Zhao Jun had only heard his professional course teacher give a rough talk on the tea making techniques of the Song Dynasty before, but it was not until now that he understood the specific details.
It turned out that since the Song Dynasty, military expenditures had become increasingly huge. The problem of border army pay was relatively easy to solve, but the problem of food and fodder was difficult. Food had to be transported to the border, and civilians had to be conscripted for labor, which resulted in excessive waste.
In order to solve these problems, the imperial court introduced the Jiaoyin Law.
The so-called Jiaoyin method is to ask merchants to help transport grain to the border, and then give them certain policy preferences. The tea law is currently being implemented.
Although tea has been consumed in my country for a long time, it was initially just a pastime for aristocrats and landlords and was not yet popular among the people.
It was not until the Tang Dynasty that tea drinking became a common social custom, and tea making and tea trade began to develop.
After the middle of the Tang Dynasty, tea was considered an object of taxation, and a monopoly system was soon established.
Tea, salt, iron, wine, etc. became one of the important sources of income for the imperial court's monopoly.
By the Song Dynasty, tea had become a necessity for the people, just like rice and salt, and they could not live without it for a day.
The Song government continued the methods of its predecessor and implemented a government-run monopoly system on tea, with profits from tea becoming the main source of income for the Song government.
Before Li Zi reformed the tea monopoly system in the Northern Song Dynasty, the tea law implemented by the Song government was mainly the "Ruzhong Law".
In the second year of Yongxi, due to foreign military operations, the northern border was short of food and grass, so merchants were allowed to transport food and grass to various border areas.
After receiving the grain and fodder, the border areas calculated the price according to the local market price and the distance the merchant had to travel, with certain discounts, and then issued a receipt to the merchant called "Jiaoyin", which is also the origin of Jiaozi.
Merchants would go to the capital with a delivery permit to collect payment, or after obtaining a delivery permit from the capital's cargo office, they would go to Jiezhou or Jianghuai to collect tea. This was called "entering the central government."
Later, incense and alum were added to the goods included in the compensation, so compensation became the most common form of monopoly system in the Song Dynasty. This method was beneficial to the national finances of the Northern Song Dynasty.
Although this method is better, there is a problem with pricing.
The Song Dynasty court used this method to solve the cost of collecting and transporting grain and fodder.
However, merchants also have to spend money to transport grain to the border. From the perspective of the government, because they are eager to raise grain and fodder for the border, they must offer high prices to encourage merchants to enter the country, and they must give merchants certain preferential policies.
For example, this time the cost for the merchants to transport grain was 800,000 strings of cash. In order to increase the enthusiasm of the merchants to transport grain, the imperial court estimated the cost of the 800,000 strings of cash to be 1.5 million strings of cash, so that the merchants could make more money.
Although it was reasonable for merchants to make money, it was still unbearable for the imperial court to increase the amount of 800,000 strings of cash to 1.5 million strings of cash, and it became one of the extra expenses.
In fact, this part of the expenditure was not that high at the beginning. According to the previous policy, if we make a real estimate, 800,000 will become 1 million or 1.2 million at most.
However, as the war intensified, food was in short supply on the border, and the purchase on credit system in China was based on remote settlement and deferred payment, making the operation extremely complicated.
From delivery to cash withdrawal, the distance is far, the time is long, the delivery and transfer procedures are complicated, and the transportation costs are high. Compared with cash transactions, the capital turnover is slow and the transaction costs are high, resulting in higher and higher payment prices.
Because in order to obtain enough food and fodder to enter the country, the purchasing agencies of the Song government had to give more coupons and inflate the prices.
The more exchange notes are issued, the less able the settlement institutions will be to cash them out in a timely manner, which will inevitably lead to a decrease in the face value of the exchange notes and a return to their actual value, ultimately dampening the enthusiasm of investors.
Once the reduction in imports affected military supplies, the purchasing agencies had no choice but to further inflate the prices. Furthermore, the unreasonable prices caused the various offices to pay more for tea.
Most of the merchants entering China colluded with officials in border areas, deliberately overestimating the value of goods entering China and making profits from it.
This kind of false valuation caused the Song government to suffer serious losses.
Simply put, the original cost of 800,000 was actually estimated to be at most 1 million.
However, merchants colluded with border inspection officials to raise the value of goods, raising the cost of 800,000 to 1.5 million, greatly increasing the expenditure costs of the Song Dynasty court.
Li Zi's method of getting cash is to transport a large amount of cash from the national treasury to the border. You transport the goods on the spot and I pay the cash on the spot, thus avoiding the shortcomings of slow capital turnover and high transaction costs.
However, for corrupt officials and big tea merchants, this method reduced their profit margins and they naturally opposed it.
For high-level officials such as the Three Commissioners, they do not necessarily get involved in the corruption. After all, their salaries are very high, and there is no need to take such a big risk to engage in corruption.
It can be seen that the money system requires a large amount of cash from the national treasury to be transported to the border, which will empty the national treasury in a short period of time and leave the court with no money.
The result was that the tea merchants and corrupt officials below formed an opposition force, and the court ministers above formed another opposition force. They combined to attack Li Zi's reformers, which eventually led to Li Zi's demotion and the failure of the Qianfa reform.
This year, seeing that Li Yuanhao's rebellion momentum was getting stronger and stronger, a war was about to break out on the border. Once the war started, the national treasury would consume countless amounts of money. In order to save this part of the inflated expenditure, Zhao Zhen wanted to introduce the method of diplomatic invitation.
After all, the Jiaoyin method is really good. It can save the court more than one million strings of money every year. For the government expenditure, this is already a considerable expense.
But the problem remains.
The reintroduction of the cash payment system was opposed by the big tea merchants and corrupt officials at the lower levels, as well as the court ministers who were in charge of the purse strings at the upper levels.
Li Zi was also disheartened by his last demotion and had always wanted to resign. Seeing that the money law was about to fail before it even started, Zhao Zhen and others were extremely anxious.
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