After the Central Bank Governor explained why the money supply would not be reduced, he continued, "However, the peak of additional currency issuance will end within two years, and domestic consumption power is expected to peak within four years. At that time, prices will fall. Moreover, a large number of enterprises will go bankrupt due to poor management. Therefore, the Central Bank assesses that this round of inflation triggered by massive investment will end in two to four years."

The central leaders were all pondering this; such an uncontrolled state made the comrades very unaccustomed. Especially hearing that a vast number of enterprises would go bankrupt, which would bring more uncertainty.

What Li Runshi thought of at this moment was what He Rui had said to him even earlier: "You are too kind; you always hope that enterprises won't go bankrupt."

Hearing the speech of Central Bank Governor Ping Jin, the shock in Li Runshi's heart was far greater than he had imagined. For those enterprises, bankruptcy would affect a very large number of people. However, He Rui's attitude was much "less kind." He Rui only cared about the survivors of cruel competition; the losers would get no sympathy from He Rui at all.

The only thing that made Li Runshi feel somewhat better was probably that He Rui attached great importance to the masses. Universal education, providing adult training, striving to increase employment opportunities, ensuring minimum wages, establishing labor laws and trade unions, and ensuring the legal rights of workers.

Li Runshi could feel that in He Rui's spiritual world, there probably did not exist the "beautiful pastoral life" imagined by agricultural society. Improving the people's strength was to enable the people to have the strength to survive in a society full of competition. As for how painful this competition was, He Rui was very clear. He Rui had absolutely no intention of restricting legitimate competition.

Li Runshi did not oppose legitimate competition, but he could clearly feel that the cost of this competition was tremendous waste. Li Runshi had never spoken his thoughts; in Li Runshi's worldview, human history spiraled upwards, not in a straight line. Viewing development from this angle, waste was a necessity. Li Runshi believed that there was theoretically no problem with the policies currently implemented in China. As for the tragedies generated within, perhaps they could only be described as inevitable.

After the central work briefing meeting ended, Li Runshi determined that the Center's current focus of work remained on fully promoting economic development. The urgent task at this stage was to improve the efficiency of circulation through infrastructure construction, thereby improving the integration of the industrial chain.

After attending the meeting, Li Runshi returned to his office and began writing a report. But as he wrote, he felt he couldn't continue, so he simply started writing an article. During the writing process, Li Runshi's secretary came twice to remind him that it was late, but although Li Runshi heard it, he turned a deaf ear. By the time the article was finished, Li Runshi looked at his watch and saw it was already 3:00 AM. Without even washing up, Li Runshi went to the bed in the small side room, lay down, and fell asleep in the blink of an eye.

According to regulations, if Li Runshi's article was to be published, it needed the approval of the Party Committee. So Li Runshi's article was quickly sent to the Party Committee, while what He Rui saw were the views of various central leaders on this work briefing. He Rui immediately asked his secretary to get the full text of Li Runshi's article.

Li Runshi's reports and articles were vastly different from He Rui's highly professional style, and He Rui himself was very convinced by Li Runshi. Because in He Rui's view, being grounded meant facing various problems directly and solving them with the mindset of an engineer solving industrial problems. And Li Runshi's articles were equally grounded.

He Rui felt he could see a methodology with Li Runshi's strong personal style from that article Li Runshi was preparing to publish. Using terms from the very traditional Chinese culture Li Runshi possessed, it could also be called "Virtue" (De Xing). It was a virtue of seeking truth from facts, being firm and unwavering, never retreating, not taking anger out on others, and not making the same mistake twice. All of Li Runshi's speeches, reports, and articles were without exception built upon such virtue, but Li Runshi himself never highlighted these. Instead, he started from specific matters and chose the solution most beneficial to the revolutionary work. Profound literary skill, full emotion, and a sunny and upward personal style made He Rui feel as if bathed in a spring breeze while reading. After finishing it, He Rui sighed in his heart: indeed, an Unparalleled National Scholar.

Looking at his own articles again, although He Rui envied Li Runshi's sentiments, he had no way to make his articles like Li Runshi's. Because He Rui firmly believed that the future era would inevitably be a more scientific era, which meant a colder era. The development of technology required human understanding of oneself to reach the level of touching the origin, and the generation of human consciousness itself was based on the human physical body.

Hundreds of millions of years ago, humanity's ancestors in the ancient oceans, resembling fleshy worms, once degenerated their primitive brains. But with changes in the natural environment, humanity's worm-like ancestors evolved new brains. This evolution allowed humanity's ancestors to break free from the brain mode of primitive life and develop a brand-new nervous system. From then on, they were no longer playing the same game of chess as the creatures of that era.

This evolution, in a certain sense, was very similar to the emergence of industrial civilization in human society.

In the tens of millions of years after humanity's worm-like ancestors evolved brains, humans remained a very weak species. Sea scorpions, ammonites, and other creatures were still the overlords of the ocean. It was not until humanity's ancestors evolved jaws and began to possess biting ability that the chess game of tens of millions of years finally underwent a fundamental change. The old overlords were defeated one by one. Hundreds of millions of years later, the creatures dominating the Earth without exception possessed new types of brains and jaws. Although the descendants of other old overlords did not go completely extinct, they were thoroughly kicked out of the ranks of contending for global dominance, only able to struggle for survival in various corners of the Earth.

Just as European civilization, whose civilization level was far inferior to China's, ravaged the world; although they committed monstrous crimes, they still grasped the world's richest resources.

But industrial civilization is a kind of software, not hardware. The Chinese people can completely learn it and continuously advance China's industrialization according to the laws of industrial development itself. The development of industrialization touches upon the essence of humanity, which is also the reason why He Rui could never turn into a literati.

Because He Rui's understanding of the world was extremely materialistic. The human body could originally process a vast number of signals. Any signal that required the brain to realize it needed processing was inevitably a problem the physical body could not solve. Therefore, the signals processed by the brain were destined to be signals processed by the physical body.

If described in the cruel style He Rui favored, the signals received by the brain were destined not to be the truth. If one wanted to face the real world, what was needed was "imagination." The so-called imagination was a ability attempting to restore the essence of the world. This gave rise to the so-called "Geniuses."

The greatest difference of geniuses was, first of all, that their brain structure was different from others. In a certain field, geniuses possessed natural imagination. No matter how complex a problem appeared to others, it was simple and clear in front of geniuses. Geniuses' brains were capable of generating imagination and understanding close to the essence of facts. So from a certain angle, everyone is a genius. To use the words science and engineering men love to say, "That is the manifestation of human genetic diversity."

If this matter were not spoken within a knowledge structure, it would destined to be distorted into views like pedigree theory or racism. But in He Rui's view, this explanation itself was opposing pedigree theory and racism. The uniqueness of a child's brain development was simply not something current science could monitor. So it could only be described by randomness. Since every child's characteristics were random, didn't that precisely prove the natural fallacy of pedigree theory and racism?

For human society, possessing the ability to correctly understand this problem also required a certain amount of talent. Moreover, having talent alone was not enough; one also needed someone to teach them, and through repeated experience and introspection, to accept this matter. This brought about another gateway for social class transition: "To become the backbone of society, first, one must have someone to teach; second, one must be able to afford to lose."

He Rui believed that if human society could develop to a civilization level where everyone had someone to teach and could afford to lose, humanity could probably begin to enter the next stage.

Thinking of this, He Rui read Li Runshi's article once more, feeling truly emotional in his heart. At least Chinese civilization was more progressive than other civilizations in the world. The core of this civilization, which had lasted for ten thousand years, was to admit its own deficiencies, admit it faced problems, and continuously make progress. Rather than the core of European civilization, which pushed blame onto others whenever problems were encountered. That was why Chinese civilization could give birth to an Unparalleled National Scholar like Li Runshi.

Thinking of the gap between himself and Li Runshi in terms of humanism and virtue, although He Rui felt regret, he did not regret it. Humanity had walked to today relying on the division of labor. His own work was obviously not radiant, but rather hacking through thorns and brambles. He Rui believed he must accept such a destiny arrangement.

Putting down Li Runshi's article, He Rui quickly browsed through the reports of other central leaders. It could be seen that everyone was very clear about the urgent task at hand. The first was to enable China to possess large-scale production capabilities in various fields. The second was to continuously improve technological content during investment.

Although Premier Wu Youping and others had not yet been able to see with their own eyes the huge role of the industrial chain in China's industry, at least they had understood the huge role the industrial chain possessed in theory. Especially Wu Youping; as Premier, Wu Youping had also gradually shaken off the "Daddy flavor" (paternalism) within the government in traditional Chinese culture.

The government's job is to provide reasonable policies, not to be both an athlete and a referee. Even for state-owned enterprises, when an enterprise's lifespan reaches its end, preparations should be quickly made for the funeral of the state-owned enterprise dying of natural causes, and the remaining assets should be reorganized. Rather than forcibly extending the life of an enterprise that should have finished, based on the human instinct of fearing death.

The road leading to the next era is destined to be paved with the bones of losers and those who died of natural causes. This is the truth of the world.

If Wu Youping knew He Rui praised him like this, he would definitely smile bitterly. But at this moment, Wu Youping didn't even have the mood to smile bitterly. For a major country like China, a deficit of 4.5 billion Francs in one year was not a major event. Economic operation required confidence; how to release the correct signals was what a major country should care about.

At this moment, sitting before Wu Youping were Commerce Minister Li Chenggang and Propaganda Minister Li Runshi. Li Runshi's job was to understand these things through listening in, and conduct propaganda according to the country's needs. As the Propaganda Minister, Li Runshi must possess the ability to understand the entire government's work and must be able to accurately grasp the level at which the country currently stood. Therefore, although Wu Youping had never voiced his admiration for Li Runshi, his evaluation of Li Runshi in his heart was extremely high.

Facing Commerce Minister Li Chenggang, Wu Youping stated straightforwardly, "In Sino-French economic cooperation, the China Yuan can be directly exchanged for Francs in settlement. Without even an extra handling fee, if China deposits China Yuan directly into the Sino-French Settlement Bank, the settlement bank can exchange it for Francs according to the exchange rate and return it to the Bank of France. So, Minister Li, just introduce the Ministry of Commerce's judgment on exports."

Li Chenggang nodded. He believed Wu Youping would not become flustered just because of that bit of deficit. Hearing Wu Youping's words, Li Chenggang was even more sure his judgment was correct. "Premier, some people will definitely think that with a deficit of 1.2 billion in half a year, the annual deficit will be 2.5 billion. According to current data from the Ministry of Commerce, the share of our industrial products in the French market is constantly expanding. Moreover, our advantageous products are not only traditional products; like in the shipbuilding industry, our advantages are manifesting. Under new shipbuilding processes, the cost of merchant ships using internal combustion engines has already dropped to a level with a certain profit margin. And France is not a major coal country either. We hope the government can communicate with France in this regard. As long as we can sell a batch of merchant ships, our deficit can be greatly reduced."

Wu Youping had read the report. Currently, the international price of a 5,000-ton merchant ship was about 600,000 US dollars, roughly 9 million Francs. Selling 11 ships would be 100 million Francs. If a batch were really sold, several hundred million Francs would be obtained. Furthermore, France's economy was currently booming, and the demand for merchant ships was very large; this was indeed a very good entry point.

"How much will our profit be?" Wu Youping asked. Although specific profit was not something Wu Youping had to manage, Wu Youping was indeed very curious.

Li Chenggang answered confidently, "At this stage, the price of 600,000 US dollars is very competitive. Our profit is about 24%. Later, when the industrial chain is more complete and we no longer need to import some components from foreign countries, our profit could potentially reach 50%. Moreover, the tonnage of ships is also constantly increasing. Being able to produce ten-thousand-ton ships will only take two years."