In terms of the budget, there were results in the first half of the year.

There are 55 million taels that can be budgeted, of which 5 million taels are given to textile mills.

The Ministry of Education got 3 million taels, responsible for the education of the whole Shandong, first of all, to improve the treatment of teachers, in order to recruit more literati to engage in this industry, the biggest problem in the education industry is that there are not enough teachers, so the salary of teachers has been increased to the level of 5 taels of silver per month.

The Denglai Institute of Science and Technology received 1 million taels of research funds, and the Ordnance Bureau also received 1 million taels of weapons research funds. The Ministry of Agriculture received 3 million taels of funds for the repair of water conservancy in Shandong.

The Ministry of Fisheries received 1 million taels for the construction of fishing boats, preparing to develop the Zhoushan Fishing Ground in Songjiang Prefecture. The military department received 15 million taels of military spending, including 3 million taels for the navy and 12 million taels for the army.

In addition, 3 million taels were used to build fortresses in various parts of the Eastern Three Prefectures, as well as to train young and strong people throughout Shandong, so that there were 23 million taels of silver left.

After Zhao Yan considered it, he allocated 3 million taels for the purchase of cattle and horses, another 5 million taels for the repair of Shandong roads, 5 million taels for the construction of seafaring ships, and finally 10 million taels left.

The 10 million taels of silver were used by Zhao Yan for business stimulus, because the commercial bank only retained the operation of six areas and the operation of the grain bank, and the rest of the industries were all taken out, and all the industries involved did not conflict with the industrial and commercial bureau, they could obtain a certain amount of bank interest-free loans.

The total amount of interest-free loans reached 10 million taels, and at the same time, Denlai Bank will also take out a loan of 5 million taels.

Interest-free loans are mainly for those small and medium-sized businessmen, the loan amount is small, and the number of people is large, so as to achieve the purpose of encouraging small and medium-sized businessmen to start their own businesses.

At the same time, Denglai Science and Technology Institute will provide comprehensive technical support for businessmen in Shandong.

Zhao Yan also promulgated the "Shandong Industrial and Commercial Administration Regulations", which stipulates that all industries that use the advanced technology of the Academy of Science and Technology and have a market monopoly surname will be taxed according to the profitability of the industry.

The meaning of this regulation is that as long as the industry uses the technology of the Science and Technology Institute and forms a monopoly competitive advantage with foreign countries, the industrial and commercial bureau will increase taxes according to the situation, or even collect heavy taxes.

With the development of science and technology, any current production process will one day be replaced, and the introduction of this regulation means that Zhao Yan will continue to adjust the commercial tax in the future.

The commercial tax is a very difficult thing to adjust, and there will be opposition from the top and bottom of Shandong's restoration of the 10% commercial tax, and if Zhao Yan directly raises the commercial tax, he will certainly be opposed by Shandong businessmen.

Zhao Yan was really disappointed by the speed of capital industrialization of these businessmen, and many businessmen still had the old-fashioned concept of Lu businessmen, and the speed of capital industrialization was very slow.

Therefore, Zhao Yan needed to support a group of new forces, so he took out 10 million taels of silver as an interest-free loan, mainly to those businessmen with little capital, or businessmen without capital.

That's how it will be with next year's budget.

In general, next year, in terms of production, the main thing is to develop the aquaculture industry in Qingzhou and Laizhou, and at the same time develop the Zhoushan fishing grounds, with a total budget of 4 million taels.

In terms of infrastructure construction, it focuses on road construction, water conservancy, and fort building, with a total budget of 8 million taels.

The military budget totaled 15 million taels.

The budget for the construction of ships is 5 million taels, and all flying clippers will no longer be manufactured, and 50 frigates will be built next year, and the frigates will be built on North American schooners, each 600 tons, with 30 guns. At the same time, 100 1,500-ton clippers were started.

Experiments have shown that for every 2 times the size of the boat, only 1.5 times the power is required, so the bigger the sailboat is built, the faster it will be. If it is a ship, the larger it is, the smaller the proportion of fuel it can carry, and the larger the cargo load, so people like to build larger and larger ships.

It is estimated that these ships will be completed the year after tomorrow.

Of the 50 clippers that began construction last year, only 20 have been launched so far, and another 30 will not be launched until April next year.

In terms of colonial expansion, the current overseas colonies include Hawaii and California, and next year two areas will be included in the colonization plan. That's Alaska and Hokkaido.

Alaska was not visited at all in this era, and Hokkaido was not under the control of the person who did not want Hokkaido at all, but regarded Hokkaido as a place of exile, and the people living on it were a tribe called 'Ezo'.

Alaska has gold mines, salmon, furs, and Hokkaido has famous Hokkaido fishing grounds. Some people say that my protein source is not beef, but fish! Because they have Hokkaido fishing grounds, which are the largest in the world! China's Zhoushan fishery is nowhere near comparable to the Hokkaido fishing grounds.

At the same time, half of the coal mines in Hokkaido are in Hokkaido, which is also an important production base for agricultural products, which is very suitable for the development of animal husbandry, and as long as Hokkaido is occupied, the resources of this will be even more scarce.

In addition, Hokkaido and Alaska are located in the North Pacific Ocean, and the occupation of these two regions opens up new shipping lanes, and Hawaii-California is another shipping lane.

Before the end of the year, Zhao Yan sent two clippers to Hokkaido to investigate, and three clippers carrying 1,000 marines to recover Sakhalin Island.

Sakhalin Island is under the jurisdiction of the Nuergandu Division, Xuande ten years (AD 1435), the Nuergandu Division was revoked, and the subordinate guards continued to exist, but after the rise of the Later Jin, the three guards on Sakhalin Island have broken off contact, according to the news sent back by the Liaodong Special Operations Brigade, Sakhalin Island has been controlled by the Manchu Qing Dynasty at this moment, and the three guards on Sakhalin Island no longer exist.

The Manchus on Sakhalin should not be strong, a thousand people were enough to recover.

At present, the resources that Sakhalin can use are mink, timber, and fishery, and natural gas, oil, and coal are not used for the time being, and the development value is not great.

…… The New Year has come again, this year's Denglai is much more prosperous than last year, people are no longer worried about the problem of food and clothing, every household has too much grain to eat, and a large amount of currency circulates to cause the vigorous development of Shandong's economy.

During the Chinese New Year this year, Zhao Yan still went everywhere to visit the families of martyrs and the elderly who were lonely, and distributed some New Year's goods to those groups in difficulty.

In the whole of Shandong during the Chinese New Year, there is no beggar, and there is no hunger, the porridge shacks in various counties of Shandong are opened all year round, and there are so many sweet potatoes that they can strangle people to death.

On the fifth day of the Lunar New Year, the First Fleet returned to Qingdao. Twenty-one ships were brought back. Unfortunately, no warships were snatched, and 8 million taels worth of goods and silver were brought back at the same time.

"We have an extra budget of 8 million taels, how can we spend these 8 million taels?" Zhao Yan called everyone over and asked them.

"My lord, we can use it to build ships, and as long as we have enough ships, we can take more gold and silver from overseas." Liu Heng suggested: "It is best to build more frigates, specially used to intercept the merchant ships of other countries, our frigates have high speed, few manpower, plus advanced artillery, enough to compete with the warships of the Europeans." With enough frigates, we can paralyze the Dutch trade in Asia, while also plundering European ships in the Atlantic. At the same time, the cost of our frigates is very low, only 10,000 taels for one ship, and the surname price ratio is very high. ”

At this time, Mao Yuanyi nodded and said: "Lord, we can use paulownia to make frigates, paulownia is everywhere, and it is easy to dry, the texture is straight, the structure is uniform, the water barrier is good, it is not easy to burn and deform, and the nail holding force is medium, which is very suitable for building frigates." ”

"Paulownia!" Zhao Yan thought for a while and said, "This kind of wood doesn't seem to be hard enough. ”

"The frigate takes the smart route, and our artillery range is enough to keep the frigate out of the range of enemy ships, and if you use paulownia to build a frigate, you can build it much faster." Mao Yuanyi said, "Some key parts can use birch and oak. ”

"Hmmm! That's a good idea, so let the shipyard build a frigate out of paulownia. Zhao Yan was overjoyed, paulownia is indeed a kind of wood everywhere, and it is a fast-growing tree species, this thing grows faster than poplars, but the hardness is not enough. However, it is also a good idea to combine birch and oak wood for important parts of the sailboat.

Birch is a medium wood that is also very good for shipbuilding.

Oak wood is a tree species that is very similar to oak, and the structure is very similar, which is an excellent shipbuilding wood, but most of it is distributed in Northeast China, and only a small amount is distributed in North China.

In any case, the frigate is designed in the design of a 'North American schooner', second only to the clipper in terms of speed, and higher than other types of sailing ships, plus advanced artillery, which is enough to avoid close combat with enemy ships.

"But if we build a boat with Paulownia, how much should we build?" Zhao Yan asked.

"A hundred is about the same! With the addition of artillery and other equipment, it will only cost 1.5 million taels at most, and the remaining 6.5 million taels can be kept for later use. Mao Yuanyi said.

"Good! That's a hundred. Zhao Yan agreed. The number of frigates built increased from 50 to 150 units. It's not that the shipyard can't build larger warships at the moment, but it's clearly not necessary.

After Mao Yuanyi's suggestion was passed, the shipyard began to send people to cut down paulownia everywhere.

In fact, as long as there are enough manpower and sufficient supply of raw materials, the speed of shipbuilding can still be very fast, and the most time-consuming of them is wood.

Wood can be processed in the sun, which can only be used after two or three years, and it can be used in just a week by drying the wood.

In Longkou, Qingdao, and Songjiang, each has a large-scale timber processing plant, but the shipbuilding is plagued by a shortage of raw materials and craftsmen.

By the end of the year, the number of shipwrights promised by the imperial court had reached more than 10,000, which greatly alleviated the problem of shortage of craftsmen, and at the same time opened a shipbuilding technical school in Longkou, and Denglai University opened the subject of shipbuilding, and Zhao Yan had begun to train shipbuilding talents by himself, as long as a few years passed, the problem of insufficient shipwrights would be completely solved.

(To be continued)