The construction of the Daming Palace as a landmark in Chang'an City did have a huge psychological effect on the citizens of the Tang Empire, and the expectation for the prosperous Tang civilization was unexplained.

Although it is not a problem to build the Daming Palace with modern machinery and equipment, at least 20,000 workers of all kinds still need to participate, which makes the ongoing large-scale urban construction even less manpower.

Especially Jinling City and Daxing City, these two cities are located on islands with a population of less than 10,000. The construction speed is far less than that of Yanjing and Chang'an, and it requires even more labor.

In the newly built Capitol, the Senate and the House of Representatives passed the Second Population Introduction Act, which determined to introduce 500,000 people from China again in order to meet the labor gap required for large-scale urban and national defense construction in the Tang Empire. However, new requirements were put forward for the quality of the introduced population, which required a certain level of knowledge and physical fitness. Because the Tang Empire was about to bid farewell to infrastructure construction and entered the construction period of a fully industrialized country, a large number of workers with basic knowledge and technical workers and intellectuals who could train them in the future.

The members of Congress were generous and introduced a population of 500,000 without blinking at all.

Zhang Meng was helpless when he heard this news. They were not in charge of the company and did not know that the cost of firewood and rice was not enough. Resetting up 500,000 people was not a small project.

Fortunately, Zhang Meng made a plan when he was planning the city. In the future, the national economic and national defense construction of the Tang Empire would require a large population, especially if the Pacific War broke out in the future, the casualties during the war would be replenished by a large population. No matter how powerful the military force is, it would be useless if no one operated it.

Therefore, Zhang Meng set up a large area of ​​land for residential areas in the planning of four cities, and all residential areas are built with dense high-rise buildings. All the plans are completed, let alone resettlement of 500,000 people, and there is no problem with resettlement of 2 million people.

Zhang Meng was not worried about how many people he introduced, nor did he worry about not having a house for them to live in, nor did he worry about not having a job for them. The only thing he was worried about was how to support these people.

If you don’t be a leader, you don’t know how expensive it is!

At this moment, Zhang Meng was already feeling some pressure on the consumption of food, drinking water and other people's livelihoods of more than 600,000 people in the Tang Empire.

On the three archipelagos in the entire territory of the Tang Empire, except for some streams and underground springs in the forests of some volcanic islands with higher altitudes in the Yanjing Islands, there is no river at all.

In the past, Tongans lived entirely by storing some rainwater at home, because the population was only 50,000 or 60,000, so the pressure was not very high.

With the establishment of the Tang Empire, Chinese and overseas Chinese who moved from mainland China and overseas should now be called Tang people. The population has soared to more than 600,000, and the problem of domestic water consumption has long been exposed.

Zhang Meng's method is to build large reservoirs and tap water stations in the green belt highlands of each city. Because it is located in the tropical zone and has abundant rainfall, the reservoirs are quite sufficient.

Thinking that Hong Kong in later generations supported nearly 8 million people, it was entirely up to several super reservoirs to supply water. It was obvious that the Tang Empire would develop urban models like Hong Kong and Singapore in the future. Therefore, in order to avoid the serious water shortage caused by the continued surge in population in the future, Zhang Meng had to plan in advance, expand the scale of reservoirs in each city, and solve the drinking water problems necessary for the development of the next century once and for all.

The food problem is relatively simple for Zhang Meng.

The Tang Empire did not produce food, and all the food needed was imported. Before, the Tangjia people made a living by eating fruits, but later the British came to provide them with food, and they were willing to surrender to the British for food and became a protector of Britain.

In the past, the food aid the British gave to Tonga every year cannot support the citizens of the Tang Empire. The Tang Empire had money and could import it independently from abroad.

After the outbreak of the economic crisis, the import costs of grain from the Tang Empire fell sharply, saving a huge amount of money. But in fact, this money was not saved and was still used by Zhang Meng to expand the purchase of grain.

That's right!

In addition to taking advantage of the economic crisis, Zhang Meng also purchased American steel, cement and other industrial raw materials at bargain prices, he also purchased large-scale grain from the United States, South American countries and Australia.

Almost everyone in the world thinks that Zhang Meng is a fool, because during the economic crisis, the excess grain produced by various countries cannot be sold at all, and no one will be stupid to buy food. Some self-righteous farmers sealed up their grain, thinking that the food prices will rebound in one or two years, but what awaits them is that the food prices continue to fall, and even the food prices are not enough to be freight for sale to the market. Many farmers are forced to burn the food locally as coal or buried underground as fertilizer.

Under normal circumstances, grain can be stored for one year, dried for two or three years. If the food is not allowed to be preserved for a long time, farmers will have no way or ability to preserve it.

Only Zhang Meng knew that the war was coming, and all countries were in a state of great trouble, agriculture was abandoned, and food would become less and less expensive. If you did not take the opportunity to hoard cheap food on a large scale, when the war came, there would be no such big bargain to pick up.

Therefore, Zhang Meng built a large number of giant granaries near every city of the Tang Empire to store high-quality grain.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the world's major food supply countries were the United States, South American countries and Australia. After the outbreak of the economic crisis, the United States' food price first dropped like an avalanche, followed by South American countries and Australia.

Americans are more ruthless. Many farmers directly destroy the excess food to maintain food prices. Later they find that it is stupid because they can't stop the avalanche of grain prices and later they start selling food.

Zhang Meng likes to deal with gangs and associations across the United States. Using them to do things saves money and trouble, and will not cause trouble for himself.

As small as a screw or as big as a trust enterprise, no matter what Zhang Meng wants to buy or do, these clubs can always help Zhang Meng with the simplest and most effective way to save money, and it satisfies him very much.

Food is also the most important item of national strategic reserve materials in the Tang Empire, and is almost as important as strategic reserve materials such as steel and oil.

Through various means, Zhang Meng spent 13.5 million US dollars to obtain 21.8 million tons of cheap corn, sorghum, rice, soybeans and other major grain crops from the United States. Among them, more than 7 million tons of grain Zhang Meng did not spend a penny to the farmers, but just paid a "tip" to the local gang members and directly dealt with it. The farmers were cheering and cheering Zhang Meng's people to pull all the food away for free.

Latin America and Australia are Zhang Meng's main grain procurement sites. When the Americans destroyed the food, they were still selling food at low prices, which caused Americans to be unable to control the food prices and continued to plummet.

Latin American countries also speculate on the prosperity of the US market and the indiscriminate issuance of national bonds, which has also affected their countries. Fortunately, their industries are weak and the impact is not very big. However, the severe shrinkage of international trade caused by the economic crisis has made the food in Latin American countries unable to be sold. Agriculture is the economic pillar of Latin American countries, and it has also been a big blow to them. They can only sell them with a loss in exchange for seeds and fertilizers for farming next year.

Zhang Meng seized the opportunity to take action and imported 20 million tons of grain cheaply from several Latin American countries, spending less than US$12 million in total, which is much more cost-effective than buying grain from the Americans.

Australia is the target of Zhang Meng's key cooperation. When discussing grain prices with Australian farmers, Zhang Meng not only directly invested in purchasing their farms and ranches, but also jointly expanded grain and animal husbandry production with them.

Since Australia is very close to the Tang Empire and both sides are members of the Commonwealth, Zhang Meng's transaction with them was basically smooth. In particular, the expansion of investment has welcomed Australian farmers.
Chapter completed!