"Salt politics is the most harmful! If you want to reform this salt policy, the people have to applaud! ”

Listening to Li Xian talk about the current problem, Yan Sanniang subconsciously thought of her experience of shooting the chief inspector of the salt road, and Liang Boyu's family is a salt merchant, and the salt government harms people, which makes Yan Sanniang indignant, she is purely from the perspective of the common people.

But after all, she is not an ordinary person, and after scolding, she persuaded carelessly: "But Master An is also right, this salt has been sold by officials for generations, I really want to change it, it's best to take my time." Now that the enemy is in front of you, the inside is still slow, and it is not worth your anger. I heard that you also punished Long Gaoshan, this is not like ......"

As soon as he said this, Long Gaoshan's voice sounded outside: "Madam, it's my fault, I shouldn't have sent patrols to clear the streets and disturb the people, the king of heaven punished me with a military whip, I admit it!" ”

Yan Sanniang's cheeks suddenly turned red, this Long Gaoshan has been listening to the corner outside? Li Xi made love with her just now...... "I see you, the punishment of the whip is far from enough!" Guard the gate and go! ”

She snorted angrily, Long Gaoshan appeared to plead guilty, and as she ordered, obediently went to stand guard outside the gate of the Heavenly King's Mansion.

"I'm a little angry, but I also have my own calculations, anyway, don't worry, worry more about your stomach."

This Sanniang really has the style of Lu Hou, and everyone around her is afraid of her, but fortunately she is not Liu Bang. Li Xian thought helplessly, persuaded Sanniang away, and he had to continue to calculate...... Of course, An Jinzhi and Yan Sanniang couldn't figure out why Li Shi wanted to toss in the salt industry, and Li Xi was also very clear about the thousands of years of salt politics in China, and the thousand-year-old controversy caused by "Salt and Iron Theory", salt was still ranked ahead of iron, which shows that salt politics is an important surname for the traditional Confucian society. Huang Chao in the Tang Dynasty and Zhang Shicheng in the Yuan Dynasty were both born as salt merchants, and the importance of salt politics was extraordinary.

Li Shi's action in salt politics was not only out of personal complex, but also out of deep calculation.

Strictly speaking, before the Ming and Qing dynasties, the salt administration was only a monopoly, not a monopoly, and there was a difference between the two. The monopoly is only controlled by the state, and salt merchants come and go freely, and they only need to pay for the purchase of salt. At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, the "Open China Law" was also to let salt merchants send grain to the border gates, and then distribute salt according to the amount of grain. During the Wanli period, Yuan Shizhen implemented the "Outline Law" and began to establish the monopoly position of salt merchants.

During the Qing Dynasty, this measure was strengthened, and salt merchants who transported and sold salt had to first pay the salt tax to the salt transportation department, receive salt guides, and then go to the designated salt-producing areas to buy salt from stove households, and then sell it to the designated salt production areas.

However, salt is not bought casually, and merchants must prove that they have the privilege of transporting and selling salt on the basis of it. In order to get a nest, businessmen must "recognize" in advance, that is, spend money to buy monopoly management rights, and such monopoly privileges have basically been stabilized into hereditary privileges.

After the operation of this monopoly management system, it is like a gold-absorbing beast, getting bigger and bigger, and the roles are constantly differentiated. At first, the salt merchants bought salt directly from the stove households, but later they diverged into the market and held the monopoly privilege of collecting salt from the stove households. Originally, the sellers were self-transporting and self-selling, or the capital was insufficient, or it was profitable, and they began to subcontract, that is, to lease the monopoly management right, so that there were nest merchants with leasing power and leasing and transporting merchants.

In addition, there is also a class of general merchants, who are the most well-capitalized among the salt merchants, similar to the local gentry, who have to assist the government in urging the collection of salt from the salt tax. If there is a debt, the head office has to pay compensation, and at the same time, it is also responsible for the prohibition of illegal salt. The chief inspector of the salt road killed by Yan Sanniang before was the leader of the private law enforcement team raised by this kind of general businessman.

In the Ming and Qing dynasties, this set of salt policies was collectively called "the outline of merchants to lead the shore", and the core control idea was the same as ruling the locality, decomposing the power layer by layer, and putting the capital circulation link together, and at the same time putting the control responsibility and capital risk on the salt merchants, and the salt merchants naturally had to transfer the amount to the final consumers, so the political axe acquiesced to them having the privilege of "increasing prices", "increasing consumption" and "borrowing".

The whole link is not only involved in capital, but also involved in all levels of government, from the Salt Transportation Division to the Salt Courtyard, to the local government, and even the imperial court and Huang Yanjing to reach out. The imperial history of the salt patrol in the past dynasties were all officials of the Qing court's internal affairs government, and Kangxi and Qianlong toured the south, and the expenses relied on salt merchants. Kangxi's southern tour, there is a Jiangsu Yisigong deficit case, and the focus is not on the salt policy. Qianlong's southern tour detonated two Huai salt cases, with a deficit of 10 million taels. During the turmoil during the Qianjia period, and even the subsequent White Lotus Uprising, a large part of the military expenditure was "repaid" by salt merchants, of which two Huai salt merchants "repaid" 5.5 million taels from 1799 to 1803.

The Lianghuai salt area also includes Henan, Liangjiang, Huguang and a total of six provinces, and the silver of the salt class in the early Qing Dynasty was 900,000 taels, plus the miscellaneous faction was close to 2 million taels. It increased to 4 million taels during the Qianlong period, and doubled in the 20th year of Jiaqing. And the wealth of the two Huai salt merchants is also terrifying. Yangzhou salt merchants are extravagant and famous all over the world, why can there be "Yangzhou Eight Monsters"? It was all the calligraphy and painting industry created by the salt merchants, which attracted the down-and-out literati to gather in Yangzhou.

Many people will wonder how the government and merchants can loot the silver if the people who end up consuming salt only eat so much salt a year?

According to modern standards (it should already be more), it is enough for adults to eat four catties of salt a year (nearly 2400 grams), and the average price of salt in the Qianlong period was 30 wen per catty, and it cost 120 wen a year for a person to eat salt. According to the calculation of 200 million chengren, the national salt market is more than 20 million taels. Just one Lianghuai salt area paid 4 million taels of salt to the Qing court, where did this silver come from?

Huaxia is too big, things are always complicated, the cost of salt production is low, the profit is high, and it is a necessity of life, it is just needed, which is the reason why the salt policy was controlled by the dynasties. But why did groups like the Lianghuai salt merchants not appear in the Han, Tang, Song and Ming dynasties, but in the Manchu Qing Dynasty?

As I said before, there was a monopoly on the salt industry after Wanli in the Ming Dynasty, and the Qing Dynasty carried this set of things in collusion between power and capital to the extreme.

This matter cannot be seen only from the final consumer, the industry is an economic chain, how big the plate is, not just the final consumer, the intermediate link is sometimes more important than the final consumer, such as real estate...... High profits, rigid needs, thousands of years of control tradition, at the same time has accumulated considerable monopoly management experience, there is a set of clearly visible rules of power, naturally become the highlight of capital chasing. In the Manchu Qing Dynasty, where Confucianism and law colluded to the extreme, the salt industry was a hot industry and endured. Capital is constantly involved, and the division of labor is becoming more and more detailed. Each floor expands a space and creates more dams that carry risks.

Therefore, the salt industry is a game of full participation of power and capital, and to some extent it can even be regarded as an industry similar to "buying a lunar territory". Of course, this industry has an eventual export, otherwise it would not have been able to continue to operate for more than 200 years. Ordinary people have to carry a part, businessmen who participate in the game have to carry a part, and the government and even the Manchu court have to carry a part.

In summary, the focus of the salt policy is not only on the salt itself, but also on the fact that the system of power-capital collusion is stable enough and the energy source continues to absorb enough capital to maintain its operation. Later, the opium industry was in the same vein as the salt administration, and in the Manchu Qing Dynasty, the reason why the industry was difficult to revive was because capital was chasing this kind of hot spot that was closely attached to power.

The essence of such a salt policy is naturally intolerable to Li Shi's design of the industrial and commercial strategy of the new Yinghua dynasty. He also counted on the merchants to put all their money into the factories, and to count on capital to create real wealth, to create new technologies, and to promote social development. However, the direction of Yanzheng's investment is power itself, and in this game, capital is not interested in technology.

Yanzheng is the benchmark industry of the Manchu economic system, and it is the most closely combined thing between capital and power, so Li Xian wants to use Yanzheng as a breakthrough to guide capital to industry.

If he was in Lianghuai, he wanted to get rid of this trick, and the resistance was more than ten times greater than defeating the Qing army, but in Guangdong, the resistance was much smaller. Guangdong produces salt, and Guangdong's water and land transportation is also very developed, even if at the beginning of the salt reform, the Yinghua political axe is not effective enough in terms of control, it will not cause too much turmoil. And the salt merchant's power in Guangdong is also very average, and he is a soft persimmon.

But he never thought that Li Xi and the Cantonese businessmen would always have fundamental differences, and this soft persimmon pinched attracted businessmen from other industries to stand up and express their opinions, and they were afraid that they would be next.

An Jinzhi is also afraid, and he is afraid of more than one place. Originally, he also thought of using his relationship with Li Shi to let Yinghua implement a glass monopoly, so that Yuelitang, a joint venture between him and Li Shi, could dominate Guangdong. In addition, Li Shi had previously rectified the foreign company and tied all the merchants to the carriage of the Nanyang Company, and he and all the merchants were afraid that Li Xi would also use the trick of eliminating the salt administration monopoly on the Nanyang Company.

In the past two months, Li Xi has used tricks such as drawing big cakes, making promises, and diverting his attention, not only trying to persuade An Jinzhi to persuade the salt merchants, but also communicating directly with the salt merchants, hoping to solve this problem by soft means as much as possible. However, firstly, there was a fundamental difference in the thinking of An Jinzhi, the salt merchant and Li Xian, and it was difficult to bridge the distance for a while, and secondly, the plan that Li Xian came up with touched them too much, so the communication has not been effective.

Li Xi was very annoyed by the expectations of the Cantonese Merchant Association in the Yinghua New Dynasty, and at the same time admitted that he still did not know enough about the merchants' surnames. He has been suppressing the urge to force a solution to the problem by violent means, feeling that the two sides can still communicate after all. If it is directly implemented by violent means, it is estimated that the general association of Cantonese entrepreneurs that he has single-handedly supported will fall apart, and the trouble of fundraising is still a trivial matter, and the expectation of promoting the development of industry and commerce will be more obstacles, and it may even start from nothing, leaving a bad precedent for his own administration.

"Fortresses have always been breached from within, are those salt merchants really monolithic?"

After sorting out the new plan and instructing his subordinates to send it to the Industrial and Commercial Bureau of the Central Book Hall for advice, Li Xi moved his body while hoping that this new plan would lead to changes within the salt merchants themselves.

"I hope it's faster, the time left for me by Kangxi Lao'er should not be much, I don't know if that pockmark is also as trapped internally and externally as me, and he is not more anxious."

Then he looked to the north, gloating that he was not alone after all.

(To be continued)