The sky was dark, after all the officials left the palace,
As soon as he returned to the study, Zhao Jun asked Wang Huai'en to bring him the financial statements of the tea-horse trade.
After carefully reading the financial statements under the candlelight, Zhao Jun was shocked and moved!
He had only heard about it before, but had never understood the details about the tea-horse trade. But after listening to Fan Zheng's report today, he suddenly realized this and made some guesses.
Now when I look at the financial statements, it is exactly what I guessed!
The profits from this tea-horse trade are really astonishing!
It was so big that he couldn't believe it!
Some people may say, how big can it be? How big is the arms trade?
At most, it’s just a few times the profit.
This is what most people guessed about the profit margins of the trade after reading about the staggering profits from border smuggling of tea horses in history books, and Zhao Jun was originally one of them.
But when Yunzhou County actually got involved, he realized just how huge the trade profits were!
Let’s take food as an example.
In the Song Dynasty, the price of food was usually around ten cents.
Three kilograms of the most common tea can be exchanged for one hundred and twenty kilograms of rice, which is one thousand two hundred and three kilograms.
A pound of regular tea costs four hundred cents.
Tea bricks are made from the lowest quality tea residues, which are the residues left over from making ordinary tea. The price of tea bricks is much cheaper than ordinary tea, at 100 yuan per catty.
But this tea will not be sold even at roadside tea shops, for fear of ruining the signboard.
but!
Attention but!
If tea bricks of this quality are transported to the grassland, they will be deeply loved by herdsmen!
How much do you like it?
Drink it every day, every meal!
Due to the eating habits of the herdsmen, eating a large amount of meat will cause abdominal distension and pain. The pain will go away in a mild case, but in severe cases, it will be life-threatening.
They didn't know why, but they found that drinking tea helped relieve the pain and made them no longer have abdominal pain.
What they don't know is that this is because their bodies can't stand the greasy meat they eat all year round. Tea can dissolve fat and supplement some vitamins that they can't get because they don't eat vegetables.
Although they don't know this, they know that it is a good thing, so whenever they have the opportunity, they will be willing to pay a huge price to obtain tea, even if it is just tea bricks made of tea residues that even roadside stalls in the Central Plains do not want.
And for this they are willing to pay a hundred catties of tea bricks in exchange for a war horse!
And if a war horse is transported back to the Central Plains, it can be exchanged for a full thousand taels of silver!
One thousand taels!
What is this concept?
If you buy this food, you can buy a hundred thousand catties of food.
But the merchants only paid ten kilograms of tea bricks on the grassland. How much silver did they spend on buying these tea bricks in the pass?
The answer is ten thousand yuan, which is only ten taels of silver!
How much food can be exchanged for ten taels of silver?
The answer is one thousand pounds!
How much food can one thousand taels be exchanged for?
One hundred thousand catties!
One hundred catties of tea bricks were used to buy the horse, which was equivalent to one thousand catties of grain.
One thousand catties of grain turned into one hundred thousand catties!
A hundred times the profit!
A hundred times the profit!
Marx once said that capitalists will be bold once they have appropriate profit capital. If there is 10% profit, it is guaranteed to be used everywhere.
With 20% profit, it becomes active.
With 50% profit, it takes desperate risks.
For the sake of 100% profit, it dares to trample all human laws.
If it had a profit of 300%, it would dare to commit any crime and even risk hanging!
What if it's 10,000 percent?
Zhao Jun was horrified and suddenly understood why those Shanxi and Shanxi merchants in the previous Ming Dynasty dared to do anything.
What they do with foreign countries is not just tea and horse trade, more other trade means more profits.
The astonishing profits are terrifying!
It is enough to give them unlimited courage to do anything, even to betray the country!
"Wang Banban!"
Zhao Jun's voice was trembling!
Wang Huaien, who had been waiting on the side, hurriedly said: "Your Majesty!"
After taking several deep breaths, Zhao Jun calmed down.
"Inform the secret guards to closely monitor all caravans in Yunzhou County. If anyone dares to conduct any trade with Tatars without the permission of the Yunzhou County Governor's Yamen!
After the revenge investigation, kill!
Kill them all!
Leave no one behind! "
"My lord, what are you doing?"
Wang Huai'en was puzzled and didn't understand how the prince could suddenly become so murderous.
Zhao Jun shook his head and said, "Wang Banban, do you know how profitable border trade is?"
Wang Huaien shook his head honestly.
Zhao Jun said coldly:
"A hundred times! Not one time! Not ten times! But a hundred times!
If those businessmen are allowed to taste the sweetness, then they will do anything for the sake of a hundred times the profit!
It’s not impossible to even shake off everything in my Yunzhou County! "
Wang Huaien was also shocked by such a high profit!
Thinking about the virtues of those businessmen, he had to admit that his prince was right.
In the eyes of those businessmen, except for a few exceptions, most of them have no distinction between countries. They only have interests in their eyes. As long as the interests are enough, there is nothing they dare not do!
He immediately agreed: "I understand, slave!"
Zhao Jun nodded, and then said: "After the war horses are exchanged, the trading activities of Yunzhou County can be suspended, and the Feiyun Chamber of Commerce will take over the entire business!
We don't exchange war horses, we can exchange them for ordinary horses and cattle and sheep. Although there is a shortage of supplies on the grassland, there are still many things that our Yunzhou County lacks.
Nowadays, the three counties of Shendu are planting grain on a large scale, and there is an urgent shortage of cattle. We can arrange for people from the Chamber of Commerce to make a deal with those tribes, and let them help us raise cattle. We can exchange salt, tea and wine with them.
It is not impossible to use grain when necessary, but a little iron is absolutely impossible!
Not a pound of iron is allowed to be traded with these Tatar tribes, do you understand? "
Wang Huaien nodded to express his understanding and quickly went to inform him.
After Wang Huaien left, Zhao Jun sat alone in the study and looked up at a map on the wall. This was a map of the surrounding forces in Yunzhou County.
It has the most detailed information on the distribution of forces around Yunzhou County. This map will be updated every once in a while, and the updates are new maps after the secret guards have detected changes in various forces, so that Zhao Jun can always understand Changes in surrounding forces.
On this map now, on the Tatar grassland, it is shown that a large number of Tatars are converging from different directions on the Tatar grassland towards the southern grassland.
They are gathering for the autumn offensive. There is really not much time left for Yunzhou County!
…
(End of chapter)
