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Text Chapter 850 The opening of the canal

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    After Chile signed peace treaties with Argentina and Brazil respectively, the South American War officially came to an end, and peace returned to this land.  However, this peace is obviously just a fragile peace.  There will definitely be another battle between Chile and Brazil.  However, the war between the two countries will not have much impact on the situation of the entire world in terms of scale and significance.

    Although Chile won the war, they also owed huge debts.  From the beginning of arms expansion and preparations for war a few years ago, to the huge military expenditures consumed during the war, all of this came from loans obtained from China. By the end of the war, this amount had increased to 500 million yuan.  Although China provides Chile with low-interest loans and allows Chile to repay it with ores and agricultural products, the Chilean government needs to tighten its belt for at least the next five years.

    However, even so, Chile still gained a lot from this battle.  Territory gained from Argentina and Brazil more than quadrupled Chile's land area.  At the same time, various resources are becoming more abundant, especially agricultural products, which will no longer become a constraint on Chile's development.  The only thing lacking is probably that Chile¡¯s population is relatively small.  After the war, the Chilean government enacted a series of measures to promote population growth.  However, even so, it will be decades before Chile becomes a country with a large population!

    After peace was restored in South America, the entire world seemed to have returned to peace again.  However, in this peace, the shadow of war has enveloped the whole world.  In Europe, the center of the world, the confrontation between the two major military groups headed by Britain and Germany is getting more and more serious. People in Europe are very frightened, fearing that war will break out when they wake up the next morning.  All countries are doing their best to prepare for war. A large number of weapons and ammunition are produced and sent to strategic reserve warehouses.  The slipways of major shipyards are full of battleships, battlecruisers, heavy cruisers, light cruisers and destroyers being built. The construction of merchant ships has reached the lowest point, and most of the resources of various countries have been used to prepare for war.  , which caused the economies of various countries to decline to varying degrees.  It is foreseeable that when all countries are no longer able to support this crazy military expansion and war preparations, war will break out.

    The east of the world is under the rule of the ancient and huge China. On the contrary, the people here have not been greatly affected.  People still live according to normal rules.  Although many knowledgeable people saw that a large-scale war was about to break out, they all asked the empire to speed up preparations for the war.  However, the imperial government did not devote all its national power to preparations for war like other European and American countries.  Compared with European and American powers, although the empire is powerful, its foundation is not as good as that of European and American countries. When European and American countries are expanding their armaments and preparing for war at the expense of economic development, the formal empire has a great opportunity to accelerate economic development and industrialization.  In order to obtain enough resources to develop armaments, Germany transferred many precious technologies to China.  You know, if these technologies were in peacetime, China would not be able to obtain them no matter how high the cost.  It is not that China has not made military preparations, but its intensity is not as great as that of the European and American powers.  China's current position determines that China does not need to invest all its national power in the war at the beginning.

    After the war broke out, China mainly faced enemies from two directions, one was the United States in the east, and the other was Russia in the west.  Facing the United States, the powerful Chinese navy can protect China's security. Before defeating the Chinese navy, the United States cannot threaten China's mainland.  And does the U.S. Navy have the strength to defeat the Chinese Navy?  From the current point of view, this possibility is basically non-existent.  Although the United States is building battleships on a large scale, the use of British designs and technologies makes their battleships far from comparable to China in performance.  Even if they have a numerical advantage, it is difficult for them to convert it into an advantage on the battlefield.  The Mediterranean naval battle has proved that when the performance gap between the two sides' warships is too large, numerical advantage does not have much effect.  Not to mention, the aircraft carrier that China is still secretly building is a trump card. Once the aircraft carrier is dispatched, it can easily send all the battleships built by the United States that have exhausted its national resources to the bottom of the sea.  As for Russia, there is absolutely nothing to worry about.  The war ten years ago caused Russia heavy losses. Although Russia has slowly recovered after ten years of recuperation.  But it is not that difficult to defeat China.  What's more, once the war begins, Britain and France will face strong pressure from Germany and will definitely ask Russia to focus its main attack in the west.  By then, China will only need to retain a small number of troops on the western front to be able to defend itself against pressure from Russia.  After China defeats the United States with all its strength, it will then march westward.  It is simply impossible for Russia to withstand China's attack.

    1908 passed without incident, and people prayed that there would still be no war next year.  However, in 190R, the world situation changed againI got a lot more nervous once.  The crisis of war mainly comes from the fierce confrontation between China and the United States!

    In June 190R, the U.S. government announced that after spending a huge amount of money and six years of hard construction, the Panama Canal would be officially open to navigation.  This is one year later than expected in the United States, mainly because of the difficulty of the project.  However, fortunately, in order to speed up the construction of this canal and work day and night, this canal can finally be opened to navigation.  The price paid was that more than 50,000 workers died on the construction site due to various reasons, almost double the number in history.

    Of course, these dead workers are mainly Panamanians and the population of Central American countries.  Many of these dead workers in history were Chinese.  But now with the rise of the empire, Chinese people will no longer be trafficked to America and Australia to do hard labor as they did in history!

    The Panama Canal is one of the two most strategic man-made waterways in the world, the other being the Suez Canal.  Ships traveling between the east and west coasts of the United States originally had to detour to Cape Horn in South America. Using the Panama Canal can shorten the voyage by about 5,000 kilometers (8,000 nautical miles).  It can also save up to 6,500 kilometers (3,500 nautical miles) from one coast of North America to a South American port on the other.  Ships sailing between Europe and East Asia or Australia can also reduce their voyage distance by 3,700 kilometers (nautical miles) through the canal.  The Panama Canal has a total length of 813 kilometers, water depth ranging from 13 meters to 5 meters, and river width ranging from 152 meters to 304 meters.  The water level of the entire canal is 26 meters higher than the two oceans, and there are 6 locks.  It generally takes 9 hours for ships to pass through the canal, and ships of tonnage can be navigated.  For the United States, its biggest role is for military purposes. Due to the treaty signed after the failure of the second Sino-US Pacific Naval War, the United States cannot deploy warships of more than 10,000 tons on the west coast. This makes the west coast of the United States completely under China's control.  under threat.  After the completion of the Panama Canal, the huge fleet deployed by the United States on the east coast can rush to the west coast within half a month to fight, which can effectively protect the national security of the United States!

    The Panama Canal is located at latitude RT, where the North American Continental Divide drops to one of its lowest points.  The canal does not cross the isthmus from east to west as most people imagine.  Instead, it goes south from the entrance to Colon on the Atlantic side through the Gatun Locks to the widest part of Lake Gatun; then turns sharply east and follows a roughly southeasterly channel to reach the Gulf of Panama on the Pacific side.  Its terminus near Balboa is approximately 40 kilometers southeast of its starting point near Colon.

    When ships pass through the canal from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, they first pass through the approximately 11-kilometer-long entrance channel in Limon Bay to reach the Gatun Locks.  There are three consecutive locks in Gatun that raise ships 26 meters into Gatun Lake.  Lake Gatun is formed by the Gatun Dam on the Chagres River. The lake water originates from Lake Alajuela. It covers an area of ????square kilometers and has water depths ranging from 14 to 26 meters. It is about 37 kilometers long from Gamboa.  The Gaillard Canal, which cuts through the Continental Divide, begins in Gamboa.  This artificial canal has an average water depth of about 13 meters and extends for about 13 kilometers to the Pedro Miguel Lock.  The Pedro Miguel Lock lowers ships 9 meters into Miraflores Lake, which is 16 meters above sea level.  The ship passes through a waterway about 2 kilometers long and is lowered to sea level by two levels of locks in Miraflores.  The last section of the canal is an excavated entrance channel, about 11 kilometers long, through which ships enter the Pacific Ocean.  The bottom width of the entire canal is at least 150 meters; in Gatun Lake, the width of the channel varies from 150 meters to 300 meters, while in the Miraflores Lake section the channel width is 225 meters.

    China also knows that the opening of the Panama Canal will pose a huge threat to China, and has taken many countermeasures.  In the war a few years ago, after China defeated Britain and France, it acquired the island of Guadeloupe in the Lesser Antilles from France, allowing China to extend its influence into the Caribbean.  At the same time, the Tumaco naval base leased by China in Colombia and the Santa Cruz Island naval base leased from Ecuador have given China the ability to block the Panama Canal in the shortest possible time during wartime.  Currently, the main force of the Chinese Navy's Pacific Fleet has been transferred from Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands to Port Ayora on Santa Cruz Island.  The Tumaco Naval Base mainly deploys light cruisers and destroyers to facilitate reconnaissance near the Panama Canal. Once a U.S. Navy battleship is discovered passing through the Panama Canal, it will immediately report to the Pacific Fleet Command!
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