Until he returned to Hotan, Wang Changyou still hadn't gotten a satisfactory answer from Cole Smith. This made Wang Changyou a little uncomfortable, but after returning to Hotan, Wang Changyou couldn't keep following this foreign boss around all day, or else, not to mention the foreign guests, even the regional leaders wouldn't let him off.

However, Liu Changchuan gained a lot from this trip. At least after his field survey, he found that there would be no problem in building a third-level highway from Luopu to the mining area. Of course, after entering the Aqik River Valley, some dangerous sections could only be built into a single-lane fourth-level highway, but there were not many of these dangerous sections, only one or two, and the total length was only two or three kilometers.

According to Liu Changchuan's estimation, if a road is drawn from National Highway 315 outside Luopu County, this road will extend to the mouth of the Aqik River Valley, a distance of about 40 kilometers. The road will then extend inward along the Aqik River Valley, including a location where a winding mountain road needs to be built. The length of the road in the valley is about 19 kilometers. The section of the road from the Aqik River Valley to the mining area needs to bypass the mountain, so about five kilometers of road need to be built.

In other words, the total length of the road that needs to be built from National Highway 315 outside Luopu County to the mining area is 64 kilometers.

Liu Changchuan not only calculated the total length of the highway, but also calculated the approximate budget for building the highway.

Because the construction of this highway is not difficult, although it is in the mountainous area, the 40-kilometer section from National Highway 315 to the entrance of the Aqik River Valley is actually easier than building a road on the plains. This section of the road is all flat Gobi desert, and the foundation, which is the most expensive part of the road construction, turned out to be the easiest to build.

The most difficult part of this highway is the section from the mouth of the Aqik River Valley to the mining area. However, of this 24-kilometer section, only 11 kilometers are slightly difficult. The other sections are mostly built on flat areas in the valley, so the cost is not very high.

The most important thing is that even in the most difficult 11-kilometer section, there is not much area that needs to be excavated and protected. So even if the entire highway is built into a cement road according to the standards of a third-level highway, the total cost per kilometer is only about 170,000 yuan on average. This is because the 24-kilometer section raises the average cost. If the entire highway is in the Gobi Desert, the cost per kilometer is at least half of this price.

In other words, if the current price is used to calculate, the total cost of building this highway is about 11 million yuan, which is about 3 million US dollars...

Even Yang Jing couldn't help but be surprised by the low prices of this era. You know, the cost of building a third-level asphalt road of the same grade, even in the plains thirty years later, would not be less than 700,000 national currency per kilometer. And now, this cement road, which is half in the mountainous area, only costs so little money. It's really too cheap.

Now that the scope of the mining area has been determined and the cost of the road to the mining area has been roughly calculated, the next step is to start work.

However, these things naturally did not need to be done by Yang Jing, the hands-off manager. Peter Wu was very miserable and was called here from the prosperous Yanjing by Yang Jing, accompanied by more than a dozen staff members newly recruited by Peter Wu.

Now the business of the Chinese branch is getting bigger and bigger. There are some things that Pete Wu and Lao Na cannot handle alone, so expanding the staff is inevitable.

Most of the people who followed Pete Wu to Hotan this time were recruited recently, and five or six of them were top students who just graduated from university last year.

According to Yang Jing's instructions, Peter Wu had established a foreign-funded company called "Pacific Mining Company" in Yanjing some time ago. The conditions offered were very generous. Even many top students who had just graduated from campus could not resist the temptation of high salaries and joined Pacific Mining.

Although university graduates of this era are still guaranteed jobs, as the concept of reform and opening up continues to take root in people's minds, many university graduates now do not only choose jobs assigned by the state after graduation. Many of them also choose to work in joint ventures or even foreign-funded enterprises. For these university graduates, being able to enter a foreign company is actually a good thing to have the opportunity to go abroad. This is how these five college students entered Pacific Mining. With the addition of these employees, Peter Wu will be much more relaxed.

This time Yang Jing called Peter Wu here to let him take charge of the things here. Of course, once the jade mine is open normally, he can arrange someone to stay here to preside over the work, and he will return to Yanjing.

In fact, there are still many things to do in Hotan. Road construction, river cleaning, levee construction, mining, all of which require a large number of construction machinery. Peter Wu came here this time, in addition to being responsible for signing contracts with the local government and presiding over the work here, he also needs to receive some construction machinery specially ordered by Yang Jing from abroad.

Thirty years later, China's engineering machinery defeated those old foreign engineering machinery companies. But in this era, domestic engineering machinery is still far from comparable to foreign products, and the natural conditions here are also relatively harsh. So Yang Jing simply customized a batch of engineering machinery from abroad and brought it to Hotan. Although the freight was very high, these engineering machinery were really indispensable for jade mining and river cleaning here.

Since Peter Wu has come with a large team, all these tasks can be handed over to him. Peter Wu has grown into a capable general over the years. At least the Huaxia branch has been doing very well under his leadership in the past few years, so Yang Jing is relieved to hand over the work to him.

Yang Jing explained everything that needed to be explained to Peter Wu, and after making sure that he understood what he was supposed to do, he took five bodyguards and returned to Urumqi on a military transport plane specially arranged by the Hotan Prefectural Committee, and then transferred to a civil airliner from Urumqi and flew back to Yanjing.

Because after arriving in Hotan, Pete Wu told Yang Jing that Nicholas Ballmer, the arms dealer who had been active in Myanmar in the past two years, had also come to Yanjing and wanted to meet Yang Jing.

Yang Jing admired this arms dealer whom he met in Myanmar. Moreover, Mr. Ballmer had not bothered him much in the past two years. Now he suddenly asked to meet with him. He must have encountered something, so Yang Jing hurried back to Yanjing.

Yang Jing didn't want to break the connection that he had established with great difficulty. He also wanted to know what this arms dealer, whom he hadn't seen for a long time, wanted to see him about.

It was two days later when they returned to Yanjing from Hotan. This was mainly because there were not so many flights from Urumqi to Yanjing at that time. Yang Jing and his group waited for a day in Urumqi before they boarded the plane.

After getting off the plane at the Capital Airport and exiting the gate, Yang Jing found the tall and thin Nicholas Ballmer waiting outside the gate with a smile on his face to greet him...

PS: I would like to thank "很懒的鱼" for the reward of 100.