Jia She looked around the crowd with a smile on his face, and frequently raised his hands to express his gratitude, becoming more and more humble.
In his heart, he was very proud of this situation. In Yangzhou City, only he understood how much power these merchants wielded. He felt a little guilty again. After all, he is from the Song Dynasty. At least, he was a Song Dynasty person half a year ago. On the contrary, no matter how boastful the smugglers in front of them were, smuggling itself was always digging into the finances of the Song Dynasty.
In the Sizhou Forgery Market in Huainan, the commercial tax in previous years was around 40,000 to 50,000 guan. This year, due to the fighting on Nanjing Road, it dropped sharply to more than 13,000 guan. But in fact, in Chuzhou, just east of Sizhou, the value of the grain smuggled out every year alone exceeds one million yuan. Not to mention that the export of grain is prohibited by the imperial court, but based on the average tax revenue in the market, the amount of tax evaded here is a hundred thousand dollars.
Jia She estimated that the total amount of goods smuggled out of Chuzhou was only 10% of that smuggled by sea. Extrapolating from this, how much tax is evaded by maritime smuggling? That's hundreds of thousands of strings, millions of strings or even larger numbers!
The annual income of the Song Dynasty's shipping companies in Guangzhou, Fuzhou, and Qingyuan Prefecture, which many people regarded as a source of wealth, was only two million dollars in total.
Continuing to extrapolate, it can be seen that the trade volume between the North and the South is now nearly half of the Song Dynasty's trade volume with the countries in the South China Sea. This is an unprecedented and explosive expansion.
However, the Song Dynasty was always the richest country in the world, and the imperial court was used to spending too much money from top to bottom. There were too many silkworms clinging to the tree in the imperial court of the Song Dynasty, which took away countless nutrients. Therefore, even if the Song Dynasty's annual income totaled no less than 20 million yuan, it still could not make ends meet. Even if there is no smuggling, everything is an open business. The shipping company's income will normally increase by one million yuan, but it will just stop the boiling water.
This is why the Lin'an court tolerated smuggling and why many officials happily intervened.
For the officials of the Song Dynasty, it was better than nothing if this piece of property fell into the hands of the imperial court. If it fell into their own hands, it would bring them wealth for generations. There is no need to hesitate in choosing.
Since officials generally thought so, the various unsightly scenes during this period naturally fell into the eyes of the prime minister.
But Shi Xiang never tried to stop it.
During the establishment of the Shanghai Bank, Jia She was deeply involved and was the main framer of many regulations. While he was busy making preparations, he also understood Shi Xiang's intentions.
This is all because in the eyes of the Prime Minister, this huge financial source was first and foremost a tool for him to use to distribute rewards and win over many of his own party members.
In recent years, Prime Minister Shi's sphere of influence has become wider and wider, and more and more officials are attached to him. To feed this group of greedy dogs, Prime Minister Shi has actually been looking forward to this source of wealth for a long time.
On the other hand, as the prime minister of the Song Dynasty, Shi Xiang naturally had a strategic vision.
According to Shi Xiang, the Song Dynasty was smuggling, and the Jin Dynasty in the north was also smuggling, paying for extremely precious war horses, ginseng, medicinal materials and other materials.
Both sides used equal efforts to poach corners. The prosperity of the Song Dynasty was definitely more sustainable than any other political power in the north. Moreover, the Song Dynasty also gained the benefit of stabilizing the currency value of Huizi, which was even better than that in the north.
Shi Xiang may have also felt that allowing those Dinghai soldiers and bandits who had risen out of the wilderness to enjoy wealth through smuggling and sea trade would help dispel their drive to plunder southward.
However, Shi Xiang was wrong.
During political disputes, the prime minister often used bribes from wealthy people, but after all, he was a scholar who came from a wealthy family. He has never done business, has never suffered hardship, has never been in contact with the common people and officials at the bottom, has not experienced the tempering of the frontier, and has no understanding of the operation principles of many things under the water.
In the north, Dajin itself was an empty puppet. Ding Haijun directly dominated trade in an official capacity and distributed the proceeds from trade directly within the military government.
This newly emerged regime has always been based on force deterrence, and the trade system is just a tool to inject blood to the army.
And because the vast majority of people within the regime hope that they can follow Zhou Guogong Guo Ning, take a further step in politics, and even grant him the title of wife and son.
So so far, most people are working together. Guo Ning can ensure a monolithic internal situation. Occasionally, his own family members will be punished for corruption and profit sharing.
In the past two years of trade, Ding Haiyang did not collect taxes, so it did not lose any tax revenue at all. However, most of the profits from trade were used to supplement various aspects of the regime that urgently needed money, especially the expansion of the army, which benefited greatly from this.
In the south, the Song Dynasty faced exactly the opposite situation.
Trade requires people to do it. While obtaining huge amounts of materials and benefits, maintaining trade routes, establishing transportation channels, opening up many nodes, and distributing huge benefits all require people to handle it. It requires manpower, material resources, financial resources, and power. Keep investing.
With two years of investment, some things were built and some were quickly destroyed within the territory of the Song Dynasty.
What was established was a community of interests along each trade route, and what was destroyed was the original legal system and government management capabilities of the Song Dynasty outside the community.
According to the laws of the Song Dynasty, smuggling goods worth more than ten guan was punishable by death. Officials who shielded smugglers were exiled to Qiongzhou and never returned. As for the soldiers and civilians along the border, every ten households will be protected, one household will be smuggled, and ten households will sit together. If anyone can be reported and exposed, the reward will be from fifty to three thousand guan.
During the Chunxi period, the Song Dynasty court cracked down on illegal smuggling, and many people were killed. Yanhan in Chizhou was used as the main execution ground, and Huangzhou as the small execution ground.
But such a thing is now impossible to do in Huainan.
Jia She didn't know the situation at sea. But throughout Huainan, the army became the escort of the smuggling teams, and officials were supported by the smuggling teams. The merchants who led the smuggling were getting stronger and stronger, and they began to vaguely compete with the protective umbrella behind them, and even vaguely regarded Ding Haijun as a new protective umbrella.
On the contrary, the various government agencies in Huainan, which should have strictly banned smuggling, initially benefited from the merchants, and because of Jia She's dealings, they turned their backs on them and closed their eyes. Now they have discovered that the merchants themselves have become too big to lose, and they have become the government's indispensable A behemoth to look at.
Don't talk about anything else, just talk about Xie Guoming in front of Jia She. This gentleman claims to spend millions of dollars to participate in the stock market. Of course, he is just bragging and intends to make a big splash. This kind of businessman's ability to make money cannot surpass Jia She himself, who is very clever.
Jia She estimated that Xie Guoming's private property was about half of my Jia's, which was 200,000 guan. Counting the gold beads obtained during smuggling and buried under the bed, there were still 20,000 guan.
In the early years, a businessman with such a net worth was at best a fattened pig. The powerful officials here in Huainan could wipe out all their wealth with just a flick of their fingers.
But now, the situation is different from the early years. The key is not the money itself, but that Xie Guoming has traveled to the North many times to do business. He has made such a huge fortune in just two years, so he naturally has the power at his disposal.
As far as Jia She knew, Xie Guoming had six ships, 300 sailors, and 300 strong civilians, all of whom could serve as guards in emergencies. He has his own warehouses and hotels in Yangzhou, Gaoyou, Baoying, and Chuzhou, and there are another 500 people working for him every day.
At this moment, there were twenty-three smugglers gathering respectfully in front of Jia She. The wealth of each of them is no less than that of Xie Guoming, and the power they control is generally the same. The number of strong men is generally more than a thousand, or even more than two thousand, and they have bows, swords and armor at home.
Such a group of people were basically out of the spotlight in the early years, and they were likely to be beheaded by the government at any time. At the beginning of the prosperity of north-south trade, they had to kowtow along the road in order to open up a trade route.
But after two years, their money bags were bulging, their confidence was strong, and their courage became stronger. Even without Zhou Guogong's call to establish a trading company, these more than 20 smugglers controlled more than 30,000 strong men, many of whom were cunning and unruly people. With this power, they can succeed or fail, and they can fail more than enough.
Such a group had been busy with their own business before and would not stand out easily. However, they all relied on Jia She's long-sleeved skills and relied on him to open up all the joints, so they had special respect for him.
But this time Ding Haijun came forward, and together with the senior officials of Lin'an, he proposed to form a trading house to cover land trade between the north and the south...
The huge benefits contained in this immediately made everyone's heart beat faster, their blood boil, and even their beards were on edge.
The loyalty of smugglers is probably one of the biggest jokes in the world. Here in the Southern Dynasties, the people are not like the victims of the Shandong disaster. They can't survive at all. If they don't have little morality in their hearts, who would take the risk of violating national laws to do this?
But once they became big, they benefited from such illegal and disciplinary behavior, and they became the most loyal. It’s just that their loyalty is not to a certain person, but to real money!
Those who can give them real money can drive them and control them. And the power of these people will be gathered in one place, and the influence of local officials on them will be completely abandoned. If further guidance is given, there will be a second government office in Huainan that takes over the government offices in various places!
In Jia She's luxurious garden, dozens of people were all happy. Thinking of the beautiful scene in the future, thinking of money flowing like a river, everyone was breathing quickly. Looking at Jia She was like looking at his biological brother, and they wanted to shed blood on the spot. For alliance.
However, the Song Dynasty court would not sit back and watch the situation worsen and be completely helpless.
Outside Jia She's mansion, in the small courtyard across the street, there were people squinting and counting the number of carriages and horses waiting outside the door. After a while, a cold light flashed in the man's eyes, and he said bitterly: "A bunch of moths!"
