"Big brother, it seems that a big iron ore has been discovered in Shuicheng." When Qiaoxi took Murong Hanhai to find Li Xuanqing, he found that the other party was also stunned at the map of Nanzhao, and suddenly smiled, "Does the eldest brother also know about this?" Didn't you hear that you saw Brother Hu coming? ”

"Watertown?" Li Xuanqing didn't remember where Shuicheng was for a while, so he stood up and took the newspaper sent by Qiaoxi, looked at it, and then said with a smile: "It's a good thing to find iron ore, but this place can't be mined for the time being, so let's think about something else." Murong, what is your opinion from the Ministry of Industry and Commerce? ”

"Your Majesty, the southwest economic stimulus plan has been fully rolled out, but the steel and other important materials needed are all transported thousands of miles from the north, and the consumption is too great. And what the emperor may not know is that although the major steel mills in the north have greatly expanded their production capacity and increased new steelmaking furnaces this year, the output still cannot keep up with consumption, and it is necessary to ensure that the railway construction plan in the southwest is difficult to maintain. ”

"Not enough capacity?" Li Xuanqing thought for a while and asked, "According to the statistics of the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, how much can our current steel production be in a year?" "I have the impression that the output of the steel plant I have expanded is enough to ensure the current industrial scale, how can it not be enough?

"According to the statistics at the end of last year, the major steel mills in the north produced a total of 500,000 tons of pig iron and 270,000 tons of crude steel." Murong Hanhai said with a wry smile: "This year, whether it is the logistics department, the Yuwen family and our family's steel plant, they have doubled their production capacity, and adopted a new blast furnace, but at present, only about thirty percent of the new production capacity has reached the production stage, and the rest is still under construction." ”

"Big brother, you don't know, although our major steel plants have expanded their output, they can't stop us from consuming too much. In addition to the daily demand for steel, this year's shipbuilding is a large steel producer, and the three major shipyards under the royal family alone need more than 150,000 tons of steel this year, while the combined demand of other shipyards is almost 100,000 tons. If we add to the requirements of the steel and equipment department required for railway construction, I am afraid that even if we expand production, we will not be able to keep up with the demand. Moreover, this year's orders for civilian ships have increased significantly, and I am afraid that these numbers will increase by about 30%. ”

"In the first stage, a new steel plant will be built in Mukden, and the railway department will build the Bohai Bay Railway to North Korea Province, and then mine the Maoshan iron ore and transport the iron ore back." Li Xuanqing thought about it and said, Maoshan Iron Mine is a large mine, and its iron ore quality is better than those in the Northeast, and more importantly, it can be regarded as an open-pit mine, and there is almost no difficulty in mining. It's just that North Korea is surrounded by mountains, transportation is an absolutely fatal problem, because there is no shortage of domestic iron ore resources, so Li Xuanqing has not thought about this problem, but now it is Qiaoxi said that Li Xuanqing can only take out this Maoshan iron ore. It will be easy to wait until the railway has repaired the Datong River and the Yalu River, and it is a big deal to open the mountain and blow up the rocks all the way over, and the distance is not too far, and Li Xuanqing is not worried about this problem. But his method is very reasonable to Murong Hanhai, once the railway crosses the Yalu River, the situation on the peninsula will inevitably change, and the most important thing is that after the new steel plant in the northeast, the steel needed by the northern heavy industry, especially the two major shipyards of the royal family, can be met on the spot, and there is no need to transfer it from Fengzhou and other places, so as to evenly distribute the output and transport it to other places.

"What about the South? The pace of development in the south will not be worse than that in the north. You can't all transport steel from the north, right? Qiaoxi said with a frown.

"Just build a steel plant in Lianzhou or Qinzhou, and let Zhang Qiang arrange for someone to build a southern shipyard there." Li Xuanqing smiled slightly, but Qiaoxi immediately reacted, and said with a smile: "Big brother, don't worry, I understand, third brother, you immediately contact the Ministry of Land and Resources to go to Yazhou, I heard that there is a big iron mine over there, and then let them survey and survey on both sides of the Red River in Jiaozhou, there should also be iron ore over there." When the time comes, the iron ore on both sides will be supplied to Lianzhou Iron and Steel Plant, which will be able to alleviate the current situation of steel shortage in the south. Then, when the railroad was built north, it was possible to make rails nearby. ”

Although Murong Hanhai didn't know why Li Xuanqing and Qiaoxi were so sure that there was an iron ore in Yazhou, Shilu Iron Mine itself was a high-quality shallow iron mine, so the Ministry of Land and Resources quickly found it and accurately located it, which made Murong Hanhai ecstatic, and pulled the Minister of Communications Wu Zuodong to go south immediately to sit in Guangzhou in person, build a wharf and a straight road in Danzhou to lead to the Shilu Iron Ore Mine, and then ship to Lianzhou Port. In August of the sixth year of the weather, in fact, all the machinery and equipment needed by the Lianzhou Iron and Steel Plant had been produced and transported by the Shenzhou Machinery Manufacturing Plant, and the coal mines needed for steelmaking were also found in Nanzhao, and coal mines were also discovered in Qiqi and southern Sichuan, so that after the coal transported in the early stage withstood the needs of steelmaking, Wu Zuodong immediately began to build a railway from Guangzhou to the north, and arranged all the construction workers and prisoners of war of the Lingnan Railway to the new railway line. After the railway started in advance, the Hanchuan railway line that has been repaired to Chengdu began to move rapidly southward on the Chengdu Plain, because the major cities in Sichuan have a very good degree of development, so when the main line is repaired, the major thorn Shifu is also considering the construction of branch lines, so Sichuan has also become the first province in the Tang Empire to build railway trunk lines and branch lines at the same time, and the speed has not slowed down at all. By the time construction of the Jinsha River Bridge began, the Hanchuan Railway had begun to make its way south after breaking through the steep mountains of the Qinba Mountains in the north. It's just that the farther south you go, the more difficult it becomes, not only in the mountains but also in the continuous rivers to block it, so the Department of Railways arranged for the construction company to build the Jinsha River Bridge at the same time, and the Changle Bridge Construction Company began to start construction of more than a dozen bridges on the pre-selected roads in the south in one go. For thousands of years, the people of Sichuan are fed up with the inconvenience of road blockage, so when they heard that the Sichuan Railway was built this time, the wealthy businessmen and gentry from all over the country have generously donated money to assist the government in seizing the time to transport building materials, and even some of them have seen business opportunities from it, and set up a special handling company to make use of the tenacity and hardship of the Sichuan people, and quickly make a fortune after the completion of the railway, and go to all parts of the country.

When the Ministry of Communications went all out to maintain the progress of the construction of the Southwest Railway, the political embassies in Sichuan, Nanzhao, Qiqi and other places were also intensively arranging the construction of industrial bases in the four southwestern provinces, which will include 27 basic industrial industries such as steel smelting and forging, special steel smelting, chemical industry and cement, plus more than 100 light industry industries attached, all over the border area of the four provinces. Countless representatives of wealthy businessmen haunted all over the place and then industrial parks began to gradually rise up, this kind of industrial base in the second half of the second year gradually completed the construction, and when it was put into operation, it once again added a fire to the hot Western trade, and used the newly built southwest railway to reach Xihai County, the Tang Empire used the Western route to finally dig out all the southwest mountains out of a life channel, and the new trucks that continue to flow on the road drive not only trade, but also the flow of wealth and hope.

However, although the construction of the Southwest Railway was difficult and the progress was slow, Li Xuanqing did not pay much attention to it, but carefully stared at the map of the entire Tibetan area in Chang'an. Li Xuanqing basically didn't pay much attention to the war in Tibet, and the General Staff was in charge independently, because he had long considered that the Tibetan area was located on the plateau, and the large-scale war would be fought for a long time, so Li Xuanqing didn't expect Xue Yang and Chen Yu to defeat each other in a short time. However, judging from the current war report, after taking Lhasa, the remaining remnants of the Tibetan forces were left with the royal side branch in the northwest region. It's just that the current situation in Tubo is that all those stationed in the border areas belong to powerful forces, so in the next battle, Xue Yang and Chen Yu did not dare to slack off. But the huge area that has been beaten down really gives Li Xuanqing a headache. If it weren't for the fact that the land in Tibet was too important for the Central Plains, living on top of the Central Plains, once it lost control, it would be equivalent to hanging a sharp sword on the head of the Central Plains Dynasty, otherwise Li Xuanqing would not be interested in taking this land for the time being, and the input-output ratio would be too different. In fact, this is also one of the reasons why Li Xuanqing finally decided to build the southwest ahead of schedule, because the southwest region can only provide a foundation for stationing in Tibetan areas after it has sufficient industrial base and railway trunk lines, and according to the experience of later generations, the Sichuan-Tibet line and the Yunnan-Tibet line of the southern route into Tibet can still be built. It was not suitable for the mainlanders to enter the plateau, but the approximately 200,000 captives of all sizes who were captured at this time were enough to complete the task of building a straight road within three years, and as long as the road was repaired to Lhasa and other important areas in Tibet, Li Xuanqing was sure that he would control the entire Tibetan area in his hands, and even if he did not invest in it in the future, as long as he controlled it, he could slowly digest it. And now that the Tang Empire has no money to throw into it, it doesn't mean that there will be no in the future, Li Xuanqing has enough ways to earn a huge amount of wealth from the body poison side and come back to support the economic development of the Tang Dynasty in full swing.

Li Xuanqing is in Chang'an but is always concerned about the development of the southwest, but in the early August of the sixth year of the weather Murong Hanhai and Wu Zuodong set off to the south after the rest of the heart, Murong Hanhai in the past few years in the industrial and commercial development of the attainments are more and more profound, this southwest economic development plan is from his hand, so naturally he is particularly concerned, the southwest industrial base he personally ran through most of the four provinces, after understanding the local mineral resources to develop a development strategy according to local conditions, And considering the traffic conditions in the southwest region, he also specially worked with Wu Chok Dong to make this plan. Because the industrial base of each province is located in a relatively concentrated location, the linkage between each other is definitely not inferior to the northern industrial belt, so the first step is that the water and land transportation between the four provinces should be able to quickly connect with each other in order to be able to communicate with each other to form an industrial chain, so the first step is that the four provinces have mobilized a lot of manpower and material resources to repair the internal straight road, and then connect the southwest railway and the Yangtze River waterway. This is also one of the reasons why Sichuan took the lead in the construction of the main line and the branch line was also started almost at the same time.

"Big brother is thinking about several industrial bases in the south? Qiaoxi doesn't think it's much of a problem, after all, whether it is Sichuan or Hunan, we have laid out before, Hunan and Jingnan developed almost at the same time, Jingnan developed the steel industry, and Hunan was ready to build three acid and two alkali factories like later generations, which can be directly used as the foundation of the southwest industrial base. Qiaoxi smiled.

"Qiaoxi, do you think we need to build two roads into Tibet?" Li Xuanqing drew the Sichuan-Tibet line and the Yunnan-Tibet line in later generations from memory, and then shook his head and said to Qiaoxi: "According to our actual needs, I think one is enough, and even if it weren't for the poor conditions in Yuanzhou, I wouldn't plan to build a straight road in the south." ”

"Actually, big brother don't worry, it's enough to build a Sichuan-Tibet line or a Yunnan-Tibet line, but Qiaoxi thinks that the Yunnan-Tibet line is better, after all, whether it is Pibo City or Ya'an City along the way, it belongs to the essence of Tibet, and after these places are opened, they can also be connected with the southwest region nearby, and a large number of industrial goods from the southwest will be sent to Tibet." Qiaoxi knew that Li Xuanqing had fallen into the misunderstanding of later generations, so he took his hand and said: "Big brother, don't think that the Tibetan area is poor, the plateau area is not poor at all, not to mention anything else, just the annual consumption of tea bricks and silk is the sky." ”

"It's okay, first send a message to Chen Yu and ask him to organize the prisoners of war to carry out preliminary construction in Tibet in advance according to the route of the Yunnan-Tibet line, and then go south from Tieqiao City to Nanzhao, so that the map will be perfect." Li Xuanqing smiled slightly, and said with a smile after adding a stroke: "Qiaoxi, I think we are about to complete our historical task to this point, and the future will need to be comprehended and practiced by generations of elites of the Tang Dynasty." ”

"That's not necessarily, once our five-year plan is implemented, it means that we will initially enter the era of the industrial revolution, but after all, the era of you and me is in the era of information explosion, doesn't the big brother want to expand the empire to the extreme sky sea while trying to bring the Tang Dynasty hundreds of years ahead of time into the era of the future generations? At least in the electric age. The clever muttering made Li Xuanqing look at the scenery outside the hall and couldn't talk to himself for a long time.

The two people in the Chang'an base camp standing at the highest peak of the Tang Empire were thinking about taking this empire across an era, located in the northwest, a plan that was not inferior to the economic development of the southwest also quietly surfaced. And it was this plan that allowed the northwest to develop ahead of schedule.