Zhu Jinglun just made the last retention, but he didn't expect William to be really interested in this. Pen, fun, and www.biquge.info

He immediately asked Zhu Jinglun for help, it turned out that he had long wanted to bring his family to Guangdong, he said that his wife had an asthma disease, and the doctor said that the air in the tropics would help with this.

But he couldn't bring his wife over, because he couldn't find a place to live, and these Swedish consultants now lived in the factory, but the environment of the factory was obviously not suitable for his frail and sick wife, and he preferred to buy a piece of land to build a house, but the locals refused to sell the land at all, and they didn't want to be neighbors with foreigners.

When I asked, I found out that many Swedes have this concern, and the difficulty of integrating into the local society is their biggest problem, and not everyone can overcome all difficulties for the sake of their career, such as mingling with the locals.

This kind of thing is actually not difficult to solve, the locals do not want to contact with foreigners, in fact, it is not discrimination, but deep-rooted prejudice, a group is isolated, either out of discrimination, or out of fear, the Chinese people are probably the latter, red-haired and blue-eyed foreigners, let them feel creepy, this era of Chinese will definitely not produce beauty in foreigners, call them ghosts, but some Chinese in later generations, firmly believe that "blonde hair and blue eyes are good-looking", At this time, the power of cultural discourse was still in the hands of the natives, at least in China, unlike the later times when Westerners controlled the cultural discourse.

Zhu Jinglun let Xin'an County deal with it, and they finally bought a piece of land belonging to Chiwan Village in a hillside forest area at the foot of Nanshan Mountain, this grove has an area of twenty or thirty acres, and has not been reclaimed because of many stones and sand, and has become a wild forest.

When the time comes, a fence will be built, rows of villas will be built inside, and the specialists of the arsenal will be used as dormitories, and if the locals are looking for trouble, they will have to help them.

Such conditions were issued, but still did not leave all the Swedes, in the end only thirty skilled workers and managers chose to stay, most of them still chose to return to China, it seems that any country, or the majority of people who are attached to their homeland, can leave so many is already quite good, Chinese have lived in Nanyang for hundreds of years, not in batches of people to move back, many people are in their hometown to grow to fifteen or sixteen years old, after finishing private school, and then go to Nanyang to help their father do business, to thirty or forty years old to take over his father's class, and then his father returned to his hometown to retireThis way can last for hundreds of years, compared to people under Western maritime culture, who are more willing to emigrate.

During this time, in addition to the trivial matter of the arsenal, Zhu Jinglun's other work was progressing in an orderly manner, such as the training of the army was still continuing, and the recruits and Eight Banners of Xin'an County had begun to follow the main force to the nearby areas to suppress bandits.

In the past few years, bandits in Guangdong have been continuous, and it can even be said that since the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, it has not been broken, and the government has never been able to suppress all bandits.

The term bandits, even from this era was formed, the bandits that appeared in the history books before the Qing Dynasty were only replaced by a "bandit" word, and a prefix of "soil" would not be added at all, and the reason why they slowly became bandits was because the two regions of Guangxi would use the two titles of Tuke to describe the locals and Hakka people, and most of the bandits originated from the locals, because the local population was larger, the clan power was slightly weaker, the economic annexation was more serious, and the displaced people who lost their land were more.

Bandits exist in more than one county, almost every county, and in the western part of Guangdong, many of them have fled from Guangxi, or the remnants of the Tiandihui uprising in the past few years, they are rampant in the Zhanjiang area, and the government has no strength to clear them. As the most prosperous area, Guangzhou Province also has a lot of bandits. But the bandits here, mainly related to the government, when the British and French forces captured Guangzhou, Long Yuanxi and other squires responded to the call, and recruited more than 10,000 villagers, but these villagers, Xianfeng did not want to pay money to feed, after the city of Guangzhou was recovered, Huang Zonghan asked Long Yuanxi and others to disarm, more than 10,000 people were finally reduced to 6,000 people, and then they were sent to Guangxi to fight.

Many of those who were laid off were homeless people who had no land or a job, and after military training, they turned around and went up to the mountains to become bandits, raiding houses and houses everywhere. Among them, there are some ruthless people, who really kill people and set fires, and some are slightly better, they don't rob houses, just to survive, they discuss with the nearby villagers and squires to protect them and let these people pay protection money.

For the latter kind, which is relatively harmful, Zhu Jinglun's proposition is to recruit them and scatter them into his own army, and to completely strangle those who are already angry and resentful.

It's just a group of rogues, and for Zhu Jinglun, it's not difficult at all. The difficulty is to find them and find them, but I didn't expect that this kind of frenzied bandits actually have eyeliners in various places, and as soon as the army to suppress him arrived, they would be able to receive the news in advance, and only later did they find out the situation and provide them with information, there are a large number of local squires, it is difficult to understand that the local squires will collude with such evil bandits, but in fact there is such a group of people, these bandits robbed the proceeds, they help sell the stolen goods, and they can actually form a relationship of interest.

For this kind of bad gentry, it must also be severely punished, according to the law, the house should be raided, the head should be beheaded, and at the same time, a notice was issued to warn those squires who cooperated with the bandits, if they could turn themselves in and help the government to suppress the bandits, minor crimes could be avoided, and major crimes should be spared, which slowly turned the situation around and gradually suppressed the rampant banditry.

In terms of politics, Hurd has submitted three tax reform plans to Zhu Jinglun, and Guangdong's tax revenue still has to rely on the Guangzhou government, but Zhu Jinglun has been exempted from the land tax for one year, so the only tax that can be collected is the commercial tax, and the collection of commercial tax in the Qing Dynasty is due to the Ming Dynasty, which is quite backward.

For Zhu Jinglun, the imposition of commercial taxes is the reform that has the least impact on the traditional social structure and the weakest opposition force, after all, the social status of businessmen in the cities is not high, and if they really want to touch the core of this society and move the land in the countryside, it will be a big thing, and it is as strong as New China, and it is not that the masses are mobilized to fight the masses, and they dare not directly go down to confiscate the land of the landlords, but only after the hands of the peasants and completely break up the organizational structure of the villages, they will collect the land of the unorganized peasants. That is to look for death.

After Hurd reformed the tariff system and completely abolished a series of systems of differential treatment between Huayang and foreign countries, he made a letter of surrender to Zhu Jinglun and made his position clear, Zhu Jinglun directly appointed him as the General Taxation Department of Guangdong, not only responsible for the collection of customs duties, but all taxes are under his control, of course, the landlord's land tax is still managed by the local government itself.

Hurd's enthusiasm for work is still very high, and three tax plans have been formulated, but Zhu Jinglun is not very satisfied.

According to his plan, a lot of tax revenue can be received, for example, he proposed to levy a business tax on tea shops, and a high business tax on silk and satin villages, which are currently the two largest industries in Guangdong, but once moved, it will affect Guangdong's overall exports, and it is the strength of these two industries to compete with the West.

As an advantageous industry, and it is an industry in fierce competition, Zhu Jinglun hopes to be able to give some protection for the time being, but the money must be collected, and that tariff alone is not enough at all, at least it is absolutely not enough for Zhu Jinglun to launch a large-scale military operation.

Unable to affect exports, but also to collect taxes, a dilemma, Hurd finally suggested that domestic sales should be taxed, and export sales should not be taxed.

However, Zhu Jinglun believes that this tax plan is difficult to implement, and in the business culture that pays attention to honesty has not yet been formed, there must be people who evade taxes and evade taxes, and supervision will be a huge cost at that time.

The third plan is the export tax rebate system popular in Western mercantilism, which first collects taxes in other links, and finally returns them in the form of tax rebates when exporting, so as to achieve the purpose of protecting exports.

This plan can go deep into all aspects of tea and silk production, such as taxation of tea gardens and tea factories, such as taxation of silk reeling factories, etc., of course, it is very difficult, because most of China belongs to small workshop production, and the cost of taxation is very high.

If not, it was encouraged, so that Hurd introduced an industrial incentive law, for merchants who were willing to buy machinery and start large factories, the government lent them initial funds, allowed them to use them without interest for ten years, and in terms of taxes, they could be exempted from taxes for five years, and if they were not profitable after five years, the tax holiday would continue to be extended until they were profitable.

But it seems that no one has applied for this loan yet.

"What, there's one?"

Hurd reported to Zhu Jinglun.

There is a squire in Jian Village, Shunde County, who is also a businessman, and he actually plans to open a silk reeling factory, and after detailed inquiry, he learned that this person is not a wealthy businessman, but he is also a big local businessman, and he is one of the few businessmen who have business dealings with the French, so when Zhu Jinglun selected a representative to travel around the world, he was also selected.

His family is mainly engaged in the raw silk business, and later when he came to France, he was fascinated by the French silk reeling factory at a glance, when others went to other countries to visit, he applied to stay in France, stayed for a few months, almost every day lived in the French silk reeling factory, the French silk reeling machine carefully drawn, after returning to China, he planned to imitate, at present he is ready to borrow 8,000 taels, mainly for the purchase of steam engines, as for the machine he found a blacksmith to build.

This person's name is Chen Qiyuan, and in history he was the first to introduce the silk reeling factory to China, but in history he visited the silk reeling factories established by the French in Vietnam and Thailand.

Zhu Jinglun was still very happy to hear the news.

Although there was no clear-cut reform during this period, in essence, the reform had been quietly carried out, and I did not expect that the spontaneous industry of the people had also begun, and it seemed that sending those people to the West would not be in vain for those boat fares. (To be continued.) )