In addition to this major project, tens of thousands of engineering troops also gathered in Dengzhou Port and Kaifeng City, and their task was to build an east-west hardened road starting from Dengzhou and passing through Mizhou, Jinan, and Daimyofu, with a total length of nearly 700 kilometers. www.biquge.info The road is expected to be completed in two years, and the construction of the road has not yet begun, with kilns being built in several sections along the route to burn cement on site.

Moreover, this road is only the first phase, its second phase ends in Yan'an Prefecture, and the third phase ends in Xining Prefecture, which originally belonged to Western Xia. Once this road is completed, the western hinterland will no longer be a place far away from the Emperor Tiangao. The supplies and military resources in the southern part of the Great Song Dynasty could be transported north by sea or canal, and then transferred to a horse-drawn carriage from Dengzhou Port or the Daimyo's Mansion to the west, and it took less than one-third of the time to reach the far west. This is tantamount to extending the hand of the central government, and there is no need to deploy heavy troops in remote areas.

Although it will cost a lot of money to build a road, it will be worth it if you share it evenly with the annual military spending. What's more, with this highway, the western inland can carry out effective economic communication and personnel flow with the economically developed areas of the southeast coast, which can also play a vital role in the development of the inland economy.

Can Hong Tao, or the current imperial court of the Great Song Dynasty, come up with so much money to build so many big projects at the same time? Even if the army is used as labor, then you have to take care of the food. With so many people eating and drinking every day, plus building materials and tools, it is also a big expense.

It is true that Hong Tao really can't come up with this money, but he has a way to get others to pay for him to carry out this kind of project that costs a lot of money and has a long profit period. This hardened road, which he named Highway No. 1, was basically contracted by a foreign-funded company called Huang's Construction Company at least a penny by the Song Dynasty.

Speaking of which, this company is not too far from Hong Tao, its major shareholder is the Huang Hai family, and the person in charge is Huang Hai's eldest grandson and Huang Lang's eldest son Huang Yi. Now the Huang family is a veritable big family in the Golden River Empire, especially in the agriculture and construction industries. Because of its early start and wide connections, the family industry now covers almost every overseas colony of the Jinhe Empire, and it is not an exaggeration to call it a trust.

"It seems that I still have to formulate anti-monopoly and anti-trust laws, so that these capitalists will not develop unscrupulously in the future." When Hong Tao saw the details of the Huang Construction Company that finally won the bid, he couldn't help but sigh again.

The Jinhe Empire has developed too fast in the past ten years, if it continues like this, it won't take more than twenty years, and the dynasty that was overthrown by itself will have to stand up, and it may not be called the emperor at that time, but the nature is almost the same. If a family business like the Huang Construction Company is left unchecked, it may one day become a huge power group that can control a country. The capitalists are not much kinder than the emperor, and they must not be taken lightly.

As for why did Huang's Construction Company come to contract such a huge investment in the construction of such a highway that did not seem to be profitable? It's really not that the Huang family has a problem with their brains, and it's not that they want to repay Hong Tao for any kindness, but that Hong Tao gave them a promise. After the road was built, it was not a free road, but a toll road. All people and organizations who wanted to use the highway had to pay tolls according to the pre-agreed payment standards approved by the Great Song court.

And these tolls are the return on investment of Huang's construction company, when the time comes, Huang's construction company will set up a toll station on the highway, the sign reads: I opened this mountain, this tree is planted by me, if you want to pass from here, leave to buy road money!

Of course, there is a limit to this toll period, which varies from 10 to 15 years for different road sections. And not only do you have to pay for it, but you also have to do the necessary maintenance of the road. When the toll period ended, the highway would be nationalized by the Song Dynasty and turned into a free highway.

This account can be calculated by any big businessman with brains, as long as the Great Song Dynasty can fulfill the contract, it will definitely make money, and it will make a lot of money. But this model is only possible with the merchants of the Jinhe Empire, if these merchants are allowed to do this kind of business with the original Great Song Dynasty, they will not even consider it, this is a credit problem.

A person needs credit to buy and sell, and a country, a government and others also need credit. The Great Song Dynasty has no credit, but Hong Tao has it, not only does it have, but it is also very sufficient. It can be said that neither the merchants of the Jinhe Empire nor the merchants of the coastal cities of the Great Song Dynasty came to invest in the Great Song Dynasty, but they valued Hong Tao himself, so they believed that under his leadership, the new imperial court of the Great Song Dynasty also had enough credit.

At this time, if anyone wants to say that they want to get Hong Tao down and replace someone else to lead the Great Song Dynasty, these businessmen will not be the first to agree, unless you pay their investment, interest and part of the profits first. Therefore, credit is not only a promise to others, it is also a kind of protection for oneself, and it is a good habit of mutual benefit.

At present, there is a lot of local investment and foreign investment in contracting various infrastructure projects on the land of the Great Song Dynasty, and 80 percent of the new roads, factories, and water conservancy facilities are carried out in this way. Regardless of whether it is a sole proprietorship or a joint venture, as long as it is beneficial to the country, the future development, and the local people's livelihood and economy, the Great Song Dynasty will not set up artificial obstacles. In addition, many small and medium-sized investment projects are decided by local officials, and the central government is only responsible for the examination and bidding of large-scale projects, and does not interfere with local investment projects, but only has procedural supervision responsibilities.

The court officials in charge of these tasks were more interesting, and Luo Youde handed it over to Jia Yidao. Judging by the work of the previous months, he has done a decent job. An original minister who misled the country became a very capable, very daring, and honest minister in the new court, which made Hong Tao very pleased, and he was happier than the construction of the road itself.

"Was he scared out of you? Will the old disease recur over time? Wen Nan didn't understand all this, and he wasn't very reassured.

"Who was born without the name of a bad person on the door of his head, let alone a natural traitor. The ancients said: If you don't raise your godfather, you can't teach the teacher strictly! The reason why he became a traitor has his own responsibility, but the main responsibility is the system. Without a proper system to regulate everyone's behavior, good people will become bad people, because if they are not bad, they will suffer; With a proper system of constraints, the bad guys will also get better, because if you don't follow the rules, you will suffer. No one is a fool, and the reason why a traitor can stand out among so many officials shows that his own ability is stronger than others, otherwise he would not have made such brilliant use of the flaws in the system. Therefore, once such a person is in the right system, he will soon be able to grasp the essence of the new system, make reasonable use of it, and abide by it. He would even be more enthusiastic about defending the system than anyone else, because only under this system would it be easier for capable people like them to come out. In the future, don't use traitors and loyal ministers to classify the officials under you, we use their talents, not saint training classes. Hong Tao had already figured out this question, and at the same time understood Wen Nan's doubts. I can't find a few people who can think like me in the Great Song Dynasty, even in the Jinhe Empire, there are not too many, this is the ideological gap caused by the times, there is no way, it can only be slowly changed.

As for old officials of the Great Song Dynasty like Jia Yidao, Hong Tao advocated bold decentralization. As long as they are willing to actively integrate into the new rules, then don't put obstacles in their way, let alone discriminate against them. It is not their fault that the past was bad, and the burden of history should not be borne by themselves. Doing so can also set an example for other officials, and call on more people to join in the work of building a new Great Song Dynasty with practical actions.

Of course, Hong Tao is not an unprincipled casual good person, daring to use these old officials to hold important positions in the government, and he also has his own security system, that is, the newly established Great Song Dynasty Commercial Investigation Bureau. With Cixi, the big spy leader, picking up the leaks for himself, Hong Tao doesn't have to be afraid of these old officials playing with him on the surface and making trouble in secret.

Depending on the position she held, Cixi had begun to focus on monitoring the movements of these people, and whenever she found any officials with bad intentions, Hong Tao's marines would appear in front of her. In the handling of this kind of thing, Hong Tao fully demonstrated William's evaluation of him, black \ heaven \ envoy! On the one hand, it is magnanimous and does not blame the past; On the other hand, it is ruthless and brutally suppressed. All criminal officials who were found guilty by the Commercial Investigation Bureau would be hanged on the local city gates along with their immediate family members, and the entire family would be sent to the north to supervise labor. Digging mines, building roads, and some of them are waiting for them to die and die.

Throughout 1255, Hong Tao basically stayed in the north of the Great Song Empire, supervising the construction of the Tangshan Steelmaking Plant, Qianxi Iron Mine, Luanhe Machinery Factory, Luanhe Chemical Plant, Qianxi Cement Plant, and Luanping Coal Mine of the Northern Iron and Steel Group, and at the same time taking the opportunity of inspecting the progress of the construction of Highway No. 1, he took the lead in starting another very important and very sensitive reform on the Shandong Peninsula. This reform should be said to be the most difficult and the most needed, it is different from the problem of redundant soldiers and redundant officials, but only touches the interests of a small number of people, once this reform is officially rolled out in the territory of the Great Song Dynasty, almost everyone's interests will be touched, some people will suffer, some people take advantage. But in the end, who suffers and how much, who takes advantage and how much? Hong Tao still has no bottom in his heart, so he wants to try it here first, so that he knows it in his heart and then spreads it out on a large scale. (To be continued.) )