The vigorous development of the petrochemical industry is not only due to the growing domestic demand of the Ocean Kingdom, but also to use the membership of the British Commonwealth to sell products to the circle of friends of the British Empire.

Britain is not strong in this industry, and it is better to have a cheap ocean kingdom than to divide up the great market by the Americans and Germans.

At this stage

Throughout the British colonies, there is no world-class rich oil field like Balikpapan, and the resource advantage is unique.

In Europe, there are only Romanian oil fields under the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in addition to the Baku oil fields on the west coast of the Caspian Sea in Tsarist Russia, the Texas oil fields in the United States and the Balikpapan oil fields in the Ocean Kingdom, and there are only a few world-famous oil fields.

With such good resources, it would be a pity not to develop a large petrochemical industry.

After more than 10 days of field visits in Balikpapan and the surrounding areas, and many meetings and discussions with experts and scholars, King Li Fushou finally decided to rely on regional resources to develop a full range of large petrochemical industries.

This is an extremely ambitious plan, since the region does not have the conditions to build large hydropower, and the mountainous area is deep in the rainforest more than 400 kilometers away, so it is necessary to build two thermal power plants of considerable size.

meanwhile

It is necessary to build a railway network to seamlessly connect this oil and gas resource area with the port of Samarinda, which is 120 kilometers away, and build a special coal wharf, oil transportation wharf, and improve port facilities.

On this basis, a chemical industrial park will be built, roads, sewerage facilities, power transmission facilities and water pipeline networks will be built, and workers' living quarters and commercial areas will be established to form a chemical city with Balikpapan as the core.

Petroleum refining products mainly include various fuel oils (gasoline, kerosene, diesel, etc.) and lubricating oils, as well as liquefied petroleum gas, petroleum coke, paraffin, asphalt, etc.

An oil refinery with an annual processing capacity of 6 million barrels of oil, all imported advanced equipment from the United States, Germany, Britain and other countries, with a total investment of about 8.5 million gold yuan.

United Oil Corporation plans to launch two refineries, which will be implemented in the first phase and the second phase, and the construction is planned to be completed in five years.

After the completion of the project, together with the existing production capacity, it will reach an annual production capacity of 20 million barrels of crude oil.

Together with ancillary works (including roads, water transmission, power transmission and the construction of two thermal power plants), with a planned project budget of 20 million gold yuan, this project will be implemented as the leading project of the chemical city, thereby driving the comprehensive promotion of the chemical industrial park.

Petrochemical products are obtained by further chemical processing of raw oil provided in the refining process, and the first step is to crack the raw oil and gas (such as propane, gasoline, diesel, etc.) to generate basic chemical raw materials represented by ethylene, propylene, butadiene, benzene, toluene, and xylene.

The second step is to produce more than 100 kinds of organic chemical raw materials and synthetic materials (plastics, synthetic fibers, synthetic rubber) with basic chemical raw materials, so as to form a complete industrial chain.

Therefore, the complete large petrochemical industry chain includes hundreds of large and small enterprises, covering a wide range, which can only be led by government policies and social forces to participate in the common development in order to make the cake bigger.

Optimistic projections

The entire large chemical industry chain will provide no less than 600,000 jobs, and the social benefits will be widespread, which can drive the entire Borneo into an industrialized society, and the influence will not only be limited to East Kalimantan, but will also expand south to South Kalimantan and Central Kalimantan, driving the development of characteristic chemical industries in the above regions.

According to incomplete estimates, the total investment amount of the entire large chemical industry will be as high as hundreds of millions of dollars, forming a chemical industry circle dominated by Balikpapan and relying on several surrounding chemical towns, and some small chemical projects will be dispersed to other states mainly in East Kalimantan to drive regional development.

The economic development of the Ocean Kingdom has been considerable to support such a grand development project.

Large chemical projects are huge, cumbersome and complex to organize and implement, involving the introduction of complete sets of international advanced chemical technology and equipment, digestion and absorption, overall arrangement of construction projects, project capital safety and technical personnel training and so on, it is necessary to have strong leadership.

Therefore, Li Fushou personally made the decision;

Viscount Hu Chaoshan, former Minister of Economic Affairs, was appointed as the "Director of the Major Chemical Project", and Baron Li Sixian, the former Deputy Secretary-General of the Royal Secretariat (dismissed from his current position), was appointed as the full-time deputy director, and the elite soldiers of various government ministries and commissions were brought together to overcome various problems encountered in the large chemical project.

The large chemical project fund consists of four parts, the royal family fund contributed 8 million gold oceans, accounting for 30% of the shares, the government finance department invested 10 million gold oceans, accounting for 3 percent of the shares, and a syndicate composed of 17 Australian banks such as Huitong Bank Shangri-La Bank, invested 7.5 million gold oceans, accounting for 28% of the shares, and the remaining part was raised by domestic funds.

The follow-up funds needed in the promotion of the project will be solved through the issuance of bonds, and the first phase of the large chemical bond is tentatively set at 15 million gold oceans, with a repayment period of 5 years and an interest rate of 7.6%.

The later funds will be submitted to the Ministry of Finance for review and approval by the council according to the needs of the project.

For more than ten days

Li Fushou soaked together with experts and scholars, listened to the professional opinions of relevant parties, and traveled almost all over the 100-kilometer area around Balikpapan to settle on six new chemical towns.

According to the "Book of Songs" six meanings of the wind, Ya, Song, Fu, Bi, Xing named, respectively, Dafeng Town, Daya Town, Songle Town, Fu Town, Bi Town, Xing Town, these six towns are all concentrated in the area south of Balikpapan, the farthest Xing Town is 133 kilometers away, located on the side of the rushing Ebina River, only 56 kilometers away from South Kalimantan.

After finalizing this important event, Li Fushou finally returned to Samarinda with confidence, and the day after he arrived, he received a message that made him angry, according to the report of the Political Intelligence Bureau;

In Surabaya City, Java Island, in the Dutch East Indies, a violent persecution of local Chinese newcomers has just occurred, resulting in the tragic death of 17 Chinese, the humiliation of many women, the destruction and looting of more than 200 Chinese shops, and the burning of dozens of houses.

The cause of the incident was that the Governor's Office of the Dutch East Indies levied and extorted money, which aroused the general dissatisfaction of local Chinese merchants in Surabaya.

These actions angered the Dutch colonists and instigated local indigenous riots, while the Dutch stood idly by and watched the slaughter and humiliation of the vast number of Chinese merchants without taking any action, further fueling the arrogance of the indigenous mob and threatening to further escalate the situation.

As soon as the "Surabaya Incident" occurred, the diplomatic representative of the Ocean Kingdom stationed in Batavia immediately went to the Governor's Palace to express a serious protest to the current Governor-General, Viscount Van Haels-Wools-Buffon, and informed the representatives of Britain, France, Germany, and the United States that the Ocean Kingdom would always pay attention to the development of the situation, would never allow such a wanton infringement of overseas Chinese immigrants to occur, and reserved the right to take further action.

The Viceroyalty of the Dutch East Indies was not a state, so the Ocean Kingdom retained a diplomatic consulate in Batavia, which existed as a diplomatic mission of the Dutch Legation in Amsterdam, with the highest person in charge being the consular officer, which could also be called a diplomatic representative. A similar situation can be compared to the Governor's Office of the French Saigon, which served as a diplomatic institution to safeguard the rights of the citizens of the Ocean Kingdom and the local Chinese.

Let's be honest

The Chinese immigrants who were violated in Surabaya City were called Xinke, and they were descendants of Chinese who had already settled in the Dutch East Indies, and should strictly be local citizens, not within the protection of consulates abroad.

But don't forget, after the First East Indies War, the predecessor of the victorious Ocean Kingdom ~ the Earlland of Queensland signed a truce with the other party, adding an arrogant one, which was stipulated in the contract;

As the "protector of the interests of Chinese immigrants" in the Western Pacific, the Earl of Queensland has the right to pay attention to illegal acts that infringe on the interests of Chinese immigrants, urge the local government to improve the environment for Chinese to do business and buy real estate, give equal treatment, and do not rule out the possibility of taking further action.

According to the international law of later generations, this is an illegal "long-arm jurisdiction" that violates the rights of the country where the migrants live.

But don't forget what era this is?

The 9th Russo-Turkish War, known as the "Crimean War" in this century, was an extremely tragic multinational siege of Tsarist Russia, which completely changed the situation in Europe and had a profound impact on the end of the 19th century and even the beginning of the 20th century.

Orthodox Christians and Catholics have long been vying for jurisdiction over the "Holy Land" in Palestine, a Ottoman possessions, and behind the "Holy Land" dispute lies the real motives of the European powers vying for the "legacy" of the Ottoman Empire.

In July 1853, Russia, claiming to be the "protector of the Orthodox Christians", sent troops to Turkey under the pretext of protecting the "Orthodox Christians" in Turkey, and the Ninth Russo-Turkish War broke out.

The Crimean War was essentially a war between Russia and Turkey for control of the Black Sea estuary, and it was related to the basic national policy of Tsarist Russia to "advance westward into Europe" over the past 200 years.

In order to pursue their own interests in the Balkans, to maintain a superficially independent Ottoman Empire, to protect British rights and interests in the East, especially in India, and to control the two straits, to prevent Russian power from entering the warm Mediterranean Sea and compete with Britain for hegemony, and to balance European power, Britain and France jointly sent troops to fight against Russian hegemony.

The keynote of Tsarist Russia's policy toward Europe was to dismember the Ottoman Empire, encroach on its territory, and seek to gain exclusive superiority over the Black Sea, Constantinople, and the straits, in order to gain free access to the Mediterranean.

It can be seen from the Crimean War that Britain, France and other European countries are sharply opposed to the basic positions of Tsarist Russia, and there is no possibility of any détente. After the Crimean War broke its head, Tsarist Russia had to turn its expansionist policy to the East, hence the current situation in the Far East.

The Crimean War is the most typical "long-arm jurisdiction" power theory, which was very common in the international environment of the 19th century, and the "multinational joint intervention" method that the Qing court has always relied on is actually a kind of "long-arm jurisdiction", the most typical feature is to damage the sovereignty of the countries concerned.

For example, "Russia, France, and Germany intervened to return Liao" and "the Ocean Kingdom united with France and Germany to intervene and return Taiwan" all belong to "long-arm jurisdiction."

Therefore, if the Dutch East Indies did not listen to persuasion, the Ocean Kingdom could send troops to beat him accordingly.

The problem facing Li Fushou now is...... The opportunity I wanted didn't come, but what I didn't want was sent to the pole, what should I do?

The palace is next to the water pavilion

Li Fushou smiled bitterly and pinched his brows, and couldn't help but sigh in his heart, Nine times out of ten, the world is unsatisfactory, what can I do?

Given that the Spanish-American War was expected to break out in 1898, the CIA was now working hard to gather vital information about Citi's plot to wage war against the Spaniards in order to achieve its expansion attempts in Central America and Asia.

As long as they can get relevant important information, the Ocean Kingdom will be sure to shut London's mouth.

This is because London does not want the Citi Kingdom to reach out to the west coast of the Pacific Ocean, nor does it want to see the Ocean Kingdom continue to expand its power, but prefers to maintain the status quo.

However, in the case that Citigroup takes the initiative to break the status quo, it is better to let the Ocean Kingdom take action to occupy Luzon.

In this way, the Royal Navy of the British Empire can make full use of the ports of Luzon, which is much better than giving it to Citi for nothing.

This situation is a bit like a social person grabbing territory, the status of the British Empire is the general leader, he acquiesces to you to grab this territory, otherwise you will be taught to be a man in minutes, even if you grab it, you have to spit it out.

Nowadays, all the ports of the ocean kingdom can be freely accessed by the British Navy, and the two sides share resources, and they only need to report in advance, which is bathed in the glory of Queen Victoria, and stems from the close relationship between the two sides.

Because of this, the political intelligence bureau has made frequent moves in Luzon, with the aim of artificially creating a "Surabaya Port Incident" and giving the Ocean Kingdom a reason to intervene militarily in Luzon, so as to seize new territory and realize a new round of expansion attempts.

This is the top priority at present, and Li Fushou personally decided the expansion plan.

As a result, the political intelligence bureau has not yet made arrangements, but the Governor's Office of the Dutch East Indies has taken the initiative to create a riot that harms the Chinese, and sends the reason for the armed intervention to you, saying that this matter is a headache or not?

Isn't this pure troublemaking?

In order to find a reason to start a war between the United States and Spain, Citigroup blew up and sank one of its own cruisers, killing more than 200 sailors, and the price was not insignificant.

Li Fushou now has 10,000 divine beasts flying over his head, and he scolded Viscount Van Halesma-Buffon, the governor of the Dutch East Indies, in his heart.

If the Ocean Kingdom does not intervene this time, what about the next time there will be a similar riot against the Chinese in Luzon?

But the intervention is not cost-effective, and London will certainly not agree to the Ocean Kingdom to draw a piece of the Dutch East Indies, even if it is occupied, it will have to be returned, which is not negotiable.

Because this piece is not blindly mixed with Citigroup, it is not cost-effective for the Ocean Kingdom to waste people and send troops.

Li Fushou is not a good person, so this troublesome thing really gave him a headache.