Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 2426 Pampa (49)

Anyone who has gone to middle school knows that the East Coast Republic of China is a big producer of iron, but it is also a big importer of major metals such as copper, lead, and tin.

Copper is the most important raw material in the power industry, and many copper alloys are also widely used in the mechanical field.Lead is an important material for the production of sulfuric acid, and it is also widely used in navigation and civil water supply facilities.Needless to say, tin is almost ubiquitous and used everywhere, and all kinds of alloys need such metals.In addition, with the development of the economy, the industrial demand for metals such as zinc, nickel, gold, silver, and platinum is also slowly increasing. The industrial giant on the east coast has shown great interest in various metals. It costs a huge amount of money to import ores or rough processed products of the above metals.

And under such a strong market demand, the local capital on the east coast will naturally search for ore veins everywhere and try their best to mine them.Of course, they have also made some achievements. They have discovered some copper ore, lead ore, chromite, tungsten ore and other deposits. Although the scale is not large, it is also very good at this stage, and it is better than nothing.

The Wolong Mountains on the Pampa Plain is such a metal-rich ore belt, mainly zinc ore and tungsten ore.In addition, there are some small gold and silver associated mines, but the reserves are very small, and it is estimated that they will not be mined for a few years.

The three townships of Houde, Guangli, and Xiuye ​​are the mining centers of the Wolong Mountains. They have received a large amount of investment in recent years and have developed extremely rapidly.Correspondingly, more than [-] Indians and Mestizos are working in the local mines, and tens of thousands of additional non-national laborers are active on the nearby road construction sites, fully serving this metal-rich mine.

The newly established state-owned enterprise Wolong Nonferrous Metals Co., Ltd. is operating these mines, with a registered capital of 50 yuan. It specializes in mining all nonferrous metal mines in the east coast except for iron, gold, and silver. Although, such as the manganese ore being mined by the Tieling Heavy Industry Consortium - it is a very powerful enterprise.

After the establishment of Wolong Nonferrous Metals, the first major task is to fully develop several mines in the Wolong Mountains that have been invested intermittently before, and then produce qualified metals to supply downstream enterprises.After all, you have to be worthy of your name!First understand the mines in the Wolong Mountains, gain benefits, and be able to maintain their own hematopoietic ability, and then slowly find ways to engage in other things, such as nickel mines in the Pacific Ocean and chromite mines in South Africa.

The headquarters of Wolong Nonferrous Metals Company is not in the mountains, but in Luoyi District, Luoyang Prefecture, at the eastern foot of the mountains.The company's board of directors, administrative department, financial department, legal department and other departments all work in the local Naryshkin Building, but the specific engineering construction, mining and smelting departments are located in Houde and Xiuye ​​counties in Shanxi—obviously However, most of the taxes paid by Wolong Nonferrous Metals will not be handed over to these two counties, but to Luoyang Prefecture.

Both Houde and Xiuye ​​counties were newly established at the beginning of this year, and they are respectively the 205th and 206th county-level administrative units in the country.Among them, Houde County has four settlements under the jurisdiction of Houde Town, Houzai Township, Pocho Township (located in the small town of Pocho in later generations), and Taiqing Township (located near the small town of La Higuera in later generations). More than [-] residents.This county is quite interesting. There is a large fertile plain in the territory, located between Houde Town and Houzai Township, which can produce a lot of grain.In the area of ​​Taiqing Township in the north of the county, farmland water conservancy facilities based on Taiqing Lake are also being built, which can irrigate some farmland along the river, but most of the areas are still dominated by animal husbandry.In the east, mining production is in the ascendant, and the smelter of Wolong Nonferrous Metals Company has also been completed. The future of the whole county can be described as both industry, agriculture and livestock.Maybe you can add a business, because this county is the only way from the new capital Luoyang to Datong, Tongyuan, Ande and other places in the west. More frequently, the potential in this area cannot be underestimated.

Similar to Houde County, Xiuye ​​County also has a large number of plains and valleys in the county. If suitable irrigation facilities are built, the potential for agricultural production is great.At the same time, it is close to the mining production area, so food can be supplied nearby, which is very convenient and saves a lot of cost.In the hilly area in the west of the county, the conditions for the development of orchard and animal husbandry are also very mature, and it is already being done, and food can also be exported to the mining area in the future.

Xiuye ​​County has five settlements under its jurisdiction: Xiuye ​​Town, Chongye Township, Bishui Township, Zaoshu Township and Guangli Township. Currently, more than 8000 people live here and engage in industrial and agricultural production.It can be said that Houde and Xiuye ​​counties are the headquarters and production base of Wolong Nonferrous Metals Company, where most of the company's workers and their families live.Considering its location close to the capital, there is a high probability that it will become a rich and important place in Gyeonggi in the future—in fact, these two counties are currently under the jurisdiction of Luoyang Prefecture.

To the west of Houde and Xiuye ​​counties, the four counties of Datong, Tiancheng, Tongyuan, and Ande, which were established this month (April 1701), will be far behind.The reason why these four counties were established so quickly is that the State Development Bureau considered to increase the economic hinterland for the new capital, Luoyang, and the second was that once war broke out with the Kingdom of Spain, when these counties could better organize production, then Transport various materials through a large number of tunnels in the middle of the Andes to support front-line operations.Of course, in peacetime, these counties can also provide a fairly good land commercial channel, which is also the direction of the first-class national highway from Luoyang Mansion to Tongyuan Town.

Datong County is one of 207 county-level administrative units in the country, under the jurisdiction of Datong Town, Tongli Township, Meicheng Township (near Mercedes Town in later generations), Yuantan Township (near Achilas Town in later generations), Huangni Township (Located near the small village of Sanchitas in later generations), there are a total of five settlements with a total population of more than 3, which is quite a lot. It can be seen that the economic strength is still good, not as bad as imagined.At least there are many people, isn't it?

Tiancheng County (the 208th county) has jurisdiction over Tiancheng Township, Guangling Township, Fengyi Township, Yinyue Township and Enkong Township, the same five townships, but with a population of less than 1.However, the area of ​​the county is still very large, and the land is so sparsely populated.Needless to say, the county's economy is dominated by agriculture and animal husbandry, and the future will not be much better, that's all.

Tongyuan County, the 209th county-level administrative unit in the country, has jurisdiction over Tongyuan Town, Shanyang Township, Chahe Township, Zhupei Township and Qingtai Township.There are more than [-] people living in the five settled villages and towns, and the agricultural conditions are not bad, otherwise they would not be able to support so many mouths.The towns, farmlands, orchards, and pastures left over from the Spanish colonial period have been fully utilized. After taking over, the people on the east coast invested a lot of manpower and material resources to repair the irrigation system established by the Spanish, and use the local river water and alpine snow water resources. The degree of utilization has been raised to a new level.

By the way, there are some mines in this county, mainly small iron mines, silver mines, and copper mines. In the future, Wolong Nonferrous Metals Company will definitely come to mine them.Prior to this, the local economy could only be sustained by wheat, olives, peanuts, raisins/wine, vegetables and food processing industries using them as raw materials.However, it is said that the Ministry of Geology is currently dispatching a task force to be active nearby. It is said that they want to explore and see if there are oil and natural gas resources.If they can make a major discovery, it will definitely become an important economic growth point for the county in the future.

Ande County, located north of Tongyuan County, is the 210th county in the country.The county has four settlements under the jurisdiction of Ande Town, Xilou Township, Huangtai Township, and Shunhe Township, with a current population of nearly [-].This county is relatively rich in mining resources, including copper, gold, lead, tin, zinc, and tungsten, and the reserves are not small. At least it can meet the needs of industrial production at the current stage (the electric power industry has not yet developed greatly), provided that Can be mined, refined and transported smoothly.

To be honest, mining in the mountains has never been difficult, the difficulty is how to transport it out.There is no other good way to do this, you have to spend money to improve traffic conditions, and the roads are not very good, the best is the railway, after all, whether it is copper ore or crude copper, its weight is very heavy, and it is transported by road It's exhausting, and the cost must be high.

It's a pity that the two major railway companies on the east coast are currently not focusing on this area, and there are too many projects at hand, and the debt burden is so heavy that people want to tear up their financial statements.God knows how many years, 15 years, 20 years or [-] years will it take if they wait until they have finished the existing projects and then build the railway from Luoyang Prefecture to Ande County, Tongyuan County and other places?Don't be kidding, it's better to build a road first to make do with it.

So it is true to say that roads are the first thing to get rich.At present, apart from the local county and township governments, the only ones who want to build railways in this area are the army, because they have been planning to invade Chile from the Andes when war breaks out between the East and the West. The idea of ​​distracting the enemy and not being able to look at each other from head to tail—think about it, how close Tongyuan County is to Santiago, and going out from here to stab horizontally, it really feels like a magic soldier descending from heaven.

It's a pity that they have no money, and they don't have much say in this matter, so all kinds of proposals can only stay in words.If the "research and research" is exhausted, there will be no actual changes.

Instead of counting on the construction of the railway—in fact, it is difficult to complete the construction before the outbreak of war—it is better to act first, build barracks and barracks in the local area in advance, and hoard supplies.After the outbreak of the war, it is still possible to mobilize the local masters to rush to transport by land, so that it is possible to maintain a small number of partial divisions.Don't think too much about other things, it's impossible, the development outline of the white shirts in the Government Affairs Council will not be easily changed.Spaniards are not qualified enough to let them do this!

(End of this chapter)