On this day, it was the fifteenth day of the empire's month, and Feng Yunshan sat on the dragon chair in the court with a solemn face, preparing to meet the ministers and listen to the reports of the courtiers.

As a result of the greetings to the cabinet in advance, the chief officials of the various ministries were well prepared in advance, and they were well aware of all the matters to be reported to the emperor and the ministers of the court.

Although it was a great court meeting, under Feng Yunshan's insistence on simplifying the court rites for several years, various processes have been greatly simplified, which is completely different from the original Manchu and Taiping Heavenly Kingdoms. But after all, it is a big court meeting, and it is still inevitable that hundreds of officials will bow.

After everyone saluted, Feng Yunshan cleared his throat and said loudly: "All Aiqing are flat!" Today's meeting, as everyone knows, is that I want to know about the completion of the first five-year plan. Since the implementation of this development plan, earth-shaking changes have taken place in all fields of the country, and some of them have been seen and heard about, and remarkable achievements have been made, but some places have still lagged behind. There is still more than a year to go before the first five-year plan, and today's meeting is to find out the shortcomings and make up for the gaps. What is a shortcoming? I should have mentioned it to all Aiqing, the Western barrel theory. All walks of life, every region, every cabinet ministry in the country are the same planks as a wooden barrel, and the slightest pee will cause the water of the entire wooden barrel to flow out of here, which is exactly what I feared. Zeng Aiqing, you are the vice premier of the cabinet, so let me talk about it in general first. ”

Zeng Guanlan took over the emperor's words and said loudly: "The first five-year plan was mainly based on the establishment of military industry, the development of banking and finance, railway transportation, and telegraph business. Indeed, through four years of vigorous development, as His Majesty said, remarkable results have been achieved. ”

In view of the eight major development tasks, Wei Chen briefly reported to His Majesty and his colleagues: In terms of military industry, four major shipyards have been set up in Guangzhou, Fuzhou, Shanghai, and Dengzhou, in addition to Da Nang in Ninan Province, Guangzhou and Qiongzhou in Guangdong Province, Taiwan in Fujian Province, Shanghai in Jiangsu Province, Zhenhai in Zhejiang Province, and Lushun in Liaoning Province, especially in Guangzhou and Shanghai, in addition to the shipyards run by the government, there are more than 10 commercial shipyards. The shipbuilding industry has flourished, and the Fuzhou Shipbuilding Bureau, which is currently the largest, has obtained the drawings of ironclad ships by recruiting ship designers from several major French shipyards, and has begun to produce our empire's own battleships and ironclad ships. In addition, the four general bureaus of machine manufacturing in Shengjing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Wuchang have been built and put into use one after another, forming the four major weapons production bases of the imperial court. In addition, compared with previous years, the Imperial Krupp Steel Company not only expanded the manufacturing capacity of rifled guns several times, but also began to develop improved breech-loading rifled guns, and developed several advanced gun models such as the Sharps M1859 rifle, the Krupp P1858 cavalry artillery carbine, the Krupp breech rifle rifle and the Colt revolver. The Mauser Arsenal under the Shengjing Machine Building Bureau, the Mauser brothers have developed a sample of the Mauser Type 59 rifle through research, the transformation of the Prussian Dresser firing gun, and the improvement of the rotary bolt machine, and now they are making every effort to overcome the problem of the fixed black powder metal shell gun cartridge proposed by His Majesty, and it is almost possible to manufacture samples, once the fixed metal bullet is researched and put into production, the rifle of our Chinese Empire can be at least 10 years ahead of the Western powers! ”

Hearing this, Feng Yunshan nodded frequently, and he breathed a sigh of relief to the Krupp and Mauser brothers who he had dug up, and now they had begun to make the inventions in their respective fields earlier than in history. He was a little worried, afraid that in a different environment, they could no longer develop the Krupp cannon and Mauser rifle as in history, but fortunately, Feng Yunshan himself was a little related to machinery after all, and he also roughly knew the structural tricks of the Krupp rifled gun and the Mauser rifle.

However, Feng Yunshan was still a little dissatisfied, that is, the metal shell bullets of the fixed black powder were too slow to be manufactured. It seems that the level of machining in the empire, compared with the countries of Western Europe, is still somewhat lacking, otherwise, the metal-shelled bullet would have been made long ago. However, after Feng Yunshan directly mentioned the use of copper, now the copper eggshell of black powder has an eyebrow, and it will not be long before it can be mass-produced.

Seeing the emperor looking at him, Zeng Guanlan continued to report: "In agriculture, there has been a fundamental leap. First of all, the use of holy fertilizer, whether it is rice and sweet potatoes in the south or wheat, corn and cotton in the north, the yield must be increased by more than three or four percent. Secondly, in terms of rice, the Ministry of Agriculture has introduced rice from Java, Annam and Qiongzhou to breed together, and the foreigner who was captured in Borneo last time is a breeding expert, and the rice varieties cultivated are 20% higher than those of the native rice varieties in the south. Of course, the most important thing is actually the construction of water conservancy facilities. In the past four years, the imperial court has invested tens of millions of Shengyuan in funds, organized nearly 100 million laborers to build reservoirs and ponds, dig ditches, and build more water conservancy facilities than ever before, so that more than 10% of the dry land has become paddy fields, and the rest of the paddy fields are more resistant to natural disasters because of water irrigation. In addition, the local government has encouraged the people to form cooperatives to jointly resist disasters and organize farming, subsidized farmers to raise funds to buy large agricultural tools and cattle, and put new agricultural tools on the market and sold them to the people at low prices, all of which have achieved good results. Finally, the agricultural institutes set up by local governments have promoted new farming methods, implemented deep ploughing and point tillage, prevented insect pests in advance, and prevented crop diseases, which has increased the income of rural households in various places a lot in the past two years. The Ministry of Agriculture has also divided the Qinling Mountains and the Huai River into two places, divided into the north and south, compiled different farm calendars, compiled easy-to-understand songs, popularized new technologies, reminded the people to do farm work according to the season, and also promoted the development of rural areas. The grain output of the whole country is increasing year by year, and last year it has already increased by 50 percent compared with the second year of Taisheng, and the grain stored by the state treasury last year has not yet been eaten, and this year's summer harvest is another bumper harvest, and there is no place to store the tax grain and the grain collected and stored. ”

Zeng Guanlan paused here and continued: "Through the statistical data, we can compare the increase in grain income: it is still the year before the third year of Taisheng, The country has a population of 424.7 million, 1.015 billion mu of land, a total of 1.36 billion stone of wheat and 2.42 billion stone of rice, all of which are equivalent to about 454.8 billion jin of rice, and the annual grain yield per mu reaches 365 city jin, and the per capita grain can reach 1,043 city jin; and last year, that is, the fifth year of Taisheng, the country's population of 445 million, 1.284 billion mu, a total of 1.88 billion stone of wheat and 3.72 billion stone of rice, all of which are equivalent to about 676 billion jin of rice, calculated down, the annual grain yield per mu reaches 526 city jin, and the per capita grain can occupy 1519 city jin. That is to say, compared with before, last year, both the yield per mu and the per capita grain share increased by four or five percent. Although it cannot be said that all the people can eat and drink enough, but the situation is much better than in previous years, and most of the people do not have to be as before, cutting down on food and clothing, especially when the green and yellow are not harvested, they have surplus food at home, and there is no need to dig wild vegetables around to satisfy their hunger. For example, in the small drought in Hubei and Zhili last year, the victims did not leave their hometowns to beg or sell their children and daughters, and they all had some surplus food, plus the relief from the local government, and survived the disaster year safely. In other places, especially in the Jiangnan and Lingnan areas, the villagers have become richer than ever, and almost every household has surplus grain to sell, which has even led to a drop in grain prices of more than 20 percent this year, and it is precisely because of this that the Ministry of Agriculture has begun to guide some rural farmers to plant tobacco, cotton, and other economic crops. ”

Feng Yunshan and the ministers nodded one after another, and from the information revealed by Zeng Guanlan, especially the substantial increase in per capita grain and yield per mu, they calmed down in their hearts. Feng Yunshan secretly rejoiced, not for anything else, just for him, as the emperor, so that the people could live and work in peace and contentment, have something to eat, and even achieve a jump in per capita food possession one step ahead of the warlord wars and the early days of liberation in later generations, which was enough to make him proud.

However, he knew that one of them was that the situation was good in the past two years, and there were no major disasters; Second, the use of phosphate fertilizers has greatly increased crop income, and the development and grain production in Vietnam and other places have been included in the statistics, making the data look good. As the population grows, the pressure on food is always there, and I have to continue to work hard.