Education expenditure accounts for 6 percent of the central government's expenditure, which may seem very low, far less than 10 percent in later generations, but the specific era is different, so it is certainly not possible to apply the proportion of the 21 st century directly to the mid-19 th century.

In addition, it is worth noting that this ratio only refers to the expenditure of the central government, and does not include the expenditure of the local government.

According to the Empire's tax-related regulations, taxes were collected by the Ministry of Finance, most of which were directly paid to the state treasury, and some were reserved for local finance.

Therefore, when talking about fiscal revenue and expenditure, it is necessary to subdivide the central and local finances.

This is also the reason why some economically prosperous places such as Shanghai, Songjiang, and Guangzhou have been able to develop their own industries and set up education, because although they have paid a large amount of taxes to the state treasury, the remaining part is still huge.

In most of the local finances of ordinary state capitals in the empire, most of them are administrative expenses, which are used to pay salary subsidies to state employees, etc., because the salary of state employees is divided into two parts, one part is paid directly by the state central finance, which is fixed, such as the annual salary of 8,000 yuan for the provincial governor, and the other part is the post salary issued by the local finance, which is different according to different places, and of course, the specific standards are not set by the local government. Rather, the Ministry of Finance will adjust and give a guiding standard according to the income and price levels of each locality, and the local finance will pay the salary of state employees within this standard.

Part of the local government finance is used to pay salaries, and the remaining part is used to build roads and bridges, maintain water conservancy facilities, etc. However, since the promotion of new education, education funding has become local. In particular, some counties and governments spend a large part of their finances.

For a poor prefecture and county with a local fiscal revenue of only a few tens or even less than 10,000 yuan, the proportion of education expenditure in fiscal expenditure is quite large.

Overall. Education expenditures generally account for about 15 to 25 percent of local financial expenditures, and some prefecture capitals can even spend more than 30 percent of their financial expenditures on education.

This is not because the local officials have the consciousness that no matter how poor they are, but because it is a political task to open new schools and promote new subjects, and it is also a very valuable political achievement.

Especially in some remote state capitals, there are no resources for resources. It is too difficult for local officials who have nothing to achieve political achievements, because industry cannot be run, and there are only so many fields in agriculture, and it is impossible for them to fall from the sky to let them be promoted, so under normal circumstances, officials in these places do not make mistakes, but they cannot get ahead.

Now, even if you don't have anything in the county you govern, you can get out of this predicament by setting up education.

gritted his teeth and ran a few schools. In a few years, I may be able to leave a 'well-educated' test, and my career will be clear.

As a result, in terms of local finances, the proportion of investment in education funds is relatively large.

If we combine local and central finances, it is difficult to calculate specific data. However, in terms of overall fiscal expenditure, the proportion of education expenditure should be about 10 percent, and perhaps it will be another 1 or 2 percentage points.

But no matter how much the empire invests in education. However, due to the limited economic development of the empire itself, the proportion of investment is larger. However, it was also difficult to meet the needs of the new education in the empire throughout the country.

How big China is, in terms of area, it is more than 10 million square kilometers. In terms of population, it is about 350 million to 380 million, and the specific population of the empire is not known to the Ministry of Civil Affairs of the empire, so it can only make a rough guess.

There are 24 provincial-level units, and the territorial and administrative divisions basically follow the pre-Qing era, but there are also changes, compared with the pre-Qing dynasty, three northeastern provinces, steppe Mongolia, and two provinces of Wutai, and Tibet Province are added, while the eighteen provinces of Guannai are the same.

How many new schools are needed in the vast territory of the empire to be able to completely popularize the new type of education?

So even if the empire has increased its investment in education, it will be decades before it can truly reach the national level and allow all school-age children to go to school.

Nowadays, although the education of the empire has begun to promote new education, it is still the same as the elite education in the feudal period, the educational resources of the empire are only open to a small number of students, and the vast majority of the people cannot enjoy the educational resources of the empire.

In the past, there was only one county school in a county, but now there is only one higher primary school in a county, and the number of students in a county's higher primary school is in the hundreds, and the students in the lower part are in the dozens.

And there must be more than so many school-age children in one county.

The implementation of the elite education model is the current status quo of education in the empire, and it is also a helpless choice, with so much education funding and so many degrees, it is simply impossible for all school-age students to go to school.

However, there is also an advantage in this way, that is, there are fewer schools, and there are more people who want to study, relatively speaking, the competition is relatively large, and the students who can usually be admitted to higher secondary schools can take out any one of them are the role of academic hegemony, as for those who can be admitted to the Imperial University, Jiangnan University, they are the elite of the elite, and it is not an exaggeration to say that they are geniuses in this era.

This can be seen from the fact that the self-learning culture among students is very popular in higher education schools.

You must know that except for a few universities such as Imperial University and Jiangnan University, the quality of education in other schools is actually quite limited, even the teaching level of those higher secondary schools is quite limited, not to mention the primary and higher primary schools in the state capitals below.

If these students want to stand out, they basically need a brilliant brain, and if the teacher can't teach you, you have to learn by yourself, if you can't learn by yourself, then don't expect to be admitted to university.

In this year, students who can be admitted to Imperial University and Jiangnan University. All of them are top students, and the level of these students is before applying for university. Basically, they have surpassed the teachers who taught them before, because only in this way can they stand out from so many exams in the country.

Therefore, the students of the Imperial University and Jiangnan University in the current state are completely different from the college students of later generations. There are basically no people who have been going to school for a few years.

Under this management education system, when Zhili University, Nanguang University, Shanghai University, and several higher normal schools were successfully opened and successfully provided graduates, thousands of highly educated students of various types could be supplied to the empire every year, and these people would generally enter the officialdom.

After all, for thousands of years, students have studied just to become officials!

However, some will enter the business community, while others will stay in education and academia to engage in teaching and scientific research.

These students have also become an important supporting force for the subsequent development of the empire!

However, it is still too early to provide thousands of highly educated talents every year, because Zhili University, Nanguang University, and Shanghai University are still in the preparation period, and the first batch of enrollment will be in the summer of this year, and the first batch of students from these three universities will graduate. That would be four years later.

In other words, in the next three or four years, there will still be only two university students in the empire, Imperial University and Jiangnan University.

In addition, there are students from several higher normal schools and students from the more special Shanghai Industrial and Commercial School.

In the next few years, the Empire's education system will produce relatively few high-level talents.

However, the lack of high-end talents now does not mean that the empire will stop developing.

In fact, both in the past and now, it was the people who were in charge of the development of the empire, especially the development of industry and commerce, who were halfway through the family, who did not receive a formal new education, but they were eager to learn. At the same time, many of them simply come from business and industry.

You must know that in Lin Zhe's shogunate in the early years, many of the staff were basically recruited from the industrial and commercial circles, and there were some Chinese in the Nanyang region.

They may not know how to make steel, but they know the importance of the steel industry. and supporting the development of the steel industry.

For example, Guo Longyun, he is a representative of the empire's development of industry and commerce, but it is not right for you to say that he knows more about the textile and steel industries. Because he doesn't understand that at all.

However, this did not prevent him from vigorously supporting the development of the textile and steel industries.

This is especially important for officials.

Well, people can't be all-rounders. For an official, it doesn't really matter whether you know something about a specific industry or not. You just need to know which industries need to be supported, and which industries need to be developed.

Many of the new officials in the empire are actually this kind of people, and when it comes to the development of industry and commerce, they are the way, but if you ask him to say how to set up a steel mill or a spinning mill, he will definitely be blind, but this will not prevent the organization department from giving them an evaluation of being good at industry.

Because how to do the factory is something that businessmen need to consider, and the specific technology is something that technicians need to consider, for officials, it is what they need to consider by introducing various policies to attract businessmen to set up factories.

So you can see a man full of words, who is not far from the traditional Confucian imperial examination of the sage, and the officials talk a lot about how to develop industry and commerce.

In the empire after 1862, the establishment of industry and commerce has become the main governance phalanx of the empire, and it is also a breakthrough direction for officials to make political achievements, so you can see that wherever there are some conditions, the state capital is actively promoting the development of industry and commerce.

This is especially true in some of the treaty ports along the eastern seaboard, where a large number of factories are established in various treaty port cities, and then the economy is developed by virtue of geographical advantages.

1862 was a proud year for the industry and commerce of the Empire!

In the first quarter of 1862 alone, more than 400 enterprises of all kinds applied for establishment nationwide, covering almost all walks of life.

Among them, 35 coal mines, 6 iron mines, 1 gold mine, and 6 machinery industries with design parts manufacturing and maintenance businesses have been added.

At the same time, the textile industry is still the highlight of economic development, with 36 new spinning, weaving, printing and dyeing and other cotton spinning enterprises.

The raw silk industry is not growing fast, and only one raw silk enterprise has been established, but the registered capital of this steam silk reeling factory in Nantong is as high as 5 million. This shows how concentrated the capital of the raw silk industry in the empire was.

Today, the raw silk industry in the empire is moving towards capital intensification and even monopoly. Due to the various advantages of some large-scale raw silk manufacturers, it is basically difficult for some raw silk manufacturers with small investment to survive. It is often acquired and swallowed up by those large raw silk enterprises.

As a result, although the speed of new factories in the raw silk industry has slowed down, basically only people dare to invest in the raw silk industry, which is basically with at least millions of funds to enter, otherwise it is likely to be swallowed up by those big capitals.

Especially in Shanghai, those who can get involved in the raw silk industry are some large capital, not to mention the Shanghai Textile Company of the royal industry, and some other raw silk enterprises are basically some capital giants, and there are basically foreign banks, some traditional local banks or new banks standing behind them. There are also some traditional wealthy families, with assets of millions or even tens of millions.

Now the raw silk industry is a very typical capital-intensive industry, high profits, but the investment is also large, without millions of funds in hand can not play at all, even if it is barely opened is to give people a day job, and in the end can only make a little processing fee miserably.

Because of the establishment of a steam silk reeling factory, the investment in fixed assets is actually not large, just a few machinery and equipment. The wages of the workers are not very high, and the real expense is to buy silkworm cocoons, and then produce them and sell them to foreign companies, or simply transport them to Europe for sale, which will seriously squeeze the working capital.

Casually, millions of payments are pressed on top. Some large-scale steam silk reeling factories will even be squeezed out of millions or even tens of millions of dollars.

If you don't have enough money yourself, you have to borrow, regardless of the era. Bankers are the most greedy when the cocoons are on the market every year. When the steam reeling factories went to the bank or the money bank for financing, the bankers would pay very high interest rates.

If borrowed. You sit down in a year and you'll find that most of the profits have been taken by the bankers' vampires!

If you don't borrow, you won't have enough funds to buy cocoons, let alone sign pre-purchase agreements directly with those farmers to ensure the supply of cocoons.

Therefore, for the raw silk industry, it is very important to have sufficient funds, if you can be the same as Shanghai Textile Company, you can have tens of millions of yuan of working capital as a guarantee at any time, you have sufficient funds to purchase silkworm cocoons, hoard goods, and even organize your own ocean-going merchant ships to transport raw silk to Europe for sale, then you can monopolize ultra-high profits.

But if you don't have enough funds, then you have to borrow, and in this way, the bulk of the money will be taken by those bankers, and finally in the process of shipping, because it cannot be directly shipped to Europe for sale, you can only sell raw silk to foreign companies or Shanghai textile companies with ocean transportation and sales channels, and this process will be exploited by a layer of profits. In the last year, you will find that you have only made a hard-earned money, and the expected raw silk windfall has nothing to do with you at all.

In the past, businessmen could set up factories by investing hundreds of thousands, but now you can set up factories by investing hundreds of thousands of dollars, but if you invest hundreds of thousands of dollars to set up factories, you will definitely need loans to produce in the future, so that profits will be seriously compressed.

The capital-intensive raw silk industry has also led to the transfer of many businessmen who originally invested in the raw silk industry to the cotton spinning industry.

At this time, compared with the raw silk industry, the investment in the cotton spinning industry is undoubtedly much smaller.

is also an investment of several million, if it is in the raw silk industry, it is at most a small person, and it can only barely get by.

But investing millions in the cotton spinning industry, it is a proper giant.

Even the cotton spinning enterprises in many places have only tens of thousands of hundreds of thousands of investments, and there are very few more than one million.

But despite the small size of their investment, their number of employees is not small, and their contribution to the empire's tax revenue is not less.

Whether it is raw silk or cotton spinning, for the empire, it is the pillar of the economy, and it is an industry that needs to be vigorously supported.

In 1862, when the empire set off an upsurge of industrial and commercial economic construction, the situation abroad was also gradually changing, and the most important thing for the empire was the war situation in Vietnam. (To be continued.) )