When it comes to cooperating with the Haihan people to do business, especially investing in an undeveloped area, the merchants here in Fujian, especially the Xu family, have already tasted the sweetness. So much so that when Haihan began to attract investment in Kaohsiung Port, the Fujian Chamber of Commerce was also resentful because it entered the market later than its Guangdong counterparts. However, the area of developable areas near Kaohsiung is really not small, and it may not be able to be developed within three to five years, so after understanding the situation, the Fujian side did not urge Haihan to open up new areas.

But Haihan is obviously not satisfied with this development zone in Tainan, Xu Jiaqi listened to Qian Tiandun's tone, and it was obvious that he planned to copy Kaohsiung's development model in other parts of the island of Taiwan, and this time he could not let the Cantonese Yan take the lead.

"General Qian, last time in Kaohsiung, the Cantonese took the lead, this time we can't favor them anymore!" Xu Jiaqi reminded: "We can also follow the amount of silver that comes out of Guangdong." ”

Qian Tiandun waved his hand and said: "It's useless for you to just tell me about this, you have to go to someone from the Ministry of Commerce." I'm just going to inform you, how to communicate and liaise, you talk to the Ministry of Commerce on your own, and our military will not get involved. ”

"Yes, yes, I understand, I understand!" Xu Jiaqi saw that Qian Tiandun intended to put aside his involvement, so he no longer dwelled on this issue. He has been dealing with the Haihan people for a long time, and he also knows that the Haihan military is relatively taboo about military business, even if it is arms trade, it has always been the leading role of the Haihan Ministry of Commerce, and the military only sends technical personnel to guide the use of the Ming army, and will not directly participate in the transaction process. The same is true for the project to develop the plantation, the military only provides security, but the specific project operation is carried out by the Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Agriculture.

After seeing off Xu Jiaqi, who was full of joy, Qian Tiandun summoned the person in charge of the Ministry of Civil Affairs in Penghu and conveyed to him the decision of the executive committee to build two new migrant reception stations at the mouth of the Tamsui River and the port of Jilong in Taipei. In the future, some of the immigrants brought in from the northern region will be allocated to the Taipei area for resettlement. In particular, the Jilonggang area, which will carry out a large number of infrastructure projects in the future, requires thousands of laborers, and most of them must be solved nearby, and intercepting immigrants imported from the north can undoubtedly be regarded as a good way.

Of course, this also requires the Ministry of Civil Affairs to find ways to improve the efficiency of bringing in immigrants from northern Daming, otherwise the number of immigrants introduced each month may not be enough for the development of Taiwan, and then it will be impossible to send people to Hainan Island. For Hainan Island, which is in a period of rapid development, the demand for labor is actually much greater than that of Taiwan Island, which has just started. It's just that the island of Taiwan happens to be located at an important node of the northbound shipping route, and it happens to be a "terra nullius", and the Executive Committee originally intended to build it into the second most important town of Haihan after occupying it, so it spared no effort to invest troops and various resources in the local area.

However, for Qian Tiandun, the expulsion of the Western colonists on the island of Taiwan was only a special operations battalion that completed a set combat mission, and the difficulty of implementing this task was much smaller than expected. Whether it is personnel attrition or actual military spending, it is actually much lower than Qian Tiandun's psychological expectations before the war.

It may take a long time for the Central Military Commission to approve the merits of this operation, and it is difficult to say whether it will be able to catch up with the annual public commendation ceremony during the anniversary celebration next month, but Qian Tiandun does not care much about these official ceremonies, and anyway, he must have his own share when he should be promoted to knighthood. He has now begun to plan his next course of action after completing the military occupation of the island of Taiwan.

Before the military took Taiwan as its target, the Executive Committee set the direction of northward expansion on the coast of Zhejiang so that it could accelerate the introduction of immigrants from the north, but later, for various objective reasons, the military finally took the initiative to revise the original development plan. Later facts proved that the military's one-force proposition was indeed correct, and Haihan did not spend much effort to take control of the island of Taiwan, while the opposition's fear that the attacking troops might fall into a protracted war because of the lack of strength in the siege did not happen, and the only two siege battles were uneventful, and basically unilaterally beat the other side.

Of course, to be able to achieve such a record, Takahashi Minami, who was in charge of commanding Taipei's military operations, contributed a lot. If Qian Tiandun had been personally in command, he might not have been able to proceed more smoothly than him, and this bold appointment had indeed achieved excellent results, and it had also accumulated experience for the military to boldly appoint naturalized civilian officers in the future.

After completing the operation in Taipei, Qian Tiandun decided that it was time to reorient the operation and return to the previous plan. According to Haihan's consistent development strategy, the control and infiltration of the Ming Dynasty was mainly achieved by controlling its territory and controlling the sea power, so in the selection of a foothold in the direction of Zhejiang, the military still took the large islands near the coast as the main consideration.

From Hainan Island to Hong Kong Island at the mouth of the Pearl River, to Penghu in the Fujian Strait and the newly occupied island of Taiwan, the voyages between each of Haihan's leapfrogging bases have been carefully calculated to ensure that Haihan's maritime capacity and armed forces can maintain normal operations between these bases. As for the foothold of the next stop, the Haihan military has long had a plan - the Zhoushan Islands located off Hangzhou Bay.

In terms of range, the distance from Penghu to the Zhoushan Islands was slightly farther than from previous strongholds, but this minor problem was solved by the capture of Taipei, and the straight line from Taipei to Zhoushan was just over 300 nautical miles, almost the same as the distance between Hong Kong and Penghu. The distance between Penghu and Taipei is only more than 100 nautical miles, so that Haihan's chain of maritime control can be safely extended northward, without worrying that the voyage is too long to provide supplies or support in time.

As for the specific foothold, the military is Zhoushan Island, the fourth largest island on the map of China in later generations. This island, which covers an area of more than 500 square kilometers, is the main island of the Zhoushan archipelago, and Wengshan County was established as early as the Tang Kaiyuan period. In the Xining period of the Northern Song Dynasty, Wang Anshi went to the court to request the restoration of the county governance here, and Song Shenzong approved this application and changed the place name to "Changguo". "It means that it controls Japan in the east, Denglai in the north, Ou Fujian in the south, and Wuhui in the west. ”

In the fifteenth year of the Yuan Dynasty, Changguo County was promoted to a state due to the increase in population, and it is recorded that the population of the Zhoushan Islands had exceeded 120,000 at this time. In addition to the place name of Changguo, the name "Zhoushan" also began to appear in historical materials. In the Yuan Dynasty's "Atlas of Changguo Prefecture", it is recorded: "Zhoushan, in the south of the state, there are mountain wings such as the Mei of the sea, and the boat gathers, hence the name." ”

However, this prosperity did not last long, and with the relaxation of coastal defense in the late Yuan Dynasty and early Republic of China, the Japanese began to operate in this area. By the time of the Hongwu period of the Ming Dynasty, the Japanese invaders became more and more rampant, and had used Changguo as a sea springboard to enter the mainland to plunder, and the Ming court actually adopted the passive way of migrants forbidden to the sea, first changed the state to a county, and then simply abolished the governance of Changguo County, completely losing this area to the control of the Japanese invaders. Since the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, this situation has not been completely improved.

Although Ningbo, Shaoxing, Jiaxing, Hangzhou and other prefectures have carried out several times to clean up the Japanese pirates on the sea, there are many islands in the Zhoushan archipelago, and there are as many as 58 islands with an area of more than one square kilometer alone. More than 200 years have passed since the early years of Hongwu, but the plague of piracy in this area has still not been cured. The only thing to be thankful for is that there are no large armed bands like the Eighteen Chi pirates operating in this area, and although they often plunder passing merchant ships at sea, they are not enough to threaten the big cities near the coast.

If Haihan wants to establish a new base in the Zhoushan Islands, he must face pirate gangs that have been operating in the area for many years. Coexisting with pirates is certainly impossible and unacceptable, and what the Haihan must do is to expel these pirates from this sea area, or completely annihilate them. Of course, if the military is allowed to choose, probably the latter solution is more in line with their appetite, after all, the number of enemy troops who are annihilated and captured is also an important basis for rewarding meritorious deeds after the war, and just driving away the pirates, it is obvious that calculating military merits after the war will be very disadvantageous.

However, the situation in the waters of the Zhoushan Islands is much more complicated than when they fought in Penghu, and the local pirates operate in small groups, unlike Shibazhi, who can be severely damaged by biting its main force. Although there is a huge disparity in strength between the two sides, it is indeed not an easy task for the Haihan Army to completely solve the pirates in the Zhoushan Islands, and it will definitely take a long time to clean up the many islands in this area.

If you want to send a small fleet to assist the land landing like the Spaniards in Taipei, I am afraid that this tactic will not be too effective in the Zhoushan Islands. The local pirate camps were certainly not as strong as the Spanish castles, but the problem was that they did not hold on to their strongholds like the Spaniards, and the vastness of the sea would make it several times more difficult for the sea to attack them. I am afraid that the most practical way is to send a powerful fleet to carry out repeated sweeps in this sea area by pulling nets, so as not to leave room for it to maneuver.

Naturally, there will be no problems with Haihan's fleet in terms of combat capability, after all, even the Dutch and Spaniards have suffered losses one after another, and the armed level of the pirate ships is even more difficult to compete with the Haihan warships. However, the problem is that in order to send a large number of warships to fight there, the preparations that need to be made before the war are much more troublesome than those that need to be made to fight Taiwan.

If this operational plan still relies only on the staff team of the Penghu base, there will be too many projects that cannot be coordinated, so Qian Tiandun can only report his intention to the Central Military Commission first, and the staff headquarters under the Central Military Commission will formulate relevant operational plans and make unified arrangements for the mobilization of participating troops and the supply of logistics materials. The time required for this process may be one or two months, or three or five months or more, depending on the external environment. Especially now that Taiwan has just arrived, and it has offended both the Dutch and the Spaniards, and for a period of time they have to guard against these two to retaliate, and the military power that can be invested in the north will become extremely limited.

Of course, Qian Tiandun will not sit back and wait, since the matter of going north will have to be done sooner or later, before the General Staff comes up with a specific plan of action, he hopes to learn more about the situation in the coastal area north of the Fujian Strait through various reconnaissance methods, and use this to revise the combat plan drawn up by the military.

Regarding the intelligence collection work in the coastal areas of the Ming Dynasty, the Haihan Security Department has actually been carrying out the work, but the Haihan Security Department is relatively lacking in secret agents with military backgrounds, so most of the intelligence that can be collected from the Daming control area is mainly political affairs, commercial and trade news, but there are very few tasks to survey the terrain, sea conditions and other information. Even if they receive such a task, unprofessional intelligence personnel can only understand the general situation, and will not play much role in the reference and promotion of the decisions that need to be made now.

Qian Tiandun's idea was to follow the practice he did when he first landed in the Zhuoshuixi area of Taiwan Island, and to send a small group of armed forces as reconnaissance teams to non-controlled areas to conduct reconnaissance and intelligence gathering. The advantage of this is that intelligence gathering will be more targeted, after all, the military people are more aware of what critical information they need.

However, the danger of this reconnaissance plan is much higher than the original operation in the Muddy Water Creek Basin, after all, the Muddy Water Creek is very close to Penghu, and if there is trouble, Penghu can send reinforcements to the local area on the same day. However, the Zhoushan Islands are more than 300 nautical miles away from Taipei, and if the reconnaissance force is in distress there, there is no time to provide support.

Qian Tiandun actually wanted to personally lead the team to do this, but he also knew that the Military Commission would definitely not agree to him risking his life, after all, it was no longer as unavailable as at the beginning of the crossing, and this kind of task did not need Qian Tiandun to go out in person at all, and the reconnaissance platoon directly under the special operations battalion and the elite personnel of the navy could carry it out. The scene where the North American gang and he carried out reconnaissance missions behind enemy lines in Annan at the beginning will probably be difficult to reappear in the future, after all, these gang are all holding important positions in various places, and the possibility of even stepping into the same battlefield at the same time is very small.

In late March, Qian Tiandun did not wait for a reply from the Central Military Commission on this matter, but first waited for the "Enterprising" No. 4 warship, which was assigned to serve in Penghu.