Chapter 301: The Yulin Port Development Plan

“With such a large-scale expansion of the steel industry, do we have enough material reserves?” Wen Desi asked. This was not a Great Leap Forward-style backyard furnace, but a real industrial blast furnace. Although it would be considered a small, backward furnace to be restricted and dismantled in another time and place, in the 17th century, it was absolute high technology.

Not counting the refractory materials—a problem that had been solved with the brine from the salt fields—just the cooling staves for the furnace hearth would require several tons of steel, and it was a casting. Wen Desi knew that steel casting was the most difficult, as steel has low fluidity. The difficulty of casting a large steel component like a cooling stave was imaginable.

“The technical conditions for building these new facilities are fully mature, and the material conditions are also in place. Expanding to this scale is not a problem,” Ma Qianzhu replied. “However, it will consume a lot of our pig iron and steel inventory to manufacture the equipment, so the quotas for pig iron and steel in other areas must be further reduced…”

“What about the mining equipment, and the supporting facilities: boilers, steam engines… these things are all built from tons of steel,” Zhan Wuya raised a question. “And there’s the railway track manufacturing for Tiandu that the Planning Committee has arranged. The shortfall is forty percent. Even if we don’t lack the materials, we’ll need to increase production equipment to deliver on time.”

“That, of course, is guaranteed,” Ma Qianzhu opened his notebook. “Gentlemen, since August, the Planning Committee has reduced the steel consumption in all areas with the aim of breaking through this fatal steel-coal bottleneck. The difficulties are temporary. As long as we get through this, steel will no longer be a first-level controlled material—you all know the expected output. But our current inventory is still tight.” He then reported the current inventory of steel, pig iron, and wrought iron.

“It’s really not much,” Zhan Wuya said. “We must stop all munitions production now. Casting cannons and cannonballs consumes a lot of pig iron.”

The Transmigration Group’s armament work had been proceeding at a slow but steady pace. The Planning Committee allocated a certain production quota for weapons, ammunition, and rations every month. As for the professional arsenals requested by the army and navy, there were none yet—everything was currently handled by the machine factory.

Stopping all munitions production was a rather sensitive issue. Since this was a five-year plan implementation work meeting, with Ma Qianzhu being the only representative of the military, naturally no one jumped up to object. But the military’s reaction to such a measure was predictable, especially the young officers led by Zhang Bolin and Wei Aiwen, for whom cannons were their darlings.

The matter was of great importance. All eyes turned to Ma Qianzhu: his other title was the Chief of the General Staff of the army.

“It’s possible, but a bit risky.” Ma Qianzhu took out another Holy Ship notebook from his briefcase, which had a combination lock and the word “Armaments” written on it.

“Currently, each Minie rifle has 4 units of ammunition. The artillery training team has 1 unit of ammunition. The coastal heavy artillery has half a unit. The cannons on the 8154 have 1.5 units, the triangular-sailed patrol boats have 1 unit, and the ammunition reserves for other sailing warships are insufficient. After incorporating the remnants of Zhu Cailao’s forces, our sailing fleet has expanded rapidly. The old miscellaneous cannons and cannonballs have all been dismantled and melted down, but we haven’t had time to equip them with new cannons. The shortfall is too large, not to mention the cannonballs,” Ma Qianzhu said frankly.

“Is it enough for one battle?”

“As long as it’s not a joint attack by the Ming army and Zheng’s main forces, we might not be able to wipe out the opponent, but we can definitely repel them.” Ma Qianzhu had participated in several wargames hosted by Xi Yazhou at the General Staff Headquarters.

Wen Desi asked, “Is there any danger of war now?”

“According to the intelligence department’s analysis report, not for the time being.”

“Stop the production of cannons and ammunition for now. Concentrate all efforts on producing equipment for the Tiandu development plan.”

“Can we ask Guangzhou to increase the import of pig iron?”

“It’s not easy. The problem now is not only that the price of imported pig iron from Guangdong is getting more and more expensive, but also that our import volume is too large and the market stock is low—and we’ve encountered competitors.”

“Besides us, who else would buy so much pig iron?”

“The Ming government,” Ma Qianzhu said. “The Guangzhou station’s report says that the Viceroy of Liangguang, Wang Zunde, is casting a large number of cannons and buying up a lot of pig iron. The price of iron in the market has risen sharply.”

“Would the government really use cash to buy iron? Don’t they usually use tricks like ‘pumai’ to forcibly acquire goods?”

“That’s not wrong. But since the smelter owners have suffered a loss, they have to make it up somewhere. Besides, the Ming dynasty now also outsources to merchants; it’s not all about plunder anymore.”

“According to historical records, Wang Zunde’s cannon casting was on a grand scale, casting two hundred cannons at a time,” the intelligence officer reported. “And the scale is likely to be even larger next year. A wealthy merchant named Li Luoyou, I don’t know who he’s connected to, has already contracted the cannon casting business for the entire Guangdong province.”

“What’s this person’s background?”

“We haven’t started investigating yet.”

“Send a telegram to Guangzhou immediately to investigate him!” Wen Desi said, then suddenly remembered, “Have we figured out the background of that woman, Li Huamei?”

“Not yet. She set sail for Goa in October, taking a large shipment of goods with her.”

“What does she plan to bring back for us?”

“Mainly opium and jute,” Ma Qianzhu said. “And some miscellaneous goods.”

“How is the sailor training going?”

“Very good. The sailors on the triangular-sailed patrol boats you designed, President Wen, were all trained by her.”

Xiao Zishan coughed, reminding President Wen not to go off-topic, then said, “So the price of pig iron will rise even more sharply next year.”

Although after the development of Tiandu is completed and the blast furnaces start producing iron, Lin’gao’s pig iron can be completely self-sufficient—and there might even be a large amount of steel products for export—that would be at the end of next year at the earliest.

“We’ll just have to grit our teeth and continue to rely on imports for a while longer,” Wang Luobin said. “High price is high price, at least we can afford it.”

“This money is just letting the smelter owners make a profit for a while,” Wen Desi said. “Once our steel production is up, not to mention selling iron products back to Guangdong, just stopping imports will cause the price of iron to plummet.”

“We can take the opportunity to establish a commodity exchange system and control Guangdong’s iron through bulk commodity trading…”

“Stop. We’ll discuss economic issues later, or it will go off on a tangent again,” the meeting chairman, Xiao Zishan, stopped Yi Fan’s grand theory. “Let’s talk about the coal and iron problem first.”

“After obtaining a stable supply of coal from this island, our next step is the Tiandu iron mine,” Wen Desi said. “Now let’s talk about the plan to develop Tiandu.”

Ma Qianzhu stood up, walked to the large display board, and pulled open the curtain.

Behind the curtain was a large-scale map of the area around Sanya, marked with small flags of various colors.

“The Planning Committee, under the orders of the Executive Committee, has completed the Tiandu development plan,” Ma Qianzhu said. “I present it for your review.”

Developing Tiandu was not simply a matter of building a mining area and expanding the Yulin Fort pier. The Transmigration Group planned to build Yulin into a new base, a future base for the Transmigration Navy to conduct trade and colonization in Southeast Asia. Therefore, the entire plan was very ambitious. The first and second phases would be completed within the first five-year plan, followed by the third and fourth phases—which would be left for the second five-year plan.

“The first phase of the project is the development of the Tiandu mining area,” Ma Qianzhu pointed at the map, “and the construction of basic supporting facilities.”

First, a new fortress would be built on the main peak of the Luhuitou Peninsula, along with a pier, a jetty, and artillery batteries on the peninsula. This place would serve as a berthing base for the naval fleet heading south to the Southeast Asian seas in the future.

The original Yulin Fort pier would be expanded into a dedicated material export pier, fully equipped with mechanized loading and unloading equipment. In the future, iron ore from Tiandu, manganese ore and phosphate ore from Damao, and dried coconuts and timber from Yazhou would all be transported through this pier.

The Anyoule market, opposite Yulin Fort, would be completely rebuilt according to modern urban planning, with complete infrastructure and a large number of immigrants to populate it. Enterprises for processing local resources would be established on-site, with plans to first build a timber processing plant, a copra processing plant, and a food factory. Anyoule would become a commercial port for trade with Southeast Asia. Not only would it attract merchant ships traveling to and from Southeast Asia to dock and trade here, but Wen Desi also planned to move the headquarters of the newly established Southeast Asia Company here.

Tiandu Town would appear 300 years ahead of its time at its original site. The Transmigration State’s Tiandu Mining Bureau would be established here. The Tiandu Mining Bureau would be responsible for managing the mining of the Tiandu iron mine and would later be responsible for developing the manganese and phosphate mines in the Damao area.

A railway would also be built between Tiandu Town and the Yulin Fort pier to transport ore.

“In this way, we’re investing a lot in the Yulin area,” Wen Desi commented.

“The investment is large, but the returns are also high. Developing the Yulin Port area is not just about the Tiandu iron mine; it’s also a new support point for us in the southern part of Hainan Island, forming a north-south echo with Lin’gao,” Ma Qianzhu said.

This new base was basically a blank slate. There were very few local natives, and the influence of the Ming government was dozens of kilometers away in Yazhou. The Transmigration Group could plan, develop, and build this area at will, without spending much effort on conquest and negotiation. Unlike the “coexistence” system in Lin’gao, the Yulin Port area would become the first truly ruled territory of the Transmigration Group.

“Yulin Fort will be upgraded to the Sanya Special Zone,” Wen Desi said.

The Executive Committee immediately approved the Tiandu development plan, which would begin in the spring of 1630. The complexity of this operation was no less than recreating D-Day. All ministries and commissions began to plan the allocation of materials and personnel.