Chapter 157: The Tiandu Development Plan

The debriefing continued all the way back. Just because it wasn’t reported didn’t mean it was internally resolved. While calling for stronger internal management, Shi Niaoren decided to take the time to draft various management regulations to prevent the misuse of such drugs from having dire consequences.

Liu San waited in the office for a long time before the group returned. When he heard about the medical accident from Shi Niaoren, he could only offer some words of comfort, saying that such things were inevitable in the initial stages. If they had reported it truthfully, it might have caused a stir. He then reported on the matters of the Runshi Tang and the clinics. The plan didn’t cost much and utilized private resources, but Shi Niaoren was also troubled by the issue of staffing.

“With the way things are, do you think I can send these ‘Mongolian doctors’ out?” Shi Niaoren said, puffing on a cigarette. “These few are really no better than the natives we’ve trained. At least the natives understand the value of human life and ask when they don’t know something. These guys just do whatever they want. If we send them out to be clinic doctors, they’ll all turn into killers.”

“How are we to staff so many medical personnel?” The nine planned clinics would require one person each.

“We’ll have mobile clinics,” Shi Niaoren said. “Now that you say the Runshi Tang can provide clerks, the clinics will have basic traditional Chinese medicine services. I plan to select some of our better-performing and quick-learning native nurses to go as the basic force. Then, we’ll organize our doctors to make rounds, visiting one place each day. This should be enough to maintain a basic level of medical service.”

“Director Shi’s idea is very comprehensive,” Liu San said. “I suggest we equip each clinic with more common remedies, like hemostatics, painkillers, and fever reducers, and provide them to patients for free. This can greatly expand our influence.”

“That will depend on the production capacity of our two pharmaceutical factories,” Shi Niaoren said. “For now, the free medicine will mainly be traditional Chinese patent medicines.”

“Production capacity is not a problem,” Liu San assured him. “By the time the clinics are roughly completed, we can start producing in batches.”

“You need to hurry,” Shi Niaoren said. “The Executive Committee has given us a new task. We need to prepare a batch of anti-malarial drugs, snake and insect repellents, and a large quantity of standard first-aid supplies. They’re planning to develop the Tiandu iron mine, and probably Hongji as well.”

“Develop Tiandu?”

“Yes, because we’re always short on iron,” Shi Niaoren said, having attended the Executive Committee meeting. “Let’s put it this way: the price of pig iron in Guangdong has risen by 100% in the past year, and that’s all our doing.” He lit another cigarette. “There’s no other way. We can still make do with coal for now.”

“Tiandu,” Liu San murmured the name. “The Executive Committee is planning to go all out.”

The proposal to develop Tiandu had been repeatedly brought to the table since the return from the circumnavigation. The original method of purchasing pig iron from Guangdong for smelting had become increasingly difficult. Although Guangdong’s iron industry was not backward by the standards of this era, the scale of handicraft production was a drop in the bucket compared to their industrial needs. As a result, not only had the price of iron in Guangdong skyrocketed, but now even the supply was becoming insufficient.

This made Ma Qianzhu, in his management of the steel quota, deeply appreciate the plight of the Japanese during World War II. Every department showed a great greed for steel. Whether it was machinery manufacturing, construction, or transportation, all required a massive supply of steel.

Which was more important: laying the tracks between Bairen and Bopu first, or completing the thousand-ton iron-hulled ship currently under construction? Was it more urgent to increase the power supply by adding more boilers, or to mass-produce simple machine tools to expand mechanical manufacturing capacity? The army’s weapons supply needed high-quality steel and cast iron, but so did modern agricultural tools.

Every application was both valid and necessary. No matter how the Planning Committee struggled, there were still delays and bottlenecks everywhere. Many projects were stuck due to material supply, especially steel.

After discussion, the Executive Committee decided that it was necessary to break through the bottleneck in steel supply. They would concentrate all available resources to solve this problem once and for all.

After calculations, the Planning Committee discovered another difficult problem. If they were to develop the Tiandu iron mine, they would need to expand coal imports to meet the demand for pig iron smelting. The coal mining in Guangdong in this era was characterized by small scale, large numbers, and wide dispersion. The quality of the coal varied. Organizing the supply was a major effort, which made the development of the Hongji coal mine a necessity. But opening two new bases at the same time was beyond their capacity in terms of manpower, resources, and military strength.

“Especially the development of Hongji,” Bei Kai pointed out at the hearing. “The local Vietnamese are not very cooperative. Our small-scale hiring and purchasing operations have been smooth so far, but if we want to set up our own base for mining, the local forces and the Le dynasty officials will probably not stand by and do nothing. The possibility of conflict is high.”

Winning the cooperation and support of the local plantation owners was not something that could be achieved overnight. And whether they were willing to cooperate was another question. It would require a heavy military presence for protection.

Even without security issues, mining required a large amount of machinery and explosives, building houses, paving roads, manufacturing mining equipment, and providing logistical support for the miners…

It was a huge systems engineering project, involving all aspects of the transmigrators’ industry. And Hongji was not like Lin’gao, where professional personnel and equipment were readily available and problems could be solved at any time. Landing one or two thousand people with hundreds of tons of supplies on an unfamiliar coastline would be a massive organizational and coordination effort in itself.

Liu San took a list of medicines and glanced at it. “This is a heavy burden on the pharmacy,” he said. This was not an exaggeration. With the orders from the mainland, the inventory needed for the clinics, and the additional preparations for this, there was a large shortfall in raw materials for traditional Chinese medicine, not to mention anything else.

“Don’t talk about burdens. There’s a lot to do,” Shi Niaoren said. “And another thing: the Executive Committee’s social work team has begun a large-scale census in the countryside. The committee has asked us to conduct a comprehensive screening of all the traditional Chinese medicine practitioners discovered in the census and to centralize their use. This includes herb farmers, doctors, and the like. You’re the only one in the Ministry of Health who knows about these things, so the screening work is yours.”

Liu San was taken aback. “The whole county! That’s a huge amount of work! How many villages are there in all of Lin’gao?”

“It’s not so bad,” Shi Niaoren said. “There are very few traditional Chinese medicine practitioners here anyway. You can find out everything with a little inquiry. I tell you, there are pitifully few of them. Including midwives, there are no more than twenty in the whole county. Most are concentrated in a few market towns, with a few scattered in the villages. The census by the work team has identified them all. They are now being transported to the East Gate Market for screening.”

“We don’t need the midwives,” Liu San said. “It’s better to train our own midwives than to retrain them.”

Shi Niaoren said, “True. But many of the midwives here also have some knowledge of herbal medicine for gynecology. They can be considered a type of doctor, I suppose.”

“Alright, you’ll have to get me a translator.”

“Of course. Xiong Buyou can help you with that.”

“What do you plan to do with this group after the screening? Put them in a study class?”

“We’ll train them and then assign them to the clinics. And also send them to bases like Tiandu to provide basic medical services. The Executive Committee’s intention is to have at least three to four medical personnel at each location.”

“Is it urgent?”

“The second half of the year, after the typhoon season ends,” Shi Niaoren said. “The people in the Planning Committee are racking their brains right now. I think Director Ma is about to go crazy. There’s a crowd of people blocking his office door every day.”

“With great power comes great responsibility. Hahaha.”

After repeated calculations by the Planning Committee and numerous joint meetings and hearings held by the Executive Committee, it was decided to begin the development of Tiandu first, in October 1629. Yulin was relatively safer and would not require a large protective force.

Before the development of Tiandu began, there would be a six-month period of material preparation, with the necessary supplies for the base being stockpiled month by month. They would also concentrate their resources to first complete the thousand-ton steam-powered iron-hulled ship to meet the subsequent demand for transporting materials, personnel, and ore.

According to calculations, for the development of Tiandu, the first batch would require the transport of at least five hundred able-bodied young men to the shore for basic civil engineering, construction of a pier, roads, and basic mining facilities. Another five hundred would then be transported for mining operations. According to the Ministry of Health’s estimates, at least one to two hundred people would need to be replenished each month to compensate for deaths. This ratio shocked Wu De—a loss of at least ten percent of the labor force every month?

Shi Niaoren explained, “Our calculations are based on solid evidence. Mining is extremely heavy physical labor—” He stopped Wu De, who was about to speak. “I don’t doubt that the Wu Committee will provide sufficient calories for the laborers and allow them to rest fully. But you have to consider the environment: extreme heat, humidity, the subtropical natural environment… combined with high-intensity labor, I personally think that a death toll of one to two hundred per month is a conservative estimate.”

“Are we just going to send the laborers we’ve worked so hard to recruit to their deaths like this?” someone naturally lamented the loss of human resources.

“If you ask me, it’s best to use cheap slaves for the development of Tiandu,” Wang Luobin said. “Just keep filling it with human lives.”

“Just like the Japanese did back then.”

“Exactly,” Wang Luobin nodded. “If we want to minimize the death rate, we have to build the infrastructure first. That would take at least a year to achieve large-scale production capacity.”

“Why don’t we go to Japan and capture slaves!”

“That’s too far! And the Japanese are armed. It’s the Warring States period there now; they’re all fighting each other. Their combat effectiveness won’t be low.”