I'm sure of the prosperous age of Kangxi and Qianlong!

Chapter 554 Thorough Investigation into Tariffs

At the same time that the British mission left Nanjing, Kang Zifei's American pioneering mission also officially set sail.

This time, the size of Kang Zifei's fleet was obviously much larger than the last time he went to America. Not only were the warships and pioneering teams (army) invested with internal funds from the court and royal family, but there were also many private merchants who came with them.

These maritime merchants are generally not large in scale, and there are not many large ships that can follow them on voyages to the Americas. There are several sea-going ships, and even several small sea-going merchants, who jointly financed the shipbuilding and joint-stocking. When profits are made, they will be divided together according to the share of capital investment, and even if they lose money, they will be compensated together.

Domestic sea trade tariffs are increasing every year, but the market share has gradually become saturated.

After all, it had only been ten years since the Ming Dynasty opened the sea, so no matter how large the maritime trade market was, it was almost time to finish carving it up.

In particular, the new Ming Dynasty did not allow any more gentry families. These former wealthy families had lost their land and could no longer annex land in the country, at least not while Zhu Yijiong was still alive.

As a result, some of them went overseas to Luzon and relied on their former wealth accumulation and reputation to recruit Han people from the mainland to cultivate overseas lands. And there are still some people who feel that this way is unavailable, so they simply find another way out and directly take advantage of the opening of the sea to become a maritime merchant.

Although these rich people are not professional maritime merchants, there is a saying that in many cases you hardly need to use your brain. As long as you have enough money, you can achieve success.

For example, the "crouching dragon and phoenix chick" of later generations.

As for those wealthy gentry, it is naturally impossible for them to be real "crouching dragons and phoenix chicks".

Even if many small maritime merchants with insufficient strength join forces, they are beginning to be unable to defeat these emerging wealthy merchants.

Some of them not only spent money, but also imitated small maritime merchants and formed groups together. For example, after Yangzhou salt merchants switched to maritime merchants, they formed a new Yangzhou merchant gang at the end of last year.

Now, I see that the imperial court plans to open up the Americas, and I hear that there is real money and silver all over the Americas. There, everything is valuable, and only real money is the cheapest thing.

Regardless of whether it is true or not, these maritime merchants who cannot survive in China are planning to give it a try.

If you win the bet, just turn over.

If you lose the bet, it will only continue to worsen, and there will be no worse results.

Moreover, this time the court and the emperor are following the investment, so the chances of winning are great.

As people who work at sea, not to mention all maritime merchants, as long as they can make it big, almost all of them are gamblers.

It's just this price, and they can afford it.

Forbidden City.

The New Year's holiday is a full ten days, which is really refreshing, and the memorials waiting for approval are piling up.

Zhu Yijiong's head hurt from looking at it, so he could only bite the bullet and review the memorials and official documents. I have been reviewing continuously for half a morning. Fortunately, most of them are reporting matters and asking for permission. You only need to glance briefly to get an overview, and then sign and stamp.

Zhu Yijiong couldn't help but admire Lao Zhu again. Lao Zhu's energy was really strong! He has to take care of all national political affairs, no matter how big or small. Even the county magistrate's trial must be reviewed by him. I really don't know how he has persisted in these decades.

The Cabinet and the Secretariat have already given out voting suggestions in many memorials. The emperor Zhu Yijiong only needs to take a look at them and approve them "yes". But even so, I was still very tired.

At noon, there is no rest time. Those ten days of annual leave are not in vain.

After lunch was served, I ate and read directly. I continued to approve until the afternoon, and then I finally finished approving the backlog of memorials.

Pulling out another one, it was a memorial delivered by the Ministry of Commerce. After a casual glance, Zhu Yijiong called Jiang Chengzhang, the Minister of Commerce, to ask: "What's going on with the memorial delivered by the Ministry of Commerce? It's just a business gang established last year. Why are you so worried? Are they colluding with the Shipping Department behind the imperial court’s back to monopolize smuggling?”

Jiang Chengzhang shook his head: "Your Majesty, the Yangzhou Business Gang was not established last year, but has existed for a long time. Their predecessor was the Salt Merchants Alliance composed of Yangzhou salt merchants. It was only last year that it began to expand in size and began to absorb powerful Anhui merchants. Become a shareholder. Rather than saying it is a Yangzhou business gang, it is better to say it is an Anhui business gang. The entire business gang from top to bottom is almost all Anhui merchants."

"This Yangzhou business gang did not collude with the shipping department. Instead, they directly joined forces to raise the purchase prices of cotton, tea, etc. in the mainland, and drove away many maritime merchants with insufficient financial resources. Then they joined forces to lower prices for mainland farmers, thus monopolizing the mainland. market, especially cotton farmers in the Jiangnan area. If His Majesty had not issued a decree to reduce taxes on cotton fields and to implement rotational cultivation of cotton and rice, many cotton farmers would have been overwhelmed."

"Many of the pioneering fleets heading to the Americas this year were squeezed out by Yangzhou merchant gangs, and they had no choice but to take risks and head to the Americas to develop markets."

When Zhu Yijiong heard this, he immediately understood everything. This was not monopolyism, but the Yangzhou salt merchants had been doing this since ancient times. Historically, the Yangzhou salt merchants relied on their monopoly on salt to make large profits from silver. There were even many wealthy salt merchants who simply did not sell silver. You can imagine how huge the profits of the monopoly were.

Facing such a group of sea merchants transferred from salt merchants, those large sea merchants could still hold on, but the small sea merchants were swallowed directly without spitting out their bones.

Zhu Yijiong was a little angry. His family had just implemented cotton and rice rotation farming in Jiangnan, and some businessmen came to make trouble: "This Yangzhou business gang must be disbanded, and all Anhui merchants who have joined it must be disbanded. The Ministry of Commerce will then send subordinates to investigate. Members of the Communist Party of China will thoroughly investigate a few of them and put them in the new issue of Daming Moon News for publicity as typical examples."

"According to the order." Jiang Chengzhang cupped his hands.

I don't even want to ask whether it would be inappropriate for the imperial court to directly interfere with private merchants and even send officials to conduct a thorough investigation.

After asking Jiang Chengzhang to step down, Zhu Yijiong sent another order to the Ministry of Punishment and the Cabinet: "Compile and revise a new law as soon as possible. The new law is specifically aimed at market commerce, and its name is the Anti-Monopoly Law."

In any industry, once a monopoly is formed, it will not be a good thing. Especially for business, it will quickly lose competitive vitality and cause harm to the people.

This time, Zhu Yijiong could rely on the authority of the emperor and the hatred of the Yangzhou salt merchants themselves to deal with it forcefully, but next time, there must be laws to follow, and the private merchants must also be warned.

You can do business normally, but there are some red lines that you cannot touch.

By the way, speaking of the maritime monopoly, last year’s fiscal revenue exceeded more than 60 million taels. Although this year’s fiscal statistics from the Ministry of Household Affairs have not been released yet, we can already get rough data. Among them, land taxes still account for a fairly high proportion. .

In the past, Zhu Yijiong didn't have much reaction, but now when he saw this Yangzhou business gang, he felt something was wrong.

It is normal for land taxes to increase rapidly due to the New Deal reforms, but the increase rate for commercial taxes and sea trade tariffs is somewhat unreasonable. Especially now, ten years after the Ming Dynasty opened the sea, how can it be possible that tariffs and commercial taxes only have such a small ratio?

You know, the Ming Dynasty and the New Dynasty developed new spinning machines, which greatly improved the output and efficiency of cotton cloth, and it was almost fully promoted nationwide. Just looking at the scale of promotion and the number of new spinning machines produced, the increase in commercial taxes and sea trade tariffs is obviously wrong.

Zhu Yijiong thought for a moment and then issued a decree to the Metropolitan Procuratorate: "Order the Metropolitan Procuratorate to immediately conduct a thorough investigation of the national sea trade and port tariffs."

The original Li Fu has now become the right deputy censor of the Metropolitan Procuratorate, with an official rank of the third rank, and is the fourth person under the Metropolitan Procuratorate. There are also left and right Qiandu censors (fourth grade), plus a varying number of supervisory censors (seventh grade) from various provinces across the country, but basically there are about ten people.

In addition to these, there are also some additional official positions, such as the Experience Department, the Prison Department, etc.

After receiving the emperor's order, the Metropolitan Procuratorate quickly mobilized to monitor the illegal activities of officials. This was the duty of the Metropolitan Procuratorate. Li Fu, who was newly promoted to an officer, went into battle in person. With his trusted men and horses, he took a boat directly to the Shipping Department of Shanghai Port.

It was obvious that this guy was well prepared, and even the target had been investigated in advance.

No matter what this person's political stance is, even now, he still can't stand the court's new policy reforms. He thinks that dividing people into acres and dividing families and property is not right, and it is also a bit too hasty. But his personal ethics are indeed impeccable. Not only does he hate corruption extremely much, even Yong Zheng hates this guy for opposing him, but he cannot punish this person with corruption.

It can be said that this is a mad dog. When he was mad, he even dared to bite Nian Gengyao and Tian Wenjing when he was in power. When he was taken to Caishikou, he had his head stabbed across the neck and refused to give up. He forced Yongzheng to look down and admit that this guy was indeed Honest and upright officials.

Such a mad dog, if used properly, will be a knife hanging over the heads of officials, and it will also be a smart and good knife.

After all, being able to find out the case of corruption of more than 800,000 taels by officials in Guangxi during the Kangxi period is a talent in itself.

Zhu Yijiong estimates that after the Metropolitan Procuratorate completes its investigation, tariffs will increase by at least another 20 to 30%. After all, those people couldn't be too greedy, otherwise they would be noticed by the central government.

In the past few years, in order to encourage sea trade, we didn’t pay too much attention to this nonsense.

Nowadays, the maritime trade market has gradually become saturated, and it is time to take action.

It just so happens that areas such as the snowy areas of Tibet and Liaodong are in short supply of immigrants to reclaim wasteland.

This year, we will first conduct a thorough inspection of customs duties in various places. After the inspection is completed, we will start to deal with inland commercial taxes and rectify the market, so that there will be enough criminals to use for immigration. And they are generally high-level intellectuals. Throwing them to the snowy areas of Tibet and Liaodong can quickly increase the speed of local Chineseization.

In short, it is a sure profit but not a loss.

(End of this chapter)