People say that Dalian is a holy place for summer vacations. It is midsummer now, but the temperature of Jinzhouwei remains at around 20 degrees. The cool sea breeze blows every day, which makes people feel refreshed and happy. After Salini started construction, Zhu Zhi also gave himself three days off to recuperate in Jinzhouwei.

He also drew a look and asked the people below to make a hammock as they were. They went to the military camp to find two books and pulled up the hammock.

In the sunny afternoon, taking a comfortable nap between the shade of trees is also a great joy in life. He slept soundly that day, and a voice sounded in his ears: "Your Highness, your subordinate Yang Rong is asking for a meeting."

Zhu Zhi hates meetings with Zhou Gong the most when he is harassed, but Yang Rong asks for a meeting, Zhu Zhi has to get up to deal with it: "Oh, Mianren is here, is there anything wrong?"

Yang Rong reported: "After having lunch, I was walking on the beach, I found a sea boat loading on the shore. When the subordinate went over, I saw that the civilians were carrying salt bags on the boat. I was very strange because I heard General Ye say that the stove in the Liaodong Salt Field had fled. Where did this salt come from? My subordinates were about to go up and ask, when the civilians saw it, they immediately threw down their bags and ran away. This was quite strange. My subordinates immediately ordered people to chase the civilians and seize the sea boat. As a result, a total of twelve people were caught, including three civilians and nine people on the boat. My subordinates immediately interrogated and found that this was a group of merchants who came to sell salt from Dengzhou Prefecture, Shandong. The sea salt they bought was something that the salt households here saw that the Japanese pirates did not come to harass them, and returned to the salt field and fryed them privately."

After hearing what Yang Rong said, Zhu Zhi was lazy and jumped up from the hammock and said, "Let's go and take me to see." Under Yang Rong's leadership, Zhu Zhi came to the beach, and he was thinking about this matter all the way. Why can sea salt make Zhu Zhi care so much? No, salt monopoly was a large income from the Ming Dynasty in addition to land tax. From the 16th century, it could bring the empire four million taels of silver every year. But this transaction was a super troublesome project in the Ming Dynasty, and the story of the occurrence of salt monopoly ran through the entire history of the empire.

Zhu Zhi cursed the salt system all the way, and he woke up from his meditation until Yang Rong reminded him that he had arrived at the beach. A small sea boat was parked on the shore, and several soldiers guarded the civilians and boatmen with weapons. Zhu Zhi saw that several civilians were ragged and looked pitiful, so he asked the soldiers to let them go. What was wrong with these people? They just wanted to sell a coolie to make a living.

Zhu Zhi walked onto the boat and saw a few people tied together. The others all looked depressed and silent. There was only one man in blue dark skin, squinting his small eyes and staring at Zhu Zhi up and down. Seeing that he was so rude, the guards kicked him over and said, "What are you looking at? Is Your Highness the King of Liao just watching casually? Why don't you give him a salute?"

A group of "criminals" knelt down, and the man in blue shouted: "His Royal Highness is above, thousands of years old."

Zhu Zhi sat down with a chair and said, "Are you their head?"

The man in Qing said, "Xiaomin Qian Guan, please let Your Highness let these people go. They were all recruited by Xiaomin to Liaodong. If you have any crimes, just punish Xiaomin."

Zhu Zhi felt strange that selling private salt was a serious crime in the Ming Dynasty. This private salt dealer was a little loyal. He did not beg for mercy for himself, but instead asked to let his subordinates go.

Zhu Zhi said: "Let them go, you will bear it alone? Trading private salt is a serious crime of beheading. Can you bear it alone?"

Qian Guan's eyes were dim and he slowly lowered his head and said, "Your Highness must be killed or cut. Most of them have old men and young men, but they only take risks when they are tempted by the common people. The common people know that they can't escape the blame, but, just..."

Such a loyal private salt dealer aroused Zhu Zhi's favor. He wanted to understand why this man was willing to cross the sea to sell salt at the risk of beheading. Zhu Zhi ordered the soldiers to untie the rope tied to him and take the others out. Only Zhu Zhi, Yang Rong and Qian Guan were left in the cabin.

Zhu Zhi said: "Get up, since you know it's a death sentence, why do you still take risks?"

Qian Guan said with a look of grace: "If you can exchange salt from the government normally, who would be willing to take the risk of selling private salt? The young people saw that it was profitable to sell salt two years ago, so they learned to sell salt. They also learned to sell salt from others and borrowed 1,000 taels of silver. They bought some grain and grass to send it to Kaiping Prefecture. Who knew that they had waited for three months when they got the warehouse banknotes. When they exchanged the salt banknotes for another two months, they finally got the salt banknotes and went to Changlu Salt Field to collect salt, and were told that there was no salt to be exchanged. This was another year. Later, they finally found out that there was salt in Liaodong, and they cleared it for a long time to exchange several salt banknotes from Liaodong. They borrowed some money to rent this small boat to cross the sea. Who knew that they knew that Jinzhou Salt Field was closed when they came to Liaodong.

The usury loans that the family borrowed in the past two years have been 2,000 taels of capital and interest. Xiaomin forced them to do nothing, so he brought these friends with him and collected 200 taels of silver to Liaodong to find an old stove house to buy a hundred bags of salt. After taking action, Xiaomin paid off the usury loan, so he washed his hands and stopped doing it. Who knew he had met the official?"

Zhu Zhi couldn't speak for a long time, and he understood the pain of the private salt dealer in front of him. But the root of all these problems still comes from Zhu Yuanzhang, a political fanatic who tried to make rules and control them for thousands of years. Lao Zhu learned from the experience of the Song Dynasty and established that the salt monopoly established by Lao Zhu was extremely tedious. First of all, it did not directly sell salt to merchants. The first step was that merchants needed to buy food and grass to send them to designated locations in the border to help military supplies.

The second step is that the officials in the frontier received the food and grass and issued "warehouses of money" to the merchants.

The third step is that the merchant uses the warehouse banknote to exchange for salt removal (the weight unit of salt is used as the unit of weight of salt, and each time varies in different places and in different eras, about 200 to 500 jin).

The fourth step is to use these salts to pull the salt field to support the salt field, and the salt field tore off a corner of the salt field.

Step 5: The salt merchant transports the salt to the batch inspection office and waits for the salt department to inspect. At this time, the salt transportation department tear off the second corner of the salt entries. However, it will not check immediately at this time. Generally, the batch inspection must be started until the salt reaches the specified quantity, and the quantity is 85,000. After the goods are submitted and taxes are paid, the inspection office will tear off the third corner.

Step 6: The salt merchant transports the salt to the designated dock according to regulations and reports to local officials. After completing the sale, he tear off the fourth corner, and then leads the salt to the Ministry of Revenue to combine with the three corners that were originally torn off.

My mother, I really want to go crazy! This is Zhu Zhi’s first feeling when he read about the Ming Dynasty’s salt monopoly system. In order to figure out each step, he spent an hour and specially drew a schematic diagram. So until now, Zhu Zhi still remembers this process clearly.

This crazy sales process is not about doing business, it simply tortures the patience of the merchants and proves that it is not easy to make some money. Because even if this process is ideal and has no obstacles, it will take two years.

When Zhu Zhi was studying this evil Kaizhong system, he once slapped the table and scolded Zhu Yuanzhang for being the most bastard. He knew that the reason why Lao Zhu set up so many steps was to support border defense, and the other was to have extreme trust in the morality of officials and extreme distrust of merchants, for fear that the merchants would steal one or two of salt in the process.

What is the result? First of all, the problem is that the salt turbulence is that the salt turbulence under the state's low production capacity and cannot be redeemed with salt in the hands of merchants. It is easy to accumulate for ten years, and some merchants cannot even get the goods until they die.

Secondly, this system of management of officials in every step provides countless imperial officials with conditions for "renting seeking". Do merchants want to obtain official banknotes as soon as possible? The frontier officials said: You have to be so good! Do merchants want to obtain salt intake as soon as possible? The Salt Transportation Department said: You have to handle some things! Do merchants want to obtain better quality salt in the salt farm? The salt farm official said: You have to give some benefits! Do merchants want to pass the inspection center as soon as possible? The inspection official said: It depends on whether you will do it.

Any point will hinder you. Think about it quickly and you must bribe it. It is okay not to give bribes. The delay in time will force the businessman who is suppressing his principal to just hang himself. After these layers of exploitation, unless the merchant has strong strength to operate large-scale salt, he can only do a loss-making business.

Finally, it will inevitably lead to the rampant private salt, which will lead to the unprofitable salt monopoly system.

Salt monopoly is a typical black hole that is inefficient under an autocratic regime, officials seek rent, and stifle economic vitality. When the imperial government handles salt merchant affairs, it never announced a universal policy and guiding policy. The specific methods are all formulated separately by each official.

Although officials have to trade with merchants in various ways, they never think that the government and merchants are in a contractual relationship. In their view, the country is above the contractual relationship, and every citizen has the obligation to serve them.

The entire Kaizhong Salt Monopoly is a very anti-economic behavior created by Zhu Yuanzhang. It not only violates the basic laws of operation speed in economic circulation, but also becomes a typical practice of doing bad things with good intentions.

This loyal man who sells private salt gave Zhu Zhi some inspiration. Can we carry out certain reforms to the Kaizhong system and make it a growth point for Liaodong's economy? Zhu Zhi thought for a while and said, "What you are telling the truth. Who is the old stove owner who sells you salt?"

Qian Guan plopped down and said, "Your Highness, what Xiaomin said is true. If you want to punish the crime, you can cure the villain. If you beat him to death, I will not implicate him."

Zhu Zhi smiled and said, "Get up, when did I say I want to cure you? I am also very worried about the problem of salt backlog. You might as well think so. Go and invite the old stove owner. I want to discuss with you how to solve this problem. Don't worry, I will do what I say, you don't have to worry about implicating the old stove owner."

Yang Rong looked at Qian Guanjiangxin's skeptical look and said, "Brother Zhang, you don't have to worry. Our prince's golden branches and jade leaves, can you still lie to you?"

Qian Guan gritted his teeth and said, "Okay, I'll go and invite Lao Wei. Are you afraid that I will never return?"
Chapter completed!