After some haggling, finally finalizing the agreement to exchange timber for American prisoners and buy a batch of Chinese obsolete arms, Pu Anchen hurried back to Washington, and never left the barracks in Smithland again.

"Is it really good to send him away so quickly?" Soho was still a little unbearable, "You know that nothing good will come of him when he goes back, why can't you help him by the way?" ”

"Help him? How can it help? ”

"For example, you can ask him to be the ambassador of China, or some kind of minister, in short, if you let him live in China, it is better than going back and dying." Soho said softly, "This matter is not difficult for you, but it is just a matter of words." ”

"The question is, why should I help him?" Li Yongji said.

"Because he's a good man." Soho said, "He is loyal to his motherland and people, and his character is unyielding, shouldn't such a talent be preserved?" ”

"Yes, he is a good man, a talent, and loyal to the motherland and the people, but because of this, I can't help him." Li Yongji said, "Such a guy is full of ideas of loyalty to the United States of America, and it is difficult to change.

To put it bluntly, our position is different, if this guy is Chinese, even if he is an official of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, I will try to persuade him to surrender, but he is different, he will not really submit to us.

In this case, the more talented he is, the greater the threat to us, so it is a good idea to send him back early and let them eradicate this talent themselves. ”

"Oh, that's a pity." Soho shook her head.

"There's nothing to be sorry about." Li Yongji smiled, "There are many talented people in the United States, how much have you seen this time?" Seriously, I'm really jealous of the United States. Even if it is like this, there are still so many middle class people who are worried about the country and the people and dare to pay a lot for the motherland.

In contrast, most of our middle class is soft-boned...... Of course, this will change sooner or later, and the fundamental reason for changing this status quo lies in education, so the investment in education must not be relaxed. ”

"But not too much." Soho smiled, "I know it's good to increase the intensity of education. But don't we already use the land tax as an education subsidy, and you also need to increase investment in education, and deduct a part of the subsidy education from the customs tariff, which is quite a lot of pressure on our finances, because we are already in debt, which is called deficit finance. ”

"This old Shen." Li Yongji shook his head, "The talent is good, but it's a pity that it's still a little too conservative." Always use the business system to govern the country.

Of course, I admit that governing a country is actually the same thing as doing business, but no. Governing the country is a super big business, and we must not be short-sighted, we must take a long-term view, and we must make a long-term plan for 10 or even 20 years.

Let's take education, for example. Now it seems that we have invested a lot, for example, in terms of reducing school fees for school-age children and increasing teachers' salaries. Ten years later, when the children who have grown up under the new education system become young people and enter society in large numbers, they will become a new wind to change society, gradually sweep away the original rotten atmosphere, and guide others to follow suit and completely change the social atmosphere.

Only when this group of young people with a strong sense of nationality and great power chauvinism become the mainstream of society can the Chinese Empire truly become an invincible superpower, in other words, the current investment will not bear fruit until ten or twenty years later.

As for the fiscal deficit problem, it is true that I deliberately increased government consumption, and even borrowed money from banks to spend, but in this way, I am actually stimulating the economy and making the whole country run at a healthier and faster speed.

Although on the surface, our government debt is high and the number of deficits is increasing every year, it is also necessary to realize that our domestic economy is also growing rapidly, and our annual tax revenue is also increasing steadily, even explosively.

Although our fiscal statistics are not yet accurate due to technical problems, preliminary estimates show that the annual economic growth rate in 1863 reached an astonishing 1.85, and the total fiscal revenue exceeded that of 1862 by nearly twice that of 1862, and the momentum of development is good.

Under such a good economic situation, the fiscal deficit is nothing at all, on the contrary, an appropriate fiscal deficit can speed up the economic operation, and when the country's overall economy goes up, fiscal revenue will naturally rise.

Not to mention, more than eighty percent of the money borrowed by the State Council is from my private treasury, and I, a big creditor, are not afraid of him spending money, what is he afraid of? ”

Indeed, because Li Yongji has opened his golden finger wildly, he is also carrying out infrastructure construction, stimulating industrial and commercial development, increasing foreign trade and exports, and expanding overseas in various ways.

With so many favorable external conditions, coupled with the fact that China is in the post-war recovery period, the original economic foundation is also poor, it is an agricultural country with almost no industry, but it has carried out industrialization reform with the full support of the state, and in this industrialization process, the level of science and technology and technology have greatly exceeded the world average.

Therefore, under this kind of favorable situation, it is not surprising that China, as a large country that is industrializing and has just started, has a faster economic development speed, even if the speed is a little outrageous, to put it bluntly, it is because the previous foundation is too poor and the total number of guides is too small.

For example, before the Opium War in 1840, the Manchus had a population of more than 400 million, and the Manchus' annual revenue at that time was only 45 million taels.

By 1859, the Manchu Qing Dynasty had developed for so long, and various wartime taxes were raised, and the annual income did not exceed 60 million taels, and at that time, Li Yongji had only been developing for half a year, and his private consortium had already exceeded 60 million taels of silver.

In 1860, Li Yongji overthrew the Manchu Qing Dynasty ahead of schedule, ascended the throne and established a new dynasty, and then destroyed the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, almost the most prosperous places in southeast and northeast China. Later, Li Yongji adopted the guò autonomous region system and collected a large amount of land in the central and western regions, thus completing the formal unification.

In other words, China at this time. The turmoil has basically ended, and a period of peace has begun, and even if there are still some local rebellions, it is no longer significant. In addition, Li Yongji's large-scale construction of new urban circles and infrastructure construction stimulated the development of industry and commerce, and it is not surprising that under such an overall favorable situation, economic development is booming day by day.

Of course, because China does not yet have a sound evaluation capacity, the main reason is that Yan zhòng lacks talent. Therefore, it is not possible to calculate the GDP and other lofty figures in detail, so we can only look at the ratio of the state's fiscal revenue and the income of Li Yongji's private consortium.

Therefore, the so-called annual economic growth rate of the state mainly looks at the state's fiscal revenue, and more precisely, it should be the growth rate of the national treasury revenue, or the growth rate of the state's annual fiscal revenue.

The so-called annual fiscal revenue growth rate, in layman's terms, is the fiscal revenue of the following year. Subtracting the previous year's fiscal revenue, the difference obtained by dividing the previous year's fiscal revenue is the so-called annual fiscal growth rate.

Generally speaking. According to this algorithm, it is quite good to maintain an annual fiscal growth rate of 10 percent, but if it can break 100 percent, it will break 1. That means that the annual income of the following year is at least more than double that of the previous year!

This is only the ratio of the income of the state treasury, and if you count the income ratio of Li Yongji's private consortium, the figure is even more terrifying. The revenue growth rate has already broken two hundred, which means that the income of the next year is more than double the income of the previous year!

Although these numbers are only the income of the consortium itself and the financial revenue of the state, since the original Chinese Empire basically had no industry, almost ninety percent of the industry at this time was Li Yongji's own, so this number is not outrageous.

However, Li Yongji estimates that this kind of economic growth rate of more than 100 is estimated to be this initial stage, and after this initial stage, it may be difficult to have such a high speed in the future.

In addition, behind this rapid economic growth, it is accompanied by a crazy increase in fiscal expenditure, and it can be said that it is precisely because of Li Yongji's crazy expenditure that economic growth has been maintained at such a high speed.

You must know that from the very beginning, Li Yongji used the land tax to subsidize education, which means that although the land tax is collected, the state cannot spend it at will, and it is all earmarked. In this way, the main revenue of the state treasury is basically maintained by various new taxes such as industry and commerce, such as the luxury tax, and the increasingly large customs tariff.

But the problem is that long before Li Yongji became the foundation of the country, he had already begun to build a large number of buildings, urban construction and infrastructure such as roads and bridges, and after the founding of the People's Republic of China, this kind of construction became even more intensified, not only began to dredge the canal channel from Nanjing to Beijing, built various high-standard asphalt roads, but also began to carry out the so-called large railway plan.

The so-called big railway plan, the first step is to use the method of sectional construction, to build a direct railway from Nanjing to Beijing, the second step is to build a direct railway from Beijing to Urumqi, and from Nanjing to Fangchenggang, as for the third step, to start with these railways as a hub, as far as possible to spread radiation, so that all the big cities in the country have railways.

In other words, the first and second steps of the big railway plan are purely from a political and military point of view, not from an economic point of view, so it is difficult to recover the cost in the short term.

At the same time as the road was repaired, Li Yongji also began to build the five key core cities of Beijing, Tianjin, Nanjing, Suzhou, and Shanghai at the same time, and carried out the so-called metropolitan area plan. In the metropolitan plan, these cities will be expanded, and relying on these cities as the core points, they will radiate outward, and then form a series of new urban circles to drive the local economy.

It is conceivable that both the major road repair plan and the metropolitan area plan are considerable investment projects, not to mention the fact that the total number of construction workers has reached 6 million, the monthly cost is astronomical, not to mention the price of sand, cement, timber and steel consumed.

Among them, the major road repair plan and the metropolitan area plan, the investment is borne by the government and Li Yongji's private person, that is to say, it is not Li Yongji who pays for it, the government also has to pay for half of it, and this half of the money will make the country's finances suddenly a big black hole, and it cannot be blocked.

It can be said that if there is no plan for major road repairs and metropolitan areas, just raising troops and officers, then relying on the doubling of financial revenue, Shen Shiming will not complain. However, it is obvious that the major road repair and the metropolitan area plan are both black holes that swallow money, and there is no way to do enough, and the number of people swallowing money is increasing, and there is a gradual increasing trend, and how to look at this rate also exceeds the growth rate of annual fiscal revenue.

It is precisely because of this that Shen Shiming couldn't help it and kept calling him, hoping to reduce the amount of investment in these two plans and reduce the country's financial expenditure. At the same time, they are also trying to make money from all aspects, just to make the country's finances look better and not to continue to run deficits.

According to Shen Shiming, the current imperial finances are borrowing money every year, and they are not enough to spend every year, and this hole of debt is getting bigger and bigger, until now. The empire already owes 1.6 billion Chinese dollars, equivalent to 1.6 billion taels of silver, of which eighty percent is the new debt in the past year, and the state treasury last year. That is, the total income in 1863 was only 480 million Chinese dollars!

In other words, the amount of the empire's annual debt is nearly three times the annual revenue of the empire's finances, which cannot but arouse Shen Shiming's attention.

After all, under normal circumstances. The amount of annual debts owed, which is more than three times the annual income, is already quite an abnormal situation that cannot be curbed sooner. In the long run, sooner or later there will be a time for collapse.

"Let him rest assured, it's only been a long time, what are you afraid of." Li Yongji smiled, "It's really not good, just print money, anyway, after two years of operation, our banknotes have been in good circulation, more and more people have begun to recognize banknotes, no longer blindly worship silver dollars, when appropriate, an additional batch of banknotes will be issued to shear sheep, what is there to be afraid of." ”

Regarding the theory of increasing the issuance of banknotes and shearing sheep, Li Yongji has also said it to Soho many times in private, so Soho can understand this to some extent, so this time he was not surprised, but took it for granted.

In fact, the paper money movement of the empire began long ago, and even began to promote it in 1860. However, at the beginning, the number of banknotes issued by Li Yongji was not large, and the people did not recognize it, and many people went to a nearby bank or silver number to exchange it for real silver dollars as soon as they got the banknotes.

In other words, the initial issuance of paper money was not smooth, it was all coercive, that is, to pay civil servants and soldiers, and in the process of government procurement and royal consortium procurement, only paper money was used to promote, and even in international trade, it was allowed to pay with paper money, and it was no longer mandatory to use gold and silver.

After so much time, because the reputation of paper money is good, it can be exchanged for equivalent silver dollars anytime and anywhere, and the anti-counterfeiting measures of paper money are done well, others can not cheat at all, and after a long time, the superiority of paper money has fully overwhelmed the heavy and inconvenient silver dollar, and it has begun to be accepted by more and more people.

Especially those small coins linked to copper coins, that is, cents, gross bills and the like, but also because of the lightness and flexibility, especially popular among the general public, many ordinary people when trading with each other, basically no longer use troublesome copper coins, but change to a variety of small banknotes.

That is to say, after so many years of development, the credit of paper money has been established, not only Chinese love to use, many foreigners also like to use paper money, and the Chinese yuan banknote has become a real currency.

At this point, the identity of the Chinese dollar banknotes is no longer a problem, at this time the proper issuance of banknotes, can play a good sheep shearing effect, can use appropriate inflation, to increase their own income, plunder the income of foreigners, and stimulate the further development of the domestic economy.

"When will the additional issuance? How much is the additional issuance? Soho asked.

"I think it's quite good to take advantage of the good news of the Smithland Treaty to quietly issue an additional batch of banknotes." Li Yongji smiled, "At the beginning, it doesn't take too much, an additional billion yuan will be almost enough, half of this money will be used to develop the new Americas, and the other half will be invested in domestic road construction, what do you think?" ”

"The concubine doesn't understand this, what do you say, just do it." Soho laughed.

"Well, that's it, turn around...... No, I personally called Shen Shiming to confirm. Li Yongji said.

"It's easy to talk about these questions." Soho asked, "But when are we going to withdraw our troops?" Now that the armistice treaty has been signed, you can't continue to stay here and not leave, right? This is American land. ”

"Withdrawal? Hehe, don't be in such a hurry," Li Yongji touched Soho's hair, "Now the ice on the river has not completely melted, and the road is still muddy, and now it is purely to find fault for yourself to go, you see that even that Pu Anchen is not in a hurry to let us go, he just knows that it is not appropriate to go now."

However, even if the river is smooth, I don't plan to leave immediately, now is not the time to withdraw troops, so let's stay here for a while and watch the show. ”

"Watching a play?"

"Yes." Li Yongji said, "After so many days, no matter how slow the southern Yankees and the British and French forces are, they should have received the news of our truce with the United States, and I believe that soon they will send negotiators to ask us to resume the offensive, so as to cooperate with their big offensive plan. ”

"Confession, what confession?"

"You're stupid!" Li Yongji said angrily, "I know why you signed the contract before?" Because you are representing the Chinese Empire to make an armistice with the United States. To put it simply, after the signing of that treaty, the war between the Chinese Empire and the United States of America ended, but the problem is that we are mercenaries and are not actually bound by the armistice treaty between this country. ”

"You're saying you want to go back and go back and attack the United States?"

"No, no, of course not, at least not yet." Li Yongji said, "I mean, we can give an explanation to the Southern Union and the Anglo-French coalition on the grounds that we are not part of the national army, we are private mercenaries, and we do not need to abide by this armistice treaty, and we are stationed here to give them the illusion that we will continue to attack the United States."

In this way, the Anglo-French forces and the Confederate countries will feel that we are still a strong alliance, and they will be relieved to launch their big offensive plans and fight the Americans.

On the contrary, if we make it clear that we want to retreat, then the Union army will be forgotten, the British and French, hehe, I'm afraid they will have to retreat, I can't let the British and the French make a profit and leave, I have to make them pay some losses. ”

"This and this ......" Soho thought for a long time before turning the corner, "Anyway, you mean that we are stopping here to trap people, British, French, and Confederate people?" ”

"Yes, that's what it means, and of course, the Americans." Li Yongji narrowed his eyes, "Don't forget, we still have an agreement with them to exchange wood for prisoners and weapons, we only need to stay here to make money, and at the same time, we can also pit others, why not?" (To be continued......)