"In this way, we can open their borders with our goods, but they can't dump their goods to the East. From the very beginning, this trade transaction is unequal, and the Song Dynasty will never be satisfied with just the Eastern world."
"So as long as steamships appear and can replace wooden ships, allowing Song Dynasty merchant ships to travel all over the world, the whole world will soon become a dumping ground for our goods. Unless they choose not to have necessities and close their borders to trade with us."
He smiled and said, "But by then, it will be largely out of their control. Judging from the current situation, the Song Dynasty only needs to complete industrial upgrading and rely on the trade of feudal society during the First Industrial Revolution to complete primitive accumulation. Then, I'm afraid that for the next thousand years, the East will maintain an unshakable leading position."
"If that's the case, that would be great."
Everyone was very excited.
"Of course, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. A solid foundation is more important than anything else."
Zhao Jun tapped the map again and said, "Let's develop the country first. My first step is to build a railway directly to Nanyang. The second step is to build a railway from Sichuan to Shaanxi."
"It's understandable to build a road to Nanyang, but why build a road from Sichuan to Shaanxi?"
Everyone was puzzled.
"It's simple. It completes the entire economic cycle."
Zhao Jun explained, "You see, our entire domestic economic framework and route are basically locked along the Yangtze River, Yellow River, Huai River, and the Grand Canal. However, Shaanxi and Sichuan, Henan and Jingxiang, are clearly close to each other, yet they seem as far apart as the ends of the earth."
Everyone nodded slightly without looking at the map. This has been the case since ancient times. Since Bashu is the source of the Yangtze River, it is entirely possible to take the Yangtze River, and the water transport route is very fast.
As the saying goes, I left Baidi in the morning among the colorful clouds and returned to Jiangling a thousand miles away in one day.
Under normal circumstances, it only takes less than a month to travel nearly 2,000 kilometers from Bashu to Zhejiang. If there are no weather factors, it will only take more than ten days, which can be said to be very fast.
Although Sichuan and Shaanxi are very close to each other, they can only be traveled by land. It takes two or three months to travel 700 kilometers from Chengdu to Chang'an.
Unless it's like Emperor Xuanzong of Tang sending lychees to Yang Guifei by express horse.
Otherwise, there is a world of difference.
Therefore, since ancient times, exchanges between Sichuan and Shaanxi have been greatly hindered.
The same is true for Henan and Hubei, with the Nanyang Basin in between, and sections of roads hundreds of kilometers long are all land routes.
In ancient times, the cost of traveling by land was very high, so transportation was very inconvenient.
In contrast, today both Hebei and Guangdong have canals connecting them. Hebei, needless to say, has the Yongji Canal, while Guangdong has the Lingqu Canal.
Then we only need to open up the transportation between Henan and Hubei, and Sichuan and Shaanxi, and these economic regions will greatly promote exchanges.
"If Henan and Hubei wanted to use water transportation, they would have to go around Zhejiang, take the Grand Canal from Henan to Huainan, then go up the Yangtze River from Huainan to Hankou and then take the Han River to Xiangyang."
"The same goes for Sichuan and Shaanxi. Sichuan and Shaanxi are even farther apart, and transportation has to go along the Yellow River. Therefore, there's almost no water transport between the two places, only land travel. But the roads in Shu are difficult, harder than climbing to heaven. You all know how high the cost of communication is."
"After these two railways are completed, the next step will be to connect Shanxi, Hebei, and Bianliang, shifting the industrial center to Hebei while Bianliang temporarily retains its political and economic center."
"Basically, once these three railways are opened, our major economic and development centers in Sichuan, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Hubei, Hunan, Guangdong, Huainan, Zhejiang, Henan, Hebei, and Shandong will rapidly become active. With Bianliang as the center, the surrounding areas will be connected and become a large plateau."
"According to my rough estimate, if the three railways are completed within the next five years, we can guarantee at least twenty years of rapid development. After that, the Song Dynasty will be able to rapidly improve its national strength and build railways everywhere."
"The only three regions still outside the zone are Fujian, Jiangxi, and Guangxi, but there's nothing we can do about it. We can only consider Fujian, Jiangxi, and Guangxi after the third railway line is connected to Shanxi and coal resources are transported to Hebei, making Hebei an industrial powerhouse."
In the end, Zhao Jun had no choice but to point to Fujian, Guangxi and Jiangxi.
It's not that he is partial to one over the other, it's really a geographical factor.
A look at the distribution of economic cities in the Song Dynasty shows that of the ten most economically developed cities, except for Fuzhou in Fujian and Guangzhou in Guangdong, which started out as maritime trade, the other eight were all located along the canal.
The construction of the railway will definitely boost the local economic development rapidly, so he must first consider construction around Bianliang as the core.
If the capital of the Song Dynasty was not in Beijing, there would not be the phenomenon of the political center in the north and the economic center in the south.
But success and failure are the same.
The political and economic centers of the Song Dynasty happened to be in Bianliang.
Unless Zhao Jun chooses to move the capital.
However, moving the capital also requires the right time, place and people.
Even if the Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun were recovered, Beijing would not be suitable to be the capital of the Song Dynasty at least for now.
Other places are even less comparable to Bianliang. It is not a geographical issue, but simply because once the capital is moved, the current development of Bianliang will be destroyed in an instant, and it will have to start from scratch to develop another imperial capital. It is really not worth the loss.
Therefore, Zhao Jun had to consider radiating outwards from Bianliang as the center, and the extension of the railway also spread outwards from Bianliang as the center.
In the future, the railway from Henan to Hubei will definitely be built first, followed by connecting Sichuan and Shaanxi, and then opening up Shanxi with Hebei and Bianliang. So, looking at the map, the areas within 2,000 kilometers east, south, west and north of Bianliang will basically be completely connected.
From now on, it would no longer take two or three months to get from Sichuan to Bianliang. Instead, it would take only twenty days to ship to Xiangyang and then take the train north. Alternatively, you could take the train to Chang'an first and then cross the Yellow River to Bianliang.
This means that the transportation time of all goods within the 2,000-kilometer radius of Bianliang will be reduced by more than two or three times, greatly improving the speed of logistics transportation.
Under such circumstances, if the Song Dynasty still fails to develop, it would be a disaster.
(End of this chapter)
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