Rebirth of England.

Chapter 949 Undercurrent surging
When Barron woke up, stood up from Bonnie and Countess Chris and walked out of the bedroom, he could feel the silence of the entire villa, with the faint sounds of the busy servants who had gotten up early.

When I changed into sportswear and walked into the hall, all traces of last night's party had been cleaned up.

Just yesterday, Barron celebrated his 34th birthday, which was also his twelfth birthday since he came into this world.

Because of the birthday of His Royal Highness the Duke of Devonshire, yesterday, homeless people throughout London were given winter sleeping bags, blankets, toiletries and rare food from the Devonshire Charity Foundation by enthusiastic volunteers...

Therefore, as a wealthy person, one still has to shoulder social responsibilities, just like the Devonshire Charitable Foundation, which spends nearly 100 million yuan on charity every year, which not only shows the Duke's family's good deeds, but also can offset taxes.

This reminded Barron of his previous life when he saw the stock god Buffett decide to leave only 0.5% of his personal wealth to his children, and donate the remaining 99.5% of his wealth... to the family foundation.

In other words, he is actually prepared to pay inheritance tax on 0.5% of his wealth. He is indeed a role model for our generation.

After exercising as usual, Barron's personal assistant Talulah Riley came to his home. While accompanying him to eat breakfast, Talulah did not forget to say to him:

"According to your instructions, the plane will take off in an hour. In addition, the high-speed rail line 2 project will be officially launched on the 25th of this month. You still have time to come back to attend the groundbreaking ceremony..."

Today, Barron will leave for Colo and is expected to return in three days.

As for the High-Speed ​​Rail Line 2 project undertaken by the British First Rail Group, the bidding results were announced at the end of last month. The railway construction project will be mainly undertaken by a Chinese consortium, while the supplier of trains and railway systems will unsurprisingly fall to Alstom-Bombardier Heavy Industries Group.

To this end, China Development Bank will provide the British First Rail Group with a low-interest loan of up to 200 billion pounds for the railway construction of this project.

This part of the loan seems to be a huge amount, but in fact most of it is used to pay for the construction of Huaxia-related enterprises. For Huaxia, it is like transferring money from one hand to the other...

They don't even have to actually take out so much British pound foreign exchange - settlements with Huaxia-related companies can be made directly in Chinese currency, and when the British First Railway Group repays the loan, what China Development Bank gets is real British pounds.

Many of the loans that China provides to foreign countries for their engineering projects are made in this way. For example, some African countries use their mineral resources and other resources to repay the loans.

This means that after the completion of the High-Speed ​​Rail Line 2, the British First Rail Group will only need to bear about 100 billion pounds of other investment funds including trains and other equipment.

The reason why the Chinese consortium was able to successfully obtain the overall construction work of this project was, in addition to the other party's rich construction experience and technical accumulation in high-speed rail, as well as the loan provided by China, one of the main reasons was that they were able to reduce the cost of the entire railway construction by half.

And compared to the previous... or Barron's previous life, the slow construction speed of High-Speed ​​Rail Line 2, the Chinese consortium has also shortened the overall construction period to less than 50 months.

Around the end of 2017 to the beginning of 2018, the High-Speed ​​Rail Line 2 will be completed and put into operation.

It has to be said that China should have taken into account the "specialness" of Britain. Compared with the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed ​​Railway, which is nearly 2 times longer than Line 2.5 of the High-Speed ​​Railway, which took 37 months to build, setting a construction period of less than 2 months for Line 50 of the High-Speed ​​Railway can be said to be very conservative.

But even this is surprisingly high speed for the current railway construction in Britain, or for the railway construction in Europe...

"After the Serval operation, France has no intention of ending its military operations and has begun to build a military base in Mali, with a tendency to stay there for a long time..."

Nigel Inkster to Barron on the plane to Colo.

Of course, according to the history that Barron knows, France's so-called "military operation" in Mali will last for seven years. In the end, under the strong protests from Mali, facing the surging public opinion and the tough stance of the interim government after the coup in Mali, it had to choose to withdraw.

An interesting scene occurred at that time. Initially, France sent troops to Mali to help government forces eliminate the anti-government armed forces; but later, it became increasingly obvious that the anti-government armed forces had French funding behind them, and the Malian government could only fight against them by hiring "Wagner" mercenaries from Russia.

It was also with Wagner's support that Mali had the confidence to break off relations with France.

In this regard, France can be said to have aroused some "public outrage". Not only Mali, but also Niger and Burkina Faso have begun to expel French military presence...

The eight countries of the West African Economic and Monetary Union and the six countries of the Central African Economic and Monetary Community are also trying to gradually free themselves from France's control over their economies.

"France has no uranium mines and mainly imports uranium from Niger and Kazakhstan. It can be said that one-third of France's light bulbs are lit by uranium from Niger - without uranium, their nuclear power plants will have nothing to burn..."

Nigel said to Barron:

"That's why French troops are stationed in the uranium-rich town of Alite in Niger. It's difficult for France to give up the resources of these African countries..."

Read the error-free version at 69shuba! 6=9+shu_ba is the first to publish this novel.

The actual situation in Africa at this time is much more complicated. In West Africa, it not only concerns the relationship between France and the local government, but is also affected by the transatlantic relationship between Europe and North America. Even Russia will come to intervene from time to time.

But for Kolo, or for Barron, what he needs to do is to focus on his interests in West Africa.

Now Kolo, Niger, Burkina Faso and other countries have formed the West African Free Trade Area, and their relations are becoming increasingly close.

Recently, Mali has also been interested in moving closer to the West African Free Trade Area...

These actions naturally aroused France's vigilance. Even though there have been no overly obvious actions yet, some undercurrents have still emerged.

"We should try not to confront France head-on. After all, the cost outweighs the gain..."

Nigel also agrees with Barron's words:
"This is also our strategy. With Mali and other countries, we have been avoiding direct military cooperation and starting from the economic aspect..."

(End of this chapter)