"I was interrupted by Zuo Aiqing just now, and I almost forgot to talk about the big thing! is what Shi Cai said, Cheng Aiqing's suggestion to build a railway! After settling the matter of the impeachment of King Yi, Feng Yunshan continued the previous question of how to govern the newly occupied territory, and he asked directly: "Ladies and gentlemen, I just want to ask, how big is the land area of my Chinese Empire now?" Now, in the past few years, the speed of expansion has been too fast, so that I, the owner, don't know my family background, how to govern it? If you want to build this railway, you must know how much money you have. ”

Zeng Guanlan is the vice premier of the cabinet, and he knows all these data, so he immediately replied: "Your Majesty, before the Western Expeditionary Army, the territory of our Chinese Empire includes the part of the original occupation of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, Korea, Japan and the Outer Northeast, as well as Nanyang, Ceylon, Australia, North America, Hexi and Alaska, except for Burma and Luo, with a total land area of 34 million square kilometers.

Now that the Western Expeditionary Army has pushed the entire national border westward to the Ural Mountains and the Ural River, and even the middle and lower reaches of the Volga River and the Caucasus are occupied, our Chinese Empire will usher in about 7 million to 8 million square kilometers of territory, if you add the entire Kazakh Khanate, Your Majesty, will the entire Kazakh vassal state directly become the direct rule of the empire, in this way, it will add another 2.5 million square kilometers of territory, in this case, The entire Chinese Empire will have a staggering 44.5 million square kilometers, including 42 million square kilometers, excluding the Kazakh Khanate. It can be said that it is the largest empire in the world and the largest area in the world, and the sun never sets! ”

Feng Yunshan was taken aback!

He really didn't calculate the size of the Chinese Empire under his rule, but he knew that it was definitely much larger than the 9.6 million square kilometers of land that later generations had claimed. But I didn't expect that before Shi Dakai's westward expedition, there were already 34 million square kilometers, and the result of this westward expedition was that the Chinese Empire had increased its territory by nearly 700-8 million square kilometers, and if the entire Kazakh Khanate was annexed, it would be 10 million square kilometers of land harvest!

This, this is really shocking! Originally, he just felt that it was difficult to immigrate and find a way to build a railway to maintain the rule of these newly occupied territories, but at this moment, Feng Yunshan knew what to do.

With such a huge land area, Feng Yunshan naturally knew that it was a great thing. But because the land area is so large, just like the Soviet Union in later generations, once there is any trouble, it will quickly collapse. Moreover, like most countries in the world with a huge land area, most of them adopt a federal system, but their own Chinese empire adopts a highly centralized provincial system, everything is decided by the central court, and everything is directly governed by the central court through the local government, and the local government is just an agency appointed by the central court, and the agency of the central government is the court to guard the side, so it is more difficult to govern.

But with these newly added territories, Feng Yunshan was naturally unwilling to give up. After all, the dream of a heavenly kingdom has always surrounded his heart. Now, so close to this dream, how can he be willing to give up? Think about it, a world-class power with several continents and a radius of 40 million square kilometers, even far more than the original world-class land power of the Soviet Union, is equivalent to an empire that merges the three countries of the Soviet Union, the United States, and China together.

But to really turn these territories into territories that his country can hold for a long time, this is Feng Yunshan's headache now. There is no way, such a large land area, especially inland areas such as Siberia and the Aral Lake Caspian Sea, which has never been touched by the Chinese people, and it will take some thought and price to turn it into a place of permanent reproduction and rule belonging to the Chinese people.

You have to continue to immigrate! Even if no one wants to go, you have to lure them with great benefits. What's more, if it really doesn't work, it is also possible to carry out "going to the mountains and going to the countryside" or launching a movement to support the borders, calling on a large number of people to go to the frontiers to take turns to reclaim and defend the land, so as to consolidate the governance of those places. Of course, at the same time, Feng Yunshan decided that he had to spend a huge amount of money to build a railway, or Cheng Hengsheng was right, as long as the railway was opened, whether there was any war or rebellion, the central field army could quickly mobilize personnel to support the frontier, and such a frontier would be stabilized.

What's more, with the railway, it is extremely beneficial to the local development and governance, and when the time comes, it will in turn promote the upsurge of immigration. However, the construction of railways in this newly occupied territory is not as good as before, and the biggest reason for the construction of railways in the past was to promote the flow of goods and people, and they were all connected to each other between densely populated large cities, but this time, the distance of thousands of kilometers, the population is almost zero, how to build, must spend a lot of thought and careful planning.

Fortunately, in these newly occupied places, except for some Kazakhs and Russian Cossacks, there are not many other populations, and most of them are vast and sparsely populated desolate places, although there will be a lot of oil and gold and other minerals in later generations, but in this era, only grazing Gobi, at most some pastures. With the exception of the lower Volga basin, some areas surrounding the Caspian coast, and other Ural valleys where the land is fertile for growing crops, most of the rest of the world is not of much value for agricultural development at present. To be honest, such a large territory, even if the Chinese Empire has a population of nearly 500 million, it is difficult to develop it, after all, it is already a great sensation to be able to send out one percent. What's more, Feng Yunshan was not willing to do this.

Sending five million Chinese people to graze on the grasslands? Going to the Western Regions to grow cotton? Or go to the cold Arctic Circle planting sites in the cold Arctic Circle with only three or four months of growth in a year to feed their own wheat, and then hunt polar bears and seals for a living? This is not development, but the suffering of these people stationed on the border. These five million people can be better developed in the hot, productive South Seas, or in the Transkawa region of the Americas, on the island of Ceylon, or in the lower Ganges basin around Calcutta.

Therefore, Feng Yunshan considered that in these newly occupied distant northwest regions, he only targeted the development of local key places, mainly from a military point of view, and first defended this huge territory. As for whether it is going to be actually developed or developed well, it is estimated that it will be a hundred years from the next generation or even the next generation.

Thinking of this, Feng Yunshan asked people to bring a map, lit the holy oil lamp, illuminated the entire hall as if it were daylight, pointed to the northern part of the Kazakh Khanate and the entire Siberia and even the Arctic Circle on the map, and began to talk about his thoughts: "Ladies and gentlemen, please see, according to the battle report from the Western Expeditionary Army, as well as the results of the negotiations between Wu Aiqing and the envoy of Tsarist Russia, these places will be owned by the Chinese Empire in the future." What I mean is that we will focus on military occupation first, and will not engage in large-scale development, but will choose selective and focused development for the purpose of military and domestic supply.

Cheng Aiqing, your task is to let your Ministry of Communications, together with the General Staff and the Ministry of National Defense, study these places and plan a reasonable railway construction route after you go back. I remember that your Ministry of Communications originally planned to start from Shengjing City, go all the way to Seoul on the Korean Peninsula, and build it all the way through Vladivostok to Miaojie Town in Heilongjiang, which is a very good plan. ”

........ PS: The title of the previous chapter seems to be the King of Iron Heroes.,For some reason, it seems to be blocked.。 Here's an explanation.