Chapter 1360: Give equal importance to epidemic prevention and economy

Rhine city.

After being hit by the plague, the East African government quickly launched relevant actions. Starting in January, East Africa began to conduct strict inspections of European and American ships. After February, it was expanded to target all countries in the world.

Because the East African government currently does not know which countries have not been affected by the plague.

"Currently, the number of patients reported across the country is 1,372, of which several port cities in the west account for more than 60%, and a large number of suspected cases have also appeared in the east."

"European countries are in emergency, and North American countries have become the second largest epidemic area in the world due to frequent trade and exchanges with Europe. The plague is spreading to the world along sea routes."

The data given by the Ministry of Health of East Africa can be said to be shocking. You must know that under the strict prevention and control in East Africa, the number of infected people in East Africa exceeds 1,000. For those countries that are not well prepared, the number must be multiplied by at least ten, while Europe and North America Needless to say, it is estimated that European and American governments simply cannot keep statistics.

And this is only the data obtained by the Ministry of Health in East Africa. Who knows how many infected people there are in East Africa. After all, the European pandemic flu can easily be confused with other flus. Coupled with the underreported data, the situation is obviously not too optimistic.

Ernst said: "We obviously cannot relax about the epidemic. We must at least be prepared to survive the most difficult year."

Most plagues appear powerful at the beginning or in the middle stage of the outbreak, and Ernst judged that this epidemic may last two to three years, and as time goes by, this plague should naturally die out.

This was the case with the Spanish Flu in the previous life, and the only thing the East African government could do was to try to survive the worst stage of the epidemic and minimize the losses. There was no other way.

After all, the technology in the previous life was so advanced that there was no good way to deal with the plague. Ernst largely did not believe that the technology and medical level in East Africa could tame the European influenza pandemic.

Then Ernst said: "Starting from today, martial law will be imposed on the capital, people entering the Rhine City will be strictly monitored, and people entering the Rhine City will be reviewed. It is best not to go to the Rhine City unless necessary."

No matter what, Ernst’s first priority is his own safety. Rhine City is still very safe and there are no related cases.

After all, Rhine City is inland, and the epidemic mainly comes from coastal areas. Even if it spreads to Rhine City, it will take time.

Minister of Civil Affairs Wollnitz asked: "Your Majesty, are you going to directly cut off the connection between Rhine City and the outside world?"

Ernst said: "Cut it off? Don't be fanciful. As the capital of Rhine City, it is impossible to cut off contact with the outside world. Just for hundreds of thousands of people to eat, drink, and eat, doesn't it need people?"

"There are also local officials who go to Rhine City to report on their work, and the reporting and other work cannot be stopped."

"Therefore, it is impossible to enforce this through administrative instructions, but to 'promote' this concept and at the same time strengthen disinfection and inspection work."

If the time had been ten years ago, the East African government might not have had much of a problem doing this. After all, at that time, East Africa was a typical country with administrative plans and directives, and the people's acceptance was also high.

Now that East Africa has liberalized the free market, it is obviously not easy to get people to obey the government's orders.

Of course, if it is forced, it can be done, but Ernst does not want to make people angry.

Ernst said: "Times have changed, and the country's economic system has also changed, so we can no longer use the previous methods to fight this plague."

"At this stage, East Africa's approach to fighting the plague should be to implement relevant epidemic prevention policies to the greatest extent possible while maintaining normal production and operation of society."

Of course, if this is done, the effectiveness of East Africa's epidemic prevention will obviously be greatly reduced. However, Ernst knows very well that even if East Africa really implements comprehensive epidemic control and puts the safety of people's lives as the first purpose, it will be completely thankless behavior.

Not only will the East African people not be grateful to the government for ensuring the safety of most people's lives, but they will also be dissatisfied with the government's actions because of the constraints of the government's policies.

Even if East Africa really implements nationwide martial law, it will be impossible to keep the epidemic at bay. Therefore, Ernst's proposition is to give equal priority to people's life safety and the economy.

Ernst said: "We have done what the government should do, at least to make the people believe that we have done our best. After all, they are unwilling to lock them in the house."

As an autocratic monarch, Ernst himself had no moral bottom line, otherwise this country in East Africa would not have emerged.

"This period of time is also a good time to promote economic-related policies and promote domestic economic transformation. On the one hand, it will stimulate and promote the upgrading of enterprises, on the other hand, it will improve the quality of the service industry and improve the domestic economic circulation system."

Since the end of World War I, the East African economy has faced major challenges. At this time, it was time to use the European pandemic to promote economic transformation.

The current problems facing the East African economy mainly lie in two aspects. The first is the poor quality of the economy. Although East Africa is already the world's largest industrial country, compared with European and American countries, East African industries are still dominated by mid- to low-end industries.

The second is that after the end of the world war, orders from Europe decreased significantly, which had a huge impact on the current industrial structure of East Africa.

There are only two ways to deal with this impact, either to expand overseas markets or to increase the consumption power of domestic people.

However, expanding overseas markets is obviously not feasible at this stage. With the end of World War I and the return of world order to stability, East Africa has lost the excellent external environment for expanding overseas markets. Instead, it has to deal with a new round of challenges from European and American countries.

Of course, it will take at least several years for European countries to resume economic production. At present, East Africa's main competitor is still the United States.

However, the United States alone is enough to give East Africa a headache. After all, the industrial production capacity of the United States is not much inferior to that of East Africa.

Previously, due to the war in Europe, the domestic industrial production capacity of the United States was stretched to the limit. Therefore, the economic threat from the United States to East Africa was very huge.

Of course, East Africa is not unprepared to cope with competition from American industry. After all, East Africa has begun to emphasize economic transformation since the end of the Fourth Five-Year Plan, in order to avoid competition from the United States.

The U.S. industry is actually on par with East Africa, while European countries, which have more mid- to high-end industries, have not yet recovered.

Therefore, East Africa's purpose is to seize more mid-to-high-end industries, and at this time, the technical reserves and machinery East Africa has obtained from the Allies, as well as Russia's high-end talents, can come into play.

However, for East Africa, industrial transformation is only a temporary solution, not the root cause, because the world market is always limited. East Africa's industrial brand effect is obviously not comparable to that of Europe, and mid-to-high-end industries also need time to cultivate.

The industrial brands in East Africa that are less profitable are mainly light industrial products. When it comes to basic necessities, food, housing and transportation, the first two have the biggest gap with other countries.

After all, although houses and cars and other means of transportation are valuable, it is basically difficult to export houses, and cars and other means of transportation are not necessary.

The textile industry and the food industry are completely different. They update quickly and are necessities for people's lives, especially food. It can be said that food is the most basic industry.

People have to pay for food every day, and they have to buy more after eating. The cycle effect is the best. Having a strong food company can be said to be equivalent to sitting on an inexhaustible gold mountain. In the past life, the United States had Coke, hamburgers, and fried chicken. Spreading around the world is a typical example.

All in all, an important part of East Africa's fifth five-year plan or plan is to improve the quality of development in the light industry.

Ernst said: "Light industry has always been our biggest shortcoming, especially compared with European and American countries. No matter how many products we produce, if consumers don't pay, it will be ineffective production and can only waste resources."

"In the same textile industry, East Africa's production capacity is indeed tied with that of European and American countries. However, when foreigners mention East African textile products, the first impression is that they are of poor quality and cheap. And our existing textile companies have not grown into international players. A relatively well-known high-quality enterprise.”

The normal export volume of East African textile products is actually not large. What is abnormal is that during the war, a large number of orders from Europe played a huge stimulating effect on the development of the East African textile industry. But now the war is over.

As a result, the East African textile industry faces new challenges, while also having to deal with competition from US textile companies.

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However, East Africa's textile industry obviously still has many shortcomings compared with the textile industry of established powers such as the United States.

Ernst said: "Domestic textile companies have a short development time, poor technology accumulation, relatively backward equipment, and worse product quality, which has seriously affected the reputation and reputation of the empire's exported consumer goods."

In fact, to a certain extent, this is also affected by the long-term fully planned economy in East Africa. Although the East African textile industry is now privately owned, their technology sources, mechanical equipment, and management models are inevitably affected by the past East African economic system.

Of course, things must not be viewed this way. You must know that in the last century, East Africa was still an agricultural country. Before the Fifth Five-Year Plan, it had just transformed from a semi-industrial country to a primary industrial power.

From this point of view, although a large number of state-owned textile companies in East Africa have withdrawn from the stage of history, their contributions are indelible.

Today, the East African textile industry can have a huge number of professional workers. This is the historical contribution of the East African state-owned economy.

Although state-owned enterprises are not very efficient, they have rapidly expanded in a short period of time based on administrative orders and plans, cultivating a huge industrial scale and in turn cultivating a large number of professional workers and technicians.

If it weren't for this, it would have been impossible for the East African textile industry to directly find a large number of experienced workers to develop after 1910, even if it was a private enterprise.

Of course, now that all these state-owned assets have been sold, it is impossible for the East African government to establish a new batch of state-owned textile enterprises. At least for the textile industry, the efficiency and market sensitivity of the private sector are higher than those of the East African government.

However, Ernst obviously will not let the current textile industry in East Africa run its course just for this reason, especially when facing competition from European, American and even other regions.

Ernst said: “During the fifth five-year plan, the focus of the national economy is to guide the transformation of the national economy, complete the iteration of equipment, technology, and even management models, improve production efficiency, and reduce production costs. Only in this way can we Coping with competition from foreign companies.”

"The government should introduce relevant policies to encourage companies to eliminate obsolete equipment and encourage technology research and development and innovation."

"If our companies want to survive, they can only crush similar companies in Europe and the United States. Compared with companies in other countries, we lose in technology and production efficiency."

"Take the textile industry as an example. Our textile industry does not lack raw materials, but it is inferior to Europe and the United States in technology and publicity, which makes it difficult for us to compete with other countries."

East Africa is a major producer of cotton, raw silk, wool, and various hemp products. This is also the main reason why Ernst said that East African textile companies do not lack raw materials.

Obviously, sufficient raw materials and relatively low prices are very important for textile companies. After all, a good cook cannot cook without rice. Countries that do not even have basic textile development materials such as cotton basically cannot develop the textile industry.

Among European and American countries, countries with developed textile industries can either plant and produce by themselves like the United States, or obtain them in large quantities from colonies like Britain and France. In addition, they can only learn from Germany to meet their own needs through imports.

Germany's import of raw materials such as cotton is easily controlled by other countries in terms of price, and there is also the risk of supply being cut off, which has been reflected in World War I.

The important reason why German textile enterprises can develop rapidly is that they have developed textile technology research and development and application, which reduces costs through large-scale industrial production and improves the quality of finished products, which is also what East Africa is pursuing at present.

For countries that do not have the above conditions at the same time, it is very difficult to develop the textile industry. The most typical example is the Soviet Union in the past. The Soviet Union lacked natural cotton planting areas, so it had to spend a lot of money to intercept rivers in Central Asia and create a bunch of cotton planting areas in the desert.

If this is not done, the Western society's ban on cotton exports to the Soviet Union alone can make the Soviet Union's textile industry explode on the spot.

And it is obvious that countries with the Soviet system are just the thorns in the eyes and flesh of imperialist countries such as Britain, France, Germany, Austria, the United States and the East, so the possibility of not imposing sanctions on them is almost zero.

From this point of view, East Africa has a large number of planting and production areas for raw materials such as natural cotton, which can be said to be very unique.

Moreover, the cotton producing areas in East Africa are very evenly distributed from north to south, which makes the strategic security of cotton in East Africa very stable.

The raw materials are sufficient and the price is relatively low. Although it is not as cheap as the cotton grown by the British colonies, especially India, which relies on low labor costs, it also makes the basic price of East African cotton still competitive in the world. Before World War I, Germany imported a large amount of cotton from East Africa, which is a typical proof.

Therefore, in terms of raw material types, quality and price, the comprehensive conditions of East African cotton are second only to those of Britain, which is a natural advantage for East African textile companies.

However, if East African textile companies want to make good use of this basic advantage, they must adopt better technology, equipment and management models.