Zhu Houzhao walked into the Shuangyu Island neighborhood, looking at these storefronts next to each other, he didn't know how to look at this place for a while.

Shuangyu Island is a concentration of smugglers, but it can also be said to be a free port for evading customs duties and commercial taxes.

As the ruling class of the Ming Empire, Zhu Houzhao believes that it is a correct choice to capture this place with the army now.

But what Zhu Houzhao doesn't know now is whether he wants to see Zhu Kun, who is the commander of the military affairs of Fujian and Zhejiang, burn everything here.

Zhu Houzhao already knew from Zhu Kun that his idea of dealing with it was to burn down this smuggling base, and all the ordinary merchants involved in the smuggling would be executed for the crime of complication.

After all, for the imperial court, the Shuangyu Port itself is illegal, and these shops are also engaged in illegal trading.

But if the shops here are burned, it means that thousands of ordinary residents here will lose their survival and will be homeless.

It stands to reason that Zhu Houzhao is no longer the emperor of the Ming Empire, and he no longer needs to worry about these things and how to survive these thousands of residents.

But looking at the sad look of these ordinary merchants who came here to do business just because of "tax exemption" and the old and young in his family, Zhu Houzhao couldn't be ruthless to see the state apparatus inflicting the most severe blow on them.

But the law of the land does not tolerate personal feelings.

Under Zhu Houzhao's instructions, Zhu Kun changed the disposal plan.

For the real pirates and pirates, they were naturally enslaved according to Zhu Houzhao's edict, and for these ordinary residents who came to do business or work to avoid taxes, they kept all their properties and jobs, but the taxes accumulated over the years must be fully paid, and they can be paid in installments.

Otherwise, the government will forcibly repossess these shops.

For the ordinary residents of Shuangyu Island, they are naturally willing to accept this result.

Naturally, they did not dare to confront the imperial court head-on.

At the same time, Zhu Houzhao also instructed Zhu Kun: "You ask the imperial court to add Shuangyu Port as a county, and immediately appoint officials to govern it, and ask the imperial court to approve the establishment of Shuangyu Port as a free trade port, which can be exempted from import duties." ”

The reason why Zhu Houzhao asked Zhu Su to ask the imperial court to simply set up Shuangyu Port as a free port for international trade was because Zhu Houzhao learned through the interrogation of these merchants on Shuangyu Island that many merchants in the Ming Dynasty had evaded the imperial court's taxes and had begun to transfer their processing plants and production bases to overseas areas.

In other words, these firms sometimes directly produce and sell in overseas areas, so as to avoid paying multiple taxes to Daming.

What's more, the cost of indigenous labor in overseas areas is low, and they are not bound by the laws of the Ming Dynasty, so they can squeeze laborers, and even use child labor, and promote the development of human traffickers, and even secretly deceive mainlanders to be used as slaves overseas.

Shuangyu Island is just a smuggling free port close to the mainland.

Zhu Houzhao sometimes has to admit the cunning and treacherous nature of businessmen, and he also has to admit that the saying "the road is one foot high, the devil is one foot high" is right, and he can never imagine what kind of means these businessmen will take in order to pursue higher profits.

"Can't let the commercial banks transfer too much overseas, which is not only related to our taxes, but also related to the employment and income problems of the people at the bottom, the pilot implementation of the free port model in Shuangyu Port is to try to solve this method, for the real economy involving machinery manufacturing, drug development, food processing, etc., you can be exempted from corresponding tariffs in the free port, so as to drive the employment of the entire surrounding area of Shuangyu Island, but when it comes to gambling, Fengyue and other social stability is still heavily taxed!"

Zhu Houzhao said to Zhu Kun like this, and Zhu Kun also wrote all of them into the song.

For the current Ming Dynasty, the entire East and West Oceans have almost become the Ming Inland Sea, and all the trade is participated in by the merchant ships of the Ming Dynasty, and even the managers of the colonies are also officials of the Ming Dynasty or the clan nobles who were sealed out by the Ming Dynasty.

The entire earth, except for the western and northern parts of the Eurasian continent, has become the civilization of the Ming Dynasty.

The Central Empire of the Ming Dynasty still maintains a technological advantage in productivity, so the Ming Dynasty still exports more and imports less, and silver is still flowing into the interior.

However, with the increase in the income of the domestic people and the gradual destruction of the self-sufficient small-scale peasant economy, Daming, as the most densely populated area, will gradually become the largest consumer market, and the amount of imports will gradually increase.

If the tariffs are too high, it will cause many trading houses to turn overseas, so that the overseas colonies will become processing factories, which will make the manufacturing industry in the interior of the Ming Dynasty become depressed.

Therefore, it was necessary to reduce tariffs and open free ports, which could be regarded as providing a more flexible way to regulate trade throughout the empire.

Although the country has lowered tariffs and opened free ports, Zhu Houzhao believes that his Ming court should not only do this way.

"You can ask the governors of the overseas colonies and the vassal states to increase tariffs to more than three times, and implement strict human rights protection laws to protect the basic rights of workers, prohibit the use of child labor, and tell them that if they do not comply, the Ming Central Empire will raise an army to fight against the Central Empire for the crime of betraying the Central Empire!"

Zhu Houzhao said in a note written to his emperor's son.

Zhu Houzhao knew that the officials, nobles and clans he had sent to colonize had drawn up various preferential conditions for Han people to do business in order to attract Han immigrants, and even zero tariffs for Han people.

But now, in order to ensure the dominant position of the Ming Central Empire, he must ask the emperor to ask the emperor to change the tariff policy from taking care of the interests of merchants to exploiting the interests of merchants when the Ming Central Empire still has absolute superiority and his own existence, and when he can still issue military and administrative orders to these colonies and vassal states that have not yet become independent.

Because only in this way can the Ming Central Empire reduce tariffs and set up free ports, and the colonies and vassal states set heavy taxes, so as to prevent a large number of Ming trading houses from moving overseas, and also avoid the employment rate of the Central Empire being affected.

Although Zhu Houzhao believed that the Ming Central Empire should now lower tariffs and open free ports to adapt to the new economic situation, he did not say that it would allow smuggling, human trafficking, and slavery.

Syllable!

All the smuggling pirates and pirates, as well as the Western fans, were now regarded as Japanese prisoners and served in the port of Shuangyu.

The hired overseers, Han Chinese who had previously been enslaved by them, were now carrying whips on these slave owners in the same way that they had inflicted on them.

With a whip, you can basically see blood directly.

"Ahh I just can't stand it, kill me! ”

Fedeers sat on the ground in pain, the stone on his shoulder hit the ground directly, and it didn't take long for four or five overseers to surround him and start beating directly, and the so-called governor of Shuangyu Island could only be beaten to the point of crying dad and mother.

Meanwhile.

On a ship dedicated to transporting the corpses of the would-be pirates, a Ming officer and soldier commanded the Ming soldiers who had pressed dozens of would-be pirates to death from their service: "Feed the fish! ”

All of a sudden, the knives fell, and the heads and bodies fell into the sea like dumplings, which also attracted the carnival of the sharks.

Basically, every day, a group of tired pirates were thrown into the sea to feed the fish, a matter of punishment for these people who smuggled and enslaved the Han Chinese.

Besides.

At this time, Chen Yu, the father of the Chen family in Fujian and the imperial history Chen Jiude, was also arrested here.

Even Chen Jiude, who took the imperial history, was dismissed, and was imprisoned by the Beizhen Fusi for helping the traffickers.

All the Chen family's property involved in human smuggling and trafficking was confiscated.

In the end, Chen Jiude died in prison.

Chen Yu naturally could not escape the fate of being exhausted to death.

As long as these coastal scholars were found on Shuangyu Island, they were all dug up.

Min Xian, the right attendant of the National Taxation Bureau, also watched in horror at this time as Jinyiwei broke into his home: "What are you doing here, Min is a third-grade official of the imperial court, who gave you the courage to trespass without permission." ”

"Min Shilang, take a breath, you are already suspected of being a collaborator, from now on, all the property of your Min family will be confiscated as illegal smuggling proceeds, and you and your nephew on Shuangyu Island will also be escorted to Shuangyu to serve for the crime of conspiracy!"

Wu Jie, the chief banner of Jinyiwei, said and asked the other two Jinyiwei Xiaoqi to take this Min Xian.

Zhu Houzhao did not sympathize with these officials and gentry who participated in the smuggling and human trafficking of the Japanese people, because as a Han Chinese, if even his own compatriots dared to sell slaves, and even persecuted them together with the Japanese Kou, this kind of person had no humanity, and the slightest forgiveness for them would be a betrayal of Chinese civilization.

Emperor Zhu Zailei has had a headache recently, and he really didn't expect that the liquidation of Shuangyu Island would lead to so many problems.

Moreover, he did not expect that his father would arrange such a big task for him, and even asked himself to immediately come up with a plan for internal and external tariff reform.

First of all, many imperial histories impeached Zhu Kun's indiscriminate killing of the inhabitants of Shuangyu Island during his cleansing of the island.

The purging of Shuangyu Island itself violated the interests of the entire coastal scholars, and now Zhu Kun is still following the will of Zhu Hou, the emperor, to torture and kill these smugglers on Shuangyu Island, and even the coastal scholars who support them behind their backs have also been found out and severely dealt with, which naturally makes these officials who represent the interests of the coastal scholars extremely angry.

Imperial historian Li Yuyuan impeached Zhu Su for indiscriminately killing 96 innocent people on the island, and also made a list of those who were indiscriminately killed, and even participated in the impeachment of Emperor Zhu Houzhao for arbitrarily disrupting power and interfering in court affairs, and should be returned to the emperor.

Obviously, these officials representing the interests of the coastal clan knew that behind this was their Emperor Zhu Houzhao, who was also drumming up all this.

Emperor Zhu Zailei naturally knew the purpose of these officials to impeach Zhu Su and impeach his father, so he executed Li Yuyuan without hesitation and dismissed him directly.

However, what Zhu Zailei did not expect was that his dismissal of Li Yuyuan was fiercely opposed by many civil officials.

Of course, Zhu Zailei did not flinch, and simply ordered that the result of Li Yuyuan's treatment be changed from dismissal to exile for 3,000 miles.

As the emperor, he understands that he would rather offend these civil officials than his father, because his father still holds military power and has high prestige, not to mention that he also knows that there is nothing wrong with cracking down on smuggling, and he also supports Zhu Kun in his heart.

As for Zhu Xuan's request to set Shuangyu as a county and add Shuangyu as a free port, Zhu Zailei also agreed, he knew that behind this was the meaning of his father, Zhu Houzhao.

However, these were already resolutions made by Xia Yan, the first assistant of the cabinet, and even the plan involving the reduction of tariffs and the requirement for the colonies and vassal states to impose tariffs and commercial taxes more than three times the amount of their jurisdictions was directly presided over by Xia Yan, and then handed over to Zhu Zailei for approval.

This made Zhu Zailei find that his power was seriously eroded, not only was there an emperor who was holding himself like a puppet, but there was also a cabinet chief assistant Xia Yan who seemed to be hollowing himself out.

Zhu Zailei is now the emperor of the Central Empire of the Ming Dynasty, and of course he wants to have more power and control other vassal states and colonies, so he convened a council, and Xu Jie, who had asked him to ventilate in advance, put forward a proposal.

The content of this proposal was to require these vassal states and colonies to impose tariffs, and also to require them to deport half of their tax revenues to Beijing as a tax supply to the Central Empire.

Zhu Zailei's purpose in doing this was naturally to control these colonies and vassal states.

But Xu Jie's proposal attracted Xia Yan's opposition.

"Your Majesty, the minister thinks that if the Emperor is in power, he will not do this, because the imperial court's interference in the right to draw up tariffs in the colonies and vassal states will already arouse the resentment of the colonies and vassal states, because it is in itself contrary to the interests of these colonies and vassal states, but if we do not ask them to delegate part or all of the excess taxes to Beijing, they will be intimidated by the prestige of the central court and that it is profitable for them to agree to accept the decree of the central court, but if we now not only interfere with their right to draw up tariffs, They were also required to delegate half of the excess tariffs to Beijing, which would undoubtedly make these colonies and vassal states resentful of the greed of the central court and seek independence! Everything should be done gradually, and now we can interfere with its tariff power and then gradually strengthen its control, instead of rushing forward! Your Majesty! ”

Although what Xia Yan said also had his own truth, his habitual sentence "If the emperor did not abdicate" made Zhu Zailei instinctively feel very disgusted.

In his opinion, it was as if this highly decorated old Shoufu had never looked down on himself as an emperor.

But Zhu Zailei could only hold back his anger and said with a smile: "In this case, other ministers also express their opinions." ”

"Your Majesty, the minister supports what Yuan Fu said, the central court can seize its power, but not its benefits, because the central court is the country of parents, and the vassal states are the country of children, and parents can manage their children, but they should not let their children's wealth be taken away, this is love!"

As a nobleman, the British duke Zhang Rong will sooner or later go to his own fiefdom, and naturally he is unwilling to dedicate all the wealth of his fief to the imperial court, although he does not care much about being an independent principality lord and a non-independent principality lord.

Yu Dayou, on the other hand, abstained from voting, and he had no interest in internal affairs.

Wen Yuan was absent because of illness, so only Yan Song had not yet expressed his opinion.

Yan Song glanced at Xia Yan.

Xia Yan also glanced at Yan Song, he thought in his heart that Yan Song was his own person, so he would naturally support him, so he couldn't help but glance at Emperor Zhu Zailei, and sighed in his heart: "Your Majesty! It's not that you want to be a minister, but you really shouldn't be so eager to declare your power as the Ming Emperor! ”

Zhu Zailei also looked at Yan Song, he naturally knew that Yan Song had always been in the same party as Xia Yan, which also made him realize that Xia Yan seemed to be a big stumbling block for himself, the emperor, to grasp the supreme power of the empire.