The grain merchants in the four provinces of Zhili, and even the grain merchants in other regions, are intensively paying attention to the actions of the Zhili Grain Company.

Because at first, they thought that this was just an ordinary grain company invested and established by the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises, but they did not expect that as soon as it came up, it was to collect and sell grain at a fixed price, and the price has not moved.

The first few days passed, and the price of grain in Zhili remained unchanged, which they found a little strange.

Half a month has passed, and the Zhili Grain Company still continues to buy and sell at the original price, which makes them a little unable to sit still.

Even after a month, when the Spring Festival was approaching, the price of grain still did not change in the slightest, and the Zhili Grain Company swallowed up a large amount of grain at a price slightly higher than the market price, and transported it to those areas where there was an urgent shortage of grain, and sold it at a high price lower than the local price, stabilizing the local grain price while making a small profit.

The measures of the purchase and sale of the Zhili Grain Company at a fixed price have made many grain merchants feel helpless!

What to do?

Looking for connections, co-opting officials to talk about impeachment, saying that the officials of the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises don't do anything, they know that they come out to grab business with them?

Or is it that the grain company has raised the price of grain, so that the people of Jiangnan have suffered greatly?

Or, after some discussion, raise funds or something, and have a fight with this Zhili grain company?

But none of this is meaningful, because so much time has passed, and businessmen with a little background know that this Zhili grain merchant company was only established under the personal instruction of the Son of Heaven, and a large number of cabinet bigwigs such as Shangshu and waiters on it were personally staring at it.

If you do something, you will be arrested for some crime of endangering national security in minutes.

If they can't get enough grain now, then they won't have enough grain to sell in the peak grain sales season after the beginning of spring next year.

In the end, these grain merchants were left with only one thought.

The price is a little higher, it's just a few percentage points anyway, although the income is less, but there are still some earnings.

As a result, half a month after the official grain collection of the Zhili Grain Company, the grain merchants in the Zhili area also followed up one after another, slightly increasing the grain purchase price.

Originally, they were worried that after they raised the price, the Zhili Grain Company would further increase the purchase price, but they found that the Zhili Grain Company was very authentic, the purchase price on the first day was this, and now it is this, and it is rumored that this year is this price, and the death will not change!

Since your price does not move, then everyone can play happily again, so in just one month, the overall purchase price of grain in the entire Zhili Sidao area has risen by about 3 percent, and the selling price on the market is flat.

The change is not very big, but this is quite shocking for the Zhili Grain Company, and even for many cabinet bigwigs who care about this time.

Because, this is a very successful example of maintaining food price security!

This is also unexpected, and the example of the Zhili Grain Company can be carried out in other provinces.

So, on the occasion of the arrival of the eighth year of Xuanping, the Datang Grain Corporation was formally established, and at the same time, the Zhili Grain Company and other provincial grain companies were set up.

After the arrival of the eighth year of Xuanping, the bigwigs of the imperial court were busy starting the work plan for the second year, the military was still busy with the war in Liaodong, and the provincial grain companies under the Datang Grain Corporation also started their own actions.

The purchase of grain is open at a fixed price, and at the same time the sale of grain is open at a fixed price!

Of course, this price is not too high, nor too low, and it is often slightly adjusted according to the local food price.

Because the purpose of the Datang Grain Corporation is not to make money, nor to suppress other grain merchants, but to maintain the stability of grain prices, whether it is a sharp drop in grain prices or a sharp rise in prices, they do not want to see it.

They need food prices to be in a stable range, a little normal fluctuation, they don't care, but they have to deal with violent price fluctuations.

Basically, today's Datang Grain Corporation is to set aside a price range, so that grain merchants can only play in this price range, making money is sure to be earned, and the profit is honestly a lot, but if you want to take advantage of the harvest season of various grains, or natural and man-made disasters to deliberately lower grain prices or raise grain prices to make huge profits, it is impossible.

After the Spring Festival in the eighth year of Xuanping, when the Lantern Festival was coming, Li Xuan, the son of heaven, received a report from the cabinet on grain, which said that in the past two months, the grain prices in the four provinces of Zhili have basically remained stable, and on the whole, the prices of purchased grain in the market have risen slightly compared with last autumn, but the increase is not large.

The retail price of grain on the market is the same as last autumn!

What does it mean that the purchase price has risen slightly on the one hand, and the retail price has remained flat on the other?

This means that farmers' incomes have increased, while the expenditures of consumers of commodities such as urban dwellers have not increased, but have remained stable.

The only ones whose interests are damaged are the grain merchants

They may have earned 10,000 taels of silver in previous years, but this year they can only earn 8,000 taels of silver.

Are the grain merchants willing? I'm not happy, but is there a way? There is no way!

The Zhili Grain Company, a subsidiary of the Datang Grain Corporation, buys and sells grain at a fixed price, and uses its huge financial resources and grain reserves to consolidate the grain price in almost the entire Zhili Sidao area.

You know, this is the four provinces of Zhili, of which Jiangnan Province is a real granary, don't look at the small place, but the grain output of any county is higher than that of a province under other provinces.

This can be seen from their agricultural tax revenue, any county can be taken out of most of the other provincial governments.

In these years, Huguang has not been fully developed, and Huguang is ripe and the world is not enough, but the current Jiangnan is the real Jiangnan and the world is full.

This also means that the four provinces of Zhili, especially Jiangnan Province, have huge grain production, and it is really difficult to control the price of grain in the four provinces of Zhili and go in the direction that the empire wants to see.

In order to achieve this, the Zhili Grain Company mobilized a huge amount of resources, and they used a number of low-interest loans, with a total amount of more than 5 million taels of silver.

At the same time, a large amount of tax grain from the treasury of the Ministry of Taxation was also used!

Nowadays, the collection of the 'unified agricultural tax' of the Tang Dynasty is to adopt a parallel system of physical and cash, according to the principle of voluntary, taxpayers can pay cash, but also can pay the equivalent value of crops, so after the tax is levied, often get a large amount of grain and other kinds of goods.

Originally, some of this grain would be used as a reserve, while the rest would be sold, flowed into the market, and exchanged for cash into the national treasury.

Nowadays, the Ministry of Taxation directly cooperates with the Zhili Grain Company, and the grain obtained in the process of taxation is directly sold to the Zhili Grain Company.

Therefore, the Zhili Grain Company, in fact, even if it does not collect grain, but he also has the most grain in hand among the many grain merchants in Zhili.

How much?

All the other grain merchants have all the grain stocks in their hands, and they don't have as much grain as the grain companies directly affiliated to them!

The Ministry of Taxation levies an agricultural tax, which is fixed at about 30 percent of the grain output in an ordinary year, and of course, farmers do not necessarily pay grain directly as a tax, and some of them also pay directly in cash.

However, on the whole, most of the agricultural tax collected by the Ministry of Taxation is still mainly grain.

In other words, about 15 percent of all the grain production in the four provinces of Zhili was finally taken away by the Ministry of Taxation, and then as soon as it changed hands, the grain was directly handed over to the Zhili Grain Company.

Although this fifteen percent is not an accurate number, it is conceivable that it is still a huge number, and when converted into silver, it is worth nearly seven million taels of silver.

In the seven years of Xuanping, the total tax revenue of Zhili Sidao reached nearly 30 million taels of silver, which is quite terrifying, because in the seventh year of Xuanping, excluding Hubei, Sichuan, Yunnan, Liaodong and other areas that Xuanping had not yet actually controlled, the positive tax revenue of the entire Tang Empire, that is, excluding all kinds of war booty, confiscated and fines and other unconventional income, only calculated tax income, was only 65 million taels.

However, Zhili Sidao has a monopoly of 30 million!

From this data, you can know why the Tang Empire set the capital of Jinling, why it opened a business zone in Shanghai, why it established a heavy industry base in Dangtu, and why there is such a special provincial-level administrative organization as Zhili Sidao, rather than a direct province as simple as other regions, because here, almost every prefecture and every county is quite important.

Therefore, the empire needs to directly govern and control the four regions of Zhili and strengthen its influence!

Among the 30 million taxes of the four provinces, the agricultural tax is still the majority, accounting for about 40 percent, that is, about 14 million silver, although the industry and commerce of the four provinces of Zhili are developing rapidly, but the time is still short, and many enterprises are still in the preferential tax period, so the tax has not exceeded the agricultural tax, the overall amount is only half of the agricultural tax, about 7 million, and the rest is the customs tariff, salt tax two special taxes.

Well, the salt tax is more than four million taels of silver, which is only a little less than the industrial and commercial tax!

At least half of the 14 million agricultural taxes are levied in kind such as grain, and then these grains are basically directly handed over to the local branch of the Zhili Grain Company in winter.

This also means that as soon as the Zhili Grain Company was listed, it already had a reserve of grain worth 7 million silver, and then there were low-interest loans of 5 million taels of silver provided by the Royal Bank and the Industrial Bank, not to mention, there was a low-interest loan of 5 million taels of silver in the back.

Let's ask, in Zhili Sidao, and even in the entire Chinese region, which grain merchant can have so much grain and cash reserves?

No!