But when Wang Guojun heard this, he felt as if he had found a new market and said: "If tens of millions of people in Kushan eat our Dagan wheat, we don't have to worry about the problem of food accumulation here!"
But Xi Zhong said: "Xiliang still barely has wooden rails, but the Western Regions can only rely on camels. They rely on camels to transport food. I am afraid that the food transported is not enough for the camels! Instead of trying to find a way in the Kushan Empire, we can It's better to transport more grain to Liu Bei. After all, his territory is close to the sea, and a sea ship can transport several thousand dan of grain."
It doesn’t take much to think about transporting food to the Western Regions. This is something that is simply impossible. Xi Zhong wants to give up Wang Guojun’s unrealistic idea as soon as possible, unless he can also build a railway to the Western Regions and rely on the transportation capacity of steam trains. Only in this way can the price of food be greatly reduced! Otherwise, the food would rather be piled up in the warehouse and become moldy. Such losses would be less than transporting it to the Western Regions.
Xu Wei thought for a while and said: "It is better to let the money shop support the construction of breeding farms and farms, and use livestock to consume food!"
Xi Zhong said: "We have been doing this for the past few years. Now that food is cheap, many people in rural areas are raising pigs, sheep, cattle and other large livestock, as well as a large number of chickens, ducks, geese and other poultry. Even in order to maintain the quality of food in the city, Regarding meat supply, there are many thousands of acres of breeding farms near big cities like Jidu, and they specialize in delivering meat to the city! If the breeding farms hadn’t been expanding year after year, our food accumulation problem would have been even more serious!”
Jia Xu, who had just returned from Jiangnan, said helplessly: "But this method only treats the symptoms, not the root cause, and may not be effective. I have also established several large-scale breeding farms in Nandu. I originally wanted to use livestock to consume food, but people only need to eat more." One bite of meat will result in two fewer bites of food. According to my statistics, the amount of food eaten by the people of Nandu has dropped by half in the past few years!"
Then he laughed and said: "Back then, the government just said that there was not enough food to eat, so we thought of ways to eat meat. We thought it was a joke, but we didn't expect that eating too much meat could really reduce the amount of food we eat."
Li Ru thought for a while and said: "Judging from the current situation, it is difficult for the imperial court to continue to maintain the minimum guaranteed price of food. According to our annual increase of 3 million people in Daqian, it is equivalent to an annual increase of 30 to 40 million shi in food." Consumption, although the increase in grain consumption is not much, only more than 10 million shi per year, the grain we produce every year is twice as much as the grain consumed. Calculated according to the current trend, without interference from external factors, our growth rate will be 20 years from now Only then can food production and consumption tend to be balanced.
Now the court spends billions on grain, purchase, storage, and transportation every year. This is too heavy a burden for the court. If we stop this policy, we can use these billions to build railways. , or building factories and schools, all of which can bring positive returns, which is better than wasting these funds on purchasing food!"
The annual fiscal revenue of the Daqian court now reaches an unprecedented 80 billion yuan. Although this amount of money is dozens of times more than that of the Han Dynasty, Xu Wei and the others do more and spend more. The annual education expenses alone are It exceeded 6 billion, and the railway construction cost exceeded 10 billion.
The construction of railways is regarded by the Royal Army as the core concept of his governance. Now the Royal Army builds more than a thousand miles of railways every year. The huge railway network is slowly advancing across the vast land.
The construction of railways in this way digested a huge amount of steel and wood, which led to the development of Daqian's steel plants, machinery plants, and logging plants. It can be said that the entire Daqian industry is expanding at an unprecedented speed.
This act of Wang Guojun was called the Prime Minister of the Railways by people all over the world. This was the praise given to him by the people all over the world.
Railways are a huge driver of the economy. Millions of railway workers make a living by building railways. As long as local railways are connected, the economy will be prosperous and logistics will be stable. Therefore, among the private sector, once a railway is built, it can cost tens of thousands of dollars. The statement of two.
For the Daqian court, the construction of railways shouldered the function of transfer payment, balancing the development of various places and the wealth of the world. Although maritime transport has only developed for more than ten years, it has now shown strong wealth-making capabilities. The coastal cities have become more and more prosperous in recent years. A large number of people go to the South China Sea and the New World through these coastal cities. Otherwise, they simply stay in these bustling and bustling cities.
As for the cities in the central and western coastal areas, they can only watch in dismay as young men raised at home run to coastal cities one by one.
Although such continuous blood loss will not cause the decline of these central and western cities, their development speed is indeed not as fast as that of the coastal areas.
And now the Kingdom's military is using the method of building railways to build infrastructure, using funds from the south for infrastructure construction in the west, and through this method, the people in the west can get a stable income. Now there are more than 100 people working on the railway construction site every year. Millions, this is the industry that employs the most people besides industry, and most of these railway workers are people from the central and western regions.
Relatively speaking, coastal cities are wealthy, and their local governments can raise funds to build railways themselves. Of course, they connect relatively wealthy places.
Whether at the top or among the people, there is a positive impression of railway construction. Therefore, the craze for railway construction was not only promoted by Wang Guojun alone, but also by people from all over the world. Conditional Railways were built in various places.
But these wealthy places also feel aggrieved. The railways should be built by the imperial court, but now they need to spend their own money. Railways in the central and western regions do not make money, but the imperial court's railway lines are all built in these places. This is completely unreasonable.
Everyone feels that instead of spending billions of dollars on grain procurement, it would be better to use it to build railways.
However, the court's attitude was firm, and the northwest was indeed the center of Daqian's defense. The previous dynasties mainly defended against enemies from these two areas, so the officials along the coast and in the south could only endure it.
But we can’t bear to waste billions of money every year to buy food. If the money is used to build railways, they can build hundreds of more miles of railways a year. What an impact this will have on the economy!
Xu Wei said seriously: "Since the beginning of industrialization, cities have been sucking the blood of rural areas. The reason why the imperial court will spend most of its fiscal revenue on infrastructure is to replenish blood for rural areas. Without rural markets, industrial development will not be possible." will be affected.”
Daqian's infrastructure is extremely large. In addition to tens of billions spent on railway construction every year, nearly 30 billion are spent on the construction of roads, canals, canal bridges, etc., and most of these costs are obtained by farmers. It can be said that this is The imperial court of Daqian replenished blood in the countryside.