The expeditionary force began to dominate Southeast Asia by recruiting defeated soldiers

Chapter 422 How to overcome the Malthusian trap?

As for immigration, it is the second most important thing after the military attack on the Japanese invaders. It is the foundation of the country, so Zhang Chi naturally attaches great importance to it.

In order to absorb immigrants quickly, efficiently and economically, Zhang Chi had to pay for the construction of a railway in this mountainous area, even though the cost was very high.

"Okay, now let's talk about the third method."

Zhang Guangsong hesitated for a moment and continued:

"As for the third method, it's to fully mobilize the local warlords and give them a share of the profits, such as the right to sell our products, or to provide them with a batch of captured Japanese weapons or our own munitions. Let these local tyrants do the work for us, gather the victims, and then transport them here together."

Zhang Chi praised, "That's a good idea. With natural disasters and war, many young men have lost their homes. Instead of having them drafted and dying on the front lines, why not have these warlords send them to us?"

"Of course, this method has its drawbacks. The warlords certainly don't act as humanitarian as we do. Furthermore, doing so wouldn't give us a good reputation, as it would smack of coercion."

"I understand, I understand." Zhang Chi waved his hand. If the staff of the Security Army still adhered to the principle of voluntariness and mainly recruited families who could not survive and had nowhere else to immigrate to Pegu.

If this matter is handed over to the local warlords, there will definitely be a lot of trouble, and the literati will definitely criticize them at that time.

"Now is not the time to dwell on these things, especially since we just took over the Malay Peninsula and need a large number of Chinese people to immigrate there and actually control the area. We'll just have to bear a little bit of the blame."

According to previous statistics and estimates by the lower-level staff, there are currently approximately 200 million Malays, 230 million overseas Chinese, and 70 working Sindhu people on the Malay Peninsula.

Zhang Chi estimated that as long as 200 to 300 million Chinese could be immigrated there before the Japanese surrendered, the territory of the Malay Peninsula would be completely consolidated by the end of the war.

Even if the White Eagles and Johns interfere and hold a referendum, they can still retain this land legally and reasonably with more than half of the votes.

----

Several secretaries took turns reporting on the relevant work, and Zhang Chi also had a clear understanding of the progress in administration, industrial construction, education, police affairs, immigration and other aspects during this period.

After all, his energy is limited. He was previously in charge of the military deployment and coordination of the attack on Singapore, so these civil affairs work can only be handed over to the secretaries in charge of various departments.

After instructing Secretary Liu to pour scented tea for everyone, Zhang Chi gestured for everyone to sit down. After everyone relaxed a little, he asked:

"Everyone, have you ever heard of the Malthusian trap?"

Having served as chief secretary for so long, Zhang Guangsong is no longer the literary youth who graduated from the Chinese Opera Academy. After thinking for a moment, he was about to answer, but was beaten to the punch by Bai Hongsheng, an economics expert.

"My professor briefly talked about it in class when I was at Birmingham University."

As the current head of economic development under Zhang Chi's rule, Bai Hongsheng has many opportunities to interact with Zhang Chi. The more he interacts with him, the more he realizes that he can't see clearly this man who is only slightly older than himself.

It is clear from Zhang Chi's own public resume that he only has educational background in primary and high school in China and the crash course for officers at the Fifth Branch of the Whampoa Military Academy.

But in fact, Bai Hongsheng found that Zhang Chi could talk about the theories of Adam Smith, Keynes and Malthus, and he also had deep insights into economic construction, especially industrial construction.

This forced Bai Hongsheng, the person in charge of the actual economic construction work, to make careful preparations every time he reported on his work and not to fool around at all.

Because he knew that with Zhang Chi's knowledge that seemed like a jack of all trades, any act of carelessness would be seeking death.

But he was very curious, when did Zhang Chi come into contact with this knowledge?

You have to know that in this era, knowledge is not something that is readily available, but rather quite expensive. Only top universities like Harvard and Cambridge dare to say that their libraries have collected almost all the wisdom of mankind.

Bai Hongsheng didn't know that in later generations, there was a great tool like the Internet for spreading knowledge.

After calming down, Bai Hongsheng put these random thoughts behind his mind, recalled them, looked at Zhang Chi and said:

"I remember saying that with the geometric growth of population, if survival resources can only grow exponentially, it will inevitably lead to famine, epidemics, wars and other terrible things to consume this additional population?"

"It's just that this theory was first proposed by the economist Thomas Malthus over 100 years ago. However, the great collapse of the three islands he predicted never happened because the benefits brought by the Industrial Revolution and global colonization successfully alleviated these contradictions. In fact, the Johns eventually survived this wave of population growth."

Zhang Chi nodded in satisfaction, drank the iced flower tea in the cup in one breath, and said:

"That's right. Although this theory's predictions didn't work for the United Kingdom, it does fit the actual situation of our feudal dynasties.

In the past, even during the most stable times of the Central Plains dynasties, various uprisings would still break out because of this Malthusian trap.

Traditional feudal dynasties had already expanded to their limits. They were unable to colonize foreign lands, so they ultimately imploded and collapsed. We, too, will eventually face the same problem. Pegu, Siam, and Malay are all vast and sparsely populated.

But as the population grows, land will eventually become scarce. To escape this Malthusian trap, colonization is impossible. We can only innovate technologically and use new technologies to exponentially increase our living resources.

Everyone looked at each other, stunned by Zhang Chi's words. They hadn't expected Zhang Chi to actually be trying to wait and see what would happen decades later, preparing and planning for the distant future.

The territory occupied by the Anmin Army is not small, but it is all being developed as a homeland, and it is definitely not considered colonization.

Zhang Chi knew about the post-war baby boom. The natural conditions in Nanyang were good, with three harvests a year, and there was no shortage of minerals, oil, and natural gas.

The so-called miasma has also been solved by the development of modern medicine.

The "Barefoot Doctor Manual" that Zhang Chi obtained from the system has been printed and distributed in large quantities. Sanbaotang in various places have also tried to build hospitals in the city and train barefoot doctors in the countryside in an attempt to improve the health of the people and minimize casualties caused by minor illnesses, malaria, and infections.

Apart from the heat, there are almost no major disadvantages here. Although it has created laziness among the local natives, it has also enabled the hardworking Chinese to get rich faster.

As long as he, as a ruler, can provide a stable atmosphere, the exponential growth of the population will not be a problem at all.

Later, Sindhu and Nicaea also had a population of over 100 million, but were extremely poor. This forced Zhang Chi to plan ahead and prepare in advance to deal with the crisis of population explosion.

That night, everyone discussed it for a long time.