Reborn as King of South America

Chapter 321 Ten-year Development Plan
With the fertile La Plata Plain in hand, the Han State's strategic position of dominating South America was initially established. In order to consolidate the victory of the Argentine War and seize the historical opportunity of the Second Industrial Revolution, Li Mingyuan personally took the lead and, with the cooperation of officials from the central government and other departments, formulated a detailed ten-year development plan.

The Second Industrial Revolution was an industrial revolution based mainly on internal combustion engines and electricity. It began in the mid-nineteenth century and ended in the mid-twentieth century, spanning a century.

The Second Industrial Revolution was the most favorable period for latecomer countries to catch up with the British and French powers. In this short period of time, Germany and the United States came from behind and became representatives of industrial countries. Japan and Russia had incomplete political systems and low levels of industrial revolution, and initially could only be in the second echelon of emerging industrial countries.

However, the Han Dynasty's industry started late, the country had a small population and a low level of education. If it wanted to catch up with the development speed of Germany, the United States, Britain and France, it had to solve the problems of insufficient educational resources and shortage of industrial population.

Education is the foundation of the Industrial Revolution. A country with a complete industrial system cannot do without workers and technical personnel at all levels. According to the latest statistical data, only one-tenth of the total population receives primary education, and more than half of the educated population are over 20 years old. They only receive a one-year night school education because they want to work in factories and enterprises. The cultural level of these people is limited to simple literacy and some basic physics and chemistry knowledge related to their work. More than 90% of the total population generally cannot read a single word, and the jobs they engage in are pure physical labor such as farming, mining, and fishing.

The difficulty of receiving education has a lot to do with the age of the people. The first generation of Chinese immigrants missed the best age for education, so only a small number of their generation received basic knowledge education. Compared with them, more than 80% of the second generation of local children and young children who immigrated to South America with their families received compulsory education by the government.

In the first three years after the founding of the People's Republic of China, there was a shortage of scholars and teachers. In order to fulfill the compulsory education law issued by the central government, grassroots officials tried their best. If one settlement could not find enough teachers, two or three settlements would jointly run a primary school. There were too many students and the teachers could not accommodate all the students, so they called on the people in the settlements to build simple thatched huts, and then let all the children gather around the teacher to listen to the class. After the first-grade children finished their class, the second-grade children would come up and continue the class.

Simple thatched huts and dirty charcoal chalk supported the teachers through the most difficult three years. Three years later, the agriculture, animal husbandry and textile industries of the Han Dynasty experienced explosive growth. The funds obtained from grain, meat, raw silk and cloth were invested in education. In addition, with the addition of scholars who immigrated from all over the country over the three years, the basic education of the Han Dynasty was gradually put on the right track. Today, the country has preliminarily completed the layout of basic education. Every settlement with a population of more than 2000 people has a primary school, and every county town or settlement community with a total population of more than 10000 people has a secondary school.

Although basic education has a huge audience, as long as we persist in investing funds every year, we will see results within ten years. However, higher education cannot be achieved simply by spending money. The teaching content of several higher education institutions in China tends to be single subjects such as machinery and textiles, and the subject specialization is not strong. Every graduation season, the Ministry of Education will work with various universities to select a group of outstanding students to study in Europe and receive a more in-depth and higher-level education.

In the development plan for the next ten years, education is, as usual, a major focus. During the implementation of the plan, the country will invest 20% of its fiscal revenue each year in the education sector, with a focus on supporting higher education institutions in attracting foreign teachers and overseas education.

Support colleges and universities to add practical subjects such as finance, economics, and law, improve the coverage of higher education, and allow more students to study in colleges and universities. …………

Industrial development and education complement each other. While developing education, we should make use of existing knowledge talents and introduced foreign technical experts to increase research in the fields of internal combustion engines and electricity, reserve science and technology in related fields in advance, and then use the first-mover advantage accumulated by Han in emerging fields to lay the foundation for the second industrial revolution. Then we should wait for the time to be ripe, take out the mastered technologies and exchange them with Western countries, so as to make up for the shortcomings of the industrial system and overtake others to join the ranks of emerging industrial countries.

Agriculture and immigration are two other aspects of the development plan. Land and agriculture are the most favorable conditions for attracting immigrants. Therefore, in order to attract foreign immigrants and plan agricultural industrialization, in the next ten years, the government must not only develop integrated agriculture, but also prevent large-scale land annexation by the powerful, and ensure that each household that moves to the Han State owns at least 30 mu of arable land and no more than 500 mu of arable land. The maximum amount of forest land and pasture is 10000 mu. Excess land will be taxed in a gradient manner.

Education, immigration, agriculture, electricity, internal combustion engine industry, political construction and internal rectification, transportation, medical care, urban construction, diplomacy, colonial construction, military industry, shipbuilding...

The ten-year development plan involves nearly a hundred industries, large and small. Compared with the development plan in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, the ten-year development plan covers more comprehensive and detailed categories. Each major industrial industry is carefully divided into multiple aspects, and then each aspect sets a specific development model and goal. …………In the Chang'an Palace, Li Mingyuan handed over the improvement of the ten-year development plan to the officials below, and then put on his exclusive marshal uniform and came to the meeting hall in the center of the palace.

"The Argentine War is over. In the future, the mainland will usher in a long period of peace. The contributions you have made in the war have been reviewed and reported by the General Staff. In a few days, I will order the General Staff to announce the list of meritorious personnel in this war."

The spacious meeting hall was filled with senior officials and generals. Li Mingyuan paused for a moment and continued, "If anyone has any questions about the evaluation of military merit, they can go to the General Staff to ask someone. I won't talk about the issue of military merit rewards for the time being. You should all have a general idea of ​​the purpose of summoning you here today. The war is over, and the focus of the government and the army will shift from war to internal production and construction. Because of the Argentine War, the garrison and militia forces that were summoned and formed should be disbanded or reorganized. As for the field army, the entire army will return to the peacetime structure, and each division will return to the standard of 12000 people. The 16000 extra people from the four field divisions will be mixed with the first, second, and third mixed brigades. On the basis of the three mixed brigades, the fifth, sixth, and seventh field divisions and the Gyeonggi Imperial Guard Division will be formed, and the insufficient personnel will be selected from the garrison army.

Sun Bin, Zhao Yan, the reorganization of the four new divisions and the disbanding of the garrison troops and militia will be led by Liu Pu, so you must cooperate with Liu Pu's work. "

"Yes, Your Highness."

"The reorganization of the field army and the disbanding of the garrison army have been completed. The total number of the army and navy will be maintained at around 12.6. The Ministry of Revenue must do a good job in distributing soldiers' salaries and land, and must not embezzle soldiers' salaries or military land."

"Don't worry, Your Highness. The land supply under the Ministry of Revenue is sufficient. Each of the 18 states in the country has specially designated military pay fields."

"Yes, that's right. The soldiers of the Nanyang Army are stationed overseas and face a more dangerous environment than their homeland. When dividing the land for military merit, we should consider the contributions made by the soldiers of the Nanyang Army."

Li Mingyuan shifted his gaze from the mainland to Southeast Asia, and said seriously, "According to the armistice agreement we reached with the British, the troops stationed in Songkhla must withdraw before 1880. However, there are many separatist forces in Songkhla. Once our troops withdraw, it will be difficult to guarantee the safety of the Wu regime. Therefore, before withdrawing, our troops need to cooperate with the troops under the Wu City Lord to carry out a thorough blow to the local separatist forces and eliminate the local military forces of the Thai and Malay indigenous chiefs."

"The British and Dutch have lifted the siege on the Natuna Islands. The troops stationed in the Natuna Islands can be deployed to Songkhla nearby to complete the strike against the separatist forces in Songkhla before the evacuation deadline."

"There are 1200 troops stationed in the Natuna Islands, 1500 regular troops stationed in Songkhla, plus 2000 Songkhla troops, a total of 4700 people, which is enough to deal with the Thai and Malay native armies." ...

(End of this chapter)