Chapter 363 Rapid Economic and Population Growth
For Australasia, December 1913 was definitely the busiest month. In just this month, Australasia took over a large number of British and French Pacific colonies and successfully expanded its sphere of influence to most of the Pacific.
If we look at the current land area of Australasia alone, it is only over 8 million square kilometers.
But if you include the territorial waters of Australasia, Australasia can actually be called a huge country with an area of tens of millions of square kilometers.
You should know that the current division of territorial waters among countries around the world is not clear, and there is no relatively unified data to define the scope of territorial waters of various countries.
This also means that if Australasia's navy is strong enough, it may even be possible to turn most of the Pacific Ocean west and south of Hawaii into its own territorial waters.
If this goal can be achieved, no one will be able to invade the mainland of Australasia, and the Pacific Ocean will be Australasia's internal sea.
The Australasian government attaches great importance to the acquisition of new territories, and the navy is almost always on standby to prepare for any accidents that may occur.
In fact, this is indeed the case. If Australasia can completely control these new territories, it will be able to form a solid defensive island chain outside the Australasian mainland.
By then, Australasia will have sufficient strength and confidence even to confront a major industrial and economic power like the United States.
What Australasia is short of right now is time. It took time both to develop the population and to stabilize the rule of these new territories.
The navy's fleet escorts transport ships to major colonies and territories. They transport not only the governors of new colonies and territories, but also the garrisons that need to be stationed locally and some relatively scarce local resources and food.
Time flies by quickly, and amidst the busy schedule of the Australasian Cabinet Government, December has quickly come to its last day.
On December 31, 1913, as usual, the annual annual report meeting was held at Sydney Palace.
This year's annual report meeting will not only report on the situation throughout 1913, but also report on the deployment of new colonies.
At present, Australasia's actual sphere of influence has expanded to the center of the Pacific Ocean, and these territorial waters require defensive deployment.
Similarly, the dispatch and communication between the colonies, as well as the connection between the mainland and the colonies, need to be stabilized by the promulgation of corresponding policies.
Throughout 1913, Australasia's population continued to surge. Although some European countries have begun to restrict immigration exports, Australasia's immigration is not actually restricted because it has joined the Entente.
British and Russian immigrants, who are more important to Australasia, are arriving in Australasia continuously and becoming official citizens of Australasia.
In 1913, the number of births in Australasia exceeded 400,000 for the first time, reaching 431,400.
This number represents the highest number of births in the history of Australasia, and the birth-promoting policies promulgated by the new cabinet government are largely responsible for this.
Encouraging pronatalist policies gives Australasians peace of mind when it comes to having children. Not only can you get incentives for giving birth to a child, but the government will also bear a large part of the tuition and medical expenses for the newborn.
This also makes Australasians currently more active in having children. Anyway, everyone usually does not have much pressure on loans, and having children has become the choice of most people.
In terms of immigration, due to the large increase in Russian immigrants, the immigration environment in Australasia still maintains a state of rapid growth.
Throughout 1913, Australasia received a total of 1.3 million immigrants, of which Russia contributed more than 800,000.
In order to attract immigrants from Russia, the Australasian government even sent people to bribe middle- and lower-level Russian officials, so that the immigration road could be smoothed.
For Russia, less than 1 million immigrants are simply a small number, a drop in the bucket compared to Russia's total population.
And large-scale immigration to Australasia can also exchange for some military equipment and strategic materials from Australasia, which is a completely profitable business.
Russia has no shortage of people, and Australasia has no shortage of weapons and industrial products. A large number of immigrants will be a win-win situation for both parties.
Among the remaining nearly 500,000 immigrants, immigrants from Britain and France account for more than 310,000, German immigrants 20,000, Italian immigrants 40,000, and other immigrants are distributed in various European countries.
Due to the popularization of various welfare benefits and the construction of medical services in Australasia, the number of deaths in 1913 was actually very small, just over 20,000.
Coupled with the newly received colonies, which totaled more than 100,000 people (aboriginals were not counted), the annual new population of Australasia reached more than 1.8 million.
After subtracting the number of deaths from the new population, Australasia's net population increase is still as high as just over 1.82 million. It is one of the countries with the highest population growth rate in the world today, if not one of them.
The total population of Australasia has reached 13.932 million, and is catching up with the population of 15 million.
Of course, when the Australasian government calculates its population, it does not include the indigenous population in Australasia, which currently numbers in the millions.
If you include the indigenous population, the population of Australasia actually exceeds 15 million.
The problem is that because of Australasia's extreme nationalism, the millions of indigenous people are not accepted by most Australasians.
Most of these populations have fundamental religious and cultural differences from ordinary Australasians, and are not easily assimilated.
It was the indigenous populations of the newly-received colonies that were easy to assimilate. These indigenous populations have been living with local European immigrants for decades. Many of the indigenous people are proficient in English, and some have even converted to Christianity.
Especially in some colonies of the British Empire, many indigenous populations have embraced Protestantism and regard English as their main language.
These natives are easier to assimilate and may one day become recognized citizens of Australasia.
While population growth is good news, the Australasian government's various subsidies for newborns and immigrants are also costing a lot of money.
According to statistics from the Ministry of Finance, the Australasian government has provided more than 3 million Australian dollars in subsidies to families with newborn babies.
These data have increased by more than 20% compared to the previous year, which is enough to show that there are more and more newborns in Australasia.
But this is good news for Arthur and the Australasian government.
Compared with immigrants, newborn babies of the native population are the core population. These people are Australasians with pure blood from birth, and their recognition of the country and nation is much higher than that of immigrants from abroad.
These immigrants from abroad need at least fifteen years of assimilation before they can be completely assimilated into Australasians.
Or because European immigrants and Australasians have almost the same origin. If there are immigrants with different skins and different races, the assimilation time will even be several times higher.
Because of the large number of newborns, the average household size in Australasia is as high as 6.3 people. This also means that Australasian couples of the right age have begun to generally choose to have three or four children.
If this continues, in just a few years the number of babies born in Australasia alone is expected to be in the millions each year.
By that time, the Australasian government will not have to work hard to introduce immigrants from abroad. It will only need to properly deal with the new domestic population. It will not be able to develop Australasia into a country with a large population.
If we look at current population trends, Australasia's population is growing at an exaggerated rate.
If population growth is sustained, Australasia's population could double in ten years' time.
Of course, immigration will be affected to some extent by the war, and it is entirely possible to double the population in more than ten years.
Even if Australasia had not had relatively strict requirements for Russian immigrants, the number of Russian immigrants alone every year would have already exceeded one million people.
For the population of Russia, Arthur only needed civilians with innocent backgrounds, that is, former serfs.
Those who have original ideas or are restless will naturally have to go through strict selection and will not be allowed to enter the borders of Australasia.
Arthur did not want the future revolution in Russia to burn the territory of Australasia. What can most destroy a country is not aggression from foreign enemies, but chaos from within.
Of course, foreign intelligence agents are not omnipotent, and it is inevitable that some fish will slip through the net and come to Australasia.
However, all immigrants coming to Australasia must undergo an observation period of about six months.
During these six months, intelligence agents, immigration agencies, security and police stations, and local governments will closely monitor these immigrants. If any problems are discovered, the final fate of these immigrants will be to work in the mines as hard labor for a lifetime.
Don’t underestimate Arthur’s emphasis on immigration. In 1913 alone, the Australasian government identified hundreds of "unstable elements" from immigrants whose backgrounds were unclear.
Some people either committed many illegal actions before immigrating, or they were participants and planners of the revolution.
Without even thinking about it, these people got directly into Arthur's blacklist and won the right to work in the mine.
If they want to regain their freedom, they may have to pray that Australasia will become the world's hegemon soon, so that Arthur will be happy and happy, and maybe he will let them out with a wave of his hand.
Moreover, once these people are verified, they usually have to go through the interrogation stage. If they are found to have come to Australasia with a purpose and in a gang, they may face direct shooting.
For the stability and security of Australasia, Arthur held the attitude that he would rather kill a thousand people by mistake than let one go when it came to immigration.
Even if he could maintain stability during his rule, Arthur could not guarantee that without his suppression, the revolutionary forces in Australasia would not emerge.
Therefore, solving them at their root cause is the only way Arthur can think of to maintain the stability of the country.
As long as the people of Australasia can live a good life and try to prevent the entry of foreign revolutionary elements, the security and stability of Australasia can still be guaranteed.
Although Australasia is very short of population, it still maintains a six-month observation period for each immigrant.
Unless you are a particularly capable technical and scientific research talent, you must make a very significant contribution if you want to directly obtain Australasian citizenship.
To give a simple example, if there is information about Americans stealing high-tech weapons from the United States, they can also obtain Australasian citizenship.
Of course, this is very unlikely. Because currently, in all aspects of military technology, the United States does not have a significant lead over Australasia.
But before absorbing European scientists and technical talents, the science and technology of the United States was at the level of the great powers at best, and even lagged behind the established powers such as Britain, Germany, and France in many aspects.
In 1913, Australasia's economy was also developing very rapidly. One is the massive growth in population, and the other is the ongoing infrastructure construction in Australasia and the production of the Leonora industrial base.
In 1913, Australasia's gross national product (GNP) reached US$1.578 billion, equivalent to 315.6 million pounds and 631.2 million Australian dollars, with a growth rate of 10.3%.
Although the growth rate is already very good, there is still a certain gap compared with other major powers.
The rapid growth of GNP is most obvious in terms of per capita income.
By the end of 1913, Australasia's per capita income was 51.7 Australian dollars, behind France, but slightly ahead of Austria-Hungary, Russia and Italy.
It is normal for Russia's per capita income to lag behind. The gray animals are not barking for nothing, but most civilians in Russia are still in the stage of not having enough to eat and clothing, and there is a problem if the per capita income can catch up with other great powers.
As for Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the gap between them and Australasia is actually not that big. In fact, it is gradually widening.
If the populations of these two countries were not several times that of Australasia, I am afraid that the GDP of Australasia would have surpassed these two countries long ago.
Although Australasia's per capita income is currently not as high as that of countries such as the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and the United States, if only the happiness index of the people is counted, Australasia may be able to compete with these countries.
Arthur's millions of Australian dollars in relief every year are not in vain. Great powers such as Britain, France, Germany and the United States cannot prevent people from starving to death and freezing to death.
After all, they have a population of tens or even hundreds of millions. Once corresponding relief policies are promulgated, it will be an unbearable loss to the country's finances.
Australasia does not have this problem. When the relief policy was enacted, Australasia's population was still small. Then according to the per capita income and the average household income, the number of people in need of relief is very small, and the funds spent are naturally not much.
Although the population has increased now, the income of many people has already exceeded the per capita level.
In addition, various constructions have resulted in no shortage of jobs in the country. Therefore, the number of people in need of relief in Australasia remains relatively small.
I can have enough food and clothing, have some savings, and have a happy family. This should be the best wish of most civilians in the world!
In Australasia, this beautiful wish has a high probability of coming true. This is the real reason why Australasians love Arthur and this country.
The common people really don't want much. Those in power only need to simply take care of the common people and gain their favor and love.
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(End of chapter)