What was Zhao Jun doing when there was a huge uproar in the court?
He was chopping people.
Marriage is a big happy event, and Zhao Zhen gave him a vacation, actually just to let him have a good rest.
Jiangsu and Zhejiang are very beautiful and prosperous. In addition, Zhao Jun was planning to inspect the trade with Japan. He attached great importance to the large influx of silver from Japan, so he took the opportunity to visit Jiangsu and Zhejiang during his honeymoon.
Unexpectedly, the trade volume with Japan was booming and was on the right track. Soon, Japanese silver would flow into the Song Dynasty like crazy.
However, Liu Yong, the salt supervisor of Dinghai, reported something to him, telling him that someone was secretly targeting Haiyan and nationalizing the industry, which had been improving and making the salt workers' lives a little better, but it returned to the previous dark rule.
This instantly destroyed Zhao Jun's happy mood.
In the past, the government controlled salt and iron, and private salt merchants could only obtain goods through salt permits, while officials could send people to do business. In this way, it was difficult for private merchants to compete with official merchants for jobs, thus allowing official merchants to dominate the market.
Now that the imperial court did not allow officials and merchants to set the price of salt, nor did it allow them to interfere in the sale of salt, private merchants flourished.
But they also wanted to be exploiters and squeeze the salt farmers, so they began to collude with officials and businessmen.
Simply put, officials used to oppress the salt farmers, but the imperial court did not allow them to do so anymore, so they colluded with merchants and oppressed the salt farmers together.
How can this be?
Zhao Jun did not get angry at the time, but secretly sent people to investigate. He asked the Imperial City Office in Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions to disguise themselves as salt farmers and infiltrate the problematic salt fields to investigate and collect evidence.
They saw with their own eyes that under the price pressure of local officials and private merchants, many salt farmers could sell salt for seven or eight cents per catty before, but now the price has dropped to three or four cents.
Although it has not yet reached the dark stage of the previous government-run period where the price was only one or two coins per pound, it is obviously not far from that point.
After several months of investigation and evidence collection, the Imperial City Bureau handed over a lot of evidence of their crimes to Zhao Jun. When Zhao Jun saw the evidence and the people involved, he became furious and immediately sent the guards to arrest people.
By October, a major earthquake suddenly occurred in the officialdom of Jiangzhe Road.
In fact, there were not many officials involved in the case, only three county magistrates, one was Liu Jinxi, the salt tax supervisor of Shayao, one was Zhang Zai, the salt tax supervisor of Minghe, and one was Wen Zhaocai, the salt tax supervisor of Zhang'an.
Like Liu Yong, these people were salt inspectors of the local salt fields, on the same level as county magistrates, with at most a few deputies and dozens of subordinate officials.
Among the three prefectures involved in the case, only one senior official was implicated, a sixth-rank official in charge of salt supervision in Taizhou.
It can be said that it is not a big case at all.
But what Zhao Jun could not tolerate was that the state-owned enterprise reform had only been going on for a short time, and the salt farmers had only had a few days of good life, but it was back to the old ways again.
The good times were over before they even began.
Therefore, he severely criticized this situation at a meeting of various supervisors and prefectures in Jiangsu and Zhejiang Provinces, and fined the current Jiangsu and Zhejiang Province Transport Commissioner, Shipping Commissioner, Criminal Justice Commissioner, Grain and Balance Commissioner, and Censorate.
The direct superiors of the three officials in the salt system, as well as their superiors, were all demoted to varying degrees.
Other officials who failed to provide adequate supervision were also reprimanded.
It can be said that at the meeting of the Transport Commissioner's Office, where more than 20 to 30 high-ranking officials from the Jiangsu and Zhejiang Provinces were being reprimanded, any dog that passed by would be scolded by Zhao Jun, who would slam the table.
Officials dared to be angry but not to speak out.
It’s no use criticizing Fan Zhongyan. At most, Fan Zhongyan led troops to kill the Xixia and Liao people.
But if anyone dares to confront Zhao Jun, I will make sure to check everything about him. If he is found to be a corrupt official, he will be beheaded.
Even if you are an honest official, do not commit corruption or break the law, and have not done anything bad, people will still find ways to deal with you.
The fact that I exiled you to Qiongzhou to be the governor is enough to make you suffer.
Officials have protested before.
The emperor supports it, and all the prime ministers in the Constitution Council support it. What can they do to Zhao Jun?
He really chopped people down.
So in the face of Zhao Jun's angry rebuke, they could only listen.
"Damn it, you fat, big-eared bastards, you're clearly dishonest just by looking at your face. The imperial court gave you the power to trade salt, letting you take advantage of this opportunity to make money, and this is how you repay the court?"
After scolding the officials, Zhao Jun interrogated many salt merchants who had committed crimes in the yamen. They were all wearing shackles and looked ashen, and they felt that their lives would not last long.
How they wished that they would not fall into Zhao Jun's hands, or even fall into the hands of the Chief of the Criminal Court of Jiangzhe Road.
"It is time for new policies and reforms. Severe punishments should be applied. Collusion between officials and businessmen, bullying and monopolizing the market, will be punished without fail and their property will be confiscated. At this critical juncture, you still dare to commit crimes against the wind and fall into our hands. You truly don't know how to live or die!"
Zhao Jun waved his hand, and in an instant, there was a continuous sound of wailing and groaning from below. Some people knelt on the ground begging for mercy, some collapsed all over, some were speechless, and some even cursed knowing that they were going to die.
But soon Zhao Jun could no longer hear him. The soldiers dragged the man out of the city of Hangzhou, summoned many civilians, told him the charges, and beheaded him on the spot.
For a time, the people applauded and many officials felt sympathetic, and order was quickly restored in the salt fields of Jiangsu and Zhejiang.
The people naturally hope to always buy cheap and affordable salt. These unscrupulous merchants not only collude with the government to buy salt from salt farmers at low prices, but also drive up the market price and raise the price of salt. The people hate them to the core.
As soon as Zhao Jun arrived, he killed corrupt officials and unscrupulous businessmen, which made the people grateful to him.
In addition to the reputation that Zhao Jun had accumulated during his previous tours of the country, it can be said that the people in the Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions only heard of the Zhiyuan, and not the four supervisory offices such as the Transport Commissioner, the Shipping Commissioner, the Judicial Commissioner, and the Grain and Balance Commissioner.
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