Mediterranean hegemon

The huge changes in Tripoli shocked the naval officers who accompanied Contini on his inspection, especially the officers who had never been to Tripoli in the past five years. They simply couldn't believe their eyes that this was still a desolate, dilapidated, and extremely bleak Libyan port? This is a brand new port city! In terms of prosperity, they feel that it is even comparable to Genoa and Venice. More importantly, the planning of the port and the construction of roads make Tripoli look much neater than Genoa or Venice.

After all, we are drawing on a piece of white paper. Tripoli is much easier to plan than Genoa, and there are not so many vested interests. Moreover, the management system here is completely directly managed by the United Group. The United Group can build the entire port according to its own plan. For what you want.

Toth continued to introduce to Contini: "This is the port area. All dredging work has been completed. There are a total of 23 professional terminals, including 4 passenger terminals, 7 oil terminals, and 12 other material terminals. In addition to passenger ships, Outside the pier, the other piers can accommodate naval warships. There are 4 piers here that can berth ships of 35,000 tons, 10 piers that can accommodate ships of more than 15,000 tons, and the others are all piers of more than 5,000 tons... …”

During Toth's introduction, everyone could observe the bustling scenes at various docks: a boatload of Chinese laborers happened to arrive at the passenger ferry dock. The labor union here organized a fellow villagers' association to greet them and complete registration, quarantine, distribution, and registration. After a series of events, they will be integrated into the appropriate community; there are three oil tankers on the oil terminal receiving cargo, two are Italian tankers, and one is flying the French flag, which is considered a French tanker to take away the oil. In the last round of the oil war, France did not add insult to injury. Instead, due to the tightening supply of British and American crude oil, France increased its efforts to transport oil from Tripoli. Not only did it take away all the crude oil it should have taken from the beginning, it also took it away They even paid part of the follow-up payment in advance, which is understandable behavior. Now the French think that this method is not bad. They don’t need to invest or spend time on construction. They can directly send the ship to the port and have a rolling flow of crude oil output. Why not?

The crude oil terminal has also built a new oil depot, but the capacity is not large, with only a capacity of 2 million barrels. Toth said that another 5 million barrel depot is under construction and will be completed by the end of 1929. By then, Tripoli will be almost It can store 1 million tons of crude oil, which is almost equivalent to 45 days of oil production. He believes that this scale is basically enough.

Following Toth's pointer, everyone also saw the factory area. Several new factories have been built in Tripoli recently, all under the auspices of the United Group: One is a power plant with an installed capacity of 450,000 kilowatts, which can supply nearby areas. The power required, the special feature of this power plant is that it uses a natural gas and oil mixed combustion boiler. This is also the first thermal power plant in the world to use this energy for power generation. It is not that the United Group has money to use up the bag, but It was Libya that discovered a large amount of natural gas during the oil extraction process. Except for the Chinese laborers and lighting street lights, some of this natural gas was wasted. In order to make effective use and reduce costs, natural gas was used as the main energy source. At present, the regulating ability of natural gas is not strong. In order to ensure the combustion intensity, some crude oil is introduced. Since Libya does not produce coal, coal must be imported forcibly, so crude oil can be used directly. Of course, the power plant still has Phase II and III projects, and the installed capacity will be expanded to more than 1.2 million kilowatts in the future. This number may not sound like much, but it is actually the same as the electricity consumption in Italy 10 years ago.

One is an aluminum processing plant under construction for the production of aluminum ingots. The design capacity is to produce 40,000 tons of aluminum per year. However, it is still in the preparation process. The factory building has been basically completed and the electrolytic aluminum equipment is waiting for it to be in place;

Another one that is only beginning to take shape is the refinery. At present, Italy has built new refineries in three cities: Genoa, Venice, and Naples. The fastest Genoa refinery is already capable of external production, but the output is very low and the annual refining capacity is However, it is only 1.6 million tons, and the other three cities are only 5 million tons. Contini believes that refining should be done nearby, and plans to set up a medium-sized refinery in Benghazi and Tripoli, with a scale of roughly 1.5-2 million tons. Due to the construction Due to capacity constraints, the factory would not be completed until at least 1931.

In addition to several key large-scale factories, there are also some small supporting factories, such as brick and tile factories, repair shops, machinery factories, etc., all paving the way for subsequent construction.

In fact, you can tell how busy this place is when you see the cranes and trucks rushing back and forth. What Contini is proud of is that except for the trucks imported from the United States and Germany, all the remaining trucks are Italian. The trucks produced by United Company in Italy have a rated load of 1.5 tons, but in fact there is no problem with a load of 3 tons. What makes Contini even more happy is that there are a total of 4,700 trucks and more than 6,000 drivers in Tripoli and Benghazi, including more than 2,000 Italian drivers and 1,700 German drivers (regardless of German, Swiss, Czech or Austrian nationality). There are more than 800 Jewish people, and nearly 1,500 of them have been replaced by Chinese workers.

It is very strange for the United Group to employ people. The first is of course Italians, the second is Germans, the third is Jews, and the fourth is Chinese workers. Contini would rather use Chinese workers than Arabs, Slavs, or Polish workers. European ethnic groups such as Romanians and Romanians traditionally undertake blue-collar jobs. The reason is nothing more than that the Chinese are docile and easy to manage, do not cause trouble, and have relatively low incomes.

So the situation reported by Toth is very interesting: a total of 104 drivers resigned in August, and 375 people were added. None of the people who resigned were Chinese, while 70% of the people who were added were Chinese, and more than 200 people were added. After the people, the monthly salary limit actually only increased a little bit. High-income workers resigned and were replaced by low-income workers. He predicts that by the end of this year, the number of drivers will exceed 9,000, and Chinese will account for at least one-third of them, and maybe even more. More than Germans.

Because the driver added this matter, both Contini and Todt were very satisfied with Huang Xinguo's work. Huang Xinguo also established authority among Chinese workers, and he was very far-sighted. Although some domestic intellectuals believed that we should strive for equal pay for equal work, he expressed this He resolutely refused and said sincerely: "The reason why the president and the company are willing to hire Chinese workers as technical workers is because the Chinese workers have low wages and are obedient. This is our advantage and must be firmly grasped. If we can't wait to ask for improvement now, The salary and even the requirements are the same as those of Italians and Germans, which will cut off the opening of other technical positions to us. We should try our best to bring over our compatriots and let them live peacefully here and learn skills. To build a new China, do you think it is better to simply make more money now or to have more people with skills and broader horizons? "

Everyone expressed admiration, but some were worried that the Chinese workers would cause trouble if they found out.

"This requires us to do work. To be honest, the president is pretty good to the Chinese people. Not only did he not discriminate against us, he also agreed to let us run schools, communities, and organize self-governing groups. All the reasonable suggestions we put forward were absorbed, and even we Dr. Toth also pays to grow some vegetables. This is a delicate balance that everyone must carefully maintain and not break at will. Although we will not build a longevity tablet for the president to bless him for a long life like some people do, we still have to pay for it. We must be grateful. After all, this is the territory of the Italians. We have such a place as a paradise. There is no war, no chaos, no oppression by the rich and the government. How lucky is this? All the thorns in the trouble are black sheep, and we can't have any of them. Send them all away. Let me emphasize again, especially the Bolsheviks and Socialists, who are the most hated people by the president. No matter what the reason, they will all be sent out of the country as gifts. When they arrive in Libya, they must follow Italian rules. We must follow the president’s rules and not bring disgrace to the Chinese people.”