The Executive Committee gave the green light to the preparation of materials, and all the materials needed for the construction of the new port, as long as they were still in the warehouse, were almost without exception quickly approved. Modern medicines have always been restricted by the Executive Committee due to their limited reserves, and this time the list submitted by the medical team was unexpectedly undiscounted at all. Even the fuel oil, which has been listed as a strategic reserve and is strictly controlled, has been very "generous" by the Executive Committee to approve a whole ton for the Xingang project. What is not in the warehouse, the executive committee will try to dismantle it from the places that are currently in use, such as prefabricated houses and photovoltaic power generation equipment.

However, the preparation of materials is only part of the preparation of the Xingang project, and the most important thing for the Xingang project is still manpower, which is the members of the crossing group who have mastered advanced technology. To develop the Xingang project, how many people need to be sent to the base camp, and who should be sent, and how to institutionalize the overseas cycle and remuneration package abroad, these are all issues that need to be carefully considered by the Executive Committee.

So far, only a very small number of positions have been confirmed for assignment, for example, the Ministry of Construction will send Liu Shanxia as the main technical backbone, and Tian Yeyou of the mining exploration group has submitted a permanent application for Xingang to the Executive Committee, as for the administrative, civil affairs and transportation management departments, no candidate has yet been determined.

In terms of administration, the opinion of the Executive Committee is that at least one member of the Executive Committee should go to Xingang, and even if he will not be resident in the local area in the future, at least the administrative work should be grasped first in the initial stage. The Executive Committee has also discussed several times the selection of the top leader of this overseas sub-base, which is not to say that no one wants to go, but that these members of the Executive Committee have their own work that they cannot do without and have no time to take care of overseas.

At present, there are a total of nine executive committee members in the provisional executive committee in this trial operation, which are basically appointed by the heads of various departments, including Tao Donglai of the Ministry of Construction, Bai Kesi of the Ministry of Industry, Yuan Ruoxiu of the Ministry of Agriculture, Meng He of the Ministry of Information Industry, Ning Qi of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Gu Kai of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Commerce, Schneider of the Ministry of Finance, Yan Chujie of the Military Police Department, and Yue Zhiyun of the Ministry of Shipping. Each executive committee member has a lot of things to take care of at hand, and randomly transferring one person may create a blank space in management. After several discussions by the executive committee, this person finally fell to Gu Kai, who was relatively not so busy, and his main job during the period abroad will be temporarily concurrently held by Schneider.

After the leadership selection is determined, the next step is to review the expatriate candidates of each relevant department, and the mining, construction, medical, communications, shipping and other departments have submitted the list of candidates one by one for discussion and review. In order to ensure the efficiency of the review process, these candidates have been preliminarily approved by various departments before this, and as long as there are no major problems, they will go through the final hurdle.

The list of personnel reported by the Ministry of Shipping was densely written for two or three pages, and this time, except for a small number of crew members who needed to stay at the base camp, almost all the sailors and crew members registered with the Ministry of Shipping were included in the list. Even the few Ming sailors who were captured by the crossing crowd and left behind had to obey the requisition and all go to sea this time.

In addition, some of the better pirate sailors in the labor camp have also been selected for intensive training and are on standby as substitute crew members. The pirate sailors were told that if they were in good shape, some of them would be freed after the completion of the construction period of the new port, and that they would have the same opportunity as the natives thereafter, and that they would choose to join the commune as an honorable naturalized Haihan. This was undoubtedly a huge stimulus for the coolies who were eager to get out of the labor camp, and even some coolies who could not sail at all signed up to try to seize this rare opportunity to escape.

Although the proposal to build a stronghold and fortress on the new port had been rejected earlier, this did not stop the military police department from expanding its influence by following the opportunity to develop overseas bases. The new plan proposed by Yan Chujie on behalf of the Military Police Department is to send two-thirds of the active security forces and one-third of the armed forces to Xingang as a mixed team at the beginning of the operation. This force will combine the functions of public security management and military defense, and with the addition of seven to 10 commanders, the military and police force in Xingang will be dominated by this armed force of about 70 people, and then a small militia organization will be gradually formed in the local area to assist the military and police personnel in maintaining order.

Of course, after sending so many people out, the Military Police Department intends to add the second batch of military and police cadets who have been recruited into the camp here to the official establishment as much as possible, and will prepare to start the third batch of cadets in the near future, because no one knows whether the armed forces of the overseas bases are enough or not, and if it is necessary to transport armed personnel from the base camp to reinforce them, then the military strength of the base camp itself will be too empty. According to the calculations of the Military Police Department, with the current size and expansion rate of the base camp, at least 200 or more indigenous armed personnel must be maintained to be sufficient, and the current establishment of the Military Police Department is obviously still a clear distance from this goal.

The most striking thing is that the third batch of cadets of the Military Police Department has plans to expand their recruitment, and they are ready to form a security company and an armed company at one time, and then add the personnel of the first two batches to maintain the total military strength of a naturalized battalion under the establishment of the Military Police Department. This expansion plan can be described as ambitious, if these three phases of recruitment and training can be completed smoothly, the number of naturalized military and police under the military police department will reach about 500 people, plus the armed forces of the crossing group itself, this will undoubtedly reach the establishment of a full infantry battalion in later generations.

As soon as Yan Chujie's expansion plan was proposed, it was opposed by Ning Qi: "Let's not talk about whether it is necessary to maintain this scale of armed personnel in the military, in terms of our current overall economic scale, it is difficult to afford such a professional army." To put it simply, the population we now control is less than 2,000, and even if we count the overseas sub-bases after a while, three or four thousand people will be able to break through the sky, and at the current level of productivity, an average of five or six people will support a professional soldier.

Without waiting for Yan Chujie to open his mouth to refute, Schneider, who was in charge of finance, had already taken over the conversation: "Let's talk about the expenses of the first month of the new barracks." Each soldier is paid two yuan a month, and in order to appease the people, we also give each person an additional two yuan for settling-in. Since the costume is a material prepared before the crossing, we will leave it alone. In terms of weapons and equipment, the security guards even use rattan wooden sticks are very cheap, and we can calculate the salary of the soldiers at 500 yuan. However, in order to master the skills of firearms combat, the militia companies are equipped with Type 27 arquebuses, and the current ex-factory price of the military industry department is about 5 yuan each, plus the two 6-pounder guns used to train artillery, and if you count the gunpowder consumption in live firing in a month, this expenditure is about 6 or 700 yuan. Ladies and gentlemen, not counting food, clothing, and shelter, we need to invest more than 1,000 yuan to raise a company, and if it is difficult to understand, we can convert this amount into the equivalent amount of silver. ”

Seeing Yan Chujie's eagerness to try, Schneider seemed to have expected what he was going to say, and did not leave him a chance to open his mouth to refute, and immediately continued: "Maybe my colleagues in the Military Police Department want to say that the settling-in allowance, camp, clothing, and weapons are all one-time investments, and there is actually not such a big expense every month. But I would like to remind you that even without those expenses, the day-to-day maintenance costs of a professional army are not insignificant. ”

Schneider pulled up a document from the computer, and then projected it on the screen at the front desk of the conference room with a projector: "Ladies and gentlemen, this is the budget for the next quarter handed over to the Executive Committee by the Military Police Department, which does not include the second phase of the cadets who have not yet formed the army and the third phase that has not yet started to be recruited, just the existing troops, and the maintenance cost of one quarter has reached ......."

Schneider paused deliberately at this point before continuing: "...... Fifteen hundred dollars. Ladies and gentlemen, 500 yuan a month is the peacetime expenditure of a unit with a company establishment, and if the third phase of the military and police recruitment is completed, then we will have to maintain the establishment of four companies, and the monthly cost will exceed 2,000 yuan. What kind of concept is this? For 2,000 yuan we can buy two brand-new 400-gauge ships, and if we hire them, we can hire 10 ships of the same tonnage! And if we want to earn back 2,000 yuan, we need to sell 20 tons of salt, or 200 sets of glass stationery. It's easy to spend money and it's hard to make money, I think you must be cautious when you consider the expansion plan of the military and police department, we must understand that these professional military police can only spend money, and they can't create social value, and if the scale of the professional military and police at this stage is too large, it will only cause economic burdens to our collective......"

"What nonsense!" Yan Chujie slapped the table and interrupted Schneider's speech, he could no longer tolerate the expansion plan carefully prepared by the Military Police Department to be continued to be slandered by this fake foreign devil fraudster: "Without the protection of sufficient armed forces, we can really develop and grow with peace of mind? Do you people think that if we defeat a small group of Ming troops and pirates, we will be able to rest easy? I solemnly remind you that it is best to put away such a fluke as soon as possible!" Although the combat effectiveness of the Ming army is very poor, they still have tens of thousands of troops on Hainan Island that can be mobilized, and they can also continuously draw troops from the mainland to replenish them, and our armed forces are extremely limited, so it can be said that if a war breaks out one day, will our temporary militia that has never entered the barracks be effective?"