Chapter 403: Observations at the dock
The benefits of politicians pooling and using private wealth are obvious, but this idea seems simple, but it is not easy to implement. Regardless of whether others could do it or not, Ruan Ching Kui knew very well that South Vietnam before its collapse would definitely not be able to do it. The imperial court lacked professionals in the financial field to preside over the operation, nor did it have a complete financial system to implement this idea. Of course, the most important point is that the privileged class, including himself, will definitely not hand over their property to others for control without reservation.
Putting aside the mature financial system, Ruan Jinggui still doesn't understand how the Haihan people can make everyone obey this system. In his opinion, the social system of Hai Han is not essentially different from that of South Vietnam. It is also a pyramid structure composed of the people at the lower level, naturalized cadres at the middle level, and the leaders of Hai Han at the upper level. These Haihan people with short hair, short shirts and weird accents are the aristocrats in this social system. They are in charge of the power of life and death in the areas under their rule, but they don’t seem to care much about their private property. Even the noble executive committee members seem to have names in their names. He also did not purchase his own land, domestic servants or maids, which was fundamentally different from the approach of the South Vietnamese nobles.
But if you want to say that these Haihan people are "selfless", Ruan Jinggui feels something is wrong. As far as he knows, what the Haihan people are most interested in is not real money, but land and population. It is said that the North Vietnamese court was able to obtain the military support of the Haihan people in exchange for seven or eight seaside ports and a population of tens of thousands of immigrants. If we want to describe the behavior of the Haihan people more accurately, Ruan Jinggui believes that what they strive for through trade, war and other means is for the collective Haihan, not the individuals. As for why the thoughts of these Haihan people can be so unified, they Ruan Jinggui feels that he may have to wait until he truly becomes a member of this social system to understand what the real goal is.
After dinner, the immigrants' activities were restricted to the camp area where they lived. The isolation camp has a strict curfew system. Starting at 7 p.m., everyone must return to their dormitories and are not allowed to go out or visit at will. According to immigration cadres, the period after dinner is called "tidying up the house," which involves cleaning the room, packing up personal belongings, and then the dormitory leader organizes a discussion to review the lessons learned during the day.
However, there seemed to be some small changes in today's arrangements. As soon as Ruan Jinggui returned to the room after washing the dishes, the squadron leader in charge of their area came with a few security guards.
Every ten dormitories in the immigration isolation camp are divided into a squadron, and a squadron leader is appointed to manage daily affairs. However, the candidate for this squadron leader is not a new immigrant, but a naturalized cadre sent by the Ministry of Civil Affairs. The leader of the squadron where Ruan Jinggui belongs is named Zheng Yi. It is said that he is an immigrant from North Vietnam, but his surname is not directly related to the Zheng family who currently controls the Annan government. Zheng Yi is an Annan immigrant who came to Haihan earlier. He was naturalized in Heitu Port the year before last year. He only moved to Sanya at the beginning of this year. He is considered a veteran among the Annan naturalized people, so he was assigned Manage the immigration quarantine camp.
Generally speaking, before the curfew is enforced every evening, immigration cadres at the squadron leader level will conduct an inspection in the camp. Occasionally, the brigade captain or even higher-ranking Haihan civil affairs cadres will come to visit, so Ruan Jinggui did not pay attention at first. , just following the usual practice, standing up and shouting: "Stand up!"
No matter what they were doing, everyone in the room stood up immediately reflexively. In the first two days after moving in, some people did not adapt to this rule and did not want to stand up and wait for orders. As a result, they were pulled out and punished. They were forced to run around the camp ten times and almost died from exhaustion. Since then, no one has raised any objection to this rule, even if they disagree in their hearts.
Zheng Yi glanced around the room and said, "Ruan Jinggui and Ruan Jingwen come out!"
The Ruan brothers looked at each other and walked to the door as instructed. They believed that they had not committed any crime in the past few days, and Zheng Yi should have no excuse to cause trouble for him.
"You two come out with me while the others continue to clean up the housework!" After Zheng Yi finished speaking, he walked out with his hands behind his back.
"There will be an immigration ship coming back from Hue later. You two will go to the scene to help maintain order." After leaving the house, Zheng Yi explained the reason to them succinctly.
For such a task assignment, the Ruan brothers had no reason to refuse. The moment they chose to come to Sanya, they had actually decided that they would work for the Haihan people in the future. It is also reasonable to let old aristocrats like them, who are familiar with the people of South Vietnam, do the work of appeasing the newly arrived South Vietnamese immigrants.
The two followed Zheng Yi to the gate of the camp. There were already several other people waiting here, and Ruan Jinggui recognized one or two of them. They were all immigrants from Annan Kingdom. Several security guards asked them to line up and then led the team on foot to the Sanya Inland Port not far away.
It was not yet completely dark at this time, but the street lights had begun to light up one after another on the roadside. Ruan Jinggui had seen this kind of iron street lamp when he came to Port Victory last year. He was really shocked when he saw it for the first time, because the top of this street lamp is surrounded by glass lampshades. It illuminates Annan domestic glass products. According to estimates, the value of this lampshade alone is at least twenty or thirty taels of silver. And this kind of street lamps are actually arranged from the Port of Victory pier to the gate of Victory Fort. There are nearly a hundred of them at least, which can be called a luxury. The extremely excellent facilities made Ruan Jinggui deeply feel the wealth of Haihan people at that time.
In addition, Ruan Jinggui also knew that this kind of street lamp does not burn oil or firewood, nor is it coal produced in Heitu Port, but an invisible gas called "morning gas" by Haihan people. Ruan Jinggui didn't understand where this gas came from and why it could burn. He could only understand it as another unexplainable "magic" mastered by the Haihan people. However, when I was here last time, this kind of high-end street lamp could only be seen on the landscape avenue near Victory Port, but now this kind of street lamp has appeared in the area around Sanya Inland Port.
This was the first time Ruan Wenwen was allowed to go out at night after coming to Sanya. It was also the first time he saw this magical street lamp. The look on his face was as if he had seen a ghost: "Brother, this Haihan people are so extravagant. There are so many oil lamps lit on the street after dark. How much lamp oil will be burned over the years? ”
"Second brother, this kind of lamp does not burn oil, but a kind of gas. It is said that you can have as much gas as you want, and it does not cost too much." Ruan Jinggui immediately gave his brother a "popular science" about this The combustion principle of street lamps.
"Hey, you do have some knowledge!" A security guard next to him turned back to look at Ruan Jinggui and said, "You must have heard it from some chief, right?"
Ruan Jinggui said proudly: "I came to Port Victory as an envoy last year. At that time, I was a guest of all the executive committee members!"
"Brother, things are different these days. Your country is gone, so don't show off!" The security guard obviously knew the identities of these new immigrants, and he kindly advised: "Do good things for the leaders from now on. It’s the right way!”
Arriving at the pier soon, Ruan Jinggui noticed that in addition to their group, there were about a hundred militia troops and an equal number of black-clad policemen who had been deployed on the pier, and there were even a dozen or so people in between. A man wearing a Ming Dynasty military uniform. Ruan Jinggui had met Luo Shengdong and Wei Ping when he came to Victory Port last time. He also knew that those people were from Yacheng Navy and Yulin Inspection Department. The reason why they appeared on the dock was just to meet the needs of the Haihan people. Let the new immigrants mistakenly think that this is just the ruling area of Ming Dynasty. The scene in front of him reminded Ruan Jinggui of the time when they arrived here by boat a few days ago. When they got off the boat, they saw basically the same scene on the dock - vigilante groups, police, Ming Dynasty officials, Haihan Civil Affairs Department and old immigrants. There are representatives for all.
Soon, a naturalized cadre from the Ministry of Civil Affairs came over and gave a brief lecture to Ruan Jinggui and others. The general idea was to tell them how to help calm the immigrants' emotions and organize the immigrants to organize their queues at the dock and wait for arrangements. These things have been experienced personally for them, and it is very interesting to replicate them again from different camps.
Just when the sky finally slowly darkened, a few lights finally appeared on the water at the mouth of the sea. They were lanterns hanging on the masts of ships. Soon a pilot boat sailed into the pier, followed by two Chinese-style lucky boats with a material of 400 yuan. However, the sails of these two lucky boats had been modified by the Victory Port Shipyard and used the new Haihan. Soft sail instead of the traditional Chinese hard sail.
At present, the Ministry of Shipping still has more than 30 Chinese-style sailing ships under its name. Although it has already placed an order for a 300-ton cargo ship with the shipyard, the Navy's order backlog is so large that the shipyard cannot free up a large slipway to complete it. Orders from the Ministry of Shipping, so the current shipping tasks between Sanya and Indochina still rely on Chinese-style sailing ships collected through various channels in the first two years.
Traditional Chinese-style sailing ships are slow in speed and have low cargo capacity. They have gradually begun to be unsuitable for the increasing freight volume between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait. Now the ships plying between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait not only have to transport coal and immigrants, but also carry various Haihan export commodities and other supplies. Before the war was launched, the Military Commission recruited cargo ships to transport supplies, which led to an almost complete shutdown of the Annan region's maritime industry. . However, this embarrassing situation should be effectively improved within this year. The Executive Committee has approved the second phase expansion plan of the Victory Port Shipyard. In addition to several small slipways under 300 tons, two more will be built. A 500-ton dry dock and two 1,500-ton large shipyards.
After launching ten large 500-ton ships one after another, the Ministry of Shipping is no longer willing to continue tossing around this tonnage. There are already relatively mature design solutions for sailboats with larger tonnage, more loading space, and stronger endurance. And on new ships of this tonnage, the trial installation of power steam engines upgraded by the industrial sector will begin. If all goes well, maybe within a year we can see the first thousand-ton motor sailboat launched. This kind of transcending era New powered ships are expected to appear in this space and time a century ahead of schedule.
Of course, to promote the implementation of such a large project, it is not enough to rely solely on the influence of young Yue Zhiyun and Sun Changmi. In this process, both "Haihan Military Industry" and the Military Commission played a significant role. The Military Commission expressed its willingness to use 50,000 yuan from the seizure in Hue specifically for the Victory Port Shipyard to engage in the research and development and design of the next generation of naval warships. "Haihan Military Industry" also generously donated 20,000 yuan to fund this project, and stated that it would work with the technical departments of the Ministry of Industry, the Ministry of Energy and other relevant units to conduct joint technical research on some key technical aspects of future motor and sailboats.
However, even if this kind of motor and sailboat can be successfully developed in the future, it seems that the Military Commission, which has deep pockets now, may not be able to place a large order. Taking the current "exploration-class" warships as an example, after the third batch of warships launched have undergone many detailed technical improvements and improvements, there is probably no opponent of the same displacement in the Far East that can match them, but their The cost has also been rising steadily, exceeding the 20,000 mark. If you add in the daily maintenance costs after it is commissioned into the navy, the cost of such a ship plus the military expenditure in the first year of commissioning is already a considerable amount - in fact, the navy has terminated the order in the second half of last year. The "Exploration Class" with a smaller tonnage will try its best to use the limited military budget to supply the "Exploration Class" warships with stronger maritime endurance.
Judging from the operating expenses of the "exploration-class" warships, the cost of building a 1,000-ton steam-powered sailing ship in the future will definitely not be less than 50,000 yuan, and the maintenance cost after being commissioned will be much higher than that of the current pure sailing warships. . Even if the Military Commission made a lot of money from the battle in Hue, when it comes to truly large-scale military expansion, it will soon be discovered that this gain is not actually sufficient in the face of the huge military budget figures.
According to the Military Commission's plan, within the foreseeable few years, the Navy will maintain at least two large fleets. One is responsible for the safety of waterways east of Hainan Island and the southeastern coastal areas of the mainland, and the other is to be deployed on the Indochina Peninsula. In the southeast, maintain the safety of this sea area including the base camp and Beibu Gulf. The cost of supporting such two fleets will definitely far exceed the level of military expenditures of supporting two army divisions. At that time, the competition between the army and the navy for internal resources will probably be unavoidable.
Of course, Ruan Jinggui, who is still in the immigration inspection period, does not know about these things. In his opinion, the existing shipping power of the Haihan people is already amazing. The two Chinese-style sailing ships that are docking at the dock are placed in the Annan coastal area. It is definitely a first-class ship. But as far as he knew, there were many warships much larger than this ship docked at the Haihan Victory Port military dock. Even the Portuguese, who initially provided military assistance to the Hue court, seemed to have fewer ships than the Haihan people.
In order to obtain sufficient lighting, in addition to street lamps, several large fires were built with dry firewood on the shore. Although Ruan Jinggui was still far away from the fire, his face was still heated by the scorching air.
The sailor on the bow threw a rope as thick as an arm to the shore. The workers on the dock caught the rope and fixed it to the pig iron cable piles buried on the shore. Several laborers pushed a special cargo ship ramp. There are wooden wheels that can be fixed at the bottom of this ramp. The ladder is three meters wide and has a gentle slope shape. There is a movable flap at the high end, which can be directly connected to the ship's side. It is very suitable for ships with relatively tall hulls to be used ashore. This kind of gangway has a certain load-bearing capacity, and it is faster and more convenient than the traditional method of building a springboard whether unloading cargo or disembarking people.
Several crew members stood on the side of the ship with torches to illuminate the gangway, and then the passengers began to disembark from the ship one after another. Most of the immigrants who arrived at the port were those who voluntarily followed the Haihan immigration ship to settle in Sanya. The two ships carried more than 500 people in total, and the ships were also packed to the brim.
Under the instruction of the immigration cadres, the Ruan brothers each held a tin trumpet and shouted in South Vietnamese dialect to direct the immigrants who arrived on the shore to advance to the designated area to gather and wait. Of course, at times like this, there will always be some people who make their own decisions, but under the double siege of the Haihan police and militia, the only thing such people can get is a stick clamped between their head and head.
Ruan Jinggui had no reaction to this scene. He did not care that these compatriots were beaten by naturalized people. In his opinion, for some untouchables who did not obey orders, sticks were the most effective way to teach them to obey the rules—— Although he had only been brainwashed here for a few days, Ruan Jinggui had gradually begun to become intolerant of undisciplined personal behavior.
Ruan Wenwen's reaction was more direct than his, perhaps because he had stayed in a military camp. When Ruan Wenwen saw those guys who disobeyed orders and started to wander around freely after getting off the boat, he often resorted to fists and kicks. In such a way that the policeman next to him had to stop his violence first. However, the people who were beaten did not dare to resist in this unfamiliar environment. After being beaten, they returned to the queue and followed the instructions of the experienced drivers to line up and move towards the designated gathering area.
It took about ten minutes for the civilians on the ship to finally land. Just as Ruan Jinggui breathed a sigh of relief, a new figure appeared on the movable gangway. But the people who appeared this time were all wearing shackles and handcuffs, and they made a clanging sound when they took every step. It was obvious that these were South Vietnamese soldiers who were captured in the Battle of Hue.
In this battle of Hue, the militia captured thousands of people, a considerable number of whom were from the Leading Party who surrendered in advance. These people were released through an agreement with North Vietnam after the war. Another part of the soldiers captured during the siege were shipped back to Sanya by ship as part of the prisoner of war debt settlement agreement.
(End of chapter)