The rise of a great power: starting with military industry

The Pinglu Canal and the Xianggui Canal are not the only canals planned or currently under construction across the country.

There are also the Gan-Yue Canal, the Jianghuai Grand Canal, the Songliao Canal, the Zheng-Xiang Canal, the Yellow Sea Canal, the Jianghan Canal + Jinghan Canal, the Hongqi River Project, the Shanghai-Xinjiang Grand Canal, and so on.

Everyone wants to build a grand canal to facilitate transportation!
In recent years, the Red River shipping project, Yalu River shipping project and Tumen River shipping project in China have made other provinces jealous.

The Red River navigation project is related to the strategic planning of the Red River Delta, while the Yalu River and Tumen River navigation projects are related to the strategy of revitalizing the Northeast and the Northeast Asia economic integration strategy.

However, there is no province or region that does not want to carry out the Grand Canal project.

The Gan-Guang Grand Canal connects the Ganjiang River and the Beijiang River. It starts from Poyang Lake in Jiangxi Province in the north, goes up the Ganjiang River, passes through Taojiang, crosses the watershed and enters the Zhenshui River in Guangdong Province, and goes along the Beijiang River to the sea in Yangcheng. It is 1275 kilometers long, passes through 27 counties and cities in the two provinces, connects the two major water systems of the Yangtze River and the Pearl River, and connects to the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal in the north through the Yangtze River to reach the capital. It is 3187 kilometers long and is planned as a third-level trunk waterway.

Economically, the Gan-Guang Canal can promote the development of poor areas, and the benefits to Gan and Guangdong provinces outweigh the disadvantages. The governments of both provinces are actively promoting it. However, there are many objections to this project. First, the investment is about 800 billion yuan, which is a large investment. Second, the canal will cause water outflow from the Poyang Lake Ecological Economic Zone in Gan Province, which is more likely to damage the ecological environment and involve cross-provincial ecological compensation.

Even in Jiangxi Province, which is eager to build a golden waterway, academics and officials have doubts about the various problems that may arise from opening the Jiangxi-Guangdong Canal. After all, the Poyang Lake water system covers 96% of the entire Jiangxi province.

In this regard, the Ganyue Canal is still in the preliminary investigation stage so far, and it may not be launched during the 11th or even 12th Five-Year Plan.

The Jianghuai Grand Canal is a plan to introduce water from the Yangtze River into the Huaihe River and build a new thousand-mile Grand Canal. The intention is to build the Jianghuai Grand Canal so that it can accommodate 2000-3000-ton cargo ships and serve as the main connection point for north-south water transportation. The Jianghuai Grand Canal is urgently needed by Anhui Province, which wants to connect the Huaihe River system and the Yangtze River system from north to south by building an artificial Grand Canal, so that the economies of the north and south can be integrated and developed, and the economic development of northern Anhui can be promoted.

This project has been in the works for many years, but has not yet been approved. It is expected to be included in the 12th Five-Year Plan.

The Songliao Canal is a core project of the "Northeast Asia International Water Transport Corridor" that connects Bohai Sea in Yingkou in the south and East Tatar Strait in Russia in the north. It is mainly used for water transfer, while also taking into account shipping, and can divert floodwaters in both directions. After the Northeast Asia Summit, this project was included in the 11th Five-Year Plan.

The Zhengxiang Canal runs from Zhengzhou to Xiangyang, connecting the Yellow River and Yangtze River systems.

Each canal project requires an investment of at least 30 to 40 billion RMB, or as much as over 100 billion RMB.

They are all important, but they also have different priorities.

Liu Tao knows that all the projects are good projects, but that does not mean they should be undertaken all at once. Instead, they should be carried out in stages.

Emperor Yang of Sui dug the Grand Canal, which was a sin in his own time but a great merit for future generations, and directly led to the demise of the Sui Dynasty.

A lesson from the past, a teacher of the future.

The next morning, on the temporary stage built on site, all the construction units, supervision units, design units, Pinglu Canal Command and other participating units were lined up neatly.

All leaders of Guangxi Province attended the meeting.

The groundbreaking ceremony was very grand.

Liu Tao attended the meeting in person and spoke highly of the Pinglu Canal Project. He also stressed that the project must ensure both quality and quantity and that there must be zero tolerance for quality issues.

The news of the start of the Pinglu Canal project was reported quickly and caused a heated discussion. After all, many people still did not understand why such a large amount of money was spent to invest in building a canal.

Some foreign environmental protection organizations and animal organizations have all kinds of weird voices.

Concentrating on the Pinglu Canal will damage the ecological environment and affect animals.

Naturally, no one would take such strange words to heart. Since it has been included in the 11th Five-Year Plan, the Pinglu Canal will continue to move forward. After attending the groundbreaking ceremony, Liu Tao came to a sea area in the Xiangjiang River. The earth excavation of the Pinglu Canal and the silt dredged from the river will eventually be transported here to reclaim land from the sea.

The excavation of the Pinglu Canal alone will require 3.5 million cubic meters of earth and stone. Such a large amount of earth and stone cannot be piled up at random.

All the earth and rocks will be transported to Hong Kong by sea, and a 40-square-kilometer land reclamation area will be formed here.

And this piece of land is entirely controlled by the Jardine Matheson Group.

The entire land reclamation area is located in the east of the Hong Kong River. Through this land reclamation project, the other four islands will be connected to form a piece of land of 50 square kilometers.

The land reclamation project in this area was finalized in the late 90s and construction has finally started now.

This will also be the last land reclamation project in Hong Kong. Although land reclamation projects have been proposed in other places, there have always been great controversies and they have not been passed.

Liu Tao came to Hong Kong mainly to attend a meeting.

After so many years of preparation, the first Shenzhen-Hong Kong Integration Summit was finally held in Hong Kong.

Officials, representatives from academia, business and other circles from Hong Kong and Shenzhen attended the summit, and leaders from Guangdong Province also attended the meeting.

At the opening ceremony, Liu Tao attended the meeting and delivered a speech. He said that Hong Kong and Shenzhen are adjacent to each other, have similar cultures, and highly complementary industries. It is a general trend to promote the integration of the two places.

From its establishment to the present, in just over twenty years, Pengcheng has transformed from a small village into a modern metropolis and is now one of the most developed cities in the mainland.

The total area of ​​Pengcheng is nearly 2000 square kilometers, with a built-up area of ​​920 square kilometers and an urbanization rate of 100%. It is the first fully urbanized city in China.

The area of ​​Pengcheng and Xiangjiang is about half of that of Shanghai.

Area, from a certain perspective, means development potential.

The ceilings of Shenzhen and Hong Kong are very obvious and can be seen now.

In the future, when Shenzhen and Hong Kong reach a bottleneck in their development, they will have to upgrade their industries and change their economic structures.

Even in Pengcheng now, low-end manufacturing industries have begun to move out.

After all, Shenzhen's labor costs are firmly among the highest in the country, and low-end manufacturing is the most sensitive to labor costs.

In other words, the manufacturing industry is very sensitive to costs.

Judging from the trajectory of industrial migration, industries tend to move to places with lower labor costs.

Of course, there is a prerequisite here, that is, there must be high-quality labor force with a certain level of education, a peaceful development environment and relatively complete preliminary industries.

This is why, so far, there are so few countries that have truly achieved industrialization. (End of this chapter)