To be honest, although the Jianzhou Jurchens are fishing and hunting people, they are still afraid of the sea. Therefore, if they go to Shangkexi's army to serve as the military supervisor, they will definitely go out to sea in the future. Although they can be blessed and powerful, their power is unpredictable. Even if the Jianzhou Jurchens are not afraid of it, it is fake.

Therefore, this military supervisor errand was not a good errand, and then, there was a shame in Turger, which eventually fell on him.

After receiving the order, Huang Taiji summoned him again, sent others away, and privately explained some things to him, he asked him to escort food, grass and supplies, and went to Jinzhou with the army.

They didn't know anything. Emperor Chongzhen, who was far away in the capital of the Ming Dynasty, knew it clearly.

Emperor Chongzhen combined the information of Class A eavesdropping seeds on Turge's body and the news from Class A eavesdropping seeds on Zheng Zhilong and Lu Xiangsheng's body, and it is not difficult to introduce the current situation in Liaodong, what is the situation.

In fact, what he learned was much clearer than what Lu Xiangsheng or Huang Taiji.

For this reason, he quickly issued an order to Hong Chengchou, the newly appointed governor of Ji Liao, ask him to order the Zu Dashou army on the other side of Tashan to make some noise and cause trouble to the Qing Dynasty.

Aren’t you going to fight Jinzhou? No problem, Jinzhou is here to join in the fun.

Relatively speaking, if Emperor Chongzhen was in the capital, he would make a decision after learning the news and give feedback to Ning Jin faster than to pass the order to Lushun.

Then, he sent someone to issue an order to Chen Hongxu, the governor of Denglai, so that he could send the subsequent supplies to Lushun as soon as possible. After all, if Lushun wants to gain a foothold, it would not be possible without enough supplies.

In addition, the hidden warships of the Denglai Navy can also be dispatched. When it comes to Liaodong, it will be almost time for the navy to fight to the decisive battle. At that time, I will give the Qing Dynasty and the Korean navy a surprise.

After these things were done, Emperor Chongzhen temporarily put the war in Liaodong aside and began to formally implement salt administration reform strategies.

The salt administration of the Ming Dynasty can actually be said to be very failed.

The monopoly of salt is basically a fixed model. Since the fourteenth year of Jiajing, the price set has basically not changed. The officials of the Yandaoya never knew how much of their fiscal and tax revenue came from the salt courses and how much came from Yu Yanyin.

Salt Administration, speaking of the Minister of the Ministry of Revenue, is also six of them, all of them are the Minister of Revenue and eight Salt Courses. Each of them is the main salt production area, and each of them is the slightly smaller area. But in fact, each of the Salt Courses is actually under the jurisdiction of the local government, some are under the jurisdiction of the local prefect, some are under the jurisdiction of the governor, and some are even under the jurisdiction of the military generals, such as the Yankee Department of Lingzhou, Shanxi. Among them, there are also the Yankee Department of the Salt Courses.

At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, they would give food to the stove owners to concentrate on producing salt. But later, the food could not be distributed, so the stove owners were allowed to sell the excess salt to merchants with salt in exchange for food.

The Censor, there was corruption here, and there were people in the martial arts world. If they had the means, they controlled other stoves and became rich stoves. In addition to exploiting other stoves, they naturally inevitably embezzled the salt and silver that originally belonged to the court.

In addition, the stove owners and the inspected salt cubes also colluded with officials to sell salt privately, that is, private salt. This situation was very common, especially after the late Ming Dynasty. Some powerful salt merchants such as Le Qingsheng simply set up private salt teams and produced salt by themselves, and sold them as official salt at a low cost. Then, they would collude with the government to try to crack down on other people's salt as much as possible to ensure his monopoly.

Not only that, the price of salt per ton was about 3.345 taels of silver in the first period of the Ming Dynasty. However, in the late Ming Dynasty, the price of salt actually reached 56 taels per ton, up nearly twenty times. The reason for this was that the price of salt was determined by the government, not the market. Such a high salt price was burdened by the people, and during those periods when the grain prices were low, it accounted for a very large proportion of the family's expenses.

It can be seen from this that the salt in the Ming Dynasty was ridiculously high and it was unbearable for the people to bear; however, the court did not get most of the benefits, and most of these benefits were corrupted by the officials colluded with by the great salt merchants and the officials he colluded with.

Now, Emperor Chongzhen took advantage of the east wind of the Jiangnan salt merchant Le Qingtian Tonglu case and began to rectify the salt administration.

As for some people who understand the details of the Le Qingtian Tonglu case, they think that it was the emperor's intentional induction that such a thing happened, namely the so-called fishing law enforcement in later generations, Emperor Chongzhen thought this was a misunderstanding, and it was not at all.

Because in Huang Taiji's plan, he sent Wu Zhong to Jiangnan to find a business partner. Even if Emperor Chongzhen did not send Li Ruolian to go, in the end, the ones who could hook up with Wu Zhong in Jiangnan were either these big salt merchants or those smuggling merchants. Only they had the strength, ability and ambition to do business with Wu Zhong and the Qing Dynasty behind Wu Zhong.

In this matter, it is a bit unfortunate that the prince-consort who was entrusted with important tasks by Huang Taiji was actually a secret spy on the Ming Dynasty's Jinyiwei. Therefore, this matter was under the control of the court. This is different from the fact that a person who was originally a scheming person but was lured to commit crimes and arrested.

Of course, in this era, Emperor Chongzhen would not be ruthless to those big salt merchants. Just by watching them show off their wealth, they would know that these people were not dealt with! I didn’t see that disaster relief was needed everywhere in the Ming Dynasty, and how much money was needed!

Under the will of Emperor Chongzhen, Qiankun finally decided to reject all the reforms proposed by his ministers. Because he was really dissatisfied, he finally put forward his own reform strategies: the national salt administration was unified in management, and a new Salt Department yamen was established under the Ministry of Revenue, with the chief official rank of the Ministry of Revenue, with thirteen paths, each corresponding to a province. In the local area, a salt department was also set up, with the title unchanged, and the Salt Department was still in charge of the salt field.

The salt farm implements a contract system and uses an auction system. Those with higher prices will receive. Of course, there is a bottom price, which is estimated based on the salt tax collected in this area in previous years. In addition, sales will no longer be rigidly divided into regions. As long as you are not afraid of the high freight, you can sell it there casually! However, there is a condition that the price of salt has an official guide price. No matter what, the salt sold to the people cannot exceed this guide price.

The government's salt government office is mainly responsible for supervision and no longer participates in salt trading specifically, but the market decides the market itself. If salt merchants want to make more money, they must think of ways to produce more salt, think of ways to reduce the cost of salt, improve the quality of salt, and reduce the cost of selling salt. Only in this way can they be competitive.

At the same time, salt merchants themselves also need to crack down on private salt and exclude private salt, which is consistent with the interests of the court.

As long as salt merchants innovate the mass production technology of salt, innovate the refining level of salt, and reduce the selling price of salt to occupy the market, sooner or later, the court will not have to spend time and effort to crack down on private salt dealers, because they will be eliminated by the market and compete with these regular salt merchants. However, the people will get greater benefits than before. The salt price is cheaper and the quality of salt is better.

This salt management model can be said to be unheard of by people of this era, and immediately became a hot topic.

"You have heard that the emperor has issued an order to reform the salt administration and leave it all to the merchants!"

"What? Didn't the businessman make a lot of money? He went to grab them all, right?"

"Absolutely, everyone must buy salt. As long as there is salt, it will be money!"

"Yes, there will be no problem that salt cannot be exchanged for salt in the future. As long as you get the salt farm and pay the tax, no matter how much salt you produce, the court will ignore it!"

"Is it true? Then, those salt merchants will really make a big profit!"

“…”

In the Ming Dynasty, one of the biggest drawbacks of the salt administration in the past was that if ordinary merchants had received salt, they would not be able to exchange for salt after they had received salt. If they could exchange for salt in time, they would definitely make money. The people also knew this very well.

Therefore, when they knew that salt was produced by themselves and no longer could be replaced by salt, the more powerful merchants immediately caused a sensation. In fact, it was not only the merchants, including those rich civil servants and generals, royal relatives and nobles, who also looked for their agents and rushed to buy salt in the salt farm. Because anyone could see that this would never lose money.

Therefore, the Ministry of Revenue Salt Department took the lead in investigating the national annual salt tax data. After being reviewed and approved by Emperor Chongzhen, auctions began based on previous salt taxes.

You have to register at the Salt Department Office in advance and pay a deposit. The registration methods are diverse, and you don’t have to go there yourself. You can also register from the Salt Department held nationwide. The final auction will be auctioned in the capital.

Therefore, the auction time is a bit long because it takes a long time to wait for salt merchants who are interested in auctioning to gather in the capital.

Then there is a clear bidding auction, and there are also people from the Censorate, Dongchang and Jinyiwei to supervise it to prevent possible fraud.

The first salt field auction was the biggest grand occasion. Many businessmen with average strength were thinking about whether they could get a bargain and participate, and the result was imagined.

Although Emperor Chongzhen was not present, he secretly sent someone to bid. However, after the price met his expectations, he stopped bidding and let the merchants continue to bid up.

In the salt farm in Shandong, in previous years, Shandong's transfer of the Salt Envoy Department had transferred the salt management department of the Ministry of Revenue to transport the annual income of the salt management department, which was about 50,000 taels; however, through auctions, under fierce bidding competition, the final transaction price was 800,000 taels of silver, which was more than ten times more.

Each coastal province is an auction salt farm for auction, including seven provinces: Jingshi, Shandong, Nanjing, Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong and Guangxi; among them, the auction price of Guangxi salt farm is much lower than that of Shandong, but the auction price of Nanjing salt farm is much higher than that of Shandong;

There are also provinces in the mainland, some of which do not have salt farms, and they need to rely on surrounding salt farms to produce salt. For example, Shaanxi needs to rely on nearby provinces such as Shanxi and Sichuan to transport salt. Therefore, the auction of salt farms in these provinces is even more intense, and the final auction price also reaches an astonishing price.

For example, the Sichuan Salt Course Division had a yearly income of only 71,464 taels in the eighth year of Wanli, but after the auction, it received 800,000,57 million taels of silver. This was because the salt merchants considered that the mainland was not as low as the coastal areas, and the sales could not exceed the retail guide price set by the government, so they did not continue to bid. Otherwise, without the upper limit of the retail guide price stipulated by the court, the auction price would definitely be more than the mainland's population and sales areas.

The rushing auctions were held one after another. Although all the salt fields had not been auctioned off, all officials knew that the salt tax this year would reach an astonishing level.

Take the seventh year of Wanli as an example. The national salt tax revenue for one year was only 1.29224 taels of silver, of which 300,000 taels were not connected to the Ministry of Revenue, but was used for local defense. Of course, the annual salt tax revenue was different, but the highest was not higher than 2 million taels;

However, before the auction was completed, the court had already received more than 5 million taels of silver. For this income, whether it was the Ministry of Revenue or other officials, they could not help but admire Emperor Chongzhen's innovative strategy. This was simply a fortune-telling boy, turning salt into a real treasure pot!

Of course, Emperor Chongzhen's salt administration reform system will eventually fall on the richest and most powerful merchants in the Ming Dynasty. But so what? As long as they can pay the tax, the salt price that ordinary people buy is lower than before when they are retailed, that's enough! At least for now, that's fine!

This reform of the salt administration system has also brought about another development.

For this auction, rich people from all over the Ming Dynasty had to move out the silver buried in the cellar and deposit it into branches of the Royal Bank of Ming Dynasty in various provinces, get a certificate of deposit, and then go to the capital and exchange it for auction. Otherwise, just shipping the silver to the capital would probably make these merchants stop and the auction would not be so high.

Of course, not only the winning bidders would do this, but all merchants who wanted to auction had to do this. As a result, a large part of the silver that was originally not involved in circulation in the Ming Dynasty began to flow into the market and participated in circulation with this salt administration reform.

Of course, after the bidding, some of the silver will be extracted, whether it is won or not, and will continue to be hidden in the cellar. However, at least a large part of them will be left behind when they feel the silver bills are good.
Chapter completed!