"But, Your Majesty, where are we going to raise these tens of thousands of taels of silver? You know, we still have a lot of railways to build in the Guannai, which is simply not something our national strength can afford! ”

Rong Hong said urgently. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 ｉｎfo

"There's no other way,"

Guo Ye replied: "Chunfu, we can let Westerners invest in other railways, because the economy is rich in the Guannai, and the construction of railways, foreigners can invest in income in the fastest time, and foreigners are naturally willing to invest money, but these three railways may not be able to recover the benefits from himself in the next hundred years, and the gains outweigh the losses, and Westerners will never give us money to do good deeds, and now we can only build them ourselves, not for one year, two years, two years, then three years, five years, or even ten years, within ten years, We are still sure of building these three railways, isn't it 10 million taels of silver a year? ”

Zhang Chunping replied: "Your Majesty, since it is a plan, that is to say, it must be at least a plan of more than ten years, we can't afford to build it now, it doesn't mean that we can't afford to build it in the future, but when we have the money to do it, it's too late, the minister thinks that we can carry out the preliminary survey work first, and once the time is ripe, we will immediately start to build, and we will not delay!" ”

Guo Ye nodded and replied: "That's the truth, and even if it is three railways, there will be a sequence, the railway from Jiangbei to the west all the way to Urumqi must start construction as soon as possible, at least we can take the lead in the next few years to build the railway from Haizhou to Xi'an, this railway across Shaanxi, Henan, Anhui, Jiangsu, densely populated, will soon produce benefits, once the benefits are generated, all the railway income will be invested in the railway from Xi'an to Lanzhou and even Urumqi, to maintain the road; As for the railways on the Mongolian Plateau, we can build them from Datong to Suiyuan for the time being, and then wait until our domestic economy recovers. As for the third railway, it is still under the control of the Manchu court outside the Guan, so let's let it go for the time being, and let's talk about it later......"

Gao Qi on the side pursed his lips and replied: "Your Majesty, otherwise, I will still lead two divisions out of Shanhaiguan and take the entire customs back in one go, just rely on the waste of the imperial court, I can beat them all down with one division......"

Guo Ye glared at Gao Qi, and said angrily: "You shut up for me!" ”

Gao Qi stopped talking stupidly, picked up a glass of wine, and drank it all!

The corners of Rong Hong's mouth twitched: "Your Majesty, according to what I mean, I hope to be able to build the railway of the six coastal provinces in the east of Shandong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian and Guangdong......

Guo Ye said in a deep voice: "Chunfu, what you said is not unreasonable, in fact, this is not a conflict, of course the eastern railway plan is our priority development, didn't Chunping say it?" We can prepare for the railway plan in the border area in advance, these three railways are inaccessible and desolate areas, and it is not so simple to complete the survey.

Guo Ye continued: "Chunping, according to your original plan, the north-south direction to build the Beijing-Shanghai line railway and the Beijing-Guangzhou line railway, first connect all the prosperous areas in the east, in addition to these two, and then there is the line from Kunming to Fuzhou via Changsha, and from Haizhou to Xi'an, from Yongping to Datong to Baotou line, two vertical and three horizontal, together more than 20,000 miles, the first thing the Ministry of Public Transport needs to do is to complete the 20,000 miles of railway for me within five years!" ”

"Your Majesty, rest assured, this is already in my plan!"

Zhang Chunping replied confidently.

Guo Ye nodded, and then said: "The next thing is to deal with the general railway plan of Western countries, first of all, I want to think about the railway loans initiated by Western countries, hoping to borrow no less than 10 million pounds of loans from them in one go to support our road construction; Second, in addition to the railways in Zhili and Shandong, the railways in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Henan, Anhui, Sichuan, and Huguang provinces can be considered to be handed over to road construction companies in various countries for investment and construction. Chunping, my plan, is in the next 20 years, to build no less than 200,000 miles of railways, branch lines to the people and foreigners to do, the right to operate to them, no matter how they toss, these railways are still in our hands after all, no one can take away, can only stay in the Chinese Empire, in this way, we can concentrate on building trunk railways, this is our priority development of railways! ”

Guo Songtao smiled bitterly, the total cost of the 200,000-mile railway project will definitely not be less than 2 billion taels of silver, even if it is 20 years, it will be evenly distributed to each year, there will be 100 million taels of silver, which will exceed the total financial income of the current year, even if there is a pressure on the West and the people to share the funds, it is also a huge burden!

"Your Majesty, this plan is too big, can we really digest it? Two billion taels of silver, one hundred million taels of silver a year......"

Guo Ye replied: "It's very simple, the government invested a total of 200 million taels of silver in the first ten years, a total of 500 million taels of silver in the next ten years, and the remaining funds have borrowed 500 million taels of silver from various countries, and we have shared 800 million taels in the people. Don't worry, as long as we can afford it, whether it's the British or the French, they're willing to lend us money......"

Zhang Chunping said in a deep voice: "In this case, then we concentrate manpower and material resources to complete the line from Beijing to Shanghai within five years, as well as the railway network from Shandong Zhili, the line from Yongping to Datong, and other lines are to rely on the funds recovered from these railway operations to invest again, in addition, we can also prepare for the establishment of an exchange like the United States, and raise funds for railway construction from the people. ”

Guo Ye said with a smile: "Chunfu is already planning the exchange, so he must have almost prepared, right?" As for the line from Yongping to Datong, all of them were handed over to the Jin merchants, but we brought them 100,000 free labor in Japan in one go, and the Yongda line was all handed over to Qiao Zhiyong to raise money, and we provided them with 80,000 laborers in exchange, and after it was built, they would benefit the most, presumably they would not be so short-sighted! ”

(To be continued.) )