I will never be Renzong

Chapter 47 Tea

A cold snap is like the little daughter-in-law who went back to her natal home, walking away with tears of reluctance.

The imperial court has been discussing two things for a while, one is the breach of the Yellow River in the Huazhou area, and the other is the tea management system.

The problem of the Yellow River cannot be solved overnight, so there are only two solutions at present, that is, blocking and dredging.

It is more about the discussion of the tea system.

Prior to this, under the Song Dynasty’s tea management system, only Sichuan, Shaanxi, and Guangnan were freely traded by the people but prohibited from leaving the country. That is to say, locally produced tea can only be sold locally and cannot be sold elsewhere. If so, it is smuggling and subject to lawsuits.

The rest of the areas are monopolized by the state. The imperial court set up mountain farms in the six states of Huainan, and set up envoys to manage them. There are [-] mountain farms. The people who grow tea and pick tea in the six states belong to the tea farms, called garden households. The amount of tea produced is stipulated to pay tax every year, and the rest of the tea is purchased by the government.

All farmers who sell tea to the government first use the money from the court to plant tea, and then pay the tea, which is called capital.In addition, the people who pay other taxes every year are willing to use tea to convert it, which is called tax discount money.

The imperial court taxed more than 860 million to [-] catties of tea every year, and the common people had to go to the mountain farms to sell tea.

Ten prefectures including Xuanzhou and Jiangzhou in the south of the Yangtze River, five armies including Guangde Army and Ande Army, twelve prefectures including Hangzhou and Suzhou in Zhejiang and Zhejiang, seven prefectures including Jianglingfu and Tanzhou in Jinghu, plus two prefectures in Fujian .

Tea farmers in the above areas go to the mountain farms every year to sell rent and discount taxes, and the rest of the tea is purchased by the government.

A total of 27 million catties of tea are produced in Jiangnan, 120 million catties in Zhejiang, 240 million catties in Jinghu, and 39 catties in Fujian.

After Shanchang purchased these tea farms, they were transferred to six places in important transportation places, such as Jianglingfu and Zhenzhou. These six places are called "discussion offices".

Ordinary people need tea to drink or entertain guests, they have to buy it from the government. Tea is called food tea in daily reference, and if they take it out of the country, they have to be issued by the government.

If a businessman intends to do tea business, he needs to pay coins or Jinxin silk to the Jingshi Warehouse to buy tea from a certain place in Liuwu Shisanchang, and then the official will give the tea lead, and the merchant will take the goods with the help of tea and transport them to the northwest Or profit from selling outside the Great Wall.

During the Jingde period, the income of court tea reached more than 360 million.

However, since the number of troops stationed on the northwest border increased, there was insufficient food and wages, so merchants were recruited to transport grain and grass to the border, calculate the distance of the distance, increase the price, give tea, and use tea to repay. Later, spices and ivory from the southeast were added as a means of compensation.

The border areas lacked supplies and were not allowed to raise food prices. Merchants were seeking profits. After hearing that they were profitable, they rushed to go there.

The practice of exchanging grain for tea was canceled only after the Song and Liao dynasties reconciled with strikes and prices fell.

However, the prices that have been raised by cross quotations have not changed. The exaggerated prices are increasing day by day, the price of tea is getting lower and lower, and the payment of real money, gold, silver and silk is decreasing day by day, and those who are included in the frontier grain and grass are not merchants, but many are local people on the frontier.

These people do not understand the size of the tea profit, and they trade grain for tea just to make money, and resell the tea to tea merchants or cross-yin shops when they get it. Our demand has not increased. In terms of the law of market value, that is, supply exceeds demand, and the goods are too much to be worthless.

So the result can be imagined, very few profited from it.

Tea dealers buy tea tea in order to sell the tea elsewhere to make a profit, while Jiaoyin shop buys tea tea and waits for it to be sold when the price is high, which is somewhat similar to the current futures speculation.

There is a backlog of tea, and even two or three years of tea is not enough for exchange. In today's terms, the issuance of paper money is too large, and the treasury has no equivalent gold and silver reserves at all.

As for the merchants who transported grain to the border, they saw that there was no profit to be made, so naturally they stopped transporting grain to the border. Therefore, the border became more and more withered, and the tea method deteriorated.

During the reign of Jingde, Ding Wei served as the third envoy. He once made a detailed statistics. In one year, only 60 million guan was spent on buying grain in the border area, while the tea imports worth 360 million guan in the southeast were all owned by wealthy merchants. After this calculation, The imperial court has really lost money to grandma's family!
Although the imperial court modified it several times to remedy it, it could not eliminate the disadvantages.

In the first year of Tiansheng, the Empress Dowager Liu E ordered the establishment of the Department of Planning and Planning, and appointed Zhang Shixun, the deputy envoy of the Privy Council, Lu Yijian, and Lu Zongdao to take charge.

Inside the Chongming Hall, after a few days of discussions.

Lu Yi briefly said: "Officials! Queen Mother! Thirteen fields of tea production, tax 50 guan every year, but only 23 guan in the fifth year of Tianxi, each tea is worth 13, but the selling price is only 9. There are [-] guan, excluding more than [-] guan as the capital, the annual interest is only more than [-] guan, and the salaries of the officials in charge of tea are not included, so it can be seen that although there is a lot of money on the surface, the actual profit is very little!"

Seeing this, Liu said just now: "The tea tax is an extremely important source of taxation for our dynasty. It must not be corrupted because of it. Let it go unchecked. I wonder if the ministers have a countermeasure?"

Lu Zongdao said: "Reporting to the Queen Mother, the two ministers have considered the matter together and think that the three statements should be canceled and replaced by sticking and shooting."

Zhao Zhen was confused, and asked, "Dare to ask the Qing family what is the sticking method?"

Lu Zongdao replied: "The so-called sticking method is to calculate the profits of thirteen tea productions together, the government stops providing capital, and allows tea merchants to trade directly with the farmers of the same tea garden, and all kinds of tea are given a medium price. , and the government receives interest from it.”

When Lu Zongdao saw that Zhao Zhen was still frowning, he added: "For example, tea from Shuzhou sells for 56 yuan per catty, and its cost is 25 yuan. The government no longer supplies it, and only asks the merchants to pay 31 yuan in interest." That’s all, but the merchant must deliver the purchased tea to the official, and the official will pay it to the merchant according to the state and county he refers to, and issue securities as proof to prevent private sales, so it is called a stick!"

Zhang Shixun added: "If the thirteen tea sales every year are not enough, the official will still purchase it. If the tenant fails to pay the tea tax after the expiration date, he will need to pay interest. The old payment is 35 catties, and an additional [-] catties will be added. [-] kilograms, called tea consumption, is also abolished!"

It was only at this time that Zhao Zhen understood that the purpose of the new law was to enable both tea transactions and border purchases of grain to be cashed out in real money, and not to prioritize each other, so as to put an end to the ills of false prices.

"If the new law is implemented, how much will the imperial court earn from tea tax every year, excluding all expenses?"

In Zhao Zhen's eyes, true knowledge comes from practice, and the final income from the tea tax is the most important thing.

Firework Ruosang: Please collect and recommend investment monthly pass!

Thanks for the reward of the innocent cabbage bird,

Thanks to Zhao Yun in Changshan for the reward,
Thank you for your monthly tickets and recommended tickets.

Life has been a bit turbulent recently, so the update is very unstable. Now it has been resolved. I moved to a house in the county to live alone. After the network cable has been pulled up in the past two days, I will try my best to do [-] updates every day, so everyone can rest assured to invest and collect!
Here I would like to thank the brothers and sisters in the five groups. They generously donated money and helped me when I was at the worst time in my life.

(End of this chapter)