People in the Song Dynasty were lawless

Chapter 27
Zhao Jun had only listened to a professional teacher briefly talk about the tea method of the Song Dynasty before, but it was only now that he understood the details.

It turns out that since the Song Dynasty, military expenditures have become increasingly large. The problem of paying the border troops is relatively easy to solve, but the problem of food and grass is difficult. Food needs to be transported to the border and civilians must be mobilized for corvee labor, which is extremely expensive.

In order to solve these problems, the imperial court introduced the cross-citation method.

The so-called cross-quotation method is to let merchants help transport grain to the border, and then give them certain policy preferences. The current method is the tea method.

Although tea has been consumed by people in our country for a long time, at first it was only a pastime for aristocratic landowners and was not yet popular among the people.

In the Tang Dynasty, tea drinking became a common social custom, and tea production and tea trade began to develop.

After the middle of the Tang Dynasty, tea was regarded as a taxable object, and a monopoly system was soon established.

Tea, salt, iron, wine, etc. became one of the important sources of income for the imperial court.

By the Song Dynasty, tea, like rice and salt, had become a daily necessity for people.

The Song government continued the method of the previous generation and implemented the official monopoly system of tea, and tea profits became the main income component of the Song government.

Before Li Zhen reformed the tea tea system in the Northern Song Dynasty, the tea law implemented by the Song government was mainly the "Enter China Law".

In the second year of Yongxi's reign, due to the use of foreign troops, the northern border defense was short of grain and grass, so merchants were asked to transport grain and grass to pay for the border defense.

After receiving the grain and grass in the border areas, they calculated the price according to the local market price and the distance traveled by the merchants, with certain discounts, and then issued a payment voucher to the merchants called "Jiaoyin", which is also the origin of Jiaozi.

Merchants go to the capital to collect payment, or after the capital approves the goods, they go to Jiezhou and Jianghuai areas to collect tea. This is Zhongzhong.

Later, incense and alum were added to the goods that were compensated for entering the country. Therefore, entering the country became the most common form of the monopoly system in the Song Dynasty. This method was beneficial to the national finances of the Northern Song Dynasty.

Although this method is better, there is a price issue.

The Song Dynasty court used this method to solve the cost of collecting and transporting grain and grass.

However, merchants also have to pay costs to transport grain to the border. From the perspective of the government, because they are eager to raise grain for the border, they must encourage merchants to enter the country at a high price, and they must provide certain preferential policies to merchants.

For example, the cost for merchants to transport grain this time was 80 guan. In order to increase the enthusiasm of merchants to transport grain, the court had to estimate the cost of 80 guan at 150 million to allow merchants to make more money.

Although it is reasonable for merchants to make money, the change from 80 guan to 150 million guan was still unbearable for the court, and it became one of the extra expenses.

In fact, this part of the expenditure was not that high at the beginning. According to the previous policy, if a real estimate is made, 80 will become 100 million or 120 million at most.

However, with the intensification of the war and the shortage of food on the border, coupled with the credit system of deferred payment for settlement in different places when entering China and France, the operation was extremely complicated.

From delivery to withdrawal, the distance and time are long, there are many transfer procedures, and transportation costs are high. Compared with cash transactions, capital turnover is slow and transaction costs are high, resulting in higher and higher prices paid.

Because in order to obtain enough imported grain and grass, the purchasing agency of the Song government had to cite too much and overestimate it.

The more transactions are conducted, the less able the settlement institutions will be able to cash them out in a timely manner, which will inevitably lead to the face price of exchanges shrinking and returning to the actual value, ultimately dampening the enthusiasm of investors.

Once the reduction in imports affects military demand, purchasing institutions can only further increase their overestimation.Moreover, the price was unreasonable, which resulted in each site having to pay more for tea.

Most of the merchants entering China colluded with border officials and deliberately overestimated the value of goods entering China in order to profit from it.

This kind of false estimation caused the Song government to suffer serious losses.

To put it simply, the original cost of 80 yuan was actually estimated to be at most 100 million yuan.

However, merchants colluded with border inspection officials to inflate the value of the goods, raising the cost from 80 to 150 million, which greatly increased the expenditure costs of the Song Dynasty court.

Li Zhen's method of collecting money is to transport a large amount of cash from the treasury to the border. You transport the goods on the spot, and I settle the cash on the spot. This avoids shortcomings such as slow capital turnover and high transaction costs.

However, for corrupt officials and big tea merchants, this method reduced their profit-making space, and they naturally opposed it.

For senior officials such as the Third Secretary, they may not necessarily be involved in corruption. After all, their salaries are very high and there is no need to take such big risks for corruption.

It can be seen that the Qian Law requires transporting a large amount of cash from the treasury to the border, which will empty the treasury in a short period of time, leaving the court with no money to use.

As a result, the tea merchants and corrupt officials below formed an opposition force, and the court ministers above formed another opposition force. They combined to attack Li Shen's reformers, which eventually led to Li Shen being demoted. Money law reform failed.

This year, Li Yuanhao's rebellion is getting stronger and stronger, and there is another war on the border. The wars are going on, and the treasury is consuming countless amounts. In order to save this part of the inflated expenditure, Zhao Zhen wants to start a fight again.

After all, the cross-citation method is indeed good and can save the court more than 100 million yuan every year. In terms of government expenditures, this is already a large amount of money.

But still the problem.

When the money-seeking law was implemented again, the big tea merchants and corrupt officials at the lower levels opposed it, as did the court ministers in charge of the money bags above.

Li Zhen was also disheartened because he was demoted last time. He always wanted to resign. When he saw that Qian Fa was going to have a miscarriage before he even started, Zhao Zhen and others were worried.

If Zhao Jun has a practical way, it would be the best thing for them.

"So that's it. I didn't understand it in such detail before."

After listening to Yan Shu's detailed introduction, Zhao Jun wondered for a while: "Uncle Lari, where did you know about this?" "Uh"

Yan Shu was speechless for a moment and said vaguely: "It's written in the History of the Song Dynasty."

"Is it written in "History of the Song Dynasty"?"

Zhao Jun thought for a while: "Forget it, I haven't finished reading "History of the Song Dynasty" anyway. This thing makes people's blood pressure high."

Zhao Zhen clenched his fists, and Zhao Jun made his blood pressure rise every time.

"Is there a way?"

Yan Shu asked.

"Grandpa Mao once said that we should look at the essence through phenomena and analyze contradictions to grasp the key points."

Zhao Jun said: "The money-seeking method has advantages and disadvantages, but if the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, then it is a good method. So does it have more advantages than disadvantages?"

Yan Shu said: "After the implementation of the new law, the annual savings and additional fiscal revenue will reach 650 million yuan."

"The pros outweigh the cons."

Zhao Jun nodded: "The first thing to solve here is the problem of the empty treasury caused by the Qianqian Dharma Conference in a short period of time."

"Ah."

Yan Shu glanced at Cai Qi. Zhao Zhen had arranged for Li Zhen, Cai Qi, Ding Du, Cheng Lin and others to do this before, but the progress was slow and there was great resistance.

In addition to the opposition from the tea merchants and border officials below, senior officials like them also did not agree with it.

"The previous method was Yin Chi Mao Liang. Although the inflated prices caused losses to the state treasury, the tea merchants needed to travel back and forth, wait for the transfer procedures, and transfer other goods, etc., leaving the Song Dynasty a certain turnaround time."

Zhao Jun thought about it and said: "So the false estimate can be paid slowly by dragging the tea merchants, and the Song Dynasty's treasury can hold on. Now it is paid in one lump sum, which saves the tea merchants' transfer procedures and other transaction problems, but it also It gave the Song Dynasty's finances less time to recycle funds, so it was more harmful to the state treasury in a short period of time."

"Correct!"

Everyone looked at him with admiration. As expected of future generations, they looked at problems differently.

"This is just like doing government projects."

Zhao Jun said with a smile: "My college classmate's family is engaged in engineering. He usually looks smart and well-dressed. But once, the local government owed his father more than 1000 million yuan in unsettled project funds. He almost lost his pants. So. It stands to reason that as long as tea merchants can get money, they should be happy to accept it."

"Some tea merchants are more supportive of the money-seeking method. After all, in the past, tea merchants were slower to get money, which also caused great difficulties for them to recover their funds. But they are basically small and medium-sized tea merchants. For large tea merchants To me, this is nothing.”

Yan Shu said.

Li Shen also made some conclusions after the failure of the first reform.

At the beginning of this year, when he received the task from Zhao Zhen, he learned the lesson from the previous time and summoned the tea merchants. Not only did he state the interests and losses, but he also gave them a certain amount of "moon" at the tea farm.

Through the sticking method, they can trade directly with farmers, and all they get is new and good tea, without the loss of old tea and bad tea.

But for large tea merchants with strong financial resources, it is nothing.

Anyway, they had money and could continue to spend it with the court. At the same time, they could bribe officials and extract higher profits from the court's treasury than reselling tea.

Moreover, every time a big tea merchant transports grain, he not only has falsely estimated coins from the treasury, but also a large amount of tea leaves that can be used to sell specialized tea. Earning two copies of one errand, in exchange for several times the income, is faster than robbing money. Much more.

Some people may say that you have falsely overestimated your profits by so much. Is it okay if the court refuses to pay?
It really doesn't work.

If the imperial court does not pay the high price they have falsely estimated, it will inevitably cause damage to credibility and make the "Enter China Law" useless.

Merchants would no longer transport grain to the border. Without food, the army would have to rebel. In the end, it would be the interests of the border army and the country that would be harmed. Therefore, the Song Dynasty court only used straw to fight wolves - fearing both sides.

Before Zhao Jun went to college, he would probably have said that the tea merchants would be confiscated and their families would be confiscated to see if they still dared to become a worm in the country.

But now that he is a high-IQ history college student who loves to read, he naturally has to carefully consider the consequences of doing so.

Therefore, after hearing Yan Shu's words, Zhao Jun pondered again and again and said: "These two problems are actually easy to solve. Let's talk about the shortage of treasury that the court ministers are worried about first. There is only one answer I can give."

"what?"

"Jiaozi!"

"Jiaozi?"

"good."

Zhao Jun said: "Jiaozi is recognized as the world's first paper currency in history classes, more than 600 years earlier than Europe. I remember Li Zhen's method of seeing money is from the Renzong Dynasty, and Jiaozi appeared in Renzong In Sichuan, as long as Jiaozi is used properly and the bank system is under control, the problem of empty national treasury can be solved."

(End of this chapter)