I want to be emperor

Chapter 814 Illegal Immigrants
In the past ten years or so in the Great Chu Empire, the development of railways can be said to be rapid, and a large number of railway lines are completed and opened to traffic almost every year.

Its development speed is even more exaggerated than the development of railways in Britain and even the United States in history.

Before Chengshun 21 years ago, the development of railways in the Great Chu Empire was very weak, basically limited to the old wrought iron railways, which were mainly used for mining railways and port railways, and horse-drawn carriages were used instead of trains.

But this weakness is relatively speaking...Because the land of the Great Chu Empire is huge and the population is large, even if the railway development was very weak back then, in fact, the sum of many mining areas and port railways can reach thousands of kilometers.

Among them, the famous Songjiang Railway, a passenger and freight railway with a total mileage of more than 30 kilometers, was developed during this period.

At the beginning of the design and construction of this railway, this railway was used to run horse-drawn carriages...not to run trains, and its rails were not the steel rails that were later adopted on a large scale, but mild steel.

Mild steel, this is a trade-off between wrought iron and low-carbon steel when the Great Chu Empire was limited by the smelting process and the processing technology was not perfect. The carbon content used is slightly higher than Wrought iron, but a steel that is lower than the low carbon steel of later generations...

Hardness, wear resistance and other properties are not as good as low carbon steel in the traditional sense, but better than wrought iron.

The toughness is higher than low carbon steel, weaker than wrought iron.

This thing is actually between wrought iron and low-carbon steel. It is called soft steel within the Great Chu Empire. It is the result of the Great Chu Empire's efforts to improve material performance and processing performance under limited technical conditions.

Chengshun has been widely used in various industries such as railways, ships, and mechanical processing in the past ten years or even in the early 20s.

Early railways and ships were basically built with this kind of mild steel.

Matsue Railway is too!

It's just that when this railway was built, it happened that the high-pressure steam engine was successfully developed, and then the train appeared, which is the 21-year-old train of Guangzhou Machinery Company.

Therefore, when the Songjiang Railway was completed and put into operation, trains were used instead of horse-drawn carriages.

But...it cannot be denied that this railway was designed from the beginning to run horse-drawn carriages!
Chengshun 21 years ago, the railway development of the Great Chu Empire focused on mining areas, port railways, and short-distance, large-scale cargo transportation.

In addition, there is actually a kind of rail carriage in urban areas... Rail carriages are still an important means of urban transportation in many large cities until today, but traditionally it is not easy to classify this kind of rail transportation as railways. .

After 21 years in Chengshun, due to the successful development of Guangzhou Machinery Company's 21-year train, the subsequent operation on Songjiang Railway has achieved great commercial success.

At the same time, during this period, the Great Chu Empire also successively adopted large-scale mass production technology, casting technology, and processing technology of steel products, and major steel companies successively launched various steel rails.

The service life of this new type of steel rail is ten to twenty times longer than that of the early wrought iron, and it is also several times higher than that of mild steel. At the same time, although the cost has increased, it is still within the acceptable range...

After all, after the mass production process of steel is improved, there is actually no big difference in production cost for steel factories, such as low-carbon steel and high-carbon steel, that is, a little more carbon content and a little less carbon content.

In addition, there is the most important point, that is, after 20 years of early industrial development, the productivity of the Great Chu Empire has been greatly improved, and the transportation demand for transportation is also very urgent.

The huge population flow, the huge demand for material transportation, coupled with the successful research and development of the 21-year-old train and the breakthrough in rail technology, all of these directly promoted the development of the railway.

Since the 21st year of Chengshun, the Great Chu Empire began to rapidly build railways at the scale of thousands of kilometers per year.

In the early days, it was mainly concentrated in plain areas and economically developed areas where it was easy to build railways. In the middle period, railways for combat preparation were added. Now, with the further development of construction technology, the Great Chu Empire has also begun to build railways in complex terrain such as mountains.

As of today, the 33rd year of Chengshun, the Great Chu Empire has built a total of [-] kilometers of railways, which is a rather terrifying figure.

The main trunk line railways that have been completed include Jinpu Line (Hebei Tianjin to Jinling Pukou), Guanghu Line (Jiangxi Hukou to Guangdong Guangzhou), Jiangnan Railway (Zhejiang Ningbo to Jiangxi Hukou, including the branch line from Hangzhou to Jinling via Huzhou).

Hailan Line (Jiangbei Haizhou to Lanzhou, Gansu), Northwest Railway (Lanzhou, Gansu to Yining, Turpan), Central Asia Railway (Yining, Turpan to Turpan, Lianghe Province), these three railway lines are actually a whole east-west railway Therefore, it is also called the East-West Railway.

Youhan Line (from Youzhou, Hebei to Hankou, Hantianfu), Nanheng Line (from Nanchang, Jiangxi to Hengyang, South Chu, and continue to extend westward into Guizhou, which is part of the Southwest Railway)

Liaodong Railway (Hebei Tianjin to Liaodong Shenyang), Donghai Railway (Liaodong Shenyang to Donghai Busan), Liaobei Railway (Liaodong Shenyang to Heishui Shuangjiang)
Jiaotai Line (Jiaozhou Bay, Shandong to Taiyuan, Shanxi).

These main railway lines, such as Fujian Railway, Guangxi Railway, Xining Railway, etc., together with several major railway branch lines, basically connected all the provinces in the hinterland of the Great Chu Empire.

Well, except for the four provinces of Yunnan, Sichuan, and Liangkang, the railways in Yunnan and Sichuan are also being repaired, and it is estimated that it will be completed and opened to traffic in a short time. At that time, only the Liangkang area will be left without trains.

These main railway lines mean that a person from the state of Chu can take a train from the southernmost province of Thang Long to the northernmost province of Heishui. In the future, he will be able to reach the city of Chur on the shore of Lake Baikal via the grassland railway.

At the same time, there are also a large number of various railway branch lines, connecting many prefectures and counties, especially some economically developed regions in the east and south, such as Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangnan and other provinces. Not to mention every county, but basically every The government can pass the train.

And these railway networks constitute the blood vessels of the Great Chu Empire's local economy, continuously transporting people and various materials, and providing various nutrients for the huge empire of the Great Chu Empire.

At the same time, it also brought a new life to the vast number of people in the empire!

Through these railways, even people in some remote places can conveniently go to work and live in other places, and can also conveniently transport many local special products to economically developed areas.

The large-scale construction of the railway not only drove the development of the empire's economy at such a rapid speed, but also brought strong economic vitality along the railway.

The large-scale development of railways even directly gave birth to many large railway hub cities, and even changed the pattern of some parts of the Great Chu Empire.

For example, Xuzhou, this place used to be the same, but now because it is located in the railway transportation hub, it has directly become a newly developed industrial city of the Great Chu Empire, and has become the new provincial capital of Jiangbei Province.

The same is true of Zhengzhou. Because of the Yellow River Bridge, Zhengzhou has become a railway hub in the Central Plains, and its final development speed far exceeds that of Luoyang next door. Now the governor of Henan has moved from Luoyang to Zhengzhou.

The same goes for the decline of Anqing and the rise of Luzhou. Anqing used to be the capital of Anlu Province, but its development has not been very good. The main reason is that the terrain of the place is limited, and it seems to be on the edge of the Yangtze River, but in fact Port throughput is not large.

On the contrary, the military defense function is good, and the historical background is strong... But these two points are of no use during the rapid development of the empire in the past 30 to [-] years.

With the opening of the railway construction in Anlu Province, Luzhou's Hefei Line has become an important cross railway hub in Anlu Province. It can reach Jingshi Pukou in the east, Lu'an in the west, and continue west Arrive in Xinyang, and connect with the railway network of Huguang and Henan.

Bengbu can be reached in the north, and Anqing can be reached in the south.

The status of this unique cross-railway hub directly made the economic development of Luzhou and Hefei skyrocket, and it also became the most important industrial city of the Great Chu Empire in the Anlu area. It is the second in the Panjiangbei area after Xuzhou. Rapidly rising industrial city.

As a result, the provincial capital of Anlu Province also moved to Hefei County, Luzhou.

Xuzhou, Zhengzhou, and Luzhou all became big winners in economic development because of the construction of the railway, and they became the new capitals of their provinces.

And there are many similar examples, not only provincial capitals, but also prefectural and county governments.

The original prefecture or county seat of many prefectures and counties was in other places, but because the railway line did not pass through the original prefecture or county seat, the prefecture or county seat was relocated to the railway line.

Of course, this is also because the railway construction capacity of the Great Chu Empire is still a bit weak, so when building a railway, the priority is the difficulty of construction. It will not be said that because your capital city is in a mountainous area, then the railway line will be specially detoured to you in the ravine.

And the local officials in the local prefectures and counties do not have enough political energy to influence the railway line, especially the direction of the main line railway, so most of the time the local government moves to the railway line.

It can also be seen from this that a round of large-scale urban construction has occurred in the Great Chu Empire around railway lines and railway stations.

Many cities, even provincial capitals, are actually newly built, not to mention those small county towns, small prefectural cities and the like.

In some counties, new county towns were newly built around the railway station in a wilderness.

In this process, there has been a very large investment in local infrastructure, which has brought about a huge demand for various infrastructures and driven economic development.

Think about it, how much steel, how much cement, how much brick, how much wood and various supporting materials are needed to build a new city, and how many construction jobs can be directly provided by large-scale infrastructure construction!

These are ultimately transformed into demand for industrial products, which in turn stimulates the development of overall employment. When there are more jobs, the people will have jobs and more income, and this will naturally lead to consumption.

People in later generations do not understand why some countries like to engage in large-scale infrastructure construction so much, many of which are still useless after construction... Is it because there is too much money and nowhere to spend it?
In fact, this kind of large-scale infrastructure construction does not matter whether the facilities are useful or not. The important thing is to stimulate economic development.

There are too many reasons to talk about, just simply say: think with your toes, how much demand for industrial products will be created, how many jobs will be created, and how many families' jobs will be kept in order to build a new city!
Modern countries even dug and filled a drainage ditch, filled and dug...why?No reason, just find a reason to create jobs for the unemployed and pay wages!

Well, that's right, it's the United States, they did it in the 30s during the Great Depression...

So in many cases, some things that seem particularly absurd have a self-consistent logic, although this logic is particularly absurd to many people.

As for why you don't build a few more new drainage ditches, don't dig the old drainage ditches repeatedly, well, in fact, in most cases, one drainage ditch is enough, and it is useless if there are too many!

Besides, building new gutters is too troublesome and involves too many things, so it's easier and less troublesome to dig out the old ones.

As for whether the gutters are useful...it doesn't matter, the important thing is to find an excuse to pay wages to the unemployed.

Of course, what I said above is a bit extreme and even absurd, but if you look at the essence through the phenomenon, the truth is actually the same.

Invest in infrastructure to facilitate people's transportation and improve living standards, while artificially creating demand and driving economic development.

Of course, if this kind of thing is overdone, it is prone to many economic problems.

Today's Great Chu Empire is actually in this state...why does the empire already have thousands of tons of gold reserves, but it is still so keen on gold, so it does not hesitate to fight in South Africa, build railways and dig gold Mine.

Isn't it just to get more gold to issue more banknotes and increase the total amount of currency in circulation!
However, leaving aside the negative consequences of many details, the economic development driven by the current large-scale construction of the Great Chu Empire is extremely rapid, and it also improves the living standards of the people at a speed visible to the naked eye.

This is also an inevitable stage after an industrial country develops to a certain level. In the original time and space, the United Kingdom and the United States did this in the middle and late nineteenth century.

The railway investment frenzy in Britain in the 50s and [-]s and the railway construction frenzy in the United States in the late [-]th century were all in a similar era background.

Today's Great Chu Empire is no exception!
And the scale of construction is larger and faster than the two countries of the original time and space!

Because the Great Chu Empire has a larger territory and a larger population, the industrial raw materials that can be obtained from overseas have a larger industrial market.

After the Great Chu Empire with a population of more than 4 million entered the industrial age, its explosive energy was astonishing.

This point may not be deeply felt by the natives, but people in some countries or regions around the Great Chu Empire feel it more deeply.

Especially Siam and Myanmar in the south.

As two indigenous countries directly bordering the Great Chu Empire, in the early years, the Kingdom of Siam and the Kingdom of Burma were worried every day that the people of Chu would come and annex them.

Especially the Annan area was annexed by the Chu State, and many areas of the subsequent Nanzhang Kingdom were also annexed by the Chu State under various names. The high-level officials and the people of the Kingdom of Siam and the Kingdom of Burma were worried every day about being annexed by the Chu State. country annexation.

But now...these Siamese and Burmese people are no longer worried about being annexed by Chu State. On the contrary, they are now concentrating on how to join the Great Chu Empire and become a citizen of the empire!
There are so many aborigines who try to smuggle into the empire every year, and the Great Chu Empire had to increase the number of troops stationed on the southwestern border to strictly guard against it...

However, there are still a lot of fish that slip through the net and come in every year, even if the process has to pass the test of life and death... There are many illegal immigrants who die in the jungle or at sea every year.

However, it still can't stop these illegal immigrants from going to Chu!

After all, for these illegal immigrants, being a native barbarian is not as good as being a member of the Great Chu Empire... Even a black household without a household registration is more fragrant than a native!

Many Chu people are very repulsed by this, and strictly guard against illegal immigration!
(End of this chapter)