Note: Brother Happydai, who is now studying in the United States, wrote the draft of the Imperial Constitution of 1896 for this book, and wrote several short fanshi based on the setting of this book, interested readers can take a look, and I would like to express my deep gratitude to Brother Happydai for his help.

Original title: The Iron Blood Empire Supplement Chapter: The Rule of Guangxu (Guangxu 17th - Guangxu 20)

Body:

At the conspiracy meeting, there were four people who were often silent, but there was absolutely no one who did not respect them, that is, Niu Jin, Minister of Industry and Commerce, Ma Feng, Vice Minister of Science and Technology, Tian Zhenghong, Minister of Agriculture and Forestry, and his new Vice Minister, 20-year-old Wan Ling Gege, the first female minister of the empire.

Wanling Gege is the daughter of Prince Alcohol, that is, the half-sister of Emperor Guangxu, the year she was born, that is, the year Guangxu was carried from home to the palace. She has been smart and studious since she was a child, and she especially likes to play with flowers and plants. In the seventeenth year of Guangxu (1891), at a palace banquet, seventeen-year-old Wanling and Ma Feng happened to be next to each other, and the two chatted, Ma Feng found that she had studied Western studies in a Christian school when she was a child, and had read "The Theory of Heavenly Evolution". Soon after, Wanling accepted Ma Feng's invitation with the approval of Prince Alcohol, who intended to facilitate their relationship, and enrolled in the Imperial College of Science and Technology, founded by Ma Feng, becoming the first female college student in China.

In the spring of the eighteenth year of Guangxu, Ma Feng accompanied Wanling to the suburbs, and saw the farmers working in the fields, all with vegetables, and unintentionally sighed: "If there are hybrid crops and increase the yield, I don't know how many people in Ludao can suffer less from hunger and cold!" Wanling, who is already in the second year of the engineering department, replied: "I used to do experiments with flowers and plants, and I think that grain cotton can also be improved through hybridization, but I found that after the second generation of hybrid crops, the traits begin to be unstable, and it is difficult to apply them to production." Ma Feng was amazed by Wanling's biological talent, and repeatedly promoted her to be the vice-minister of agriculture and forestry of the empire at the sub-cabinet meetings. Although Liu Yun and others, especially Tian Zhenghong, laughed at his "impure motives" in the past, and later obstructed it by the princes and ministers with "the law of the ancestors", the edict of Emperor Guangxu's appointment was finally issued on the first day of the seventh month of the 20th year of Guangxu, the same day that Wanling graduated from university. It is not known exactly how the publisher thinks about it; However, the previous day, an edict was issued announcing that women would be allowed to take the new administrative official examination, enter the court as officials, and enter the Imperial Yuan, thus legalizing Wanling's appointment as an official, but it also opened the curtain on the feminist movement in China. Later, June 30 was designated as Chinese Women's Day to commemorate Wan Linggege's contribution to the first legal political rights and interests of Chinese female compatriots through her knowledge and efforts.

Wan Linggege's dissertation, "A Study on the Stability of Hybrid Crops and Livestock Traits", was published in the Imperial Journal (the first official newspaper of the Empire, which was an internal journal like the Imperial Reference, which mainly introduced non-sensitive content such as basic research in science and engineering, and was circulated in the academic circles, and was the most authoritative and serious academic journal in the Empire), and was translated into many languages, which also caused a sensation in the West. Under her auspices, the empire opened up the "Imperial Agricultural and Animal Husbandry Test and Breeding Base" in Tong County, a suburb of Beijing, to carry out research on crops and livestock. Of course, it will take time for breakthroughs to be achieved.

Considering that she is not a "person who has come over", although she also participated in the conspiracy meeting, everyone will be more careful not to mention the "future" and what happened in "the last history" when they talk about it at the meeting. This is not a discipline, but a principle that everyone knows and naturally follows. Out of "respect" for women, Wan Lingge's overtime efforts are always stopped by everyone's persuasion, and the evening conspiracy meeting often becomes a time for "passers-by" to discuss special topics.

On the issue of Wanling Gege's joining, although his chief official Tian Zhenghong once privately ridiculed Ma Feng for "fake public and private", he admired her talent very much in his heart, and he was also Ma Feng's first supporter. He was in charge of agriculture and knew that her work was the fundamental way to solve agricultural problems, but at first he was faced with acute rural problems after he came to power, and these seemed to be too slow.

After the Opium War and the Changmao Rebellion, the state increased its tax burden, and many landlords raised their land rents for reasons such as satisfying their opium needs, and the people's lives became even more difficult. "The people are the foundation of the country", and if we want to govern the empire well, we must solve the problems of the peasants' livelihood. Therefore, after Tian Zhenghong took power in the 17th year of Guangxu, he quickly formulated the "33 Act," the basic contents of which had three basic contents: First, the land rent of medium land fertility should not exceed one-third; second, peasant associations should be set up in various localities to be responsible for lease negotiations between peasants and landlords, and the government was responsible for appearing in the tripartite meetings convened as coordinators rather than arbiters in the event of disputes, and was responsible for mediating the contradictions between peasant associations and landlords. Article 3 stipulates that land that has been left uncultivated and barren for more than three years will be automatically nationalized and redistributed to landless peasants.

In order to implement the new law, Tian Zhenghong made a request at the conspiracy meeting, and received everyone's support, and also asked a reserve division from He Xin to form a special imperial agricultural police (later in the 20th year of Guangxu into the imperial police headquarters, renamed the Agricultural Office, and the Independent Commission Against Corruption jointly won the reputation of "Imperial People's Protection Bureau"). The new law was unsurprisingly resisted, but within a few months, after the agricultural police tried and executed hundreds of "bullies" (many of whom were relatives of the imperial government) in various places, they were forced under the bayonets of the "tyrants." Half of the landlords included in the household statistics lowered their taxes according to the law, a small part, especially the big landlords, sold their land, and the remaining and new buyers of most of the land felt that one-third of the land was not profitable, and no longer leased the land to tenants, but hired long-term laborers to organize agricultural production on their own. The number of tenant households in the empire dropped sharply from 100 million before the implementation of the new law in the spring of the 18th year of Guangxu to about 30 million in the 21st year of the Gregorian calendar, while the number of long-term agricultural workers in the same period increased from more than 10 million to 130 million. The structure of the agricultural economy has been greatly adjusted. Except for a slight decline in the 18th year of Guangxu when the new law was implemented, the national land revenue was restored in the 19th year of Guangxu.

In the 20th year of Guangxu, due to the lack of rain in summer, the summer grain and early rice were slightly poor, but the autumn grain achieved a rare bumper harvest in 20 years, and the total grain output of that year was 5% higher than that of the seventh year of Tongzhi, the highest in history. There was an endless stream of grain ships, and grain was piled up in the granaries and military depots of the empire. Cotton in the eighteenth year of Guangxu was a bumper year, and the nineteenth year was a poor harvest, but the total output still increased because of the effective implementation of the new law; In the twentieth year of Guangxu (also because of the drought) Huanghuai area of the cotton harvest, this is the second year of the implementation of the imperial cotton purchase system, because the previous year's purchase was not large, lack of preparation, many counties of cotton can only be temporarily piled up to the county hall (although the county government in the nineteenth year of Guangxu was renamed the county government, and the county order was renamed the county magistrate, but the work handled by the county magistrates has not changed significantly. The county government compound is still customarily called the "county government hall").

After the Minister of Industry and Commerce Niu Jin came to power, he implemented the currency reform, which was strongly supported by the Minister of the Navy, Zhang Zhidong. In the eighteenth year of Guangxu, Niu Jin set up the Imperial Mint Bureau, abolished the so-called "goose-eye small money" minted by profiteers in various places, all kinds of copper coins circulating in various places, and the "big" money that the people did not like to use during the Xianfeng period, but the weight was the same. In August of the same year, the engraving copper mold and other equipment imported from the American Haley Knapp factory arrived, and on the basis of using Guangxu Chongbao as ten coins and Guangxu Tongbao small coins, he minted and issued two kinds of money according to the different sizes of Guangxu and Guangxu fifty coins. In the nineteenth year of Guangxu, the imperial copper yuan "Guangxu ingot" began to circulate, the front is "Guangxu ingot" four Chinese characters, there is no square hole in the middle, and there are "one hundred" two full fonts, the following is close to the outside of the "Imperial Mint, every hundred Wen for one yuan" words, the back is the dragon pattern, and there are English characters near the below. More than two yuan began to issue treasure banknotes (banknotes), using two, five, ten currency system, until the thousand yuan banknotes, a total of nine kinds, with a dragon to nine dragons as the pattern (the second cabinet once proposed in accordance with the international practice to use the emperor's head as the design of coins and banknotes, the court was met with extremely fierce opposition from the old school, and even some ministers asked for the execution of the proponent for the crime of "great disrespect", although Guangxu rejected it in court, but this proposal was not finished), there are Chinese, Manchu, Mongolian, Tibetan four languages written "Imperial Central Bank" words, The value of Chinese characters and Arabic digital coins, Chinese characters "Imperial Mint" + year name + "producer" small characters, etc., are commonly known as "dragon coins".

Silver taels are no longer used as a tax unit, the official price of silver taels and copper coins (one tael for 1,200 official coins) has been abolished, and after the implementation of free fluctuations in silver prices, the majority of the people are generally very happy to use copper coins instead of silver taels, because this is less of the pain of silver and copper exchange when paying taxes; Coupled with the bumper agricultural harvest of the same period, the value of copper coins soon exceeded the price of copper of the same weight, and the price of raw silver fell from 2,250 wen (official money) / 1,600 wen (local copper coins) per 17th year of Guangxu to 9 yuan (900 wen). The Empire's currency reform, after limited resistance, was completed relatively smoothly.

At the same time, the empire established the Imperial Central Bank, regulated the business of money banks in various places through the "Banking Law", let it gradually bank, began to manage the macroeconomy by adjusting the reserve ratio and the redeposit rate, and established the Imperial Agricultural Bank and the Imperial Investment Bank. The interest rate on domestic agricultural loans has dropped sharply from about 150%/half-year to 7.2%/half-year, and the interest rate on industrial and commercial loans has also dropped sharply from 70%-80%/year to 10.8%/year. The empire's industry and commerce flourished with the demise of domestic usury and a sharp drop in interest rates.

During this period, Niu Jin, together with Tian Masahiro, formulated the ambitious "Thirty-Year Imperial Water Conservancy Plan" (according to this plan, the construction of small hydropower projects on the Yellow River and the Huai River began in the 20th and 23rd years of Guangxu respectively). Niu Jin and Tian Zhenghong do not have the habit of rejoicing in great achievements, nor do they want to engage in any face-saving projects, and they soberly know that whether it is power generation or flood storage, it is the wisest way to first develop small and medium-sized hydropower and leave such a large-scale project as the Three Gorges to future generations who are more technologically mature.

Ma Feng, the finale of the four, was jokingly called the "Three Heroes of Minkou" at the beginning of the Second Cabinet Conference, and the leader of the "Four Heavenly Kings of Minkou" later, and his contribution was also well-deserved. As the founder of the General Administration of Education, the Imperial University, the Imperial College of Education, the Imperial Academy of Sciences, and the Imperial Academy of Engineering, he not only turned the imperial examination system into a modern civil service evaluation system, but also established the Xinxue education system all the way to the rural areas, and put forward the slogan of realizing the universal primary school culture for the whole people in the 30th year of Guangxu; As the founder of the General Directorate of Medical and Health Care, he incorporated traditional Chinese medicine and Western medicine into the nascent imperial social welfare system, from the central to the local level, with the goal of achieving within 15 years that 90% of the urban population and 50% of the rural population could enjoy the subsidized supply of 510 kinds of "essential medicines for life" (the establishment of the Zhonghua Pharmaceutical Factory in the 20th year of Guangxu made this plan completed ahead of schedule in the 25th year of Guangxu); As the founder of the General Directorate of Standards, he provided the General Directorate of International Trade and Industry with a system of standards and total quality management (his book "Total Quality Management" was widely translated and circulated throughout the world, making him a Nobel laureate in economics thirty years later). The promulgation of the "Media Law" in the 19th year of Guangxu (because it was prematurely defined as "the media as the carrier of all public information", and later the Supreme Court issued a judicial interpretation to elaborate on the concept of "public information") and the establishment of the State Information Administration in the following year provided a propaganda machine for the imperial "public-armed faction" to control public opinion and lead reform.

Taken together, however, these contributions are still far inferior to the instructive speeches he makes after each presentation at the Imperial Academy of Sciences and the Imperial Academy of Engineering. The empire's most recent scientists and engineers privately called Ma Feng the "Great Mentor" because many of their major scientific and technological achievements were inseparable from the "Great Mentor's inspiring prompts". Because of the promulgation of the "Imperial Secrecy Law" (the 17th year of Guangxu) and the "Imperial Intellectual Property Protection Law" (the 20th year of Guangxu), except for the use of electric lighting in the Forbidden City in the 20th year of Guangxu, it is difficult for the outside world to know the extent of the development of the empire's science and technology.

According to the "Jingshi Daily", which was first established by the people and has a good reputation in Gyeonggi, through an interview with an academician of the Academy of Engineering who did not want to be named, it was learned that the Otto internal combustion engine and the Diesel internal combustion engine, which had just been invented internationally, had been provided by the General Administration of Industry and Commerce for application in certain areas of the imperial state's industry, and the General Administration of General Industry and Industry was designing supporting production equipment to produce an unprecedented means of transportation in conjunction with Ma Feng's "production line" plan. According to Zhang Aiguo (pseudonym), an engineer working in the General Administration of International Trade and Industry, the ministers of the army and navy have contributed a lot to this project, and there must be the production of related weapons, which are absolutely new weapons of the navy and army that have never been seen before. There is a rumor among the folk gossip (the news is said to come from a maid in the palace of Prince Alcohol) that the sub-cabinet is secretly studying the establishment of a new military minister and his division, alongside the army and navy. What exactly it is called is unknown. When members of the Senate were asked about the matter shortly after, officials replied that they were still studying and could not comment. A special commentator for the Imperial Military Monthly (a semi-official publication sponsored by the Parliamentarian Foundation of the Senate) speculated that it could be the Marines, artillery, or full-time logistics units. Later, the official "Imperial Daily" (the first national daily newspaper of the Empire, a comprehensive newspaper, sold only one article each, and there were as many as six sheets and eight pages, with a total of 24 pages. Eight of these editions are various advertisements for Imperial Enterprises, and eight editions are local shopping guides, the content of which varies from place to place. In addition, the two special editions of Life Encyclopedia and Production Guide were even more popular among the urban and rural people, and the daily circulation of the newspaper exceeded 100 million copies in the 25th year of Guangxu. In the same year, the newspaper was reprinted into six large four-sheet newspapers, and the price continued to remain the same. The New Year's message of Emperor Guangxu published in the newspaper on the New Year of the Gregorian calendar has been included in the "Chinese Textbook for Primary Schools" many times. The senior reporter asked Ma Feng himself, who cut the ribbon at the new product exhibition held in conjunction with the Daqing Empire in the 20th year of Guangxu, about this. Hearing the folk speculation, Ma Feng Ha Ha Da laughed. Although there are no words to comment, it is almost certain from its performance that the actual content must have been surprisingly exciting. Although the folk media called Ma Feng a "miracle minister", although everyone did not know what miracles he would bring to the empire every time, every subject of the empire, from officials to farmers, deeply believed that what he brought would be a bumper harvest for the empire and the prosperity of the people.

At the beginning of the First Sino-Japanese Season, everyone in the empire was full of hope for the future, and even the complaints of the bannermen who had gradually (ten years) abolished the "hardcore crops" because of the "Nationality Law" of the empire's "shadow prime minister" Governor Liu were becoming less and less common. All of them saw the dawn of the revival of the empire: they called the present situation "the rule of Guangxu" and had sufficient confidence that a prosperous era was coming, even surpassing that of Kangqian.