Chapter 1298 - Population Allocation

"Shouldn't the Planning Commission have the final say on this?" Yang Yun's implication was clear: allocating population wasn't Wu Nanhai's place to meddle.

"True, but the various departments' opinions serve as the Planning Commission's primary reference for the final allocation plan."

"If we satisfied every department's demands, even a million people wouldn't be enough to go around."

"Naturally." Liu Muzhou straightened in his chair and picked up a document from his desk. "This is the demand figures submitted by each department. Even counting all currently allocatable population, the shortfall would still be at least 150,000."

Yang Yun was unfazed. No leader ever thought there were too many people working under them—especially when they weren't the ones paying the wages. Apart from the top boss, every lesser boss below spent their time in meetings arguing about nothing but money and people. If departments received however many people they asked for, what would be the point of having an HR department?

"The meat hasn't even reached the table, but the wolves are already champing at the bit." Yang Yun cracked a joke. "Every department has its own interests, but we should follow the Planning Commission's guidance—after all, they take the holistic view."

"You're right." Liu Muzhou considered this and concluded Yang Yun had a point. Ever since the first batch of refugees from Operation Engine arrived, transmigrators from various departments had been coming to him constantly, openly or subtly discussing the refugee allocation issue. Wu Nanhai's request in particular was one he found hard to refuse—he had received quite a lot of support from him on prior occasions...

But now that Yang Yun put it this way, it did seem hardly worth getting entangled in such dispute-prone allocation matters. Better to stay aloof and handle things by the book. His mind made up, he said: "Our department won't offer any opinions on this matter. Let the Planning Commission rack their brains over it."

Yang Yun returned to his own office. In truth, he had already begun secretly compiling population allocation tables according to the Planning Commission's requirements in recent days. Though Wu De hadn't specified exact numbers for each region or department, he had provided "guiding ratios" and "basic principles" for the specific allocation.

Allocating contract laborers was an exceedingly meticulous and tedious task. Without computer assistance, it would have taken months of manual calculation and summarization just to sort out the basic facts on these 400,000-plus people. In nineteenth-century America, a population census often took seven or eight years from completion of data collection to release of statistical results. The Transmigrators' Council had three divine artifacts—computers, local area networks, and databases—enabling statistical summarization in less than a month while producing highly detailed classification reports.

From the moment each refugee began purification, they had to fill out a personal information form. This contained not only basic information such as gender, birth date, native place, and marital status, but also occupation, skills, education level, original family economic status, religious beliefs, and political background. This "political background" referred to whether they had obtained any Ming examination degrees or held any form of "public office"—including officials, clerks, soldiers, servants of officials, those who "performed public duties," tithing headmen, guild heads, and various other official or quasi-official positions.

This personal information form was Yang Yun's raw material for classification and summarization, as well as the basis for allocating refugees to their various destinations. Generally speaking, those from artisan backgrounds would go to the industrial or construction sectors, then be further assigned to various trades and enterprises according to their skills; merchants and shop assistants would go to the commercial sector; fishermen to the Fisheries Company; sailors into shipping enterprises or the Navy; intellectuals, after preliminary screening, would go to administration if deemed "reliable," with the remainder assigned to education to serve as literacy teachers...

Children under fourteen were not allocated at all by convention; they were uniformly handed over to the education department to become students.

This allocation system was uncontroversial. The problem was that ninety-five percent of the allocatable population were illiterate peasants. If allocation were based purely on occupation and skills, all these people would go to agriculture—which was clearly unworkable. Therefore, a substantial portion would be assigned as "apprentices" to various industries. Lingao's increasingly swelling industrial working class in the secondary and tertiary sectors had emerged precisely this way. The competition between departments for immigrant population was concentrated in this area.

At present, labor allocation favored the industrial sector. Industry had received most of the contract laborers imported before Operation Engine, with especially large proportions going to metallurgy, mining, construction, and equipment manufacturing; the primary and tertiary industries came second.

However, at the recent National Affairs Conference jointly held by the State Council and the Planning Commission, a policy of "establishing food security" had been proposed, aiming to increase the self-sufficiency ratio for grain in the Lingao regime. The population under the direct control of the Lingao regime had reached nearly a million, and large-scale dependence on imported grain not only burdened the treasury heavily but also occupied significant shipping capacity.

Yang Yun estimated that Wu Nanhai's proposal to allocate 100,000 people to the three agricultural counties was riding on this favorable wind.

Yet, Yang Yun thought, the Planning Commission's considerations were far more complex than those of individual department heads.

Based on the "guiding ratios" and "basic principles" provided by the Planning Commission, Yang Yun had already drafted a preliminary population allocation plan.

Jeju Island: Planned settlement of 50,000 contract laborers. This would create a five-to-four demographic balance against the local Korean population. Combined with active recruitment of Korean security troops from Jeju Island and the introduction of subsequent migrants, linguistic assimilation could likely be completed within a generation, ensuring Jeju Island became the Council's "island of cattle, horses, sheep, and citrus."

These 50,000 contract laborers would mainly be settled as agricultural migrants, serving as farm and ranch workers at Agricultural Commission-administered farms and ranches.

Regarding food supply, prior to the landing, Jeju Island's extensive agriculture could barely sustain 40,000 people. After the introduction of potatoes, grain yields had increased substantially—to the point where large quantities could be exported in 1632 to supply Shandong and other areas. This demonstrated considerable agricultural potential. After introducing large numbers of migrants and implementing basic farmland construction, Jeju Island agriculture would not only achieve self-sufficiency but would also be able to export substantial agricultural and pastoral products.

Southern Taiwan (Tainan area): Currently, 10,000 refugees had been settled locally, with plans to settle an additional 25,000. The core of these 25,000 consisted of Fujianese civilians captured from the Fujian coast during Operation Overlord, supplemented by some Shandong refugees.

Using Fujianese migrants as the main body clearly violated the Council's requirement to "break down closed regional parochialism," but the water and soil improvement in Tainan was not yet complete. Northern migrants suffered severe acclimatization problems with high mortality rates, while Fujianese migrants adapted relatively better to the Tainan region with higher survival rates. Thus, including the Agricultural Reclamation Tainan Brigade that had landed earlier for development, the total migrant population settled in the Kaohsiung-Tainan area was 40,000. There were also 40,000-plus people who had previously migrated under the organization of Zheng Zhilong and other sea lords, now available for absorption.

The Tainan area had begun land reclamation in the autumn of 1631, and with subsequent deployment of large numbers of slaves for land development without regard for casualties, Wei Bachi had completed his planned 100,000 mu of land reclamation by January 1633. Though this farmland was "raw land" with limited yields, Tainan had excellent water and heat conditions. With rotation planting of rice, sweet potatoes, and beans, they could harvest at least seven to eight thousand tons of grain, twenty thousand tons of sweet potatoes, and several thousand tons of beans. Even accounting for the roughly five to six thousand surviving slaves who also needed local provisioning, self-sufficiency was definitely achievable at a minimum.

Tainan's agricultural potential was not only far greater than Jeju Island's but also exceeded Hainan's. With sufficient labor investment and basic farmland construction, the Tainan area would become the Council's granary.

As for the migrants who had been in Tainan previously, since they had survived before, the land they cultivated could sustain them. At worst they wouldn't eat their fill, but they wouldn't starve to death either.

After deducting these migrants, the remaining 345,000 would all be settled on Hainan Island. Of this number, approximately 60,000 children under fourteen would be handed over to the education sector for schooling and training—orphan collection had been pursued most actively during refugee gathering, so children made up a quite high proportion of the refugee population. The remaining 280,000 were the objects available for allocation to the island's industrial and agricultural sectors.

Of these, approximately 10,000 would be transported to the Sanya District. Though Sanya's mining development relied primarily on slaves, Sanya's own development also required large amounts of population, especially as the Agricultural Commission prepared to establish tropical plantations there—a typically labor-intensive enterprise.

Additionally, the southern counties of Hainan needed appropriate supplementation of agricultural population to establish a presence in these counties. The Han Chinese population in southern Hainan was extremely sparse; even counting hidden households, some counties had only a few thousand people. Apart from maintaining a county seat, there was hardly any governmental presence to speak of. These counties were projected to receive 40,000 migrants to build up their population base. Besides engaging in agricultural production, they would also develop forestry and mining. Among these counties, Changhua was a special case: the industrial sector was preparing to establish a large cement production enterprise there. Between industrial workers and miners for quarrying, plus the labor needed for preliminary road engineering in the next phase of Shilu development, approximately 10,000 people would need to be settled there.

The remaining 220,000 would mainly be settled in the northern region. How to allocate these 220,000 became the biggest point of contention between the industrial and agricultural sectors.

Looking at absolute numbers, agriculture had already gained a huge advantage. But on closer examination, these populations would have difficulty generating returns in the short term. Those who could deliver immediate results were obviously in the several traditional agricultural counties in northern Hainan. The land currently under Council control—whether directly operated state farm land or taxable registered fields—was overwhelmingly concentrated in the northern counties, accounting for over ninety percent.

This land was either mature fields cultivated for years or improved farmland after water conservancy renovation. With sufficient labor input, agricultural output could immediately skyrocket. Wu Nanhai's private lobbying of Liu Muzhou was obviously aimed at this.

(End of Chapter)