Nanyang Storm 1864

Chapter 478: West Africa has the conditions for large-scale migration
King Zheng Guohui of Chu was sitting in a specially customized BMW sedan, with the glass on both sides covered by small white silk curtains to maintain the necessary privacy.

Through the windshield in front, one could see the figures of the cavalry guards, as well as a large number of local residents of the Great Bay City kneeling on both sides, their expressions devout and fanatical.

Similar scenes have been played out countless times during the King of Chu's royal tours of various places.

King Zheng Guohui of Chu had already turned a blind eye to it. He sat leisurely in the back seat with his legs crossed, holding a cigar in his hand and taking a puff from time to time.

Sitting in the front passenger seat was the Royal Secretary General Li Jinghui, and in the back was the Secretary of State for Colonies Wu Qingfeng, an extremely capable minister at the Central Government, who had the honor of riding with His Majesty.

Unlike the leisurely King of Chu, Wu Qingfeng placed his hands on his knees, half of his buttocks sitting sideways on the seat, his upper body straight and slightly leaning forward. This sitting posture was indeed a bit uncomfortable.

But being able to show the greatest respect is also the proper measure for a subject.

King Zheng Guohui of Chu asked Wu Qingfeng to relax a little with a warm expression. This was the care of the king, but Wu Qingfeng did not dare to be careless at all, let alone show that he was relaxed.

"Lord Wu, you are all pillars of the kingdom, and have served us well. Don't be restrained in my presence; feel free to relax."

"Your Majesty, how could this humble servant bear such a great favor? Only by serving the king with trepidation and loyalty can I find a moment of peace of mind."

"You're too kind, my dear Lord Wu." King Zheng Guohui of Chu said casually, raised his hand to hold up the cigar and took another puff, then slowly exhaled. The fragrant smoke was drawn out of the gap on the upper part of the glass window.

He changed the subject and asked:
"Have you ever calculated the cost of colonizing? How much did it cost to transport Chinese immigrants to the Congo River colonies?"

"In reply to Your Majesty, the Ministry of Ports, Shipping, and Transportation has a generous tax exemption policy for liner companies operating West African immigration routes, including port fees and various taxes. Furthermore, the General Administration of Taxation also offers tax exemptions for return cargo. Overall, the total cost per person is approximately 132 silver dollars, with the actual payment being approximately 67 silver dollars per person."

"In other words, transporting 1 people would cost 67 silver dollars, and transporting 10 people would cost 670 million silver dollars."

"That's roughly the case, except that the money can be temporarily financed by a bank colonial loan, and the immigrants can repay the principal and interest later."

"Well, go back and draft a proposal. Substantially increase the annual volume of Chinese immigrants sent to the Congo River Basin to 40. The conditions are already in place to accept a large number of Chinese immigrants. This investment is essential, and the sooner you start, the better."

"I will follow your orders and formulate a plan as soon as I return."

"The ships transporting migrants to West Africa are still too small. In the future, we need to develop ships of 2 or even 3 tons. The number of migrants transported at a time can reach tens of thousands. This will minimize costs and achieve substantial profits."

"I understand. I will immediately convey the king's will to the relevant departments and promote close cooperation between the shipbuilding industry and other industrial sectors. We will further develop large-capacity immigration ships to meet the needs of long-distance shipping and further reduce costs."

"Yes, that's what I mean." The King of Chu nodded with satisfaction.

During the past few days in the Great Bay City, his convoy drove around and felt that this vast land was sparsely populated. It was common to see no people for dozens of kilometers.

With a Chinese population of less than 20 around the city of Greater Bay, the total number of children under the age of seven and free blacks actually exceeded 7.

However, both towns and rural ranches appear to be sparsely populated, which is closely related to the local economy which is mainly based on ranching.

A ranch may cover thousands or even tens of thousands of acres, but only have a dozen or so people.

There are large areas of uninhabited wasteland between the pastures. Even with the speed of the King of Chu's convoy, they can only visit two or three pastures at most in a morning and see only a few dozen people.

One Chinese settlement is often tens or even hundreds of kilometers away from another. Although the roads are well-maintained, they cannot withstand the invasion of rain and wind and sand, and are inevitably bumpy over time.

Some places have sunk, some places are filled with ponds, and the road conditions are hard to describe.

The Congo River Company forced black convicts to build tens of thousands of kilometers of roads and thousands of bridges of various sizes. 99% of these roads were dirt and gravel roads. After several consecutive rainy seasons, the roads deteriorated.

It is better in densely populated villages and towns, where Chinese villagers often provide maintenance.

In any case, within the scope of any Chinese village or town, the nearby villages and towns will organize personnel to maintain the roads regularly.

But in remote pastures and remote areas, there is nothing that can be done.

The only way to solve this problem is to increase immigration.

Around pastoral areas such as Great Bay City and Yellowstone City, farms and villages are arranged at intervals to maintain a certain local population size.

The final and fundamental solution is to arrange the implementation of railway projects after a period of development and promote the hardening of roads in an orderly manner.

For example, the steel plant project near Dongsang City has been completed and put into production, and corresponding projects such as rolling mills, coal mines, iron mines, coking plants, brick kilns, lime kilns and cement plants have been built. This echoes the development of the shipbuilding industry in the Cabinda area, realizing the first heavy industrialization zone in Africa.

The coal slag produced by the coking plant, the fly ash from the burning of steel mills, and the gravel and stone powder from the quarry are all good materials for paving roads, and we can start from Dongsang City.

Then it radiated to the surrounding areas such as Cabinda and Coastal City, expanding step by step.

After more than ten years of settlement and continuous compaction, the roadbed has become stable. With the addition of fly ash, lime powder and coal slag gravel, a relatively stable trunk road network can be formed.

In the future, if conditions permit, the road will be paved with asphalt gravel concrete to completely solidify it and form a wide and smooth thoroughfare.

But this requires a certain population size, so the formation of a considerable scale of Chinese town clusters and rural areas along the Atlantic region is the basis for the construction of trunk roads and railways.

on the basis of

The ideal scenario is to go upstream along the Congo River and its tributaries, connect the Chinese settlements and towns along the banks, and form villages and towns with a population distribution that looks like towering trees.

The Congo River is this towering tree, and its numerous inland tributaries are the branches of the tree. The Chinese towns and settlements distributed in the area can be seen as the branches and fruits of the tree, which are becoming more and more prosperous.

The seven port cities and contiguous Chinese township settlements lined up along the Atlantic coast are the land from which the giant trees of the Congo River can continuously draw nutrients.

Standing firmly on it, the foundation is extremely solid.

Since inspecting the Congo River Basin, passing through the City of Grand Bay (Note: Douala, Cameroon), the City of Yellowstone (Makanda, Equatorial Guinea), the City of Coastal City (Libreville, Gabon), and arriving at the City of Dongsang (Kakamoeka), the grand picture planned in the mind of King Zheng Guohui of Chu has become increasingly clear.

A large-scale Chinese immigration wave was launched, with the annual immigration scale in the region increasing sharply from 8 to 9 people to 40 people per year. The plan lasted for 10 years, and the number of Chinese immigrants reached over 400 million, costing about million silver dollars.

If the Chinese immigrant population in the region is added to the locally born population, the total will increase to around 7 to million. If Chinese children under the age of are included, the total number will exceed million.

This grand vision moved even the broad-minded King Zheng Guohui of Chu.

The latest report from the Colonial Office made him even more determined to push forward this grand plan.

According to the latest surveying and mapping report from the Ministry of Colonies, the Congo River colony occupied by the Chu State extended from Grand Marina City (Note: Douala in Cameroon) in the north to Hai'an in Angola (Note: the original city of Luanda) in the south, and bordered Tanzania and Uganda in the east. Its scope was far more than 230 million square kilometers.

The latest precise mapping shows that its area covers an area of ​​348.9 million square kilometers.

That is
The territory of Chu was underestimated by 118.9 million square kilometers, which caused a big mistake.

After repeated approval
The scope of the Congo River basin is indeed 348.9 million square kilometers. Fortunately, this conclusion was accurately surveyed and implemented before the Berlin Conference, otherwise we would have suffered a great loss.

The 635 million square kilometers of kingdom territory that the King of Chu had just proposed in the Great Bay City had evolved into 755 million square kilometers in just three weeks. This was quite a misunderstanding.

Fortunately, the king of Chu knew his mistake and was able to correct it. When the king issued an edict, no other figures were mentioned from the kingdom's mainland to the border. The unified figure was 755 million square kilometers of territory, and the same was true in newspapers and media.

Regarding the Congo River Basin, the original territory of 230 square kilometers is no longer mentioned, but is promoted according to the latest 350 million square kilometers.

As for the precise figure of 348.9 million square kilometers found in the audit, it was intentionally or unintentionally ignored.

It’s only 1.1 square kilometers, where can’t we find something from every corner?
There can only be more, not less.

more than a month later
September 11th, 2025

Kinshasa on the lower Congo River

It is located in the lower reaches of the vast Congo River, about 507 kilometers away from Cabinda. It is in the southwest of the Congo River Basin, on the banks of the Zaire River and Lake Malebe. It has vast fertile land and is the largest inland river city established by the Congo River Governor's Office.

The farming conditions here are very favorable, with abundant rainfall and sunshine, and convenient shipping on the surrounding rivers. It is very suitable for establishing an irrigation canal system for growing rice, rapeseed, corn, vegetables and fruits. It is a large concentrated agricultural farming area.

According to the colonial plan
The Congo River Basin, with Kinshasa as its core, has a mid-term plan to resettle 280 to 300 million Chinese immigrants over the next ten years, with a long-term plan to resettle more than million Chinese immigrants.

King Zheng Guohui of Chu has been here for four days. He has visited more than a dozen Chinese settlements and two towns in the surrounding area, and the impression he is left with is a wilderness version of Jiangnan.

Wild animals pop out from the wastelands and woods here from time to time, including lions, giraffes and white rhinos, as well as large herds of wildebeest and buffalo, living freely in this lush wilderness.

Chinese settlements and cities were inevitably attacked by wild beasts, and were in a stage of repeated tug-of-war between humans and wild beasts.

It was common to see Chinese cavalry troops fully armed crossing the fields, and from time to time one could hear the sound of gunfire as they hunted wild animals and eliminated threats to farmland and crops.

Everywhere I go

You often see large areas of charred land after being burned. It only takes more than ten days for new seedlings to sprout from the charred land.

According to local people, more than a month after the burning, the originally scorched land turned into lush green. After two rains, there were not many traces of the burning.

The land in this place is fertile, and the rice yield per mu can reach more than 240 kilograms, which is about % higher than the yield in the native land of Chu State, and it also has three harvests a year.

If you are diligent, you can also intercrop a crop of rapeseed.

Unfortunately, this area is also sparsely populated. The development of the area around Kinshasa has a history of no more than 5 years, and only a few hundred thousand Chinese immigrants have been resettled, most of whom are concentrated in towns and suburban settlements.

To completely eliminate the surrounding wild animals, we have to go at least hundreds of kilometers deep, because many wild animals have the habit of migration, including beasts such as lions and African hyenas, which will migrate with the herbivorous wildebeest and deer herds.

Eliminated wave after wave, in repeated tug of war.

Humanity will undoubtedly prevail in the end. Wild animals are now much rarer, a result of years of repeated suppression efforts. Farming in the wild has become much safer.

The wild beasts of Africa in the wilderness seemed to know how powerful the two-horned beasts were. Even lions and hyenas would avoid them when they encountered a group of two-horned beasts, not daring to attack them rashly.

Burning in the area is also repeated. If it doesn't work once, try it twice, and if it doesn't work twice, try it three times.

At the end of the dry season every year, villages, towns and settlements would organize burning of the surrounding wastelands. The thick smoke would cover the sky, drive away a large number of wild animals, and burn all kinds of tropical mosquitoes, flies, poisonous insects and snakes.

Actual exploration of these areas
The important officials of the King of Chu and his entourage were more confident about large-scale immigration. Everything was ready, only the east wind was missing.

The inspections over the past 40 days have given Zheng Shouxu, the incoming Congo River Governor, more confidence.

Especially when he saw that the Congo River Company still had a huge surplus of 1322 million silver dollars and 1007 million in uncollected accounts, he was so happy that he danced with joy.

If you have money, nothing can be difficult to do, right?
The Royal Nanyang Bank, the Royal Colonial Bank, the Chu Communications Bank and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China have respectively opened branches and business departments under the Congo River Governor's Office. In addition, the Nanfengtang Department Store, the Royal Post Office, the Royal Nanyang Telegraph Office, major cruise companies and large institutions under the Royal Fund have all established branches and business offices here, laying the foundation for great development.

There is a passenger and cargo liner service every week from Bahía Blanca in South America to Cabinda in West Africa. The terminal port of the route is located in Kinshasa in the middle reaches of the Congo River. This route was extended only this year.

As a result, regular exchanges were formed between the South American colonies and the West African colonies, and the volume of personnel and cargo transportation increased, which was a very good interaction.

Expected to be by the end of the year

Regular liner ships departing from the port of Colón will transit through the ports of Uribia in Colombia and Fortaleza in Brazil, cross the Atlantic Ocean directly to the Grand Baie City, pass through Lisboa, Dongsang, Cabinda along the way, and finally arrive at the terminal port of Kinshasa.

Initially, it is planned to have one liner per month plying this transatlantic route.

Depending on the amount of goods and people traveling back and forth, we will add more liner ships and cargo ships as appropriate to connect the trade between the two places and realize the interconnection of colonial trade between Central and South America and West Africa.

(End of this chapter)