Chapter 632: Zhenghe Island

All along, as a self-contained society has thrived and grown, the present-day Great Yan has developed a standard set of development procedures for every place its reach extends to.

Adapting to local conditions, the core process remains unchanged.

Saigon, far from the Great Ming, was no exception.

Cramped and narrow traditional cities, lacking all manner of municipal infrastructure, not only failed to adapt to the urban development planning patterns of the "new era," but also frequently saw outbreaks of infectious diseases — one could say they brought a hundred harms and not a single benefit.

Facing a traditional city like Saigon, which was not particularly large, the stationed South Seas Governor's Office had a deeper consideration: in a place where every face was an enemy, at least for the initial period, it was best if only their own people lived inside the city.

Once they had thought it through, the bigwigs entered the city that very day and immediately issued decrees, beginning to overhaul it according to the standard routine.

The first step was, naturally, relocating the populace.

A blank sheet of paper is best for painting. Only by moving out the residents could they transform the city. In the end, only a functional architectural complex of barracks, official offices, and warehouses would remain inside the city.

It could be understood as a seventeenth-century concession.

The relocation order was very clear: first the slums within Saigon, then the middle class, and finally the wealthy. Over the course of a month, all were successively "relocated" by soldiers wielding blades and firearms, forced to leave the city and live elsewhere.

Doing this in the Great Ming, the rulers would have to consider the issue of "simmering public resentment." Back when the Transmigrators preferred to build a new district from scratch rather than develop Guangzhou City, this very concern was behind it — large-scale relocation easily led to trouble.

In Saigon, however, the lawless Governor-General Shao had no intention of negotiating with the natives whatsoever; everything was efficiency-oriented. If you refuse to obey, answer to my blade!

Unsurprisingly, the Cambodian natives helplessly driven from the city certainly harbored resentment. Yet what was astonishing was that, after only a few days, the resentment first dissipated among the poor.

Some people's methods are always the same old tricks, but they always work.

First, the poor who had been driven out immediately received a job: demolishing the "chaotic" buildings inside and outside the city, clearing away garbage, and collecting construction materials.

All the manpower was divided into three parts. One part was responsible for leveling the ground, digging drainage systems, and constructing new functional building zones inside the city.

Another part was responsible for building a new residential area outside the city — affordable housing.

In this hot and rainy region, the so-called affordable housing was actually just the most common stilt houses. The only difference was that the stilt houses built this time were standardized products, constructed at an extremely fast pace.

The last part of the people was responsible for collecting construction materials from the surrounding areas.

While the poor obtained work, they also gained the opportunity to live in the affordable housing district outside the city. Most importantly, the generous outsiders produced shiny coins and various daily necessities to pay their wages.

When paying wages in the Mekong River Plain, which abounded in rice, the grain commonly used in the north was not effective; the hard currency was daily necessities transported from thousands of miles away.

In fact, the many ancient kingdoms that existed in the vast region of Southeast Asia, past and present, were all founded by Chinese merchants. As early as the Han Dynasty, the Chinese had propelled the civilization process in these barbaric lands, and also made the natives aware of various Chinese daily necessities.

The poor, who normally did equally backbreaking work for meager pay, now had shelter and received exquisitely crafted cast-iron soup pots and porcelain bowls. They quickly forgot all their previous displeasure and happily began serving the outsiders.

One cannot blame the poor for changing their minds so quickly.

No matter the era or the regime, the impoverished class living in hardship is the group most easily swayed.

Moreover, this was the seventeenth century, an era of dynasties, local kings, tribes, nobility, and vassals. The modern ideology of nation-states had yet to form among the populace; the first object of human loyalty was one's own family.

Thus, when the poor discovered that their lives were actually better than before, they soon settled down to work for the outsiders, unburdened by any of the ideological baggage that people of later generations would carry.

After the largest group was settled, as for the remaining middle class and the wealthy, the Governor's Mansion did not confiscate their property. Instead, it generously allowed these people a free choice: take their floating wealth and return to the northern highlands, or stay and become obedient subjects.

Of course, for the former, the private lands they owned in the plains would be confiscated.

As the saying goes, hard to part with one's fortune, a portion of them ultimately risked staying. Most of these people were former merchants with an adventurous spirit. They were gambling this time, hoping that this so-called Governor's Mansion that had suddenly appeared would not seize their family wealth in the aftermath.

Those who took their families and gold and silver back to Phnom Penh were mostly Cambodian dignitaries. These people had previously lived as masters in Saigon, relying on the kingdom's authority. Now that Cambodian power had withdrawn from the lowlands, the former so-called dignitaries had lost their backing and naturally had to flee.

Shao Qiang let all these dignitaries go. In his eyes, the private manors left behind by the dignitaries were the most precious. As for that bit of floating wealth, to an industrialized nation, it was nothing at all. Once the new year turned, they would do business with the Cambodians again and trade sundry goods to get it back — simple as that.

Time: Late October, 1648, three months after the Allied Forces occupied Saigon.

Location: Outside Saigon.

The city of old, apart from its distinctive stone city walls, had completely changed in appearance both inside and out.

The defensive implements like swatting poles atop the city walls had vanished, replaced by guards armed with firearms and cannons gleaming with a dark luster.

Below the city walls, the previously chaotic and scattered vegetable markets, rice markets, fish markets, and so on, including the residents of the city-gate areas, had all been rearranged. Neat and spacious, functional bamboo and wood sheds were being constructed according to plan.

Among these, the Pier District, located south of the city and extending along the banks of the Mekong River, was the current key infrastructure project.

In the future, a series of piers and warehouses would appear along both banks of the river. A large-scale rice trading market would be established here.

Whether locally produced rice, or rice from Siam, India, and even the Dutch territories in Indonesia, all would be traded in this market in the future.

However, today's subject was not the rice market.

Right there in the Pier District outside the city, warships gathered in numbers, soldiers followed in droves. All the bigwigs of the South Seas Governor's Mansion were assembled on the pier at this moment, seeing off an exploration fleet.

The fleet consisted of three advanced shallow-draft Type 28 steam transport ships and one Huangpu-class Cruiser, with the commander being Sha Zhengming himself, the South Seas Fleet Commander.

The fleet's cargo holds were not only stuffed full of various supplies and construction materials, but also carried 200 Pioneer Army soldiers. From the pier, one could see that the fleet's waterline was pressed very deep; it was an overloaded fleet.

This exploration fleet held great significance.

For the first time, the Transmigrators were substantively reaching out for several strategic resources produced in the South Seas: rubber, nickel-chromium ore, and petroleum.

Since the first batch of Transmigrators arrived in this plane in 1627, seven years had hurriedly passed.

Seven years of planning, seven years of preparation. To this day, the Transmigrators simply could not wait any longer. The thirst for rickshaw tires and stainless steel overrode everything.

Thus, the newly established Great Yan did not hesitate to adopt the enormously risky "leapfrog" strategy, and did not hesitate to leave behind a massive destabilizing factor like Vietnam at its rear, all to establish a base in Saigon, far from the homeland.

All of it was for today — merely three months after occupying Saigon, before they had even gotten familiar with the ground, the exploration fleet was desperate to set out.

"Old Sha, the sea conditions along this route are complex. Be extremely careful."

Clasping Sha Zhengming's hands tightly, Governor-General Shao Qiang, who had come to see him off, repeatedly urged.

"Heh heh, it'll be fine." Sha Zhengming was tall and broad, his face bearing an expression that put people at ease. "What's there to fear with radar and sonar? Speaking of which, getting that equipment really made those guys bleed. It was like pulling teeth from a tiger's mouth — imported on the spot."

Sha Zhengming's joke seemed to lighten the solemn farewell scene, and everyone chimed in with laughter.

Yet the laughter could not conceal the worry in the eyes of those in the know: the exploration fleet's destination had unfamiliar sea conditions and complex terrain. The outer perimeter alone was surrounded by thousands of scattered islands and reefs. In the primitive environment of the seventeenth century, countless hidden reefs stood beneath the sea surface — this journey was exceptionally perilous.

So where exactly was the destination of this hastily launched exploration fleet?

The answer was "Zhenghe Island."

In later generations, Zhenghe Island was known as Balabac Island.

This was a long strip-shaped island, located southwest of the Philippines, facing Saigon across the sea, with a sea distance of over 1,000 kilometers between the two places.

The stretch of sea between Saigon and Zhenghe Island was the Nanhai so familiar to people of later generations. Within this sea area lay another well-known place name: the Nansha Islands.

As previously mentioned, all the islands of the Philippines, including Zhenghe Island, were home to numerous ancient states founded by Chinese merchants and had always been tributary states of China. Historically, no nation called the Philippines ever existed — this piece of colonial territory only begged independence from the United States after World War II, and it cannot represent the "legitimate succession."

Since ancient times, China has held suzerainty over the many ancient states surrounding the Nanhai. And in later generations, ever since the Philippines unilaterally renamed China's Nanhai to the "West Philippine Sea," calls among the Chinese people to call Balabac Island "Zhenghe Island" have grown increasingly strong.

This was also why the Cabinet, before the expedition fleet's departure, specifically sent a telegram to the South Seas Governor's Mansion to confirm the place name "Zhenghe Island."

In fact, during the previous joint meetings between the Cabinet, the industrial departments, and the Agriculture Department, the first stop in the grand strategy for developing the South Seas was not Zhenghe Island, but Luzon Island, located north of Manila.

But plans are no match for change.

No one anticipated that the southward team's methods would be so superb — a series of deft maneuvers that simultaneously struck and leveraged, ultimately sweeping up a group of Vietnamese natives and opening the gates to the Mekong River Plain.

As a result, the leadership of Great Yan, far away in Guangdong, suddenly realized that the nickel and Chromium Ore deposits at the westernmost tip of Zhenghe Island, along with the local tropical environment, had abruptly become the most suitable integrated development pilot site at present.

Of course, the fundamental reason behind all of this was still that the transmigrators had, in one stroke, seized the Mekong River Plain.

Rice was the basic driving force behind all the large-scale southward operations.

For the increasingly tense situation in the Great Ming, the Mekong River Plain — which required no further blood transfusions from Guangdong, could itself sustain large numbers of immigrants, and could incidentally ship rice northward — was fully capable of serving as a strategic support point.

This was also the fundamental reason why Zhenghe Island ultimately replaced Luzon as the first experimental development stronghold in the South Seas.