But this is like the historical "construction of the third line", which inevitably dragged down the economic and industrial growth rate, so it is not difficult to understand that the data is not so good. According to Hu Weidong's estimates, if this work is to be basically completed, it will not be until the end of 1943 at the earliest, when China will be able to engage in industry with complete peace of mind and no longer have to be discouraged by the lessons of 1941.

In spite of this, in 1942 China still made considerable achievements in economic construction, in terms of agriculture, although the production of the crucial Central Plains region was greatly reduced, due to the initial completion of the basic construction of farmland and water conservancy in more and more areas, the natural disasters in China were not particularly serious on a national scale in this year. Coupled with the continued increase in the production and wider application of chemical fertilizers, the country's total grain output in 1942 was still higher than that of the previous year, and the difficulties of the Central Plains were not so much a shortage of grain as a lack of transportation capacity. Therefore, the Chinese government has paid more and more attention to transportation construction, in addition to the government as the main investment in the construction of railways and trunk roads, in order to fully mobilize the private liliang and launched the "village to village road" movement has also begun to be carried out in full swing throughout the country, "if you want to get rich, first build roads." In a very short period of time, the slogan has become a household name

Compared with the road, in 1942 the progress of China's bridge construction is obvious to all, in this year, the main stream of the Yangtze River finally appeared on the first bridge connecting the north and south - Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge, Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge with a total length of 1670.4 meters, the main bridge is a double-layer steel and wood structure beam bridge for both railways and highways, and the upper layer is a highway bridge. The lower layer is a double-track railway bridge, the bridge body has a total of eight piers and nine holes, each hole span is 128 meters, the bridge can pass 10,000 tons of giant ships, eight piers except the seventh pier, the others all adopt the "large pipe string drilling method", this is a new construction method pioneered by China's bridge workers, embodies the wit and exquisite craftsmanship of China's bridge workers, and more than 100 years of life expectancy and enough to withstand the safe passage of multiple columns of medium-sized tanks, but also shows that the reputation of the Chinese engineering troops is by no means in vain. The Shijie powers were also shocked to find out. Unconsciously. The country, which was still very poor and backward in their impression, already had the first-class engineering construction capacity of Shijie

After the completion of this bridge, the three towns of Wuhan will be connected into one, which will greatly promote the development of Wuhan. From a national macro point of view, the completion of the bridge will connect the Pinghan Line with the Guangdong-Han Line. The railway transportation between the north and south of the Yangtze River has been smoothed. Known as the "thoroughfare of nine provinces", Wuhan has become one of the most important railway hubs in the country. After the bridge was opened to traffic. The socio-economic benefits are enormous. In the first few years of operation alone, the freight savings exceeded the entire project cost. With the continuous development of the national economy, the passage of the bridge will continue to increase, and the direct and indirect economic benefits are incalculable. It is no wonder that after learning the good news of the opening of the bridge, the great man will be very happy with poetry, and write on the spot: "A bridge flies north and south, and the moat becomes a thoroughfare." Such a famous sentence

Although in the first five years of the new Chinese government, for national defense and security reasons, the coastal areas with superior conditions were not the focus of industrialization, but in order to strengthen coastal defense, but also due to the large number of shipbuilding orders placed by the Japanese government, the central government still formulated the construction of "six shipbuilding bases" and "ten seaports". Guangzhou and Singapore have also begun to expand their ports and shipyards, although these three ports are not responsible for the construction of military ships (although they both have naval bases), given the limited strength of the Chinese navy, and it is necessary to be cautious.

In addition to the six shipbuilding bases, there are four cities that have developed purely as seaports: Lianyungang, Saigon, Bangkok and Yangon, especially Lianyungang, which is located at the eastern end of the "Second Eurasian Land Bridge", which is now connected. In order to make full use of overseas high-quality iron ore to develop the iron and steel industry, Hu Weidong once proposed to build a large steel plant with Shijie advanced level in a large port city along the coast, and among the top ten ports, there is Xuzhou Coal Mine not far west of Lianyungang, which can greatly save coke capacity, and Xuzhou is also an important railway transportation hub, and the convenience of land transportation is nothing to say, coupled with the small population of Lianyungang, the pollution hazards of the steel plant are relatively light.

After taking these factors into consideration, the central government finally decided to build Asia's largest steel enterprise in Lianyungang, with a design capacity of 3 million tons of crude steel in the first phase of the project, and more than 15 million tons after more than ten years of completion

Although the production capacity is very amazing, but because the grade of the rich iron ore imported from overseas is much higher than that of the poor iron ore in China, the difficulty of smelting is small, the cost is low, coupled with the convenient transportation and the freight savings, in fact, the investment of Lianyungang Iron and Steel Plant is lower than the Panzhihua Iron and Steel Plant currently under construction, although the design capacity of the latter is only a quarter of it (of course, Pangang also has to undertake the smelting task of rare metals such as vanadium and titanium, which cannot be regarded as a pure steel plant, similar to Baotou Iron and Steel Plant. So it will not put too much burden on the central government.

After the completion of the first phase of the project, it is expected to account for 30% of the country's total steel output at that time, although it is not low, but it will not cause too much dependence, even if Japan loses Australia, and even Indonesia's iron ore causes it to completely cut off the source of overseas iron ore, China's industrial system can still operate normally (temporarily switching to domestic iron ore can also have at least 1/3 of the output, other steel companies will work hard to increase production a little, although there will still be losses, but it can be completely reduced to the extent that China can bear). It can be said that it achieves a balance between economy and safety.

Although due to the high cost, the significance of air transport to the economy is far less than that of sea and land transport, but the airport is of great significance to national defense, and no matter how good the aircraft is, there is no airport, so in the first five years, the central government issued a death order to all provinces and cities across the country, requiring each province to build at least one large regular airport that can meet the needs of DC-3 passenger aircraft take-off and landing, these airports are usually used for civilian use, and once the war breaks out, they can be immediately converted to military. Each airfield can accommodate at least two or three hundred fighters and light bombers, which is quite enough for the Chinese Air Force, which currently has only a few thousand aircraft. (To be continued......)