Tibet.

Chapter 1346 Child Slave Incident
Xiao Hua said goodbye and left first, but Wei Jiansu and Zhang Li stayed. The King of Nanzhao had already come north to Chang'an to apologize, and they needed to understand the emperor's attitude towards Nanzhao.

Wei Jiansu said, "Your Majesty, Nanzhao is now a piece of meat on the chopping board. How do you think you should deal with it?"

Li Ye smiled and said, "I would like to hear the opinions of the two prime ministers?"

Wei Jiansu smiled slightly and said, "Before the Northern Expedition, Zhuge Liang conquered the barbarians in the south and still tried to appease them. But now is not the Three Kingdoms era. Crossing the Lu River to the south is not a taboo. Nanzhao is also mainly engaged in farming, not the nomadic Hu people who are erratic. It is easier to manage. So it is not impossible to destroy Nanzhao and establish prefectures and counties. However! I think it is also a good idea to leave a harmless Nanzhao to manage the various ethnic groups for us. The key is to balance the gains and losses!"

"What do Prime Minister Zhang think?" Li Ye asked Zhang Li again.

Zhang Li bowed and said, "I think that Minister Wei's opinion of harmless Nanzhao is extremely important. There are not many Han people in Nanzhao, and almost all of them are barbarians. Some have been assimilated to Han people and are basically the same as Han people, but some are still in the barbaric era. If the court directly sets up prefectures and counties, it will not be easy to manage. I still support the model of governors in Hexi, with ethnic minorities being autonomous, but the court stationing troops in key cities, and the whole belongs to the court."

Li Ye nodded, "You two are right, and your ideas are basically the same as mine. I will put forward four suggestions, and then the Political Affairs Hall will discuss them according to my four suggestions and come up with a plan!"

"Your Majesty, please speak!"

Li Ye said slowly: "First, in principle, the Nanzhao Kingdom can be retained, but it cannot have an army. The army can only be stationed by the imperial court. Second, the borders before the ninth year of Tianbao will be restored. The imperial court will set up Yaozhou and Kunzhou, appoint governors to manage the Han settlements. Third, the heir to Nanzhao must live in Chang'an before ascending the throne. Fourth, the imperial court may not levy taxes in the Nanzhao autonomous region, but all Nanzhao mineral deposits will belong to the imperial court, including salt wells, and the price of salt in Nanzhao will also be unified with that in Bashu."

The four plans proposed by Li Ye were completely in line with the interests of the Tang Dynasty, especially the one that prohibited the existence of an army, which actually eliminated the possibility of Nanzhao's resurgence. Nanzhao eventually became an agent, managing the Nanzhao region for the Tang Dynasty.

Wei Jiansu and Zhang Li took their leave. Li Ye stood in front of the sand table with his hands behind his back for a long time without saying a word. The Nanzhao issue was a problem that any ruler of the Tang Dynasty had to face and solve. It was actually an extension of the struggle between Tang and Tubo. The invasion of Xichuan had always been a line for Tubo to spy on the Tang Dynasty. In addition to Longyou, Hexi and Anxi, Xichuan was the fourth point of Tubo's eastward invasion, and controlling Nanzhao was part of Tubo's invasion of Xichuan.

However, Tubo's investment in Xichuan and Nanzhao was far less than that in Longyou area. This time, it lost Nanzhao and lost 50,000 fresh troops in Jianchuan. For at least ten years, Tubo would not dare to interfere in Xichuan again.

However, Li Ye's attention was not limited to Nanzhao, his gaze also went to the more distant south.

In the heart of the Indochina Peninsula, there is a plain of 250,000 square kilometers with fertile soil and abundant water and heat. That vast land can feed hundreds of millions of people.

Advancing southward from Nanzhao was obviously not realistic due to the mountains and virgin forests blocking the way. Li Ye then turned his attention to Jiaozhou, which was the Red River Delta, a fertile alluvial fan plain with abundant water and heat, but a slightly smaller area.

But the biggest advantage is that it is the territory of the Tang Dynasty, and it can be used as a foundation to establish a huge naval base in the sea outlet of Halong Bay.

Walking south along the coastline, you will soon reach the Mekong Delta. From here all the way to the northwest, there are endless plains with sufficient water and heat, which can produce three crops of rice a year.

How could Li Ye not be tempted?
But this is not a great task that can be accomplished in a short period of time. It will take at least twenty years for the Tang Dynasty to completely annex this rich and fertile land.

Li Ye took out a red flag and planted it on the land of Jiaozhou.
At this time, Wei Gao reported at the door, "Your Majesty, Li Dutong of the Internal Guard wants to see you!"

Li Ye nodded, "Summon her to the emperor!"

Not long after, Li Chenghua hurried in and bowed, "Your Majesty!"

"What's important?"

Li Ye knew that Li Chenghua wanted to see him because of something urgent.

"Reporting to your Majesty, when the Internal Guards were investigating the largest underground slave market in Chang'an, they discovered a shocking incident. This underground slave market not only sold people from abroad to Chang'an, but also sold a large number of people from the Tang Dynasty to foreign countries, especially girls. This has been going on for twenty years, and the number of girls sold has reached an alarming level."

One of the key points of abolition is to close slave markets in various places, but official or public slave markets are easy to close, while underground slave markets are difficult.

The underground slave market has always existed, mainly for tax evasion. The number of slaves bought and sold there each year even far exceeds that of the open slave market. Almost everyone knows about Chang'an's underground slave markets. There are several of them, the largest of which is in the West Market. Young women smuggled from Japan and Silla were sold to major brothels in Chang'an through the underground slave market in the West Market of Chang'an.

Therefore, after the abolition of slavery was issued, many industries suffered a huge impact. For example, in brothels, there is no such thing as selling one's body now. The contract is signed for one year, and when the one-year contract expires, the prostitute can leave if she wants to, without having to redeem herself. If the madam dares to stop her, she will be reported to the government and be beaten with a stick, which is the lightest punishment. She will be sentenced to exile 3,000 miles away, which is basically going to guard the border.

Therefore, the only way for a brothel to retain employees is to improve their treatment and share the money. In the past, prostitutes were not paid for sleeping with men, and could only rely on patrons to give them some extra rewards and accumulate some savings.

This is no longer possible now. A brothel receives 500 coins from a customer, and at least half of that has to be given to the prostitute. The brothel also has to provide for the prostitute's food, accommodation, cosmetics, and clothes. If the treatment is not good, the prostitute will simply change jobs after her contract expires.

Therefore, the abolition order is easy to deal with for slaves who are in the open, but the difficult part is the underground human trafficking that is not visible to the public.

It is impossible for them to enforce the abolition of slavery and stop the human trafficking, so they need to rely on the internal security to crack down on it severely.

In the past, there were two ways for Western Hu women to come to the Tang Dynasty. One was that human traffickers bought them as slaves from Persia and then resold them to the Tang Dynasty. As the Tang Dynasty abolished slavery, this method became less and less common and eventually disappeared.

Another way was for young girls from various Sogdian countries to come to Chang'an to work spontaneously, just like people going to the West to work today. They would work in Chang'an or Luoyang for more than ten years, save some money, and then return to their hometown to get married.

This approach was actually the mainstream. This trend of yearning for the prosperous land in the East lasted for nearly a hundred years throughout the heyday of the Tang Dynasty, and only gradually subsided after Tubo occupied Hexi and Anxi. The fundamental reason was the decline of the Tang Dynasty.

Li Ye supported this approach. No matter whether it was the Hu woman from the West or the girls from Silla or Japan, Li Ye hoped that they would come spontaneously, work happily and go home happily without leaving behind humiliation and tears.

Therefore, when it comes to cracking down on the black market slave trade, Li Ye has always been clear-cut and unambiguous, with no room for compromise.

"You mean to say that a large number of Han Chinese girls were found to be trafficked to the West?"

Li Chenghua nodded, "Exactly! And it has lasted for nearly twenty years, and has even intensified in recent years."

At this time, Li Ye suddenly thought of the young lady Xiaokang whom he met in Kangguo that year. It was she who was sold to the Hu people by her uncle and taken to Kangguo by the Hu people.

Li Ye frowned and said, "Tell me more in detail, how did you find out?"

“Reporting to Your Majesty, there was a slave trader named Xu Wuliang who continued to secretly buy and sell slaves after the abolition order was issued. He was caught by the inner guards. In order to mitigate his crime, he confessed to the inner guards that he was selling girl children. This has been going on since the Tianbao period. It was most rampant during the An Lushan Rebellion. It has decreased a little in recent years, but it still exists.

According to his account, there were five or six gangs in total. They bought girls from remote mountainous areas and trained them in music studios as musicians. When they were twelve or thirteen years old, they were sent to the West under the pretext of learning the Huxuan dance. They could make a net profit of more than 100 strings of cash for each girl they sold, which was much more than selling them to buyers in Chang'an and Luoyang.

"How many people have been sold?" Li Ye asked.

"There are at least 10,000 people!"

There were so many people. Li Ye took a deep breath and asked immediately, "Do you know which music houses are involved?"

Li Chenghua bowed and said, "Your Majesty, there are many music houses involved. Some are run by themselves, while others are trained by other music houses they have asked."

Li Ye immediately ordered: "Immediately check all the music and dance studios in Chang'an and Luoyang, and strictly investigate the origins of all underage girls. If there are more than three girls in a music studio whose origins are unknown, the owners of the music studio will be arrested and interrogated."

"I humbly obey my orders!"

(End of this chapter)