wales couldn't make up his mind at all, so he called Prime Minister Grenville.
After reading the description, Grenville was certainly not satisfied with the conditions.
There is still a long way to go before the psychological expectations of British bureaucrats such as Grenville.
But unlike the Prince of Wales, Grenville made a decision quickly:
"Your Highness, I suggest accepting Daming's conditions..."
The Prince of Wales was surprised:
"Accept? Just accept it like this? That's Nan Tianzhu, can you only get these loans?"
Grenville said of course:
“The Nantianzhu of today is no longer the Nantianzhu of the past.
“That continent has been completely hollowed out by us and is now just a hot and humid wasteland.
“The key is, Her Royal Highness Charlotte said that Ming Dynasty will not come up with other conditions.
"If we continue to delay, the actual rewards we can get will continue to decrease."
Grenville agreed so readily because he was ready to give up.
Relevant personnel in the bureaucracy are ready to hand over Nan Tianzhu to Ming Dynasty and retain an asset.
If it is not handed over to Daming, this asset will be a non-performing asset. The key is that it cannot be developed directly.
The Prince of Wales did not want to give up such a piece of land at such a low price:
"Your Excellency Grenville, do we have a chance to re-open the land of Southern Tianzhu?
“After all, the old, weak, sick and disabled have disappeared, leaving only the young and middle-aged.
“After all, the land in Tianzhu is better than Southwest Mozhou.
“And now our relationship with Ming is getting closer and closer.
“Now there should be no need to worry too much about Nan Tianzhu being surrounded by the Ming Dynasty.
"And Ming Dynasty seems to have little interest in Nan Tianzhu..."
Grenville was stunned for a moment, and an idea of trying appeared in his mind.
But the idea quickly died out.
If Southern Tianzhu was not handed over to the Ming Dynasty but continued to be developed by the British, the preparations of a large number of British civil servants and nobles, including Grenville, would have been in vain.
So Grenville said very decisively:
“It’s impossible, we can’t redevelop South Tianzhu.
“The cost of transporting people from Mozhou to Southern Tianzhu is too high.
“But what’s more important is the relationship with Ming Dynasty.
“Nan Tianzhu is a thorn between us and Ming Dynasty.
“Only by handing over Nan Tianzhu to Ming Dynasty can the conflicts between the two sides be truly eliminated.
"It's not that Ming Dynasty doesn't care about Nan Tianzhu, but it's just that he doesn't care too much. This is a typical bargaining strategy.
“If the deal fails, this British colony left in the hinterland of the Ming Dynasty will become the trigger for the next war.
“If we want to maintain a good relationship with Ming Dynasty, we must give up Southern Tianzhu.
"And the faster, the better. The longer the stalemate lasts, the fewer benefits Nan Tianzhu can get..."
Although the Prince of Wales was a little reluctant and reluctant, he finally agreed with a sigh after Grenville spared no effort in persuading him.
Then the Prince of Wales sent a message to Charlotte.
Charlotte was also very surprised when she received the news. She did not expect that her father would agree like this.
Charlotte originally thought that the delay would continue like last time.
When Charlotte forwarded the news to Zhu Jingyuan, Zhu Jingyuan was also a little surprised.
Zhu Jingyuan looked at Charlotte and asked:
"Is your father really agreeing like this? Do you want to use Nan Tianzhu in exchange for Daming's condition of exempting all loans? Have you made it clear to your father what I mean?"
Charlotte explained with a grimace:
"Of course I made it clear. I was surprised myself. I don't know why my father agreed directly..."
Zhu Jingyuan looked at the telegraph newspaper in his hand and read it back and forth twice:
"Hey, since Britain has accepted it, let's start negotiations to prepare for the handover after that year."
Charlotte nodded in confusion:
"Um……"
Nan Tianzhu's problem is the last thing that happened in the ninth year of Ankang.
The New Year of ten years of well-being is coming soon.
After the New Year, Ming Dynasty and Britain each arranged their diplomats to go to Bombay in Tianzhu for negotiations.
The negotiation this time was much simpler. It was said to be a negotiation, but it was actually a discussion of the handover process, and it was arranged in just five days.
In mid-February of the 10th year of Ankang, the Ming Navy carried several groups of army officers and soldiers to the remaining major cities in southern Tianzhu and officially began to take over this land.
British official personnel stationed in the South Tianzhu area gradually left South Tianzhu within the next month.
The family members specially arranged by the British bureaucrats headed by Grenville directly stayed on the land and manor in South Tianzhu.
People in the Ming Dynasty did not like the British very much, and Zhu Jingyuan never supported the use of foreign populations.
But Nan Tianzhu's transaction was a pure transaction, not a request under tension like the Dongyi Kingdom, let alone a direct occupation in a state of war.
Coupled with the influence of Charlotte's relationship and the increasing number of economic and trade exchanges, the relationship between the two parties has become closer and closer.
Now there is no suitable reason for Ming Dynasty to directly and violently expel these people who are willing to stay.
Therefore, the Ming officials responsible for taking over Southern Tianzhu, just as the British thought, referred to the original arrangement of Dongyi Kingdom for the Taixi people and gave them the citizenship of Southern Tianzhu vassal state.
The problem of Nantianzhu, which had been sandwiched between Ming Dynasty and Britain for decades, was finally solved.
The British gave up this fertile land and strategically located but wildened colony and waived all remaining Ming loans.
This deal is of course relatively loss-making for the UK.
But the state of many British bureaucrats, civil servants, and aristocrats is beaming...
Although the United Kingdom may indeed have suffered a loss at the national level, they and their families have not.
After the handover of Southern Tianzhu was completed, the local situation after the outbreak of the plague was directly displayed in front of the people of Ming Dynasty.
The degree of desolation of the cities in southern Tianzhu and the degree of wilderness in the interior were completely beyond the Ming Dynasty's expectations.
Ten years ago, there were almost no people in the place where 70 to 80 million people lived.
The population outside the city has almost completely disappeared, as if returning to an undeveloped wilderness.
Only the Tianzhu people who were forcibly driven into the wilderness for experiments before the British left were still operating on the edge of the city.
These Tianzhu people all knew that all the people in the interior were dead, and some of them had originally fled from the interior.
Now I don’t want or dare to go deep into the interior again.
They didn't dare to go inland, and the people of Ming Dynasty didn't even dare to go inland.
Aircrafts can only be used to patrol the sky, look down from the air, observe and record the situation on the ground.
The long barbed wire fence that towers on the border between north and south Tianzhu has not been removed.
Now the relevant officials are very conservative and still temporarily isolate the entire South Tianzhu, waiting for the final decision from the top management.
Zhu Jingyuan quickly received a report on the situation in Tianzhu from the imperial court.
Zhu Jingyuan was also shocked by the wilderness environment of the interior of the large number of faxes of aerial photos of the interior of South Tianzhu:
"Is this what the original cities and villages looked like after humans disappeared?"
Charlotte sat next to Zhu Jingyuan and looked at the photos Zhu Jingyuan had seen. She was also very shocked:
"The population of these villages and small towns left and disappeared for only two or three years, and now they are completely covered by grass and wild trees..."
Zhu Jingyuan sighed and said:
"The Tianzhu area has sufficient rainfall and heat. Without human intervention, it should soon turn into grassland or even forest."
Charlotte asked curiously:
"Then the Ming Dynasty will immediately start the development of the inland areas of South Tianzhu?"
Zhu Jingyuan thought for a moment and put down the photo in his hand:
“I think…it’s better not to go to the inland areas for the time being.
“God knows whether there are any traces of the plague germs and whether they could be spread through decaying animal and human corpses.
“Let’s wait at least ten years before talking about developing the interior.
“However, existing cities and residential areas in the surrounding coastal areas can resume construction.
"After the cities have slowed down, we will then use these cities as the center and slowly expand into the surrounding inland wilderness."
Zhu Jingyuan thought carefully, wrote a simple report and suggestions, and sent it to his father through a dedicated telegraph line.
A few days later, Zhu Jingyuan received a reply from his father.
Zhu Jingyuan subconsciously thought that it was a question and discussion about Tianzhu affairs.
After reading it, I realized that I was asking about things on the other side of the world.
Among the accompanying documents, there is also a report signed by Zhu Di Jin, the manager of Panama Royal Village, and Wang Jinpeng, the chief engineer of the Yinzhou Canal Project.
After more than five years of construction, the Yinzhou Canal is about to be completed.
Of course, since the project itself is extremely large, the completion process will also be relatively long.
Now the scale of the project has begun to shrink, and more and more project areas are gradually entering the state of inspection and cleaning.
It is expected to be officially completed in July this year.
The final construction standards currently implemented are that the water depth is 20 meters, the river bottom width is 120 meters, and the water surface width is 300 meters.
Dual-lane navigation, that is, two basically parallel canals.
If we only look at the construction of the single-line canal, it was actually completed a year ago.
In other words, this canal was opened to navigation last year, and the construction of the double-line project continues until now.
Even so, this speed is already very scary.
In the original history, the French repaired it for six years and made a mess.
It took the Americans another ten years to complete a narrow, lock-like above-ground canal and turn the valley into a lake.
It can only pass ships of about 50,000 tons at most and no more than 33 meters wide.
The Yinzhou Canal built by the Ming Dynasty is a giant compared to the Panama Canal in history.
In fact, the logic is very simple. First, Zhu Jingyuan directly listed the places where the French and Americans failed.
Then Wang Jinpeng took Zhu Jingyuan's reminder and made very detailed and reliable exploration and engineering preparations.
At this time, the Ming Dynasty still had advanced large-scale project management concepts left by Emperor Shizu.
There is also the support of Zhu Zhujin's unique logistics management and business plan.
In order to save money, prisoner-of-war laborers were allowed to open up wasteland and farm their own fields, and a self-sufficient construction plan was launched.
Finally, there are more than 800,000 prisoner-of-war laborers captured in the Yinzhou War, plus about 200,000 Ming workers and craftsmen.
During the entire project, more than 20,000 workers have died one after another.
However, there are basically no deaths from high-intensity labor. Most of them are caused by tropical diseases, and most of them are elderly people who are already weak.
In the previous life, there were only more than 40,000 workers in the Panama Canal, which was more than 20 times the number of workers.
Today's Ming Dynasty also has more construction machinery that the French and Americans did not have in the previous life.
The combination of various factors allowed Daming to complete this super project in just over five years.
The project is about to be officially completed, and several important issues are also placed in front of Zhudi Jin.
How will these workers be arranged in the future?
In order to stimulate the work enthusiasm of these prisoner-of-war laborers, Zhu Dijin applied to Zhu Jingyuan to grant Panamanian national status to the active prisoner-of-war laborers.
Zhu Jingyuan accepted this suggestion and allowed Zhu Zhujin to make a formal commitment.
Zhu Dijin knew that Zhu Jingyuan did not want these people to stay in the Ming Dynasty, so he worked very hard to control the number of identity issues.
However, Zhu Zhujin, who has rich management experience, also understands that if such rewards are given out too little, the incentive effect will not be good.
So after five years of non-stop work, almost 200,000 identities were issued one after another.
Zhu Zhujin did not want to break his promise, so these 200,000 active workers must stay.
So the question is what to do with the remaining 600,000 people.
Among these 600,000 people, only a small number were willing to leave Panama and go to Mexico in the north as originally promised.
These people basically all had noble status.
But the vast majority of ordinary POW laborers wanted to stay in Panama.
Because of their work in the past five years or so, these low-level Thais are completely familiar with Ming Dynasty's management methods.
Although the people of the Ming Dynasty are indeed full of discrimination against them, the people of the Ming Dynasty are much more civilized in terms of management and attitude towards workers than their own ethnic group, the Taixi people.
After working here for five years, they did not see a few workers who were beaten to death, and the number of workers who died of exhaustion was also very small.
You can eat enough most of the time, and it's almost completely safe.
The living conditions here can be considered good for this era.
The key is that it is much better than fighting in Nanyinzhou in the past.
So they want to stay.
Zhu Zhujin himself also wanted to keep them, and these people were sent by experienced workers.
You can be given a right of residence, which can be used to continue to open up wasteland and build factories in Panama. If you work hard, you will be gradually granted national status.
But the resident manager also knew that Zhu Jingyuan didn't like foreigners, so he had to ask for instructions specifically.
(End of chapter)
