Ernst said, "Light industry has begun to receive attention in the current development stage of our country, but industrialization is a complex and huge problem."
"In the past thirty years or so, our development focus in East Africa has been agriculture, infrastructure and heavy industry. Even if First Five-Year Plan is completed, the problem of East Africa's light industry will not be solved. Therefore, during the Second Five-Year Plan period, the development of light industry will become one of the key tasks of the government."
Although East Africa is already a well-deserved world power in terms of size, its development level is slightly better than Japan and Tsarist Russia among world powers. Its capital, technology, and foundation are relatively poor compared with those of relatively developed countries.
The advantages of East Africa as a colonial country have appropriately alleviated this problem. For example, in terms of per capita agricultural product consumption, East Africa is much higher than Russia and Japan. However, due to insufficient productivity, it has not reached the United States level and is barely on par with many European countries. Otherwise, based on East Africa's territory, cultivated land, and resource volume, it should exceed most European countries.
After all, the current population of East Africa does not exceed 100 million, while Europe has a population of more than 300 million. At the same time, the total area of East African mainland is more than two million square kilometers larger than that of Europe.
"If Russo-Japanese War breaks out now, it will be a favorable opportunity for us in East Africa, mainly to expand the Russian market. Without considering colonies, Russia has the second largest population in the world, the largest area in the world, and its industrial and agricultural development level is above the world average."
"Russia has always been one of our country's important markets in the past, but the competition we face in the Russian market is also relatively fierce, including Western Europe and United States Capital, which has a first-mover advantage in Russia."
"So Russo-Japanese War will be an important opportunity for our country to expand the Russian market. Even if our market share in Russia is increased by one percentage point, it will be a huge progress."
For a country with a population of over 100 million, one percentage point may mean a market of one million people, which is very attractive to any country.
Of course Ernst does not want to support Russia's victory over Japan, but even if East Africa shows a little more goodwill to Russia in this war than other countries, it will make it more convenient for East Africa's commercial trade with Russia.
Germany in the previous life Russo-Japanese War is a better example. When Britain and the United States clearly supported Japan, France did not support Russia's conflict with Japan in the Far East because of Britain and its own interests.
This is understandable. Although the relationship between France and Russia continues to heat up, the purpose of French government is to let Russia suppress Germany, rather than wasting energy in the Far East and Japan. This makes France remain neutral in Russo-Japanese War, but Germany gives Russia the greatest support.
Of course, although Germany has benefited from Russo-Japanese War, because Germany has great geopolitical and political differences with Russia, this short-term "friendship" will ultimately be difficult to play a role.
East Africa is different. There is almost no fundamental conflict of interest between East Africa and Russia. This means that if East Africa supports Russia in the war, the subsequent relationship between the two countries can be further improved. Although the current Russian government is likely to only have a life span of more than ten years, East Africa needs this window period of more than ten years to promote the development of its country.
"We must seize every opportunity so that we can achieve the rapid and healthy development of East African industry in a relatively short period of time. Therefore, in the middle and late stages of First Five-Year Plan, we must quickly solve the problems in our country's industrial product market."
It is easy to expand the industrial scale of East Africa in a short period of time, but the market is relatively fixed. If the market problem cannot be solved, East Africa can only achieve its goal by further squeezing the potential of its domestic citizens, and this is only the last resort.
At present, there are only a handful of countries in the world that have independent power. Excluding a few top-ranking powers, most of them are colonial or semi-colonial countries. Therefore, in East African industry's foreign market, Russia is an important link. It is large in scale, has relatively strong consumption power, and cannot form competitiveness with East African industries.
Russia's industry is weak. Although East Africa and Russia seem to be incompatible with each other, East Africa has left Russia behind in the field of heavy industry, and in the field of light industry, Russia does not have the advantages of East Africa.
Take the textile industry as an example. Russia's local textile industry, like Germany, lacks the supply of raw materials. In order to solve this problem in the past, the Soviet Union built a large number of new water conservancy projects in Central Asia to alleviate this problem. Although Russian government currently has similar ideas, it is unable to do it like the Soviet Union. It is powerless. This is the advantage of East Africa.
Among the foreign markets in East Africa, the most important one is the Chinese Eastern Europe market, and Central Europe is undoubtedly the German territories market dominated by Germany and Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Eastern Europe market can basically be summarized as Russia, followed by the Far East market, and finally the Middle East market. These are also the three major foreign markets in East Africa.
In addition to the three major foreign markets, South American market is expanding rapidly, but it is ultimately unable to compete with the three major markets, and East Africa lacks the opportunity to accelerate its entry into South American market. The last time was due to the defeat of Spain in Spanish-American War, and East Africa occupied a place in South American market through the relationship of Spain.
Although Spain and Portugal are the main suzerain countries in South America, the South American economy is now mainly controlled by the United Kingdom. If this were not the case, the increase in East Africa's trade in the Argentina market should be able to rise rapidly.
Many South United States countries are economic colonies, and their politics and economy are greatly influenced by European countries. Therefore, if East Africa wants to achieve more outstanding results locally, unless European Dalmatia's takes South America into consideration.
In the previous life, this opportunity was World War I. When the European country Dalmatia's took care of him, United States took the opportunity to enter South American market and replaced the local advantages of other countries. Therefore, before a large-scale war broke out in Europe, East Africa could not smoothly carry out infiltration work in South America.
The Far East market and the Middle East market are in a similar situation. In the Far East market, the "economic alliance" of the United States, Britain, and Japan has an absolute advantage, while East Africa is at a disadvantage locally, so East Africa can only develop in areas with relatively weak economies and focus on defense.
The size of the Middle East market can only barely meet the needs of East Africa, and there is not much room for further growth. After all, the Middle East is still dominated by the Ottoman Empire. Moreover, due to climate reasons, the population in the Middle East is small and the consumption power is also insufficient. The richest Persian Gulf coast in later generations is now the most abundant in pirates.
Therefore, among many markets, the Russian market is the most important to East Africa at present. Even if Soviet regime comes to power in the future, they will not be able to completely get rid of the influence of East Africa. After all, Russia's geographical location determines Russia's dependence on tropical products such as rubber.
Therefore, the layout of East Africa in Russia, even if it is affected by regime changes, will not be too big, and as long as Ernst makes good use of its foresight advantage, it can avoid some losses and maximize benefits.
Ernst said, "Industrialization cannot be done behind closed doors. We in East Africa are not as good as Russia in some conditions, so we cannot ignore the importance of the international market. The connection with the international market has always been a disadvantage in East Africa, which puts higher demands on our various government departments and enterprises."
Even if East Africa develops a planned economy, it must have flexible means to alleviate some of the shortcomings of the planned economy. The planned economy also requires commercial trade, especially when East Africa's resource situation is not as developed as Russia.
Therefore, connecting with the international market is a long-term task for many state-owned enterprises in East Africa. Regardless of whether it was the former United States or the Soviet Union, although the economy went to two extremes, they all had their own forms of markets. It is impossible for East Africa to set up a mutual economic assistance committee, so the connection between East Africa's foreign trade and the country's current Planned Economy System also requires long-term exploration.