I want to be emperor

Chapter 1190 Supporting Backward Areas

High-rise buildings and cars are definitely the two most obvious features in the social development of the Great Chu Empire in the past fifty years.

Everyone knows that the Great Chu Empire is developing very rapidly, various scientific and technological advances are emerging in an endless stream, and new things are popping up from time to time.

However, many things are actually not obvious, at least one cannot tell at a glance that the country is very developed.

  The only things that can clearly and intuitively reflect this are skyscrapers and cars!

Spacious asphalt roads, concrete roads, bridges spanning hundreds or even thousands of meters, 10,000-ton ships, trains, etc., although they seem shocking, they are just like that.

But skyscrapers are not like cars.

Skyscrapers are often hundreds of meters high, towering above the ground, large enough to be seen by people far away.

If it is a complex of skyscrapers, the visual shock will be even more exaggerated.

Even in the 21st century, clusters of skyscrapers are still an important criterion for measuring whether a city is prosperous and developed.

Because skyscrapers have a preliminary stage. First of all, the local population must be dense and the land must be expensive. Only under such circumstances will skyscrapers appear and demand space from the sky.

Secondly, skyscrapers are now considered office buildings...which means there are a large number of companies that can afford relatively high office space costs.

The combination of these two can actually reflect the size and economic level of the local city.

The same is true in the contemporary Chu Empire. Not all cities have a large number of skyscrapers. In fact, the only city with relatively many skyscrapers is Songjiang City. Even in Guangzhou and Tianjin, which are megacities with a population of several million, there are actually not many skyscrapers.

And in some other ordinary cities, the number is even lower, and even if it is half, it will not be very high.

After all, there are so many places where office buildings can be built. It is not worthwhile to spend a lot of money to build a building that is one or two hundred meters high. The construction cost is expensive, and the maintenance cost is also expensive...

Therefore, skyscrapers can, to a certain extent, represent the local economic development level.

  Secondly, it’s the car!

Cars are large industrial consumer goods. If they are sedans, they are still personal industrial consumer goods... In essence, there is no difference between passenger cars and household appliances.

In this case, if we want people to buy and use passenger cars in large numbers, the overall economic level and people's income level must reach a certain level, so that people can buy cars in large numbers.

The monthly input of the people of Chu State is only three or five Chu Yuan, while the general selling price of a passenger car is four or five hundred Chu Yuan...so the penetration rate of cars visible to the naked eye would be very low.

However, the income level of contemporary Chu people, mainly the middle-income class in cities, can basically reach more than ten Chu Yuan. On this basis, the income of its high-income group is even higher, basically reaching dozens of Chu Yuan.

As a result, there will be more middle- and high-income groups who can afford cars, and the scale of passenger cars will increase.

Of course, the scale of passenger cars in the contemporary Great Chu Empire is still relatively small!

Although a car priced at three or four hundred Chu Yuan is considered very cheap, it is still unaffordable for many ordinary families.

This is also the reason why tricycles are very popular in the automobile industry of the contemporary Chu Empire.

Compared with a sedan that starts at three or four hundred Chu yuan, a small or medium-sized tricycle that costs around one hundred Chu yuan or even cheaper seems much more affordable.

Even some rural families with better conditions can afford to buy one for their own use or to transport passengers and goods.

In the contemporary Great Chu Empire, the sales of various tricycles are very large, accounting for more than half of the sales of various motor vehicles. From small tricycles worth tens of Chu Yuan to large tricycles for hauling goods worth more than one hundred Chu Yuan, all kinds of tricycles have a huge market.

These tricycles did not replace the market for cars or trucks, but rather the market for various types of horse-drawn carriages that were widely available everywhere.

The large number of tricycles in the Great Chu Empire are replacing horse-drawn carriages at a very fast pace.

Especially in suburban and even rural areas, horse-drawn carriages are disappearing rapidly, being replaced by various types of tricycles.

Many rural areas have tricycles that carry passengers regularly between the countryside and towns and counties. These tricycles can carry a few people at least, or more than ten people at most, and then slowly move on some rural dirt roads, solving the travel problems of rural residents.

Not to mention individual businesses, even many government-run public transportation companies use tricycles in large numbers to replace four-wheeled carriages to perform these regular shuttle bus tasks.

After several years of development and popularization, tricycles have become one of the most important means of transportation in the Chu Empire.

And it is replacing horse-drawn carriages at a very rapid rate.

This is something that various tractors, cars and trucks cannot do.

Tractors, whether they are medium or large tractors or small tractors specially launched for the rural market, are actually positioned as production tools, either used for agricultural production or for cargo transportation. On the rural dirt roads of the Chu State, you can see many tractors pulling a whole carriage of cargo, then crawling slowly on the road.

In fact, many transportation tasks in construction projects in rural areas and even cities are completed by these tractors.

As for the truck... that thing is too expensive and the construction company can't afford it.

Modern trucks are mainly found in cities or suburbs in the Chu Empire, and are mainly used for short-distance transportation of some commercial goods. Few people use trucks for engineering construction.

Even though major automobile manufacturers have launched high-horsepower dump trucks one after another, sales are not very good.

As I said, the price is too high and it is not cost-effective for the construction party... On the other hand, tractors are much cheaper. Although tractors run slowly, tasks such as transporting earth do not require very fast speeds... Tractors can even adapt to terrain more strongly.

Passenger cars seem to have a lot of sales every year, but so far, they are still the exclusive means of transportation for middle- and high-income groups.

Apart from the truly wealthy, those who can afford to buy and use cars are small bosses like Jiao Tiancheng, or senior managers and core technical personnel in the company.

For ordinary people, cars are still relatively expensive nowadays.

But this is only the case for now, because the income of contemporary people is constantly increasing, while the price of cars is constantly falling.

It is only a matter of time before sedans become common vehicles. Currently, the growth rate of automobile ownership in the Great Chu Empire is very fast. In the past ten years, the compound growth rate of automobiles has reached an astonishing 15%.

Of course, this growth rate includes data for various types of tractors and tricycles, and a large part of the growth is due to tricycles.

However, as time goes by, the growth rate of sedans continues to increase. At a certain time in the future, sedans and light trucks will replace various types of three-wheeled vehicles and become the main force in the automobile market.

  However, there are still differences of opinion on how long it will take to reach this time point. Maybe it will be ten years, or twenty years, or even thirty years!

This also means that for a long time to come, tricycles will be the mainstream of the automobile industry in the Great Chu Empire...

Strictly speaking, the contemporary Chu Empire has not entered the era of a major automobile power, but has entered the era of a major three-wheeled vehicle power... This may seem embarrassing to say, but it is an inevitability of technological development and economic income development.

Not to mention the civilian population, even the military has adopted various tricycles on a large scale in its motorization efforts, including regular three-wheeled vehicles for transportation and sidecar three-wheeled vehicles for reconnaissance and armament.

The scale of various tricycles in the military is expanding at an astonishing rate.

  In the words of some military generals, "I can't afford to buy a truck, I can't use it, so how can I not afford a three-wheeled vehicle that costs only a few hundred yuan? It's impossible. No matter how poor I am, I can't be that poor!"

As a result, the contemporary Chu army purchased and equipped itself with various types of tricycles on a large scale.

If we compare this with the modern countries in the original time and space, it is a very strange phenomenon.

But in the contemporary Chu Empire, it becomes very normal.

  why?

In fact, it’s not that the Chu army is really poor. If you compare the military expenditure of the Chu army with that of modern countries in the original time and space, it is actually very high... If they really grit their teeth, they can actually equip themselves with a large number of various military trucks, armored vehicles and the like.

But there is no need for that!

The armies of modern countries in the original time and space, their enemies are all contemporaries, and their technical equipment levels are not bad... Even if the enemy is inferior, they still have some rifles, cannons and the like. If you don't get some better trucks to go to the battlefield, big problems will really arise.

  But the Chu army doesn’t need it!

Look at who the Chu army's enemies are. They are all natives who are still in an agricultural society. They can't even make a single-shot rifle. They either rely on smuggling equipment to do it secretly or simply smuggle weapons and equipment.

But they are basically not on a large scale.

In this case, the requirements for the Chu army's military equipment would not be so high.

There is no need for so many military trucks that cost one or two thousand yuan. A few large tricycles that cost two hundred yuan will do the trick.

Then we'll get some ordinary tricycles for the infantry units to replace the four-wheeled carriages they used to have, and we'll get some sidecar tricycles for the reconnaissance units and officers to use as a makeshift service.

You also want a proper military truck to transport infantry, and officers also want a jeep as a vehicle... You're thinking too much, there is no need for this at all.

The Chu army now uses tricycles and trucks on a large scale, but the purpose is not to enhance mobility, but to replace the large number of military mules and horses.

The daily maintenance costs of mules and horses are too expensive, and the military feels it is not cost-effective.

The purchase and use costs of the trucks are also high, and the military still feels that it is not cost-effective.

So in the end we chose a tricycle... It's cheap to purchase, durable, and has a very simple structure, making it easy to repair, which means its cost of use is relatively low.

As for the worse off-road performance, slower speed, and smaller cargo capacity, that doesn’t matter... no matter how worse it is, it is still better than a horse-drawn carriage.

Where a tricycle cannot go, a horse-drawn carriage cannot go either...conversely, where a horse-drawn carriage can go, a tricycle can also go.

In addition, the military has also used a number of small tractors as vehicles for transporting supplies. Tractors have stronger terrain adaptability and can be used not only to transport supplies, but also to pull artillery.

A small tractor with only about ten horsepower can still pull a 75mm field gun, and it is more useful than a truck because it is not picky about terrain and can go to more places.

On the contrary, if a truck is used for pulling, there are certain requirements for the terrain.

So in the contemporary Chu army, you will see many different kinds of tricycles, and small tractors... On the contrary, there are relatively few medium and large military trucks that people in later generations are accustomed to. These things are generally deployed as independent transport battalions to tow artillery in the division's artillery regiment. After the artillery is in place, it acts as a transport force to travel between the rear supply stations and the front lines, transporting large amounts of supplies.

  The transport capacity of this truck is much larger. Generally speaking, it is no problem to carry two or three tons at a time. If the road is paved, the truck driver can even directly carry four tons of cargo.

So although these medium and large military trucks are expensive, there is a reason for their high price.

Cars and skyscrapers, these two things constitute the most typical characteristics of the era in the contemporary Chu Empire. Not to mention the natives, even the Chu people who come to the big cities and see the skyscrapers and various cars running on the streets will feel like a grandmother entering the Grand View Garden.

The prosperous big cities and ordinary small and medium-sized cities seem to be in two different eras, and the difference is even greater when compared with the countryside.

This actually means, to some extent, that the development of the Chu Empire was unbalanced. Not only was there an imbalance between regions, but there was also a huge income gap between people.

And as time goes by, this gap is gradually widening.

This issue has now received attention from the top leaders of the empire. At the Council of Ministers meeting in October of the 54th year of Chengshun, Crown Prince Luo Jun proposed that attention should be paid to the development of remote and backward areas and the income level of low-income groups should be raised.

After this meeting, all departments of the empire quickly came up with their own plans, and after finally summarizing them, the Great Chu Empire introduced the largest plan to support remote and backward areas in the past twenty years.

The plan focuses on supporting the development of inland areas, striving to build an industrial city with the region as the center to increase local employment, so that local people can get jobs nearby and increase their income levels.

At the same time, greater support will be given to the agricultural sector, mainly by providing tax exemptions, transportation cost reductions and other policies for the export of various agricultural and livestock products from inland areas.

In response to the large influx of rural people into cities for work, targeted solutions should be provided to these people's employment, living, children's education and other problems. For example, after parents go to the city to work, as long as they have a formal job and tax record, they can obtain a residence permit in the local city and allow their children to attend local government-run schools.

Are you saying that it will bring huge pressure to local government-run schools?

  There is pressure, but it is not insurmountable. First of all, the influx of a large population will bring tax revenue to the local city. What is the tax revenue used for? Building schools. There is no way there is not enough money to build a few shabby houses. It is impossible!

You said you dislike the school’s poor decoration and the fact that it’s just an unfinished building... So, you can’t learn anything if the school isn’t prestigious?

Anyway, government-run schools have always been concerned with ensuring the minimum standards, that is, they only ensure that you have an education, so don't expect elite teaching in small classes. If you want this kind of education, please turn left and go to schools in high-end communities or simply private schools.

Ordinary government-run primary and secondary schools provide universal basic education and it is impossible for them to be turned into aristocratic schools.

  In some densely populated urban areas with a tight supply of school places, it is common for a class to have hundreds of students and for teachers to lecture with a loudspeaker!

The official grassroots education of the Great Chu Empire has always only ensured the lower limit, not the upper limit...