Ma Yilong was posthumously awarded the highest honor. In addition to his breakthrough in planting double-season rice in Jiangnan, doubling the single-season yield per mu, and establishing an agricultural college to continuously train agricultural technicians, there is another reason that people don’t pay much attention to at this time -

That is, he successfully achieved the localization of corn, potatoes and sweet potatoes, and has planted thousands of acres of experimental fields in various northern provinces... It was when he went to Shandong to inspect the sweet potato planting situation there that he suffered a sudden cerebral hemorrhage and fell on the ridge of the field he loved, never to get up again.

People sighed that this contemporary Shennong had lost his precious life for an insignificant new crop. Only Zhao Hao knew the significance of these insignificant foreign crops.

That will save tens of millions of people from natural disasters decades later!

The dead are gone, and the living can only wipe away their tears, inherit the old man's legacy, and strive to make these three magic weapons become qualified staple food substitutes as soon as possible...

~~

Next, in terms of commerce, during the 15th Five-Year Plan, the Jiangnan Group promoted the realization of the sea transportation of grain and obtained the monopoly of Ming Dynasty's maritime trade. Today, from Sakhalin Island in the north to Hainan Island in the south, the entire coast of Ming Dynasty is completely under the control of the Jiangnan Group.

Of course, in order to avoid being too conspicuous, the Jiangnan Group did not directly intervene in the sea. Instead, it formed the Royal Shipping Group with the Xishan Group to be responsible for the maritime trade in the north. It also formed the Nanhai Group with the Fujian and Guangdong maritime merchants to be responsible for the maritime trade in the Ming Dynasty's South China Sea.

Today, the Jiangnan Group owns 3,000 sand ships of 1,000 tons and 2,000 sea vessels of 2,000 tons, half of which were built during the First Five-Year Plan.

In addition to the Longjiang Baochuan Factory and Suzhou Shipyard working overtime day and night, the group's newly built Jiangnan Shipyard on Chongming Island has also rapidly improved its level by absorbing Chinese and foreign talents and receiving huge financial support. Now, both the annual shipbuilding tonnage and quality have surpassed the Longjiang Factory, becoming the best shipyard in the Ming Dynasty.

The Jiangnan Shipyard also digested and absorbed the technology of Western galleons, and on this basis, combined with the Ming Dynasty's shipbuilding technology, it produced new warships with superior performance and reached the world's advanced level!

Today, Jiangnan Shipyard can produce four three-quarter-size "cruisers" every year and two full-size "battleships" every two years.

As for the half-sized galleon, it is defined as a "destroyer" and will not be produced until the second shipyard in Hong Kong is put into production.

In addition, the group has set up more than 30 overseas trading houses, basically establishing a trade network throughout East Asia and Southeast Asia...

In short, with the group's two-pronged efforts of both civil and military development, the overseas trade volume of the Ming Dynasty has increased by more than ten times compared to the low point in the early years of Longqing, and is 1.6 times the peak period of the Wang Zhi era.

In the first year of the Wanli reign, the group's total imports exceeded 100 million taels of silver, exports reached 20 million taels, and the trade surplus reached 80 million taels of silver!

Among them, trade with Japan accounted for one-third of the total trade; Western trade... that is, trade with countries on the west coast of the South China Sea, including Portugal, Annan, Champa, Siam, and Johor, accounted for half; the rest was the so-called Oriental trade. After excluding Japan, the remaining trade with Ryukyu and Luzon originally accounted for a very low proportion. But because of the opening of the Spanish galleon trade, this part grew very rapidly.

~~

In the construction industry, in addition to the five cement plants on Xishan Island, Jiangnan Building Materials has also established eight new cement plants in Beijing, Chaozhou, Hong Kong and Taiwan, increasing cement production to fifteen times that of the period before 2001.

In fact, Zhao Hao only gave a five-fold increase in production plan at the beginning, and it was Hua Bozhen who took the initiative to ask for a ten-fold increase. Not only did he fulfill his boast, he also exceeded the task. Fortunately, Hua Bozhen took the initiative to increase the amount, otherwise the originally planned cement production would not be able to meet the group's rapid construction frenzy.

As for finance, the original plan was to attract 50 million taels of silver, but the plan was completed in the first year. Currently, the total amount of savings accounts in Jiangnan Bank has reached 220 million taels of silver. This is the result of depositors enthusiastically buying group bonds issued by Jiangnan Bank, which attracted 100 million taels of silver in deposits.

It can be seen that the wealthy have become more and more accustomed to depositing the silver in the cellar in the bank to earn interest.

In addition, the total denomination of silver bills issued has reached 200 million taels. And with the establishment of Jiangnan Bank's absolute dominant position, silver bills have become more and more popular. Especially in June of the sixth year of Longqing, even the Ministry of Revenue accepted silver bills to pay taxes, and depositors have become more and more accustomed to equating silver bills with silver money. The proportion of required redemption is getting lower and lower, and basically only 30% of the reserve is needed to ensure the safety of redemption.

To say something that is not suitable for publicity, most of the silver in the Ming Dynasty is now in the warehouse of Jiangnan Bank.

To put it bluntly, most of the paper circulating in the market is printed by Mr. Zhao...

In terms of loans, Jiangnan Bank has lent more than 100 million taels of silver. One is large loans to the group's companies, and the other is small loans to small merchants and small handicraftsmen. Moreover, the non-performing loan rate is less than 1%, which is lower than Zhao Hao expected.

This is because the local branches of Jiangnan Bank, through cooperation with various local guilds, provide precise allocation, scientific guidance, and full-process assistance to industrialists and businessmen, which greatly reduces the difficulty and interest for small businessmen and handicraftsmen to obtain loans, improves production efficiency, and ensures product sales.

Of course, the traditional guilds’ screening and guarantee of lenders, as well as the group’s strong control over Jiangnan, are also reasons for the low non-performing loan rate.

In fact, when Zhao Hao first promoted micro-loans, the group's top management had concerns. They were not worried that ordinary people would not repay the money, but they were afraid of arousing opposition from the landlords and gentry, because usury was an important channel for their financial management.

They knew very well that anything that the landlords opposed together would basically fail.

However, when it was actually implemented, it did not cause much disturbance. The reason for this was not only the strong deterrent power of the Jiangnan Group, but more importantly, it was because the landlords and gentry benefited from it... because the guild leaders were often the most prestigious gentry in the local area. The profits earned by the landlords from the booming industry and commerce far exceeded the previous usury income with a very high bad debt rate.

In addition, Jiangnan Financial Group finally no longer has only Jiangnan Bank. During the 15th period, it successively established a futures company and a securities trading center.

Futures can hedge risks. Once launched, they were warmly welcomed by Jiangnan merchants. Under the guidance of the trading center, they quickly learned to sell the same amount of forward contracts on the exchange at the same time as they purchased goods to avoid risks, which greatly improved the certainty of production and allowed them to arrange production with more confidence and expand production scale.

In the two years since the establishment of the futures center, there are already thirty futures commodities including indica rice, japonica rice, wheat, soybeans, cotton, sugar, rapeseed oil, and raw silk.

As for the stock exchange center, it was actually prepared two years ago, but the "Dashilan stock market crash" occurred before it opened. This made them adopt more cautious and conservative listing rules. At present, they are still providing guidance for pre-listing companies and are not in a hurry to start listing.

~~

In terms of education, every county in Jiangnan has at least one primary school. Some counties with good conditions and early start even have two or three!

During the First Five-Year Plan period, a total of 200 primary schools were built in the Jiangnan region, far exceeding the planned 24.

Currently, the number of full-time primary school graduates has reached 300,000! And the number is increasing significantly every year!

This is due to the Chinese nation's tradition of attaching importance to education. The gentry in various counties were unwilling to lag behind and donated money to support education. The schools they built were bigger than the last, and there were donations every year, which greatly alleviated the financial pressure on the Jiangnan Education Group.

If it weren’t for the Jiangnan Education Regulations that teachers must undergo training at Jiangnan Normal University and pass the exam before they can take up their posts, more primary schools would have been built.

In fact, primary school is not so bad. After all, you just need to train the old students who are everywhere for a year, and then you can pass the exam and get a job.

Middle schools are even more severely limited by teacher resources. Currently, there are only 16 middle schools in the entire Jiangnan region, which means there can only be one middle school in each prefecture. In addition, Kunshan County has a special situation and has two middle schools.

Moreover, each middle school is very small, with only 5,000 students in total. There is no other way, there are too few people who can be middle school teachers, so we can only train them slowly!

Fortunately, both the gentry and the common people attached great importance to education, which made Zhao Hao firmly believe that all difficulties could be overcome.

In terms of vocational education, the results are encouraging. During the First Five-Year Plan period, 20 vocational secondary schools and five advanced technical colleges have been built.

These vocational schools are basically funded by the group companies and are responsible for imparting professional skills. After graduation, students can directly go to work in the factories under the company, which is very attractive to ordinary people.

Because their children can work in Jiangnan Group, they are definitely the envy of the neighbors, and matchmakers will come to the door. For girls from ordinary families, the best fate is to marry a guy from Jiangnan Group.

Therefore, after graduating from primary school, students are all trying their best to go to technical secondary school. Nowadays, it is no longer the era when you can directly join the group after graduating from primary school, let alone a one-year crash course. Lucky people like Cai Yimu only appear in the early stage of entrepreneurship when there is a shortage of personnel.

As for the achievements of higher education such as Yufeng Academy and Xiangshan Academy, they are already well known to everyone, but Zhao Hao did not even mention them in his report.

"That's annoying!" Li Zhi was very unhappy and protested with a shrill voice...

~~

Next came the part that the participants did not understand.

For example, in the chemical industry, the first sulfuric acid production workshop was built and put into operation during the First Five-Year Plan period, using sulfur as raw material to produce sulfuric acid on a large scale. Later, sulfuric acid could be used as raw material to produce nitric acid and hydrochloric acid. So the production of the three acids was solved at once.

In addition, the 04th Institute also mastered the method of industrially producing soda ash using salt and sulfuric acid as raw materials. Moreover, the hydrogen chloride produced during the production can also be used to make hydrochloric acid, chlorine, bleaching powder and other industrial products that Zhao Hao urgently needs.

In addition, soda ash can also be causticized with slaked lime to produce caustic soda. In this way, the three acids and two alkalis were all industrially developed during the 15th Five-Year Plan period. Once the Budai Salt Field in Taiwan is put into production, we can try to build a soda ash production line.

Although there are certainly still many difficulties to be overcome, the industrial production of the two alkalis is only a matter of time.

Well, it’s still small-scale production, but it’s more than enough to match the current industrial level.

In five years, we have figured out the production of three acids and two alkalis, and have developed a usable sulfuric acid production line. Mr. Zhao couldn't be more satisfied.

Thinking about being able to provide countless soaps for men in the future, Master Zhao couldn't help but grin.

P.S. If I were to expand the content of this chapter, I could write dozens of chapters, but firstly, the space is limited, and secondly, I think everyone is impatient to read these, so I condensed it in this way, and then quickly get to the fun. Keep writing...