Chapter 1310 Desperate

Population demand is not just a problem faced by Haikou City. In fact, in most areas under the rule of Haihan, the labor gap is a long-term problem. Chief executives everywhere are also like Qiu Yuan, who is almost paranoid about immigration.

The desire. Although the current total population of Hainan Island has already exceeded 300,000, which has increased by at least 20% compared to when the travelers first arrived here, there is still no guarantee for the accurate implementation of the plan that the Executive Committee wants to implement.

In an industrialized society, there is still a huge bottleneck in the number of labor forces, and population is still one of the shortcomings restricting Haihan's development speed.

Fortunately, time-travelers have mastered many ways to improve labor efficiency, which can make up for the shortage of labor to a certain extent, allowing the country to maintain a very high development speed despite the shortage of labor. If the existing social productivity of the Ming Dynasty is

Using level as a measure, Haihan's development can really be described as rapid. In just eight years, Haihan's social productivity has evolved to a level much higher than that of 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 but think that if the Ming Dynasty had the same ability to govern, why would it encounter today's internal and external troubles?

It is a difficult situation. At least the Ming Dynasty has as many labor forces as it wants. The government can recruit civilian laborers 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 like the Haihan people.

and time to recruit and transport immigrants from overseas.

The population advantage alone can leave Haihan behind for several years. Unfortunately, no one in the Ming Dynasty knows how to take advantage of this advantage. They can only watch Haihan poaching a large number of people from the Ming Dynasty and then use these manpower for construction.

Haihan Kingdom. If you think about it carefully, this is simply a great irony of the Ming Dynasty's ability to govern.

The second stop of the visit was the Haikou Military Port, located ten miles west of the estuary of the Nandu River. As an important coastal stronghold guarding the Qiongzhou Strait, construction here began shortly after the capture of Qiongbei from Haihan. Currently, the first and second phases of the project have been declared completed.

, the follow-up mainly involves the construction and improvement of some supporting facilities. The Haihan Navy has an integrated fleet stationed here. In addition to being responsible for guarding the Qiongzhou Strait and establishing maritime armed barriers, this fleet's active sea area is actually very wide, ranging from east to west.

The river mouth, the Beibu Gulf in the west, and the coastline of the northern half of Hainan Island are all under its control.

This is not the first time Liu Shang has had close contact with the Haihan Navy during this trip, so he doesn't feel much novelty. Moreover, he saw a whole fleet of Haihan Navy in the "Crossover 1635" military exercise a few days ago.

The steam sailing fleet has a much higher vision than before, and the fleet stationed at Haikou Naval Port will no longer surprise him. However, he has never set foot in a real naval port anywhere else, including Sanya, before.

Therefore, the infrastructure here still made him feel a little novel.

There are various tall spreaders, pipes, steam-powered conveyor belts, etc. on the dock where the warship is docked. These equipment are used to quickly load supplies to the warship, such as ammunition, fresh water, coal, etc. In addition,

There are several dry docks covering a large area next to the pier, which are used to tow ships that need repair out of the water for maintenance. However, the technical strength here in Haikou is relatively limited. Although there are shipyards, they do not have the ability to independently build standard warships.

Capacity, naval warships with larger tonnage are all built at Sanya Shipyard.

To elaborate on this, of course, the Executive Committee intends to control the military-related shipbuilding industry. Although the production capacity of Sanya Shipyard is limited, military shipbuilding orders have been scheduled for several years, but this does not mean that the Executive Committee

If you know how, you can rest assured that you can open a shipbuilding institution in other places that can build warships. Especially for high-end warships using steam power, final assembly and commissioning must be completed at the Sanya Shipyard.

In order to have sufficient self-defense capabilities, Haikou Naval Port also built several coastal defense forts according to the terrain. The huge cannon bodies made Liu Shang speechless. The largest artillery he had ever seen before was the city defense cannon at the head of the Ming Dynasty.

Compared with the Haihan coastal defense artillery, the city defense artillery is relatively small in size. According to the accompanying officers, these coastal defense artillery can easily hit solid shells weighing more than 40 kilograms into the sea several miles away.

And the accuracy is not bad. If the number of invading enemy ships is relatively limited, there may not be a chance to forcibly dock at the Haihan Military Port Pier.

Liu Shang didn't need to see the actual firing effect of this cannon. He just looked at the huge iron bullets piled next to the cannon body. He had no doubt that this kind of artillery could easily penetrate all the Ming warships he knew, and even very powerful.

Perhaps even Haihan's own warships may not be able to withstand the long-range bombardment of such a giant cannon. More than ten nautical miles due north of this port is the southernmost tip of the Leizhou Peninsula of the Ming Dynasty. Haihan built such a powerful coastal defense here.

Who exactly the fort is guarding against? The answer is self-evident.

However, in the past two years, with the continuous penetration of Haihan in the southeastern coastal areas of the Ming Dynasty, the Leizhou government has actually turned a blind eye to Haihan, and will not intervene at all to control what happens on Hainan Island, or even

The message came through an intermediary that as long as they did not send troops to attack Leizhou, there would be no restrictions or restrictions on the Haihan people living and doing business in Leizhou. Of course, recruiting immigrants would naturally be included in the category of trade. Leizhou

The government will not regard it as any prohibited matter to resist or stop it.

Regarding these matters, Qiu Yuan did not explain it very clearly when he introduced it, but after listening to it, Liu Shang could roughly imagine what this so-called "tacit understanding" situation between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait is like. Something like this

This situation is not unique to Leizhou. In fact, as far as Liu Shang knows, most of the officials in the entire Fuguang coastal area have such an attitude towards Haihan. Anyway, as long as there is no war within their own jurisdiction, everything else will not matter.

Easy to say.

Even just thinking about this situation makes people feel very sad. The mighty Ming Dynasty should suffer such cowardice. But Liu Shang also understands that the officials in these nearby areas have probably despaired of the possibility of resisting Haihan.

.In the previous "Crossover 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. It is said that this has become a common practice and such invitations are sent out every year during the military exercise.

In this way, the power of Haihan's military force was demonstrated to Ming officials.

How the officials of the Ming Dynasty would feel after watching the Haihan military exercise. Regarding this, Liu Shang already had personal experience, so he made the previous judgment. As long as anyone with a normal mind will see it,

After knowing Haihan's powerful force, he probably won't think about the unrealistic idea of ​​how to defeat Haihan on the battlefield. It would be better to think about how to maintain a peaceful coexistence with Haihan. Peace is the most important thing in everything.

Avoid the outbreak of war as much as possible.

For the officials of the Ming Dynasty, as long as the war started, it would basically be a defeat. At that time, they would either die for the country or become prisoners, and normal people would not be happy to accept these two possibilities. In a compromise, both

The only way to keep the Ming Dynasty's territory intact and keep one's own black gauze hat is to satisfy Haihan's needs as much as possible and maintain this slightly fragile peace.

No one knows how ambitious Haihan is, and no one knows when Haihan will lose his patience, but the days of peace will last longer, and no one really wants to go head-to-head with Haihan.

"If a war breaks out, our fleet can set sail within two hours and set foot on the Leizhou Peninsula within four hours." The officer responsible for explaining the port situation to the inspection team did not hide the pride on his face.

For the Haihan Army, the buffer time needed to launch a war against the Ming Dynasty was only half a day.

On the other side of the sea, the Leizhou Peninsula has a flat terrain and is undefeable. Xuwen County, which will bear the brunt of the attack, is probably not as reliable as the coastal defenses of the naval port. Liu Shang is not confident whether the local defenders can withstand a wave of attacks from the Haihan Army.

There is no 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 will at most be able to delay Haihan's march.

At this time, Lu Ting added: "If we use force against Leizhou, there is no need to land in Xuwen County. We can go directly to the east coast of Leizhou Peninsula and attack Fucheng. The effect should be more immediate."

The battle plan given by Lu Ting was immediately approved by Qiu Yuan and Yu Xiaobao. War plans like this have been studied by both the military and the executive committee, and senior officials like them have naturally been exposed to them.

Relevant information. What Lu Ting said is basically Haihan's official plan, but the details are not full enough.

But when Liu Shang heard these words, he basically announced the death of the Leizhou Peninsula. The Haihan people are not a peace-loving race. Although they now have extremely close trade and personnel exchanges with the Ming Dynasty, they really want to go to war.

When the time comes, these people will definitely turn against each other and will not have any friendship with Ming. And listening to their words, it seems that they do not take the nature of the war with Ming seriously. The reason is also very simple.

, they have already made preparations for war and studied how to seize Ming territory that is relatively close to Hainan Island.

For Haihan, everything has been prepared, and it seems that all that is left is an excuse to start a war. But if a war is really going to start, are you afraid that you can't find an excuse? Even Liu Shang can think of it casually.

Out of ten or eight. The initiative of the war is in the hands of Haihan. As long as the executive committee gives an order, Haihan's army will immediately cross the sea and attack the Leizhou Peninsula. It turns out that the cloud of war is not out of reach, but has already enveloped it.

It's over the South China Sea.

Liu Shang secretly sighed, hoping that these Haihan people could continue to focus on trade, instead of such sensitive topics as when, where, and how to launch an aggressive war against the Ming Dynasty. Even if they had to discuss it,

One can only hope that they are just joking about this topic.

But if you think about it further, after the Haihan people occupied the Haikou area, they rushed to build a military port and build forts. Doesn’t this kind of action mean that they started preparing for war a few years ago? Even at that time, they may not be able to attack the Ming Dynasty.

Launching a cross-sea battle, at least showed that they did not regard the Ming Dynasty as a partner with whom they could coexist peacefully, but as a competitor that they needed to be wary of at all times.

Thinking about it this way, the Ming Dynasty's only chance was when these people first arrived eight years ago and had not yet established a stable foothold. If the Haihan people were still fledgling at that time and sent troops to expel them from Hainan Island, it might still be possible. But now I think about it.

Taking similar actions again will be more than a hundred times more difficult than it was then.

During the visit to the military port, Liu Shang said nothing, but followed several important figures and listened to their discussions. He hoped to at least capture some good news. For example, Haihan had no plans to start a war against the Ming Dynasty in the near future, and

Or what kind of fear did Haihan still have towards the Ming Dynasty that allowed them to restrain their ambitions? It's a pity that these people discussed it over and over again, and the topics they talked about were almost all about the military value of Haikou Military Port. They

What they are concerned about is only what preparations need to be made to launch combat operations against the Ming Dynasty using this place as a base, and what expected results can be achieved.

After completing the visit to this place, Qiu Yuan hosted a banquet in the officer's mess hall of the military port to entertain everyone. However, due to the conditions in the military, this banquet was obviously not as lavish as Zhang Xin's previous meal in Danzhou.

But Liu Shang's attention was not on the dishes on the table. After Qiu Yuan's introduction, he found that half of the local officers present were from the Ming army. It was obvious that after these people chose to join Haihan,

They all received good treatment, and those who were supposed to lead the troops continued to lead the troops, but they just changed into military uniforms.

As of now, only the Haihan Ministry of National Defense knows how many soldiers and officers of the Ming Army have defected to Haihan. Liu Shang infers from the current situation that he has access to that this number should be enough for the Ministry of War.

Lord Shangshu took the blame and resigned. There are a large number of former Ming army personnel who continue to serve in the Haihan army. These people understand the establishment, training, weapons and equipment and common tactics of the Ming army. If they have to deal with the Ming army on the battlefield in the future, it will naturally be

Very handy.

Although Liu Shang was very shameless in his heart for these people's betrayal of the country and surrender to the enemy, on the surface he still had to socialize with them with a smile. After a slow conversation, he discovered that not all of these officers served on Hainan Island before joining Haihan.

, many of them came from Guangdong, Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang and other places. Liu Shang couldn't help but admire the Haihan people's methods for recruiting so many Ming officers from other places to serve under his command.
Chapter completed!