After the Cabinet discussed the plan for the distribution of Nanyang Company's dry shares, it was issued in a central order. Among them, the Cabinet, the Metropolitan Procuratorate, and the Military Department have all received one percent of the shares; The Ministry of Households, the Ministry of Industry, the General Administration for Industry and Commerce, and the General Administration of Communications each received 0.5 percent.

This distribution is precisely the formation of the Nanyang development system promoted by the Ministry of War and the Cabinet, with households, industry, commerce, and communications as the auxiliary branches. In order to safeguard the interests of all people, the Metropolitan Procuratorate also got the backbone treatment, and it was precisely because of them that they ensured the health of the officials in Nanyang and protected the development of industry and commerce.

Li Yuzhi finally got the permission of Zhishi, and at the same time, the royal family received 0.5% of the dividend rights, which can be received during his lifetime, as a thank you for his contribution to the Ming Dynasty. As for the title and treatment after the Zhishi, it is still not left behind.

Zhu Cihong took advantage of the heat wave of Nanyang Company's dividends to launch a court push. Under the instigation of the cabinet ministers and His Royal Highness the Crown Prince, Zhou Yingqi, Cai Maode, and Yuan Jixian successfully entered the cabinet, so that the number of cabinet members finally reached six, which is a normal establishment. It's just that these three people are a step late, and the cabinet's 10,000 taels of dividends have been made into four shares, and Li Yuzhi, Wu Fu, Sun Chuanting, and Jiang Dejing each took 2,500 taels.

The silver was still deposited in the Imperial Bank, and paper money was issued to everyone, and the exchange of more than five hundred taels of silver only required three days in advance.

Even Jiang Dejing, who is involved in maritime trade at home, can't be indifferent to this. On the one hand, large families have to bear the burden of doing so, and on the other hand, there is also the risk of losing a penny, and the annual profit is nothing more than thousands of gold. If you hold the dividends of the imperial court in one hand and buy real estate and industry in Nanyang with the other, it is not only to avoid risks, but also a good way to make small profits.

In May of the twenty-first year of Chongzhen, the long-prepared city shipping divisions finally waited for the "Chongzhen Open Sea Order", announcing that the Ming Dynasty should open a port from north to south to accept foreign merchants. However, there are additional restrictions on trading. That is, all foreign merchant ships had to use legal banknotes issued by the Imperial Bank to buy goods from China.

Of course, not all of them are affected by this. The city in the north mainly levied taxes on goods from North Korea. This part of the trade is the buyer, so the payment is silver. Only the southern city is an important export town, which needs a large supply of banknotes.

These banknotes were specially supervised by the Imperial Bank, starting with the name "Wai", and it was forbidden to exchange them for silver. But it can be used to pay taxes. Foreigners exchange silver for paper money, which can then only be used to buy Chinese goods. This may seem like a loss, but the Portuguese are still willing to trade in the face of high profits.

They even pioneered international finance and trade.

In the beginning, Portuguese goldsmiths in Macau used their own currency, the escudos, to buy silver from their compatriots in China, or to buy paper money outright, which they then lent to local and foreign merchants at high interest rates. Because the Ming Dynasty banned the circulation of foreign currency, these escudos remained in the bank. It's just that there are changes on the books.

Such a non-capital transaction soon attracted the covetousness of other merchants.

Merchants in Guangdong began to spontaneously buy grain from Vietnam and other places, or set up tuntian fields in Zhangjiakou and other places in exchange for paper money from the north, which was a form of opening up the Chinese law. These banknotes are considered to be a purchase permit and can therefore be sold to foreign merchants at a premium of 10 percent. Even if you can't make money on grain, you will never lose money, so the proceeds from the resale of paper money alone have a net profit of 10 percent.

Net profit that is not subject to tax.

With a net profit of ten percent, Jiangnan gradually began to deposit large amounts of silver in the Imperial Bank. So much so that Jiang Chen was bitter about the shortage of paper money.

Daming now has a total of more than 10 paper mills to undertake the manufacture of money paper, and three printing houses are fully engaged in printing banknotes. Even so. Banknote production remains unsatisfied.

"Your Highness, it is time to print a large denomination of currency." Jiang Chen said: "And it must be a paper money that is forbidden to be exchanged for silver." ”

What else can Zhu Cihong say about this? The desire to buy silk, tea, and porcelain in Europe was surprisingly strong, and in order to meet the demand for currency and stimulate exports, it was imperative to print large currency symbols.

"Let's print 1,000,000 taels of banknotes first, and forbid the purchase of silver. Others are like domestic small ticket banknotes. Zhu Cihong said.

Stimulated by Chinese commodities, the inflow of silver, which had been gradually declining, set off a small upsurge. Although Spain banned the outflow of silver, the peso and the Indian rupee were still sucked into the vaults by the Ming Dynasty in exchange for beautifully printed banknotes.

The Dutch after losing Taiwan. Despite threats of retaliation, the competition for maritime supremacy between his own country and Britain has become more and more fierce, and friction has increased, and if there are no accidents, the Anglo-Dutch naval battle in the original historical script will be staged as scheduled. With no military forces to attack the Ming Dynasty and no sufficient amount of silver to trade, the Dutch were in jeopardy in the economic and trade system in Southeast Asia, which finally made the Portuguese see the possibility of capturing Java.

However, these are not Zhu Cihong's concerns, Zhu Cihong pays more attention to the warehousing of Jiangnan silver.

As a poor silver country, all dynasties before the middle of the Ming Dynasty were mainly copper coins, and silver was only used as an auxiliary currency for bulk transactions. The reason why silver quickly became the mainstream currency of the country after the middle of the Ming Dynasty was precisely because the southern powerhouses accumulated a large amount of silver through sea trade. They can't bury all the silver in the ground, they have to use it, and that's the truth of how silver became the mainstream currency.

When Zhang Juzheng was in power, the whole country paid taxes in silver, which was in line with the wishes of the powerful people in the south, but it greatly increased the burden on the peasants in the north. Because of the shortage of silver in the north, the exchange price is high, and the state only collects silver when collecting taxes, so that the price of grain is equivalent to a disguised drop, and in order to pay the tax, the peasants must sell grain cheaply, which eventually leads to the tragic situation of bankruptcy in the bumper year.

In view of natural and man-made disasters, Zhu Cihong's policy towards the northern provinces is still two-way support for grain and currency. For the peasants who lost their land and went bankrupt, they absorbed all kinds of government-run and non-government legal person organizations and got paid by selling their labor. For self-cultivated farmers who are struggling to make ends meet, food rations are subsidized. For small landlords who have reached the tax qualifications but lack the ability to pay taxes, they will also be supplemented with technical subsidies.

"How are the tax subsidy plans for Shaanxi and Shanxi preparing for next year?" Zhu Cihong asked Jiang Chen again.

Jiang Chen said: "The county outlets have been rolled out, and the personnel have been properly deployed, but the specific tax amount will not be determined until next year's harvest statistics are released." Because according to the Ministry of Households, the Imperial Bank only subsidizes the entire amount of taxes. ”

"This is also a test of the actual operational capacity of bank branches, so we should be cautious." Zhu Cihong reminded the last.

Jiang Chen nodded yes.

A bank with only two locations is not really a bank. However, in this era of no electricity, no communications, and poor transportation conditions, it is no less than building another Great Wall to take the lead in rolling out the empire-wide banking network in the whole world.

"Your Highness, Wei Chen will go to Shanxi next month, and it will be no obstacle when the tax is collected next year." Jiang Chen made a military order.

Zhu Cihong saw his solemn face and said with a smile: "Tell you something, it will also be considered a relief for you." Next year's regular tax can be paid by farmers at any time throughout the year, so you don't have to worry about a large number of people pouring in at once. ”

Jiang Chen was really relieved, so that there was no need to send extra people during the tax season. But even so, the work of the Imperial Bank was too slow. In this year's self-examination success, Jiang Chen applied for a low-interest support loan together, but now after laying the outlets in Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces, he has no spare energy to do anything else.

If you can't complete the exam, your future is dark and you don't mention it, how much less will you have to get the bonus alone? Thinking of his bonus, Jiang Chen thought of the task of reordering the salaries of officials at all levels.

After the crown prince abolished the guards, the number of prefectures and counties in the Ming Dynasty reached more than 1,500, and each county had two sets of administrative and judicial systems, and the number of people who ate imperial grain ranged from 70 to 80 and more than 100. All of these people's salaries were to be paid from the banks and paid by them at the county offices. That's a lot of work!

Zhu Cihong saw the change in the expression on Jiang Chen's face, and knew that he had a lot of things to worry about, but in the final analysis, it was a shortage of manpower. The vast majority of the Ming Dynasty, with a population of 150 million, is an agricultural population, and those who want to be transferred to workers can still be competent, but they cannot be transferred to management positions.

There is no way to solve this problem, that is, to introduce a commercial banking mechanism to contract a large number of cumbersome grassroots businesses to private banks. In fact, the two Huai salt merchants did not have this brain, not only advocated it in the newspaper, but also handed over the title book, but Zhu Cihong did not want to open the financial field to the people.

What's more, these salt merchants have no integrity, and they are not much better than the Jin merchants in Zhangjiakou.

The profit of salt is so high that even in Zhu Cihong's previous life, the state still practiced monopoly. At that time, there were only two monopoly deals in the country, one was tobacco and the other was salt. It can be seen that no matter how low the price of salt is, there are still huge profits.

The price of salt in the Ming Dynasty was six times higher than that of the Northern Song Dynasty, but the salt tax revenue was a quarter of that of the Northern Song Dynasty. The Northern Song Dynasty taxed 30 wen per catty of salt, and the Ming Dynasty levied 22 wen per catty, and there was not much difference between the two. However, considering that the population during the Chongzhen period of the Ming Dynasty was more than double the population of the two Song Dynasty, and the salt tax revenue was still so low, it was very problematic.

What's more, according to the salt tax and fee set during the Hongwu period, every money attracted was six taels and six dollars and four cents. Based on the national salt output of 2 million taels, the annual salt tax revenue of the whole country should be 13.28 million taels.

Since the founding of the Ming Dynasty, the highest salt tax has only received 2.5 million taels a year, where did the other salt taxes go?

Zhu Cihong's attitude towards them was very simple: let them "sit in the trap", cut off their main source of wealth, and force them to spit out the wealth in their pockets little by little. Clever people may use this to break the chrysalis into butterflies, and the stupid ones will only die. (To be continued......)

PS: Ask for a recommendation ticket ~~~ Ask for a monthly pass ~~~