Chapter 997 Industrial Foundation
Of course, the premise is that the Ottoman Empire joins the German side as in its previous life. In this way, in addition to the Suez Canal, East Africa can directly use the Persian Gulf and then transport materials to Germany and Austria-Hungary through the Baghdad Railway. empire.
After all, the Suez Canal has certain risks under British control, but even so, East Africa has a greater advantage than the United States, because the United States only has one Atlantic route to choose from, while East Africa has three trade routes. To be more extreme, East Africa can open up a land trade route from the Sahara to the Mediterranean coast, but it is too difficult and does not have a cost advantage.
Of course, the premise of all this is that history develops according to its original trajectory, East Africa's industry develops, and there is a strong navy to ensure East Africa's economic interests.
In the previous life, the basic guarantee for the United States to be able to eat both sides in the war was the relatively strong naval strength of the United States. Otherwise, the British and French navies were fully capable of cutting off the trade between the United States and the Allies.
You must know that after the end of World War I, the total tonnage of the U.S. Navy was close to half that of the British Navy, with a total tonnage of nearly 500,000 tons. In the early and mid-term of World War I, the United States maintained its status as a neutral country and did not engage in the war, so during World War I , the fundamental guarantee that the United States can eat both ends is its strong naval strength.
This has a very high reference value for Ernst, so before the advent of all-out war in Europe, the strength of the East African military should also be greatly expanded and improved.
However, this does not interfere with East Africa's economic development policy during the First Five-Year Plan. East Africa's First Five-Year Plan is completely different from that of the former Soviet Union. The primary goal of the Soviet Union's First and Second Five-Year Plans was to develop defense industry and heavy industry.
The First Five-Year Plan for East Africa is relatively balanced, focusing on heavy industry as a whole, but at the same time vigorously developing light industry and agriculture. Although it is biased toward heavy industry, light industry and agriculture also occupy a certain share, unlike the first two Five-Year Plans of the Soviet Union. So top-heavy.
The reason for this situation lies in the differences in national conditions and geopolitics between the two countries. The Soviet Union is facing a serious external crisis, and due to the harsh geopolitical environment, it faces the risk of joint armed intervention by European countries at any time.
This forced the Soviet Union to solve the problem of natural security first, and this forced choice also laid hidden dangers for the subsequent imbalance of the Soviet industrial structure. Therefore, the economic development path of the Soviet Union was not easy, and various crises also led to a bipolar pattern. China and the Soviet Union were unable to cope with competition from the United States.
On the other hand, East Africa is completely different. East Africa is geopolitically very safe, not far from the main trade route between Asia and Europe, and has smooth sea routes. These are the most basic favorable conditions for the economic development of East Africa.
In the First Five-Year Plan, the reason why East Africa continues to focus on heavy industry as the focus of development is related to the current national conditions of East Africa. There is a big gap between East Africa's industrial level and European and American countries, which makes East Africa's industrial output value seriously insufficient.
As the most basic industry, heavy industry can be called the foundation of industrial development. This can be seen from the definition of heavy industry. Heavy industry is the industry that provides the main means of production with the material and technical basis for various departments of the national economy. .
With the foundation of heavy industry, there is a foundation for the development of light industry. Taking the first industrial development as an example, the development of the steel and coal industries is the most important driver of the development of the British textile industry. Steel is used for textile machinery manufacturing. Providing raw materials, it also promoted the development of railway and shipbuilding manufacturing, promoted transportation development, and facilitated the export of the British textile industry, while coal was the main source of power for light industries such as the textile industry.
Therefore, theoretically speaking, the development of light industry cannot be separated from heavy industry. Light industry without heavy industry is rootless and difficult to maintain.
So for East Africa, whether it is steel, coal, petroleum, electricity, chemicals and other basic industries, they are the goals and trends that mainly promote industrial development during the First Five-Year Plan, especially the two major industries of steel and coal. In terms of industry, there is a huge gap between East Africa and the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom. After the completion of the First Five-Year Plan, the strength of these two basic industrial fields in East Africa will be greatly improved, especially the gap with the United Kingdom will be narrowed.
The development of these basic industries can provide raw materials and means of production for the development of light industry and agriculture in East Africa. For East Africa, as heavy industry develops, light industry and agriculture will naturally develop. To put it simply, during the First Five-Year Plan of East Africa, the most important thing is to explode the production capacity of basic industries and provide the most basic supply of raw materials for the economic development of East Africa. These raw materials will be invested in East Africa's infrastructure construction, urban construction, transportation construction, etc. .
So Ernst said to the government officials: "In the construction of the west, we must build a new comprehensive industrial base in East Africa in the west coast provinces and promote the development of local light and heavy industries. This is completely different from our past construction experience.”
"In the past, East Africa tended to focus on agricultural construction. This was determined by the national conditions at the time. At that time, East Africa lacked funds, technology and talents, so we could only start with the most basic agriculture. But now we have the necessary elements to develop industry. All have been gathered together, which is the main reason why our development focus shifted from agriculture to industry in the 1990s.”
“Of course, the gap between our European and American countries is still very large, so now. At this stage, we should focus on the development of basic industry, that is, heavy industry is the only way for us in East Africa.”
“After heavy industry is developed, we can use it as a basis to develop other industries. This is the current world economy. One of the important paths of development is actually the characteristic of German industrial development in the last century. "
"In the last century, German industrial development started with steel, coal and railways, and then continued in many fields. Surpassing the United Kingdom and France, we have become the third largest industrial country in the world. Due to historical reasons, we in East Africa cannot achieve this goal in just a few years.”
“We can only accelerate this through administrative and planning means. process, and my expectation is that at least after the completion of the two five-year plans, East Africa’s overall industrial level will at least surpass Russia.”
At present, Russia is known as the fifth industrial country in the world, which should be ranked between France and East Africa, while the Austro-Hungarian Empire has taken advantage of the trend to rank seventh in the world.
Of course, in the industrial strength ranking recognized by all countries in the world (except the East African government), East Africa actually ranks seventh, behind the Austro-Hungarian Empire, followed in order by the United States, Britain, Germany, and France. , Russia, Austria, East Africa.
However, according to East Africa's own understanding of its own industry, East Africa's industrial strength and scale should actually exceed France's. However, the overall output value of East Africa's industry is lower, and one of the important reasons is that heavy industry accounts for a large proportion.
If the factor of output value is excluded, the industrial scale rankings of various countries are the United States, Germany, Britain, Russia, East Africa, France, Austria, and Russia ranks fourth in the world. Thanks to its huge population, here Under such circumstances, although East Africa's industrial level is higher than that of Russia, it cannot close the gap with Russia's tens of millions of people in a short time.
The industrial output value of France is higher than that of East Africa, but in the field of basic industry, France is obviously unable to surpass East Africa, because France itself is among the great powers because it lacks raw materials for industrial development, which makes French industrial development funds flow to light industry and high profits. industry.
Therefore, if France breaks out with East Africa, there is a high probability that East Africa will be better than France, not only in the source of troops, but also in the field of defense industry. However, the focus of East Africa's development is not military industry now, so at the current stage, East Africa has the scale and strength of the navy and army. Not as good as France.
This is obviously not good news for France, because France has been involved in a lot of energy by Germany and must maintain a relatively large army, which is bound to have a certain negative impact on the country's economy.
(End of this chapter)