Chapter Seventy-Nine: The Remnants of the Army Are Defeated
At the end of October, just as the Russians began to turn around and "clean up" the northern part of Honshu, the North Korean people suddenly "made a fuss" again.
On October 31, the Korean Southern Army (formerly the Donghak Party People's Army) suddenly forcibly occupied Japan's Tsushima Islands in the waters of the Korean Strait under the cover of its two warships, "Kangji" and "Chaoyong"!
Not to mention how the "atrocities" of the North Koreans trampled on the pride of the Japanese, Chen Zeyu, who was far away on the other side of the sea, was also taken aback when he heard the news.
Chen Zeyu did not expect that the Koreans would seize a piece of the Japanese island with the few old warships they sold to them at the beginning. While admiring Quan Zhun's boldness, Chen Zeyu also felt very pity. The strategic position of the Tsushima Islands in the Korean Strait is very important, and he thought about whether to let the fleet of the Republic also play a game of forcible occupation, but he did not expect that North Korea would take the lead.
Shaking his head, Chen Zeyu finally gave up the plan to snatch food from his little brother in his heart, and it was not impossible to put Tsushima in Quan Zhizhun's hands.
At this time, he and a group of colleagues were presiding over the groundbreaking ceremony for the upcoming Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge, which is planned to be extremely large-scale and will become the world's longest cross-river highway and railroad bridge.
The Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge, which is expected to take two years and cost 7.2 million yuan to build, will connect Nanjing and Yangzhou on both sides of the Yangtze River, and will also become an important hub of the Beijing-Shanghai Railway in the planned Republic. According to the plan, when the Seris-Beijing Shanghai railway line is completed, the bridge will also be able to enter the final stage.
After Chen Zeyu seized power on the mainland, the government of his republic has always attached great importance to the construction of bridges connecting the two sides of the river. In addition to the upcoming Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge, as early as more than four months ago, the Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River and the Baishatuo Bridge in Chongqing have already entered the construction stage, and the Jiyuan Xiaolangdi Bridge on the Yellow River has been completed as early as a month ago.
In addition to the construction of bridges in various places, the construction of several railway arteries connecting the provincial capitals and municipalities of the Republic of China began several months ago. In addition to the fact that Tibet still does not have the technical conditions to start construction, the total length of the railway lines throughout the country has reached 20,000 kilometers in the first five-year plan, and the length of the railway lines planned in the second five-year plan has reached 60,000 kilometers.
At a cost of 5,000 taels of silver per kilometer (roughly calculated, in fact, it is more than that), the Ceris government would have to spend a budget of 1.2 billion yuan to complete the construction of the railway project under the two five-year plans alone. And this is only the railway link in the future infrastructure construction of the republic, the future intercontinental highways, national highways, bridges, water conservancy, coastal defense construction, etc., each of which will cost a lot of real money. At the pace at which these two five-year plans are being built, the Republic of Seris will have to complete the path that Western countries can walk in 200 years in 10 years.
If it weren't for the government's previous "looting" of property from the Qing Dynasty in various places to support it, perhaps even Chen Zeyu himself would not have had the courage to let the Seris government pass such an astonishing "five-year construction plan" one after another.
In the two five-year plans, the construction of railways in various provinces and cities alone will cost about 6 million tons of steel based on the calculation that one meter of railway line needs 75 kilograms of steel. Combined with all the other construction plans for water conservancy, bridges, roads, etc., it is calculated that Seris will need at least more than 20 million tons of steel in ten years. Without taking into account the cost of building within each region's own city, Seris's final demand for industrial raw materials would be an astonishing astronomical figure.
After returning to Beijing, Chen Zeyu rushed to the newly built State Assembly building and urged the House of Commons to pass dozens of industrial construction bills.
In fact, Chen Zeyu originally wanted to rely on Nanyang's industrial capacity to carry out domestic infrastructure construction and suspend the heavy industry plan on the mainland. But then it still didn't work, if you simply relied on Luzon's industrial capacity, the steel needed to support the mainland's ten-year railway construction alone would have to crush the avalanche steel heavy industry in Sizhejiang. If it didn't work, it would have to drag down the five-year ship expansion plan of the Republic Navy, and in the end, after Chen Zeyu himself weighed it, he still made up his mind and embarked on the road of "Great Leap J" again.
According to the original plan of the Republic of Seris, it wanted to build more livelihood projects first and raise the level of the people of the whole country as soon as possible, but now it seems that in order to raise funds for the industrialization of the mainland first, the former can only be put aside.
In addition to Chen Zeyu's personal transfer of funds and personnel within the Avalanche Group to start the construction of the Baoshan Iron and Steel Plant in Shanghai ahead of schedule, the Ceris government also set aside part of the budget to expand local mines and railways in the Northeast and Lianghu regions, and began to invest in the construction of two planned steel machinery factories in Anshan and Wuhan.
In order to reduce the pressure on the government's industrial budget as much as possible, Chen Zeyu later submitted to the House of Representatives a bill on the issuance of the Republic's industrial construction bonds, namely the Seris 1897 Wells Fargo Bonds, which are expected to be sold to the public by the Central Bank of the Republic from January next year, in addition to the first 156 million Chinese dollar bonds in 1897, according to the plan, the Central Bank of the Republic will issue such bonds for 10 to 15 consecutive years, and the total amount is expected to reach 2 billion Chinese dollars.
In addition, the government of the Republic of China will also encourage private capital in Nanyang and the mainland to develop and build a large number of light industries such as various light textile mills, silk reeling factories, and bicycle factories in several industrial base cities under planning, so as to improve the living standards of the people in the country......
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November 7, 1896, Fukushima Prefecture, Kanto, Japan
In the Nanumsu Mountains in the northwest of Fukushima, the Yokohama Division's Commander Kobayashi Motoji was hiding in the depths of the dense forest with his soldiers, and the Japanese army brigade of more than 200 people was left with only 20 people after days of fierce fighting.
"Shaozuo, let's eat something first." The deputy next to him, Lieutenant Fukatsu, handed over a food box from the side.
Xiao Lin swallowed his saliva, and after enduring it for a long time, he still took it.
"Thank you."
Kobayashi's troops had been out of food for a long time, but at this time his soldiers were eating meat.
Human flesh, yes, Kobayashi joined the ranks of cannibalism along with his soldiers.
The piece of meat cut from the buttocks of a dead Russian soldier has become a supreme delicacy in the hearts of Kobayashi soldiers after steaming in the marching pot.
If the flesh of the dead can save the living, if the living can survive on the flesh of the dead, this is also a choice, Kobayashi comforted himself in his heart as he chewed the piece of meat in his mouth.
A few wild dogs ran out of the jungle not far away, and at this time, they were supposed to be afraid of humans, but they let go of their fear one by one, and they all greedily stared at these Japanese soldiers who were devouring human flesh.
Kobayashi, who felt the potential threat, frowned, and with a bloody life, he could easily recognize that these beasts in front of him were masters who had eaten human flesh.
Although he is also "eating meat" at this moment, these former wild dogs are never allowed to see themselves as food.
Pulling out the bayonet on the muzzle, Kobayashi slowly walked towards the wild dogs.
Xiao Lin thought silently in his heart, "Just increase your food reserves......"
Seeing the humans approaching in front of them, these wild dogs seemed to wake up, and they all ran away into the jungle one by one.
Watching the "wolf meat" that was about to slip away, Xiao Lin, who was unwilling to waste any more bullets, licked his lips regretfully......
Looking up at the sunlight shining through the canopy overhead, Kobayashi sighed deeply.
This is already the second week that his broken army has fled into the Seven Mountains, and a month ago, he set out from Yokohama with the 9th Division of the Army, and after the tragic "Battle of Sendai", several combat teams he was in could be regarded as repelling the Russian troops on the front line. The "victory" after paying a heavy price was not worth boasting about, but what deeply shocked all Japanese officers and soldiers, including Kobayashi, was that a large number of their own civilians appeared in the ranks of the Russian side in this battle.
Grain! The Russian army is gradually eroding the hearts of the Japanese people with this vicious method, and there is actually a situation on the battlefield where the Japanese help to transport supplies and help in the war. The local supply situation has also reached a critical point, and due to the lack of imported iron ore, the blast furnace of the Yawata Iron Works in Tokyo has begun to smelt various iron products donated by citizens. Correspondingly, the output of the various arsenals has also reached a precarious level, and the most critical to the front line is still military rations, and there have been more than one fire incidents in the front-line troops due to the supply of military supplies.
Originally, he was sent to the rear to "collect food" because of the lack of supplies for his unit, but who would have thought that before Kobayashi's troops arrived in Fukushima Prefecture in the south, they were confronted with a team of hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing from the famine. In the chaos, the Kobayashi brigade of hundreds of people was eaten up in this way, and only 23 people, including himself, escaped and survived, and this Japanese brigade that did not let the Russian army destroy was annihilated by the Japanese "army" of displaced people.
It was also from that day that Kobayashi's soldiers learned to eat human flesh. Yes, cannibalism is what Kobayashi's soldiers learned from these homeless people.
Later, along the way, Kobayashi and the others encountered many other remnants of the Japanese army, and to his disbelief, these Japanese soldiers at this time also lost their former discipline one by one. On the way back to the Qisu Mountains, Xiao Lin had seen many routs fighting each other for food more than once, and sometimes even a nest of bird eggs could cause a wave of hundreds of people to fight.
"Amaterasu, what did we do wrong? To punish Japan in this way?!! ”
Wiping away the tears that came out of nowhere, Xiao Lin took the food box, and the corners of his mouth tore and accelerated his swallowing speed......