Father of France

Chapter 221 Immigration Requirements
Upon landing, Koman went straight to Gu Qing's restaurant for a change of pace, as a way of rewarding himself for his trip to the South Asian subcontinent.

Perhaps the British quarter in New Delhi, Kolkata, and Mumbai isn't bad, but Hyderabad, which Coman visited, was truly pristine. It was filled with the raw, untamed grime and disorder typical of an agrarian society.

To be fair, he wasn't a pretentious person. The Middle East, North Africa, Madagascar, and even French Indochina weren't exactly clean, but the subcontinent was on a completely different level. From the moment he left Aligan's palace, perhaps his financial power failed him, and Koman instantly became intolerant of the heat and filth of the South Asian subcontinent.

It was only then that Koman suddenly looked back and realized that he had actually stayed in a clean and hygienic place for so long and had returned without any aftereffects.

When Gu Qing rushed over, the first thing he saw was Koman eating in the VIP room as if he were fleeing a disaster. "Sir, did you go to the disaster relief?"

"That's about right. Actually, I'm quite tolerant of filth, but India is a bit beyond that tolerance."

Koman gave a vague reply, "I came back as soon as India gained independence. It's really not a place where people can live permanently. South India, where I am, is even higher. I can't even imagine North India."

Any observations or experiences in South India can be simply multiplied by four or five, taking into account the population ratio between North and South India.

“It seems that many people are saying that if India becomes independent, a powerful nation will emerge,” Gu Qing explained. “I’ve only heard this; I don’t know where this idea came from.”

This was clearly suspected of using Indian independence to embolden the resistance of French Indochina, so Gu Qing had to explain in order to express his loyalty to the French Federation.

"India is a country without development. The Ganges estuary and the entire Indus River basin have been cut off, affecting 80 percent of the population," Coman said with a dismissive smile. "Moreover, India does not have the capacity to develop the Ganges for navigation, so the living environment of most Indians cannot be improved."

When a major river is within a country's borders, the first thing to consider is its navigation capacity. The Ganges' navigation capacity is only slightly better than the Yellow River's, so can it be dredged deeper? Theoretically, of course, it can.

Another reference is the Yangtze River. In fact, there were many shallow shoals in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River that were not navigable.

From the founding of the People's Republic of China until about 2000 AD, the great Eastern power had been dredging the Yangtze River to improve its shipping capacity. However, in those 50 years, the Yangtze River channel was only dredged to a depth of one meter, and the average water depth in the middle and lower reaches was increased from seven meters to eight meters.

This is a span of fifty years. Since the 1960s, the industrial scale of this great Eastern power has always been more than three times that of the impressive India, and it has only dug a meter deeper.

The turning point came after the arrival of the 21st century, when the industrial scale of the great Eastern power began to increase unprecedentedly. The work of dredging the Yangtze River continued, and it took more than 20 years to dredge the Yangtze River to an average depth of 11 meters, which created the world's busiest shipping route.

The Yangtze River shipping industry was strong in the past, but not much stronger than that of the Rhine or Mississippi Rivers.

Given India's execution capabilities and industrial scale at the time, to do similar work, it would be considered an exceptional achievement to dig 20 centimeters deep in 50 years; 20 centimeters would mean no improvement.

Obviously, India cannot spend fifty years doing something useless. Even if it were a dream, if India actually implemented it, it would need to reach an industrial scale similar to that of a major Eastern power in the 21st century to see any results. Clearly, even during Modi's era, India's industrial capacity was only equivalent to that of a major Eastern power in the 1990s.

Putting aside the facts, what would happen if India really had the capability and succeeded? The biggest beneficiary would, of course, be Bangladesh.

Bangladesh will become a leading country similar to Shanghai. During the British Indian period, Bangladesh was the most prosperous region in British India and an important part of the largest industrial area in Calcutta.

India has spent decades building a foundation for economic take-off for a Muslim country. Will India do the same?

Koman made a direct judgment in front of Gu Qing: India's inability to develop was destined for the people along the Ganges.

"Sir, I understand. It seems the British are quite clever to have divided India." Gu Qing thought to himself, "If anything, these foreign devils are really bad. Was the upgrading of French Indochina Laos and Cambodia to protectorates also a preparation for this?"

"The British didn't only do bad things. They didn't originally intend to partition the country, but British India happened to have the conditions for partition. If you Chinese had one-third the population of Vietnamese, I could help you try to emulate the partition of India."

Koeman was just saying that one-third of them are ten million Chinese, and France absolutely cannot incite them. Even if someone with a screw loose had such an idea, Britain and the United States would step in to stop them.

"For some weaker nations, colonial powers didn't necessarily only bring disaster. The residents of Phnom Penh have always been grateful to us French, and the same goes for Britain. After all, the British brought India a great deal of benefit. Most importantly, during British rule, the various ethnic groups in India united as one, which sparked the passion for revolution. Otherwise, if the Indians had been allowed to annex each other through war, the price they would have paid would have been enormous. What if... Hinduism couldn't defeat the Muslims?" "However, you are right about one thing: Nehru was much better than your current leaders. Gandhi's ideas were completely fanciful, even though he put them very well."

Gandhi wanted these villages to be self-sufficient, capable of producing their own food, cloth, milk, fruits, and vegetables, as well as educating their descendants and solving their own survival problems.

He wanted to close all the textile factories in India and replace them with the hand-spinning machines he used. This was one of his ideas for finding jobs for the rural unemployed. Another purpose of doing so was to keep farmers in the countryside so that everyone would have something to do.

Koeman, who had casually kicked Chiang Kai-shek again, was in a good mood. The matter was not simple. Only eight months had passed this year, but the influx of Chinese people had already exceeded the entire previous year. He wondered if this was a consequence of the currency war with the Japanese. Now, the Kuomintang's solution to the fiscal deficit was to print money.

The legal tender has depreciated sevenfold in the past eight months, and this is just the beginning. The ultimate test for Hong Kong and Saigon will come next year when the war goes badly and the Kuomintang sends out gold yuan notes.

So the immigration process is about to begin. During the month that Corman was in Hyderabad, Paris had already approved the proposal to immigrate from French Indochina to Madagascar.

The number of people doesn't need to be too large, just around 200,000, which is exactly the increase in the Chinese population in French Indochina over the past two years.

Now that Coman has returned, there is no need to waste time; we can begin immediately. With General Tashanliu's approval, the Saigon authorities began printing leaflets right away.

Emperor Bao Dai would not object either. Even if he didn't say it, the Vietnamese monarch was certainly uncomfortable with the growth of the Chinese population in Saigon and regarded it as a potential threat.

Therefore, the Bao Dai cabinet cooperated, and Coman was busy from the moment he disembarked until evening before returning to his lodgings in Saigon.

Upon opening the door, Ava Gardner leaned against the sofa, her phoenix eyes fixed on the doorway, settling on Koman. Her eyes were filled with a multitude of emotions as she spoke after a long pause, "You still have the nerve to come back? I finished up my business in Los Angeles and returned to Saigon only to hear you had just left. You were gone for months."

"It's all for the country," Koman explained with a dry smile. "Do you think I wanted to leave? I want to be with you every moment. You have no idea what kind of life I've been living in Africa. As soon as I got back to Saigon, I rushed back to see if you were there. Can't you tell?"

Ava Gardner stood up and walked up to Koman, bringing with her a fragrant breeze. She stared at Koman for two seconds and said, "You didn't lie."

“Let’s take a shower together and see if my woman has grown too much hair.” Koman looked at the woman, who was his wife’s equal, and expressed her satisfaction.

They have made such great sacrifices and endured so much hardship for France in recent months, and they deserve the treatment they are receiving now.

Nothing more was said that night. Immigrant propaganda had already begun in earnest. In Saigon, especially in the Chinese-populated areas of Cholon, notices were plastered all over the streets and alleys. Large Chinese families, including the Guo family, were also going all out to use their local influence to describe Madagascar as a rare paradise on earth, almost as if they were describing it as the Promised Land of Israel.

Even if it's not quite the same, it's not far off. As an island, Madagascar certainly can't compare to Java, and its land is definitely less barren than Vietnam's. But it's true that Madagascar has a small population, only four million.

The land of the Bantu people on the east coast is indeed very suitable for rice cultivation, covering an area of ​​nearly 100,000 square kilometers. Although a lot of it has been taken away by the Austronesian people, it is still easy to accommodate 200,000 immigrants.

The large Chinese families along the embankment have publicly stated their readiness to respond to the Paris government's call and send key members of their family businesses to participate in this major development project in Madagascar.

This act of taking the lead immediately caused a sensation and quickly became the focus of discussion in the streets and alleys of the Chinese community in the embankment.

The promise of land allocation by France was a huge attraction, especially for new refugees who had just fled to French Indochina and had no property there.

The Governor-General's announcement also clearly stated this point: new immigrants would receive land allocated by the Governor-General of Madagascar. To alleviate fears about the long journey, the announcement also emphasized that the local people of Madagascar are also of Asian descent, and their customs are the same as those of the ethnic groups in Malaya and the East Indies.

This cannot be considered deception, but it is somewhat of a generalization, all for the purpose of making the immigration process smoother.

(End of this chapter)