Chapter 1473 The stalemate of the Indian Ocean war
The Southern Railway Company was nominally established just a few days ago, but its core is the original Guangdong Railway Company, which originally built and operated Guangdong's railway network, including the railway lines from Foshan to Guangzhou, then to Huizhou, and then to Hong Kong.
It is their proud work.
In addition, it also merged several subsidiaries of the Railway Corporation such as Huguang Railway Company and Nanchang Railway Company.
After the merger, the company's senior management did not make any adjustments. These were all a waste of time. They focused all their energy on the construction of the Guangdong-Jiangxi Railway.
If the construction is completed one day earlier, the bonus will be one more day.
In addition, the officials in the Jiangxi Governor's Yamen originally had no feelings about this matter. They were all going to build the railway anyway, but they also knew that after the Guangdong-Jiangxi Railway was built, Guangdong would benefit greatly, but
The benefits on their side will not be less.
At the same time, in order to respond to the call of the Emperor Sheng and demonstrate his political presence, the governor of Jiangxi also made a concession, saying that when it came to the construction of the Guangdong-Jiangxi Railway, Jiangxi would not hesitate to lend money and was willing to provide convenience for the construction of the railway.
financial support.
Of course, although Jiangxi is also known as the land of plenty, especially the northern Jiangxi region, which is a traditional agricultural town, they were left behind in the industrialization era of the empire.
There is nothing wrong with it. Next to it is Wannan, which has the industrial town of Dangtu. A little further away is Jiangnan, and to the south is Guangdong. Wuchang to the west is also an important industrial town supported by the empire. Jiangxi is caught in the middle and cannot get anything from the empire.
Support from senior management can only be achieved through self-reliance.
Although the industry has also developed, it can only be regarded as the middle class among many provinces in the empire. The local economic development is average, and the fiscal revenue is naturally not much.
So money was tight, and in the end, they gave about 500,000 yuan in financial support.
Of course, most of this money is actually not given directly to the Guangdong-Jiangxi Railway, but to several branch lines attached to the main line of the Guangdong-Jiangxi Railway, such as the Nanchang branch line of the Guangdong-Jiangxi Railway connecting Nanchang City, and
The Guangdong-Jiangxi Railway connects the straight line to the Pingxiang Coal Mine, etc. People have also been smart in their calculations.
Only a subsidy of about 100,000 yuan is provided for the Guangdong-Jiangxi Railway trunk line.
But this is money, more than half a million yuan, and it will all end up in the pockets of the Southern Railway Company.
The Southern Railway Company was infiltrated by money, and the Railway Corporation also exerted great pressure on them, so they tried their best to meet the construction deadline.
There are not enough mechanical equipment, transportation is inconvenient, and equipment such as large steam engines cannot be transported in. For fear of losing eggs, a large number of manpower will be used.
Anyway, most of the railway construction is ordinary excavation and road building. As for the bridges with relatively high technical content, we will talk about them later.
The key now is to dig a lot of mountains and open roads. If you have enough manpower, you can still dig out a road, and then the technical engineering team behind will lay gravel, sleepers and rails.
In order to build the railway, they not only recruited workers along the railway line, but even went to other places to recruit workers.
They are going to use the power of the sea of people!
Anyway, the cost of hiring workers is not high these days, and it is even cheaper than using mechanical equipment directly.
The Southern Railway Company was so fast that Chen Lifu was a little worried. If they completed the railway construction very early, wouldn't he suffer a big loss?
The originally planned interest subsidy and construction bonus of more than 5 million yuan is already a heavy burden for Guangdong's local finance. If it is more, I am afraid there will be trouble.
But this worry only lasted for a few seconds. If it could be completed as soon as possible, there would be nothing to worry about spending hundreds of thousands or even millions more in bonuses. At most, it would be more difficult in the past few years and reduce some administrative expenses.
As long as the railway is opened to traffic, the economy will be freed up. At that time, there will be more tax revenue and more fiscal revenue will be allocated to local finance.
After finalizing the Guangdong-Jiangxi Railway, Chen Lifu originally wanted to repeat his old trick and launch the Guangdong-Han Railway, but this time he was directly rejected by the Imperial Study Room.
The important ministers in the imperial study believe that this kind of thing can only be done once, not twice!
The Guangdong-Jiangxi Railway is more important, because in addition to economic factors, there are also strong political factors, because once the Guangdong-Jiangxi Railway is completed, it means that you can take a train all the way from Jinling City to Guangzhou.
If the Beijing-Tianjin Line is added, it will form a complete north-south trunk line.
Nowadays, finances are tight, and the Northwest Railway and many other railway lines have not yet been completed. There is no need to rush to launch the second north-south trunk line.
After all, Datang's railway trunk line planning was based on the Jiangnan Railway Plan in the early stage, and the north-south trunk line and northwest trunk line in the mid-term.
As for other aspects of railway construction, they have to be ranked behind the North-South Main Line and the Northwest Main Line.
However, although Chen Lifu's plan was withdrawn, it does not mean that the railway will not be built, it just means that it will not be built in the past few years.
After being busy with railway matters, Chen Lifu is eyeing a series of transportation developments such as official roads, urban cement roads, and shipping!
When he took office as the governor of Guangdong, he reorganized the administration in the first few months, and in the following months he was busy with transportation. In addition to railways, he also did not fall behind on other aspects of transportation planning.
The traditional construction of official roads still continues. The construction of official roads in the Tang Dynasty has always been continued. In the national official road development plan in the early years, the most basic official roads were basically built nationwide.
Network, although most of the official roads were built on the basis of the official roads of the Ming Dynasty, and many of them can only be used for carriages in one-way, but at least they are there.
Now, what Chen Lifu wants to do is to continue to develop the official road network in the province, expand its key routes, and in other areas, build low-level official roads leading to various towns.
Strive to connect the existing official road network that only connects states and counties to all towns.
The local management system of the Tang Dynasty extended to villages. There were counties under the government, towns under the counties, and villages under the towns.
Let’s not talk about villages. As for towns, a relatively small county often has more than a dozen towns. Most of these towns have no access to pipelines and only have some mountain roads.
In addition to wanting the pipeline to cover a wider area, Chen Lifu also plans to pave cement on several urban roads with huge traffic volume and high economic influence.
This cement has been around for so many years and has been widely used in the construction industry. Its use for paving roads is nothing new.
Shanghai has been doing this for a long time. Nowadays, many main roads in Shanghai are basically paved with cement. Of course, the cement roads of today are incomparable with the cement roads of later generations. In order to save costs, the cement roads of these days are
It is just a layer laid on the surface. Its main function is to harden and smooth the road surface. It is not like the cement roads of later generations, which can bear tens or hundreds of tons.
After all, the roads these days are all horse-drawn carriages, and even those heavy-duty horse-drawn carriages that specialize in transporting goods only have a load capacity of just over one ton. This kind of pavement with just a layer of cement on the surface is enough.
In addition to Shanghai, some other cities with relatively good economies have also followed suit. Needless to say, Jinling City, the capital of the empire, has to be repaired even for the sake of the dignity of the empire. If Chengtian Mansion has no money, the treasury will directly provide it.
As for Guangzhou, there are also cement roads, but they are not on a large scale and are only paved on a limited number of roads. Now Chen Lifu plans to pave all the main roads in the city with cement.
Especially the roads in the commercial and industrial zones must be paved with cement on a large scale so that the local economy can be better developed.
Chen Lifu didn't need to worry too much about paving urban roads with cement, because Guangzhou Prefecture already had such a plan and had money, so this matter was much simpler.
Only shipping gave Chen Lifu a headache!
The shipping system in Guangdong, in addition to sea transportation, inland waterway shipping mainly relies on the many tributaries of the Pearl River, such as the Dongjiang River and the Xijiang River.
The Dongjiang River is a waterway that connects Huizhou and even northern Guangdong, while the Xijiang River is a waterway that connects Zhaoqing, Wuzhou, Guangxi, Liuzhou and other places.
These two waterways are not naturally very good waterways, especially the Xijiang River. The Zhaoqing section of the Xijiang River has many canyons with fast currents and many rocks.
With the development of the economy, there are more and more ships, the shipping on the Xijiang River is becoming more and more busy, and at the same time, more and more ships are involved in accidents.
In order to solve the inland waterway shipping problem, Chen Lifu plans to dredge the Xijiang River, Dongjiang River and other waterways to maximize the shipping capacity of the rivers in the Pearl River Basin.
After all, although railways are now dominant, the role of inland shipping is still irreplaceable.
Especially now that the high-pressure steam engine has come out, the ships in inland waterway shipping have gradually turned into steamships, which are faster and easier to sail upstream without wind. This has also allowed inland waterway shipping to play a greater role.
While Chen Lifu was traveling east and west of Guangdong, taking care of his transportation, Li Xuan in Jinling City had already forgotten about him.
Even though Li Xuan valued Chen Lifu, there were twenty-five provincial highways in the empire, so how could he keep an eye on Guangdong and Chen Lifu every day?
After the railway subsidy incident passed, Li Xuan basically didn't pay much attention to Chen Lifu. He had to deal with more government affairs every day.
Not only do they have to deal with the many affairs of twenty-five provincial highways and more than a dozen overseas territories, but there are also a lot of messy things in various departments in Gyeonggi Province.
In addition to these domestic affairs, there are also many military affairs, which are still at war with the Portuguese over in the Indian Ocean.
The war between the two sides has been going on for almost a year, but for these two countries that are extremely far away from each other and are not weak in strength, this war has just begun.
However, this war has not gone smoothly for the Tang Empire until now!