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Volume 7: Laughing and Talking about Drinking the Blood of the Huns Chapter 11: Merchant

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    Update time: 2010-04-08

    Chen De saw that the faces of all the merchants were a little apprehensive, and he probably knew what they were thinking. He walked into the group of merchants, smiled and held his hands to the left and said: "Is Mr. Chu doing well?" As if a stone was dropped into the calm water, the merchants  After getting this opportunity, everyone became polite. Some bowed and said that business has been good recently, and some came forward to wish Mr. Chen and his family well. In short, the solemn scene of an underground organization meeting suddenly disappeared.

    Merchants value profits. If we take the Chen-De line now, in the future, tea, silk, and porcelain from Jiangnan can be exported through the Hexi trade route, which is much safer than the sea route.  The only worry is that Chen De wants them to start a rebellion in Jiangnan, killing officials and revolting. This is a major matter of confiscating the family and exterminating the clan. These wealthy merchants dare not do it.

    Chen De wanted this effect. After being polite, he stretched out his hands and pressed them softly. The merchants below immediately fell silent. Chen De just said in a deep voice: "The city of Jinling was destroyed, things changed and people changed. The Lord of Jiangnan is hunting in the north.  I also surrender to Bianliang. Lord Chu has left the Divine Guards and is engaged in various industries on his own, each with his own family. The reason why we have called everyone here to discuss this time is not a dangerous matter, but a business." He said.  His tone is familiar to all businessmen, gentle and seductive.

    "Whatever your Majesty has to say, I will just do it. When we talk about business, we are not meeting with my subordinates. How can this not be chilling, Sir!" Han Shang suddenly knelt down in tears and said. Only then did the other merchants suddenly realize that since  If Chen De gets on the boat of Chen De, he will be in the same boat. If Chen De gets along with his group of businessmen with the attitude of talking about business, if there is any disharmony in the future, if he slaps his butt and returns to Hexi, his wealth and life will be at risk.  It's all in Da Song's hands.  The only way is to completely surrender, so that Chen De will always have a trace of incense in his future actions and will not sacrifice his power in vain.  Everyone secretly cursed the old fox and followed Han Shang closely, crying with runny noses and tears, asking Chen De to re-incorporate themselves and others into the prestigious Anxi Army system. Several people even asked Chen De to transfer their family property.  Re-register it to the military assets of the Anxi Army.  The status of merchants in this era was not as respected as that of later generations, so it was natural for everyone to have such concerns, otherwise they would not have invested in the Divine Guard system back then.

    Seeing a group of proto-bourgeois elements crying and shouting to return to the ranks of the proletariat, Chen De, who had originally planned to persuade these businessmen to cooperate with the Anxi Army with benefits, was shocked. He looked at Gou Luo'an in confusion.  He shrugged his shoulders helplessly. This was a signature move he learned from Chen De, indicating that it had nothing to do with him.

    Chen De frowned. The reaction of the merchants was far beyond his expectation, but there was still some discussion. He coughed, helped the Han merchant up, and said in a deep voice: "Han Dutou, what are you doing?  When you come to the south of the Yangtze River and see no one, let Luo'an find you, is this the way of abandoning you and others?" Because Han Shang and others were old acquaintances of Gou Luo'an, so Chen De only saw him in front of these people.  Calling him by his name, no one knew who the famous Han Chan was for a long, long time. Many officials of the Song and Liao Dynasties even thought that he was the other identity of Li Si, the head of the Military Intelligence Department.

    Only then did Han Shang and other merchants stop crying and stood up aggrievedly, as if subordinates were meeting their superiors. Chen De sighed in his heart. They all say that no businessman can be a traitor. What are the calculations in the minds of these merchants' subordinates?  , but sometimes I don¡¯t see it clearly.  Fortunately, I won't leave anything too important to them.  This extra layer of master-slave relationship would be beneficial to the big event that I had to rely on these businessmen to plan.

    Seeing that everyone began to listen to him seriously, Chen De just said in a deep voice: "Since you voluntarily return to my service, you must abide by the rules and regulations. Luo'an will tell you the specific rules on my behalf. Now I want to talk to you  What we are waiting to discuss are several business deals." His tone was serious. The merchants had just performed a show and did not dare to interrupt him again. They all listened quietly with their hands down.

    "This first one is about selling salt." Chen De said just one word, and there was an uproar again. All the merchants knew that what Chen De wanted to traffic could not be official salt. This was a serious crime of ransacking homes and beheading people.  .  Everyone knows that there are many large salt lakes near Hexi controlled by Chen De that produce high-quality salt. However, in this era, you can¡¯t just sell salt if you have it. At the end of the Tang Dynasty, salt tax accounted for about half of the imperial treasury revenue. Central official Xu  The officials worked hard and reaped several times the benefits. It can be said that the salt industry was the largest industry in the late Tang Dynasty and the biggest cancer in the late Tang Dynasty.

    The soaring salt price has greatly stimulated the emergence of private salt dealers. Private salt dealers have affected the interests of the government and led to bloody suppression by the government. Even a child who accidentally brings a grain of salt from the salt field will be killed.  The government's indiscriminate punishment is simply a model of violence. In the face of huge interests, private salt dealers not only were not subdued, but instead armed themselves in groups and began to openly fight against the government.  The most famous one among them is the so-called "Sky Incense Array Breaker"."An, the city is full of golden armor" Huang Chao. Since then, trafficking in illegal salt has become synonymous with rebellion. All illegal salt dealers are ambitious and daring heroes. Except for Huang Chao, Wang Jian, Qian Liu, Zhu  Xuan successively divided the country into one party. And the serious merchants also stayed far away from the dangerous field of selling illegal salt.

    Therefore, as soon as Chen De said that he wanted to sell salt, the merchants below him felt a "thump" in their hearts. Many people thought that the lord was indeed not a law-abiding master. He wanted to sell salt privately, which was incompatible with the imperial court.

    The expressions of the merchants below were caught by Chen De, which made the crying allegiance just now seem like a joke. Chen De sneered in his heart, coughed, and said in a deep voice: "Please be quiet, gentlemen, the salt trade I mentioned is voluntary.  Participate without force. Also, you only need to transport the salt from the northwest to the capitals of Jiangnan. Then I will send people to pick up the goods, and then hand them over to the real private salt dealers for distribution. What do you and those people do?  We didn't meet each other." When he said this, the merchants below breathed a sigh of relief. It would be great if they could not do such a dangerous business. Only a few people who were greedy for money were thinking in their hearts that if they contracted the merchants in the northwest,  In the salt business, I am afraid that within a few years, he will become the leading wealthy businessman in Jiangnan.

    And Chen De also just wanted to find a few collaborators among Jiangnan merchants who sold northwest green salt.  In fact, there are many merchants who go to the northwest every year to find private salt to sell to the Central Plains, but these people are not necessarily safe and reliable, and their capital is too small.  At present, the salt policy of the Song Dynasty is still strictly controlled by official purchases. The only way to sell private salt is to contact private salt dealers. When the court implements the salt introduction and salt banknote system and allows private merchants to sell salt, they can imitate the salt banknotes and let them sell salt.  Green salt was sold with great fanfare through these merchant networks.

    "The second business is to underwrite the sale of three items: beautiful jade, famous horses, and precious swords from the Western Regions." The merchants below were in an uproar again. Different from the panic just now, this time there were exclamations of surprise and admiration.  , some people are even thinking in their hearts, you really do treat me as your confidant, and you have benefited from the underwriting. These three things are a stable and profitable business.  Those who think more deeply are thinking that by exporting famous horses and precious swords to the Central Plains, two powerful military weapons, could it be that you only intend to separate the northwest and have no ambition to enter the Central Plains? From this point of view, you may not necessarily want us to go against the imperial court.  , it¡¯s just about making money together.

    Hexi is now in the hands of Chen De. It is the main channel for treasures from the Western Regions to enter the Central Plains. Whoever Chen De wants to give the goods to, it belongs to whomever.  Except for a few people such as Korean merchants, most of these merchants cannot be called wealthy businessmen. But if they get the benefits of underwriting, I am afraid that their net worth will double within a few years.

    Although everyone has their own thoughts, everyone who took the initiative to underwrite the goods this time was enthusiastic. Chen De smiled and said: "Everyone is my subordinate, and I will naturally take care of it. If you sign up with Luo'an, Luo'an will also make a plan for me."  Let me tell you the articles of association." Through underwriting, Chen De can control these three downstream markets to the maximum extent and extract the maximum benefits from them.

    ¡°The third business has big profits but also big risks, and it can¡¯t be done unless you have a lot of capital. If you think you can¡¯t afford this risk, you can quit now.¡± Chen De said slowly.  The merchants below had already been stimulated by the huge benefits of selling treasures from the Western Regions, their eyes were red, and they all wanted to at least listen to the details before making a decision.

    Seeing the expressions of eagerness on the faces of all the merchants and no one quitting, Chen De sighed in his heart. Sure enough, money can turn cowards into warriors. When these people heard about smuggling salt, they were frightened and covered in chaff. They had just used the underwriting monopoly to stimulate them.  All of a sudden, he regained his courage.

    "Everyone must know that the base of my Anxi army should have been the four towns of Anxi. Unfortunately, most of the four towns have become foreign lands. Since I have established the town of Anxi, I naturally have to plan to restore the old land of the Han and Tang Dynasties. Therefore, I sent troops to conquer  Those Manchus who are dissatisfied with the king's rule are already on the string and can't wait." Chen De paused for a moment, looked at the confused expressions of the merchants below, and then said: "After thinking about it, this war is also like fighting.  Business is average, with profits and losses. As the saying goes, before the troops are moved, food and grass go first. You can also guess that the Anxi army has always had to deal with the food and salary by itself when it attacks the barbarians. But after the four towns of Anxi were captured, there were thousands of miles of grassland immediately.  The beautiful jade veins and the large and small towns along the way are all inexhaustible sources of wealth.¡±

    Note 1: "The Song Dynasty flattened all the countries, and all the salt and profits in the world belonged to the county officials, and the official fields were open to trade. Suizhou County announced that, however, changes were not constant, and private traders were especially prohibited."  In the early Song Dynasty, the salt administration was inherited from five generations without major changes. Salt tax was the main tax revenue of the country, and local funds depended on it.  Just like the income from land sales is now the main income of local governments.

    Note 2: During the Northern Song Dynasty, "the country's profit from cooking salt was divided into three points, and Huaihe ranked second."  "History of the Song Dynasty? Shihuo Zhi" said when talking about the salt benefit: Yuan Youjian (1086-1093), "Huaiyan and Jiechi are as old as four million min, which is two-thirds as much as the Tang Dynasty.  "At the end of the Northern Song Dynasty, the salt industry in the Huaihe River and Huaihe River changed.The highest amount was 15 million guan to 24.05 million guan, while the highest national salt profit at this time was 31.13 million guan. The Lianghuai salt profit accounted for about one-half to two-thirds of the total salt profit in the Song Dynasty.  In the words of Lu Zuqian, a native of the Song Dynasty, "In the Song Dynasty, Huaiyan salt was the most valuable to the state."

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