Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 1700 Large Infrastructure ([-])

"I'm sorry, I finally got some projects." On July 1675, 7, Xu Yu, commissioner of the Beining District Administrative Office, stood on the north bank of the Tiet River, looking at the construction site on the south bank that was under construction, and said with emotion.

This is Gaoguo County, the 114th county in the country. It was established just last month and has jurisdiction over five townships, Gaoguo Township, Yanfu Township, Changfeng Township, Renfeng Township, and Aling Township, with a population of about 115. The region cannot be regarded as a small county, and even surpassed several other counties established earlier than it, such as Xiadu, Miyun, Yanqing, Fangcheng, and Bowang five counties—the latter two were newly established this year, of which Fangcheng The county has four settlements under the jurisdiction of Fangcheng Town, Kongshan Township, Wugong Township, and Dushu Township (near the small town of Sikaira Campos in later generations), and it is the 116th county in the country; Bowang Township (later Four settlements were made in Cha'an Township (near the small town of Penapolis in later generations), Qianshan Township (near the small town of Penapolis in later generations), and Guangyang Township (near the small town of Assis in later generations) It is the [-]th county in the country.

In Gaoguo County, there is a wharf along the Parana River. Although the handling capacity is not very strong, it can also transfer many key materials from the south.These materials were shipped from the core mainland on the banks of the La Plata River, and went up the Paraná River to the Port of Iguazu, where they were unloaded and then transported northward to Nansheng County Railway Station through the Yinan Railway, and then loaded on a ship and continued northward. Until arriving at Gaoguo County Wharf.

During this long journey, the front is fine, but the section of the Yinan Railway is simply a hell: shoals, rapids, and hidden reefs are everywhere, and in some places there is even a relatively large drop. At present, only the state-owned inland water transport company is operating this section, and there are not many shifts. All other private transport companies regard this place as a dangerous road.

What's more troublesome is that some large and small waterfalls often appear in the waterway, which makes people very embarrassed.After all, a ship is not an airplane, and it is impossible to jump onto the riverbed at the top of the waterfall. There is no other way but to transport it in sections, which further reduces the efficiency of transportation and increases the transportation cost, which makes people feel helpless.

However, even though this river has all kinds of inconveniences in the eyes of outsiders, it is still an important waterway related to life for many people in the coastal areas. After all, this is the only bridge to communicate with the outside world. Land transportation The cost is too high, and there is currently no decent road extending to the south.

Therefore, several counties in the Hejian and Beining areas jointly applied for the project of dredging the upper reaches of the Paraná River, and the Government Affairs Council also responded positively to this: they allocated 30 yuan from the sales of the traffic lottery. 20 yuan of funds, and obtained a [-]-year low-interest loan of [-] yuan from the Bank of de la Plata in the name of the Canal Affairs Office of the Ministry of Communications as a special purpose for the "Phase I of the Comprehensive Improvement Project of the Upper Parana River Channel". funds.

The above is only in terms of money. In terms of materials, tools and personnel, the Government Affairs Council also instructed the Canal Affairs Office to make the best efforts.First of all, there are naturally "more than [-]" non-national laborers of Polish descent. Because the local population of land reclamation is not large, and the transportation is not particularly convenient (which makes the cost of cross-border labor very high), so there is an urgent need to import labor from the outside world, so three A labor force composed of [-] Poles and [-] South African Xhosa blacks was transported here at the right time, serving as the main force for building embankments (the river often floods during wet seasons) and dredging waterways.

Secondly, the tools and technology have also achieved the ultimate. Basically, the new technologies and machines that have been released in recent years have been purchased or borrowed by the Transportation Affairs Office in order to improve labor efficiency.For example, considering that the upper reaches of the Paraná River have a relatively large gradient and there are many large and small waterfalls, the Transport Affairs Office intends to build a new thing in this section of the river: a boat lift.

Undoubtedly, the rudiments of ship lifts have appeared in human history, but they were all pushed by human or animal power, which was inefficient, and they were actually small wooden boats, which was of little significance.The ship lifts that the people on the East Bank intend to install and build in the upper reaches of the Paraná River are all large-scale mechanized equipment powered by steam, which can push small-tonnage steamers full of cargo to the top lock through rails.

To be more specific, when the ship enters the dam at the bottom, if the dam is empty, the ship will stop on a rail car parked at the beginning of the track, and then be slowly pulled up to the top by the cable along the rail within the river, and continue sailing forward.When the ship sails down from a high place, the gate of the low dam is opened, and then the ship is allowed to slide down slowly along the rails under the action of gravity (it can be controlled by the braking system in the middle), and finally It landed steadily on the water surface in the dam and successfully floated up.

It can be seen that this kind of ship lift must be used together with the ship lock, and with the steam power system, sliding track, etc., the construction cost is still quite high.Fortunately, the waterfalls in the upper reaches of the Parana River are generally very small waterfalls, and the drop is not too big, so a lot of construction costs are saved, which relieves the engineers who came to the Canal Affairs Office for survey.

Of course, even if the waterfall drop here is bigger than expected, considering the importance of the Paraná River, the executive committee will actually approve the construction of the ship lift and the ship lock in the end, because this is a once-and-for-all investment. , in addition to the annual fixed maintenance costs, there is no need to invest in anything else, but it can greatly benefit the people along the river, and achieve fairly good economic benefits, and this benefit will increase along the development of the coastal economy and population. more and more abundant.

Another point I have to say is that in view of the current technical force and the experience and quality of the construction team on the East Bank, the first batch of ship lifts and locks will not be too big and "too risky", so the tonnage of ships that can navigate is also Pay attention: According to the preliminary guidance given by the Canal Affairs Office of the Ministry of Communications, it is best to choose ships with relatively low load and dead weight, that is, it is best to choose 35-ton inland river steamers that have been eliminated before.

They explained that for a 35-ton inland steamboat, the total weight of the cargo (35 tons), the ship's own weight and the rail car (including the steel bracket) combined is almost exactly close to [-] tons. It is just enough for the ship lift and ship lock in design.The implication is that no matter how big and heavy the boat is, it may not be a big problem when it falls down, but the safety factor may not be too high when it is pulled up, and accidents are likely to occur, so they recommend choosing a smaller boat.

Regarding the suggestion given by the Canal Affairs Office, the gentlemen of the inland water transport department are also unable to complain, so they can only write about the three major shipyards, asking them to go to the pile of old papers and find the blueprint of the 35-ton steamship that has been eliminated before. Come out, then modify the design, and come up with a new ship type to adapt to the actual situation in the upper reaches of the Paraná River.In this regard, the Hyundai Special Shipyard in Zhenhai County has given a response, saying that it will design a brand new 35-ton steamship within six months and apply it to the Paraná River to support the construction action there.

Of course, all of the above are long-term plans. In the near future, the brave and experienced captains of the state-owned inland water transport company will still have to use old ships to transport supplies from downstream.As for the skyrocketing costs caused by frequent loading and unloading of goods midway, this is also something that can’t be helped. Who made the traffic conditions like this?

"The transportation is not smooth enough now, and the inland water transport company can only selectively transport some supplies that are in short supply. For those bulky items, it is best to mass-produce them locally, otherwise, there is no need to replenish them at all." Xu Yu Walking slowly by the flowing Tiete River, he said: "So we have a large-scale brick and tile wheel kiln project, a cement kiln project, a lime kiln project, and a wood processing plant project. Raise funds and labor to build a logging camp, a sand field, and a gravel field. Only when these projects are completed can the subsequent construction be accelerated! Otherwise, there will be no place to store the materials that have been transported so hard from the downstream. The pioneer immigrants have no place to live, how can this work!"

In fact, this time, the executive committee has made a ruthless plan to carry out infrastructure projects in China to alleviate economic difficulties. In fact, there is also a focus, that is, the focus is on places with a low level of development or not developed at all, including roads, roads, etc. Infrastructure such as railways, canals, docks, building materials, and farmland water conservancy.The reason for this is that they hope to maintain the current economic system by investing in these wild areas and blank lands. After five or ten years, when these wild areas that have received large investments are gradually on the right track, the new The demand was naturally created, and the East Bank successfully survived an economic crisis.

In the final analysis, when the external market is weak due to various factors, through expansionary fiscal policies, large sums of money are spent on old and new lands, and continuous immigration is created to create new economic growth points and new demand for commodities to digest At present, there seems to be some excess production capacity in China.

This approach, to put it bluntly, is the expansion of domestic demand mentioned before.There are actually many ways to expand domestic demand, but under the current national conditions on the east coast, it is actually unrealistic to expect the residents of the old districts to spend their savings, and even so, once the consumption money is exhausted, Once again, money is concentrated in the hands of business owners, and they have no money to make, and they naturally fall into a new crisis, so that they have to close factories, reduce investment in scientific research, and so on.

Therefore, the most effective way is to make the whole cake bigger, so that society can create more effective wealth, which requires more immigrants, more resources, and more land.In fact, compared with the capitalist countries of later generations, the east coast with a large blank land is quite happy. This is equivalent to the United States with the "western decompression valve" and the United Kingdom with the "colonial cash machine". The economic crisis is very effective, and countries without colonies can only digest the crisis within themselves, which will undoubtedly bring about considerable side effects.

This kind of approach on the east coast undoubtedly requires huge financial support and a steady stream of immigrant population. The development of the new land requires money, and more importantly, the population needs to settle there, so that in the future, we can use our own hands to create wealth and create new markets. need.Therefore, this can well explain why the East Bank is doing everything possible to purchase slaves from the Ottomans and Tatars, encourage free immigration from European countries, and even transport a large number of people from the Far East by themselves. To fill the land to be developed, to make the wealth cake of the East Coast.

In contrast, the original export-oriented economic model actually does not need too much population and land.Because the international market is so big, it is simply impossible for the east coast to expand the scale of exports on a large scale without a substantial increase in the productivity of the people in Europe and Asia. Therefore, there is a need to expand the scale of domestic manufacturing It is not so urgent, and naturally, the demand for workers is not so great.

Therefore, the current behavior of the East Bank is actually to artificially create demand when the demand in the international market is insufficient. However, it seems that this demand will not be effective until five, ten or even 20 years later. In the past, it was only possible to burn money on a large scale, which is quite a test for the government's financial strength, and it is not known whether the pace of investment will be slowed down due to financial difficulties in the future.Otherwise, you can only send a large amount of currency to the market (if you can get it), which is equivalent to "printing money" in later generations, and this will undoubtedly cause a certain degree of inflation, and the negative impact cannot be underestimated.

"In the future, Gaoguo County, which relies on the Paraná River, will mainly produce various building materials. After these projects are settled and put into operation stably, they will be a steady stream of financial resources, which will benefit both local construction and the lives of local people. Therefore, the botanical garden project of the Northern Agricultural Company (formed by the merger of the former Northern Seed Company and several animal husbandry stations and state-owned farms) has settled in Bowang County, where agricultural product seed cultivation and livestock breeding will take place in the future. , the palms of the hands and the back of the hands are all meat, and they are all counties under the jurisdiction of Beining. The township cadre said.

"Understandable, understandable." Everyone immediately nodded hurriedly: "There are so many projects approved by the superiors, how can we let Gaoguo County eat it, and other places also need to be developed. Anyway, they are all in the Beining area , the meat is rotten in the pot, as long as the project has not been snatched away by other regions."

The cadres of these Gaoguo County actually meant something, and they were talking about the competition between the Hejian area in the south and them on some projects.

(End of this chapter)