Start a Ming Dynasty plane

Chapter 689

Lantian, county government.

Li Chaosheng is looking at the financial statements of various places this year, as well as related policy reports on food expenditures, farm equipment expenditures, water conservancy construction, and refugee accommodation.

At this time, Guo Bao stood aside and said to Li Chaosheng: "Master, the finances are a bit tight at the moment. This year, we will develop five provinces at the same time, which will be a huge pressure on the entire Lantian."

What Guo Bao said is true. This year, Lantian has rapidly expanded into five provinces, and the basic area of ​​Lantian is only Shaanxi and Hubei, which has developed most of it. Gansu has also developed some, but not many.

The finances of the two provinces are full of budgets, but Qinghai, Hunan, Guangxi, Henan, the four major provinces, as well as parts of Hubei and parts of Gansu, add up to five provinces.

And next they will be stationed in Shandong, and Li Zicheng is going to fight Shanxi and Hebei again. After Li Zicheng finishes fighting, Lantian will also take over, and Sichuan is obviously coming soon. , saying that Qin Liangyu's health is getting worse and worse, and now he often stays in bed to handle military affairs, and he seems to be dying soon.

If Qin Liangyu were to die, his son Ma Xianglin, a man of great ambition and talent, would not be able to play against Zhang Xianzhong. After Zhang Xianzhong occupied Sichuan, Li Dezhen's army would start to attack Sichuan. It would be a big expense to develop Sichuan at that time!
Although Lantian has tried his best to accumulate wealth in these years, it is still a little difficult to cope with the growing territory. In this year's financial meeting, Lantian experienced a fiscal deficit for the first time in this decade.

At this moment, the people in Lantian realized that our money is not enough to spend!

So they hurried to find the county venerable. The county lord must take the helm for such a major event. If the county lord does not come out to preside over the overall situation, they may have internal disagreements and discuss the development of these five provinces.

To develop external provinces, should we sacrifice the quality of life of the people in Lantian to support the rapid development of these five provinces?

After Guo Bao summed up the opinions of the big guys, he came to Li Chaosheng with this year's materials. They needed Li Chaosheng to give them a direction.

They are very confused now, and they need a guide to give them a clear direction, and Li Chaosheng is Lantian's Dinghaishenzhen. At this time, as long as Li Chaosheng points out a direction, then Lantian people will work hard towards this goal, no matter how hard it is. Don't regret complaining, this is the popularity that Li Chaosheng has accumulated over the past ten years in Lantian.

The purpose of Guo Bao's coming here is to hope that Li Chaosheng will give him a general direction, so that they can work well.

After reading this year's financial statements, Li Chaosheng found that the deficit was not as big as he had imagined. It was only a deficit of 500 million silver dollars. However, if Shanxi or Hebei were added this year, the fiscal deficit would reach 2000 million. This fiscal deficit That's a lot.

If this issue was handed over to Daming, then Daming would definitely scratch his head and not know what to do, because Daming, or Chongzhen, did not have currency rights in his hands, he could not interfere with currency circulation, and of course he had nothing to do about it.

But Li Chaosheng is not Chongzhen, he is Lantian County Honor, a modern person who understands modern economics, and after ten years of continuous efforts, his Lantian has laid a solid foundation.

This deficit does not mean that the people of Lantian cannot afford to support the other provinces, but that the tax revenue of the Lantian government is not enough to support the development of other provinces, and this problem can be solved.

Li Chaosheng has several solutions here.

At present, to solve the financial deficit, the first is to use the surplus funds from previous years. This sum of money is useless, because the surplus from previous years has been invested into the army by Li Chaosheng, and the five major legions in Lantian have been expanded. Each legion now has more than 50 people. , Lantian now has a main force of [-] people.

So don't think about the balance from previous years, and the second is to reduce expenses.

This won't work either. Currently there isn't any redundant yamen in Lantian. Whose expenses are you reducing?

There is also open source. Li Chaosheng is working on open source. The largest open source project at present is that Li Chaosheng has conducted friendly communication with the Tokugawa shogunate in Japan.

Specifically, Shi Lang was asked to bring a warship equipped with Lantian's latest artillery to block the gate of the plaster country, and had a naval battle with the plaster country. The effect was obvious. The Tokugawa shogunate was defeated and was willing to cooperate with Lantian to develop the largest Silver Mountain, see Silver Mountain in stone.

This silver mountain is very important to Lantian. You must know that according to the estimation of the mine engineer in Lantian, the silver content of this silver mountain is several times higher than the silver content of the entire Gansu Baiyin Factory. Exhausted, inexhaustible treasure land.

So Li Chaosheng started a business with the Tokugawa shogunate, and gave Lantian the right to mine Yinshan, and Lantian could sell some cheap cloth, gunpowder, and handmade products to the Tokugawa shogunate at very low prices!
The Tokugawa shogunate was very interested in this. After inquiring about the low price of Lantian, they directly purchased on a large scale. This could not make the Tokugawa shogunate not excited. They share one-third of the price in their own country. This price can't even cover the cost. Can they be unhappy?

So he cheerfully signed an agreement with Lantian, and after the messenger from Lantian passed the news to Li Chaosheng, Li Chaosheng almost burst out laughing, this stupid plaster countryman!

Not only allowed himself to get the mining rights of Iwami Yinshan for nothing, but also allowed himself to dump industrial products to their country on a large scale. Where can such a good person be found?

Soon the actions of the Tokugawa shogunate brought a devastating blow to the budding handicraft industry in the plaster country. Gunpowder workshops, cloth workshops, and various handicraft workshops all began to close down, and people's livelihood began to rot from the root.

There is no way not to rot, the gunpowder and cloth in Lantian are all produced on a large scale, even if they are sold to the plaster country at a third of the price, it is still profitable, and the quality of such mass-produced things is good, Much better than those produced by those small workshops.

People in Plaster Country are not fools, can they not know which is good and which is not?
The ones imported from Lantian are good and cheap, while the ones made at home are poor and expensive. As a normal person, I know which one to buy, so Lantian products are a best-seller, and their local handicrafts are not cared about at all. This led to the closure of local handicraft products one after another, and the shop owners went directly to the field and became farmers again, and the industrial enlightenment of the plaster country was directly strangled in the cradle.

And Lantian kills people. Once these gunpowder factories in Japan closed down, Lantian directly started the recruitment mode, and all the skilled masters and old craftsmen were packed and sent to Jeju Island in one boat, for the benefit of the people of Jeju Island.

This directly led to a breakdown of craftsmen in the entire plaster country. There were no craftsmen left, and the rest were all farmers. The bankruptcy is almost over. At this time, some people want to restrict the dumping of Lantian products in Lantian.

However, the progress was very difficult, because where is Lantian's intelligence? He is clever because he does not directly do business in the plaster country, but seeks out the nobles of the plaster country and dumps the goods to them at low prices. However, Lantian stipulates that the cost price of local products must be lower than that.

But even so, these aristocrats from the Plaster Country who were selected by Lantian got rich overnight. It doesn’t matter if the price is low. Therefore, Lantian's products in the plaster country are valued by more and more nobles.

Even Tokugawa Iemitsu's younger brother, son, and even Tokugawa Iemitsu's mother are in this chain of interests. Then Tokugawa Iemitsu wants to work hard and limit the dumping of Lantian products. The final result It is the resistance of most of the nobles, even the son, younger brother, and mother do not support him, really want to cry but have no tears.

And because Lantian carried out large-scale business activities in Japan, this aroused the dissatisfaction of the Zheng family in Bamin. Zheng Sen angrily led the fleet to attack Jeju Island, and met Shi Lang in the end. It was really jealous when the enemy met. , Shi Lang, whose whole family was killed by Zheng Sen, his eyes turned green at this time.

With the warships equipped with the latest artillery from Lantian, they fought against the old pirates of the Zheng family. In this battle, Shi Lang sank one warship, damaged five warships, and wiped out the 32 Zheng family warships led by Zheng Sen. In the end, only Zheng Sen's lead ship ran fast, otherwise Shi Lang would make Zheng Sen hate the waters of Jeju Island.

This battle is known as the naval battle of Jeju Island in history, and it was this naval battle that completely established the status of the Lantian Navy, and at the same time severely damaged the vitality of the Zheng family. During the process, Zheng Sen was also injured. After returning to Bamin, After a setback, Zheng Zhibao even took the opportunity to annex half of Zheng Sen's team.

After Zheng Sen knew about this, he was furious, and finally got angry, and died at a young age. Since then, the land of Bamin has been managed by Zheng Zhibao. Under his leadership, he can retreat to the land of Bamin and wait for the Jeju Island navy to grow and annex them, or Shi Dalei can raise troops from Jiangxi, go south to the land of Bamin, take Fujian and Guangdong, and eliminate the roots of Zheng's pirates.

At present, open source is a good way, but silver mining takes time, so Li Chaosheng can't be in a hurry.

However, the funds for developing these five provinces cannot be saved, so the current open source method cannot solve the immediate troubles.

Li Chaosheng thought for a while and said to Guo Bao: "After you go back, hold an economic meeting immediately, and let the Ministry of Finance, banks, and other related financial systems all gather together. I will propose a solution at the meeting."

Guo Bao heard the words and said: "Xianzun, what is the plan, this is a hole of 500 million."

Li Chaosheng glanced at Guo Bao and said with a smile: "This small amount of money will embarrass you, the dignified political minister of Lantian, and you are useless. I will give you two plans. The first is to issue more currency, and the second is to issue national bonds!"

"Issuing additional currency, issuing national debt??"

Guo Bao was stunned. Li Chaosheng knew that these two methods for future generations to solve the fiscal deficit were very simple, and they were ahead of the people of this era, so he said: "The method is very simple. We have now fully popularized banknotes in Lantian. That is to say, we can use this money by printing it ourselves, aren’t you short of 500 million? Just print 500 million.”

"Ah, it's so simple! No, the county, we print money like this, we won't destroy the paper currency policy we have so hard to establish like in the Hongwu period!"

Li Chaosheng said: "No, the fundamental reason why Zhu Yuanzhang's Hongwu banknotes collapsed and turned into blank paper is the collapse of credit, which means that the money cannot be exchanged for silver, but our Lantian can be exchanged normally, so there is no collapse. Danger."

"However, issuing additional currency is indeed a matter that hurts the people. In fact, it is tantamount to spreading the money to the people. With a deficit of 500 million silver dollars, we now have a population of about 200 million, which is equivalent to more than one person per person. They collected more than one yuan in tax money, but they don’t have to pay it, we apportioned the money to them directly from the source of the currency.”

More than one yuan is one silver dollar. Now the average salary in Lantian is about [-] yuan per person per month. To be honest, such a large-scale release of water is a bit hurtful to the people.

Li Chaosheng thought for a while and said: "It's not easy for the common people. This increase in currency can't be too ruthless. Let's issue an additional currency of 800 million. On average, the price will not rise much. As for the remaining holes, we are issuing 200 million in national bonds." !"

"National debt?"

Guo Bao frowned, and Li Chaosheng said: "It means that the state borrows money from the people, and issues national debts to the whole people with an interest rate of 5%. Don't worry about this money. We are only in temporary difficulties now. With these 2000 million silver dollars, the development of our five provinces will be successful." If we can enter the fast lane, we will be able to earn back dozens of times, hundreds of times, which is not a problem."

Li Chaosheng’s words are right. If the 2000 million is spent, Li Chaosheng will be able to obtain the wealth of five provinces. Among other things, even if these five provinces only grow grain, Lantian will be able to return a lot of money in the coming year. , animal husbandry, forestry, commerce, and various measures are put in place to improve the lives of the people, and the tax revenue can be paid back in a year, and after that, Lantian will be invincible.

With the wealth blessings of Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, Hubei, Hunan, Guangxi, and Henan provinces, the foundation of Lantian is solid, and there is no need to worry about money anymore, because the stalls are big enough!

At that time, if the remaining places want to develop, Lantian will mobilize the wealth of the seven provinces to help. There is no need to issue national bonds, and the annual tax revenue of Lantian is enough!

At that time, the funds from the plaster country can also flow back, and Lantian can go to the Bangzi country to develop. The money will have to belong to Lantian sooner or later.

So the financial crisis is only temporary, just get through this period.

Guo Bao came in dejectedly, but when he left, he was smiling all over his face. As expected of the county lord, he solved the matter that had troubled him for so many days so easily. There is a county lord in Lantian, so why not be strong!

Thinking of Guo Bao, he saw a pile of military information in Gu Zi's hands. The two greeted each other, and Gu Zi entered the house and saw the county venerable, "Xian lord, there are changes in the north!"

(End of this chapter)