I want to be emperor

Chapter 759

Jinan Prefecture, the Shandong province of the Great Chu Empire, has always been a water transportation hub and an important industrial and commercial town in Shandong. However, the previous development was very mediocre, and the current development is actually not very good.

The development is not going well, this is Luo Zhixue's first impression after arriving in Jinan City.

Of course, this kind of development is not good, which means that compared with some big cities in the south with good economic development, it is a comparison within the Great Chu Empire.

If it is compared with the pre-Ming period, or even any previous dynasty period, then Jinan City today can be beaten.

And it was a sling with a difference of more than ten floors.

Jinan in the industrialization era, even if the development is unsatisfactory in the eyes of Luo Zhixue, is far from being comparable to cities in the agricultural era.

Whether it is the output value of industry and commerce, or the living standards of the people, it is an existence that cities in the agricultural era need to look up to.

This is a huge gap in productivity!

When the imperial carriage was walking on the street, Luo Zhixue looked at the roads, bridges, and buildings around the streets in the city, and secretly estimated in his heart that the development of Jinan City was at least ten years behind the big cities in the south.

In terms of urban infrastructure, it is probably similar to Jinling City ten years ago.

This kind of intuitive scene seen with my own eyes is far more intuitive than reading various reports and cold figures on documents, and it makes people more aware of the local development dilemma.

And Luo Zhixue is more aware that the backward development of Jinan City is not an isolated case, but a general situation in the provinces north of the Yangtze River.

Even Tianjin and Liaodong, the two major northern industrial zones strongly supported by the empire, are far inferior to the Yangtze River Delta industrial belt and the Pearl River Delta industrial belt in the south in terms of economic vitality.

The reason for this is that the northern provinces suffered severe war damage in the late Ming Dynasty.

Taking Shandong as an example, because Shandong is located in the north, it was conservatively affected by wars during the Song, Jin and Yuan Dynasties, with a sparse population and poor economic development.

During the Jin Dynasty, it was because of the war and the exploitation of the Jin Dynasty itself. In the early Yuan Dynasty, the local population was only a few million. This situation did not improve much during the Yuan Dynasty.

Why?

The ruling class of the Yuan Dynasty was the Mongols. The core area of ​​their rule at that time was in the northern region. Naturally, they oppressed the Han people in the northern region. At the same time, because the Mongols were nomadic, they liked to herd and raise horses in enclosures. The enclosed land is all farmland!
At that time, the Yidu Horse Farm in Shandong was one of the most important large-scale pastures in North China during the Yuan Dynasty... A large amount of cultivated land in the area was used by the Mongols to herd and raise horses. It is conceivable that the local grain output must be low What's wrong with the population.

When the Ming Dynasty recovered this place, it was sparsely populated and a large amount of land was uninhabited. Later, the Ming Dynasty encouraged local reclamation to gradually restore its vitality.

By the 26th year of Hongwu, the area of ​​cultivated land in Shandong had reached more than 7000 million mu, ranking third among all provinces in the country.

After Zhu Di established his capital in Youzhou in the Ming Dynasty and the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal became an important traffic route, Shandong along the canal also developed along the trend, but it was only limited to the early and middle period of the Ming Dynasty.

In the late Ming Dynasty, especially after the rise of the Dongyao people, Shandong became sad again... On the one hand, there were various rebels and rebels tormenting, and on the other hand, Dongyao detoured from time to time to enter Mongolia to plunder.

As a result, Shandong, like other places in North Zhili, suddenly became a place where people live in dire straits.

Of course, in the last few years, there were also wars between the Chu Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty for hegemony.

At that time, the armies of the two sides fought all the way around the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, from Jiangbei to Tianjin and even to Youzhou. The local area in Shandong was inevitably affected by the war.

The war resulted in a large number of young and middle-aged casualties, and a large number of farmlands were abandoned.

This is not only the case in Shandong. In fact, the situation in many provinces north of the Yangtze River was not good at that time. In many places, hungry people belittled, and rebels or rebels were everywhere.

The greatest pressure that the Chu army faced during the Northern Expedition was not the military pressure of the Ming Dynasty's army or the intervention of the Eastern captives, but the inability of the hundreds of thousands of troops going north to obtain enough food locally.

If food cannot be obtained locally, then the only way to organize food transportation from the southern provinces to the north is through thousands of miles.

In addition to the rations for tens of thousands of soldiers, civil servants, tax patrols and other personnel going north, some food is also needed to feed the hungry people who are hungry.

The amount of food needed is an astronomical figure. The Great Chu Empire used the power of the whole country to gather a large amount of food, and it was continuously transported to the north through the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal and other river transport networks and even land transportation. .

This was the result of the military victory in the Northern Expedition, and the subsequent successful establishment of a ruling institution in the local area, and then a large-scale suppression of bandits to pacify the local area.

Therefore, in the so-called Northern Expedition, a considerable part of the important work revolved around how to organize the transportation of grain from the south to the north, how to relieve the hungry people in several northern provinces, and organize them to resume agricultural production to save themselves.

After the Great Chu Empire took complete control of the Shandong area, it established the Shandong Province, with the governor stationed in Jinan. Then, like other northern provinces, it launched a large-scale campaign to suppress bandits and restore farming.

After working in the north for several years, it was only then that the northern provinces were relieved.

The northern provinces, which had recovered, began to catch up with the southern provinces and began to develop industry and commerce...but it was many years behind the southern provinces.

Every step is bad, and the transportation is inconvenient, and the lack of river and sea transportation channels in the early industrial development period makes the logistics cost remain high, which makes it difficult for some inland areas to develop.

Far less rapid than the development of coastal cities!
This is why in the Great Chu Empire, the economy of the coastal areas is generally higher than that of the inland areas, and the southern coastal areas are higher than the northern coastal areas.

It is mainly the area south of the Yangtze River, which did not suffer too much war damage in the late Ming Dynasty. It was acquired by the Great Chu Empire early on, and then it was able to develop industry and commerce rapidly, and successively built around resource areas and places with convenient transportation. Four large-scale industrial bases were established: Daye Industrial Zone (Hantianfu), Dangtu Industrial Zone (Yingtianfu), Susong Industrial Zone (Jiangnan Province), and Guangzhou Industrial Zone (Guangdong Province).

Then it gradually extended outward, and developed a considerable scale of industry and commerce in provincial capitals and important cities, such as Changsha, Nanchang, Hangzhou, Ningbo, Quanzhou, Lianzhou, Huizhou and other places. The development is not bad.

The area north of the Yangtze River started a little slower. Of course, the Northern Chu area, where the Great Chu Empire started, is an exception. Xiangyang started to develop the textile industry early, and is one of the five major textile centers in the Great Chu Empire.

The areas north of the Yangtze River and Jiangbei Province in Anlu Province were trapped by the Yellow River’s seizure of the Huaihe River into the sea in the early days. They experienced floods every year, and there was a major flood every three years. The local government was busy with disaster relief and relief for the people every year. How could they have the time, energy and capital? Industry and commerce have developed.

In the area north of the Yangtze River in Anlu Province, the early government made great determination, but only supported a Huainan mining company.

Not to mention the Jiangbei province. Before Xuzhou developed, the textile industry in Tongzhou was good, and it was the fourth largest textile industry center in the country. However, Yangzhou and Huai'an, the two important economic centers during the Ming Dynasty, were He is already dissatisfied with the prosperity, and can only rely on the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal and the salt service to barely maintain the dignity of the big city.

Further north, Shandong, Hebei, Henan, Shanxi, Shaanxi, and Gansu, these provinces were all war-torn areas in the late Ming Dynasty. In the late Ming Dynasty, various rebels and rebels, as well as Dong captives... In the end, the Ming Dynasty was also indispensable. Army officers and soldiers.

Like combs, they combed these places over and over again.

Not to mention the industrial and commercial economy, this population is more than half less than that in the early years of Chongzhen.

The activities of the rebel army were the most active, and in Shaanxi, western Henan and other places where the rebel army and the official army saw each other back and forth, there was no one in Dingkou.

When the rebels played rebellion back then, they were not affectionate. The rebels played rebellion in the early days, but they played the set of coercion.

What is coercion?

To put it simply, after the army of the rebels arrived at a place, they killed all those who dared to resist, took away all edible food, and burned down all the houses they saw.

Then he raised the so-called banner and said that the King Chuang would not pay when he came...and then called on the young and strong to join him in overthrowing the evil Ming Dynasty.

The food was robbed, the houses were burned down, and even the young crops of the farmland were trampled. The peasants had to join the rebel army in order to survive.

After joining the rebel army, Qing Zhuang became a cannon fodder soldier of the rebel army, while his wife and children followed behind the rebel army.

These rebels will go to the next place after eating one place, eat up all the eatable places along the way like locusts, and take away the young and strong. The scale will expand rapidly in a short period of time...it only takes a few months to go from tens of thousands to tens of thousands.

That's why we often see rebels with tens of thousands or even tens of thousands of people... But these so-called rebels are actually the family members of the rebels who were coerced, and the real rebel soldiers only account for a small part of them.

This coercion mode can allow the rebel army to pull out an army of tens of thousands or even tens of thousands of people in a very short period of time. Regardless of the combat effectiveness, the number must be enough.

Therefore, where the rebel army passed, it was true that not a single blade of grass grew.

Of course, the official army is no better than the rebel army. The official army does not play coercion, but the official army grabs food...

And sometimes the officers and soldiers are even worse, because the officials and the army just grab food and don't coerce it, which is equivalent to taking away all the rations of the people, regardless of whether the people live or die.

After the rebels also robbed the people of their food, at least they would take away the young and strong inside!
Are you talking about the officers and soldiers who don't grab food?

There are still troops without guns and food in this world!
Even when the Chu army fought wars, they often played 'eating from the enemy'. This was the case when fighting civil wars during the unification war, and it is the same when they go to the frontiers and expand overseas.

Although the four words of "eating from the enemy" seem more elegant than grabbing food, there is no difference in essence. At most, the Chu army's methods are softer when they do things, and the target group they aim at is more special and the number of people is rare.

Generally, the Chu army would not go directly to grab grain, and the tax department usually did things like collecting grain.

Why are the tax policemen in the tax department still so notorious until now? It's because they collected taxes too harshly back then, and the targets of tax collection were often landlords and gentry.

After all, the grain stored in a place is basically in the hands of those old rich landlords.

Those untouchables who are suffering haha, even if they are squeezed out, they don't have a lot of oil. The price/performance ratio is too low!

Therefore, during the war, the taxation department's work target was never the low-level people, but the middle and high-level people, especially those landlords and rich people who were most popular with the tax police.

Back then, these tax policemen either ransacked their homes or were on their way to ransack their homes every day.

And these landlords and gentry are often the group that controls the discourse power of public opinion...

I can't fight you, and I can't deal with you, so why can't I curse you behind my back?

So even though many years have passed, various tax law systems have been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, and gentry and businessmen are used to paying taxes...but they still scold the tax police when they should.

There is a view within the tax department on this, that is, the intensity of tax collection was still light, so that there are a lot of remnants of the previous dynasty, the old and the young.

----

Due to the wars in the early years, the population in the northern provinces was small, and the land was abandoned. In the early days, they basically focused on restoring people's livelihood and developing agriculture.

After recovering, I began to follow up with industry and commerce, but the overall development speed was still relatively slow.

In the end, the situation that Luo Zhixue saw in Jinan was formed, a majestic provincial city, in terms of transportation facilities and architectural appearance, it was not even as good as an ordinary prefecture in the Yangtze River Delta.

Its industrial development is also not good.

Luo Zhixue had seen reports before that the industrial and commercial output value of Jinan Prefecture was only 30.00% of that of Zhenjiang Prefecture...

This is just talking about Zhenjiang Mansion... not Suzhou Mansion and Songjiang Mansion, which are big economically important places.

However, this is also one of the reasons for Luo Zhixue's northern tour, that is, to see with his own eyes how backward the development of the north is.

At the same time, it sends a message to the outside world, that is, the empire intends to invest certain policy support and financial support in the northern provinces, and is determined to improve the economy of the northern provinces.

In Luo Zhixue's view, the northern provinces still have great potential for development, especially after the large-scale opening of the railway, the traffic problems that plagued the northern provinces in the past have been alleviated to a certain extent, and logistics costs have dropped. Especially the development of inland areas is of great help.

The development path of Shanxi is an example worth emulating and learning. Shanxi has many mountains and little land, and it has not been an economically important place since ancient times.

Even after the period of the Great Chu Empire, the level of economic development in Shanxi was very low for a long time, and the economic output value basically relied on agriculture... The limited industries are also small and medium-sized factories, mainly producing ordinary industrial products , such as cloth, iron products for daily use, small machinery, etc., are mainly supplied to limited local markets.

In this way, the industry will naturally not develop, even if it is discovered that there are a lot of coal resources in Shanxi.

As for coal, it is useless to have it alone. It must be able to be dug out and transported out, and the cost must be ensured to be low enough so that it can be developed and utilized on a large scale.

The Great Chu Empire has a vast land and abundant resources. Over the years, many iron ore and coal mines have been developed, but not every mine is worth investing a lot of money in development.

Especially in places with inconvenient transportation, even if there are a lot of minerals, they will not be developed on a large scale.

Because it can't be shipped out... let alone the mineral products, because the transportation is inconvenient, some medium and large equipment purchased can't be shipped in.

Shanxi's coal resources were in such an embarrassing situation in the early years.

Coal resources are abundant, but they cannot be transported out!

This situation was not improved until the railway was opened in Datong, Shanxi.

Starting from Datong, Shanxi, the train transporting coal can reach Zhangjiakou all the way, and then enter the southern section of the Central Plains Railway, that is, the Hebei section to Youzhou and Tianjin.

Tianjin is currently the largest industrial center in the northern region of the Great Chu Empire, and it is also the largest market for coal demand. Even though Tianjin is next to the coal mines of Tangshan, Tianjin, which has gathered a large number of heavy industries, is also the most important port and railway in the north. transportation hub.

The industrial coal and transportation fuel coal needed every day are massive.

In addition, Tianjin is also the largest city in the north. The permanent population of the urban area alone has reached one million. In addition, the surrounding counties, towns and even suburbs have a population of millions. numbers.

The important thing is that Tianjin Li is still a transportation hub!
This place is the northern terminus of the Central Plains Railway, the starting station of the Northeast Railway and the Grassland Railway, and the three main railway lines converge here.

At the same time, the local area is the second station in the north of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal. Relying on the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, various cargo personnel can easily reach Shandong and even Jiangbei and other places.

More importantly, this is actually the largest port in the north. The throughput of Tianjin Port is the largest among many coastal ports in the north. Looking at the whole country, it is also ranked third, second only to Shanghai and Guangzhou.

Coal from Shanxi can be supplied to local factories after being transported by rail, used for transportation coal, and can also be spread to surrounding areas as residential coal.

More importantly, it can also be directly transported to coastal and riverside cities in the south by large-tonnage sea-going ships, especially the Yangtze River Delta region.

At present, the Yangtze River Delta region in the Great Chu Empire is the area that consumes the most coal in the Great Chu Empire. Whether it is residential coal, industrial coal, or transportation coal, the daily coal consumption is an extremely huge number.

The local self-produced coal is far from enough for the consumption of the Yangtze River Delta, and coal needs to be transported from other places.

The coal produced by several large coal bases in the empire can be seen in the Yangtze River Delta, such as Pingxiang in Jiangxi, Tangshan in Hebei, Fushun in Liaodong, and Guangning in Guangdong.

Now, we have to add Shanxi Datong.

On the whole, the coal industry of the Great Chu Empire was transported from north to south.

As for Guangdong Guangning Coal, because the output is anthracite, because the quality of anthracite is high and the price is also expensive, at present, not many people are willing to use it as industrial coal or residential coal, and it is basically used as thermal coal. It's a steamship.

Among them, the navy of the Great Chu Empire only uses anthracite coal produced by the Guangning Coal Mine, and other coal navies look down upon it...

Aside from the relatively special coal mine of Guangning Coal in Guangdong, the current coal pattern of the Great Chu Empire has formed a situation in which coal is transported from the north to the south.

Shanxi seized the historical opportunity of the opening of the train and sold coal to the south. Only in recent years has the local economy developed by leaps and bounds.

In just a few years, Datong, Shanxi has rapidly surpassed the provincial capital Taiyuan in terms of industrial output value and fiscal revenue, and has become the largest city in Shanxi.

This also made Luo Zhi pay more attention to transportation, especially the role of railway and sea transportation.

Today, the railway mileage of the Great Chu Empire is still small. Even in the eastern region, there are only a few main railway lines of isolated groups, and the number of corresponding railway branch lines is too small.

To improve the economic backwardness in the northern region, the traffic problem needs to be solved first.

If you want to get rich, build roads first!
So different from the previous inspections, after arriving in Jinan City, Luo Zhixue didn't go to see any factories, farmland, etc. Anyway, the local industry and agriculture were just like that, and there was nothing worth showing at all.

What Luo Zhixue went to see was mainly the embankments along the Yellow River and the conditions of the wharves, but also the wharves and ports of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal.

And even more important railways.

Jinan is actually a railway hub, not only the Central Plains Railway running north-south.

At the same time, there is also a railway in Shandong Province, that is, the railway from Jinan to Qingdao. This railway is also a strategic railway to a certain extent, because Qingdao is an important military port of the Great Chu Empire in the northern sea.

At the same time, the existence of the Qingdao Naval Shipyard also made the local area the third largest warship construction base of the Great Chu Empire.

Around the Qingdao Naval Shipyard, there are a series of other supporting factories, and around Jiaozhou Bay, the Ministry of Industry and the Navy have joined forces to create a defense industry system whose main purpose is to produce naval equipment.

Because of the particularity of this place, in the early stage of the railway planning, the railway line from Qingdao to Jeju was included in the planning, and it has been completed.

Today's Jinan has the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal and the Yellow River in terms of river transportation, which is already enough for thirty.

That's right, the Yellow River is also navigable these years. Before the Great Chu Empire made artificial diversions, it had already considered the navigation needs, planned and built the scheduled waterway in advance, and invested a lot of money to straighten the river, especially at the sea estuary. , dig deep.

Therefore, after the diversion of the Yellow River, the lower reaches of the Yellow River are navigable, but the navigability is not high, and it is far from being comparable to the Pearl River and the Yangtze River.

In addition, because the amount of sand carried by the water of the Yellow River is too large, it is estimated that the navigation capacity of the lower reaches of the Yellow River will fail after a few decades.

But that's all for the future. At least for now, the lower reaches of the Yellow River are capable of navigating to a certain extent, even if it is only navigable for some small inland river vessels.

In terms of sea transportation, it can be directly connected to Qingdao by railway, which can be regarded as a solution to the problem.

But the railway traffic is still poor, especially the lack of a railway line to the western part of Shandong and the southern part of Hebei.

Luo Zhixue looked at the topographic map that night, and then frowned at the large plains in the west of Shandong and the south of Hebei.

There is such a huge plain terrain, but there are no railways and no rivers!

No matter how you look at it, it's an eyesore!

After thinking about it, he simply drew a zigzag line on the map, taking the ancient road from Taiyuan, Shanxi to Zhendingfu, Hebei, and then to Dezhoufu to connect the Jinpu Line of the Central Plains Railway.

Then draw a line starting from Youzhou, go south through Baoding Mansion, Zhending Mansion, Shunde Mansion, Guangping Mansion, then enter Zhangde Mansion and Weihui Mansion in Henan, and then go all the way to Zhengzhou in Kaifeng Mansion.

Once these two lines are drawn, it looks much more pleasing to the eye!

Then he turned his attention to other places on the map. This map is not small, but there are not many railway lines on it.

So much so that the huge map of the empire looked empty, Luo Zhixue began to draw lines on the map referring to the terrain and cities, as well as the speed of population, economy, resources, etc.!

While drawing, Luo Zhixue suddenly stopped writing!
There are already too many dense lines on this map, and even Siberia has more than a dozen lines... Not to mention other places, the eastern region and even Luo Zhixue in each county have drawn a railway branch line.

Looking at these lines, Luo Zhixue sighed... It's useless to draw so many!

Let's honestly build up a few main line railways and a few important branch line railways in the eastern plains first!

Thinking of this, he simply burned the topographic map full of lines...

This thing can't be spread, otherwise people will say that he has no brains to map the railway construction is just a trivial matter, I'm afraid that the officials under him will take it seriously, and really plan to do this to please himself... that would be embarrassing!

(End of this chapter)