The matter of the labor service company is actually not of much concern to the military. There is nothing to be gained from hunting the natives, and there is no military merit. At most, it is just a labor guard.
Doing this kind of thing cannot make the army or navy more important, stand out, and compete for more military spending, so they just lack interest.
It just means that their military will cooperate with the needs of the empire's strategy, but don't expect them to wave the flag and shout for it. If they have that time, they might as well fight behind closed doors between the army and the navy.
In the end, Li Xuan approved the plan discussed by the cabinet, which was a small opening in the extremely strict localization policy.
To this end, the Immigration and Reclamation Department will set up a special Aboriginal Labor Department to take charge of this matter. The main task of this department is to strictly prevent and prevent these indigenous workers from sneaking in and destroying the localization policy of the Tang Dynasty.
In order to better unify and arrange their own control, it is handed over to four wholly-owned labor service companies directly under the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises specially established for this purpose, namely Nanyang Labor Service Company, American Labor Service Company, Indian Labor Service Company, and African Labor Service Company, each responsible for which
Aboriginal labor services in different regions,
When officials from various parts of Southeast Asia are struggling for localization and infrastructure construction, they sometimes lament that it is still easier to get along with Northwest and Central Asia.
There is no localization problem at all, and there is no shortage of immigrants from the country.
When the Tatars were in the Western Regions and Central Asia before, they would retreat if they couldn't defeat them. When they retreated, they would pack up the entire population and take them away.
For the Tatars, these indigenous people are wealth.
The large areas of Eastern Europe and western Asia they control require a large amount of labor.
Otherwise, with their Tatar population of more than one million, their current population of less than two million would be nothing!
This invisibly helped Datang a lot.
When the Tang Dynasty defeated the Tatar army, they often occupied large areas of no-man's land, because the Tatars packed up their people and took them away in advance.
For these uninhabited areas, there is naturally no problem of localization. Subsequent development and construction can be directly carried out by immigrants from the local area.
And because the place is not bad, it is not a place with harsh environment and difficult to survive, and although it is a bit far from my hometown, it is not unacceptable to travel by train.
Therefore, many people in the empire are still willing to go to Central Asia.
At the same time, the terrain is also a plain terrain, so it is easy to build infrastructure. It will not be like that poor place in Nanyang, where a lot of people have to die to develop a settlement.
What's more important is that the empire treats these as local operations, without industrial restrictions, and the railway has been built.
These are conditions unmatched by other overseas territories.
Now that the situation in Central Asia has been completely stabilized, especially after the military captured Curry, the development of Central Asia has entered the fast lane.
Last winter, the Army's cavalry vanguard units had already reached the Caspian Sea, and the Railway Corporation also announced that the construction of the Central Asia Railway was progressing very smoothly.
Because they are all low-standard military railways and are built in plain areas, the road construction speed is very fast. It is expected that the Central Asia Railway will be built to the Caspian Sea early next year.
Once the railway is built to the Caspian Sea, it can be declared that Datang's Central Asia strategy has been a complete success.
Against this background, the empire's top officials already had plans to establish a province in Central Asia.
Before this, the Tang Dynasty had actually established multiple independent state capitals or military-controlled areas, or merged some areas into the original state capitals.
For example, in the southern area of Lake Balkhash, the Yibo Mansion was established. The name was taken from Yibohai, a traditional ancient city in Lake Balkhash. However, this area has become part of the empire itself, and there are no Yibo people left there.
Naturally, the word "yi" cannot be used.
Therefore, in official documents, Lake Balkhash is called a prefecture established with the Bohai Sea and the lake as its core. Naturally, it is also called Yibo Prefecture.
And the province was directly merged into Tumi Province as part of Tumi Province.
In addition to Yibo Prefecture, several other state capitals have also been established along the Central Asia Railway, but they are all large in size and have small populations.
The empire's immigrants in Central Asia are still very few, and they are mainly concentrated in the eastern and southern areas of Lake Balkhash, that is, within the scope of Yibo Prefecture.
In other places, small-scale immigration settlements are basically established and have not yet become a phenomenon.
However, this did not affect the upper echelons of the empire's plan to directly establish a province in this place and completely bring them into the scope of local rule.
Just like Northeastern Province and Hefeng Province back then, they still had a small population. However, with the opening of the railway, the convenience of inland water transportation, and most importantly, the cheap land, the government attracted people by giving away land for free.
A large number of immigrants came.
Nowadays, the population of several provinces in the northeast is not small. Among them, the population of Liaodong Province has reached more than two million.
The population of Western Liaoning Province is even greater, reaching more than six million. (Western Liaoning in the Tang Dynasty is the area west of the Liaohe River, south of Heilongjiang, including the Koryo Peninsula and other areas)
Even Northeastern Province, north of Heilongjiang, now has a population of nearly 800,000.
Northeastern Province covers the area north of Heilongjiang, to the Arctic Ocean in the north, to Sakhalin Island in the southeast and the border with Beihai Province, to the Bering Strait in the northeast, to Lake Baikal in the southwest, and to the Lena River in the west. It is generally a large area of Eastern Siberia.
mountainous areas.
Northeastern Province is a real ice sheet. Except for places along some rivers such as Heilongjiang where immigrants can immigrate, other places are basically not suitable for immigrants.
Farther north of Northeastern Province is a new province just established a few years ago, called Hexi Province. This refers to the area west of the Hetao Plain, but also to the west of Heilongjiang and the west of the Lena River.
Generally speaking, it is the area west of Hefeng Province, north of Shaanxi, Gansu, Tumi Province, west of Northeastern Province, east of the Yenisei River, and south of the Arctic Ocean, which is the so-called Central Siberian Plateau in later generations plus western Inner and Outer Mongolia.
.
Although its area is not as large as that of Northeastern Province, it is still extremely large. However, like Northeastern Province, most of it is undeveloped no-man's land. Datang only opened the map to explore areas with rivers.
Second, the real large population distribution is in the southern grassland area.
The Northeastern Province and Hexi Province established in the northern region are limited by the fact that they are too far north and have a harsh climate and are difficult to develop. Therefore, the population is very small, and they are generally concentrated in the south where there are rivers.
Although the area is large, in fact, the population of the huge Northeastern Province and Hexi Province is not as good as that of a high-class prefecture in the south of the Yangtze River.
Not to mention big mansions like Songjiang Prefecture, even prefectures like Changzhou and Zhenjiang have a population of more than one million!
In the West Siberian Plain area to the west of Hexi Province, the Tang Dynasty has not established any administrative agencies for the time being, because although the Tang Dynasty occasionally has cavalry troops entering the area, they are only for the purpose of carrying out combat missions. As for immigrants, I'm sorry.
,not a single one.
There are no people, so it is impossible to set up a state capital.
On the other hand, in the Central Asian region in the southern part of the West Siberian Plain, although the number of immigrants in the empire is not large, and most of the areas are no-man's land, it is still very easy to develop immigrants because of the railway connections.
Therefore, although the empire did not organize large-scale immigration before, but relying solely on spontaneous immigration, the Central Asian region within the control area of Datang now has a population of hundreds of thousands.
And the number is still increasing rapidly.
Because there is a lot of land here, as long as you are willing to settle here, you can receive a certain amount of land for free, and this amount can be very large.
In addition, according to the empire's consistent handling of border areas, this area will definitely become local in the future, so naturally there is no need to worry about obstacles to industrial and commercial investment.
Now someone has discovered a large number of high-quality copper mines in the northern area of Lake Ebo (Lake Balkhash). Some bold businessmen, regardless of whether Central Asia is still a war zone, can't wait to develop the local copper mines.
This copper mine is a precious metal mine. Even though it is not as profitable as gold and silver mines, it is much more profitable than ordinary iron ore and coal mines.
As long as they can make money, they are not afraid of Tatar attacks.
The copper mines and development in the northern part of Yibo Lake, together with the hub of the Central Asia Railway, have supported the development of Yibo Mansion. Otherwise, it would not have been possible to have a population of more than 100,000 in just a few years.
This alone is not enough. Central Asia is a very large place and there must be a lot of various mineral resources. Even if there are no mineral resources, many places are suitable for land reclamation and planting.
Even if we can't open up wasteland for planting, we can still raise horses and cattle and sheep.
In short, in the eyes of some ambitious people, the huge Central Asia is full of gold.
No matter what you do, you can make money. For example, if you engage in animal husbandry, the empire's textile industry requires a huge amount of wool. At the same time, countless people in the empire need mutton and beef.
Not to mention horses.
Nowadays, horse-drawn carriages are the main means of short-distance transportation in the Tang Empire. Whether in the city or in the countryside, horse-drawn carriages are an essential means of transportation.
Breeding horses is now basically a guaranteed profit.
Back then, the enterprises that went to Ha Feng Province to enclose land and then opened animal husbandry companies to raise horses made huge profits. Even ordinary herdsmen also bulged their pockets.
The subsequent establishment of Hexi Province also focused on the development of animal husbandry.
However, even so, the supply of wool, meat, horses and other livestock products within the empire was still in short supply.
Therefore, after the imperial army entered Central Asia, they were actually followed by countless businessmen and immigrants. Their common goal was to come over first to enclose the land, eager to make a fortune.
The spontaneous immigration and development behavior of the people of the empire to Central Asia further prompted the determination of the empire's high-level officials to establish provinces in Central Asia and completely integrate this area into the mainland, and accelerated this pace!