Rise of the Argentine Empire

On December 1st, Saint-Hesse, accompanied by the Mayor of Nice and a team of senior officials from La Plata, visited the construction sites of the Hans Steel Plant's No. 1 and No. 2 blast furnaces, which were under construction.

The two 1000-cubic-meter blast furnaces of the Hans Steel Plant are expected to be capped in January next year, and they are almost completed.

The sense of oppression brought by the two steel behemoths is very strong, and the construction site is full of construction workers.

"This can really be considered a miracle."

The senior official from La Plata, who was over 50 years old, praised repeatedly.

"Actually, the steel plant in La Plata is even larger in scale. The United Steel Plant alone has 22,000 workers."

Saint-Hesse said with emotion.

After the Hans Steel Plant is put into operation, it can solve the employment of at least 10,000 to 15,000 people.

"Good heavens, 22,000, almost half the population of our Santa Rosa!"

The Mayor of Nice was also quite surprised, looking a bit like he hadn't seen the world. Even the Argentine National Railway Company is spread all over the country.

Actually, this is normal. A large factory like La Plata Steel, covering more than 10 square kilometers, needs that many workers. It can be said to be a city within a city.

The group of three visited several large factories. Looking at the hardworking people, they could only say they were very shocked.

There are now many factories in the industrial zone, with buildings scattered in a well-organized manner.

Because they often have to rush the construction period, and because Blanca City has sufficient land resources, Blanca City does not have many high-rise buildings. Most of them are rows of 3-story large factory buildings, with an average height of about 5-6 meters. Textile factories are mostly one-story buildings.

The floors of dormitory buildings are usually taller, mostly 5 or 6 stories high.

Various supporting facilities are also ready, waiting for installation and debugging after capping.

Unlike the construction cycle of La Plata Steel, which exceeds two years, the construction cycle of Hans Steel is expected to be completed in at most one and a half years.

Next year, Blanca City's steel production will exceed 900,000 tons, making it the second largest in the country, surpassing the steel production of Rosario.

And in the year after that, the fully completed Hans Steel Plant will have a production capacity of at least 2.2 million tons.

The output of Hans Steel has also exceeded the 850,000 tons of the Belleville Steel Plant in Rosario.

The Belleville Steel Plant is the third largest steel plant in Argentina. It now has 2 new 550-cubic-meter blast furnaces and an old 100-cubic-meter blast furnace, built by Austrian United Steel and invested by the Belleville family of Rosario.

And at the beginning of next year, the Blanca Steel Plant, located in the Alta district, will begin construction, building 2 brand new 1580-cubic-meter blast furnaces. It was completed 58 years ago and is expected to produce 3 million tons of molten iron annually. This is exactly the same as the first phase of the La Plata project, and the investment will be much less.

The main reason is that the current loan quota of Barron Bank cannot be spent. More and more deposits are being absorbed. In the past few months, the El Pachón copper mine project has also mined 5 tons of gold, which has allowed Barron Bank's gold reserves to continue to increase. It's just that the money hoarded there cannot be turned into wealth; it must circulate.

The tobacco industry continues to generate profits and is still very considerable. There is no need to repay the loans early. It is better to continue building steel plants.

Since losing the arms trade, a profit cow, the lessons of not investing haphazardly are still profound.

Currently, shipbuilding, automobiles, petrochemicals, diesel engines, tractors, and motorcycles do not need too much investment in the short term.

It's not that Saint-Hesse doesn't want to engage in other industries, but Argentina is not yet qualified for industries such as electronics, electrical appliances, nuclear energy, electronic computers, and bioengineering.

Currently, the hydroelectric power plants and thermal power plants built with the participation of Southern Energy are all importing generator sets.

After all, it's not easy to do without a foundation. It will still die if it cannot form an industry. These are thorough high-tech industries for Argentines, and it's impossible to force them.

After all, Saint-Hesse has a headache just trying to localize automotive parts, and there are still many problems to this day.

Philip, the head of Leidon Motors, has taken 5 million US dollars to Germany to see if there are any opportunities to acquire parts factories.

The development path of the Japanese automobile industry can still be used as a reference: buy technology, buy factories, establish cooperation, and become independent, but Japan's technical talent far exceeds that of Argentina, and there are enough Japanese people. Last year, Japan's population was 86 million, an increase of 14 million compared to the post-war year of 45.

In Saint-Hesse's view, rapid population growth is such a powerful advantage, not to mention that Japan's higher education is far more developed than Argentina's.

The fact that Blanca City's population is growing so much now does not mean that Argentina's population is growing so much. It's all existing population. If Blanca City has more, other places will have less.

Saint-Hesse is now pinning his hopes on new immigrants and having more children. Blanca City becoming the capital of La Pampa Province can at least deeply influence La Pampa Province. Río Negro Province, which owes Saint-Hesse a favor, can also formulate more aggressive population growth plans.

New immigrants from neighboring countries are used to replace some labor-intensive industries and workers building infrastructure. Native Argentine immigrants in Blanca City focus on developing more technologically advanced industries such as automobiles, petrochemicals, and shipbuilding.

This allows for industrial upgrading plans. Recently, the speed of new immigrants has also accelerated, especially in the textile and clothing industries, which require a large number of female workers and pay well.

If they can marry and have children in the city, they can automatically obtain Argentine citizenship. Such publicity can be said to be very attractive.

This also means that they can integrate very well into Blanca City. Anyway, Argentina is a country of immigrants, and the psychological burden is not that heavy.

Argentina's wealth is still very attractive to Chileans and Peruvians. Perhaps this is the advantage of information asymmetry. Their impression of Argentina mostly remains in the prosperous 1910s and 20s, an era that could rival the wealthy United States.

Although Argentina is full of decline, Blanca City's prosperity and employment can still capture their hearts.

So when the immigrant ships heading to Blanca City arrive, they do not hesitate to raise funds and choose to go. Compared to crossing the Andes Mountains, taking a boat is faster and more comfortable.

They simply didn't know that places like Bahía Blanca were exceptions in Argentina. Once you were on that pirate ship, it wasn't easy to get off. When they left Bahía Blanca, they would realize that this wasn't the Argentina they had imagined at all...

So, most of them stayed in Bahía Blanca, feeling at ease. They comforted themselves, saying that Bahía Blanca was, in fact, Argentina. Staying here wasn't bad at all; the security was good, and they had the opportunity to bring their wives and children over. The future would only get better and better.

If they stayed in Bahía Blanca for a month, they would be filled with hope for the future. The speed of development here was too fast; it was as if the air itself was filled with the scent of money.

This was a city of miracles.

New factories opened in Bahía Blanca every day. Perhaps yesterday you were working on an assembly line, and today you opened your own small workshop in the new port area, becoming a boss.

Stories of wealth unfolded here every day.

Especially since it had Argentina's most complete garment and textile industry, a garment trade transfer center. The Blue Cloud Textile Group alone employed over 6,000 people here and possessed a large amount of new production capacity.

And with the official legalization of the Bahía Blanca Free Trade Port, foreign investment in the new province increased again. Hot money began to pour into Bahía Blanca, further accelerating the city's development.

There were rumors that the mayor of Bahía Blanca even planned to establish a futures exchange here to develop the financial industry. The rumors became increasingly outrageous, claiming that a Bahía Blanca stock exchange would be established, and the number of swindlers also increased.

Unlike other people in Bahía Blanca, San Martin remained very calm and did not try to force other projects, such as building a transistor factory. He preferred steel and petrochemicals.

He didn't want to end up in a mess. He remained focused on basic industries.

Now, Argentina already had some foundation for developing the steel industry, making it relatively easy to start. Developing other industries could wait until there was real surplus, at least until the National University of the South and the Higher Vocational School had been operating for a few years.

Just building a 100,000-vehicle automobile factory was already so difficult; it was better not to think too far ahead.

Efforts were already being made in the petrochemical industry to supplement the foundation. As for atomic energy, it was actually about developing an atomic bomb, which might be possible to achieve.

Without industrialization, engaging in new technologies was somewhat like building castles in the air. It was better to invest more in basic industries now, such as petrochemicals, steel, and energy, which would naturally attract some capable people to invest.

Like the Arrow II fighter jet, even though ten years had passed since World War II, it hadn't been successful. Fortunately, now there was some progress. Being able to keep Dr. Tank and having sufficient funds, the performance of 304 stainless steel was acceptable, but it still needed to be improved for use in fighter jets. If they could get an order from the Ministry of Defense, then Argentina's independent fighter jet could continue to be developed.

However, with a little money, it was better to build more blast furnaces. Other industries were indeed temporarily unable to develop, and the demand for steel was long-term. Building more blast furnaces and converters would also ensure the stability of Bahía Blanca's economy.

Moreover, the profit per ton of steel was also very considerable now. At least this golden age could be maintained until the 1980s. With the profits created by these steel plants, many more things could truly be done.

Blast furnaces No. 4 and No. 5 in La Plata were also under construction, with the same specifications as blast furnaces No. 1, 2, and 3.

Bahía Blanca Special Steel Plant also began to build already technologically mature large converters. Currently, global steel demand was huge, and countries were developing their economies. It was said that Japan was starting new blast furnaces at a rate of ten per year. Argentina's steel industry level was still far behind.

In addition to producing low-quality coal, the largest project in the Zapla mining area in Jujuy Province was the production of iron ore. It was estimated that after completion, it could produce 5 million tons of iron ore annually, effectively alleviating the pressure on domestic iron ore supply in Argentina. The normal operation of the Uruguay iron ore project also created a huge amount of wealth.

San Martin praised the Zapla mining area as "God's gift," second only to the copper mining project currently under development within Thunder Mining.

In addition, Argentina imported large quantities of coal from Colombia, Australia, and South Africa. Among them, Thunder Mining East Australia Energy alone transported nearly 8 million tons of coal in 11 months this year, alleviating the pressure on the steel industry and reducing the import share of British coal from 80% to 5%.

Recently, British coal companies and York Energy Coal Company were putting pressure on the Argentine Ministry of Trade, but no one paid any attention to them.

After all, everyone clearly remembered the price increase of British coal in the past few years.

Thunder Mining East Australia Energy hired 37 10,000-ton coal carriers, transporting large quantities of coal to Argentina every month. Among them, 16 coal carriers belonged to the Plarrie International Fleet, and a number of shipping companies such as Australian Melbourne National Shipping, American Onassis Shipping, and Hong Kong Danan Shipping also accepted Thunder Mining's transportation business.

He vaguely knew that there were hands manipulating Bahía Blanca, and he couldn't let these small achievements go to his head.

......

On the morning of December 22, the two-day Bahía Blanca Spring University Entrance Examination began.

The joint examination of the five major vocational and technical schools would begin on December 24.

This time, the National University of the South enrolled 2,200 students at once, and the Bahía Blanca Higher Vocational School enrolled 2,800 students, totaling 5,000 students.

The five vocational schools enrolled 6,000 students, all serving the needs of Bahía Blanca's shortage of talent.

The tuition fees of both schools were more than half cheaper than other national universities, and the majors offered were more attractive.

Moreover, the number of students enrolled this time was large, attracting nearly 20,000 people from all over the country to take the examination.

The many schools built in Bahía Blanca also came in handy. There were no age restrictions for the examination; anyone under 30 could apply, which also increased the number of applicants.

Of course, most importantly, from April, the propaganda machine under San Martin began to operate. The National University of the South quickly rivaled the established national universities in terms of public opinion and deeply understood the essence of San Martin's propaganda.

A large number of famous teachers were created by San Martin using newspapers. The complete teaching environment, the beautiful school, and the excellent teaching staff made the National University of the South popular even before it opened.

Ten days ago, candidates from other places successively came to Bahía Blanca. Local hotels, inns, and small hostels began to be fully booked. Fortunately, the city of Bahía Blanca now had no shortage of houses, easily accommodating 30,000 people.

These candidates were all valuable talents.

San Martin had issued a strict order to fully guarantee the various needs of the candidates.

The surroundings of the two universities were quiet. The San Martin Aviation Industrial Park was arranged to be closed for 2 days.

Fortunately, there were actually no large mechanical factories nearby.