Glorious Mission 1937

Chapter 260: Lack of Food

While Deng was sending a report to the Eighth Route Army headquarters, Chen Feng briefly told Kang Ze what had happened. Hearing that the Japanese army had captured the children of senior Eighth Route Army officers as hostages, Kang Ze was also dumbfounded when he heard that, and secretly thought that the group of Japanese Devils are becoming less and less able to get on the stage, and they even made a fuss about some children, it's really fucking shameful.

Soon Deng Ping came back and said: "Just now I told Mr. Zhu about the matter. On behalf of the Eighth Route Army headquarters and the heads of Yan'an, he thanked Commander Chen and the entire Eighth Theater for their timely assistance. The children who came out were sent to a safe place. In addition, the Eighth Route Army headquarters will find a way to rescue those children. As for the result, hey, to be honest, we don’t have much confidence!”

Chen Feng said: "I have already ordered Iron Leopard to send the rescued children to a safe place first, and also sent a few special forces to Baoding to find out where the children are being held and try our best to rescue them. But this matter needs the help of Lao Kang, and Lao Kang is an expert in intelligence collection!"

Kang Ze thought for a while and said, "Don't worry, I won't ignore this matter. Give me two days, and I will hand over the detailed information to Commander Chen after two days."

"That's very grateful, thank you!" Deng Ping said excitedly.

"This matter is over first. I have one more matter to ask you two today. I heard that the price of food in the defense zone has risen a lot these days. What's going on?" Chen Feng said.

Kang Ze opened his mouth and said, "I'm the one to say this. Commander Chen should have known about the lack of food in Chahar. Due to the large-scale Japanese attack, a large part of the land in Chahar missed the farming season. From 8 Many places in the province have run out of food since the beginning of this month. However, because the provincial government has implemented a work-for-work policy, the common people barely have enough to eat, and they are not hungry."

"But Commander, you also know that our Chahar is just a remote and poor province with an underdeveloped economy and a small population, so the taxes collected in a year are very limited. This year, we collected a total of 3200 million yuan in taxes. Excluding the salaries of government staff, there are still about 2700 million. And this year we started 2231 projects at the same time. Although most of them are schools that are not expensive, there are still some projects that cost a lot. It is very large, such as the Sui-Er Railway, Baofa Power Plant, Wuwangou Reservoir, etc. Up to now, the balance in the books of our provincial government is not much. It is only 1000 million oceans when it is fully paid. In order to last for a while. After we discussed with the old man , decided to change the salary paid to the workers from five catties of fine grains to 10 catties of coarse grains. This aroused the dissatisfaction of the common people, but the provincial government had no choice but to explain the difficulties faced by the provincial government to the common people. But the matter did not calm down. The common people did I can understand us, but they also want to live. When they heard that the provincial government had no money, many people panicked and went to rice stores to buy grain. Although those profiteers are limited by the pressure of our provincial government, they dare not lower the price of grain. It was raised too high, but it still rose by nearly half."

"So that's the case. Does your provincial government have a solution?" Chen Feng asked again.

"It's not that I came here today to talk to Lao Deng about this matter, but there is no good way to talk about it. The best way is to get some more money and implement this work-for-relief policy until next year. Autumn harvest." Kang Ze said.

"Well, this is a way, but have you calculated how much it will cost?" Chen Feng asked.

"Why haven't I calculated it? It's because I have calculated it, so I feel that this method will not work at all. Our provincial government still has a balance of 1000 million oceans. At the current speed of spending money, this 1000 million will only last for 3 months at most, or even Even shorter. If you want to support the autumn harvest, even if you count the taxes for next year, there is still a shortage of at least 6000 million oceans, this hole is really too big." Kang Ze replied.

As soon as Kang Ze finished speaking, Deng Ping also interjected: "The problem is far more than that. I know that the troops under the command of the commander all have fixed military salaries. Ordinary soldiers receive 5 yuan a month, while officers receive different military salaries according to different military salaries. , although we don’t know how many people there are in your army now, but the monthly military salary must be a huge amount. Although the taxes collected this year are quite a lot, the consumption is also huge. Up to now, the provincial government has not paid The commander withheld the military pay, so we didn't dare to move the 1000 million yuan, and if the military pay was included, the gap would be even bigger."

The military pay is uniformly allocated by the logistics department, and the money is deducted from the seizures of previous battles. According to the report of the logistics department last month, the total military pay that the entire army needs to pay in September is 9 million oceans.Coupled with disability subsidies and pensions for the families of soldiers who died in battle, the logistics department spent a total of 220 million yuan in September.Fortunately, the troops made a huge sum of money from Tianjin last time, otherwise they would have fallen into an economic crisis long ago.

"You don't have to worry about the military rank. In the future, all the taxes collected by the provincial government will be used for the construction of the province, and the troops will not spend even a single ocean from it. In addition, I will allocate another [-] million oceans to the provincial government. You must ensure that The common people in the defense area live a stable life, and as for the lowered salary, it can be changed back, and it can even be raised appropriately." Then Chen Feng said to Kang Ze: "Old Kang, the harvest in the south of the Yangtze River is good this year, especially in the two lakes area, where the grain yield is abundant. , I can authorize you to purchase grain from these places, and collect as much as you want, and Generalissimo Jiang should be happy to do this business."

"Old Deng, you immediately issued an alcohol prohibition order to our defense area. Except for the factories that produce medical alcohol, anyone in the defense area is prohibited from brewing liquor. If you want to drink alcohol, you can buy it from other areas. People who can spend an ocean to drink alcohol must not Would mind spending an extra ocean."

In fact, both Kang Ze and Deng Ping know that Chen Feng is rich, and they know the high price of penicillin. A box of 30 capsules of amoxicillin is sold for as high as 100 oceans in China, and it is said that selling it to foreigners is even more expensive. scary.Even if it is provided to the armed forces of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, it is as high as 15 oceans per box, and there is a quantity limit.It can be said that countries all over the world are sending money to Chen Feng. Even if Chen Feng doesn't come to them today, they will go to Chen Feng for alms in these few days.They never thought that Chen Feng would get [-] million yuan when he made a move. This is [-] million yuan, which is equivalent to three years of taxes in Chahar Province.

In fact, they didn't realize the value of penicillin. After they saw that Chen Feng should have made a fortune, penicillin was a cash cow.But in Chen Feng's eyes, penicillin is a sharp weapon to change the world. It is the most reliable economic guarantee for Chen Feng's hundreds of thousands of troops, and it is also the best medical guarantee.

Last month, he received a total of 2.85 million U.S. dollars. According to the exchange rate between U.S. dollars and silver dollars at this time, one U.S. dollar is equal to 1.5 silver dollars, and 2.85 million U.S. dollars is equivalent to 4.275 million silver dollars. It is such a huge sum in China Money.In addition, according to the agreement between Chen Feng and the United States and the Soviet Union, after the signing of the agreement, the United States and the Soviet Union will pay Chen Feng a total of 20 billion US dollars in cash at one time. Donate 30 million oceans to support the Chahar provincial government to continue the work-for-work program.

Sure enough, Lao Jiang was very interested in buying and selling grain in exchange for oceans. Because the strength of the Japanese army exceeded Lao Jiang's expectations, all the wealthy coastal areas have been occupied by the Japanese, and the national government's taxes have shrunk by nearly half. However, due to the war with the Japanese, the national government's military expenditures increased by about 10 times during the same period. It can be said that the national government's finances are on the verge of collapse.

Fortunately, in the face of the national crisis, a large number of citizens bought the national debt issued by the national government, otherwise, the national government's economic capacity at this time would not be able to support the war at all.

This year, the grain harvests in the two lake regions have been bumper, and the rice harvests in Yunnan and Guangxi have also been bumper. Rice and sweet potatoes are piling up like mountains on the Chengdu Plain.If all these grains can be replaced with cash, it will definitely be a great thing for the national government.

Lao Jiang attached great importance to this transaction. With his single-handed promotion, a special line for grain transportation from Chengdu via Shaanxi to the eighth war zone was confirmed soon.Originally, Lao Jiang had some doubts about passing through northern Shaanxi, but after Deng Ping's coordination, Yan'an agreed to the national government's convoy passing through northern Shaanxi.

The food crisis was indeed a headache, but in the face of Chen Feng's strong economic strength, this crisis was easily resolved by him.

On November 11, Kang Ze sent a message that the Japanese army hid the little guys in a prisoner-of-war camp all over the city in Baoding in order to prevent the Eighth Route Army from taking risks to rescue those children. At the age of 22, the Japanese army specially captured 33 women to take care of these children.

After receiving the news, Chen Feng immediately passed it on to Chen Tiebao, and at the same time ordered Chen Tiebao to rescue these children at all costs.

Soon Chen Tiebao sent a telegram saying that they had arrived in Mancheng County and found the prisoner-of-war camp, but the situation was not optimistic and they were looking for opportunities to start. (To be continued..)