Because for now, the key industrial projects on the side of the Red House are not here, but the joint chemical production line of the chemical group and the steel smelting and rolling plant of the metallurgical group.

Obviously, this is the core project of the chemical industry group and the metallurgical group, and it is also a bottleneck project that restricts the development of all other industrial construction, and must be given priority.

As a group of science and engineering professionals, we unanimously agreed that in order to completely change the passive adaptive industrial development mode of the current east and west stick, we must lay a solid foundation for future industrial development.

Because once these two projects are completed, there will be a qualitative leap in our industrial capacity, so during this time, all other industrial projects will have to make way for these two projects, even the slipway project of the royal palace.

If it weren't for the fact that the construction of Xin'an City and the profits of the cement business were indeed tempting, the Red Mansion would not even consider a copy of the cement plant.

A few days later, a telegram from Sun Lao about an agreement with Degus and Pimont on the slave trade arrived on Mornington Island, and the Red Mansion was overjoyed to hear the news, which meant that there seemed to be hope for a solution to the extreme shortage of labor.

Of course, it is an established policy for black slaves not to go to Mornington Island in principle, but black slaves can settle in Xin'an City, which means that some labor-intensive industries on Mornington Island can move out, so that there are no land-intensive industries competing with their side for Han labor, with these two benefits, it is also from another perspective to alleviate the labor shortage on Mornington Island, isn't it?

Immediately, Sun Lao told some information about the black slave trade in this era in a telegram.

The slave trade was not a very interesting business for the Portuguese in Southeast Asia.

However, as a merchant, Deguce participated in the Atlantic triangular trade in his early years, that is, transporting all kinds of manufactured goods from Europe to southwest Africa, and then trafficking black slaves from southwest Africa to the Americas, and then transporting raw and semi-raw materials such as cotton cane sugar from the Americas to Europe.

Moreover, Degus had always worked with the Dutch, and in his early years in Southeast Asia, he also trafficked blacks from southern and eastern Africa to India and the Far East, but because of the long distances and the low demand—there were no large-scale cotton and sugar cane plantations in the East, business had been sluggish, and had even stagnated recently.

However, the shrewd and capable Didusse soon discovered that the arrival of Australians had turned his population business around.

At the same time, he realized that the Dutch were clearly not interested in this business, so it was likely that he would have few competitors in this business.

So, in recent months, he went to Goa, found an Arab slave trader, and built a bridge of business again.

In his meeting with Degus outside the port of Ambon, Elder Sun made it clear that Degus needed slave labor in Australia, and that in the near future, our plantations, mines, and factories would certainly be larger than those in the Americas.

Deguce is certainly keenly aware of the opportunity, and Sun Lao has made it clear that Australians are willing to pay 10% more than the market price for the people you have trafficked, provided that they are healthy and have a balanced number of men and women.

Sun Lao's statement is not his own assertion, but a statement after discussion with Li Junming, Zhu Beiguo and others.

However, Sun Lao also made it clear to Dergus that this was just an informal exchange, because we had certain moral concerns about the slave trade.

Degus expressed some surprise at this, and he replied, "Your moral concern is similar in the Church and at the secular level in Europe today, and although it is not the mainstream consciousness, it seems that the moral problem of human trade is really a thing.

However, the needs of the current reality still made Degus and Sun Lao finally put this business on the table again, especially after the capture of Dili City, the labor tension was even more prominent in the situation of waiting to be rebuilt.

So Degus and Pimont and Sun Lao further refined the terms of the original cooperation intention, and Degus finally proposed that due to the long distance and the high mortality rate of black slaves, he hoped that the purchase price of the Australians would be increased.

To this end, the Australians replied that it was 20% higher than the market price in the Americas, but emphasized the balance between men and women, and specifically stated: do not castrate people.

Because Degus told Sun Lao that they wanted to cooperate with the Arabs to traffic in blacks, so under the reminder of Zhu Beiguo, Sun Lao specially came out to emphasize this point, because in the history of the Old World, the Arabs had a tradition of castrating black slaves and then selling them.

As for the cooperation with the Arabs in the slave trafficking, both the Red Mansion and the partners outside were surprised at the beginning, and shouldn't the slave trade be done by Europeans?

Why look for Arabs?

Do they have such channels and experience?

However, Dr. Zhu clearly told everyone that the history of the Arab slave trade was hundreds of years earlier than that of Europeans.

When the Arabs used violent and semi-violent methods to traffic people from eastern black Africa to the East, Europeans were still groping in the darkness of the Middle Ages, and when the Arabs arrived in Mozambique to establish trading posts, exchanged cheap small goods and iron tools for spices for Africans, and instigated tribal wars to buy prisoners and trafficked them to Calcutta, India, and the metropolis of Nanyue, the Eastern Empire, the Europeans had not yet begun to engage in crusades!

Therefore, in the history of the Old World, the Arabs were the initiators of the slave trade, and their business skills and means were not known to be higher than those of the Europeans - this is why in the Old World, until the twenty-first century, there was a deep source of national contradictions between the north and the south of Africa.

In order to resolve this contradiction, the two major international organizations in the world at that time, ---- the Arab League and the African Union, had a serious and serious exchange of views on this historical issue and also formed an international proposal, but there were no practical results, resulting in this historical contradiction being unresolved just like the historical contradiction between the Eastern Empire and the archipelago countries in the old world, and this contradiction became more and more difficult to reconcile.

One of the reasons is that the southern African countries have been demanding that the Arab world apologize to southern Africa for the historical crime of the slave trade, and these African countries have also stressed that the Europeans have apologized a long time ago, and that they still legislated to ban the slave trade in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, so no matter how sinful the Europeans were in the past, they later apologized!

And unlike the Europeans, the Arabs often seized and castrated male slaves before they were sold to all parts of the Arab world, from the olive planters of the Two Rivers Valley to the wealthy Arab merchants of Medina, and of course to the Caliph's court garden.

In the modern times of the old world, one of the main problems is precisely that the later Arab countries have always adopted an attitude of pretending to be deaf and dumb and deliberately avoiding this black history, and they have refused to apologize, so the countries of black Africa believe that this is unjustifiable in any case!

People in Black Africa say: Don't tell us that history is history, it's a thing of the past, we still have to look forward and things like that!

Because, as one black leader put it: if humanity does not reflect on its own dark history, then the darkness of history will surely come back to humanity!