"I will preside over this meeting." He Rui clarified the host according to the meeting procedure straight away.

There were six participants: Republic Chairman He Rui, Premier Wu Youping, Minister of Education Zhao Tianlin, Minister of Internal Affairs Xu Jia, Minister of Industry Zhuang Jiaxiong, and Minister of Propaganda Huang Zhen.

As the host who initiated this meeting, He Rui ordered, "Comrade Wu Youping, please report on the work progress first."

Wu Youping opened the document. "In 1925, the Republic's First Five-Year Plan will begin. By the end of 1926, the National Bureau of Statistics needs to establish economic statistics departments covering the whole country to provide economic data to governments at all levels. This includes population census, labor force statistics, regional means of production statistics, industrial and agricultural statistics, transportation statistics, consumption power survey and statistics..."

Except for Propaganda Minister Huang Zhen who was taking notes while listening, and He Rui who listened seriously to Wu Youping's report, surprise appeared on the faces of the others. The new government had completely broken the old tradition that 'imperial power does not extend below the county level' and established a national organizational structure from the central government down to the administrative villages. However, the plan proposed by Wu Youping sounded very crazy: to investigate the manpower, resources, and productivity of each region, especially the consumption power and consumption potential.

If ordinary people who had never been in contact with government operations heard this plan, they would probably be angry and terrified: 'The state actually wants to figure out exactly how much money is in everyone's pockets!'

Although surprised, everyone did not feel puzzled. After Wu Youping finished his report, it was Zhao Tianlin's turn. Zhao Tianlin's report was on the school construction to be completed in the future First Five-Year Plan, as well as the number of foreign professors to be introduced.

"...Strengthen engineering and normal schools. High schools and technical schools must be established in every county... Every city must establish engineering schools, health schools, and normal schools. The quantity is at least one of each. Every provincial capital must establish a full-time university including a medical school, and at least three colleges based on local economic characteristics... Every important state-owned enterprise must have relevant technical training schools. The goal for primary schools is for all school-age children to receive five-year compulsory education..."

In various countries, the Ministry of Internal Affairs manages domestic police and security affairs. The Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of China did not govern powerful agencies but was the Organization Department. Powerful organizations such as the National Security Bureau, Public Security, and Police were managed by the State Council.

Xu Jia took out the latest statistical data. "By June 1924, there were 29 universities in the country, 10 established in the Northeast, 10 public universities, and 9 private universities. The 29 universities had a total of more than 74,000 students. Among them, universities in the Northeast had a total of 51,496 students. The other 19 universities had more than 23,000 students..."

This was the current status of higher education in China, a very helpless reality. Among the more than 74,000 students, there were more than 39,000 science and engineering students. Universities in the Northeast had been fully cultivating science and engineering students from the beginning. Among the more than 39,000, more than 35,000 were cultivated by the 10 universities in the Northeast.

Of the remaining 4,000 science and engineering university students, more than 3,000 were students from various Beiyang universities. Most of them were either science and engineering students from the National Peiyang University or students from the Beiyang Railway Official School where Wu Youping and Zhuang Jiaxiong graduated.

Hearing this introduction, Minister of Industry Zhuang Jiaxiong couldn't help smiling bitterly. As a Fujian native, Zhuang Jiaxiong didn't care about his 'Beiyang lineage' mark. As a native of Fuzhou, the anchorage of the Nanyang Fleet back then, Zhuang Jiaxiong identified more with his 'Nanyang Fleet lineage' identity.

However, the data was so cold; this group of people in the office all graduated from these schools. Although the South began to buy equipment and set up factories during the Self-Strengthening Movement, Beijing and Tianjin had their own advantages and possessed great advantages in the construction of formal schools, especially universities.

The number of science and engineering students in the South was very low. After all, universities in the South were all related to foreign forces. Foreigners didn't need native Chinese engineers; they needed Chinese people who understood Western law, culture, and other knowledge to be used by them.

Among various technical schools in China, the most flourishing were military academies. In such an era of war and chaos, military academies were run everywhere. Although there was a considerable gap in quality compared with the Great Powers, the quantity was not bad. Military academies in various provinces received orders to go to Zhengzhou, the future capital, to await reorganization; those who failed to arrive by the deadline would have their academic qualifications cancelled.

At this time, more than 10,000 teachers and students from military academies in various places had gathered in Zhengzhou, while the Beiyang military academies were directly taken over by the National Defense Force.

Xu Jia just talked about the statistical data. By June 1924, within the scope of the national population census, there were a total of 137,600 university graduates from various universities that could be contacted, of which 64,751 graduated from Northeast universities.

New-style primary and secondary schools began to be set up in the country after 1900, which was late. Excluding the Northeast, there were 640,000 students in high schools and equivalent education (Republic middle school students), and 6.74 million primary school students.

Counting the Northeast, the numbers were much more optimistic. The Northeast had comprehensively eradicated illiteracy and enforced compulsory education in the past ten years. The Northeast was an immigrant area, and its population composition was not quite the same as the general population structure of China at present. The proportion of refugees was large, the proportion of young adults was large, and the proportion of single people was large. Under the stable environment of these years, the proportion of infants and young children was large. The proportion of school-age children and teenagers was only 10%.

The population ratio of Inner and Outer Mongolia had the nomadic characteristics of this time: vast land, sparse population, living by water and grass. Some reservoirs had been built in these years, and technologies suitable for local pastures and ecological development were adopted. The settled population increased a bit, but it still had pastoral characteristics.

The 4 million children and teenagers in the Northeast were forced to receive education. Since many were forced into compulsory education when they were teenagers, the rate of primary school students entering middle school barely reached 30%. But for those who received compulsory education in childhood, the rate of entering middle school reached 54%.

Such a number existed because under the policy of gender equality, the number of industrial workers in the entire Northeast had reached 2.7 million, and agricultural workers 2.6 million. The children of workers and state farms all received compulsory education, encouraging children to go to middle school after graduating from primary school. After these industrial and agricultural workers became literate, they clearly noticed that the employment space for junior high school students was larger than that for primary school students, and wages were also higher. Since there was an opportunity for their children to go to junior high school, they naturally went with the flow.

By June 1924, the entire family assets of the Republic were this much. Barely 10 million primary school students, 2 million junior high school students, 900,000 high school students, and less than 140,000 university students. Among all these 13.04 million students, in the proportion of class hours and knowledge, Chinese language accounted for about 40%, mathematics 20%, physical education 10%, foreign languages 10% (entirely relying on Northeast + Beijing/Tianjin + church schools everywhere), history 8%, geography 5%, music + painting 3%, physics 3%, chemistry 1%, and the proportion of other course hours was basically negligible.

After Xu Jia finished the introduction, it was the turn of Minister of Industry Zhuang Jiaxiong. Zhuang Jiaxiong's introduction was concise and comprehensive, "Currently, there are seven industrial categories that need to be developed. The scientific principles are provided by the Chairman, and a large number of technical personnel and engineers are needed to complete the technical research and development of these categories."

After the first round of introductions ended, the others roughly understood the purpose of He Rui's meeting. In He Rui's view, these contents could be organically combined to promote efficiency as a whole. Zhuang Jiaxiong also thought in his heart that He Rui wanted to allocate human resources. The current university students and engineers could not meet the technical personnel required by the Ministry of Industry.

He Rui spoke, "Economic work is not completely equivalent to industrial construction. Judging from reports from various places, the grain harvest this year is relatively stable. The situation of widespread bankruptcy in rural areas should be greatly alleviated. 'A people without trust cannot stand'; since we have won the trust of the people, the next step should be to enter the stage of providing blood transfusions to rural areas. We must provide orders to rural areas to drive employment..."

When He Rui finished speaking, Propaganda Minister Huang Zhen asked, "Chairman, will adopting a market approach be too inefficient?"

He Rui knew that someone would definitely have such a question; after all, the Northeast didn't do it this way back then. Huang Zhen's question was very good. "The reason for low efficiency is not the market, but whether local governments have the ability to provide labor employment opportunities. Premier Wu proposed establishing a digital management method, the purpose of which is to enable local governments to have a definite target."

The so-called statistical mode proposed by Wu Youping was an idea proposed by He Rui, which he let Wu Youping and the State Council formulate. This management mode first appeared around 1985 in He Rui's space-time and began to be used in G7 countries after the emergence of supercomputers. Collecting data alone is useless; massive analysis of data is required to obtain a relatively scientific result. China only mastered this set of technology and began to execute it after 2004.

According to He Rui's judgment, China now had a population of 480 million, and residential areas were relatively concentrated. Although the cost of manual calculation was high, the cost was still within an acceptable range. After all, the price of labor in China was low, and the quantity of labor was sufficient. From the perspective of creating demand, these positions could indeed drive demand and greatly improve efficiency.

From the perspective of advanced layout, the accumulation at this stage created massive demand for Chinese mathematics, which was also fertile soil for the growth of a large number of mathematics professionals. When computers appeared, even the most primitive vacuum tube computers, those accumulated algorithms could be fully utilized.

Of course, these didn't need to be mentioned at this time. He Rui continued to explain the market economy, "The efficiency of the market cannot be said to be low, nor can it be said to be high. The market is just a collection of transactions. Compared with the command economy, the market has a huge coverage range. This is the part where the market seems efficient. Compared with the command economy, the market is influenced by many rational and irrational factors. This is the part where the market seems inefficient. Like any other existence, the true face of the market will be distorted in a simple and one-sided perspective."

The task of the Propaganda Minister was to make people who did not participate in policy formulation understand the original intention of the policy. Since He Rui had made a certain introduction, Huang Zhen continued to listen to the meeting content.

Other cabinet members also waited. Managing the country with an economic analysis model was an unprecedented model, and everyone wanted to hear He Rui's allocation of existing human resources.

"Every city must have a team capable of analyzing data. County-level departments should ideally have one; if not, the county government and county party committee also need to have the ability to understand the content of data analysis. Knowing how much purchasing power the county has, combined with the level of economic development of the county, product production priorities can be determined. But this is not the most important thing; the most important thing is to be able to guide economic development and promote economic development. This is a high challenge for various local governments. I think this part of manpower demand should be satisfied with the highest priority. What do comrades think?"