Chapter 240: Military Dogs

Lin’gao’s water resources were scarce in the long run, making it unsuitable as a future main industrial and agricultural base. Changhua had less arable land, but its freshwater, timber, and industrial and mineral resources were much richer than Lin’gao’s. The annual runoff of the Changhua River alone was 900 million cubic meters, while the entire Lin’gao County had only 700 million. The developable hydropower resources were 40,000 kilowatts, 30 times more than Lin’gao. Not to mention the local iron and copper mines. The cement rock resources alone had great industrial potential.

“What? Are you going to build water conservancy projects?” Fang Jinghan greeted Yan Quezhi.

“It’s you guys,” Yan Quezhi seemed very busy. “Where do we have the capacity to develop in Changhua now—all the resources are being sent to Taiwan. To develop industry, you need population. Just having resources and technology is not enough to look at.”

“Then why did the Planning Commission hurry to transfer you here?” Fang Jinghan asked strangely.

“First, to train students,” Yan Quezhi pointed to a few young students around him who were operating Lin’gao-produced equipment and instruments. “Second, to see if we can use the water transport capacity of the Changhua River—shipping is impossible, but rafting might be possible. The timber resources here are very rich. Besides, we also have to consider the future transportation of ore.”

Although the navigation value of the Changhua River was very low, its water volume and hydropower were much greater than Lin’gao’s Wenlan River. According to 20th-century data, the annual runoff of the Changhua River alone was 900 million cubic meters, while the entire Lin’gao County had only 700 million. The developable hydropower resources were 40,000 kilowatts, 30 times more than Lin’gao, which was very superior from the perspective of hydropower development. Unfortunately, there was no development capacity in the short term.

“Even so, water resources are also very important to us. Changhua’s mineral resources are very rich, and it can be turned into an industrial and mining base in the future, which will require a large amount of water resources.”

The task of Yan Quezhi’s team was to find out how much water resources and hydropower could be utilized in Changhua in the 17th century, and what kind of help the Changhua River could provide for Hainan’s industrialization.

Changhua’s agricultural potential was not great. The entire county had only 340,000 mu of arable land, and the soil fertility was even worse. Except for some advantages in water and heat resources, it was inferior to the northern counties of Qiongbei such as Lin’gao.

“Can you send someone to take us to Shilu in a few days?” Yan Quezhi suddenly asked.

“I can take you there,” Fang Jinghan said. “But what are you going to do in Shilu? The last geological survey should have been very thorough.”

“It’s still for surveying the terrain.”

Yan Quezhi’s other task was to take the students to Shilu to survey the terrain between Shilu and Changhua Fort to see if it was possible to build a simple road or railway.

The purpose was not to mine the local iron ore—with their current industrial capacity and steel production level, it was impossible to support such a large-scale project. The reason the Planning Commission was eager to understand the transportation conditions and try to build a road was that they had their eyes on the dolomite mine in Shilu.

Dolomite served as a flux in modern iron smelting, which could improve the quality of pig iron and reduce coal consumption. In modern steel production technology, dozens of kilograms of dolomite are consumed for every ton of pig iron produced. After the Maniao Iron and Steel Complex went into production, the annual demand for dolomite was about several hundred tons.

In the old world, there was a dolomite mine with a reserve of 1.25 billion tons and a grade of 19-21% 1 kilometer south of Shilu Town. Full-scale development was not possible, but small-scale mining to supply the Maniao Iron and Steel Complex for production was still manageable. The Planning Commission and the industrial department’s assessment believed that according to the data, the dolomite mine in Shilu was not deeply buried and could be mined by hand and simple machinery. If the demand was not large, it could be mined intermittently.

After mining the dolomite, the problem of transportation would arise. So, Wu De considered building a simple road locally. Even if it wasn’t for the future development of the Shilu iron mine, there was also a demand for mining small amounts of associated non-ferrous metal ores such as copper and gold in Shilu. Building a road would also help to extend the tentacles of rule into the interior of Changhua and develop and radiate the surrounding areas.

The Planning Commission also required Kong Lingyang to try to establish a permanent outpost in Shilu: “The Morning Star flag must fly over Yayu Ridge every day!”—to ensure the presence of the government.

According to information provided by the Li people, almost every year, some outside Han people hired Li people as guides and porters to venture into the Li areas, deep into Shilu, trying to mine the local copper ore—or, if they were luckier, to find gold. Although few of them succeeded—very few could correctly find the veins—their random digging and small-scale smelting seriously damaged the local resources, especially disrupting the exploration team’s survey. The Planning Commission could not tolerate this. Since Li Haiping’s time, people who went to Yayu Ridge to illegally mine copper had been caught, and they came in an endless stream every year. Therefore, cracking down on illegal mining was also one of Kong Lingyang’s tasks.

With a road, an outpost, and patrols on the road, control over the areas along the line would be established.

“You don’t have to go personally. Just send a few Li people to lead the way. Didn’t you recruit many Li soldiers?” Yan Quezhi said. “It takes several days to go back and forth. You all have work to do, and it’s not good to delay.”

“If it weren’t for the fact that Zhen Huan and the others have just enlisted, we could have just sent them to Shilu. They are local people, good at climbing mountains and drilling through forests. No one could escape them,” Mu Min said.

“Even if he had served for ten years now, it would be impossible,” Fang Jinghan shook his head. “Locals don’t serve as soldiers in their hometown. This is a basic principle of forming an army.”

For a local public security force like the National Army, the Council of Elders was unwilling to have it composed entirely of local people, let alone a combat unit that Zhen Huan had joined.

The matter of recruiting Zhen Huan into the army was met with a backlash from Wei Aiwen in the afternoon. It was not that he disliked the quality of these new recruits, but in his view, it was a serious infringement on his authority as the director of the General Political Department—he often forgot that his department was the Political Department of the General Staff.

Mu Min retorted that as a member of the recruitment team, she also had the right to decide who to recruit and who not to recruit. The mission statement did not clearly specify which department or which Elder was specifically responsible. In theory, Mu Min did not need to ask Wei Aiwen for permission to decide certain things.

The argument between the two continued until Kong Lingyang reappeared. With a beaming face, he invited the Elders to the kennel to “guide the dog breeding work.”

Mu Min was not interested in dogs, but Wei Aiwen was very interested. The reconnaissance team of the Haitian had been ambushed by natives in Taiwan, and dogs had played an important role. And now, more and more internal security tasks also required dogs to replace some sentries.

In his university days and in the army, Kong Lingyang had cooperated with them before and knew that the alert range of a well-trained military dog was roughly equivalent to that of 5 soldiers. Well-trained military dogs were good helpers for tasks such as mainland combat, counter-insurgency alerts, pursuing deserters, guarding equipment, and deterring mobs.

The newly built kennel was located in an enclosure outside Changhua Fort, where the breeding dogs transferred from Lin’gao were kept.

Kong Lingyang knew very little about dog training. This business had always been Yang Baogui’s responsibility, but the rapid expansion of the dog population at the Nanhai Farmstead meant that military dog breeding and raising had to be moved to another place, and could no longer stay in Lin’gao, where land resources were becoming scarce. Thus, the dog farm in Lin’gao was split into two parts. The working dog training remained in Lin’gao, while the dog breeding was moved to Changhua. Yang Baogui planned to move the training base to Changhua as well after he had trained his first batch of naturalized students.

The breeding dogs mainly came from Yang Baogui’s “Olympic” family. Yang Baogui had selectively brought them to serve as breeding dogs for working dogs. Later, several other dogs brought by other Elders were added, including the Labrador of the Qian brothers, which was also brought from Sanya to be a breeding dog.

To rapidly expand the population, Yang Baogui and Kong Lingyang adopted the method of separating the puppies from the mother dog immediately after weaning and raising them artificially to encourage the mother dog to produce another litter as soon as possible. Therefore, the population expanded rapidly.

Yang Baogui also selected some of the local dogs with better genes for crossbreeding. Through continuous breeding and gradual elimination, a considerable dog population was finally formed. Although there were only a dozen dogs that could be used as foundation stock, there were already more than a hundred dogs of suitable age for working dogs.

Although the quality of the first few batches of dogs was average, they were in their prime for training. If they got older, they would not be suitable for training and could only be sent to the Council of Elders for hot pot. And Yang Baogui was too busy to handle it all by himself. He adopted a simplified training model, subdividing the work, reducing the training items for each dog, and reducing the workload. He sent out working dogs to various departments in batches as soon as they were trained.

A portion of the dogs, after simple training by Yang Baogui, had already been allocated to the military, police, and internal affairs departments. Soldiers and police patrolling with “large dogs” had become a common sight in various counties. And at the mines in Sanya, military dogs monitored thousands of slave laborers in the mines.

But although the dogs were favored by the violent departments, they also encountered institutional problems. Dogs and horses were different from meat animals like pigs, chickens, and ducks, which were slaughtered when they were fattened. They were for long-term use. Once they were incorporated into the army or a certain agency, the problem of their supply and dedicated handlers arose—this was relatively easier. The departments could solve the supply problem of horses and dogs themselves, but the establishment of personnel was not so easy to solve.

Yang Baogui’s establishment was in the Agricultural Committee, and dog training was not the main business of the Agricultural Committee. He could not draw a number of people from the laborers assigned to the Agricultural Committee to learn his dog training skills. These establishments had to be implemented by the military.

The reason Kong Lingyang invited Wei Aiwen to visit was to persuade Director Wei and the other military leaders to quickly sort out an establishment for a military dog team and allocate some people to specialize in raising and training dogs. In particular, he had to find a few apprentices for Yang Baogui to inherit his dog training skills. This was something he had repeatedly urged Kong Lingyang to help solve.