Dominate the Country

For a big country, normal administrative operation is the main part of "daily life", and the investigation and elimination of spies is just a small seasoning in life. Chen Ming and Chen Cong, uncle and nephew who dominate the operation of this huge country, are now worried about how to recommend candidates in the court, and how to leave a strong and colorful mark for Chen Han in the last period of their term!

It is now the early summer of the tenth year of Chengtian. The court recommendation will be launched in early autumn, and the final result will be obtained before the Mid-Autumn Festival to finalize the list of the next cabinet members.

It is reported that many officials who intend to go further have already started to move.

As mentioned before, when the money transactions of bribery and bribery are curbed, the "transactions" of the entire officialdom will involuntarily enter a deeper level. Chen Ming is now paying close attention to this.

You know, the first court recommendation will be launched soon.

The red line of Chen Han's version of "court recommendation" is drawn to the third rank. Whether it is the third rank or the third rank, you can make your own suggestions for the candidates of cabinet ministers. For a certain position, they all have the right to recommend candidates they approve of, and then the emperor will summarize and decide on a list of candidates - five to seven people. After that, the third-rank civil officials in Beijing and the local areas can recommend candidates based on this list.

Chen Han has "pigeon delivery". This saves the time of "ballots" on the road to a great extent. Of course, confidentiality becomes more important.

The top three will be submitted by the cabinet to the emperor for selection.

Therefore, the court recommendation is not so awesome that it will go against the sky. It does not mean that the first person selected by these ministers will definitely be able to sit on the throne of the cabinet. The final decision is still in the hands of Emperor Chen.

But this is definitely a big deal for Chen Han, whose imperial power "inherits" the highly centralized tradition of the pseudo-Qing Dynasty.

Chen Ming attaches great importance to this matter. He believes that the Chinese officialdom political cluster that has learned to "exchange" and "accommodate" in the struggle will have a more profound impact on China's future.

But Chen Ming's focus is not something that Chen Cong cares about, because he is about to retire. His two sons will not stay in China for long, and overseas fiefdoms are their final fate.

Chen Cong knew that Chen Ming preferred Liu Dezhao to the position of the third cabinet chief minister. This does not mean that Emperor Chen no longer likes Chen Ding and prefers the son of Concubine Liu. It is a long-established rule that Liu Dezhao will have to step down after another term. The end of the third cabinet may be the moment when the curtain falls on the founding ministers.

The next people to take the throne will be Pang Zhenkun, Xiong Bingzhang, Wang Huizu and others.

At the last moment of his life, Chen Cong cleverly abandoned his political legacy. He believed that his nephew would definitely not want him to push someone to compete with Liu Dezhao.

Therefore, Chen Cong chose to keep silent. He did not care about the election of the next cabinet, but only cared about how to make another wave of political achievements in the remaining six months of this year.

"Your Majesty, the memorial just handed over by King Song."

Zhang Dayong held a memorial and delivered it to Chen Ming's desk.

Chen Ming did not comment, and continued to write and draw on a memorial in his hand. This was a memorial sent by a horse farm in Inner Mongolia. Chen Han has been working on the horse breeding project for several years, and the results have begun to show.

Because Chen Han has introduced enough stallions from foreign countries.

The horse farms in Mongolia, Xinjiang, Qinghai and other places have raised the average height of tens of thousands of new horses based on Mongolian mares to four feet and three inches [143 cm], and the average weight exceeds five hundred and fifty catties [330 kg], which has completely surpassed the Mongolian horse, the mainstream horse breed in China before. However, compared with Western military horses, there is still a height difference of about 20 cm, an average weight difference of 110 catties, and an average sprint speed difference of about 10 kilometers per hour. Of course, the last data is not for long-distance raids. The Mongolian horse's super endurance is one of their greatest advantages.

Although China in this era has little chance to fight against the major powers of Britain, France, Prussia and Austria, Russia is not among them. China's military horses have a most direct comparison object, that is, Russian war horses.

The mainstream of Russian war horses in this era, the Don River horse, has not been improved, and overall it does not have much advantage over the Mongolian horse. Or the most primitive basis of the Don River horse is the Mongolian horse - the Mongolian horse of the countless steppes in Siberia. It has some advantages over the Mongolian horses in the south, but it cannot form a qualitative gap. The reason why it is called the Don River horse is that Russia has established a series of huge horse farms in the Don River Basin, which is suitable for the reproduction of horses, based on the Mongolian horse.

Now, Chen Han has introduced Turkmen horses, Arabian horses, and a series of purebred and mixed-blood horse breeds from Britain, France, Spain, and Italy on a large scale. Although the time is short, these good stallions combined with Mongolian mares have already created a group of good offspring.

These new horses still inherit the fine traditions of their mothers, are hardworking, easy to raise, have long endurance, and can live in the frozen steppes. And they have a good temper and strong adaptability, but they are not attractive in physique.

Compared with their fathers, the new horses still have many shortcomings in their physique and body structure, such as restricted, unnatural, ungraceful and unsuitable movements, but military horses are not racehorses on the track, and horses in war do not need those fancy things. Few horses can work effectively on the snow-covered prairie at minus 20 to 30 degrees Celsius.

Chen Ming had a very strange feeling in his heart. He felt that if these new horses continued on the road of improvement, they might be the famous Cossack Don horses in the original time and space plane. The real Don horses! Not the primitive ones that Russians are riding now.

Chen Ming was very happy that the horse breeding could achieve such results in just a few years. You know, horse breeding is a very long project, with phases one, two, and three, each of which takes 20 to 30 years.

Just like the little Japan in the original time and space plane, they carried out two connected horse breeding projects, each of which took 30 years. During the Anti-Japanese War, the final product was still the tall and strong "Oriental Horse".

There was a huge improvement in height and strength, but it also suffered from a "delicate disease" that was life-threatening. Few of the Oriental horses seized by the Tubalu could be kept alive. The living standard was very high.

If it were placed in the 21st century, it would be considered a rare animal, and maybe it could be kept as a pet.

The Japanese horse breeding improvement can't be considered very successful, but it can't be considered a failure either. After all, they improved their own local horses that were shorter than donkeys into tall horses.

If we look at the Japanese horse breeding improvement projects in history and compare the horse breeding improvement that Chen Han is currently carrying out, why China's achievements in just a few years are so gratifying, it can only be said that it is the gap between the rich and the poor.

How big is Chen Han's horse breeding improvement stall?

There are as many as two or three thousand fine stallions imported from foreign countries, and what about the Japanese? After the Meiji Restoration, how big was the basis for the horse breeding improvement that the Japanese started? It was only 26 stallions.

One year before the Meiji Restoration, Napoleon III of France gave Japan 26 Arabian horses to thank the Tokugawa shogunate for its contribution to saving the French sericulture industry. The shogunate, who didn't know the value of the goods, rewarded all these world-class riding horses to the daimyo and his retainers. After the Meiji Restoration, these Arabian horses were gradually recovered by the government as stallions to improve local ponies.

After nearly 10 years of improvement, the average height of Japan's registered military horses caught up with the average height of Mongolian horses. Note that this is a registered military horse. How many registered military horses could the Japanese have at that time? Whether there are more fine-bred stallions than the ones Chen Han has introduced in recent years is another matter.

The reason why the improvement effect of the Japanese is not significant is that the population of excellent horse breeds is too small, and only the stallions among the 26 Arabian horses have led to serious inbreeding.

In addition to improving the quality of military horses, Chen Han also started to improve the horse breeds covering the production areas of small draft horses, light draft horses, and heavy draft horses. The horse breed bases established by Chen Han on the grassland are all specially classified, and special production areas for riding horses, small draft horses, light draft horses, and heavy draft horses have been established. The hybrid offspring of various types of introduced fine-bred horses are used for specific purposes according to their respective characteristics. For example, the cavalry warhorses mentioned just now, as well as the draft horses widely used in infantry, artillery, baggage soldiers and gendarmerie; of course, there are also trotting horses specially used for equestrian performances and horse racing, which are also used as mounts for senior officers and messengers.

Take the draft horses introduced from Europe in this era as an example. For the same artillery cart, six Chen Han army draft horses pulled it quite hard, while four European draft horses could pull the artillery cart and run fast. This is the gap!

This is enough to kill on the battlefield.

Therefore, Chen Han's horse breed improvement is just the first step of the Long March. The future tasks are more important and the pressure is greater.

Because the horse breed improvement project is not half successful with a good start. On the contrary, a good start will only make them more stressed in the subsequent process. If the "upgrade" activity is carried out on a good basis and still fails, wouldn't it be too stupid?

Chen Ming left a red scarf with four or five hundred words on the memorial, then put down the memorial and reached out to pick up the memorial that Chen Cong had just handed over.

"Oh, King Song wants to carry out a pilot project of compulsory education in primary schools?"

It's nonsense to carry out compulsory universal education in primary schools in all aspects. China has a population of more than 200 million. Even though a large number of people have immigrated to Southeast Asia and North America every year in recent years, the domestic population has always been growing steadily. There are no less than 3 million children of school age who arrive at the school each year. The number of children of school age in the entire primary school stage exceeds 20 million, and the number of children who can actually enter school is less than 15% of the total number.

Therefore, it is impossible to carry out compulsory universal education in primary schools in all aspects, which is simply beyond the financial support of China.

However, this pilot project of compulsory education can be carried out.

Chen Cong's proposal is to carry out compulsory universal education in the primary school stage in the three capitals, but the total population of the two capitals in the north and south plus Lushan is only more than 2 million, which refers to those with household registration in the three capitals, and the total number is definitely less than 3 million. There are probably less than 250,000 children of school age in the primary school stage. Moreover, these three places are the richest places in China, where powerful and wealthy businessmen gather. The enrollment rate of children is the highest in China, and the school density is naturally the highest in China.

After the compulsory universal education pilot project begins, can we still raise funds from the market? This will greatly reduce the financial pressure on the government.

In addition, the school location can be selected from nearby vacant houses, and it is estimated that the number of campuses that need to be actually invested in construction will be at most a hundred or so.

The scale of the school is not large. There are two classes in one grade, with about 50 students in one class. There are six grades + preschool classes. A school has at least 500 to 600 students, and at most 700 to 800 students. The classrooms, offices, logistics rooms, etc. required, totaling 20 to 25 houses, are really not a big investment.

If the land is not counted, the investment in building a primary school is less than 2,000 yuan. The total number of teachers needed for a school, including regular and auxiliary classes, is only 20 to 30 people. The salary of teachers is 100-150 yuan per person, and 4,000 yuan per month is enough. If the meal eaten by teachers and students at noon in the school is counted, each person can't spend 3 yuan per month, so the half-blood fund required for a primary school every month is about 6,000 yuan. In a year, 70,000 yuan.

There are three or four hundred primary schools in Sanjing every year, and the total annual expenditure is only 30 million! Compared with Chen Han's rapidly growing fiscal revenue, 30 million can only be said to be a small amount of money.

Chen Cong was going to do something great for the people of Sanjing in the last days of his administration, and earn the last glory for himself.

So how could he do it beautifully and get everyone to applaud?

After much thought, Chen Cong finally set his sights on education, basic education at the primary school level.

He knew very well how huge Chen Han's fiscal growth would be this year. The new tax policy would be implemented for a whole year this year, which would bring an astronomical increase in the court's annual fiscal revenue.

Part of this money would be used to repay debts, and the other part would be a large amount of money added to education expenses.

The pilot project of compulsory education in primary schools in Sanjing only costs 30 million, which is just a small amount of money compared to the funds added to education in this year's fiscal budget.

The only problem with this matter is that it is not in this year's fiscal budget. When the fiscal budget was formulated last year, Chen Cong had not thought of this matter at all. Therefore, although the expenditure of 30 million is not large, it needs to be cut out from several projects.

Although Chen Cong is the chief minister of the cabinet and the King of Song, his plan may not be successful if he does not get the support of Chen Ming.

If he has the support of the emperor, it will be a piece of cake to get 30 million from several major expenditures.