The Northeast Operational Plan formulated by the Operations Department of the Privy Council of the Army was to gather 100,000 troops with cavalry as the absolute main force and infantry artillery as a supplement to wipe out all kinds of chaotic alien races entrenched in the Northeast in one fell swoop.

These alien races, not only including tribes such as the Chahar tribe, but also other chaotic tribes and natives are all within the scope of the cleanup.

You know, when the time comes, there will be a large number of immigrants organized by the Immigration and Reclamation Department of the Ministry of Agriculture, which will not expel those alien races quickly, how can the people of the empire immigrate in the Northeast and develop the Northeast?

As for the policies of integration and co-optation that were used more in previous years, they have now been officially abandoned by the empire.

When the strength of the empire is insufficient, it is necessary to win over, and then divide and co-opt, but when the strength of the empire is enough, then these policies can be officially announced to withdraw from the stage of history.

The population of the empire is growing, and more and more land is needed to feed the people of the empire!

Therefore, the foreign expansion policy of the empire in recent years has never been to conquer foreign races and integrate them into the empire, but to simply occupy land and then emigrate!

Therefore, in the process of external expansion, foreign races will not be included in the rule of the empire!

Well, there are exceptions, and that is that some alien women who fit the aesthetics of the subjects of the empire can become subjects of the empire.

Nowadays, the military of the empire, whether it is the army or the navy, has successively appeared propaganda slogans such as "fight for the living space of the empire" and "fight for the land of the people of the empire".

And the Son of Heaven also mentioned the empire's global strategic goal in the next hundred years on a private occasion, which is definitely the greatest goal in the history of mankind that has never been seen before or since:

One Earth, One Empire!

Therefore, the foreign expansion policy of the empire cannot be simply understood as obtaining economic benefits, nor can it be simply understood as conquest of enemies and the like, and it is even different from traditional colonization.

The core of the Empire's policy of foreign expansion has been one from the beginning, and for a long time to come, and that is to acquire more land to feed more of the Empire's subjects!

This was decided on the basis that there were too many empires, and that the population was growing more and more.

Different from the foreign colonization activities of contemporary European countries, colonization is for the purpose of obtaining more economic benefits.

The empire is just expanding very purely for the sake of land, and as for the so-called economic interests, can gold and silver be eaten?

Based on this, the empire expanded in the north, in the west, or in overseas colonization, mainly by occupying land and then immigrating.

And the Northeast region is the next important expansion direction of the empire!

Unlike the grasslands, which can only be used for grazing and are covered with ice and snow further north, the Northeast is a plain area, although it is also cold.

The vast plains of the Northeast are very suitable for agriculture, and if they can be completely captured and developed, then the Northeast will become the new granary of the Empire.

And for this, Li Xuan firmly believes, because the Northeast in the future is a very important granary in the Chinese region.

In addition to the granary, Li Xuan also knew that the Northeast region was very rich in mineral resources, including iron ore, coal mines and various other minerals, which were very used to develop heavy industry.

This is also a successful experience that has been proven in later generations, and Li Xuan has no reason not to follow suit.

However, if you want to develop the Northeast, there are still a lot of problems now, first of all, strictly speaking, except for a few areas in western Liaoning, most of the other areas are still wild areas, and there are no mature infrastructure, and even the population is not much.

Although the empire has continued to migrate to the northeast for more than ten years, the local population is not large, and most of them are still concentrated in the two provinces of western and eastern Liaoning, and the northerner provinces of Northeast China now have a total population of only more than 300,000, which is not even as good as a county in the south of the Yangtze River.

In addition, there are a large number of alien races entrenched in the area, and these alien races are not easy to get along with, and if you don't clean up these alien races, there is no way to carry out large-scale migration, let alone large-scale development.

This is also the reason why Li Xuan asked the army to formulate relevant plans to completely pacify the northeast.

To this end, the army formulated a large-scale battle plan with a mobilization of more than 100,000 troops, and the scope of the operation included the traditional Liaohetao area, as well as other northeast regions, and the combat targets included not only the Mongol tribes such as the Chahar tribe, but also many local natives, such as the famous Jurchen tribes in later generations.

The army's plan was very simple, that is, with absolute superiority in troops and firepower, and even mobility, directly pushed flat, and then swept across the entire northeast region, cleared the local aliens, established a safe zone, let the subsequent immigrants follow, and then built cities and roads, developed farmland, and finally completely incorporated these places into the rule of the empire.

In order to achieve this goal, the Imperial Army is ready to draw a large number of elite cavalry!

It is worth noting that these elite cavalry were prepared to be drawn from the Hetao area.

There is no way, at present, most of the elite cavalry in the Tang Empire is actually concentrated on the side of the Ninth Army, although there are also cavalry in the Northeast and other regions, but there are not many of them, and the elite degree cannot be compared with the cavalry of the Ninth Army.

On the army side, it plans to concentrate at least 50,000 cavalry, and at least 20,000 cavalry in the Hetao area will be sent to participate in the battle, plus no less than 50,000 main infantry artillery to cooperate, so as to strive to defeat the northeast region in a battle.

Regarding the plan proposed by the army, Li Xuan did not interfere too much, but simply approved it.

Anyway, he had already put forward the goal, that is, to completely bring the Northeast under the rule of the empire, and not allow any alien races to be entrenched, as for what plan to use to achieve this goal, it was a matter for the military.

When the news of pacifying the north and recovering the Hetao and Fengzhou River spread throughout the empire with the report of the Tang Dynasty, Chen Lifu, who was far away in Shanghai, also got the news.

As the prefect of Songjiang Prefecture, he contacted the business community in Shanghai and held a celebration dinner.

What is the purpose of fundraising, it is naturally used to reward military officers and soldiers.

It's just that although it was a fundraising dinner held to pacify the north, the more than 50,000 yuan raised was not handed over to the army in charge of the north, but to the navy as soon as it changed hands.

Why, because this money is nominally a support fund from the Songjiang Prefecture to the newly commissioned 800-ton cruiser Matsue on the navy, but in fact, it is still a series of actions by Shanghai to thank or encourage the navy in Fuso.

Why thanks?

With the navy, he conquered several places along the coast of Fuso, and at the same time made frequent sorties, and obtained the right to mine many minerals for the empire.

The navy is an army, and when it obtains these minerals, it will naturally not dig them by itself, but will take domestic industrial and commercial enterprises to open mines, although most of them are eaten by enterprises directly under the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises.

However, if you have to pay for the equipment to open the mine, other ordinary businessmen can still benefit from the development of many minerals in Fuso.

As representatives of the domestic industrial and commercial circles, Shanghai's industrial and commercial circles naturally reciprocated the favor, and then the opportunity for the navy to serve the new generation of cruiser Songjiang sent the navy more than 50,000 yuan to support the army.

Although the money is not much, it shows an attitude, that is, the domestic business community stands with the navy.

Or rather, to stand with the Navy that can bring you and them benefits.

And this money is only the beginning, many large enterprises in Shanghai have already joined forces, ready to lobby the navy to continue to expand operations in the Fuso area.

Although Fuso is only a small place, it still has a population of millions and many gold and silver mines, and there is not a small amount of money that can be earned from this fight.

In fact, they are ready to lobby not only the navy, but also the army, but the goal of lobbying the army is not to let them fight Fusang or Nanyang or anything, but to let the army send troops to Annam and occupy the Quang Ninh area.

Why?

Because the merchants found that there is a super-large, and very easy to mine open-pit coal mine, the quality of the coal here is very high, and there is anthracite, the key is that the reserves are super large.

This attracted the attention of the Empire's industry and commerce!

In recent years, the scale of the application of the empire's steam engine has increased year by year, at first it was only used in mining areas, and then it was gradually applied to major factories and docks, although the steam engines used today are low-pressure steam engines, and they cannot be used as transportation power on warships or trains.

However, the application in industry also made the empire officially enter the steam age, and the more steam engines, the demand for coal mines naturally increased.

In addition, steelmaking also requires a large amount of coal mines.

There is also a larger civilian market!

Now in the empire, it is rumored that the honeycomb coal stove spread from the palace has swept the country.

The combination of civil and industrial uses led to the increasing demand for coal in the empire, and in this case, almost the whole country was engaged in the exploration and development of coal mines.

Nowadays, many coal mines in China have begun to be mined, such as Tangshan in Tianjin, some areas in Shanxi, and Pingxiang Coal Mine in Jiangxi, all of which have been mined one after another.

But the above-mentioned coal mines, more or less of poor quality, basically do not have anthracite.

However, the merchants found in Quang Ninh, Annam, that there was a local coal mine with huge reserves, and this coal mine even produced the best anthracite, which made the merchants of the empire hungry to death.

Although at present, the merchants of the empire have also begun to mine coal in the local area through various means, but after all, it is not their own territory, and it is very troublesome to mine, and they also have to deal with the local natives.

In this case, the merchants desperately hoped that the empire would take down this place!

As long as it is the territory of the Empire, it is easier and safer for them to be mined.

However, this is just the idea of the merchants, whether to fight Annam or not, this needs to be considered by the top of the empire from the whole situation.

At least so far, the empire has no plans to march into the Nanyang Peninsula on a large scale, and the broken place is not easy to fight, Rao is the elite of the Tang Army, but fighting in that kind of broken place will also face great trouble.