Dominate the Country

In the third month of the lunar calendar, new news came from Europe.

——A new coup took place in Paris, and Napoleon ascended to the highest throne of power in France.

Chen Ming smiled very brightly after hearing the news. Great, this is great news. This means that the French are going to withdraw from Egypt. In history, after Napoleon became the big boss of Paris, it didn't take long for the Ottoman Empire to become an ally of France again. At the same time, this also means that China will soon be able to win new gains in America - Louisiana.

Chen Ming has been laying this dark chess for many years. It's really time to harvest.

After China has Louisiana, the Lighthouse Country can no longer play the westward strategy.

This is an important step to suppress the Lighthouse Country, dominate America, and not attract the attention of Europeans.

Of course, Napoleon could not sell Louisiana to China, but to the United States as in history, but would he dare to bear Chen Han's anger? Is it necessary for him to bear China's anger?

Historically, Napoleon sold Louisiana to the Americans out of strategic considerations. At that time, Napoleon sent a large army to attack Haiti, intending to restore France's rule there, but the whole army was annihilated. France's power in America has dropped to its lowest point. If Napoleon had not sold Louisiana to the United States, it would have been easy for the British to seize it. At that time, the situation between France and Britain was already as antagonistic as fire and water, and war was inevitable.

You must know that after the Second Anti-French Alliance was crushed, Napoleon's original wishful thinking was to make peace with Britain in Europe and expand his territory in the Caribbean and North America-so he sent an expeditionary force to Haiti, but the French military operations in Haiti have not been smooth, and the British are unwilling to make peace with France. Military conflict between France and Britain is inevitable.

Therefore, Napoleon sold the vast Louisiana to the Americans at a cheap price. Although such a price is still not affordable for the weak lighthouse country. But this transaction laid the foundation for the strength of the lighthouse country!

Napoleon has always been a very smart man. Chen Ming doesn't believe that he can't guess what benefits Chen Han wants to get from him.

In the original time and space history, Napoleon sold Louisiana to the United States. Now selling it to China is obviously more in his interest.

But you can't eat hot tofu in a hurry. This fruit will have to wait for another year or two.

Napoleon has just come to power and his power has not been completely firmly grasped. Chen Ming naturally can't stretch out his hand to ask him for Louisiana at this time. Wait until he consolidates his power and position, and then seek benefits.

In the following two months, at least 10,000 Chinese workers sailed to Tianfang. The excavation project of the Suez Canal has entered the track. The technical difficulties of this canal are not big, because it is a sea-level canal, and the technical difficulty is not a problem at all. But the whole project is in the arid desert, and there is a serious lack of water. Most of the local workers are Chinese, and a small number of Japanese. The engineering command will not ignore the lives of Egyptian workers as France did in history.

In the history of the Suez Canal, 120,000 Egyptian workers sacrificed their lives for it, with an average of 738.5 deaths per kilometer. Chinese lives are not that cheap.

Ensuring sufficient drinking water and food is the most basic material guarantee for the engineering command. As a result, a full quarter of the Chinese workers transported to Suez for the entire canal project were doing material transportation work.

Chen Ming felt that the construction of the entire project might cost 1 billion yuan. In history, the French treated Egyptian workers so harshly that 120,000 people were forced to death. At that time, Egypt had a total population of less than 4 million. With such a huge cost, it took a full ten years to build the Suez Canal and cost less than 20 million pounds.

How much will Chen Han have to pay?

Money is not a problem. Even if there are a few more hundred million, it will be more than one hundred million yuan per year. According to China's current fiscal and private enthusiasm for canal bonds, this is not a problem at all.

The problem is people.

Chinese lives are very precious now. Not to mention throwing 120,000 people to Egypt, Chen Ming would not be willing to give up even 10,000 people. So, when the French retreat from Egypt, Chen Ming will gradually transfer tens of thousands of workers on the canal construction site. Whether it is Aden Port or South Africa where he wants to go, tens of thousands of people are a powerful force.

And the labor force of the project mainly depends on the Ottomans.

Ruling a huge territory, there are many "lowly people" in the Ottoman territory. These people will be transported to Port Said, the western entrance of the Suez Canal, by ship in the future.

Time slowly entered the fifth month of the lunar calendar. It passed so fast. In the blink of an eye, half a year was gone.

In about ten days, it will be the annual summer harvest period on the Huanghuai Plain. Since the previous disaster, millions of people on the Huanghuai Plain have spent a very bad year.

Drought in spring, locust plague in summer and autumn.

Floods were not seen, but drought and locust plague delayed the entire Huanghuai for a year.

The relief work of the imperial court was very powerful, but no matter how perfect the relief was, it was impossible to take care of more than three million suffering people without missing a single one. It was not until the Mid-Autumn Festival that the Huanghuai region had ten consecutive days of autumn rain. The rain was not heavy, but it lasted for ten days, truly resolving the drought that had hung over the Yellow Sea Plain for more than half a year. It did not delay the planting of winter wheat.

In winter, there were several heavy snowfalls. Auspicious snow indicates a good harvest, which is a good thing. In the following year, God gave us a favorable weather. The old traces of disasters on the Huanghuai Plain were like waves in a lake, which were quickly smoothed out. Today, the Huanghuai Plain is still a scene of bumper harvest.

All the farms in Xuzhou have become a golden ocean, and countless wheats are still in the final sprint period of maturity.

Blown by the breeze, the wheat forms golden waves, which rise and fall, rustle, and seem to be a beautiful music, which is endless. This is the joy of harvest!

The wheat waves are rolling, and the wheat fragrance is floating. The rolling wheat waves dyed the Huanghuai land into yellow, and the sky into yellow, which is rich and prosperous, thrilling and golden.

This is the foundation of Chen Han. The bumper harvest of grain is a testimony to the prosperity of Chen Han. Although midsummer is hot, it is a lively season, a harvest season, and an exciting season.

In addition, also in Xuzhou Prefecture, on the bank of the Yellow River in the northwest suburbs, a construction site is busy with construction workers. Countless workers in the anthills are busy in a tense, diligent and orderly manner.

On the south side of the construction site, three steam engines are making a deafening roar. Each steam engine is connected to an iron "water wheel". The water wheel stands in a large "pot", and a carload of gravel, sand, cement, etc. are poured into the pot. Then pots of concrete are stirred by these steam engines. When the stirring is finished, the valve of the pot is opened, and the tilted concrete is transported to where it should go by the conveyor belt brought by another steam engine standing on the riverside.

Chen Han wants to build China's first Yellow River Bridge in Xuzhou. Is there any technical difficulty? Of course. But can it be overcome? It can be overcome.

The water depth in the lower reaches of the Yellow River is very shallow, much shallower than the water depth in the Thames estuary area.

But the silt and sand at the bottom of the Yellow River will definitely cause great trouble to the construction of the bridge piers.

At the west end of the construction site, a tall and strange steam machine with two large wheels on each side stood quietly in the center like a giant beast. The machine was low in front and high in the back. There was a tall smokestack at the head, which was all black. The end was high and convex like a step stone, and it was also like a grid. The empty space was installed with glass. There were more than a dozen workers in red and yellow work clothes around it.

The steam monster was a mixed structure of iron and wood. It was nearly two feet long, six feet wide [two meters], and nearly one foot and fourteen feet high [five meters]. This is the first generation of steam locomotives in China.

This construction site on the bank of the Yellow River in Xuzhou is one of the construction sites of the Kaihai Railway, and it is also one of the most important construction sites. If the construction of the Yellow River Bridge here cannot be successful, then the railway bridge will not be in sight. The Kaihai Railway will also become a big joke for Chen Han.

While the railway was being built, the locomotives and carriages were also gradually arranged in place. Xuzhou Station is a crucial station on the Kaihai Railway. It is a dispatching station, and its qualifications are as high as those of Kaifeng and Haizhou Stations.

When a shovel of coal was stuffed into the boiler, the steam began to heat up. With the sound of a whistle, the worker standing in the driver's seat of the No. 04 steam locomotive cab smiled with satisfaction.

This is a big guy. There are six or seven trailers behind it, each of which is full of heavy objects, weighing tens of thousands of pounds. This big guy can also run hundreds of miles at a speed of 10 miles per hour.

The track at the west end of the construction site is less than two miles long, and it is easy to get it done at the speed of the locomotive.

"Haha, everything went well in today's test. There has been no problem for half a month." Half an hour later, the technician on the train excitedly reported to the chief engineer of Xuzhou Station.

...

It has been 26 years since the founding of the People's Republic of China. As of the first half of the 26th year, another national population census was completed. The total population of Chenhan has exceeded 206 million. The birth rate is so high that it is worrying. The Chinese have always believed that having many children brings happiness. Now that life has improved, why don't they have more children? Will they still be left as seeds?

The corresponding thing is the decline in the speed of foreign immigration. Not only in America, but also in Southeast Asia and Outer Northeast China, the population of many towns in the early days of America and South Mingzhou has not even exceeded the 10,000 mark.

After more than 20 years of development and more than 20 years of industrialization, Chen Han is still far from completing the industrial revolution, but the basic scale of the country's modern industry has gradually entered a mature stage. It's just that the society has not yet entered an industrial society, and there is still a little distance from the full-scale explosive expansion, and the number of industrial workers it relies on is still insufficient.

In the entire Chinese mainland, the number of qualified technicians that can be obtained from formal vocational education schools and on-the-job training each year is no more than 50,000, and the overall industrial development is still constrained by the supply of raw materials and the number of skilled workers.

Of course, this does not mean that the efforts of more than 20 years will not work. In fact, the first major issue initiated by Pang Zhenkun after entering the cabinet was the innovation of transportation construction in the new era.

Compared with the dredging and construction of water and land transportation in those days, more than 20 years have allowed Chen Han's engineering construction technology to have an unimaginable development, which is full of bridge technology.

The Yellow River Railway Bridge in Xuzhou is an experiment. In the next five years, bridges across the two banks of rivers will appear on all the major rivers in China, making the "transportation" that previously required ship transfer more convenient and faster.

The middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River are the top priority of this major transportation construction. Who makes the Yellow River so important in the social economy of northern China, and the river itself is quite shallow?

And on some large and medium-sized rivers, reservoirs will appear one by one.