Chapter 3599
Chapter 3599
Chapter 3599
It is certainly good news that the Executive Committee has given overseas regions greater autonomy, but Zheng Agui is not particularly optimistic about the prospect of expanding the scale of conscription.
To be precise, he did not have much confidence in the Luzon Region's own conscription plan.
The population size of the Luzon region is smaller than the rest but better than the rest. It still has obvious advantages over Singapore Island and North America, but its population composition is not ideal. The proportion of Han people with higher quality is less than a quarter, which is very similar to Singapore Island.
Among the areas under the jurisdiction of the Luzon Region, there are relatively concentrated Han Chinese communities only in the central and northern parts of Luzon Island. From the area south of Manila Bay, the proportion of Han Chinese drops sharply, and the smaller it is as you go south.
Currently, on the island of Mindanao at the southern end of the jurisdiction, the proportion of Han Chinese in the local population is said to be only about one-tenth, and this even includes those mixed-race people who are only half Han Chinese.
The vast majority of the population in the jurisdiction are still local indigenous people, but these indigenous people have almost no cultural quality and use a variety of languages. It is not easy to organize them to carry out production activities or to recruit young and strong people to join the army.
Most of the soldiers in the several indigenous camps currently under the Luzon Army are young people who have received basic education in schools run by Hai Han. But even so, it is extremely difficult to train these natives with a lax nature into disciplined soldiers.
This also led to the overall combat effectiveness of these indigenous camps being weak, and they were only suitable for carrying out some low-intensity clearing missions in tropical island environments. If it was a large-scale battle on the front battlefield, or a battle to siege a fortress city, these indigenous troops would inevitably expose many shortcomings.
In several fierce battles fought in the central Philippine Islands in the past two years, the performance of the indigenous troops was obviously inferior to that of the troops mainly composed of Han people. Zheng Agui had a personal experience of this.
As for some important special positions in the military that have certain requirements for professional skills, such as communications, medical care, sniping, navigation, quartermasters, etc., basically only Han people or Hispanic soldiers with a certain foundation can be employed, while soldiers of pure indigenous origin find it difficult to match the corresponding requirements.
However, if the Luzon region were to start large-scale conscription, the main source of soldiers could only be the indigenous people. This is an objective fact determined by the population ratio. By then, the establishment of the indigenous forces would probably have to increase several times than it is now, but the combat effectiveness might not necessarily be improved accordingly.
For Zheng Agui, although there is a great possibility that he will be promoted due to the expansion, it also means that the proportion of indigenous soldiers in the troops he will command in the future will greatly increase, and it is even possible that he will be transferred to an indigenous force as a commander.
However, these problems are not his concern. He has to complete the established combat mission first. The hundreds of prisoners here will board a cargo ship and head south to the Beimen Port in the New World, where a large number of manpower is needed to build infrastructure.
Zheng Agui and his company needed to continue to carry out the task of clearing out Spanish colonies in the Lesser Sunda Islands. Fortunately, they had rested for many days and were in good condition. Several lightly injured personnel had recovered and returned to the team, and their combat effectiveness had basically returned to normal.
Based on the current battle situation, the command center determined that there were not many Spanish combat troops deployed in the southwest Pacific. However, due to the complex geographical environment of this sea area, it was difficult for the Hai Han army to achieve success in one battle. They could only clear out the settlements one by one to cut off the opponent's supply channels. This was why the immigrants' food in the settlement where Zheng Agui was carrying out his mission was all taken away by the Spanish fleet.
No matter how good the Spanish fleet is at guerrilla warfare, it still needs supplies to maintain itself. Once the supply is completely cut off, even if the Hai Han army does not continue to put pressure on them, they will have to withdraw from this sea area on their own.
But the problem is that the command believes that there are no large colonies in the region, but at least two or three Spanish fleets still appear from time to time in various places, and even have the spare capacity to attack Hai Han’s supply fleet. There is only one reasonable explanation, that is, the Spanish still have some supply channels that have not yet been found.
After repeated interrogations of the prisoners of war, the Military Intelligence Agency believed that somewhere to the west of the current fighting area, the Spaniards still controlled at least one or two secret ports, where they had long-stockpiled supplies and food, as well as ammunition transported across the ocean from South America, which could support their armed fleet to continue fighting for a considerable period of time.
But the problem is that there are almost no high-level officials among the prisoners captured so far, and the information held by the Military Intelligence Agency is very vague, making it impossible to confirm the location of the secret port.
Although Manila is very dissatisfied with this situation, it also knows that the troops that can be mobilized at present have almost reached the upper limit of the Luzon region. If all the troops guarding the home are really transferred to the front line, not only will the logistics supply be difficult to maintain, but there will also be the risk of the enemy taking advantage of the situation.
Therefore, Qiu Yuan and Xiao Liang could only temporarily put aside their pride and ask for help from the country. The regions closest to the Luzon region were Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian and Taiwan.
The Guangdong and Guangxi regions have the strongest military power among the three places, but now all their attention is focused on the inland Yunnan, Guizhou, Hunan and Jiangxi regions, which have a huge amount of land and population. Therefore, they have little interest in overseas conquests and have actively pushed this task to the neighboring Fujian and Taiwan.
The garrisons in Fujian and Taiwan currently have no combat missions, so they can take on this task.
Needless to say, Taiwan has no room for external expansion, and there is no chance to gain military merit. The main task of the local garrison troops is probably to keep an eye on the other side of the strait and ensure that the Xu family will not have second thoughts about the Executive Committee.
Although the Xu family has always been in charge of Fujian and is the nominal local tyrant, they have basically been cut off from further expansion. To the north is the East China Sea region, to the south is the Guangdong-Guangdong region, to the east is Taiwan, and although it borders Jiangxi to the west, the Executive Committee has strictly restricted the deployment of troops, so they can only look at the meat in the bowl without being able to move their chopsticks.
If the Xu family wanted to improve their resumes with military merits, they could only focus on overseas battlefields. So no matter whether the battlefield was in the Philippine Islands or somewhere else, as long as there was an opportunity to send troops to fight, the Xu family would be happy to help.
Fujian has built so many warships and raised so many soldiers, so we have to find a place to consume some of them, so that the Executive Committee can rest assured - this was one of the instructions that Xu Xinsu left for the Xu family when he was alive.