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Geng Jingzhong was still very concerned about the customs affairs, and the two discussed for two days in a row before they made a preliminary plan, and they began to implement it after a period of preparation and sufficient preparation. After sorting out the affairs of the customs, Geng Jingzhong immediately turned his attention to the other two major things that he had been preparing for a long time, one was the peaceful land reform that had been prepared for a long time, and the other was even more urgent, which was the matter of table salt. Now the people of Fujian have increased their income, but they can't afford to eat salt more and more!

It is said that the income of most people in Fujian has increased greatly in the past, but according to the report below, the price of salt in Fujian has also continued to rise. In the past, the people couldn't afford to eat salt, and generally used very little salt, but after the income was high, there were more purchases.

Geng Jingzhong's first thought was the word salt monopoly, and it seems that before managing the customs, it is necessary to manage the salt first.

The salt franchise has a long history in China. The monopoly (or monopoly) of salt began in China more than 2,600 years ago during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. At that time, Guan Zhong proposed to Qi Huan Gong "Guanshan Hai", that is, to specialize in mountain and sea resources, mainly to implement state-owned salt, and make a profit. Guan Zhong advocated that the seaside salt-producing country can count oral salt. At that time, the production of salt, the government and the common people could boil the sea for salt, and the transportation, distribution, import and export were under the management of the state. Retail is a businessman. According to Guan Zhong's rough calculations. According to this, Qi Guo can get 60 million yuan a year.

When it came to Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty. Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, under the construction of the "financial planner" Sang Hongyang, in order to strengthen the centralization of power, regain important economic undertakings such as salt and iron from the hands of wealthy merchants and tycoons, and reverse the country's financial difficulties, also implemented the official sale of salt and iron and liquor. After the Han Dynasty, the famous Salt and Iron Conference was held, which abolished the iron wine monopoly and partially relaxed the salt monopoly. This laxity was maintained until the Anshi Rebellion of the Tang Dynasty, after which the salt monopoly was strengthened again.

And where there is "official salt", there is private salt. Where there is control, there must be zài smuggling and a black market. The most famous smuggler is "If I am the Green Emperor in his year, I will bloom with the peach blossoms" and "Wait until September 8 in autumn, I will kill a hundred flowers after the flowers bloom", at the end of the Tang Dynasty, Chang'an was broken and broke the deadlock situation of the dark society of the warlords at the end of the Tang Dynasty. The Tang Dynasty was pitted by these smugglers!

In this day and age, it can be said that the richest people in the country are not those textile merchants, but salt merchants. Historically, the salt merchants of the Qing Dynasty were also the most famous, with tens of millions of taels of capital and one or two million taels of less. Later history. Taking the 37th year of Qianlong as an example, the sales volume of salt in Yangzhou was 1.53 million. One lead is equal to 200 to 400 catties, a lead salt is six dollars and four silver on the seashore, after being transported to Yangzhou, plus freight, salt tax, up to about two taels, from Yangzhou to the six southeast provinces of the retail price of about ten taels, the price has increased more than ten times. Yangzhou salt merchants earn more than 15 million taels of silver every year and pay more than 6 million taels of salt taxes, accounting for about 60 percent of the country's salt tax. In that year, China's total economy was 32 percent of the world's, and the salt tax provided by Yangzhou salt merchants accounted for 8 percent of the world's total economic output.

The salt monopoly system has a very long history in China, starting from the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period of Qi to the founding of New China in later generations, and has accompanied almost the entire development process of feudal society. The ancient name of monopoly is "forbidden", the meaning of prohibition is forbidden, and the meaning of the bridge is a single-plank bridge, and the prohibition is to monopolize oneself and not allow others to be involved in the operation. As for the salt monopoly system, it is a set of institutional arrangements artificially formulated and set up by the feudal ruling class, which monopolizes the salt production and sales channels, earns huge profits from it, and increases fiscal revenue. In feudal society, those scholars and doctors with financial consciousness have a visual description of this, "profit out of a hole", its image lies in only seeing the benefits, but not looking at how the interests are generated. The ruling class has cleverly borrowed the commodity-like form of salt to conceal its essence of plundering the wealth of the people.

Salt is one of the necessities of human production and life, and the social demand is large, and the consumption elasticity is very small. In a feudal society where most of the means of production and subsistence were self-sufficient, salt could not be self-sufficient and had to be obtained from the outside world. In China's ancient society, salt, iron, tea and wine are a few bulk trading commodities, but these commodities have been monopolized in different periods, and salt is the variety that has been monopolized for the longest time, the widest range and the greatest economic impact. Under the monopoly system, the attributes of commodities have changed greatly compared with their conditions under the conditions of free production and circulation. According to the analysis of political economics, free buying and selling and equivalent exchange are the intrinsic attributes of commodities and the necessary conditions for a certain item to become a commodity. Under the salt monopoly system, the production, sale, and pricing of salt were all carried out by the government, leading to the degradation of its commodity attributes.

Salt producers are salt farmers, and although they work in the same way as other craftsmen, salt farmers are very different from other craftsmen because salt is a monopoly. The status of salt households is different from that of ordinary people, and they have a separate household registration, and there is a special department in the government to manage them, and they are not allowed to change to other industries or fugitives, and lose their personal freedom. The tools and raw materials for salt production are provided by the government, and all the salt produced must be handed over to the government, and the government will pay the cost and grain. No one is allowed to engage in salt production except for the salt area recognized by the government, and violators are punished with felonies. It can be seen from this that the government monopolizes the production of salt with administrative power, which is fundamentally different from the monopoly producers in general, it is neither a natural monopoly due to the efficiency of the scale of production, nor a legal monopoly caused by patents or technical obstacles, but an administrative monopoly created by the government, that is, the party with administrative power using its own administrative power.

Although the price of salt varied from dynasty to dynasty, the overall level was much higher than the cost of production, and the general trend was upward, rising as the government's financial situation continued to deteriorate. In the early Tang Dynasty, the salt industry policy was free for the people to operate, the government levied taxes, and after the Anshi Rebellion, the financial situation deteriorated, and the salt monopoly policy was implemented, so the changes in salt prices during this period provide an excellent analysis sample for analyzing the impact of the salt monopoly system on salt prices. New Tang Dynasty Book. Food and Goods Four" contains: Tianbao, Zhide years, salt per bucket ten yuan,...... And Qi is the salt and iron envoy of Zhuzhou, and the salt in the world is exhausted, and the price of the bucket is 100 yuan, which is 110 yuan. …… In the fourth year of Zhenyuan, Huainan Jiedu made Chen Shaoyou play and add the people's endowment, since then Jianghuai salt has also increased by 200 per bucket, which is 310 money, and then increased by 60, and the two pools of salt in the river are 370 per bucket.

This historical material can be analyzed from two aspects. First, the astonishing increase in salt prices before and after the implementation of the salt monopoly was 36 times, and from the analysis of other economic historical data, it can be categorically ruled out that the production of salt has shrunk suddenly, leading to a strict imbalance in the ratio of supply and demand, and thus pushing the price of salt to rise sharply. In the case of 10 yuan per bucket of salt, assuming that 7 yuan is to compensate for the production cost and 3 yuan is the normal operating profit, and assuming that the production cost of salt does not fluctuate significantly, according to this calculation, the government can obtain 120 times the excess profit when the salt price is 370 yuan per bucket. Second, the government can raise the price of salt at will according to its own financial needs, and through the monopoly of salt, it can achieve the financial "quantity of people". When the executive power intervenes and is motivated by self-interest, the law of value disappears. This can also explain why the price of salt in a dynasty showed a trend of low before and then high. As the dynasty continued, the corruption of the government worsened, and the fiscal revenue and expenditure situation deteriorated, so the government continued to raise the price of salt, plundered the wealth of the people, and increased fiscal revenue to maintain the operation of the bureaucracy, until the people revolted and changed the dynasty, and so on.

In the past, the government used the method of compulsory apportionment to distribute official salt to every household of the people according to the number of heads, and directly collected currency or grain according to the official salt price, and used the official salt quota as the performance evaluation standard for local officials. In this way, the principle of free and voluntary trading of commodities has completely disappeared. Even in the case of transportation and sales by salt merchants, salt merchants are appointed by the government and can only sell in the areas designated by the government. The sale of salt by others is considered illegal and punishable by felonies.

During the Eastern Han Dynasty, although Emperor Zhang also implemented the salt and iron monopoly policy, it was not long, and it was abolished in just a few years, mainly because the Eastern Han Dynasty was declining since Emperor He, and it was impossible to organize the salt and iron monopoly on a large scale. During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, the princes were divided, the situation was turbulent, the salt monopoly was intermittent, and the fiscal revenue of each regime was mainly based on taxes paid by individual small farmers. The circumstances of these two periods prove from the opposite side that the salt monopoly system is an administrative and economic act that is completely based on administrative power, and when the political power is not strong enough or does not have a complete setup, the salt monopoly system cannot be implemented.

However, due to the extremely slow process of change of China's feudal social system, the process of change of the salt monopoly system is no exception, from the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period to the Qing Dynasty, it took more than 2,000 years to complete this process. It should also be emphasized that in every dynasty from the Tang Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty, the income from salt profits was basically the same as the income from land endowments, that is to say, although the privatization of the salt monopoly process improved efficiency and reduced the costs in the process of production, transportation, and marketing, this benefit was still taken by the ruling group and shared with the bureaucracy, and the welfare of the people was not improved in the slightest.

For such a huge drawback, Geng Jingzhong is ruthless, and he must completely change his territory, and become like the new China in later generations, no matter how poor the people are, they can afford to buy salt, instead of being reluctant to buy salt! Salt must not become a tool for the ruling class to exploit the common people! (To be continued......)