Lin Gao Qiming

Chapter 984
As for the government, the reason is the same.Since the Senate actually controlled most of the salt fields in Guangdong, the supply of official salt also depended on the Senate.As long as the Senate cuts off the supply of salt, the government will have to give in—since they are unable to defend the saltworks, they can only accept the conditions of the Senate.

"If this is the case, we might as well contract out all the official salt sales in Guangdong—how about being a taxpayer?" Guo Yi suggested, "In this way, all the salt affairs are under our control. We are the official salt .”

"Now is not the time," Scaled shook his head. "In Guangdong, we are not enough to cover the sky with one hand. Daming's salt monopoly already has a large vested interest group. We pay taxes, or we have to bear all the interest groups here. The benefit is either to kick them out completely."

The former costs too much; the latter will only attract too many enemies to itself without sufficient control power-the current basic policy of the Senate towards Guangdong is still based on stability.

Scaled had already found someone to represent them on their new deal.This person is Xuwen's salt merchant who was the first to do business with the Senate: Liu Gang.

Liu Gang has been running private salt sales in Leizhou for a long time - he is only a middle-level household among the local private salt dealers.He has been in contact with Yanchang Village until the Gou family occupied Yanchang Village by force and this channel was cut off.Since Yanchang Village was owned by the Australians, he has established a relationship with the elders. By selling the high-quality "Lingao Salt", Liu Gang made a fortune and became an important salt dealer in the Leizhou area.

Although he made a fortune by relying on the Senate, the relationship between him and the Senate is relatively distant.The Senate has never cultivated him as a key customer in the past, and the two parties are just a simple business relationship.It is no different from many merchants who come to Lingao to sell goods.

The reason why Liu Gang was not "trained" was not due to the deliberate alienation of the Ministry of Colonial Trade, but mainly due to the fact that the sale of private salt is a very complicated matter that requires an extremely complicated network of relationships.Illegal salt trafficking has long been a black and white, ambiguous gray social phenomenon in Chinese history.There are entangled and complex relationships among the government, salt merchants, and private salt dealers—far beyond the comprehension of research monographs and papers.In order to avoid the trouble of re-integration, the Ministry of Colonization and Trade adopted a marketing idea of ​​only supplying goods regardless of channels.

However, under this model, it is obviously difficult to improve profits.Liu Gang's own strength is not enough, and he cannot expand a sufficiently broad space under the complex private salt sales network.

And Skaide is also about to create a new source of income from the salt industry, and the two hit it off.Decided to cooperate to expand the sales network to the entire Guangdong, Guangxi and Fujian.

The only one who expressed dissent was the Mayao Salt Industry Consortium—it said that with the current labor force situation, it would be difficult for them to "increase production to serve the country" by such a large scale.Unless more support is given: from manpower to equipment, instead of taking more salt fields under its banner.For the salt industry complex, they have enough salt fields, too many to produce efficiently.

Even with low-efficiency production and the suspension of Yinggehai’s new salt field development plan, there are almost 12 months’ worth of sea salt stockpile in the various salt warehouses and salt fields along the Qiongzhou Strait under the control of the Planning Institute: chemicals and edibles are included.Skade is making a fuss about this, thinking that the inventory can be reduced to within six months.

For this reason, Liu Gang has already moved his family, buddies, and all the wealth he got from the salt industry to Guangzhou to prepare for a big fight.

Although Liu Gang had no in-depth cooperation with the Senate in the past, he was in Xuwen and had a clear understanding of the strength of the Australians.I also know that the Australians have great plans.Seeing their growing power.Being able to become a partner of Australians now, the future "money future" is immeasurable.Therefore, he is very aggressive. In fact, Scaled's colonial trade department did not invest a penny, and Liu Gang took out all the initial infrastructure investment.

Guo Yi listened to his introduction silently. Obviously, this Liu Gang is one of the commercial compradors he will command in the future.Perhaps it can be called the comprador of the new era.If the "compradors" of big foreign businessmen like Gao Ju and Li Luoyou are more independent, then the compradors like Sun Kecheng and Liu Gang are purely dependent.Their industries are nominally independent, but in fact their every move is under the control of the Senate.

"This is the personal information of Boss Liu." Skaide opened his password briefcase and took out a file bag.

Guo Yi looked at this person's profile. A strong man in his 30s: The face in the photo is full of murderous looks—obviously, it is not easy to be a private salt seller. There is an old mother in the family who only knows how to eat fast and chant Buddha, his wife Zheng, and his son Liu Xiaoguan.There is also a list and a brief introduction of his servants and buddies at the back.

"Now his mother and son are in Xu Wen, under our direct control." Skaide said, "We didn't ask him to move his son's mother to Lingao. Anyway, Xu Wen is almost our world now."

"Speaking of Leizhou, has the Tang Seng Project been implemented?" Guo Yi suddenly thought of this once very popular plan.

"The official implementation will start next year." As a member of the executive committee, Skaide has a clear grasp of the progress of this secret. He lowered his voice and said, "I heard that the people at the intelligence outlet are already training, and they are naturalized. civil."

"But I don't think it makes much sense..." Guo Yi's idea represents the attitude of many veterans who were once very enthusiastic about it. Now Leizhou is under the full radiation of Lingao, and Xuwen and Haikang counties are gradually " Qiongzhouization".The control of the Senate over the entire Leizhou Peninsula is increasing.

"That's right, but it's not a bad choice to directly control an official. Since we've already established Fushe and made friends with artillery experts, why should we limit him to Leizhou? He can be transferred to other places." It may come in handy when it may come in handy." Skade said, "Even if it doesn't come in handy, we don't invest much."

Guo Yi expressed his "sincere admiration" for the executive committee's vision.Skaide smiled and said, "Stop flattering me. Let's talk about the food issue in Guangdong."

Guo Yi reported the current situation of collecting grain in Guangdong.

Guangdong was still a grain exporting province at the end of the Ming Dynasty, and a considerable amount of commercial grain was exported to Fujian every year-Fujian has long been a province short of grain.However, due to the widespread planting of cash crops, the food self-sufficiency rate has dropped a lot.

However, to raise food, Guangdong is still the most convenient source of goods for the Senate - the food collected from the Pearl River Delta and surrounding areas is transported to the Hong Kong base for processing and there are convenient waterways to use.

The Planning Institute, the Ministry of Colonial Trade, the Council of Agriculture and the Bureau of Foreign Intelligence jointly set up a special food working group in Guangdong, which was led by the Guangzhou Station. One of Guo Yi's main tasks recently was to produce food.

Collecting grain is not purchased with cash—according to the needs of the Travel Group for grain, it is impossible to collect such a large amount of money, and such a large-scale purchase of grain will also cause the price of grain in Guangdong to skyrocket.

The method used by the food working group to collect food in the local area is "grain collection" - or in other words: collection of "reasonable burden".

After the Battle of the Pearl River Estuary, the Fubo Army's prestige has been well-known in the Pearl River Delta, and all the towns and towns it raided and passed through were blackmailed for "reasonable burdens". "Reasonable burden" is not a one-time extortion, but a long-term "tax" - the one responsible for collecting it is Guo Yi's Guangzhou station.

Although the Fubo army has retreated, it is a fact that everyone knows that the warships of the Kun bandits are cruising in the waters of the Pearl River Estuary.

The Guangzhou branch of Dachang Rice Bank is now the tax office of the Senate in Guangzhou.After receiving the "notice" secretly sent by Lin Baiguang's intelligence personnel, each township paid the approved "reasonable burden" to the rice bank before the specified time.

Not only rice is collected, but miscellaneous grains, cash crops and raw silk are also collected, and money can also be paid——Delong Guangzhou Branch collects it on behalf of them.Depending on local conditions.

In addition, in the large and small towns along the Pearl River that were conquered and swept away by the Fubo Army, there appeared a rent store that collected rent with the title deeds and leases of the gentry and landlords who were wiped out in the Battle of the Pearl River Mouth.

The so-called rental store is a rent-collecting agency.It was very developed in the Qing Dynasty, also known as "Tiandian".Ordinary small and medium-sized landlords or landlords living in cities, because of their limited power in the local area and not much land, tenants who encounter strong rent collection in rural areas often fail to collect rent or collect rent at a discount.As a result, a kind of industry gradually emerged: there are powerful people in the local area, and people who have colluded with the government come forward to set up rent warehouses, specializing in the rent collection of landlords.A small handling fee is charged.

This approach is similar to the "contracting households" in tax payment, but it is aimed at tenants instead of the government.

The emergence of renting warehouses facilitated small and medium-sized landlords, and became increasingly popular after the middle of the Qing Dynasty.Gradually, it became so overwhelming that it became an agent of all land leases, taxes, and even business transactions. Instead, the landlord himself could no longer intervene and could only sit back and collect land rent.As a result, the tenants only knew that their land belonged to a certain warehouse, but did not know the name of their landlord.

This time, the grain working group made Renzhan appear in Daming's time and space in advance.After a lot of intensive preparations, a number of old "grain messengers" drawn from various counties in Hainan arrived one after another.Taking this batch of grain as the backbone of the business, and cooperating with some other naturalized people, formed the "Wan/Sheng/hao" leasehold that comprehensively manages this batch of land.

The owners of the land were all changed to "Yuan Laoyuan", which was actually managed by the Planning Institute.The address is in Lingao Bairen Village, Qiongzhou Prefecture——it was Lingao that established a separate administrative village for the crossing people.

(End of this chapter)