As the official newspapers under the Chu Empire's Domestic Reporting Department successively reported the news of the discovery of super gold mines in South Africa.
It caused quite a stir in the country, especially those groups who originally planned to immigrate, and also listed South Africa as their candidate destination for immigration.
Some impatient people even bought ferry tickets to South Africa as soon as possible.
Public reports have greatly stimulated the number of immigrants, and even more stimulated the number of immigrants to Africa.
In the past, although the number of immigrants was very large, they basically chose to go to Southeast Asia or North America. Not to mention Africa, not many people even went to India.
At present, the preferred destination for immigrants from the Chu Empire is North America, which is similar in geography and climate to the empire itself, especially the southern region where the climate is milder and more suitable for planting, mainly concentrated in the Jinshan Prefecture area.
The tendency of imperial immigrants to North America was far greater than that of Southeast Asia, which was closer to home.
The Chu Empire has organized immigration in the Nanyang region for more than 20 years, but now the total number of immigrants from various regions in Nanyang is not much greater than that in North America.
Several major immigration areas of the Chu Empire in Southeast Asia, such as the Luzon Islands, the Malacca Peninsula, Java Island, and the western Sumatra Island, are directly under the jurisdiction of the territories. These places have almost the same characteristics, that is, they all have a tropical rainforest climate. ...The average annual temperature can reach the upper twenties.
For example, the average annual temperature in Luzon Island can reach 27 degrees... This Luzon Island is actually relatively northern in a large area of Southeast Asia.
And places further south such as Java Island are even hotter!
This large area, except for a few special places, such as the Chu Empire's largest military base and commercial port in the Nanyang region, is also the residence of the governor of Malacca Province. Singapore is a better place because the climate is relatively special, with an average annual temperature of about 2 Thirteen and fourteen degrees.
But in most other places in Southeast Asia, the temperature is in the twenties or even above 30 degrees all year round, the rainfall is very heavy, and the sunshine is quite abundant!
This kind of climate is finally combined to form a tropical rainforest climate of high temperature, humidity, and rain... Well, people in this climate are basically the same as taking a sauna. People who are not used to this kind of climate will not be able to do anything even if they go there. If you don't do it, you'll be sweating profusely if you stay there for a long time.
This tropical rainforest climate area has also led to the proliferation of local mosquitoes and venomous snakes, making people more likely to get sick.
Then the people of Chu also discovered that in these poor places, there were a lot of typhoons and rains, and the typhoons they experienced were all very large. Super-large typhoons frequently hit the coastal areas.
Frequent heavy rains also make the land in the area seem fertile, but in fact it is difficult to carry out large-scale agricultural planting without sufficient water conservancy facilities.
For example, in the Vietnam region, which had been directly annexed by the Chu Empire, at the beginning Luo Zhixue and his ministers felt that they had occupied a good place, after all, just looking at the map.
There are many coastal plains in these places, as well as a large number of river plains... After occupying these places and starting to migrate to these places on a large scale, I realized that this damn place is really difficult to deal with.
Especially the Red River Delta in Thang Long. This damn place is just like the Mekong Delta in the south. Not only does it flood every year, but it floods every time it rains...
Officials from the Empire's water conservancy department had dark faces after coming here to inspect... The flooding situation in this damn place was much more serious than in the Huaihe River Basin in the Empire's mainland in earlier years.
If we really want to manage it well, a lot of money needs to be invested.
But there is no way, no matter how difficult it is, we have to do it. After all, this place already belongs to the empire's native provinces, and the people living in these places are also the subjects of the empire.
When these places were first annexed, there were not many indigenous people in the area. Now, most of the local population is actually immigrants from the imperial organization. These immigrants intermarried and integrated with the small number of original indigenous people in the area.
The so-called Annamites have long since disappeared from history.
In order to ensure a stable life for the people of the empire, the empire has invested a lot of money in water conservancy construction in the Annan region in the past ten years. This has turned the Red River Delta and the Mekong Delta further south into food-producing areas.
Trivia: In ancient and modern Vietnam, although they had many coastal plains and several were located in Haikou plains, the climate was also rainy, which seemed to be very suitable for large-scale food cultivation.
But in fact, Vietnam has always been an extremely food-deficient area before modern times.
Why?
Because it rains heavily every three days, the river swells when it doesn't move, and then changes its course to cause floods...
This has also led to many areas along the river plains that look like waste, but are actually not good food-producing areas!
It was not until modern times that science and technology developed, and the local area began to build various water conservancy facilities on a large scale, which allowed Vietnam's food production to increase.
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On the other hand, in Siam further south, their agricultural conditions are better, not only for their own consumption but also for export.
Very early on, the Chu Empire imported large quantities of local grain from Siam.
Generally speaking, although the Nanyang region is closer to the mainland, it is limited by the local climate conditions. Therefore, many immigrants from the empire do not like to go to these places.
They are more inclined to go to North America, or simply go to India... Since the Chu Empire expelled the European colonists from the Indian continent, it took over almost all the coastal colonial areas left by the Europeans, and at the same time also took over the local colonial areas on its own. He acquired a large area in his hands and eventually established many direct territories in India.
Many of these directly-administered territories have good climate and agricultural conditions, so many domestic immigrants will also go there.
However, they are basically concentrated in Ceylon, southern and eastern India, and there are still relatively few in other places.
There are even fewer in West Asia and North Africa. These places don't even have a directly administered territory for the time being.
Nowadays, the Chu Empire has established a territory directly under the jurisdiction of Maputo Prefecture in southern Africa. There is also a large amount of gold in the area and the agricultural conditions are very good, which immediately attracted a large number of immigrants.
In the two months at the end of the 32nd year of Chengshun, more than 20,000 immigrants took boats to Maputo, Africa, either at their own expense or through official immigration.
They will become the first large-scale immigrants from the Chu Empire in South Africa and even the entire African region.
In comparison, the Cape Town region of South Africa, which is also a directly administered territory, received only more than 5,000 immigrants in the past year!
In fact, the local agricultural conditions in South Africa are even better.
This shows how attractive gold is to people.
Just as people were attracted by the gold in Jinshan Palace and hundreds of thousands of people poured into it in just a few years, Maputo Palace is also experiencing the same situation today.
In a short period of time, more than 100,000 immigrants may even go there, trying to get rich overnight by finding gold.
But in fact, the possibility of breaking out overnight through ordinary gold mining is very slim...
Because the current super gold mine in Maputo Province, the Tshwane Gold Mine, has been nationalized, the African Governor’s Office and the local African Tax Department decided to auction the mining rights of the Tshwane Gold Mine after discussions.
In the end, the mining rights were obtained by the Western Armed Trading Company with an absolute price advantage.
In the next twenty years, the Western Armed Trading Company will be fully responsible for the mining of the gold mine, and in addition to paying a fixed amount of fees to the government every year, the gold mined every year will need to pay a high gold mining tax, and the tax will be paid in full. A share of the final profits must be given to the Maputo government.
Most of the gold mined from this super gold mine in the future will be returned to the national treasury in the form of mining rights fees, gold mining taxes, and profit distribution.
In fact, the remaining part seems to belong to the Western Arms Trading Company... but in fact, the Western Arms Trading Company is also a wholly-owned government enterprise.
To put it bluntly, most of the gold and profits mined will belong to the government.
It has nothing to do with private capital, let alone those gold diggers.
However, those gold diggers can actually look for gold in other places. According to preliminary survey reports, the local gold mine in Tshwane is not just a local super gold mine, but an entire gold mining belt.
In order to develop local gold, the local government will successively conduct auctions of local areas where gold mines may exist.
In this way, many domestic mining companies, especially those that are engaged in overseas mineral development, have also gone there to carry out development.
Even gold diggers can actually purchase exploration and mining rights in a small number of places and then pan for gold...
If it really doesn't work, you can go to the barren mountains and forests to pan for gold by yourself, and no one can care about you.
Generally speaking, there are very few gold diggers who get rich overnight, but it is not impossible... It's just that most people are disappointed, or they work hard to find gold, and in the end they don't save much money, and the real profits are all lost to everyone. Enterprises and businessmen made money.
These have little impact on the official empire. Anyway, what the senior leaders of the Chu Empire need is more gold reserves to support their country's gold standard currency.
At the same time, control more gold-producing areas to prevent the indigenous people from digging out a large amount of gold with a shovel, and then using the gold to purchase a large amount of industrial products from the empire.
This is also the reason why the Great Chu Empire adopted the indirect gold standard... The currency system that controls the gold standard to a certain extent is used by the indigenous people, who use a lot of gold to purchase the industrial products of the Great Chu Empire.
After all, strictly speaking, the Chu Empire's demand for the indigenous people was not gold, but various industrial raw materials, agricultural products... Gold cannot be eaten or drunk, it is just a trading equivalent.
As far as the Chu Empire is concerned, those indigenous countries should not mine any gold mines. They can just grow food, cotton, and mine industrial minerals, and then export industrial raw materials and agricultural products to the Chu State, and the Chu State will then provide It was a pile of Chu Yuan banknotes under the indirect gold standard, and then the natives took these pieces of paper to the Chu Empire to purchase industrial products.
This forms an economic cycle!
If the natives dig gold directly and then use the gold to purchase the industrial products of the Chu Empire... wouldn't the Chu Empire suffer a huge loss?
Therefore, if the Dachu Empire wants to adopt the gold standard, and if it wants to maintain the gold standard system for a long time, and not let the indigenous people take advantage, it is very important to control the major gold producing areas around the world.
In fact, this is indeed the case at present. The Dachu Empire controls a large number of gold-producing areas and uses modern industrial surveying to mine gold.
Currently, more than 200 tons of gold are produced every year, while other indigenous countries only produce a few tons of gold a year combined.
The gold output of the Chu Empire in the past thirty years has exceeded the total gold mining of mankind in the past thousands of years. This is a terrifying figure.
The gold-producing area of Maputo Province in South Africa is an important part of the empire's maintenance of the gold standard system, and nothing can be missed.
That's why the Chu Empire directly promoted immigration and gold development in South Africa from the central level.
This situation is even more true thirty-three years after entering Chengshun. Many government-run mining companies from the Dachu Empire have successively announced their presence in Maputo Prefecture to invest in the gold industry.
The Guangdong and Guangxi Mining Company acted the fastest. Their surveyors were the first to arrive in Maputo. It didn't take long for them to draw their own preliminary survey conclusions, and then they bid generously to the local government for the gold exploration and mining rights of a large area of land.
Just three months later, their first gold mining site was established.
Immediately afterwards, more gold mines were discovered one after another. In less than a year, more than 20 gold mines of various sizes were discovered in Tshwane.
A large amount of gold mining machinery began to flow along the river and into the land.
In order to solve transportation problems and difficulties in transporting materials caused by the influx of large numbers of people, the Maputo Government has also formally applied for the construction of a local railway to connect Maputo and Tshwane.
This matter has caused a certain range of controversy among the empire's top officials. After all, at present, the Chu Empire has no precedent of building railways overseas.
In the past ten years or so, the railway construction in the Chu Empire has been concentrated in the local area. Although the results have been very good and tens of thousands of kilometers of railways have been built, funds and personnel are still relatively tight.
Therefore, I have never been able to take care of railway development in overseas areas. At most, there are mining areas, port railways and other non-public railways developed by overseas enterprises on their own.
But in the end, the matter was decided directly by Luo Zhixue. If overseas directly-administered territories have this demand and it is expected that the railway can return the cost or even make a profit, then the railway can be built appropriately.
After all, railways can speed up local development, allow the empire to better control the local area, and strengthen its ability to control surrounding areas.
As for the funding issue, just continue to issue railway construction bonds... Anyway, the Dachu Empire Railway Corporation already owes a lot of railway construction debt, and there is no shortage of tens of millions more Chu yuan in debt.
Even if you build railways overseas, the cost is actually lower. Although the rails and everything have to be transported from the mainland, the infrastructure costs can be greatly reduced!
When building railways in the mainland, the workers who build the railways are all citizens of the country. Not only are they guaranteed a minimum wage, but they also need to pay attention to various safety productions. If someone dies during the construction of the road, not only will they lose money, but it is also easy to let them go. The responsible official loses his official hat.
But in overseas territories, this problem does not exist.
Because in overseas territories, you can't let your own people immigrate all the way to build railways... You can't do this whether it's due to cost considerations or political risk considerations.
Therefore, the labor used in large-scale infrastructure construction in overseas areas has always been a variety of low-cost indigenous labor.
Whether it is using prisoners of war from the military, free indigenous labor from a labor service company, or simply hiring ordinary indigenous labor, the cost is very low.
In fact, a large part of railway costs these days is infrastructure costs. After saving this part and comparing it, we find that building railways overseas is cheaper than building railways in China.
Taking into account various factors, Luo Zhixue personally issued an order and approved the preparation plan for the Maputo Railway. At the same time, he also approved the American Jinshan Railway, which had been applied for many times before.
Even Luo Zhixue personally gave instructions that the railway construction in America can be bolder and faster according to the situation!
Build the railway from Jinshanfu all the way to the east...to the east coast of North America.
There are not many rivers on the west coast of America. It is difficult for immigrants to rely on rivers to penetrate into the interior of North America, let alone the east coast of America!
Then we will build a railway across it!
Ships and trains must have been the vanguard of the Chu Empire's external expansion and the fight for more living space for the Chinese nation.
Let’s not talk about ships. Railways are themselves called strategic railways. The Chu Empire had built all the way to Central Asia before. It was the Northwest Railway-Central Asia Railway that allowed the Chu Empire to truly control They conquered the huge Central Asia and immigrated to these places in large numbers.
Now, the Chu Empire is planning to do it again in North America!
Build a strategic railway that runs through the east and west coasts of North America to capture all of North America.
The specific method is also very simple: the army takes the lead and carries out large-scale armed expulsion of the indigenous people to completely ensure security along the proposed railway line.
At the same time, the railway company organized the construction of railways in the rear, and the railways could also provide sufficient logistical supplies for the army advancing eastward.
After the railway was built, the officials organized a large number of immigrants to go there, and opened immigrant settlements along the railway and along the river, and exercised practical and comprehensive control over the surrounding areas.
Fighting wars, building roads, and immigrating while at the same time, this is the North American strategy set by the empire's top brass.
In response to this North American construction and development strategy, the empire's senior officials finally finalized the entire plan. This plan is called: North America's Eastward Advance Plan!
The name was chosen by Luo Zhixue himself to pay tribute to the Westward Expansion Movement that was notorious to outsiders but extremely great to Americans!
Why a tribute?
Because the plan to advance North America eastward will definitely be great in the eyes of the Chu people!
