The rise of a great power: starting with military industry

Chapter 652 Three Hundred Billion?
During lunch break.

Leaving Liu Tao alone.

This time it is for the Beijing-Shanghai Expressway, Beijing-Kunming Expressway, Wuhan-Guangzhou High-Speed ​​Railway, Guangzhou-Kunming High-Speed ​​Railway, and Chengdu-Kunming High-Speed ​​Railway.

The Beijing-Shanghai Expressway starts in Beijing and ends in Shanghai, passing through Hebei Province, Tianjin, Shandong Province, and Jiangsu Province, connecting Beijing, Hebei, Tangshan and the Yangtze River Delta. The entire line is 1262 kilometers long, with a total design budget of 500 billion yuan.

The Beijing-Kunming Expressway starts in Beijing, passes through Baoding, Shijiazhuang, Taiyuan, Linfen, Xi'an, Ankang, Hanzhong, Guangyuan, Mianyang, Deyang, Guanghan, Rongcheng, Ya'an, Xichang, Panzhihua, Yongren, Yuanmou, Wuding, and finally ends in Kunming. It is 2865 kilometers long with a total investment of 1500 billion yuan.

The Wuhan-Guangzhou High-Speed ​​Railway connects Jingchu Province, Hunan Province and Guangdong Province. It is 1069 kilometers long with a total investment of 500 billion yuan.

The Guangzhou-Kunming High-Speed ​​Railway has a total length of 1330 kilometers and a total investment of 750 billion yuan; the Chengdu-Kunming High-Speed ​​Railway has a total length of 1085 kilometers and a total investment of 750 billion yuan.

The total investment of the five projects is up to 4000 billion yuan.

The launch of these four projects will not only facilitate transportation and connect various locations, but will also help boost economic development and promote employment.

Throughout the 80s, the army was streamlined four times, reducing almost two-thirds of its personnel.

That's as many as four million troops.

Apart from those who were transferred to the armed police or local areas, most of them were transferred to construction workers.

These transferred people must be given a job to support their families.

How many soldiers have fought on the battlefield and made contributions, but were laid off. They had been in the army before, carrying guns all the time, and learned how to fight. When they take off their military uniforms, it is like starting over from scratch.

If you don’t have money, there is naturally no way.

If there is a way, it would be to properly settle these people who have made contributions to the country.

"Leader, our Panshan Group can only allocate 500 billion yuan for investment in transportation." Liu Tao said cautiously.

Investing in railways and highways has a long payback period but a high rate of return.

But the proportion cannot be too large, because Panshan Group’s basic foundation is still in manufacturing and is based on industry!

Infrastructure construction is an extended section and is secondary to Panshan Group.

He glanced at Liu Tao and raised three fingers: "300 billion RMB, this is a political task, not for you to bargain with."

Liu Tao almost vomited blood.

I feel that 500 billion RMB is enough.

As a result, the leader's offer suddenly increased sixfold, to 300 billion RMB.

That’s 300 billion RMB!

"Leader, our Panshan Group doesn't have that much money!" Liu Tao complained bitterly, "The Shenyang-Haikou Expressway is completed, and the Beijing-Kowloon High-Speed ​​Railway is also in operation, but you know that it is not profitable at the moment. We have also started the Shanghai-Shenzhen High-Speed ​​Railway, which just started construction not long ago." "The four major hydropower stations on the Jinsha River will start construction in the middle of the year, and the Three Gorges Dam project will also officially start after the Chinese New Year."

Liu Tao wanted to continue complaining, but was interrupted: "You little monkey, don't think I don't know how much money your Panshan Group has made this year. You have already arranged the funds for the projects you mentioned. Three hundred billion yuan, you can come up with it."

"Our country's economy is developing now, but the Ministry of Finance doesn't have much money. Three hundred billion yuan can be regarded as the profits you have handed over over the years. What's more, you also hold shares, so you can get dividends in the future."

Liu Tao was suddenly speechless.

Liu Tao was not clear about the specific income situation of the Ministry of Finance, but he roughly knew that although the national economy had made rapid progress in the past decade, the central government's finances were just mediocre and definitely not wealthy.

The reason for this situation is the complex relationship between the central and local governments.

Since 1978, when China implemented the reform and opening-up policy, in the social and economic fields, China has gradually gotten rid of the planned economic system and experienced a clear process of decentralization of management power. The central government has delegated many financial management powers to local governments. Compared with the previous unified revenue and expenditure fiscal system, local governments have independent budget formulation power and enjoy a certain degree of fiscal autonomy, such as local governments can decide budget expenditures without interference and share budget revenues with the central government.

The country's fiscal system adopts a "contract system", in which government fiscal revenue is divided into three categories: central fixed revenue, local fixed revenue and central and local shared revenue. Local governments only pay a fixed amount of fiscal and tax revenue to the central government each year. Some places adopt the method of reducing or exempting corporate taxes to intercept the fruits of economic development and hide wealth in enterprises, forming a "weak central government" state that has never appeared since the founding of the People's Republic of China.

In 1982, in order to support the construction of large-scale projects in the energy and transportation sectors, the State Council decided to levy the National Energy and Transportation Key Construction Fund based on the principles of compulsory and gratuitous taxation.

Last year, that is, in 1989, the central government decided to start collecting the "National Budget Adjustment Fund" to alleviate the central government's financial difficulties.

On the basis of collecting the "two funds", the central government's fiscal situation still cannot be fundamentally improved, which means that the national defense construction and national basic investment under the central government can barely cope with it.

This is in recent years, when Panshan Group can pay a large amount of profits and taxes every year.

Otherwise, the central government’s finances would have already been in deficit.

Before the Spring Festival every year, the Ministry of Finance’s biggest expectation is that Panshan Group will settle profits and taxes and alleviate its difficulties!

It is absolutely incredible that the central government's fiscal revenue now accounts for 22% of the total, while local governments account for 78%.

The other provinces are fine, they are just a drop in the bucket, too small, and the difference cannot be reflected even if they are divided more or less.

But for those developed provinces, the difference is huge. These provinces have abundant finances, live a happy life, and their local government buildings are very good.

In the final analysis, the emergence of this situation has shown that the country must now carry out tax-sharing reform in order to adjust the relationship between central and local finances.

In China, centralization is the norm, and a strong central government can play a greater role. Whenever China flourished, there was no one who was not centralized, and the strength of local governments often meant the beginning of turmoil.

"When you were still Panshan Machinery Factory, I promised to give you greater autonomy during the reform. In theory, during the reform process, you did a good job of settling the third-line factories and helped absorb a large number of veterans. According to the policy, you did not need to pay taxes. Later, you cooperated with the tax reform and paid taxes. You paid a lot of taxes every year." He slowly said, "But now some comrades have a lot of opinions about this. They think that since you have such a large annual revenue and profit, you should also hand over part of the profit."

"Now that you have taken out 300 billion yuan to invest in highway and high-speed railway construction, these comrades will be speechless." His face looked normal and calm.

But it also made Liu Tao understand his good intentions.

(End of this chapter)