As for the government, the principle is the same. Since the Senate actually controlled most of the salt works in Guangdong, the supply of official salt depended on the Senate. As long as the Senate cut off the supply of salt, the government had to give in, and since they were unable to defend the salt works, they had to accept the Senate's terms.

"In this case, why don't we directly contract all the official salt sales in Guangdong as a tax contractor?" Guo Yi suggested, "In this way, all the salt affairs will be controlled by us." We ourselves are the official salt. ”

"Now is not the time," Skade shook his head, "we don't have enough to cover the sky in Guangdong. Daming's salt monopoly already has a large vested interest group. If we include taxes, we will either have to bear all the benefits that the interest groups here want, or we will kick them out completely. ”

The former is too expensive; The latter, lacking sufficient control, will only attract too many enemies for themselves, and the current basic policy of the Senate towards Guangdong is still based on stability.

Skade already had a figure to act as a surrogate for their new deal. This person is Xu Wen's salt merchant who first traded with the Senate: Liu Gang.

Liu Gang had been selling sī salt in Leizhou for a long time, and he was only a medium-sized sī salt dealer in the local sī salt dealers. has been in contact with Yanchang Village, until the Gou family forcibly occupied Yanchang Village and cut off this channel. Since Yanchang Village returned to the Australians, he has a relationship with the patriarch, relying on the sales of excellent quality "Lingao salt", Liu Gang made a fortune and became a pivotal salt seller in Leizhou.

Although he made a fortune from the Senate, his relationship with the Senate was relatively distant. In the past, the Senate did not train him as a key customer, and the two sides only had a very simple relationship between buying and selling. It is no different from many merchants who come to Lingao to sell their goods.

The reason why Liu Gang was not "cultivated" was not because of the deliberate alienation of the Colonial Trade Department, but mainly because the sale of sī salt was a very complex matter that required an extremely complex network of relationships. The sale of sī salt has long been a black and white, ambiguous social phenomenon in Chinese history. The complex relationship between the government, the salt merchants, and the sī salt sellers is far from being understood by research monographs and papers.

The Ministry of Colonization and Trade, in order to avoid the hassle of reintegration, adopted a marketing approach of supply-only, regardless of channel.

However, it is obviously difficult to improve profits under this model. Liu Gang's own strength is not enough, and he is unable to expand a wide enough space under the complex sī salt sales network.

And Skede was also about to create a new source of money from the salt industry, and the two sides hit it off. It was decided to cooperate to expand the sales network to the entire Liangguang and Fujian.

The only one who objected was the Ma Yuan Salt Industry Consortium, which said that with the current labor situation, it would be difficult for them to "increase production to serve the country" so drastically. Unless more support is given: from manpower to equipment instead of bringing more salt pans under its umbrella. For the salt complex, they have enough salt pans, so many that they can't produce efficiently.

Even with inefficient production, even with the suspension of the development of new salt pans in Yinggehai, there are stocks of sea salt that are almost enough for 12 months in the salt warehouses and salt factories along the Qiongzhou Strait under the control of the Planning Institute: both for chemical and edible use. Skeder made a fuss about this, thinking that it was possible to reduce the inventory to within June.

For this reason, Liu Gang has moved his family, his associates, and all the wealth obtained from the salt industry to Guangzhou to prepare for a big job.

Although Liu Gang did not have in-depth cooperation with the Senate in the past, he was in Xu Wen and had a clear understanding of the strength of the Australians. I also know that the Australians have great plans. Seeing their shili grow bigger and bigger. Being able to become a partner of Australians now, the future "money" is immeasurable. So his momentum is very big, and Skede's colonial trade department actually didn't invest a penny, and the initial infrastructure investment was all taken out by Liu Gang.

Guo Yi listened to his introduction silently, and it was obvious that this Liu Gang was one of the commercial compradors he would command in the future. Or call it the comprador of the new era. If the "compradors" of foreign businessmen like Gao Ju and Li Luoyou are more independent, then compradors like Sun Kecheng and Liu Gang are purely dependent on them. Their estates were nominally independent, but in fact their every move was under the control of the Senate.

"This is the profile of this Boss Liu." Skader opened his password briefcase and pulled out a file bag.

Guo Yi looked at this person's materials. A strong man in his thirties: the face on the photo is murderous, obviously it is not easy to be a sī salt seller, there is an old mother at home who only knows how to eat fast and recite Buddha, his wife Zheng, and his son Liu Xiaoguan. This is followed by a list of his servants and associates, as well as a brief introduction.

"Now his mother and son are in Xu Wen, under our direct control." Skede said, "We didn't ask him to move his son and wife to Lingao, anyway, now Xu Wen is almost our world."

"Speaking of Leizhou, did Tang Seng Jihua do it?" Guo Yi suddenly thought of this once very popular jihua.

"It won't be officially implemented until next year." As a member of the Executive Committee, Skade had a clear grasp of the progress of this secret, and he lowered his voice and said, "I heard that the people of the intelligence department are already training, and they are naturalized citizens. ”

"But I don't think it's of much significance..."Guo Yi's idea represents the attitude of many veterans who were once very keen on this, and now Leizhou is under the comprehensive radiation of Lingao, and the two counties of Xuwen and Haikang are gradually "Qiongzhou". The Senate's control over the entire Leizhou Peninsula is growing.

"That's right, but it's not a bad choice to directly control an official, since we have already caught up with the Fushe and have a friendship with artillery experts, why just let him be confined to Leizhou? It can be adjusted to other places. Maybe it will come in handy at some point. "Even if it's not useful, we don't invest much." ”

Guo Yi expressed his "far-sightedness and sincere admiration" for the Executive Committee. Skade laughed, "Don't be a sycophant. Let's talk about Guangdong's food problem. ”

Guo Yi reported on the current situation of grain collection in Guangdong.

Guangdong was still a grain-exporting province at the end of the Ming Dynasty, and a considerable amount of commercial grain was exported to Fujian every year, and Fujian has long been a grain-deficient province. However, due to the widespread cultivation of cash crops, the rate of food self-sufficiency has fallen considerably.

However, to raise grain, Guangdong is still the most convenient source of goods for the Senate, and the grain collected from the Pearl River Delta and surrounding areas is transported to the Hong Kong base for processing, and there are convenient waterways to use.

The Planning Institute, the Ministry of Colonial Trade, the Committee of Agriculture, and the Foreign Intelligence Bureau jointly set up a special grain working group in Guangdong, with the Guangzhou Station taking the lead in implementation.

The collection of grain is not purchased by cash, and according to the demand for grain from the crossing group, it is impossible to make up such a large sum of silver, and the purchase of grain on such a large scale will also cause the price of grain in Guangdong to skyrocket.

The way the grain working group collects food locally is "requisition", or "reasonable burden".

After the Battle of the Pearl River Estuary, the prestige of the Fu Bō army had been thunderous in the Pearl River Delta, and the towns and villages it passed through had been extorted for "reasonable burdens". The "reasonable burden" is not a blackmail, but a long-term "tax" that is responsible for the collection, that is, Guo Yi's Guangzhou station.

Although the army had retreated, it was a fact that the bandits' warships were cruising in the waters of the Pearl River estuary.

The Guangzhou branch of Dachang Rice Bank is now the tax office of the Senate in Guangzhou. After receiving the "notices" secretly sent by the intelligence officers under Lin Baiguang, the townships and towns paid the approved "reasonable burdens" to the rice bank before the specified time.

Not only rice, but also miscellaneous grains, cash crops and raw silk can also be collected by the Guangzhou branch of Yinqian Delong.

It depends on the local situation.

In addition, in the large and small towns along the Pearl River, which had been conquered and swept by the Fu Bō army, there was a rental house that took the title deeds and leases of the squire landlords who had been eliminated in the Battle of the Pearl River Estuary.

The so-called rental house is a rent collection agency. It was very developed in the Qing Dynasty and was also known as "Tiandian". Generally, small and medium-sized landlords or landlords living in urban areas, because they have limited shili in the local area and do not have much land, tenants who encounter strong points in rent collection in rural areas often do not receive rent or have a discount on rent collection. As a result, an industry gradually emerged: there were local shili, and people who colluded with the government came forward to set up rental houses to specialize in renting landlords. A small processing fee is charged.

This practice is similar to the "contractor" in the payment of taxes, but it is aimed at tenants, not the government.

The advent of renting houses facilitated small and medium-sized landlords, and became increasingly popular after the middle of the Qing Dynasty. Gradually, the landlord himself could no longer interfere and could only sit on the land rent. So much so that the tenants only know that their land belongs to such and such a stack, and they do not know who their landlord's surname is.

This time, the grain working group let the rental stack appear in the time and space of Daming in advance. After some intensive preparations, a number of old "grain poors" drawn from various counties in Hainan arrived one after another. With this batch of grain as the backbone of the business, and with some other naturalized people, the "Wan/Sheng/Hao" rental stack was formed to comprehensively manage this batch of land.

The owner of the land was changed to "Yuan Laoyuan", and the actual management of the land was entrusted to the Planning Institute. The address is in Lingao Bairen Village, Qiongzhou Prefecture, which is an administrative village that Lingao made alone for the crossing of the public.