Chapter 1146: Looking for the country (part 1)

"Zhenhua, what are you?"
"Uncle Shen, this is part of the cooperation package I reached with Pakistan Railway." Tan Zhenhua replied: "According to this agreement, I will continue to invest US$50 million in Pakistan Railway in the next three years. These investments will It is mainly provided in the form of equipment, technology, and personnel training. The goal is to strive to form a certain scale of local small-scale industrial capacity in the Pakistan Railway after the completion of these investment projects."
"That's it." Shen Zongyi nodded thoughtfully, put on reading glasses, carefully read the report submitted by Tan Zhenhua, put it down, and pondered it for a while before saying: "This plan of yours basically applies. Based on our country’s thinking when it was engaged in third-line construction, we used the
five small industries
to open the way, which is suitable for the industrial transformation from scratch in areas with a poor industrial foundation. However, Zhenhua, you should also know this kind of
five small industries
. Disadvantages, high energy consumption, low efficiency, low output, and product quality cannot be guaranteed. Compared with construction above a scale, it is neither environmentally friendly nor economical in terms of the cost-effectiveness ratio of investment. I have always understood that these backward technologies and production capacity should not be the direction of your investment? And why should you invest in the Pakistan Railway? Will the investment environment there be better than in China?"
"Uncle Shen, I know that from the perspective of investment alone, in the current environment of the Pakistan Railway, the benefits of investing this US$50 million can be far less than those in China. However, if viewed from a long-term perspective, its strategy The value is far from comparable in China."
"Oh?"
"You see, as of the end of last year, Pakistan Railway has a population of about 95 million, of which nearly 70% are engaged in agricultural labor. In other words, Pakistan Railway is basically a country dominated by agriculture so far. , The industrial foundation is very poor. The country’s largest export materials are cotton and cotton textiles using cotton as raw materials. Moreover, the education level of the entire country is low, and skilled workers are in short supply. If you want to build large-scale industrial facilities with high technical content. In order to train qualified workers, it costs a great price. This is one of the reasons why I don’t plan to engage in large-scale industrial investment there in the first place. And this "5 small industries"? It just fits the local situation. The actual level of development, small steel, small coal mines, small machinery, small cement, and small chemical fertilizers. In fact, the biggest role of these five basic industries is to use local resources, strengthen local economic strength, improve regional economic structure, and cultivate part of it. The labor force has shifted from a single agricultural economy to mainly agricultural production, taking into account industry, and appropriately increasing the level of non-agricultural income in the region."
Shen Zongyi thought for a while and nodded: "Your slow-moving thinking is still good, and it is also suitable for the current economic structure of the Pakistan Railways. If you consider the problem at the level of the leaders of the Pakistani Railways, it is assumed that five years, ten years Or a longer timeline to plan the country’s economic construction. This is indeed a good idea. In fact, China Huaxia has also gone step by step. However, Zhenhua, you are not the leader of the Pakistani iron country, you are a The businessman is still a Chinese businessman, so why do you think for them like this? Also, you just said one of the reasons, then what is the second? Is there the third? What is the strategic value you said?"
Tan Zhenhua twitched his lips and replied: "Uncle Shen, you asked so many questions in one breath, I don't know which one to answer you first."
"Then first answer the strategic value of your doing this."
"Well, okay, but, um, uncle Shen, kid, don't scold me if I said."
Shen Zongyi looked up and down Tan Zhenhua suspiciously before saying: "Your kid won't be holding back any big bad things, right? Okay, you say, I promise not to scold you."
"I want to seek a nation of Palestine."
Shen Zongyi was stunned for a moment, and then he stretched out his hand and slammed on Tan Er's forehead while shouting: "Smelly boy, are you earning too much money? You want to be the emperor?!"
Tan Er immediately covered his head and called out: "Hey, Uncle Shen, you just promised not to scold me... Besides, what age is this? I, Tan Zhenhua, was born in Xinhua Xia and grew up under the red flag. Who wants to go? The sin of being an emperor?"
Shen Zongyi said angrily: "Am I scolding you? I am obviously beating you...say, what kind of country did you plan for?"
Tan Er: "...".
The old man made sense, but Tan Er was speechless.
"Uncle Shen, this is a long story. Do you have time now? If you have time, I will report to your old man about my plan of "seeking a country"."
"If you don't have time, it will scare you so you have time, let's talk."
"Well, then I can talk about it." Tan Zhenhua organized the language, and took out a national map of Pakistan from his small bag, spread it out on Shen Zongyi's desk, and pointed to a few marked on it. Circles and lines said: "Uncle Shen, the topic should start with this Gwadar Port. Look at the geographic location of this port. It is located in the south of Gwadar City in the southwest of Balochistan Province. It is an excellent deep-water port. Its coordinates are located at 25.2 degrees north latitude and 62.19 degrees east longitude. It is only about 120 kilometers away from the Pakistan Railway-Ipersia border, bordering the Arabian Sea in the Indian Ocean to the south, and only about 400 kilometers away from the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz. Africa, Europe, through the Red Sea, the Strait of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf to East Asia, and the Pacific Ocean are the throats of several important maritime routes. Uncle Shen, what do you say about the Red Sea coast and the Persian Gulf?"
"Then you need to ask? Of course it is oil."
"Yeah, you see, Uncle Shen, if we take this port, we will have a safe energy logistics channel that does not need to pass through the Strait of Malacca. For China, whether it is the export of our products or the acquisition of energy , All have inestimable strategic value."
Shen Zongyi nodded slightly, and pondered for a while before he said: "Zhenhua, the strategic location of the port you mentioned is indeed important, but it is mainly because of oil. But our country's oil is still based on self-sufficiency? "
"That's now, Uncle Shen, you see I have a piece of statistics here." Tan Zhenhua said while digging out another piece of information from the bag and handing it to Shen Zongyi: "This is my summary based on the previous years released by the National Bureau of Statistics. The data, as can be seen from this table, by 1985, China’s oil production exceeded 125 million tons. Compared with the previous year’s increase, it also reached 8.89% of the historical peak. We exported 36 million tons and earned foreign exchange. 6.7 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for 24.5% of the country’s export earnings that year, and most of the buyers were Japanese; but in the second year, last year, although the output still reached 130 million tons, the increase was suddenly It fell to 4.63%, which shows that China’s oil production has reached a bottleneck, and subsequent increments will continue to fall. If there are no major exploration discoveries in new large oil fields, our oil production will remain at this level for a period of time. The growth rate is likely to decline gradually, and it may even turn into a negative growth one day. But you can see from this table, Uncle Shen, from this curve, we can see that with the further advancement of China’s reform, the domestic oil demand The amount of consumption is constantly rising. If this momentum remains unchanged, then only a few years later, probably from the late 1980s to the early 1990s, the equilibrium point will be crossed, and China will switch from a net oil exporter to a net oil importer. China, and with the further development of China’s economy, especially the manufacturing industry and the associated transportation industry, this net import figure will become larger and larger. At that time, we will have to look for oil import resources everywhere in China. For China, a safe supply of oil and transportation routes are strategic factors related to national security."
Following his statement, Shen Zongyi's face gradually became serious. After carefully reading the data provided by Tan Zhenhua, he pondered for a while, and then said: "Zhenhua, what you said is very important, continue."
Ps: Part of the data in this chapter is quoted from the paper "The Evolution of China's Petroleum Import and Export Status Since 1949", author Li Xin, published in January 2014, "Journal of Southwest Petroleum University" (Social Science Edition) Volume 16, Issue 1, Thank you very much.