Chapter 1310
Desperate
Chapter 1310 Desperate
Population demand is not just a problem faced by Haikou City. In fact, in most areas under Haihan’s rule, the labor shortage is a long-standing problem. The chief executives of various places will also be like Qiu Yuan, who is almost paranoid about immigration. longing.Although the current total population of Hainan Island has already exceeded 30, an increase of at least 20.00% compared to when the traversers first arrived here, for the quasi-industrialized society that the Executive Committee wants to promote, the number of laborers There is still a huge bottleneck, and population is still one of the short boards restricting the development speed of Haihan.
Fortunately, the traversers have mastered many ways to improve labor efficiency, which can make up for the shortage of labor force to a certain extent, so that the country can still maintain a very high speed of development in the case of labor shortage.If the current level of social productivity in Ming Dynasty is used as a measure, then the development of Haihan can really be described as rapid progress. In just eight years, Haihan's social productivity has evolved to a much higher level than this era.
Haihan's construction achievements undoubtedly made onlookers like Liu Shang both envious and jealous. Although he knew it was wrong, he still couldn't help thinking, if the Ming court had the same ability to govern, why would it encounter internal and external troubles today? Difficult situation.At least the Ming Dynasty has as much labor force as it needs, and the government can requisition civilians with a single order. There is no need to worry about a large labor gap during the implementation stage of a certain project, and there is no need to spend a lot of resources and time recruiting from overseas like the Haihan people. and transporting immigrants.
Just because of the population advantage, Haihan can be left behind for several years. Unfortunately, no one in Daming knows how to take advantage of this advantage. They can only watch helplessly as Haihan poachs a large number of people from Daming, and then uses these manpower for construction. Haihan country.Thinking about it carefully, this is simply a great irony of Daming's ability to govern.
The second stop of the visit is the Haikou Military Port, which is located ten miles west of the mouth of the Nandu River. As an important coastal stronghold guarding the Qiongzhou Strait, the construction here began shortly after Haihan captured Qiongbei. At present, the first and second phases of the project have been announced to be completed. , the follow-up mainly remains the construction and improvement of some supporting facilities.The Haihan Navy has an entire fleet stationed here. In addition to guarding the Qiongzhou Strait and setting up maritime armed barriers, the fleet’s active sea area is actually very wide, from the Jiangkou in the east to the Beibu Gulf in the west and the northern half of Hainan Island. The coastline of the country is under its control.
This is not the first time that Liu Shang has been in close contact with the Haihan Navy during this trip, so he will not feel too much novelty, and he saw a whole navy in the "Crossover 1635" military exercise a few days ago. The steam sailing fleet has a much higher vision than in the past, and the fleet stationed at the Haikou Military Port will no longer surprise him.However, he had never set foot in a real naval port in other places, including Sanya, so the infrastructure here still made him feel a little novel.
There are various tall spreaders, pipelines, and steam-driven conveyor belts on the wharf where the warship is docked. These devices are used to quickly load supplies such as ammunition, fresh water, and coal to the warship.In addition, there are several dry docks with a large area next to the pier, which are used to drag ships that need to be repaired out of the water for maintenance.However, Haikou’s technical strength is relatively limited. Although there are shipyards, they do not have the ability to independently build standard warships. The larger naval warships are built in Sanya Shipyard.
To elaborate on this, it is of course that the Executive Committee intends to control the shipbuilding industry involving the military. Although the production capacity of Sanya Shipyard is limited, the orders for military shipbuilding have been scheduled for several years, but this does not mean that the Executive Committee If you know it, you can safely open shipbuilding institutions that can build warships in other places.Especially for advanced warships that use steam power, they must be assembled and debugged at the Sanya Shipyard.
In order to have sufficient self-defense capabilities, Haikou Military Port also built several coastal defense forts according to the terrain. The huge gun body made Liu Shang speechless.The biggest artillery he had seen before was the city defense gun at the top of Daming city, but comparing the city defense gun with the Haihan coast defense gun, it seemed smaller in size.According to the accompanying officer, these coastal defense guns can easily shoot solid shells weighing more than [-] kilograms to the sea several miles away, and the aim is not bad.If the number of invading enemy ships is relatively limited, it is very likely that there will be no chance to forcibly dock at the Haihan Military Port Wharf.
Liu Shang doesn't need to look at the actual firing effect of this cannon anymore. Just looking at the huge iron bullets piled up next to the cannon body, he has no doubt that this kind of artillery can easily penetrate all the Ming warships he knows, and even very Perhaps even Haihan's own warships might not be able to withstand the long-range bombardment of such giant cannons.More than ten nautical miles to the north of this port is the southernmost tip of the Daming Leizhou Peninsula. It is self-evident who is Haihan building such a powerful coastal defense fort here to guard against.
However, with the continuous infiltration of Haihan in the southeast coastal area of Daming in the past two years, the Leizhou government has actually been in a state of turning a blind eye to Haihan, and will not intervene to manage what happened on Hainan Island. The intermediary brought word that as long as no troops were sent to attack Leizhou, there would be no restrictions or restrictions on the Haihan people living and doing business in Leizhou.Of course, such things as recruiting immigrants are naturally included in the category of commerce and trade, and the Leizhou government will not regard it as a prohibited thing to resist or prevent it.
Regarding these matters, Qiu Yuan didn't make it very clear when he introduced it, but after listening to it, Liu Shang could roughly imagine what the so-called "tacit understanding" between the two sides of the strait was like.Such a situation did not occur only in Leizhou. In fact, as far as Liu Shang knew, most of the Fuguang coastal areas had such an attitude towards Haihan. Everything is easy to say.
Even thinking about such a situation would make one feel very sad, that the dignified Daming should suffer from such uselessness.It's just that Liu Shang also understands that the officials in these nearby areas have probably long since despaired of the possibility of resisting Hai Han.In the previous "Crossing 1635" military exercise held in Danzhou, Haihan also invited some local civil and military officials from the coastal areas of Guangdong and Guangxi to come and observe. In this way, the officials of Ming Dynasty showed the strength of Haihan's force.
Liu Shang already had a personal experience of how the officials of Ming Dynasty would feel after watching the Haihan military exercise, so he made the previous judgment.As long as a person with a normal mind, after seeing Haihan's powerful force, he probably won't think about how to defeat Haihan on the battlefield, such an unrealistic idea, it is better to think about how to maintain a peaceful coexistence with Haihan Peace is the most important thing in everything, and the outbreak of war should be avoided as much as possible.
For the officials of the Ming Dynasty, as long as they start a war, they will basically lose. At that time, they will either die for the country or become a prisoner, and normal people will not be happy to accept these two possibilities.As a compromise, if he can keep the land of Daming and keep his own black hat, probably he can only meet Haihan's needs as much as possible and maintain this slightly fragile peace.
No one knows how big Hai Han's ambition is, and no one knows when Hai Han will lose his patience, but the days of peace can be counted as more days, and no one really wants to fight Hai Han head-on.
"If war breaks out, our fleet can set sail within two hours and set foot on the Leizhou Peninsula within four hours." The officer in charge of explaining the port situation to the inspection team did not hide his pride.For the Haihan army, the buffer time needed to launch a war against Ming Dynasty is only half a day.
The Leizhou Peninsula on the other side of the sea is flat and there is no danger to defend. Xuwen County, which bears the brunt, may not be as reliable as the coastal fortifications of this military port. Liu Shang has no doubts about whether the local defenders can withstand a wave of Haihan army attacks any hope.Once the war breaks out, I am afraid that the autumn wind will sweep away the fallen leaves, and the defenders in Guangdong and Guangxi can at most play a role in delaying Haihan's marching speed.
At this time, Lu Ting added: "If it is to use force against Leizhou, then there is no need to land from Xuwen County, and go directly to the east coast of Leizhou Peninsula to attack Fucheng. The effect should be more immediate."
The battle plan given by Lu Ting was immediately approved by Qiu Yuan and Yu Xiaobao. Both the military and the executive committee have conducted research on such a war plan, and senior officials like them have naturally come into contact with it. relevant information.What Lu Ting said is basically Haihan's official plan, but the details are not full enough.
But in Liu Shang's ears, these words have basically announced the death penalty in Leizhou Peninsula.The Haihan people are not a peace-loving race. Although they have extremely close trade and personnel exchanges with Daming, when a war really starts, these people will definitely turn their faces and deny anyone, and will not show any affection to Daming.And listening to what they said, it seems that they didn't take the nature of the war with Daming seriously at all. The reason is also very simple. They have already prepared for the war and have studied how to seize the island that is closer to Hainan Island. Ming territory.
For Haihan, everything is ready, and it seems that there is only one excuse to go to war.But if war is really going to happen, isn't it afraid that there won't be an excuse?Even Liu Shang can casually come up with ten or eight.The initiative of the war is in Haihan's hands. As long as the executive committee gives an order, Haihan's army will immediately cross the sea and rush to Leizhou Peninsula.It turns out that the cloud of war is not far away, but has already shrouded the South China Sea.
Liu Shang secretly sighed, and only hoped that the Haihan people could continue to focus on trade instead of such a sensitive topic as when, where, and how to launch an aggressive war against Ming Dynasty.Even if there is a discussion, you can only hope that they are joking about this topic.
But thinking about it further, after the Haihan people occupied the Haikou area, they rushed to build the military port and the fort. Doesn’t this action mean that they started preparing for war a few years ago?Even if they might not be able to launch a cross-sea battle against Da Ming at that time, at least it shows that they do not regard Da Ming as a partner that can coexist peacefully, but a competitor that needs to be on guard at all times.
Thinking about it this way, Daming's only chance was eight years ago when this group of people first arrived and their foothold was not stable. If the Haihan people were fledgling at that time and sent troops to drive them out of Hainan Island, it might still be possible.But now it is more than a hundred times more difficult to take similar actions than it was then.
During the visit to the military port, Liu Shang didn't say anything, but just followed the big shots and listened to their discussion.He hopes to at least catch some good news from it, for example, Haihan has no plan to start a war against Ming Dynasty in the near future, or what kind of fear does Haihan have towards Ming Dynasty, so that they can always restrain themselves ambition.It's a pity that these people discuss and discuss, and the topics they talk about are almost all the military value of Haikou Military Port. What they care about is only what preparations need to be made and what can be achieved if they use this as a base to launch a combat operation against Ming Dynasty. expected effect.
After completing the visit to this place, Qiu Yuan hosted a banquet in the officer's canteen in the military port to entertain everyone.However, limited to the conditions in the army, this banquet is obviously not as generous as Zhang Xin's previous one in Danzhou.
But Liu Shang's attention was not on the dishes on the table. After Qiu Yuan introduced them, he found that half of the local military officers present were from the Ming army.Obviously, after choosing to join Haihan, these people have all received good treatment. Those who should lead the troops continue to lead the troops, but they just changed into military uniforms.
As of now, only the Ministry of Defense of Haihan has the exact number of how many soldiers and officers of the Ming army have defected to Haihan.Liu Shang deduced from the current situation that he could come into contact with, that this number should be enough for Lord Shangshu of the Ministry of War to take the blame and resign.There are a large number of former Ming army personnel who continue to serve in the Haihan army. These people understand the Ming army's organization, training, weapons and equipment, and common tactics. If they want to deal with the Ming army on the battlefield in the future, they will naturally be very handy.
Although Liu Shang was very shameless in his heart for these people's behavior of betraying the country and surrendering to the enemy, he still had to socialize with them with a smile on the surface.After talking slowly, he found that these officers were not all serving on Hainan Island before joining Haihan. Many of them were from Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian, Zhejiang and other places. Liu Shang couldn't help admiring the methods of Haihan people. To be able to recruit so many Daming officers from other places to join him.
(End of this chapter)
Population demand is not just a problem faced by Haikou City. In fact, in most areas under Haihan’s rule, the labor shortage is a long-standing problem. The chief executives of various places will also be like Qiu Yuan, who is almost paranoid about immigration. longing.Although the current total population of Hainan Island has already exceeded 30, an increase of at least 20.00% compared to when the traversers first arrived here, for the quasi-industrialized society that the Executive Committee wants to promote, the number of laborers There is still a huge bottleneck, and population is still one of the short boards restricting the development speed of Haihan.
Fortunately, the traversers have mastered many ways to improve labor efficiency, which can make up for the shortage of labor force to a certain extent, so that the country can still maintain a very high speed of development in the case of labor shortage.If the current level of social productivity in Ming Dynasty is used as a measure, then the development of Haihan can really be described as rapid progress. In just eight years, Haihan's social productivity has evolved to a much higher level than this era.
Haihan's construction achievements undoubtedly made onlookers like Liu Shang both envious and jealous. Although he knew it was wrong, he still couldn't help thinking, if the Ming court had the same ability to govern, why would it encounter internal and external troubles today? Difficult situation.At least the Ming Dynasty has as much labor force as it needs, and the government can requisition civilians with a single order. There is no need to worry about a large labor gap during the implementation stage of a certain project, and there is no need to spend a lot of resources and time recruiting from overseas like the Haihan people. and transporting immigrants.
Just because of the population advantage, Haihan can be left behind for several years. Unfortunately, no one in Daming knows how to take advantage of this advantage. They can only watch helplessly as Haihan poachs a large number of people from Daming, and then uses these manpower for construction. Haihan country.Thinking about it carefully, this is simply a great irony of Daming's ability to govern.
The second stop of the visit is the Haikou Military Port, which is located ten miles west of the mouth of the Nandu River. As an important coastal stronghold guarding the Qiongzhou Strait, the construction here began shortly after Haihan captured Qiongbei. At present, the first and second phases of the project have been announced to be completed. , the follow-up mainly remains the construction and improvement of some supporting facilities.The Haihan Navy has an entire fleet stationed here. In addition to guarding the Qiongzhou Strait and setting up maritime armed barriers, the fleet’s active sea area is actually very wide, from the Jiangkou in the east to the Beibu Gulf in the west and the northern half of Hainan Island. The coastline of the country is under its control.
This is not the first time that Liu Shang has been in close contact with the Haihan Navy during this trip, so he will not feel too much novelty, and he saw a whole navy in the "Crossover 1635" military exercise a few days ago. The steam sailing fleet has a much higher vision than in the past, and the fleet stationed at the Haikou Military Port will no longer surprise him.However, he had never set foot in a real naval port in other places, including Sanya, so the infrastructure here still made him feel a little novel.
There are various tall spreaders, pipelines, and steam-driven conveyor belts on the wharf where the warship is docked. These devices are used to quickly load supplies such as ammunition, fresh water, and coal to the warship.In addition, there are several dry docks with a large area next to the pier, which are used to drag ships that need to be repaired out of the water for maintenance.However, Haikou’s technical strength is relatively limited. Although there are shipyards, they do not have the ability to independently build standard warships. The larger naval warships are built in Sanya Shipyard.
To elaborate on this, it is of course that the Executive Committee intends to control the shipbuilding industry involving the military. Although the production capacity of Sanya Shipyard is limited, the orders for military shipbuilding have been scheduled for several years, but this does not mean that the Executive Committee If you know it, you can safely open shipbuilding institutions that can build warships in other places.Especially for advanced warships that use steam power, they must be assembled and debugged at the Sanya Shipyard.
In order to have sufficient self-defense capabilities, Haikou Military Port also built several coastal defense forts according to the terrain. The huge gun body made Liu Shang speechless.The biggest artillery he had seen before was the city defense gun at the top of Daming city, but comparing the city defense gun with the Haihan coast defense gun, it seemed smaller in size.According to the accompanying officer, these coastal defense guns can easily shoot solid shells weighing more than [-] kilograms to the sea several miles away, and the aim is not bad.If the number of invading enemy ships is relatively limited, it is very likely that there will be no chance to forcibly dock at the Haihan Military Port Wharf.
Liu Shang doesn't need to look at the actual firing effect of this cannon anymore. Just looking at the huge iron bullets piled up next to the cannon body, he has no doubt that this kind of artillery can easily penetrate all the Ming warships he knows, and even very Perhaps even Haihan's own warships might not be able to withstand the long-range bombardment of such giant cannons.More than ten nautical miles to the north of this port is the southernmost tip of the Daming Leizhou Peninsula. It is self-evident who is Haihan building such a powerful coastal defense fort here to guard against.
However, with the continuous infiltration of Haihan in the southeast coastal area of Daming in the past two years, the Leizhou government has actually been in a state of turning a blind eye to Haihan, and will not intervene to manage what happened on Hainan Island. The intermediary brought word that as long as no troops were sent to attack Leizhou, there would be no restrictions or restrictions on the Haihan people living and doing business in Leizhou.Of course, such things as recruiting immigrants are naturally included in the category of commerce and trade, and the Leizhou government will not regard it as a prohibited thing to resist or prevent it.
Regarding these matters, Qiu Yuan didn't make it very clear when he introduced it, but after listening to it, Liu Shang could roughly imagine what the so-called "tacit understanding" between the two sides of the strait was like.Such a situation did not occur only in Leizhou. In fact, as far as Liu Shang knew, most of the Fuguang coastal areas had such an attitude towards Haihan. Everything is easy to say.
Even thinking about such a situation would make one feel very sad, that the dignified Daming should suffer from such uselessness.It's just that Liu Shang also understands that the officials in these nearby areas have probably long since despaired of the possibility of resisting Hai Han.In the previous "Crossing 1635" military exercise held in Danzhou, Haihan also invited some local civil and military officials from the coastal areas of Guangdong and Guangxi to come and observe. In this way, the officials of Ming Dynasty showed the strength of Haihan's force.
Liu Shang already had a personal experience of how the officials of Ming Dynasty would feel after watching the Haihan military exercise, so he made the previous judgment.As long as a person with a normal mind, after seeing Haihan's powerful force, he probably won't think about how to defeat Haihan on the battlefield, such an unrealistic idea, it is better to think about how to maintain a peaceful coexistence with Haihan Peace is the most important thing in everything, and the outbreak of war should be avoided as much as possible.
For the officials of the Ming Dynasty, as long as they start a war, they will basically lose. At that time, they will either die for the country or become a prisoner, and normal people will not be happy to accept these two possibilities.As a compromise, if he can keep the land of Daming and keep his own black hat, probably he can only meet Haihan's needs as much as possible and maintain this slightly fragile peace.
No one knows how big Hai Han's ambition is, and no one knows when Hai Han will lose his patience, but the days of peace can be counted as more days, and no one really wants to fight Hai Han head-on.
"If war breaks out, our fleet can set sail within two hours and set foot on the Leizhou Peninsula within four hours." The officer in charge of explaining the port situation to the inspection team did not hide his pride.For the Haihan army, the buffer time needed to launch a war against Ming Dynasty is only half a day.
The Leizhou Peninsula on the other side of the sea is flat and there is no danger to defend. Xuwen County, which bears the brunt, may not be as reliable as the coastal fortifications of this military port. Liu Shang has no doubts about whether the local defenders can withstand a wave of Haihan army attacks any hope.Once the war breaks out, I am afraid that the autumn wind will sweep away the fallen leaves, and the defenders in Guangdong and Guangxi can at most play a role in delaying Haihan's marching speed.
At this time, Lu Ting added: "If it is to use force against Leizhou, then there is no need to land from Xuwen County, and go directly to the east coast of Leizhou Peninsula to attack Fucheng. The effect should be more immediate."
The battle plan given by Lu Ting was immediately approved by Qiu Yuan and Yu Xiaobao. Both the military and the executive committee have conducted research on such a war plan, and senior officials like them have naturally come into contact with it. relevant information.What Lu Ting said is basically Haihan's official plan, but the details are not full enough.
But in Liu Shang's ears, these words have basically announced the death penalty in Leizhou Peninsula.The Haihan people are not a peace-loving race. Although they have extremely close trade and personnel exchanges with Daming, when a war really starts, these people will definitely turn their faces and deny anyone, and will not show any affection to Daming.And listening to what they said, it seems that they didn't take the nature of the war with Daming seriously at all. The reason is also very simple. They have already prepared for the war and have studied how to seize the island that is closer to Hainan Island. Ming territory.
For Haihan, everything is ready, and it seems that there is only one excuse to go to war.But if war is really going to happen, isn't it afraid that there won't be an excuse?Even Liu Shang can casually come up with ten or eight.The initiative of the war is in Haihan's hands. As long as the executive committee gives an order, Haihan's army will immediately cross the sea and rush to Leizhou Peninsula.It turns out that the cloud of war is not far away, but has already shrouded the South China Sea.
Liu Shang secretly sighed, and only hoped that the Haihan people could continue to focus on trade instead of such a sensitive topic as when, where, and how to launch an aggressive war against Ming Dynasty.Even if there is a discussion, you can only hope that they are joking about this topic.
But thinking about it further, after the Haihan people occupied the Haikou area, they rushed to build the military port and the fort. Doesn’t this action mean that they started preparing for war a few years ago?Even if they might not be able to launch a cross-sea battle against Da Ming at that time, at least it shows that they do not regard Da Ming as a partner that can coexist peacefully, but a competitor that needs to be on guard at all times.
Thinking about it this way, Daming's only chance was eight years ago when this group of people first arrived and their foothold was not stable. If the Haihan people were fledgling at that time and sent troops to drive them out of Hainan Island, it might still be possible.But now it is more than a hundred times more difficult to take similar actions than it was then.
During the visit to the military port, Liu Shang didn't say anything, but just followed the big shots and listened to their discussion.He hopes to at least catch some good news from it, for example, Haihan has no plan to start a war against Ming Dynasty in the near future, or what kind of fear does Haihan have towards Ming Dynasty, so that they can always restrain themselves ambition.It's a pity that these people discuss and discuss, and the topics they talk about are almost all the military value of Haikou Military Port. What they care about is only what preparations need to be made and what can be achieved if they use this as a base to launch a combat operation against Ming Dynasty. expected effect.
After completing the visit to this place, Qiu Yuan hosted a banquet in the officer's canteen in the military port to entertain everyone.However, limited to the conditions in the army, this banquet is obviously not as generous as Zhang Xin's previous one in Danzhou.
But Liu Shang's attention was not on the dishes on the table. After Qiu Yuan introduced them, he found that half of the local military officers present were from the Ming army.Obviously, after choosing to join Haihan, these people have all received good treatment. Those who should lead the troops continue to lead the troops, but they just changed into military uniforms.
As of now, only the Ministry of Defense of Haihan has the exact number of how many soldiers and officers of the Ming army have defected to Haihan.Liu Shang deduced from the current situation that he could come into contact with, that this number should be enough for Lord Shangshu of the Ministry of War to take the blame and resign.There are a large number of former Ming army personnel who continue to serve in the Haihan army. These people understand the Ming army's organization, training, weapons and equipment, and common tactics. If they want to deal with the Ming army on the battlefield in the future, they will naturally be very handy.
Although Liu Shang was very shameless in his heart for these people's behavior of betraying the country and surrendering to the enemy, he still had to socialize with them with a smile on the surface.After talking slowly, he found that these officers were not all serving on Hainan Island before joining Haihan. Many of them were from Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian, Zhejiang and other places. Liu Shang couldn't help admiring the methods of Haihan people. To be able to recruit so many Daming officers from other places to join him.
(End of this chapter)