As for Xia Yuanji, it’s not that Zhu Zhanji looks down on the Ministry of Revenue. If he really dares to take 50% of the profit, it is estimated that the old man will only be able to go out at noon, otherwise he will be put in a sack sooner or later!

Maybe there was Zhu Di's instigation in this.

After glancing at Xia Yuanji, Zhu Zhanji said:

"Old man Xia, I am not taking advantage of you this time. Let me tell you the truth, I plan to directly use new salt to squeeze out all the salt markets currently on the market and re-formulate the regulations on salt sales!"

Xia Yuanji was stunned for a moment and asked: "Reformulate regulations on salt sales?"

Zhu Zhanji nodded and continued: "A few days ago, I have arranged for people to go find some wealthy businessmen with strong families. Then let them gather in Yingtian. I will divide the Ming Dynasty according to the regions and the population of each region, and then make a plan.

According to the rules, each region will arrange a fixed merchant to sell these salts according to the rules I set."

When Xia Yuanji and Zhu Gaochi heard this, they looked at each other, and Xia Yuanji said again:

"Your Highness Taisun, please forgive me. I have something that I don't understand!"

"explain!"

Xia Yuanji cupped his hands and said, "I would like to ask Your Majesty, Your Highness, businessmen have been pursuing profit since ancient times. How can Your Highness restrict these businessmen? What if some of them do not follow the rules in private? What will your Majesty do?"

"This is easy!"

Zhu Zhanji smiled slightly and said: "It is not that simple to become a salt merchant. When the time comes, I will ask them to pay a huge deposit. This deposit is their guarantee to act in accordance with the rules. If they act in accordance with the rules,

When the time limit is reached, the deposit will be returned to them. If they violate the rules, I will not only deduct their deposit, but also terminate their qualification as a salt merchant!"

"Deposit?"

Xia Yuanji's eyes suddenly lit up when he heard this new vocabulary for the first time.

No matter what kind of gold, since it is gold, isn’t it still money?

For the Ministry of Finance, if you have money, everything will be easy.

Even Zhu Gaochi laughed when he heard this, clapped his hands and said: "This is a wonderful plan. In this way, in order to become a salt merchant, the court will definitely get a lot of deposits!"

"What are you thinking? Do you know that our court also wants to be trustworthy?"

Seeing the two people's eyes open to money, Zhu Zhanji was speechless and said with disdain:

"We are just keeping these deposits for you. If they act according to the rules, then the money will be returned to them. If not, who will follow the rules with you in the future?"

"But...this...doesn't the court not want this much money?"

Zhu Gaochi rubbed his chubby hands with some pity, looking distressed.

Although he hasn't seen these so-called "guaranteed deposits" yet, he can imagine how huge this money will be.

When he thought that the money did not belong to the imperial court, Zhu Gaochi, who was used to being poor, immediately felt distressed.

"Of course you can't do it. Dad, don't you know Shang Yang's principle of growing trees?"

Zhu Zhanji curled his lips and continued: "Besides, how much is the deposit? Think about the population of our Ming Dynasty? Old man Xia, there should be 50 million people in our Ming Dynasty, right?"

Hearing this, a trace of hesitation flashed across Xia Yuanji's face, and then he nodded and said: "There was a rough statistics last year. Although it was not very accurate, the population was roughly 50.95 million!"

Zhu Zhanji glanced at Xia Yuanji. Although the hesitation on Xia Yuanji's face was not obvious, Zhu Zhanji could still see it clearly.

In fact, this is not to blame Xia Yuanji. Even in later generations, the population of the Ming Dynasty has always been like a mystery.

Can you imagine that when there were no natural or man-made disasters, no large-scale wars, and in the early Ming Dynasty there was no shortage of cultivated land due to the land occupation system,

The population of the Ming Dynasty actually decreased instead of increasing?

And it’s still decreasing by tens of millions a year!

Zhu Zhanji could figure out the problems hidden here without using his brain.

According to the normal population growth law, the current population of the Ming Dynasty is at least around 70 million.

However, the things involved in this kind of thing are too complicated, and Zhu Zhanji is not in a hurry to figure it out.

After all, food must be eaten one bite at a time, and the road must be walked step by step.

There were too many things going on at once, and Zhu Zhanji was afraid that if he couldn't control any of them, he might overturn.

Since the current official population is 50 million, Zhu Zhanji can only use this number.

So Zhu Zhanji thought about it for a while, and after keeping this in mind, he continued:

"Old man Xia, does one person need to eat five kilograms of salt a year? Fifty million people, plus various livestock and other consumption, do they need fifty million kilograms of salt a year?"

Zhu Zhanji said something, and Zhu Gaochi and Xia Yuanji nodded.

Especially Xia Yuanji, as the Minister of Household Affairs, should not be too sensitive to these figures.

Whether Zhu Zhanji was right or not, he knew the answer almost without doing any math.

When he heard Zhu Zhanji talking about fifty million catties of salt, Xia Yuanji touched his beard and stood up and said:

"Your Majesty the Great Sun, the salt production in the Huaihe and Zhejiang regions alone in the Ming Dynasty exceeded 40,000 kilograms last year, and the total salt production in the entire Ming Dynasty was more than 100,000 kilograms!"

Zhu Zhanji: “…”

Well, it seems that there is still a big problem with his estimate.

This is the problem that the population of Ming Dynasty obviously does not match up.

The most salt a person can eat in a year is five kilograms of salt, and including livestock, the average person can only eat ten kilograms of salt at most.

In other words, if the Ming Dynasty really only had a population of 50 million, not counting private salt, at most 50 million kilograms of salt would be enough.

However, the Ming Dynasty produced hundreds of thousands of kilograms of salt every year. In addition to the high price of salt caused by the imperial control, there were still people who could not afford salt.

The obvious question is where does all this excess salt go?

Zhu Zhanji wrote down these questions in his mind and continued to calculate: "Then it will be one hundred thousand catties. This does not include all kinds of private salt. I will price it at 50 cents for one catty of new salt. That is to say, ten thousand catties

The total price of tens of thousands of catties of new salt is fifty million taels of silver!"

"Putting aside various costs, the profit from one pound of salt is about 40 taels of silver, which means that the profit from one hundred thousand jins of salt is 40 million taels of silver!"

Zhu Gaochi listened to the various numbers Zhu Zhanji reported casually, and wrote down these numbers one by one on a piece of white paper.

Then he handed it to Xia Yuanji, who frowned after reading it.

He thought more. If he sold one hundred thousand catties of salt for fifty cents, the profit would be more than forty million taels of silver.

However, the salt sold by the imperial court in the past was obviously more expensive, but the amount obtained was only ten million taels of silver.

Seeing this number, Xia Yuanji almost cut off a lot of his beard, and then gritted his teeth and cursed: "Profiteer!"

Zhu Zhanji was not far from him. When he heard the old man talking about profiteers, he knew that the old man was passing the blame.

The imperial salt tax revenue was so low, who knows how many people raised their hands,

Although it is true that those salt merchants were full of food, but Ji Gang could tell that it was definitely not just the merchants.

But wanting to catch all these people one by one is unrealistic, let alone unrealistic.

Zhu Zhanji estimated that even if he succeeded, Zhu Di would stop him.

After all, there are definitely many people here who contributed to Zhu Di's rise to power.

If you bring things to light, no one will look good.

This is also the reason why Xia Yuanji is a profiteer.

These days, starting from Lao Zhutou, businessmen have such no status. If something goes wrong, no matter whether he is related to the businessman or not, businessmen are the perfect candidates to take the blame.

Killing a group of businessmen enriched the pockets of corrupt officials, the Ministry of Household Affairs also enriched their purses, and the emperor also had money to fight wars.

It’s just a win-win!

After hearing Xia Yuanji's words, Zhu Zhanji just curled his lips and said nothing.

Although he understood the truth, he didn't want to say anything fair for a group of businessmen. After all, the businessmen of the Ming Dynasty understood.

You can never go wrong if you kill a group of people, especially Shanxi merchants and so on.

However, Xia Yuanji wanted to cause trouble for the merchants, and Zhu Zhanji would not take care of it. However, Zhu Zhanji planned to use the new salt to completely tie Ming Dynasty's salt industry to the royal family.

So after taking a look at Xia Yuanji, Zhu Zhanji said: "Of these 40 million profits, as salt tax, the Ministry of Household Affairs can collect 20 million!"

Xia Yuanji did some calculations and nodded. The salt tax for a pound of salt is twenty cents. Twenty million taels is completely reasonable!

Zhu Zhanji continued: "I will sell the salt to those merchants at a price of forty cents. There will be a profit of ten million taels. The Ministry of Revenue will take three million, I will take three million, and the remaining four hundred

Wan Gui Emperor!"

Xia Yuanji nodded again, then paused and asked: "Even if His Highness Taisun is like this, is it still far from the 40 million promised by His Highness Taisun?"

"What are you anxious about?"

Zhu Zhanji glanced at Xia Yuanji, then raised the corner of his mouth and said: "Those merchants who wanted to sell salt had to exchange salt before. Now all the salt from the court belongs to me, and I don't want their salt. But I follow the instructions

The region divides my salt for them to sell, so can I charge them some agency fees?"

"Also, if a businessman breaches the contract, in addition to the deposit, is it not too much to ask them for some liquidated damages?"

"It's not much. The franchise fee is charged every five years. In places like Zhili, Zhejiang, and Jiangxi with a population of nearly 10 million, an agency fee of 10 to 20 million in five years is not excessive, right? There are fewer people in other places.

It’s not too much for me to charge an agency fee of several million, right? And those who breach the contract, tsk tsk…”
To be continued...