Chapter 1374 Cadres Going North
"If we sail one day further, we will reach the border of Shandong!" The captain pointed to the looming outline of the land on the sea level to the west: "When we brought Shandong refugees from the north to the south, it was Haizhou Prefecture over there."
After the Denglai Rebellion broke out that year, a large number of war refugees quickly appeared in Shandong. One of the escape routes for these refugees was from the Shandong Peninsula southward into Jiangsu. At that time, Haihan happened to have opened up the key channel of the Fujian Strait. With the help of Xu Xinsu, the government organized Fujian maritime merchants to go north to Jiangsu and Shandong, recruited a large number of Shandong people who had fled to the local areas, and transported them to Haihan in the south. resettlement within the control area.
Although the voyage from Shandong to the south is long, over the past few years, Haihan has accepted more than 10,000 refugees from Shandong, becoming an important part of the immigrants in this emerging country. For many people who have become Haihan citizens, Haizhou Prefecture, which borders Shandong, can be said to be a place of extraordinary significance, symbolizing the beginning of their new life. Many members of this passenger ship carrying a team of cadres heading north boarded the ship from here and left Ming Dynasty a few years ago and fell into the arms of Haihan. Returning here after a long time will naturally lead to many emotions.
Many of them were just refugees with no money or even a livelihood when they left here. Just to have a mouthful of hot food to survive, they defected to the Haihan people they knew nothing about. But when they returned to their hometown, they were like Returning home in glory. Although Haihan is not a big country, they are now genuine Haihan officials. This is a scene that they could not have imagined when they left in despair.
"Can we stay in Haizhou for a day or two? I want to see the place where I lived." Someone asked the captain.
The captain shook his head with embarrassment and said: "I can't decide this kind of thing. The superiors have given orders to sail directly to Shandong. If there are no special matters, the fleet will not dock again in the middle."
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There are no coastal strongholds under the control of Haihan in the sea area between Shandong and Zhejiang. Therefore, in order to avoid unnecessary complications, passenger ships transporting cadre teams heading north will definitely not dock at Daming ports on the way. This is an order issued directly by the Executive Committee to the Ministry of Transport. The captain is just a small person who takes orders from the Department of Shipping. Naturally, he does not dare to disobey orders from above. Even if the passengers on this ship are all officials, big and small, compared to the Executive Committee The authority is still far behind.
Those officials who had had a difficult experience in Haizhou Prefecture could not help but sigh again. Of course, they had no right to command the captain to change the sailing route. They could only look at the outline of the mainland from a distance and miss the days when they were in trouble.
Of course, not all officials on board are from the north. People from the south have a different feeling about this place. They are more curious and wary of the unfamiliar environment. In particular, some people with special backgrounds are particularly interested in this period of history that the outside world does not know much about.
Liu Shang is a person with this mentality. His background is different from everyone on the ship. As a member of the Ming Dynasty, he is very interested in how Haihan poached in the Ming Dynasty to strengthen himself. He had also heard about the immigration fleet that brought back a large number of immigrants from Shandong back then. If he was lucky enough to be here, he naturally wanted to learn more about it.
Because the relevant departments paid special attention to the issue of their origin when selecting cadres to go north, there were quite a few people on this ship who had experienced this period of history. After setting off from Zhoushan, Zhejiang, Liu Shang didn't waste too much time and asked a lot about The details of Haihan’s original recruitment of immigrants here.
Liu Shang has been involved in Haihan's bureaucracy for some time. During this period, he has had many interactions with Haihan's immigration department as a new immigrant and an official. He can understand Haihan's intentions as soon as he hears many of the measures. There is no need for the person involved to explain it slowly.
In the past, Liu Shang only knew that Haihan had been introducing immigrants from the Ming Dynasty on a large scale, as far as the areas around the Yellow and Bohai Seas, but he did not know much about the specific operating methods. Now after listening to the person involved, I realized that Haihan was so determined to introduce immigrants that he even spent huge sums of money to organize an immigration fleet and travel thousands of miles away from Hainan Island to recruit homeless war refugees.
To organize a large-scale population migration over such a long distance, the freight and food input will inevitably be astronomical. Even the Ming Dynasty may not be able to afford such expenses, otherwise there would be tens of thousands of refugees stranded. He was near Haizhou Prefecture and could not get resettlement from the government for a long time. The cost for Haihan to cross such a spatial distance and introduce refugees fleeing from Shandong was definitely much greater than the Ming Dynasty's expenditure for resettling refugees internally, but in the end these measures were still persisted over the years, and they were also In exchange for a large number of loyal subjects who devoted themselves to the country of Haihan after being rescued by Haihan at the most difficult moment. Some of the best among them were on the ship heading north at this time.
If Liu Shang had not personally lived in the Haihan Kingdom for a period of time, it would be difficult to understand why the Haihan people would do such a thing. But now he knows that population means many things to Haihan, not only the improvement of social productivity, but also that Haihan's vast control area requires a large number of immigrants to develop and operate.
Liu Shang had seen the annual territorial changes of Haihan in the library. The speed of this country's external expansion was undoubtedly very alarming, but they had always controlled the scope at the edge of the Ming Dynasty and tried their best to avoid obvious territorial disputes with the Ming Dynasty. Therefore, the world does not know how big the country of Haihan is. Even intelligence personnel like Liu Shang always thought that Haihan only occupied Hainan Island, Taiwan Island, Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian, and Just some islands off the coast of Zhejiang.
But the fact is not that simple. The Leizhou Peninsula, which is only separated from Hainan Island by a strait, the Pearl River Basin, which controls the economic lifeline of Guangdong and Guangxi, the Fujian Strait, which is the main maritime transportation route between the north and the south, and the Hangzhou Bay area, the richest area in the south of the Yangtze River. These are the richest in the south, and they are important to them. The areas most dependent on shipping are more or less under the control of Haihan. Hainan and Taiwan, the two large islands alone, officially claim to be enough to support hundreds of thousands of immigrants.
And this is only the area occupied by Haihan along the coast of the Ming Dynasty. In fact, in the Nanhai area south of Hainan Island, the scale of the overseas enclaves occupied by Haihan is no smaller than that in the north. There are also a large number of overseas colonies that urgently need to introduce immigrants for development. .
For Haihan, no matter how much money is spent on immigration matters, these expenses can be earned back exponentially through later operations. The various high-priced industrial products dumped from Haihan to the Ming Dynasty and other surrounding countries were almost all produced by the labor of these immigrants. It is not an exaggeration to say that immigrants formed the economic foundation of Haihan State. There are immigrants from various countries and races in Haihan Kingdom, but among them the largest proportion and the fastest to adapt to the social environment are the Han immigrants from the Ming Dynasty. Liu Shang himself had personal experience. After entering Haihan, his adaptation period was very short, and he realized that Haihan society had many similarities with Ming Dynasty. In terms of culture, they were of the same origin, and their languages were basically the same. It can be said that introducing Ming Han immigrants is the most convenient option for Haihan. This is probably one of the main reasons why Haihan is willing to invest heavily in this aspect.
"So is the Ministry of Civil Affairs still continuing to recruit immigrants from Shandong?" Liu Shang asked his interlocutor while sorting out his thoughts.
The person who told him how he organized immigrants from Shandong and Jiangsu to move south was Su Yu, a naturalized civil affairs cadre who was also a native of Shandong and one of the refugees recruited by Haihan. Su Yu has been a member of the Haihan nationality for much longer than Liu Shang, and naturally has a much clearer understanding of the immigration situation than Liu Shang. He knows that Liu Shang's official identity is an officer of the Youth League, so he has no intention of hiding anything about him. .
"Of course we are recruiting. Work in this area has never stopped." Su Yu admitted frankly: "It's just that after the war in Shandong ended, refugees gradually returned to their hometown from other places. We want to go south again like before. It is not that easy to transport two to three thousand or more immigrants back. In the past six months, the focus of immigration has shifted to Liaodong. There are still tens of thousands of Han people on Phi Island waiting for us to rescue them and transfer them to the south. It will take up most of the existing transportation capacity.”
"Pi Island..." This place name is still a bit unfamiliar to Liu Shang, who has been living in the south. He only recently learned that this overseas enclave that originally belonged to the Ming Dynasty has joined forces with Haihan, not only in terms of immigration, but more importantly, in the military aspect, it has also chosen to form an alliance with Haihan to jointly fight against the invasion of the Liaodong area outside the customs. Later Jin Dynasty.
If it were in the past, Liu Shang would definitely hate this kind of behavior that is tantamount to treason, and would like to eat his flesh and sleep on his skin before he can die. However, since his colleagues and comrades on Hainan Island died unexpectedly, many of his thoughts have also changed. is gradually changing. The officials of Pidao would make the decision to cooperate with Haihan. They must have many helplessness and cannot rely on Daming to solve the problem. Since Pidao agreed to Haihan's recruitment of immigrants, it probably means that the local living conditions are no longer sustainable.
It is not difficult for Liu Shang to make some speculations about what kind of follow-up development the local cooperation with Haihan will have. Officials from Fujian and Guangzhou provinces have many cooperations with Haihan, including economic and military affairs, and the scale of cooperation between the two parties has expanded year by year. The depth and breadth are also increasing. The interest entanglement between these regions and Haihan is too deep, and it is unlikely that they will take the initiative to stand against Haihan. As an overseas enclave of the Ming Dynasty, Pidao located in Liaodong will definitely rely on Haihan similar to the Fuguang area once it cooperates with Haihan, and will even make more compromises with Haihan due to the scarcity of materials. From now on, it is unclear whether the local area will follow the command of Haihan or the Ming court.
Su Yu didn't know what the situation was like on Pi Island and couldn't provide Liu Shang with any more relevant information. But even so, Liu Shang's half-guessing had guessed some facts, but he couldn't verify them yet.
Liu Shang remembered that when he stopped in Zhoushan, he saw many port projects under construction there, and immediately asked: "Is it likely that many of these Han people brought out from Liaodong will settle down in Zhoushan, Zhejiang?"
Su Wei smiled and said: "It is inevitable that immigrants transported back from the north will be deducted along the way. But it is actually not bad in Zhoushan. Zhejiang is a province with a large population. As long as more money is spent on publicity work, it will be the same. It can also absorb many skilled immigrants.”
Liu Shang understands the meaning of the so-called "skilled immigration". In fact, his own situation can also be classified into the category of "skilled immigration". He was originally recruited by the Propaganda Department and quickly qualified for naturalization because of his storytelling skills. Although it was just a job of selling words, he was regarded as a professional talent in Haihan. Once you are introduced to Haihan as a "skilled immigrant", generally speaking, the treatment will be greatly improved compared to before. Therefore, there are indeed many craftsmen in the Ming Dynasty who choose to immigrate to Haihan under the temptation of large sums of money and generous benefits. .
Immigrants transported from Liaodong to the south will definitely be screened first when they arrive in Zhejiang, and some will be retained locally before continuing to be sent south. However, the civil affairs department generally has clear requirements on the proportion of immigrants detained by the colonies along the way, so in the end a considerable proportion of immigrants will be transported back to Hainan Island for unified resettlement.
"It seems that in less than two years, there will be a group of officials with northern accents appearing in various yamen." Liu Shang couldn't help but sigh when he thought of this.
Su Yu responded: "This is basically a sure thing. The superiors still have a lot of ideas for the Liaodong region. They will definitely train a group of cadres from the local area. It will be much easier to send them back to carry out work in the future."
Liu Shangxin said, aren't you just playing such a role now? You were born in Shandong, wandered around Haihan, got an official position, and then came back all the way, but now you are working for Ming Dynasty instead of Ming Dynasty. It’s just Haihan. Of course, it is absolutely impossible for an ordinary person like Su Yu, who did not even have any honors in the Ming Dynasty, to enter the yamen and work as an official. This is only possible in emerging cities like Haihan, which have extremely low thresholds for officials to take up posts. Country, people like Su Yu will get the opportunity to become officials.
Liu Shang actually couldn't tell whether introducing these ordinary people to serve as officials would be good or bad for the development of the country. The platform he stood on was not that high, and his perspective could not see the impact it would have on social development. But the Haihan people are obviously good at this and can train ordinary people to quickly adapt to work in this field. This is probably one of the reasons why Haihan has developed so fast.
(End of chapter)