I want to be emperor

Chapter 1095 Fifty Years of Spring Festival

In the 50th year of Chengshun, December 16th, this time has officially entered the Spring Festival in the Chu Empire.

People who are studying and working abroad are gradually starting to take various means of transportation to go home. Some people are taking advantage of the rare Spring Festival holiday to travel with their families. Many people in the north will choose to go to the warmer south. winter……

The south generally does not refer to the southern provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi, but refers to the Nanyang regions further south, such as Malacca, Banten Province, and Luzon.

Some people also travel to the Americas, such as the Jinshanfu area in North America, which is very popular with tourists because it is relatively warm in winter.

Of course... In this era, there are still relatively few people who travel long distances. They are usually the upper class who have money and leisure. Ordinary people usually choose to go home to celebrate the New Year, or celebrate the New Year locally.

After all, the Spring Festival holiday is still a relatively rare long holiday. If you miss this long holiday, the next long holiday will have to wait until the Dragon Boat Festival, and the Dragon Boat Festival holiday time is not so abundant.

Beginning in the 1930s, the Chu Empire implemented a long holiday system in order to stimulate consumption. After years of repeated improvements, it has now formed three main long holidays: the Dragon Boat Festival long holiday, the Mid-Autumn Festival long holiday and the Spring Festival long holiday.

However, the Dragon Boat Festival and Mid-Autumn Festival holidays are relatively short. Not counting the original rest days, the statutory holidays are only three days, but they are usually adjusted so that about five days of holiday can be arranged.

The Spring Festival holiday is relatively long. There is a statutory five-day holiday, and a seven-day holiday can be arranged by adjusting the leave.

But in actual practice, considering that a large number of employees have to go home for the New Year, the traffic speed these days is not very good. If it is farther away, the one-way train may take two or three days... In this way, the seven-day holiday is not enough. For use on the road.

At the same time, spring is generally the off-season for the manufacturing industry. Both sales and production are off-season. Companies do not need to prepare too many goods and the production tasks are not heavy. Therefore, many companies will give more holidays according to their own conditions, and employees can often get About half a month's vacation... can be regarded as annual leave.

All of this has led to a surge in passenger demand in the Chu Empire every year during the Spring Festival...and the problem is getting worse year by year. Many people want to go home but can only give up because they can't buy train tickets. This thought.

There is no way, even the basic transportation construction of the Great Chu Empire is already very good, especially in the central and eastern provinces with developed economies and large populations, the railway network is densely packed... The total mileage of the railway network in East Asia alone exceeds 1900 kilometers (PS: Around 1916, the United States had more than kilometers of railways, reaching its peak of kilometers in , exceeding the total length of railways in other countries in the world)...

The contemporary Chu Empire's railway mileage in East Asia alone is more than the mileage of China's operating railways in the 21st century!

Why is this happening?

Because in later generations, railways were only one of the main means of transportation, and after entering the 21st century, high-speed railways were developed one after another, and investment in railways became larger. At the same time, air transport and road transport also greatly occupied the market share of railway transport... …

However, in the contemporary Chu Empire, railways are the most important means of transportation. Road transportation, that is, horse-drawn transportation, is generally used for short-distance transportation. It cannot shake or replace the role of railway transportation. It can only be used as a supplement.

There is no aviation industry, and there is no car transportation to share... In addition to ship transportation, other personnel and material transportation almost rely on trains... And it is not just long-distance transportation, in fact, short-distance transportation of dozens of kilometers, hundreds of kilometers, etc. Relies heavily on trains.

In addition, contemporary trains are also slow, and the fastest passenger train can only run 60 kilometers. The carrying capacity is honestly limited...

At the same time, many railway lines are actually single-track railways...especially railway lines opened in some complex terrains. In order to reduce construction costs, many are actually single-track railways.

All these factors led to the Chu Empire’s frantic construction of railways... Especially in the central and eastern regions of East Asia, those who built railways could be said to be crazy... Otherwise, they really wouldn’t be enough!

And the most important thing is, don't think that building the railway like this will have a big financial burden... In fact, it is not a burden. The Chu Empire has stopped spending money to build the railway a long time ago.

The railway construction of the contemporary Dachu Empire is partly funded by the Railway Corporation's own funds, but most of it is financed through the capital market... Therefore, the debt of the Dachu Empire Railway Corporation is also very exaggerated.

And how to repay so much debt?

It’s not a big problem at the moment, because railway operations these days are very profitable...because it has no other competitors except shipping...and shipping can’t go everywhere. In some inland areas and not along rivers, There are no ships in the area, so we can only take trains... The same goes for material transportation.

Another important point is that the railway operation in the Dachu Empire is a monopoly. There is only one commercial railway operating company in the world... Even if the railway freight needs to maintain a certain inclusive nature to support economic development along the way... but the monopoly As long as the things are done normally, it will not lose money. Not only will it not lose money, but it will also be very profitable. Especially for railway lines in economically developed and densely populated areas, it can even be regarded as making a lot of money every day.

Many railways built in economically developed areas in the east can recover their costs within a few years, and the rest are pure profits, and the profits are particularly large.

Its strong profitability also makes major financial institutions happy to lend money to railway companies. At the same time, railway construction bonds discovered by the public in the financial market are also very popular because the interest rates are good and they are easier to sell than national bonds. .

Well, the Dachu Empire did not issue many national bonds, so the interest rates paid were also low... After all, there was no world war, and there were no other particularly important events that required money, so the financial system of the Dachu Empire has always been very stable. , large-scale deficits rarely occur, and they rely on the issuance of large-scale national debt to maintain them.

Some of the treasury bonds issued today are basically small-scale, used for checking deficiencies, temporary use of money and other reasons. The overall scale is not large... and the interest paid is also low. It belongs to the type where the interest is only so much anyway, you can sell it or not.

In comparison, although the interest rate of railway bonds is not high, it is higher than that of government bonds. Therefore, many financial institutions and even individuals will choose to purchase railway construction bonds as a stable investment option...not to make more money, but to protect the principal and earn some interest.

As for bank deposit interest...that's even lower.

In the early years, when you go to the bank to deposit money, you not only get no interest, but you also have to pay a custody fee... Now there is interest, but the interest provided by the bank is extremely low.

If you are an ordinary individual user and do not have much deposits, you will have to pay the bank every year, because the bank will charge account management fees and corresponding handling fees for deposits and withdrawals. If you open a check business, you will also be charged a certain amount. management fees.

Why is this happening, you ask?

Because the Da Chu Empire still implements the gold standard... However, the economy of the empire is developing too fast, but although the output of gold as a currency anchor is also increasing year by year, it is still not enough!

Therefore, in the past few decades, not only did the Great Chu Empire not have the inflation that would appear every year in later economic systems, but there would be deflation from time to time... In this case, in normal years, banks can give you some interest at will, then This is already very good. In a year of deflation, the bank will further lower the deposit interest rate and give you an interest rate that is infinitely close to zero.

Therefore, even if the interest rate of railway construction bonds is very low, a large number of people still buy them, and they do not have to worry about not being able to redeem the railway construction bonds after they expire.

After all, the Railway Corporation has strong attributes of an official organization. Many people believe that if there is a problem, the government will definitely cover up... At the same time, a big reason is that the Railway Corporation is very profitable and can fully afford to pay off these bonds. The principal and interest are just that they have too many railways to build and they need too much money now, so they need to borrow a lot of money. Otherwise, the Railway Corporation does not need to issue any railway construction bonds at all, and can live a comfortable life relying on self-profit funds.

Unfortunately, the Railway Corporation of the Dachu Empire has never been a pure commercial organization, but a commercial organization with strong official attributes. Making money has never been their purpose. Build more railways, improve railway transportation capacity, and meet the needs of economic development. Transport capacity demand and promoting economic development are their only tasks.

This also means that after the Railway Corporation has almost completed the railway construction, and the air transport and road transportation industries have also developed, and there is no need to build railways on such a large scale and intensively as now, without this pressure, the Railway Corporation will be able to Begin to significantly reduce railway transportation costs and further stimulate economic development...

And now, we can see signs of it... The Dachu Empire Railway Corporation has built 205,000 kilometers of railways in East Asia alone, and has also built a large number of railways in other places, such as Central Asia. , Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, America, etc.

Among them, the Americas, mainly North America, are also key areas for railway construction. Today, the number of completed and under-construction railways in North America has reached 100,000 kilometers, second only to East Asia.

Even in various vassal states, such as West Asia, Europe and even poor places in Africa, railways have begun to be built.

This brings the railway mileage operated by the Dachu Empire Railway Company to have exceeded 450,000 kilometers, which is very close to the early expected goal of 500,000 kilometers. It is estimated that it will be reached in less than two years.

Of course, this is still not the end. According to the plan of the transportation department of the Dachu Empire, the overall plan has reached 600,000 kilometers... If you use a country to measure this data, it will feel very exaggerated, but if you use If we measure this data globally, it is actually at a normal level.

Because the Dachu Empire is a powerful country that occupies the entire world, has a population of more than 700 million, and has fully entered the second industrial revolution!

In such a country, the demand for railways is huge.

But... even though the Great Chu Empire currently has a fairly developed railway transportation system, especially in the eastern and central regions of East Asia where the railway lines are densely packed and everywhere... it still cannot withstand the Great Chu Empire's annual Spring Festival travel rush.

There is no way, no matter how powerful the modern railway transportation system is, it cannot withstand the passenger traffic of hundreds of millions of passengers in a short period of time.

And this year, according to the transportation department, the passenger volume in East Asia is likely to exceed 300 million passengers... Every time I think of this huge number, the transportation department will feel helpless in life!

What’s even more frightening is that this number is still growing year by year... You must know that in the 47th year of Chengshun, the passenger volume of Spring Festival travel in East Asia was only more than 100 million. It only took three years, and it doubled. More than twice that!

The reason why there is so much growth is not that only so many people will travel during the Spring Festival travel period, but that the railway system in East Asia can only provide so much transport capacity, and countless people who want to buy tickets home cannot.

But even so, it is the result of the railway department's hard work.

In recent years, every Spring Festival, railway companies will transport trains from Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Eastern Europe and other places, and at the same time activate a large number of mothballed locomotives and temporarily use the trains.

The railway lines are extremely busy. On many railway lines with heavy tasks, trains will pass by every ten minutes.

In order to ensure the safety of train operations and improve transportation capacity, the railway company has used all methods.

Precisely because he knew that the closer the New Year was, the greater the pressure of Spring Festival travel would be, so after receiving the task instructions from Luo Zhixue, Prince Luo Jian quickly took a special train north and left Jinling City before the official start of Spring Festival travel.

After the Spring Festival travel season started, his special train had already arrived in Tianjin!

When he arrived at Tianjin Railway Station, he felt the shock of the Spring Festival...

Even though it is only December 16th and the Spring Festival travel season has only started for two days, the number of passengers in the train station has also increased significantly.

In addition, contemporary Tianjin is one of the three super cities of the Chu Empire. It is also a political, economic, cultural, and military center in the north, and a leading city in the Bohai Rim economic circle.

The permanent population of Tianjin alone has reached more than 4 million, and there are also several cities with large populations in the surrounding areas, such as Tangshan, Youzhou and many other small cities.

The population of this urban agglomeration with Tianjin as its core can reach about six million people... which is an exaggeration.

So many people have to go home and travel during the New Year...and Tianjin is still a railway transportation hub, which also makes Tianjin Railway Station very busy.

When Prince Luo Jian was in the special train, he could see frequent trains departing or arriving at the station... The density was just like the steady stream of carriages passing by on the street, which could not be counted.

To be honest, he also went to Jinling City's train station last year to inspect the Spring Festival transportation situation, but he had never seen such a dense train...

There is no way, although Jinling City is the capital... its population is really small. There are only a few hundred thousand people in the urban area, which is not as large as the Dangtu Industrial Zone, which also belongs to Yingtian Mansion.

At the same time, the population in Jinling City is mainly employees in government offices, teaching institutions and some corporate headquarters, as well as students. These people are basically permanent residents, and the floating population is relatively small... And the most important thing is that Jinling City These government and higher education teaching staff have statutory holidays. They will not give you half a month's holiday like companies do. It is usually seven days, and many of them have to be on duty and have to take turns.

Therefore, during the Spring Festival travel rush in Jinling City, there are actually not many people returning to their hometowns. Most of them are college students. The total number of people returning home is far different from that of those industrial cities.

As for Tianjin, this is an important economic town in the north, with factories everywhere and a particularly large floating population. During the long Spring Festival holiday, naturally more people will return home.

In this way, Prince Luo Li also saw the densely packed trains!

(End of this chapter)