In Lin Fei's time, Australia was the country that exported the most iron ore to China, and China imported more than 60 million tons of iron ore from Australia every year.

Australia often raises the price of iron ore, causing China to suffer huge losses, and China has no choice but to swallow Australian ore, break its teeth and swallow it in its stomach.

In his own time, Lin Fei had nothing to do about these things, but in this era, Lin Fei would never let this kind of thing happen again, since Australia is rich in iron ore, then we have to mine it.

Australia in this era has been colonized and developed by the British, and the British have also declared the Australian continent to be British territory, but Australia was originally an ownerless wasteland, and the British have only been in for a few hundred years, so why should the British say that they are theirs.

The areas where the British gathered were all in the east and south of Australia, and most of the iron ore that Lin Fei wanted was in the western part of Australia, with a distance of more than 3,000 kilometers.

Lin Fei then said: "Our iron ore is mined from Australia, and we have to scavenge minerals from all over the world, and we can't hang ourselves from a tree in the Qing Kingdom." ”

Ling Xue showed a blank expression, "What is the situation in Australia, I don't know ...... at all"

Lin Fei said with a smile: "You don't have to worry about this matter, just prepare the exploration team, and I will arrange other things." ”

Ling Xue agreed, said goodbye, Lin Fei began to prepare to go to Australia to mine minerals, the mining team needs to overcome many difficulties, first of all, the natural environment of Western Australia, Australia is an endless desert, it is impossible to develop agriculture, and the grain of the mining team must be transported from China. As for water, there are lakes near the mining area, which is a good solution.

The second thing to overcome is the threat of all kinds of wild animals, including wild dogs, poisonous snakes, poisonous insects, etc., there are some tribes in Western Australia that live by hunting, these tribesmen are fierce, the customs are strange, and their mining team will clash with them if they are not careful, so the mining team needs to be fully armed.

As for the equipment, it is not a problem, after the end of the war, all the garrison troops will be retired from active service, and a large amount of weapons and equipment will be vacated, and it will be enough to give these equipment to the mining team.

Last but not least, Lin Fei needed a base to enter Western Australia.

Lin Fei's eyes were fixed on the closest island to Australia, Timor Island, which was only more than 700 kilometers away from Australia, closer than all the territories of the Chinese Empire to Australia. In Lin Fei's time, there was a small country called East Timor.

Timor Island is located on the east side of Java Island, the climate and soil on the island are suitable for grain cultivation, the island is divided into two parts, the west is a Dutch colony, the east is a Portuguese colony, the Dutch and Portuguese have been operating here for nearly three hundred years, reclaiming a large amount of land, and establishing agriculture, that is to say, as long as Lin Fei takes Timor Island, he can get a large amount of grain and a stable grain production base, and there is no need to go through the trouble of transporting grain from other parts of China.

Lin Fei slammed his fist on Timor Island, and secretly thought, he took Timor Island, if the Portuguese on the island are obedient, I will let them be honest and obedient, if they are not obedient, then they have to jump into the sea to feed the tropical fish! Anyway, now that the Portuguese still occupy Macau, I can't take back Macau for a while, so let's take the Portuguese out of anger in Nanyang.

The Portuguese settlement on the island of Timor is called "Dili", which is the capital of the Portuguese colonial government, so Lin Fei decided to attack Dili with his army, first civil, then military, and the Portuguese surrendered, and if they did not surrender, they would be subdued.

However, the Portuguese have been running this place for almost three hundred years, and Dili should have some defensive facilities, as for what kind of facilities there are, Lin Fei is not very clear, so Lin Fei decided to send an Emperor-class cruiser, two Dragon-class cruisers, and an infantry force of 3,000 people to attack Dili.

A small Timor Island, Lin Fei would never go out in person, Lin Fei did not even send a veteran like Liu Daming, but ordered the captain of the Song Zu ship, Shangguan Yunlong, to lead the Song Zu ship, the Tianlong ship and the Yunlong ship to the expedition.

After Lin Fei gave the order to go out, he left the matter of going to Timor Island behind, because in his heart, attacking Timor Island was not a big deal at all, the Portuguese on Timor Island were very weak, and once his troops went, they could easily flatten the Portuguese on the island.

Lin Fei devoted all his energy to post-war reconstruction and weapons research and development, and in terms of post-war reconstruction, Java Island was the top priority, because there were a lot of oil resources on Java Island, and most of the factories Lin Fei built before the war were oil refineries and chemical plants supporting oil refineries.

These factories were burned down after the city was destroyed, and the British originally planned to keep these factories, but the Indonesians burned them all and burned them directly, and the British let them go in order to please the Indonesians, and now Lin Fei decided to rebuild these factories first, and then gradually build the city when the factories were re-established.

Lin Fei ordered all the reconstruction teams to be equipped with weapons, both combat teams and construction teams, most of the reconstruction teams were technicians and soldiers, and ordinary laborers directly captured local Indonesians to act, Indonesians bullied the weak and feared the hard, and they would inevitably be very obedient.

In terms of weapons research and development, naval weapons are still the top priority, the most important of which is the construction of a large number of Emperor-class cruisers, at this time the territory of the Chinese Empire has reached 2.4 million square kilometers, including Indonesia, the Philippines and Taiwan in the era of Lin Fei, so to speak, those countries that dare to shout in the South China Sea and China in the era of Lin Fei, except for Vietnam and Malaysia, were wiped out by Lin Fei.

The territorial span of the Chinese Empire is quite large, from the northernmost Taiwan to the southernmost Java Island, the straight-line distance is actually 4,000 kilometers, you must know that China in Lin Fei's time, from the northernmost to the southernmost, is only 4,000 kilometers.

The distance in a straight line from north to south is nearly 4,000 kilometers, and the distance in a straight line from east to west is about the same, and this is a straight line distance, counting the winding waterway, the distance is even farther, such a large territory, always facing threats, Britain in Singapore, France in Vietnam, all the time thinking about revenge for the South China War, so in order to defend such a large territory, a large number of high-speed cruisers must be built.

It is foreseeable that the Yoshino-class cruisers will be in service in large numbers in various countries, and the dragon-class cruisers have a certain gap between their combat strength and the Yoshino-class cruisers due to the lack of power system capabilities, so Lin Fei decided to completely stop the construction of the dragon-class cruisers, and the resources used to build the dragon-class cruisers were used to build the Emperor-class cruisers on the one hand, and to develop battleships on the other hand.

Lin Fei's order to stop building the Dragon-class cruiser was to show the courage of a strong man to break his wrist, at this time, the Chinese Empire, there were still six Dragon-class cruisers under construction, Lin Fei ordered to stop building, and these cruisers could only be shelved.

Ling Xue begged Lin Fei on behalf of the shipbuilding factory to continue building the Dragon class, but Lin Fei flatly refused, "We can't continue to build a type of warship that is already backward. ”

Ling Xue didn't dare to argue, so she could only discuss and say, "But we have already invested a lot of money in six warships, and if we don't continue to build them, all the money invested will be wasted." ”

Lin Fei laughed, "How can I be in vain, and when I wait for an opportunity in the future, I will find an opportunity to sell these six warships to the Qing court, or small countries such as Argentina and Chile in South America, and knock them hard." ”

Lin Fei suspended the construction of six Dragon-class cruisers, and then put a lot of resources into the development of battleships and the upgrading of submarines; Lin Fei originally wanted to directly develop airplanes and aircraft carriers, and once a major war broke out in the future, he would directly use airplanes to bomb the enemy's battleships, but later found that the difficulty of developing airplanes far exceeded that of battleships, and in order to have surface warships to compete with Britain and France, battleships had to be developed.

Since all countries in the world have noticed the strength of submarines, they will invest heavily in the construction of submarines, Lin Fei must also do his best to upgrade submarines, the key transformation directions are two, first, torpedoes, the existing swordfish torpedoes, because the battery level is not up to par, the speed is only ten knots, and the speed of all warships in this era is more than ten knots!

Second, sonar. At this time, the monster-class submarine is only equipped with a simple hydrophone, there is no echolocation function, and you can only hear a ship passing by, which is absolutely not good, fortunately, now Lin Fei has been able to produce a simple electron tube, which can use the electron tube to build sonar, which is far ahead in the world.

With the leadership of torpedo technology and sonar technology, Lin Fei can at least guarantee absolute underwater superiority, although Britain and France have absolute superiority in battleship technology, but Lin Fei's underwater superiority can offset their water superiority.

Lin Fei formulated a plan for the development of naval forces, and handed it over to various departments to implement, and in the following period of time, the Chinese Empire was stable, the ore resources of the Qing Kingdom were transported one after another, and various factories were started one after another, and Li Hongzhang also sent someone to send the news, saying that he was preparing to send the girl to Taiwan.

The time came to June 24, on this day, news came from the port of Dayu City, Shangguan Yunlong led the fleet to return with a great victory, and captured 450 Portuguese, including the governor of Timor Island.

Lin Fei didn't take this matter seriously, and he didn't plan to greet Shangguan Yunlong, but just told someone to tell Shangguan Yunlong and rest well.

However, his subordinates came to report: "Your Majesty, Captain Shangguan wants to see you and say that there is something extremely important. ”