Only the locals know the local situation best, and only the locals are most anxious about what the locals are anxious about.

Yunnan is located in a remote place, there are no big rivers to navigate, and the main line of the railway company cannot be built here, so the people of Yunnan can only rely on themselves.

The start was difficult, because Yunnan is not only remote, but also mountainous, it is a plateau, not to mention the construction of canals, and it is difficult to repair official roads. When Yunnan established a railway company, just like Shanxi, it contacted the Royal Railway Company, hoping to merge the Yunnan Railway into the main line, but the Royal Railway Company was not interested in this at all, because it was impossible to build a railway and cross the mountains to climb the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, which in this era was like a fantasy.

Yunnan people are very discouraged, and the road conditions make Yunnan's long-term foreign trade can only be transported by horses, which greatly affects Yunnan's economy and people's livelihood.

After the annexation of Nanyue into China, it was divided into two parts, the north of the Red River to Guangxi, and the south of the Red River to Yunnan.

On the one hand, the Yunnan government joined forces with Guangxi to vigorously dredge the Red River waterway, and on the other hand, it began to lay out railways around the outlet of the Red River.

Yunnan is remote, the road is difficult to travel, but the product is not barren, the mountainous terrain has created the characteristics of many mines, because the orogeny and metallogenic movement are accompanied by the occurrence of gold, silver and copper and other precious metals in Yunnan, as well as coal and tin mines.

During the Manchu Qing Dynasty, due to the traditional fear that the miners would gather and cause rebellion, the mining was restricted, and due to the shortage of money caused by Japan's restrictions on copper exports, the Manchu Qing Dynasty implemented the mining administration in Yunnan under the control of the government, and allowed the Yin Shi family to open mines, but strictly supervised the mines, not only to control the number of workers and output of the mines, but also to purchase the output of the mines in a unified manner, which was called the "official purchase of surplus copper" policy, the mine owners paid 20% of the copper extracurricular fees, and the surplus copper was compulsorily purchased by the government. Because the price offered by the government was too low, which led to a decrease in investment, in order to expand the mining industry, 10% of the copper in the mine was allowed to be sold to the Mint Bureau by itself, called "trade copper", and some factories were allowed to sell 20%. However, this restriction has led to a large number of private mining and private sales, which is difficult to eradicate, because many private mines are operated by powerful people.

The Great Zhou encouraged mining, businessmen can apply for a license to open mines, Yunnan copper mine production surged, during the Manchu Qing Dynasty Yunnan was China's largest copper mineral, annual output of eight or nine million catties of copper. The Great Zhou Dynasty has not abolished the money system, it used to be the silver money standard, and now it can be said to be the money standard, as long as the money is circulated, copper is money. Therefore, Yunnan copper mine is very profitable, and the biggest cost is transportation.

Encourage the mining policy, cultivated a large number of Yunnan mining capital, in order to improve the output of their own mines, they introduced a lot of new technologies, steam engine in the mining area rapid popularization, which made Yunnan's machinery industry began to be born, large-scale production of steam engine factories have not yet appeared, can produce a large number of parts and components of the large workshop, the improvement of the level of machinery, and let them innovate a large number of mining machines, Yunnan's technical level is not low.

If they have capital and technology, they will have the basic conditions to break through geographical restrictions.

Coupled with appropriate policies, it can produce results beyond imagination.

Yunnan Province's approach did not go beyond this era, and after the government was given the power to approve commercial companies, it did not abuse these powers, but guided them. This joint-stock commercial company is privileged, not only can issue shares, but also can issue bonds, which will greatly reduce the financing channels and costs, the key is that the risk will be greatly reduced, in the past, everyone partnered or sole proprietorship to open a mine, in case of bad luck, opened a waste mine, Yin Shi home is basically broken. If it is a joint-stock company, it is different, how much money is invested, it will be compensated if it is lost, it will not affect other industries, and it will not let the owner sell the house and land to compensate because of the debt owed by the mine.

So a large number of mine owners wanted the government to approve them to set up a mining concession company, and the government took advantage of this demand of the mine owners and asked them to charter them to set up a commercial joint-stock company, but they had to set up a railway company at the same time.

Therefore, the mining company in Yunnan and the railway company are actually the same company, the full name is the Yunnan Road Mining Company, which was jointly founded by dozens of large miners, with an investment of one million yuan and two million yuan of bonds.

In fact, the interests of roads and mines are highly consistent in Yunnan, and mining companies are already limited in expanding their interests by increasing production alone, and the biggest obstacle is not production technology, nor capital, but transportation.

Roads and mines also have something in common in terms of construction technology, and mining requires a large number of engineering and technical personnel, and road construction also needs these talents.

The mine owners sent their experienced architects to open roads, using blasting techniques to open mountains and roads, and railways from their mines through the Yuanjiang (Red River) and then to the provincial and county seats. The construction of the railway of Yunnan Road Mining Company was not obvious at the beginning, but after a few years, it became the climate, and the copper mines in Yunnan were distributed in more than 70 counties, and the short-distance railways in these mining areas gradually became a network.

This kind of railway network, of course, cannot be compared with the railway network of later generations, and it is crude. Because it is impossible to solve some of the problems of crossing mountains and mountains, the cost of drilling mountain tunnels is too high, and on most of the mountain railways, the method of pulling is even with steel wire, and the uphill is pulled by steam power, and the downhill is descended by the slope. But it finally solved a basic transportation problem, and finally these unconventional broken lines converged into distribution centers, which were located in Pinggu or by the river, and finally converged on the Yuan River.

What Zhou Lang saw in the Yunnan Railway was not the power of technology or the operation of capital, but the willingness of the local government to build railways. As in later generations, the local motivation to build railways was often greater, and the provinces ran to the railway company to lobby.

The willingness of the local government to run the railway is stronger than that of the Royal Railways, because the local government hopes to use the railway to improve the local traffic situation, and the Royal Railway Company is more willing to build railways in developed areas, and the reason why the developed areas are developed is often because the local traffic situation is relatively good, and a stubborn chain of transportation interests has been formed.

Relying on local improvement of transportation, but the strength is insufficient, after all, the local railway companies are limited in their business scope.

This restriction was not given to them by Zhou Lang, but caused by the concession system, which was copied from the Western system, and the Western concessions were all geographically restricted, for example, the East India Company could only operate in India, and the Bank of England could only issue banknotes around London, and so on. The concession of the royal company was at the national level, covering the whole country, and Zhou Lang later delegated power to the localities, the purpose was not to allow them to compete with the central government, so he acquiesced and accepted this regional division. Now, it seems that it is not necessary. In business, there are still fewer restrictions.

Local governments cannot compete with the central government in the issuance of concessions, which makes it impossible for local commercial companies to compete with central commercial companies. The Royal Railways have nothing to fear, anyway, no matter how good the railway in Yunnan is, it will not affect them. Yunnan people are hoping to build the railway outside, but they can only build it locally.

It is not necessary to completely change the concession system, and the consequences of making the local and central powers equal are unpredictable, but it can be opened, and Zhou Lang decided to reinterpret the concept of local commercial concessions, and the interpretation power is in the hands of the imperial court and the emperor anyway. He can reinterpret and re-empower these new concepts.

Zhou Lang's explanation is that concession transfers and mergers are allowed, and concessions are granted to foreign companies.

This explanation is significant, which means that if the people of Yunnan want to build the railway to Guangxi, they have a solution, they can lobby the Guangxi government to grant the Yunnan Road Mining Company a concession, they can also buy the Guangxi railway company to obtain the concession, and they can also merge with the Guangxi Railway Company to obtain the concession.

This means that local railway companies can expand their operations beyond the province by merging with similar companies elsewhere.

The new interpretation of the concession was issued to the provinces, which instantly caused the capital market to explode, and the stock prices of the concessionaires in the provinces, regardless of whether they had performance or not, rose one after another. The reason is simple: the concessions they hold become tradable capital, and even if the local company is unable to operate, it can be sold for profit; At the same time, the stock price and bonds of the Royal Railways, which lost the lawsuit against the Jiangbei Canal Company, fell sharply, because the concession power of such a company was no longer unique, and the local railway industry could already carry out inter-provincial railway business through mergers, and the poor performance of the Royal Railway Company suffered bitter fruits.

This is the case in financial markets, where the storm caused by butterfly wings is just a cautionary philosophy in other industries, but here it is a bloody reality.

The collapse of the Royal Railways will not be enough, but the pressure on them will immediately increase, and they will not dare to control the risk slowly, and they must seize the market as soon as possible.

Because the emperor had just reinterpreted the meaning of the local concession, there were a number of railway companies merged, and they were all completed under the promotion of local governments, the road and mining companies of Yunnan and Guizhou provinces were quickly merged, Yunnan and Guizhou were under the jurisdiction of a governor, and Guizhou also needed access to the sea, the most recent is to go to Yunnan and go to the sea through the Red River.

Not in the same governor's jurisdiction, the Shanxi Railway Company also carried out a merger, because there were many Jin merchants doing business in Central Asia, and the Shanshan commercial forces have always been in the same spirit, and the guilds in many places are jointly organized, called the Shanshan Guild Hall. The close relationship between the capital of the two railways soon led to the merger of railways across jurisdictions. The Jin merchants needed to obtain railway access to Central Asia through Xi'an, and the Shaanxi merchants also hoped to enter the steppe through Shaanxi for development.

What frightened the Royal Railways the most was that after the Jiangbei Canal blocked the railway companies from going south, instead of staying away from the railway business, they began to seek to enter the railway industry, and began to negotiate with the railway companies in Jiangsu, Shandong and other provinces to sell the railway concessions.

The Royal Railways quickly took various countermeasures, but their measures made Zhou Lang very dissatisfied, and he really began to think about withdrawing the investment of the Royal Railways and taking back the royal title of the railway company!

Because this company has gone out of the ordinary, they have taken measures to use monopoly power to the extreme.