1890 King of Southeast Asia

"Hello, subjects of the empire. I am your emperor. I am very happy to send you New Year's greetings as the emperor of the Huaxia Empire."

"In the past year, we have overcome many difficulties and completed the epic merger of two huge countries and unified Huaxia."

"The past year was a year of harvest and a year worth celebrating..."

On January 28, 1916, when the war in Europe was in full swing and spread to Asia, Liu Yiming delivered a New Year's speech through the radio station.

Direct broadcasting from Chang'an to the surrounding thousands of kilometers, and then relaying through antennas. Where the antennas cannot reach, airships act as signal repeaters.

Dozens of airships carry antennas and huge equipment and fly in every corner. There are more than 20 airships on the mainland alone.

In this way, from the Arabian Peninsula in the west to the Hawaiian Islands in the east, with a total area of ​​more than 17 million square kilometers, as long as there is a radio, the broadcast can be received.

Of course, the cost is so high not only to talk about how good last year was, but of course this is also very important, after all, this belongs to the public opinion position.

In addition to using radio to increase the sense of identity, it is more important to tell the public what Liu Yiming wants to do.

Some people say that the public is short-sighted, which must be nonsense. It is just that the perspectives and starting points are different, which leads to different factors.

It is like a hungry beggar and a wealthy speculator. The speculator lets the beggar invest his money in the stock market and multiply it a hundred times in a year.

But the beggar took the money to buy two steamed buns, filled his stomach, and avoided starvation. Then the speculator said that the beggar was short-sighted. Is this reasonable?

Of course, this is just a metaphor. In the final analysis, it is caused by the difference in perspective, interests, and responsibilities.

"Starting next year, the government will invest 6.5 billion yuan in five years to build 80,000 primary schools, 20,000 middle schools, and 500 universities. And fully implement the six-year compulsory education system."

"We will start the fourth five-year plan and carry out the third large-scale industrial construction. It is expected to build two industrial centers and four main roads..."

"In order to achieve this goal, the government will invest a total of 15 billion yuan in the next five years for infrastructure construction and industrial equipment research and development."

"We will mobilize all the manpower in the country to participate in this construction."

In fact, Liu Yiming said a lot and promised a lot, but the most important one is the last sentence.

Liu Yiming thought for a long time, and finally found that the large-scale contract model with the participation of all people can complete their plans in the shortest time.

Maybe this model will cause some problems, but it cannot be denied that this model has effectively promoted infrastructure construction.

Huaxia is not poor, especially after the merger, the rich output of some agricultural products and industrial products in Nanhua has enabled Huaxia to form a self-closed loop, and the outflow of precious metals has improved all of a sudden.

With the bonuses brought by the European war, China began to become richer visibly, as shown by the grand plan formulated by the government.

Similar proposals were made at the beginning of the merger, such as universal compulsory education, which can not only improve the level of labor force, but also let the people feel the benefits of the merger.

But there was no money at that time, so it couldn't be done.

Compulsory education is not just a matter of education. For example, the most rudimentary primary school, a few thatched houses, a blackboard, a few tables and benches, plus three or five teachers, can be opened and can teach hundreds of students.

The cost is only two or three thousand yuan a year (student textbooks and teaching aids, teacher salaries, etc.)

Don't think it's high. The annual income of teachers in Nanhua is about 600 yuan. It sounds a lot, but teachers have at least received secondary education and professional skills assessment.

Although secondary education cannot be called high-level intellectuals, it is not difficult to work in a factory for a few years to hone your skills and pass the technical engineer exam.

The salary of a technical engineer is 800 yuan or more, not counting subsidies.

If the income is too low, even if people enter the teaching profession out of passion, how long can they stick to it?

People need to eat. When the granaries are full, people know etiquette. When they have enough food and clothing, they know honor and disgrace. This is a truth that the ancients all knew. Liu Yiming can't be a gangster and learn from the capitalists.

The government calculated that such a simple primary school, which does not provide any benefits to students, has such a high annual maintenance cost. If the finances squeeze out tens of millions, they can only build 10,000 schools.

It sounds really a lot, but 10,000 schools are a drop in the bucket for hundreds of millions of children in China.

As for other methods, such as reducing wages or starting with certain regions, Liu Yiming stopped them.

It is not the lack of wealth that is worrying, but the inequality. The wages can be changed due to regional differences, but it cannot be outrageous!

So the proposal for compulsory education was shelved.

After all, it is not a package deal, like building warships. If you squeeze out, you don't have to worry about it. The rest is the navy's business. The school needs to allocate funds every year.

It was not until the first anniversary of the European War, which happened to be the year-end settlement, that Xu Hui gathered people from various departments, summarized the economic situation over the past year, and then generously agreed to the compulsory education policy.

In the fiscal year of 1915, the imperial government's tariff revenue was 860 million yuan, and personal and corporate taxes were 1.25 billion yuan, totaling 2.11 billion yuan, which tripled and far exceeded the United States.

Among corporate taxes, 70% came from large state-owned enterprises, that is, guns, steel, shipbuilding, chemicals, etc., and the amount of personal taxes was not large, only more than 20 million.

In the fiscal year of 1915, the total expenditure was 800 million yuan, and the surplus was 1.31 billion yuan, which was higher than the US fiscal revenue.

This is an incredible figure, but this is because Liu Yiming had hoarded a large amount of materials in advance and raised the price before the war.

For example, rubber, because of the "war", rubber futures have been hyped up to 5,000 pounds per ton, and the spot price can float up two levels to 6,000 pounds, which is 30,000 US dollars.

Because only Southeast Asia produces rubber in the world, except for a small amount of production in British Malaya, the rest of the output is in South China.

There is also oil. Although the UK discovered oil in the Suleiman area of ​​Persia and mined it, and built a 210-kilometer-long oil pipeline from Suleiman to the Abadan Port refinery.

However, the current daily output of the Suleiman oil field is more than 8,000 tons, which cannot even meet the needs of the UK. It is not enough for its own use, so what about export?

(Britain began to manufacture warships that only use fuel oil as fuel around 1911, and renovated the original warship boilers. Britain has warships of more than two million tons.)

So, at present, British and French warships and cars have to use Arab oil. China has an oil pipeline directly to the Mediterranean Sea, right in Haifa Port.

Why mention this? Because the United States also has oil, and there is a huge amount of oil production in the Gulf of Mexico.

The biggest cost of oil is the transportation cost. It is self-evident which one has lower costs, crossing the Atlantic Ocean or directly connecting to the Mediterranean Sea through pipelines.

Of course, Haifa's refineries will refine oil into finished oil, such as kerosene, gasoline, diesel, heavy oil, paraffin and other by-products.

Most of the fuel oil will be exported to France or the British, and the by-products will generally be shipped back with empty ships.

By the way, a reminder, it is not how much fiscal revenue is, that is, only so much money is earned, and it is not that only so much can be used.

For example, the loans from Britain and France to China cannot be counted as income, right? There are also the income of each enterprise, the profits distributed by the entire industrial chain after selling products, etc.

Let's put it this way, in the whole year of 1915, the total amount of funds flowing into the Huaxia region exceeded 8 billion. Is it a lot? Really a lot! The US fiscal revenue is only 800 million.

So much money squeezed in, and it also caused a lot of troubles for Liu Yiming, such as where should the money go?

With preparation, China's size can provide sufficient materials, but China's current situation cannot digest this money well.

To digest 8 billion cash, at least tens of billions of volume are needed, but it is difficult for China to have so many high-quality enterprises in a short time.

After all, factory construction takes time, worker training, raw material sources, etc., all take time.

If you don't find an outlet for funds as soon as possible, an outlet that is enough to absorb future funds, then the funds will transfer to the stock market.

And China has strict control over the stock market. The final result is that funds flow to places where control is not so strict, such as the United States, which is experiencing a bull market.

If this is true, then Liu Yiming has been busy for several years, which is equivalent to working for the United States.

Therefore, Liu Yiming simply launched the infrastructure construction project. If he couldn't handle it, he would build two more industrial centers and heavy industries that would burn money.

And through policy measures, this cash flow was diverted to these projects, and wealth was increased through construction in general.

Moreover, these projects could take over the huge post-war production capacity. With China's size, infrastructure construction would not be completed in decades.

As for why he told the people, it was mainly to give them something to look forward to. When the plan was officially implemented and the families got jobs, they would also get satisfaction.

First, it could improve their motivation, and second, it could improve their sense of belonging. Liu Yiming was not a teacher, so he could only lure people with benefits.

The speech lasted for more than ten minutes, and it was basically blessings, reviewing the past, looking forward to the future, and work reports.

After the speech, there was a crosstalk performance, followed by opera, and the radio could only do these.

"How is it, is it okay?" Liu Yiming walked out of the studio, picked up the tea and drank it, and did not forget to show off before drinking.

"The content is detailed, but some of it involves future planning. Is it okay to just tell it like this?" Xu Hui handed Liu Yiming a towel.

"These things are not like the Chang'an, which can be covered by a shed. Once the construction starts, it will definitely be impossible to hide."

"Okay, it's okay, go home for dinner, spend time with your family today, and you will be busy in the next few years."

Liu Yiming smiled and wiped his mouth, ready to run away, his family was waiting for him to celebrate the New Year.

"Your Majesty, something happened in Arabia." Jiang Wang hurried over, followed by Huang Keqiang and Wang Yang.

Liu Yiming frowned and sighed.

"What's wrong..."