Chapter 13: The Second Five-Year Plan

To overcome the water resource problem, after the end of Operation Engine, the Senate began the construction of Lin’gao’s main reservoir: the Songtao Reservoir.

Songtao Reservoir is the largest reservoir on Hainan Island, with a total capacity of 3.125 billion cubic meters, capable of irrigating an area of 3.122 million mu. After its completion, the entire northern part of Hainan Island, including Lin’gao, Danzhou, Chengmai, and Qiongshan, will benefit to varying degrees, with Lin’gao being the largest irrigated area.

After its completion, it will not only promote agricultural production throughout northern Hainan Island, but also alleviate the problem of insufficient industrial water that currently plagues the industrial sector.

However, the Songtao Reservoir is a massive project. In this time and space, the construction of the dam began in 1958 and the earth-rock dam was not completed until 1961. The supporting irrigation canal project was not completed until the 1990s. This is not only a drop in the bucket for the industrial blueprint of the Senate’s next five-year plan, but also a distant solution to a pressing problem.

The Pearl River Delta, in terms of transportation, water resources, manpower, and market, is one of the best places in 17th-century China. To further develop productivity, industrial relocation is imperative.

In the second five-year plan formulated by the Planning Council, the scale of the Ma’niao Iron and Steel Company will not be expanded. The focus of the Senate’s steel industry will be shifted to Guangdong, and a second machinery manufacturing center will be established in Guangzhou.

The second five-year plan will focus on developing the following industries and projects:

• Electricity: Manufacturing of complete sets of self-provided power station equipment; manufacturing of 220v and 380v small-scale low-voltage network power transmission and distribution equipment and related instruments; manufacturing of incandescent lamps.
• Machinery: Focus on developing the equipment manufacturing industry, achieving self-replication of basic industrial mother machines, and being able to manufacture basic machine tools such as lathes, milling machines, and planers. Experimental manufacturing of a hundred-ton hydraulic press; vigorous development of the manufacturing of various professional mechanical equipment—with a focus on equipment for metallurgy, machinery, and chemical industries. Increased investment in the design and manufacturing capabilities of process equipment, and improvement of the output, variety, and quality of standard parts, gears, and bearings.
• Precision Instruments and Equipment: Increased investment in the development and trial production of optical equipment, instruments, and measuring tools. Focus on developing hand-cranked mechanical calculators.
• Chemicals: Further expand the production scale of the “three acids and two alkalis”; expand the production of synthetic ammonia using the coal-based process; focus on developing salt and coal chemical industries. Preliminary exploration of organic chemical production. In specific projects, focus on project breakthroughs in medicine, pesticides, chemical reagents, and explosives. Search for and test rubber substitutes.
• Metallurgy: Launch a second steel complex in Guangdong. Further expand steel output, and increase the variety of steel grades and profiles. Project breakthroughs in special steels needed for the national economy: silicon steel, stainless steel, manganese steel, and tungsten steel. Expand the production scale of electrolytic copper. Further improve the output and purity of non-ferrous metals.
• Power Equipment: Further improve the performance of boilers and steam engines and expand production. For boilers, while ensuring quality, explore medium and high-pressure boilers. The development focus for steam engines is on multi-expansion, high-horsepower models, mainly for ships and power stations. Mass production of small single-cylinder and multi-cylinder diesel engines. Experimental production of gasoline engines.
• Transportation: Serialized and standardized production of steam locomotives and wagons; promotion of iron-ribbed wooden hull technology in large and medium-sized ships; vigorous development of inland motorized vessels; promotion of new types of ships; experimental construction of iron-hulled ships and piston aircraft.
• Light Industry: Focus on promoting the silk weaving industry, garment manufacturing, and deep processing of food.
• Electronics and Electrical Appliances: Development of vacuum tubes and manufacturing of radio components; mass production of wired and wireless radio transceivers with fully self-produced components; mass production of radios, loudspeakers, and first-generation manual telephone exchange systems.
• Transportation and Communications: Completion of the Hainan island-loop and cross-island simple highway and wired telegraph system. By the end of the second five-year plan, all counties in the Hainan Special Administrative Region will have road and telegraph access. Construction of the Guangzhou-Sanshui railway; Haikou Port Phase I; Sanya Port Phase II; Kaohsiung Port Phase II; Changhua Port Phase I; Changhua-Shilu simple highway; Sanshui inland river port; construction of the Guangzhou radio broadcasting station and the Sanya time signal station.
• Mines: Tiandu Iron Mine Phase II; Shaoguan Coal Mine Phase I; Hong Gai Coal Mine Phase II; Southeast Asia oil exploration and experimental development.
• Water Conservancy: Completion of the Songtao Reservoir and some supporting canal projects. Strive to complete it after the second five-year plan to ensure the industrial and agricultural production and daily water needs of Lin’gao. In addition, coastal dikes will be built in major coastal agricultural areas of the Senate such as Kaohsiung and Lin’gao to resist seawater intrusion.

In terms of culture and education, in the second five-year plan, a complete primary school will be established in every county of the Hainan Special Administrative Region. For counties with a population of less than 10,000, a junior primary school will be established first.

In Guangzhou and Kaohsiung, a ten-year national model school will be established in each, modeled after Fangcaodi. In Kaohsiung and Jeju Island, schools will be established at a standard of one junior primary school per 16,000 people.

Higher education, which had not been touched before, also has projects: a naval officer academy will be established in Hong Kong, and a land army officer academy in Jeju. A comprehensive polytechnic institute and a higher normal college will be established in Lin’gao as higher education institutions for science and arts.

Liu Tom held the document in his hand, looking at the long list of projects: Shaoguan Iron and Steel Company No. 1 Blast Furnace, No. 1 Open-Hearth Furnace, Shaoguan Coal Mine No. 1 Shaft, Shaoguan Central Coal Washing Plant, Hong Kong Shipyard No. 1 Large Dock, Lin’gao Optical Equipment Factory, Guangzhou Second Machinery General Factory, Hong Gai Coal Mine No. 2 Pit, Hong Gai Central Coal Washing Plant, Lin’gao Instrument and Measuring Tool Factory, Lin’gao Electronics Factory, Lin’gao Cable Factory, Ma’niao Tungsten-Iron Alloy Factory, Ma’niao Metal Structure Factory, Guangzhou Glass Factory, Guangzhou Meat Processing Plant, Guangzhou Silk Factory, Guangzhou Gas Works, Guangzhou Electric Motor Factory, Qiongshan Building Materials Cement Plant, Changhua Cement Plant, Wenchang Coconut Products Processing Plant, Haikou Seafood Processing Plant, Jeju Island Meat Processing Plant, Leizhou Sugar Factory…

This time, it’s really going to be a great leap forward, Liu Tom thought, both happy and excited. Due to the difficulty in producing silicon steel sheets, the development of the power system had been somewhat sluggish recently. Apart from setting up self-provided power stations for the non-ferrous metal smelter and the salt chemical plant to solve the problem of electrolytic power consumption, the prime movers in Lin’gao’s industrial system were still mainly steam engines and gas engines. Liu Tom keenly felt that the “electricity party” was not very popular in the Planning Council.

From the planning of this five-year plan, it was clear that the Senate as a whole still affirmed that electricity was the direction of development! With such policy support, the “Great Leap Forward” in electricity would no longer be just an empty slogan shouted by a few “electricity party” members in the Nanhai Coffee House.

The IT professionals felt particularly neglected. It was obvious that rebuilding a modern IT system in their lifetime was a fool’s dream. At most, they could continue to maintain the dwindling number of IT devices. The biggest hope was that the Senate could re-develop a vacuum tube mainframe computer as soon as possible—a Lin’gao version of the ENIAC.

Before that, they could only be satisfied with the research and development and use of “mechanical computers” in the second five-year plan, busy with paper tape punching and sorting punched index cards. Secretary of State Ma Qianzhu was very enthusiastic about this, but the IT programmers knew very well that these projects needed machinists more than IT engineers.

The technical senators had a heated discussion about the second five-year plan. The venue was bustling with excitement, and many people’s faces showed a rare excitement. Although many projects in the second five-year plan were just about expanding scale and improving quality, they were to be carried out entirely with the industrial capacity of this time and space, without any support from products brought from the other world. This was a severe test of the industrialization they had been promoting for five years, and the challenges were self-evident.

However, it was precisely because of this that once they passed this test, it would mean they had basically acquired the core capabilities of “self-sustainment” and “self-upgrading” of the industrial system, and had mastered the highest level of technology and the strongest productive forces of this time and space. After that, conquering the mainland and even the world would just be a matter of time!

“With so many port and road projects, I’m afraid our construction company can’t handle it,” Mei Wan said, both happy and worried. “Transportation is a great leap forward, and our construction company will have to contribute a lot, but there are also so many industrial projects…”

“Don’t worry about that, the General Construction Company will definitely be expanded,” Ma Qianzhu said with certainty. “The senators must fully play their role as industry leaders and managers, and let the naturalized citizens have a free hand to do the work. They can’t always be their own foremen and construction workers. Besides, the Planning Council has also considered it. I’ll give you a sneak peek at a policy: after we take Guangdong, all the native construction enterprises and personnel in Guangdong will be unified and incorporated. These people may not be good at other things, but they can at least do carpentry and bricklaying, and maybe even better than the workers we train ourselves.”

“Good, good, that’s a relief,” Mei Wan said, nodding repeatedly.

“Besides, don’t be intimidated by these ‘phase two’ projects. Don’t apply the concept of civil engineering from the other world to ours. It’s a world of difference,” Wu De said with a smile. “Sanya Port Phase II is just about building a breakwater and a pier. Don’t overthink it.”

“Regarding the oil industry, where should we set our sights? Brunei or Taiwan?” the long-suppressed “oil party” members asked.

Given the huge consumption in oil shale mining and processing, the second five-year plan did not include the mining of oil sand in Danzhou, Hainan, and Zhaoyuan, Shandong, but directly considered the exploitation of shallow oil fields.

Shallow oil fields existed in Miaoli County, Taiwan, with shallow oil and gas resources. They were mined in small quantities during the Qing dynasty and the Japanese occupation era, with the deepest wells being no more than 120 meters, which was very suitable for the Senate’s currently not-so-advanced drilling technology. However, the output of these wells was very small, and the oil fields with larger reserves were buried more than 2,000 meters deep.

The oil fields in Brunei were not only shallow but also had large reserves and good quality, making them a very suitable target for exploitation. But the distance was too great. If they were to be developed, a new base would have to be established.