Chapter 165: Grand Canal

Chen Fan stayed at Tongtian Peak for more than a month and waited for the new year before heading south to preside over the development plan of Lingnan and Southern Xinjiang.
Because the two places have been affected by wars, it is a waste of time and it is best to start from scratch.
The first thing Chen Fan did was to overhaul the waterway and closely connect the two borders with the northern part of the empire.
Fortunately, the two places are already densely covered with water networks, and Chen Fan only needs to dig out a few Grand Canals running east, west, south and north on the basis of the original rivers and lakes.
It's not that Chen Fan has never thought about building roads. After all, the sentence in his previous life to build roads before getting rich is too popular. But the problem is that building roads in a prehistoric world is simply whimsical, so Chen Fan can only retreat to the next best thing, and first develop the waterways to open up the north and south of the empire.
In fact, Chen Fan has not been idle for more than a month at Tongtian Peak. Instead, he has gathered a group of monsters who are good at surveying and mapping Fengshui to work together to draw up a map of the Imperial Waterway Canal.
Then Chen Fan took this design drawing all the way south, and whenever he visited an administrative province, he would personally organize and organize manpower to dig the canal.
When the project in one place is on the right track, Chen Fan will rush to the next place to start again, letting the administrative provinces in various regions take over the canal excavation projects by themselves in the form of contract labor.
The construction of water conservancy in ancient times was undoubtedly a big project, but fortunately, this is a world full of monsters and dinosaurs.
If you don't have large machines, recruit powerful monsters or domesticated dinosaurs instead.
If you encounter a high mountain in the way, let the monsters who are good at the art of earth escape play, if it still fails, use gunpowder to open the mountain and crack the ground.
Sections of canal excavation projects were built one by one under the leadership of Chen Fan. Although they were not able to catch up with the'celestial miracle' of his previous life, they were definitely fast.
It took nearly half a year for Chen Fan to turn around, and then returned to the Valley of Thousand Poisons to remotely preside over the overall situation.
The reason why he returned to the Valley of Ten Thousand Poisons is because Chen Fan discovered that after ten years of development, the Valley of Ten Thousand Poisons already has the foundation for developing industrial civilization.
First of all, there is food and oil, and it is located in the center of the empire. It is a thoroughfare between east and west, north and south.
Secondly, the large farms have made the small peasant economy lose the soil for survival, forcing many people at the bottom to either depend on the large farms or enter the cities and towns to become emerging handicraftsmen.
And the prosperity of handicraft industry will give birth to the buds of capitalism, and then form factoryization and defeat the family soil workshop.
In fact, the first factory was Chen Fan's winery established on Lobster Island. Cheap and delicious wines directly lost the market for bootleg wine.
And there is no shortage of smart people or monsters in this world. After seeing the power of large farms and factoryization, they will naturally apply this model to other industries.
Such as the processing of food and agricultural and sideline products.
As far as Chen Fan knows, three large factories for fishing and processing have been established next to Lobster Lake.
Then many people have learned something, and various factories have sprung up like mushrooms.
Chen Fan knows very well that if these primitive capitalists are not controlled and allowed to grow wildly, the game might have very serious consequences, and even hinder the industrialization of the Valley of Poisons.
These are all things that can be learned from history. The extreme points may even form two trends. One is that the whole of the scholars and merchants in the late Ming Dynasty only lay on the empire to blood but did not want to feed back, which directly led to the collapse of the entire empire. The other direction is the Industrial Revolution on the Europa side. The two classes violently confronted and killed people, and then the entire civilization was engulfed in a capitalist carriage.
The key is that the carriage hasn't braked yet, so don't even want to stop easily once it starts.
Therefore, Chen Fan immediately put up a memorandum to ask Emperor Heiba ​​to establish the Imperial Royal Bank and the Imperial Ministry of Commerce, and then established the Imperial Taxation Bureau under the Royal Bank and recruited only the retired demon who had been on the battlefield as tax police. The Patent Office was established under the Ministry of Commerce.
After receiving the memorial, Emperor Heiba ​​only read one side of the memorial and made an order for consideration by the upper house. The memorial was quickly approved by the upper house, and the Imperial Bank and the Ministry of Commerce were formally established.
Subsequently, under Chen Fan's supervision, the empire sent officials stationed in various provinces to regulate the sound development of industry and commerce in various regions, and directly tied the newly born evil dog of capitalism to two chains.
...
The fourth year of Tianan, autumn.
The first Grand Canal connecting Lingnan Linhai City and Wandu Valley is through.
Chen Fan personally took the boat trial and arrived in Linhai City in only three days.
Afterwards, Chen Fan formally told the court to name the Grand Canal the "Tianshun Grand Canal" and set up a number of shipping departments on both sides of the river. The Ministry of Commerce and the Taxation Bureau cross-administered one responsible for regulating commercial roads and the other for tax collection. At the same time, the canal law was promulgated. Except for the ship department designated by the central government of the empire, no private person or organization can charge tolls for private passages of ships in any name.
In addition, all taxes collected must first be turned over to the treasury set up by the Imperial Royal Bank, and then transferred to the governments on both sides of the river for the security and maintenance of the canal. Anyone who is found to have withheld or embezzled taxes, cut it!
Chen Fan received another piece of good news after spending half a month in Linhai City, and the canal between Southern Xinjiang and Wandu Valley was also opened.
In this way, a triangular-like Grand Canal system will be formed on the territory of the empire, closely connecting the center of the empire with the southern borders.
With the opening of air routes, it has further stimulated the vigorous development of industry and commerce in various regions.
When Chen Fan took the boat back to the Valley of Thousands of Poisons, he saw the spectacular scene of Qianfan racing.
"Great King, your majesty has a secret order!"
As soon as Chen Fan returned to the Ten Thousand Poison Valley temporary mansion, he received a secret letter from Hei Ba ~ EbookFREE.me~. After confirming the authenticity, Chen Fan opened the secret letter and looked at it carefully. He was a little bit dumbfounded.
The dredging of the two Grand Canals greatly stimulated the development of the empire’s industry and commerce, making the empire’s tax revenue in this month exceeded the sum of nearly a year in previous years.
Therefore, Hei Ba was a little irritated, and decided to build another east-west canal across the Yaozu continent...
Even if Chen Fan was crazy, he didn't dare to agree to the whimsical idea, so he quickly wrote a letter to discourage Hei Ba.
However, even with the relationship between the two, Chen Fan tried his best in the memorial to Chen Ming that the empire had just gone through a great war and built two Grand Canals, and the money that was just collected would have to be distributed to the provinces for use. I am afraid that the national treasury will still be able to make ends meet after the final settlement. Therefore, the East-West Canal project across the mainland is best to be put on hold for a few years.
In fact, in Chen Fan's next plan, he will not dig canals at all, because he is ready to skip the railway and build airships and planes when the empire truly enters the industrial age.