After Wang Zhaoming, the new secretary general of the secretariat, left, Song Biao recruited Mei Yiqi, the executive director of the Science and Technology Commission of the Advisory Bureau, to the office and asked Mei Yiqi to draw up a detailed report on the Imperial 201 project.

The legendary eternal president of Tsinghua University completed his Ph.D. in industrial physics at the University of Virginia in the United States in the publicly-funded study abroad program of the Central Imperial University, and served as an executive director of the Science and Technology Commission of the Inner Court Advisory Bureau, responsible for following up the cabinet's 201 National Science and Technology Research Project.

At this time, Mei Yiqi was still very young, just past the age of standing, tall and thin, with glasses, really a typical scholar, in the upsurge of almost blind worship of the emperor throughout the country, when the former president of the Central Imperial University, Huang Zhongliang, recommended him to serve as the executive director of the Science and Technology Commission of the Inner Court Advisory Bureau, Mei Yiqi was naturally extremely excited, but in the past six months since the official launch of the 201 project, he has not had the opportunity to meet the emperor.

Suddenly received a call from the emperor directly in the office, and asked him to report to work by name, Mei Yiqi was excited and in a hurry, and she didn't know how nervous she was.

Accompanied by the chamberlain, Mei Yiqi found that the emperor was drinking tea in front of the window outside the balcony.

He approached a little closer, and was at a loss to know whether he had to salute in the center of the hall or step forward to salute, but fortunately, the experienced chamberlains gave him a gesture in advance, and led him to the front of the emperor and bowed.

Hearing that the tall and thin young man in front of him was Mei Yiqi, Song Biao showed some interest, asked Mei Yiqi to sit down in front of the balcony with him, and asked people to prepare a teacup for Mei Yiqi.

Waiting for the newly brewed oolong tea to be delivered, Song Biao personally poured tea for Mei Yiqi and said: "In the past, there were still refreshments for the first time to receive newcomers, but unfortunately almost no one was willing to eat half a piece of palace dim sum here, it was always wasted, so it was canceled." Now the rules have changed, and when you go out, the chamberlains will prepare a box of court snacks for you. ”

Mei Yiqi hurriedly thanked: "The emperor is too polite......!" ”

Halfway through what he said, he felt that this was too stupid, and hurriedly changed his words: "Thank you Emperor Longen." ”

Saying this, he was about to stand up in embarrassment, and felt more and more that he was too unruly, how could he be on an equal footing with the emperor?

Song Biao motioned for him to sit down, and said, "You're lucky, it's time for me to rest, you can come in and report at ease at this time, and you are not in charge of military and political affairs, so you don't have to be so stubborn." Sit down and talk to me about 201. ”

Mei Yiqi breathed a sigh of relief and said: "Back to the emperor, since the cabinet determined this plan, from May last year to yesterday, a total of 127 projects have been formulated, involving 31 major projects such as electric power, railways, ships, chemicals, pesticides, machinery, radio, drugs, etc., covering a wide range, including 35 projects such as hybrid rice proposed by the emperor, which have been officially approved, and some projects are progressing smoothly. At present, there are a total of 11,348 domestic scientific and technological workers and 7,493 foreign experts to assist in the work, and some technologies such as rolling and pressing homogeneous marine steel plate research work have been carried out early, and the first phase of results has been basically achieved at this stage. Projects such as high-power steam turbine generator sets and high-voltage transformers are also progressing smoothly at this stage because of German technology and their own basic work in the Northeast Electric Power Industry Research Institute. ”

Song Biao nodded slightly with satisfaction, and then asked, "What about the field of nuclear physics?" ”

Mei Yiqi thought for a while and replied: "Your Majesty, these are all industrial application research in front of us, as long as the ideas are correct, the progress will usually be relatively fast, but in some basic science research fields, there may be no real results for more than ten years, which is also a very normal fact in scientific research, so we still need geniuses, and a genius can often be worth thousands of mediocre researchers." ”

Song Biao agreed: "Yes, what you said is very correct, and I think so too, so the empire should put education first." The empire has a large population, and there is absolutely no shortage of children with gifted potential, but there is a lack of really suitable education to help them become the pillars of the empire. ”

Mei Yiqi said: "Your Majesty thinks that the empire has gradually had a better foundation in university education, whether it is Aurora University, or the Central Imperial University, the Imperial University of Science and Technology, or the provincial universities in various provinces, the level is still gradually improving, but the basic education needs to be strengthened. Only with a good basic education can there be more talents that can be created, and only then can universities cultivate real academic elites. ”

Song Biao still nodded in agreement, and said: "You are right, but the national conditions of the empire are here, although our education expenditure this year is finally about the same as the United States, but compared with the United States, there is still a big gap, the key is that our country has a large population, the pressure of basic compulsory education is heavy, only the provinces with good economic conditions provide formal primary and junior high school education, and the poorer provinces mainly guarantee the most basic literacy education and illiteracy work." This still needs to be done step by step, and there is no reason to say that it can take a few years to complete the road of others in a hundred years. ”

Mei Yiqi replied: "The emperor is sage." ”

Song Biao came to Mei Yiqi, not to discuss the issue of education with him, but to ask: "Is there any difficulty in the funding of the 201 project?" ”

Mei Yiqi said: "The prime minister attaches great importance to the 201 project, and currently mainly adopts three methods, one is the basic scientific research part is mainly through the cooperation with universities, and the other is the industrial science and technology to support enterprises to carry out related work in the form of subsidies and support for factories; Third, the military field and special fields are dominated by political axe investment. From the current point of view, the total cost is still relatively abundant, mainly because we have to do what we can at this stage, and there are few things with the surname to open up and more things to catch up with the surname. In particular, a large number of experts directly from abroad have significantly accelerated the pace of catching up with technology, and the efficiency is also high. Generally speaking, many industrialists are also very active and enthusiastic in this investment, as long as it is the call of the imperial political axe, whether it is to improve the process, or to improve the technology, whether it is to train more scientific researchers, or to train more senior technicians, the industrialists are positive responses, I have also dealt with many industrialists in the past six months, very moved, so, I also believe that the funding of the Imperial 201 project is not a problem, not to mention the large scale of the imperial investment, itself is not a problem, confidence and enthusiasm is the key, The people have such confidence and enthusiasm, patriotism and loyalty to the monarch above all else, this is the foundation of the success of the Imperial 201 Project! ”

After hearing these words, Song Biao was silent for a while.

After a while, he and Mei Yiqi admonished: "Let everyone be sensible, catching up with the great powers and the recovery of the nation is never an overnight thing, the most important thing is to explain to the cabinet, and ask the cabinet to make some basic emergency plans for the 201 project, and provide temporary emergency loans for some enterprises." Secondly, it is necessary to support new technical personnel to take the initiative to participate in entrepreneurship, and to encourage banks with sufficient capital to participate in investment in new technologies. ”

Mei Yiqi agreed.

Although he was not a cabinet official and had a low administrative rank, in his position, his responsibility was to be in charge of the special communication channel between the emperor and the cabinet axe for the 201 project.

Song Biao's interest in the 201 project is very strong, not Mei Yiqi can be satisfied with a simple report, he also personally browsed the information and reports compiled by Mei Yiqi, and after consulting Mei Yiqi with some opinions, he made some special annotations for each key project.

At this time, Song Biao has now decided that if China wants to continue to develop, it can only rely more on scientific and technological progress rather than simply relying on investment growth.

Taking advantage of the economic crisis in Germany and France, the war and depression in Europe, and the special situation within Soviet Russia, the empire recruited a large number of outstanding scientific and technological talents and experts from Europe and Soviet Russia, which not only accelerated its own scientific and technological research, but also stole a large number of important technologies from Germany and European countries.

This kind of work can be called the hiring of foreign experts, it can also be called robbery, and it can also be called technology theft, because the empire hires experts and scientific and technological personnel from various countries for the surname, and on some important projects, the empire will also secretly transfer technology through other operational channels, such as Germany providing special funds to aid the military industry, and converting part of the debt into aid loans for important companies such as Krupp and Thyssen.

For example, in the field of shipbuilding steel, the empire itself has mastered the classa series of shipbuilding steels through the Bethlehem company, but it still continues to introduce talents and technologies from Germany through secret cooperation with Germany, and transfer to the KC series of shipbuilding steels, and the country also continues to promote the hardening research of new alloy steels and surface carburizing technology at the Northeast Metallurgical Industry Research Institute.

By comparing the two technologies, Imperials re-tested the new surface carburized silicon-molybdenum alloy steel of the Fecemented series with the process of KC series combined with the ratio of CLASSA, and the average value is about 7% higher than that of KC series, especially in the performance of heavy elasticity.

In the fields of electrical, chemical, steam turbines, internal combustion engines, submarines, etc., the scale of the empire's introduction from Germany is even more amazing, in Qingdao and Haizhou, the empire has specially opened the German area, and more than 47,500 professionals have been introduced from Germany, just in the chemical dye industry, the empire has quadrupled the entire set of technical process formulas and products in just three years.

In the fields of mining exploration, agriculture, and education, the scale of the empire's direct introduction from Europe was even larger, especially the empire's policy of recognizing dual nationality, and the European population (excluding Russians) living in China surged from 523,000 in 1913 to 2,243,300 in 1921, with 31% of the population, and the population of foreign Russians and native nationalities increased to 3,584,000.

Among them, the Russian population mainly lives in Novosibirsk, the three eastern provinces and the Far Eastern Province, the French are mainly concentrated in Shanghai and Fuzhou, the Germans are concentrated in Liaoning Province, Tianjin, Qingdao and Weihai, the Belgians are concentrated in Tianjin and Shanghai, and the British and Irish are mainly concentrated in Shanghai and Hong Kong.

From the First World War to the present, although the empire has not launched a new national industrial plan similar to 175 items, the empire's industry is still in the rapid expansion of technology and total products, especially in the important industrial fields such as oil, textile, dye, chemical, machinery, electrical, automobile, metallurgy, etc.

The Empire's fertilizer production surged from 1.7 million tons in 1913 to 43 million tons in 1921, and the Empire's automobile production surged from 140,000 in 1913 to 380,000 in 1921, becoming the second largest fertilizer and automobile industry after the United States, and agricultural machinery also increased from 4 million horsepower in 1913 to 3.4 billion horsepower in 1921, although this indicator was only equivalent to 1/7 of the same period in the United States, or even only 1/1 of the United States in 1910. 3, but it is already one of the countries with the largest scale of agricultural mechanization in the world.

The popularization of agricultural mechanization has a great effect of saving labor resources, so that the labor rate and total output of the agricultural population increase rapidly, the agricultural population can be engaged in other sideline labor in addition to planting crops, increase the simultaneous development of animal husbandry and fruit forestry, and increase the supply of vegetables, fish eggs and meat.

With the domestication of industrial machinery and the support of the imperial fiscal credit policy, small township enterprises began to emerge to promote the construction of national townships.

All of this stems from one problem, and that is the development of technology.

At this stage, the 201 project is not so much about innovation, but more quickly catching up with the world's science and technology, as long as it is to achieve this goal, whether it is self-research and development, imitation, or directly through the recruitment of foreign experts for the surname, directly solve the replication in the fastest time, or more directly in the name of the national project from abroad to buy out the patented technology, all for the empire to have the world's most advanced technology in the shortest possible time.

Corresponding to Project 201 is the "National Industrial Excellence Campaign" proposed by Minister of Industry Cheng Tingxiang, which attempts to promote a reliable and effective industrial quality management system across the country.

Although the empire exported a large number of industrial products during the First World War, it was still clearly at a lower stage in terms of quality, and the British used to refer to Chinese goods specifically to luxurious and fine porcelain, but now to the cheap and crude industrial products of China.

Like Wang Yongjiang's hardline policy at the Agricultural Institute, the Ministry of Industry has also adopted a similar qualification system, following Germany's example, mandating that skilled workers must receive vocational education, providing more graded qualification protection for skilled workers and tax deductions for enterprise technology cultivation, and encouraging enterprises to recruit and train more senior technicians.

However, the easiest way to increase the effectiveness of these tasks in the fastest possible time is to recruit foreign specialists and skilled technicians directly, to hire them to work in factories, to provide them with better treatment, to invite them to work as teachers in vocational and technical schools and secondary colleges, and to fully absorb European technology.

In China, the more common name of the "national industrial revolution" is the "domestic product revolution".

The word revolution has been somewhat abused in the Empire, but it is undeniable that it is indeed useful, as long as it is a revolutionary movement that can strengthen the country and enrich the people, it will always usher in the most enthusiastic response.

In this era, the enthusiasm of the Chinese people is very pure, at least more pure and simple than a century later, and many industrialists can even pursue quality and craftsmanship at any cost in response to the tide of the domestic revolution.

In this passionate era, industry is always associated with a strong country, and most of the people who run the industry come from the upper class and have more ambitions and hopes.

Project 201 is a special project in such an era, in order to catch up with foreign science and technology and the existence of the national plan, no matter what method is used, the empire must also have the science and technology of other powers, the empire even has to develop a higher level of science and technology, most of the industrialists and scientific researchers who devote themselves to it are not for wealth and fame, but for the dream of a powerful empire.

We are a generation that is working hard for the recovery of China.

As long as our enthusiasm and confidence were not wasted or consumed by those warlords and chaotic parties for no reason, we could have created an achievement and miracle belonging to the Chinese nation in this era.

Why can't the Chinese people be able to stand on top of the world in the first half of the 20th century?

Yes, even in this year, 12 years after the founding of the Chinese Emperor, the total output value of the empire is only 1/3 of the United States, and the per capita is only 1/12, but the empire is still developing at a high speed, the confidence of the people is high, the self-esteem is stronger, and the trend of patriotism and loyalty to the monarch is striving to rise, everything is so beautiful, as long as the political axe does not make mistakes, the emperor does not make mistakes, the people of the country will be able to dominate the world within 30 years, based on the apex of all nations and countries.

The empire is advancing and catching up at a rapid pace, and all it needs now is a peaceful environment for twenty years, nothing more, but Song Biao is very worried about this eternal troublemaker.

When talking to Mei Yiqi about the progress of the 201 project, he always had a bad feeling in his heart, and always felt that this scourge on the issue of Papua New Guinea would sooner or later bring a huge problem to the empire.

This is obviously not a new problem, since the First World War, he has been looking for various ways to obtain German New Guinea, and he has long been envious of the gold and copper resources here, and the British have agreed to this request.

After China's occupation of German New Guinea, he never ceased to contest and negotiate, and his posture changed several times from arrogance to negotiation and from negotiation to toughness, and after the Washington Conference, with the British and American policies of compromise and sympathy for him on this issue, his attitude will probably become tougher again.

(To be continued)