Reborn as King of South America

Chapter 372 Naval Organization Reorganization
Thousands of engineering troop soldiers lined up to get off the train, preparing to change water routes to the Patagonia region in the south of the mainland to continue railway construction work. After most of the passengers got off the train, a group of middle and senior military officers wearing gray autumn and winter uniforms and wide-brimmed hats (winter in South America is July, August and September) walked into the station under the escort of two rows of soldiers.

The reform and reorganization of the 12 central departments involved the General Staff Headquarters, the military leadership body. For this purpose, Li Mingyuan specially summoned the main generals of the navy and the army to the capital Chang'an to offer advice and suggestions, and made many useful suggestions and opinions on the changes in the functions of the military's administrative organization.

Against this background, Commander of the Navy's First Fleet Chen Sen, Commander of the Second Fleet Li Han, Commander of the Marine Corps Feng Guoan, Commander of the Caribbean Squadron Hou Taiyuan, commanders of the Army's First to Seventh Divisions, commander of the Imperial Guards Division, and former heads of various departments of the General Staff, set out from different bases, either by train, bicycle, or water, heading towards the same destination.

Chen Sen, Li Han, Feng Guoan and Hou Taiyuan walked side by side. Each of them held a thick stack of official documents in his hand, which contained suggestions and opinions compiled by them and their staff, and they were going to submit them when they met Li Mingyuan.

The main purpose of splitting the General Staff and establishing the Navy Ministry and the Army Ministry, which are independent of each other, is to further improve the system of separation of military and political affairs and military command, to separate the daily management of the army, weapons and equipment, and transportation management of combat materials from the army's combat command, to form a well-organized and efficient wartime and non-wartime military management system, and to ensure that the development of the army does not break away from the control of the emperor and the government.

According to the preliminary functional reorganization document issued by the central government, the Ministry of Navy is composed of: War History Department, Fleet Affairs Department, Ship Construction Director, Waterway Management and Surveying Department, Internal Audit Department, and Naval Education Director, a total of four departments, two directors and six first-level functional departments, responsible for the daily administrative management, education, personnel, weapons procurement, ship construction and bidding and other matters related to the Navy.

The Naval Staff, which is parallel to the Navy Department, is responsible for
The five major departments are the Military Affairs Department, Operations Department, Intelligence Department, Communications Department, and Training Department.

The Military Affairs Department is responsible for general affairs and military affairs management, while the Operations Department is responsible for fleet organization, formulation and implementation of combat plans, military discipline control, etc. It is the core department of the Navy General Staff Headquarters.
The Intelligence Department is responsible for collecting military intelligence, investigating waterways, weather and other conditions in combat areas, and translating war history and foreign intelligence.

The Communications and Training Directorates are respectively responsible for the communication between the fleet and the mainland and naval bases, as well as the training and selection of naval vessel personnel and reserve personnel.

The establishment of the Naval General Staff and the Navy Department meant the reduction of the military power of the two heads of the two departments. At the same time, after the functions were further subdivided and improved, the administrative status of both the Navy Department and the Naval General Staff was greatly improved.
Under the original General Staff system, although the Navy and the Army were listed as subordinate units of the General Staff, more than 70% of the department-level units under the General Staff were occupied by Army officers, and the Navy's voice was greatly restricted and compressed. This can be easily seen from the number of general officers in both the Army and Navy.
In the army, the commanders of the seven field force divisions and the commander of the Guards Division are all major generals or lieutenant generals, while in the navy, there are only two officers above the rank of general, Chen Sen and Li Han, both of whom are major generals. The only major officers below the rank of general are Feng Guoan and Hou Taiyuan. Whether in the number of generals or colonels, the gap between the navy and the army is more than four times.

The navy was established later than the army, and its strategic position was quite different from that of the army. All these reasons combined led to an imbalance in the power between the army and the navy. However, with the opportunity of naval organization reorganization, Chen Sen and Li Han saw the opportunity for the navy to rise, while Hou Taiyuan and Feng Guoan, while delighted that the navy was valued by the emperor and the government, also saw the possibility of further advancement in military rank.

Feng Guoan was a subordinate of Li Sandou, a veteran general of the Han Dynasty. Because he was transferred from the Army to the Marine Corps, he did not receive any major combat missions during the Argentine War, thus missing out on the precious opportunity to be promoted to Major General.
On the one hand, Hou Taiyuan lacked opportunities to make meritorious contributions because he had been stationed in the Caribbean for many years. On the other hand, Hou Taiyuan, who was not from the direct line of descent, hesitated briefly when faced with the recruitment of the army, and was not liked by the main generals of the Han Dynasty.
Therefore, when Li Han, whom he had originally sent out to contact the Chinese army, had been promoted to the commander of the Second Fleet of the Han Navy and was awarded the hereditary earl title at the coronation ceremony, Hou Taiyuan was still in the position of lieutenant colonel. It was Li Mingyuan who saw that Hou Taiyuan had served diligently in the Caribbean for more than ten years and had made great efforts even if he had no merit, so he temporarily promoted his rank to colonel, and then added a new hereditary baron title to the list of hereditary noble titles.

Otherwise, according to the thinking of most of the Han Dynasty's direct military officers, Hou Taiyuan would have been deliberately ignored and could only wait to retire when he reached the age. If the situation developed in that way, let alone the hereditary baron title, he would probably still have the original rank of lieutenant colonel when he retired.

Unlike Chen Sen, Li Han and even Feng Guoan, Hou Taiyuan is more than ten years older than them. The time left for him to serve in the navy is no more than eleven or twelve years. If his career does not improve in the next two years, even if Li Han and Wang Youtian say a few good words for him in front of Li Mingyuan because of their old friendship, he will not have the face to continue staying in the navy.

Riding in the carriage sent by the Navy's Beijing-based agency, Hou Taiyuan was thinking about the situation in the Caribbean and the purpose of this trip.

Affected by the growing anti-Chinese sentiment in the United States, countries such as Canada, Cuba, and Colombia were also affected. Canada and Cuba under Spanish rule used the changes in the international situation as an excuse to unilaterally violate the Chinese labor repatriation agreement signed with the Han Dynasty, and continued to repatriate local Chinese workers ahead of schedule, which brought great transportation and maintenance pressure to Hou Taiyuan's troops.

The Han Kingdom only has a small island with an area of ​​160 square kilometers as a base in the Caribbean region, and because of concerns about interference from the United States, Britain and the two countries, the location of the Caribbean Fleet is still nominally under the jurisdiction of the Haitian black government. Hou Taiyuan donates a batch of weapons and supplies to the Haitian warlord leader near Tortuga Island every year as a fee for occupying the island.

After the anti-Chinese crisis in North America, due to the small area of ​​the island, Hou Taiyuan had to relocate some Chinese to the side of Haiti, which was under the management of warlords. Over the past year, the number of Chinese who had immigrated to the main island of Haiti has unknowingly increased to 20,000, which is twice the number of Chinese living on Tortuga Island.

The last resort opened up a new idea for Hou Taiyuan. Didn't the United States implement the Monroe Doctrine in the Caribbean, not allowing foreign countries to occupy Caribbean island countries? Then the Han Kingdom used Chinese immigrants to quietly infiltrate Haiti Island, and then when the number of Chinese in Haiti Island expanded to a certain extent, they occupied the entire Haiti in the name of Haitian natives.
Anyway, tracing back to the origin, the original inhabitants of Haiti were Indians who also belonged to the yellow race. The Haitian blacks were just latecomers. In a sense, they were the real colonizers, while the Indians were the victims.
After sorting out the underlying principles, Hou Taiyuan came up with a suitable solution. When the Chinese were dissatisfied with the exploitation of the black colonists and were ready to drive them out of Haiti, the worst that could happen was that they could be thick-skinned and insist on claiming that they were the descendants of Haitian Indians and Chinese, and that they were later forced to drift to other parts of the Americas because their land was occupied by blacks and whites. Now they were launching an uprising to take back the land that originally belonged to them, not illegal invasion.

Based on the growth rate of the Chinese in Haiti and the changes in the local population and national strength of the Han country, Hou Taiyuan estimated that it might take several decades to complete the entire plan.
However, once this plan is completed, the Han Kingdom will have a forward base in the Caribbean region with an area of ​​more than tens of thousands of square kilometers. Then, even if the world situation changes drastically in twenty, thirty, or even a hundred years, the Han Kingdom will be able to rely on Haiti Island, its most solid base, to push the front line of the Han-US confrontation from South America to the Caribbean Sea and stop the US threat to the Han homeland.

(End of this chapter)