These voices of dissatisfaction and doubts from the grassroots have made the Executive Committee realize that the current Cross Group is not monolithic, and there are still big differences between the ideas of some members and the Executive Committee. The main reason for this ideological difference is the difference in the personal pursuit of the members, the executive committee wants to be the king of the hegemony, the name of the eternal, and there is no lack of people who are rich and peaceful, thinking that since they have gained a firm foothold, it is not time to start thinking about enjoying life. Under such circumstances, if the Executive Committee wants to increase its collective cohesion, it must firmly control the position of public opinion in its own hands.

Now, handing over the propaganda department to the Ministry of Information Industry is obviously not satisfactory to the Executive Committee. Meng He, the head of the Ministry of Information Industry, is himself an otaku and is not very sensitive to politics, and he has not done a good job in attaching importance to and guiding the work of public opinion, so it seems that the executive committee has to take back the power in charge and turn the propaganda department into an organ directly under the executive committee.

After lunch, after a short break, the year-end summary report will continue. The heads of various departments came to the stage one after another and made work reports on the state of the departments in the past six months since the crossing.

After the report of the head of the department is completed, the head of each overseas unit will come to the stage to make a report. Although only the Heitu Port is relatively large among the three overseas units at present, the importance of the Yaya Office and the Guangzhou Office is no less than that of the Heitu Port. In particular, the Guangzhou Office has now begun to catch up and become the main channel for the procurement and sale of materials through the group.

Schneider, like Tao Donglai, also stepped on the podium twice in one day, once on behalf of the Ministry of Finance and once on behalf of the Guangzhou Office. Schneider pointed out in the "Report on the Work of the Guangzhou Office" that although the current migration sent by the Guangzhou Office to Shengli Port accounts for only 5%-8% of the total inflow of migrants, the literacy rate of this group of people is as high as 57%, far exceeding the current average literacy rate of naturalized residents. The mainland merchants introduced by the CJO have accounted for 85% of the total number of foreign merchants in Shengli Port, and the commodities sold to the mainland account for more than 70% of the total exports of the Group.

Compared with such an important role, the current staffing of the Guangzhou Office is still insufficient, especially the number of business personnel is simply pitiful. This drawback is particularly prominent in the recent influx of businessmen, who are basically the only two people in the entire Guangzhou Office who can take on the task of business negotiations, while other tasks such as personnel contact, cargo inventory, and material delivery lack sufficient manpower. Although the Executive Committee has specially sent a second-echelon team to enrich the staffing of the Guangzhou Office, it is inconvenient for the members to do some clumsy work or errands, and the new system of overseas units has extremely strict requirements for external personnel, and those who want to hire people from Guangzhou are also faced with policy restrictions.

In order to avoid being overly informed by the outside world and to ensure the safety of the Guangzhou Office and the shipping routes between the two places, the Executive Committee stipulates that the external personnel of the overseas units can only engage in peripheral work, and are not allowed to have access to information on financial delivery, personnel arrangements, shipping transactions, etc. At present, the value of the goods carried by the merchant ships between the two places is quite high, and some of the cargo ships are also carrying smuggled salt, munitions, and other materials. Moreover, there are pirate gangs in the waters of the Pearl River estuary, and they have to be careful that they send ships to rob merchant ships between the two places at sea after obtaining some important information.

This strict personnel control must continue at least until there is a regular escort of armed sailing ships between the two places, or until the waters of the Pearl River estuary are cleared by the crossing group to ensure that there are no pirates in the vicinity. In short, either way, there is little chance of achieving it in the short term. Therefore, the only way to solve the staffing problem of the Guangzhou Office is to rely on the base camp to continue to replenish manpower.

Schneider also blew the wind for the Military Police Department by the way, and briefly mentioned the necessity of setting up an island stronghold at the mouth of the Pearl River to control the waters of the Pearl River Estuary. As an intelligence outpost of the crossing group, the Guangzhou Office has collected a lot of information about pirate gangs in the waters of the Pearl River Estuary through various channels, and provided it to the Military Police Department as a reference for future operations. In the past two months, Yu Yao and Xiao Liang, two people stationed in the Guangzhou Office, have taken several boats to inspect the situation of the Wanshan Islands, especially Dawanshan Island and Baili Island, which are the main choices, and have even landed on the islands several times to conduct on-the-spot investigations.

The work report of Heitu Port is more special, divided into two parts: civil affairs and military. As one of the largest overseas offices of the Transit Group, the port of Black Earth not only provided a steady supply of energy to the base camp, but also brought back a large number of North Vietnamese immigrants to enrich the base camp's working population. The various trade agreements reached with the North Vietnamese regime also benefited from the hard work of the Black Earth Port Management Committee in the early stage. At the same time, Heitu Port is also the place with the highest autonomy among the foreign agencies, not only can the local government organize its own immigration and carry out foreign trade, but even the establishment of localized military and police agencies has been approved by the Executive Committee. The Tushan Peninsula base established in Beibu Gulf is currently assigned to the Heitu Port Management Committee for daily management and operation.

The first to make a report was Gu Kai, the leader of the Heitu Port Management Committee. After living abroad for the past few months, Gu Kai is obviously much less bookish than before, and his temperament has become a bit of a leader. However, he did not intend to end his overseas assignment on the occasion of returning to Sanya to report on his work, and he still planned to work there for a full year according to the original plan. In addition, it is said that when Gu Kai returns to Heitu Port this time, he will bring his foreign fiancée Ressa over with him, and this news will probably make the executive committee happier than bringing back a few boatloads of coal from Heitu Port.

Gu Kai pointed out in the report that the current resident population of Heitu Port has reached about 3,500, of which more than 90% are registered and naturalized, and the rest are immigrants and a small number of prisoners who are still in the inspection period. More than 2,000 of the naturalized workers are engaged in coal mining or coal-related industries, but the cultivation of agricultural products, fishing, shipbuilding, and the development of maritime trade in North Vietnam and Lien Chau are also industries that the management committee is currently vigorously developing.

Because the local industry is relatively simple, and the population is relatively concentrated, the difficulty of civil administration is much smaller than that of Sanya. In addition, the source of the local naturalized people is basically the war refugees in North Vietnam, and the poverty of Cheng Dù also exceeds the immigrants collected from Hainan and the mainland in the base camp, so the dependence and support of the local naturalized people on the management committee are quite high, and the implementation of the civil affairs measures promulgated by the management committee is relatively small in the local area.

Of course, this is also due to the fact that the Executive Committee has provided very comprehensive support to the Black Earth Port from the very beginning, not only ensuring the needs of the Black Earth Port as much as possible in terms of materials, but also using elite soldiers from various departments in terms of staffing. In addition to Gu Kai, who is in charge of the overall situation on behalf of the executive committee, Zhou Hengxing, the chief civil affairs officer, Xie Chun, the chief maritime officer, Tian Yeyou, the chief mining officer, and Qian Tiandun, the chief military officer, are all quite outstanding in their abilities, and it can be said that there are no obvious shortcomings in the allocation of management personnel.

The actual output of the Heitugang Coal Mine has now exceeded the target of 1,000 tons per month, which is a good result under the current conditions of almost manual coal mining. In addition to being transported back to Shengli Port in large quantities by cargo ships to meet the production needs of the base camp, the coal produced by Heitu Port has even begun to occupy the market on Hainan Island, and the coal currently sold in the Yazhou market has occupied the majority of the "Haihan refined coal" transported from Heitu Port. This kind of coal burns with a strong head and small soot, and the quality is much better than that of lignite produced in Danzhou in the north, but the price is two percent lower than that of Danzhou coal.

The output of asphalt, coal tar and other products, which are produced as high value-added industrial products by Heitu Port, is also rising steadily. According to the annual budget made by the Heitu Port Management Committee, if the output of coal series products can be further increased by 30% in 1628, it is expected that the repayment period of the original development funds will be shortened to Gu Kai's tenure, which will mean that the economic independence of Heitu Port has taken the first step in the real sense, which is a great good news for Heitu Port and the entire crossing group.

After Gu Kai finished his report, he was followed by Lieutenant Qian Tiandun, the military chief officer of Heitu Port. Since it is said that he brought back the latest news of the civil war in Annam, everyone in the audience has regained their spirits, and the trend of the war situation in Annam will directly affect the future arms sales strategy and trade progress of the crossing group to Vietnam, which is a matter related to the vital interests of all members. However, Qian Tiandun did not first mention the civil war in Annam, but introduced the current progress of the construction of the military strength of the Black Earth Port.

At present, the Black Soil Port Management Committee has three companies under its military strength, one of which is stationed on the Tu Son Peninsula and serves as a military adviser to the North Vietnamese side, specifically responsible for training North Vietnamese firearms units. Another mixed company of security militia is stationed in the Heitu Port area, and in addition to the local security and guarding work, it is also responsible for the armed escort of ships between Heitu Port and Shengli Port. The third company is the mountain and jungle special operations company advocated by Qian Tiandun, of course, the nature of this company is still kept secret from the outside world, and only a very small number of people know the truth. However, this company has only been formed for about two months, and it is still in a state of training, so it is far from being able to speak of combat effectiveness.

Therefore, the actual combat strength stationed in Heitu Port is actually only a mixed company, and at least one platoon of this company has been floating on the sea for a long time. As a result, the Heitugang Military Region, which seems to have three companies and is not weak in combat effectiveness, actually has less than one company of troops that can be directly commanded and mobilized, let alone defending against foreign enemies, and even maintaining local law and order is inevitably a little stretched.

However, following the recent approval by the Executive Committee of the Military and Police Department's plan for universal militia training, the port of Heitu has similarly adopted this militia training system for ordinary people. Due to the single industry in the local area, it is much less difficult to concentrate young and middle-aged people for militia training in just two or three work units than in the base camp, so Qian Tiandun organized a whole three companies of reserve militia in Heitu Port very smoothly. Of course, these reserve militias, like the base camp, can only use cold weapons based on iron-tipped spears for the time being. In this way, the local security force finally has a basic guarantee, and the only thing that is lacking is probably the sea force, after all, the local shipyard has just been put into production, and the sailors and crews who can control the big ships are also quite lacking, and it will take time to train a water force.

On the Tushan Peninsula, at present, the management of the local garrison troops and the training of the training camp are all taken over by Feng Annan and Mu Xiabai, who have been transferred from the garrison office, and Qian Tiandun will go from Heitu Port about once every seven to 10 days to see the local training situation, and by the way, he will also take out the special operations company he has personally trained for training.

The training camps built by the North Vietnamese on the local coast have expanded considerably more than two months ago, and now they have received more than 1,200 cadets, including about 1,000 North Vietnamese soldiers who have received musket training, about 100 artillery cadets, and dozens of North Vietnamese officers who have received military theoretical training. Of course, for this reason, the North Vietnamese side had to nearly double the amount of orders for arms on the basis of the original arms order, and extended the lease period of the port of Black Soil from one year to three years. The Zheng side figured out that Guò continued to extend the lease period in exchange for the "free arms" of the crossing group, but the Black Earth Port Management Committee did not agree to the other party's request, and if they still can't eat the North Vietnamese gang after three years, they need to rely on the way of leasing to maintain the safety of the Black Earth Port, then there is no need to talk about it, everyone will jump into the sea and die.

The Military Police Department believed that because the North Vietnamese army was equipped with slower-firing arquebuses, even experienced players who had been trained for several months could only fire two shots per minute, and the scale of the North Vietnamese musket troops was not large, it was a bit risky to use a pure musketeer formation, so it was necessary to deploy a certain number of spearmen to fight. As a military adviser, the hot weapon tactics taught to North Vietnam by Feng Annan and others did not hide too much, but they were not advanced either, and they were basically copied from the Gustav phalanx of the same era.

The basic combat units of such phalanxes were squadrons, each consisting of 192 musketeers and 216 spearmen. The spearmen were arranged in 6 columns, located in the center of the formation, while the musketeers were arranged in two equal parts to the left and right flanks of the spearmen, which were also 6 columns. In this way, the front of each squadron is 68 people, and the width of the battle is about 60 meters. In terms of the number of musketeers trained in the training camp, it was possible to equip about five such rectangular combat phalanxes, and the North Vietnamese side naturally called them the "Haihan phalanx".

On the front of the phalanx, the musketeers were able to unhinder their full firepower and maintain a constant rate of fire by reversing the round-fire method. When the enemy rushed closer, the spearmen stepped forward or defended on the spot, while the musketeers regrouped behind the spear phalanx. If you want to avoid attacks from the flanks or rear, then these 5 combat squadrons can also be deployed in a checkerboard format. The larger the number of combat squadrons, the more powerful the checkerboard deployment becomes.

The Gustav phalanx would add 96 musketeers per squadron to further increase the combat width, but the "Haihan phalanx" did not adopt this strategy, considering the limited number of North Vietnamese musketeers, and instead deployed artillery as battlefield support fire into the gap between the phalanxes. Taking into account the mobility ability, the Military Police Department selected a six-pounder gun for the North Vietnamese firearms unit to support the battlefield, with three guns per phalanx, which happened to put all the fifteen six-pounder guns purchased by the Trung family in two installments. As for the 12-pounder gun, because the cannon body is relatively heavy, it needs to be towed by livestock, and it is inconvenient to transfer on the battlefield, so it must be used in positional battles or city battles, and field battles or encounters are not very suitable.

The North Vietnamese officers who were also trained by the Hai Han learned the most basic tactics of guns and spears and infantry and artillery. The Military Police Department believes that after the completion of this batch of trainees, North Vietnam will be able to organize a decent phalanx of musketeers, coupled with engineer, baggage, logistics, reconnaissance and other companies, which will probably be able to form an "elite" with a total of about 3,000 people, which should definitely be second to none in the entire Indochina Peninsula. After fighting a few actual battles on the battlefield, this army, which had already spent hundreds of thousands of taels of silver on the Zheng clan, was enough to become the Zheng clan's magic weapon.

Of course, due to the generational difference in the performance of weapons, it was far from enough for North Vietnam to rely on this force to deal with the crossing group. Whether it is the accuracy, range, and power of firearms, or the training methods and combat methods of the troops, there is still a big gap in strength between this puppet force and the Haihan militia that crosses the crowd. The most important thing is that the firearms units of North Vietnam are completely dependent on the supply of the crossing group in terms of ammunition, and as long as the North Vietnamese commanders do not go crazy, they will certainly not give the order to turn them against the Haihan side.

But things were not so smooth, the North Vietnamese army had recently suffered several defeats on the battlefield, and the battle line had gradually moved north from Hue before, and now it was between Nam Quang Binh and Ha Tinh. In this era of cold weapons, once a certain side is defeated, it is difficult to effectively organize a defensive front on the way to retreat, and it is often hundreds or even hundreds of miles before it can gather the rout and reorganize the troops, so the North Vietnamese side is quite worried about the situation of the civil war, and sent envoys to the training camp on the Tu Son Peninsula, hoping to get the help of the Haihan side.