Chapter 310 Industrial Urbanization

Chapter 310 Industrial Urbanization

Chapter 310 Industrial Urbanization

Time flies.

Amidst all the turmoil, time came to early November 2028.

Northeast of Hongsavadi in Southeast Asia, that is, the Taunggyi Basin in the Chanbong Plateau, 35 kilometers northwest of the edge of the basin.

A huge transport airship unloaded a large amount of supplies onto an open space on the ground.

This is a small plateau located in the mountains, with an area of ​​about 0.5 square kilometers. It was originally a residential area of ​​a local small mountain village, but is now contracted by Zijin Mining.

To be precise, it is a mining company jointly established by Zijin Mining and the local area: Donggyi Mercury Mine Company.

In September, Hongsavady joined the new industrial complex and became a first-level member country, at the cost of fully opening up mining, infrastructure services, communications and markets to Serbia.

Zijin Mining has leased the geomineral survey airship developed by Blue Whale Airship in June this year. Zijin Mining has great interest in the Chanbang Plateau, whose mineralization conditions are similar to those of the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau.

Maybe it's luck.

It may also be that the history of mineral exploration in Hongsavadi is too short, coupled with long-term internal chaos, resulting in many minerals buried at a depth of more than 20 meters not being explored locally.

The exploration airship leased by Zijin Mining discovered a cinnabar mine with a burial depth of about 50 to 80 meters in the mountains on the edge of the Dongzhi Basin on the Chanbang Plateau after only one flight.

After more than half a month of drilling, they were able to basically confirm that part of the cinnabar mine's reserves, in the area that has been explored, contains about 7 tons of mercury.

Moreover, according to the remote sensing data from the exploration airship, this is a mineralization belt that stretches for hundreds of kilometers.

Its prospective reserves of mercury are estimated to be between 20 and 40 tons.

From the drilled rock layers, it was discovered that the mine contained a very high cinnabar content, making it a definitely rich mine.

Therefore, Zijin Mining rapidly increased its investment.

On the one hand, a joint mining enterprise was established with the local people in Hongsavadi.

On the other hand, the company used the mining rights of this mine as collateral to borrow 50 billion yuan in special funds from domestic banks.

In fact, in order to suppress the rapid appreciation of the Chinese yuan, the country has recently started printing money at full capacity. 90% of these foreign projects are invested through loans.

Including Hailufeng Company, in order to further expand its overseas industrial layout, it borrowed about 2000 billion yuan from the four major banks and several local banks in September this year.

This crazy injection of money has indeed suppressed the further appreciation of the Huayuan. Currently, the Huayuan has become the largest foreign currency in Southeast Asia.

As for the exchange rate against US dollars, it is still around 3.5.

The reason for this situation is not that the Huayuan has actively appreciated against the US dollar, but that the US dollar has been depreciating wildly over the past six months.

So it looks like the Huayuan is appreciating.

However, the Southeast Asian region has already completed the replacement of foreign currencies. In addition, many wealthy Chinese in Southeast Asia have converted their assets into Huayuan. In order to cope with the economic crisis, food crisis, and ecological crisis, various parts of Southeast Asia have allowed the Huayuan to circulate freely locally. This has allowed the Huayuan to quickly enter the local market.

For example, in the small town near the Taunggyi Mercury Mine Company, because of the establishment of the Taunggyi Mercury Mine, the local Myanmar currency was quickly squeezed out of the market, and the Chinese Yuan became the mainstream trading currency.

After all, the local currencies of Southeast Asian countries have collapsed, and sometimes their values ​​even drop by hundreds of percent in a single day.

At this time, either using precious metals as currency or using a relatively stable foreign currency as currency are basically the only two options for civilians and businesses.

At a time when major international currencies such as the US dollar, euro, and yen are depreciating wildly, the Chinese yuan, which remains strong, has become the first choice of many people.

The office building of the Taunggyi Mercury Mine is built in a small town called Hebang, while the mining base is located in the mountains to the north, about 11 kilometers away from the town.

Due to the very backward local infrastructure construction, there is only a simple mountain road between Hebang Town and the mining base.

Previously, when explorers entered the mining area to explore and build a mining base, both the staff, various equipment and integrated buildings were transported in by airship.

The local residents were forcibly relocated and settled in the small town.

However, the Dongzhi Mercury Mine did not go to the extreme, but instead provided compensation, such as absorbing all the young and middle-aged labor force in the village into the mining base.

At the same time, housing was arranged for the elderly, children and women, and some women with working ability were arranged to work in the town's affiliated service agencies.

The mine requires a total of about 600 miners, plus 150 service personnel of various types.

Of course, Hebang Town at that time not only had the Taunggyi Mercury Mine Company, but also three other enterprises, namely the mercury metal refinery under the Taunggyi Mercury Mine, the Southern United Mining (a local joint venture of the Mo Nan United Mining), and the Hongsawadi New Resources Group (a joint venture between the China Minmetals Group and the local company).

Among them, the Southern United Mining mainly develops local phosphate mines. The mining area is located on the northeast side of the Hebang mercury mining belt, about 25 kilometers away from Hebang Town, and is also among the mountains.

The phosphate mine was discovered thanks to the exploration airships that Zijin Mining had previously leased. The data from these exploration airships needed to be shared with the Blue Whale airship, so the information about the existence of a large phosphate mine in the area was immediately known to the Blue Whale airship.

Since Zijin Mining had no intention of mining phosphate anyway, it did a favor and agreed to allow United Mining to join the exploration and mining.

However, this phosphate mine is still in the preliminary exploration stage.

The Hongsavadi New Resources Group is also developing mercury mines, but they have contracted the southern part of the Hebang mercury mining belt and are currently in the initial exploration stage.

The entry of the three groups has crowded this small town with a population of only a few thousand people, and has also absorbed all the local young and middle-aged labor force.

This is also a common situation in resource-based cities.

As long as the mineral reserves in the area are still worth mining, the city will basically not decline, but if the resources are exhausted, the town will quickly decline.

Quick installation in office building.

The local heads of the three groups held a meeting today.

A middle-aged man with a square face and dark skin wearing a short-sleeved shirt lit a cigarette and said, "Huh... Lao He, you guys are so fast?"

He Jiaqiang, who was sent from Zijin Mining, took a sip of Pu'er tea and said, "With your relationship with Hailufeng Company, it is estimated that the construction of the mining area will be completed soon."

The square-faced middle-aged man smiled but said nothing. They belonged to United Mining, and the management of United Mining was currently appointed by Hailufeng Company. Therefore, it would be smooth sailing for them to mobilize various resources.

Another bald middle-aged man with a hint of military air poured tea for the two men and said calmly, "Lao He, Mr. Zhou, the safety equipment you want will be in place tomorrow."

"Oh? How many are there?" "100 per family, and each one comes with 500 peanuts." The bald middle-aged man picked up the teacup and took a sip of Pu'er tea.

"Okay, but local documents?"

"It's done. We will issue you gun licenses when the time comes. After all, there are still some unstable factors in the Chanbang Plateau. The mining area and the town cannot rely solely on local people. I propose to set up a joint security company first to jointly deploy defenses for the town and the mining area."

After hearing the bald middle-aged man's proposal, Lao He and Mr. Zhou looked at each other and then nodded.

"can."

"I agree."

After all, if they fight alone, they will easily be defeated one by one, and it is also easy for defense loopholes to appear.

For example, last month, their exploration airship was attacked by a rocket from unknown militants during a survey flight mission over the Chanbang Plateau.

The other side fired five rockets in succession in the mountains and forests.

Fortunately, these airships going abroad were equipped with protective nets woven with silicon carbide nanowires on the outside. The rockets only caused a few pieces of paint to fall off, and did not hit the core airbags and detection equipment.

But this situation also serves as a wake-up call for Seris' overseas companies.

In the past, people had to consider local sentiments, but now there is no need to worry too much. Many overseas mining companies have hired domestic professional security companies, or set up their own security companies to protect these industries.

However, these companies did not go too far and had no intention of interfering in other local affairs. Even if Chinese people committed crimes locally, they would respect local handling, provided that it was reasonable.

However, the local management of the Chinese people now dare not be careless. In order to avoid angering Seres, they often invite relevant domestic departments to send personnel to jointly hear cases related to the Chinese.

Putting down the teacup, Mr. Zhou thought of something: "Lao He, what are the environmental protection standards of your mercury refining plant?"

Lao He replied confidently: "Don't worry! The standards we use are the same as those in China. Besides, the factory is surrounded by mountains, and we will build a buffer zone to avoid polluting the local land and water sources."

"I'm just worried about something going wrong!" Mr. Zhou is very concerned about this matter. After all, he will be stationed here for a long time and needs to eat local food and drink local water. If mercury pollution occurs, he will be in trouble too.

The bald middle-aged man also echoed, "Mr. Zhou's concerns are indeed justified. We will have to eat and drink locally for the next three years. If there is a large-scale mercury pollution, the consequences will be disastrous."

"You two can rest assured. Have you forgotten the new product that Hailufeng Company launched in August?" Lao He talked about another thing.

"August?" Mr. Zhou thought for a while before remembering what the other party was talking about: "Are you talking about the waste of sponge batteries?"

"That's the thing. We purchased a batch of discarded sponges from a heavy metal refining factory in China. This thing has a very good ability to absorb heavy metals and can basically filter out 99% of floating heavy metals."

"So it's this product." The bald middle-aged man also had some information about this.

As sponge batteries have begun to enter the scrap recycling stage, a large number of discarded sponge batteries are generated in the country every year.

The soybean oil and potassium chloride from discarded sponge batteries can be used to refine biodiesel and make fertilizers, but the sponge structure formed by fungi seems a bit wasteful if it is only used for organic fertilizer fermentation.

Therefore, many scientific research institutions are studying the secondary utilization of this fungal sponge structure.

Due to its special sponge structure and its main components being protein and chitin, it can efficiently absorb heavy metals in the environment.

Although water pollution treatment can use special water purifiers made of silicon carbide nanotubes to separate pollutants dissolved in the water.

However, during the refining process, mercury vapor is easily produced. This substance is extremely toxic and will also accumulate in the bodies of surrounding animals and plants, causing genetic toxicity to organisms, leading to developmental problems, deformities, and intellectual impairment in children.

Compared with traditional professional mercury vapor adsorbents, the adsorption effect of fungal sponges is similar, but the cost is very low. By increasing the number of air filtration times, it can ensure that the mercury vapor concentration in factory and mining areas is always within the safe limit.

Mr. Zhou then secretly breathed a sigh of relief: "Since you use this sponge filter, I feel relieved."

After all, the country is very determined to go overseas this time. For industries that will bring negative impacts, the government has specific requirements, which is to reduce the impact as much as possible.

As long as overseas companies can form a strong mass base locally, their position will become very solid.

Including recruiting local employees, many positions can be replaced by machines, so why do factories still insist on using a combination of manpower and machines for production?
The answer is to increase the employed population while draining as much of the local young and middle-aged labor force as possible.

Many people don’t know that industrialization and urbanization are the most effective contraceptives.

Now these overseas companies all have a potential mission, which is to quickly promote local industrialization and urbanization and prevent further expansion of the local population.

To promote local industrialization and urbanization, one of the strategies is naturally to vigorously develop labor-intensive industries, while improving workers' treatment and promoting differentiation in urban and rural incomes.

As long as the income of urban workers is several times that of farmers, the surrounding rural population will naturally flock to the city.

Another thing these overseas companies need to do is to cooperate with the local agricultural system and transform it from the previous small peasant economy consisting of landlord farms and self-employed farmers into complete bankruptcy.

As long as their agricultural production is completely controlled, these areas will never be out of control.

Hailufeng Company's layout in Southeast Asia is to vigorously develop various tropical fruits and cash crops, especially woody cash crops, to become the local agricultural core.

Because after planting woody cash crops, if you want to switch to growing food crops, you can only destroy the forest and open up wasteland, which becomes very difficult. In addition, the cost, plus the huge interest groups formed by planting these cash crops, will frantically prevent others from changing their planting patterns.

As long as Southeast Asia is transformed into an economic model of primary industry, mining, and large-scale characteristic farms, the local area will have no choice but to become a part of the Serbian economic system.

Now these overseas companies are the vanguards in carrying out this task.

In order to attract local people to become urban workers and miners, these overseas companies offer very good wages and benefits, which are basically the same as those of similar workers in China.

For example, ordinary mercury miners have a basic salary of about 7500 yuan per month, plus various subsidies and benefits, this salary is basically more than ten times that of ordinary local farmers.

Under such circumstances, young and middle-aged laborers from surrounding rural areas will inevitably flock here.

In order to further promote the development of local labor-intensive industries, Hailufeng Company even plans to transfer two-thirds of its linen products industry to Southeast Asia.

After all, the wool comes from the sheep.

Now that the country has obtained part of the international coinage rights, there is no need to worry about the risk of backlash from industrial transfer.

(End of this chapter)