In the expanded participation meeting held in October of the 37th year of Chengshun, extensive discussions were held on grain production and supply issues. More importantly, Emperor Luo Zhixue of the Great Chu Empire gave clear instructions at the meeting.

It is required to initially solve the food supply problem within five years and increase the per capita food level from the current 380 kilograms to 400 kilograms.

The impact of this meeting is significant!

Da Chu Chao Bao devoted a lot of space to reporting on this grain conference in the latest Chao Bao. It not only reported on the conference itself, but also followed up on some related actions of various ministers and departments.

Local newspapers also followed the trend closely and successively reported on it on a large scale.

Many officials, whether they are officials from various ministries in Gyeonggi Province or officials from local government offices, as long as they are related to food, they are making various statements with all kinds of chests.

Even officials in other fields that have nothing to do with food or even agriculture are rushing to make various statements one by one.

Even the Ministry of Taxation, which is only responsible for collecting money, only issued a document a few days later, stating that it would study the current agricultural tax rate and explore the feasibility of reducing agricultural taxes to increase farmers' income and increase farmers' enthusiasm for growing food.

The industrial and commercial department stated that it will further optimize the relevant processes of grain circulation, reduce the burden in the grain circulation process, and optimize the grain circulation volume.

The same is true for most other departments.

As for the Dachu Empire Grain Corporation, which has a closer relationship with this matter, the company's supervisor openly stated in the Dachu Chaobao: The Grain Corporation will make every effort to increase the food supply and ensure that the local per capita average grain supply will be increased within five years.

The grain level is increased to 400 kilograms.

At the same time, a number of specific plans have been released, such as preparing to build large-scale refrigeration ships to widely import meat from overseas territories, colonies, indigenous controlled areas and other overseas areas to reduce the pressure on local meat supply and reduce the cost of locally cultured meat.

resulting in food consumption.

Sea transportation cost subsidies for bulk basic grains will be further increased, and the amount of basic grains such as wheat and rice imported from overseas will be expanded.

The brewing business will be transformed, and the staple grain brewing business will be significantly reduced, and crops such as potatoes and corn, which are not picky about the terrain and have higher yields, will be used as auxiliary grain brewing business to reduce the waste of staple grains in the brewing industry.

And in some places, the purchase price of grain will be raised to support and promote the enthusiasm for grain farming in some areas.

In short, the Dachu Empire Grain Corporation will make every effort to improve food supply.

The enthusiasm of various departments and local yamen for food supply can be said to be very rare... This cannot be blamed on them. The main reason is that this is the first time in the past many years that Luo Zhixue of the Great Chu Empire has publicly targeted some major affairs.

Make clear requests in person.

The last time he did this was the high-pressure steam engine in the early 1920s. At that time, he personally gave public instructions to speed up the development, production and application of high-pressure steam engines.

This allowed the Chu Empire to burst out with great enthusiasm and realize the large-scale mass production and application of a series of various high-pressure steam engines in just a few years.

As for other seemingly important matters, in fact Luo Zhixue has never publicly issued clear requirements on what to do and what goals to achieve.

In most cases, it is a natural adjustment made by the empire's upper echelons as a whole with the development of productivity and society.

Even if Luo Zhixue got involved, he mostly promoted it through many less conspicuous ways such as small-scale private meetings, listening to reports, and simply giving instructions.

He rarely shouts out loud enough to get the whole country to do it with him!

In most cases, Luo Zhixue rarely directly intervenes in domestic development!

For example, in railway construction, strictly speaking, Luo Zhixue did not interfere much.

But even so, despite the seemingly vigorous railway construction in the past decade or so, more than 100,000 kilometers of railways have been laid in just a dozen years!

This data is extremely astonishing... Of course, this is also an inevitable situation given the productivity, huge population, and vast territory. You must know that the United States in the original time and space had already laid 50,000 kilometers of railways during the Civil War around 1860.

Having completed industrialization, with a population of 400-500 million in the mainland alone, and extensive global expansion, with a large supply of overseas industrial raw materials and a dumping market, the national power of the Chu Empire was actually 19 times greater than that of the original time and space.

Any modern industrial country in this century will be more powerful!

The construction of 100,000 kilometers of railways in the past ten years is actually not too fast.

If anyone has played the Victoria series of P Company, then they will know that the Qing Dynasty, which has hundreds of millions of people, a vast land and abundant resources, and possesses most of the resources required for industrialization, will definitely be a world hegemon once it starts industrialization... the kind that can dominate the world.

This is not for Chinese people to enjoy themselves, after all, this game was created by foreigners.

And today's Chu Empire is actually more powerful than the Qing Dynasty in these strategy games... The Qing Dynasty in the game also has other powers as opponents, and there are also restrictions and penalties from various game mechanisms!

However, the Da Chu Empire has no rivals, and there is no punishment mechanism for expansion such as notoriety. For the Da Chu Empire, it can be said that it can expand wherever it wants on a global scale, and it can do whatever it wants.

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Not to mention places like Southeast Asia, America, India, and Africa, the Chu Empire is now promoting European trade plans... and plans to treat the entire Europe as an economic colony.

The Da Chu Empire, which has such a strong strength, is also extremely strong when it comes to various infrastructure construction. It has built 100,000 kilometers of railways in more than ten years, which is actually a small amount...

The main reason is that the technical strength of basic engineering is somewhat inferior. It is more difficult to lay railways in complex terrain. Many places in China also have complex terrain. At the same time, railway construction funds mainly come from the issuance of railway bonds by railway companies, and

There was no liberalization to allow private capital to rush in, so railway construction was slightly slower.

If private capital is allowed to rush in, the speed of railway construction will be much faster... But the railways built by private capital will most likely be concentrated in the eastern flat terrain and economically developed areas.

As for other remote economically backward areas or areas with complex terrain, there is a high probability that it will not be done.

However, railways are one of the most important basic facilities for people's livelihood. The empire will not tolerate private capital only building railways in places where it is easy to build railways and making money, leaving them invisible to economically backward and remote areas, and only focusing on making a fortune.

The empire's top officials considered comprehensive development and people's livelihood issues, so they insisted on not liberalizing the railway issue... In recent years, the Da Chu Empire has gradually liberalized even the salt affairs. In the thirty-fifth year of Chengshun, the Da Chu Empire officially

A license system has been adopted for salt affairs. As long as enterprises obtain production, transportation, and sales licenses, they can engage in related operations of table salt or industrial salt.

As for the retail sales of salt, it has been fully liberalized. It is no longer limited to specialized salt stores. All terminal retail locations such as grocery stores are allowed to sell after applying for the corresponding license.

This is the very important "salt licensing system" in the Dachu Empire's salt reform... It has evolved from a monopoly system integrating production, transportation and sales to the current licensing system!

It's just that the table salt and even industrial salt business has been dominated by the provincial branches of the Dachu Empire Salt Company, which has made small profits but quick turnover, with little profit... So even if the license application is liberalized, not many companies have entered it.

…It’s not that you can’t apply for a license, it’s that you don’t make money.

There's nothing wrong with doing something these days. I have to go into the salt industry, which is no longer making much money. People's capital is not stupid...

Who still doesn’t know that the reason why your Salt Service Corporation opened up its franchise is because it doesn’t make any money!

I don’t see you officials letting the railways run as monopolies when it comes to making real money.

The facts are almost the same... Mainly because of the continuous advancement of technology, salt production has become very simple. At the same time, the empire's fiscal revenue is increasing, and the share of conventional tax contributions such as industry and commerce is very large. The salt industry brings thousands of

The profits and taxes seem to be a lot, but the voices of complaints from the people are not small... Therefore, the government began to gradually abandon the profits and taxes on salt many years ago. By reducing the salt tax and reducing profits, the terminal price of salt was gradually lowered!

Until now...salt has become very cheap...so cheap that most capital is unwilling to enter this industry even if the franchise is opened up.

In desperation, the Salt Service Company could only continue to bite the bullet and continue to work hard, still monopolizing most of the domestic salt and industrial salt supply business!

Their monopoly is not due to how powerful their technology is... it is simply because they keep the price of salt too low, making it unprofitable for latecomers!

It's a bit like the Coke companies of later generations... The two Coke companies are able to occupy almost all the Coke market, not because of secret formulas or anything like that, but purely because they have made their product prices very low through years of accumulation, causing latecomers to want to

Entering this market involves a large investment and low profits... No, let alone making money, you will probably lose money.

In this way, the market threshold has been raised a lot!

The moats of the two Coca-Cola companies are not formulas or patents, they are simply the ultimate price!

The same goes for the salt company of the Dachu Empire. In the past ten years, in order to influence the calls of the empire's top officials, they have continued to lower costs and lowered the retail price of salt to the point where no one would even pick it up... This would have been unimaginable twenty years ago.

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But it is different when it comes to railways. Regarding railways, the Chu Empire still maintains a monopoly system, and the operating profits of some railways are still very high... A lot of private capital wants to get involved.

Therefore, the empire's railway franchise was driven purely by administrative power.

However, even if private capital did not rush in to create a railway boom, 100,000 kilometers would still be built.

These 100,000 kilometers are not a small number. Even the overseas territory of North America has begun to build railways. Railways are also being built in southern Africa...where the big gold mines go deep into the interior of Africa, and a railway can be built to facilitate transportation.

However... even for such an important matter as railway construction, Luo Zhixue actually did not pay much attention to it over the years. That is to say, he paid more attention when the train was first built, and then basically ignored it...

...Anyway, there are a lot of departments in charge of this matter, so nothing can go wrong. Just build the railway step by step.

There are many other issues, such as universal basic education that was proposed two years ago, but Luo Zhixue never took the initiative to express any attitude from the beginning to the end.

It was just that after the ministers discussed among themselves, compromised with each other, and exchanged interests, they reached a consensus plan and Luo Zhixue directly approved it.

In fact, this universal basic education is a very important government affairs, but Luo Zhixue does not pay much attention to it... After all, after the productivity develops to a certain level, compulsory or universal education in the basic stage will naturally be provided, and there is no need for Luo Zhixue.

Zhixue is dedicated to promoting it.

Universal basic education can be regarded as the Dachu Empire’s version of six-year compulsory education to some extent... Of course, due to limited financial capacity, the basic education in the Dachu Empire focuses on universal benefits, not

All for free!

In fact, even later generations of China seemed to have adopted the so-called nine-year compulsory education early, but in fact for a long time, due to financial constraints, although tuition fees were nominally free, books, miscellaneous fees, board and lodging were still required.

There are still a lot of messy expenses...

I won’t talk about it earlier, but in the 1980s and 1990s, for a considerable number of rural poor families, it was still a relatively heavy burden to support their children in the nine-year compulsory period of primary school and junior high school... If there are more children, then the children

Dropping out of school after entering elementary school is also very common.

It was not until the 21st century that economic conditions improved that fees for books, miscellaneous materials, room and board, etc. were gradually exempted in a real sense...

Don't feel bad about it yet, in fact this is already done very well.

Compulsory education is a great test of a country's financial capabilities. For a country with a small population, compulsory education can be achieved with just a few tweaks.

Anyway, no matter how much you try, it won’t cost you much!

But for a country with a population of more than one billion, compulsory education is very expensive.

For example, future generations will provide 150 million primary and secondary school students with free nine-year compulsory education... Generally speaking, primary school students receive a subsidy of more than 700, and junior high school students receive a subsidy of more than 900... Boarding students will have to receive an additional subsidy of 200 to 300... Taken together, it is about

That’s about eight or nine hundred yuan per person per year!
To be continued...