Volume 2: Soaring! The Overlord of the Region Chapter 194 The World Becomes Transparent Again (Part 3)
Nanjing, a row of houses outside Nanhua Palace, with a sign of "Duzhiting" hanging on the gate outside the courtyard. This is the daily office area of Cao Sanxi, Zhu Youdong's chief financial officer.
The situation of Cao Daguanshi is also very impressive. He has more than 100 financial personnel under his direct management. This is the scale after the Daguanshi has always hated all kinds of unnecessary expenses and has repeatedly reduced labor costs.
On weekdays, this place is very busy and noisy. The sound of abacus banging can often be heard deep in the Nanhua Palace, and the scene of heavy candlelight at night is not uncommon. But on May 20th, the entire Duzhi Hall was extremely quiet. All the staff temporarily stopped their work and looked at the innermost room of the entire Duzhi Hall with bated breath.
This is where Cao Sanxi meets guests. Today, he convened all shareholders of Daming Maritime Trade except Zhu Youdong.
When Daming Haimao was first established, the shareholders were Zhu Youdong, Cao Sanxi, the Liaodong Li family, Li Dan's family, Yan Siqi and others. But now, the shareholders of this company include the Huating Xu family, the Chu King of Huguang, the Shu King of Sichuan, and nearly a dozen big merchants along the Yangtze River. The shares of the original group of shareholders have also been diluted to a little more than 50%.
In recent years, this Ming Dynasty Maritime Trade Company has basically monopolized the export trade of all materials along the Yangtze River in the entire Ming Dynasty. With Sun Chengzong's entry into Fujian, Funing Town was also under the jurisdiction of Zhu Youdong, and it almost controlled 90% of the entire Ming Dynasty's foreign trade. From the production, collection, transportation, export, and settlement of export materials, Ming Dynasty Maritime Trade has achieved full participation and control of the entire process - this is the super trust of this era.
The combination of the royal family, vassal kings, the military, pirates, super merchants and big landlords is not something that the numerous middle-level landlords that exist widely in the Ming Dynasty can resist. So as time goes on, more than 90% of the traditional Chinese foreign trade products such as raw silk, tea, and porcelain in the entire southern part of the Ming Dynasty, especially along the Yangtze River, have direct or indirect relations with the Ming Dynasty's maritime trade. Ordinary small and medium-sized merchants either change their careers, go bankrupt, or honestly accept the various conditions of the Ming Dynasty's maritime trade and join as the lowest-level suppliers.
Now, in 1612, the annual turnover of the entire Daming Maritime Trade Co., Ltd. exceeded 20 million taels of silver, and the profit basically remained at around 5 million taels. The largest shareholder, His Royal Highness the Crown Prince, could receive dividends of more than 2 million taels of silver every year. And this was the result after the export of penicillin was separated.
The company responsible for the export of penicillin is the special "Da Ming Pharmaceutical Research Co., Ltd.". Its largest shareholder is of course Zhu Youdong, who holds 60% of the shares, followed by Wu Youxing and a group of doctors who own 30% of the shares. As a professional manager, Cao Sanxi also owns 10% of the shares.
The pharmaceutical company's domestic sales rely on Fangshan Grocery Store, while foreign sales are the company's independent sales channels. Its products include penicillin, sulfonamides, and various Chinese patent medicines. The annual turnover is as high as 10 million taels of silver. Moreover, the profit of medicines is much higher than that of traditional commodities. Zhu Youdong can get more than 3 million taels of silver from them every year. At the same time, streptomycin has been extracted in Fangshan Medical Laboratory. This antibiotic, which has a miraculous effect on tuberculosis, will bring Zhu Youdong even greater profits once it is launched on the market in this era.
In addition, Fangshan Grocery Store (shareholders include the emperor, military, and nobles), Honghe Industry (Tongfangshan), Mubang Mining (shareholders include the emperor, local government, and local chieftains), etc. Although the era of huge profits has ended with the passage of time, the Ming Dynasty Therefore, after completing the shareholder dividends, Zhu Youdong can still get about one million silver from it every year.
In short, His Royal Highness is now one of the richest people in the Ming Dynasty. His annual dividends are almost as much as the Ming government's annual monetary taxes. Although he is very generous and often makes Cao Sanxi jump when he spends money on the army, schools, scientific research, propaganda, etc., but overall, the financial situation of the Nanhua Palace is always at ease.
It was precisely because of this that he dared to start the reconstruction of the Yellow Book at this time.
"Dear shareholders, I have invited you all here today for one thing. Your Highness wants to rebuild the Yellow Book Library, and he needs your unreserved support!"
At the beginning of the meeting, Cao Sanxi directly pointed out the theme. Of the people in the meeting, Li Guozhu and Yan Siqi naturally need not be said much. The other shareholders looked a little strange.
"Everyone, I will not elaborate on how important rebuilding the Yellow Book Library is to the country. At present, Your Highness has only taken the first step: re-cleaning the population, which is the basis for rebuilding the Yellow Book. In this process, the most supportive of Your Highness are probably the various refugees and fugitives in the past, because they will regain their household registration and no longer be black households with no rights. The second are the good people who honestly farm or work, because the various inexplicable extra burdens on them will be greatly reduced. And other than that." Cao Sanxi sighed: "Besides that, the rest are basically opposition forces."
Cao Sanxi was not exaggerating. Rebuilding the Yellow Book Library would have a huge impact on the people, clerks, officials at all levels who had made fortunes by exploiting loopholes in the Yellow Book Management, merchants, village tyrants, etc. They would oppose! They would oppose! They would spread rumors! Or they might even form a clique to cause trouble...
Zhu Youdong had no intention of fighting for these people: driven by interests, no matter how much reason he used, it was useless, whoever jumped up would be killed anyway.
Those who need to be won over are royal family members, nobles, military leaders, super businessmen and big landowners.
As mentioned above, the land annexation in the Ming Dynasty had its own characteristics: there were super-large landlords, but they were few in number, and there were more small and medium-sized landlords. Therefore, in this era, it was not possible to unite small and medium-sized landlords to fight against the aristocratic families, but rather to seize the largest few to clean up the large number of small and medium-sized landlords.
"Your Highness asked me to call everyone to a meeting. In addition to the previous year's operating report and profit and dividend, the most important thing is this matter. Of course, Your Highness also knows that everyone actually has doubts about rebuilding the Yellow Book Library, and even has psychological resistance. This is also human nature.
There are only three reasons why you are resisting: First, there are a large number of hidden households in your families. These people have disappeared from the national yellow book for many years, so they naturally do not have to pay head taxes or perform corvée labor. Once these people are cleared out, your interests will naturally be damaged. Second, for various reasons, many of your family lands are not registered. They do not have to pay taxes either. Therefore, once these lands are cleared out, your interests will also be damaged. Third, since the founding of the Ming Dynasty by Taizu, there has been no slavery except for a few departments such as the eunuchs and the Jiaofang Division. In other words, none of you are qualified to use slaves. But the reality is that although the slaves in your families are not as many as the emperor, they are probably dozens or hundreds of times more than the prince. After these people are cleared out, will their personal dependence on the owner of the family be lifted? Well, on the military side, the existence of family servants is also a problem... Hehe, I have summarized these few points. Do you think they are accurate?"
After everyone was silent for a while, Xu Yuanzuo, the head of the Xu family in Huating, stood up and said, "General Manager, this is the truth. And in our position, we also understand that if we don't rectify the Yellow Book Library, it won't be long before we become citizens of a fallen country. But as the general manager just said, although we know that scraping the bones to heal wounds is good for the body after all, how many people can endure the pain of scraping the bones?"
"Manager Xu is speaking the truth. I am telling you this because some things cannot be published in Jinling Daily. So I will not admit what I said, and I will not admit it once I leave this room."
"Please ask the general manager to help us solve this problem."
"In view of the three concerns raised by everyone, your Highness's solution is: First, this is just a population census. After the census, the head tax and corvée will not be collected from these hidden households in the short term. In the long run, your Highness has the idea of abolishing the head tax and corvée. Of course, such a big change in the tax system cannot be made without the approval of the emperor, but in general, the implementation of tax reform is the general trend, and everyone should have confidence in your Highness.
Second, this time we will only clean up the population, not the land. There is no plan to redraw the fish scale atlas. Of course, we are all one family, and I will not fool you. After the population is cleaned up, the next step is naturally to clean up the land. But your highness will classify the land into cultivated land, commercial land, transportation land, homestead land... The tax rates are completely different. You have all gathered together to do maritime trade in recent years, and you all know that doing business makes money much faster than farming. You also know that selling things, selling finished products, can make more money than selling raw materials. Your highness said that in the future, Fangshan Laboratory will gradually open up some technologies to everyone, and everyone can build a factory. In this way, won't this part of the loss be recovered? Who knows, there is still profit.
Third, the issue of slavery. His Highness said that the slaves in the mansions should continue to be used and given the same silver as before. There is only one rule: you are not allowed to decide the life and death of slaves without permission!
As for the issue of retainers in the military register, His Highness' instructions are that retainers are caused by the court's frequent failure to pay military salaries on time. Until this issue is resolved, retainers will not be included in this inventory. The generals of each military garrison and the noble families can report a list of retainers ranging from 500,000 to 10,000 according to their respective ranks. Those on this list will not be included in this inventory."
After saying these four points, Cao Sanxi let out a long sigh, then slammed his hands heavily on the table: "Do you have any objections to this arrangement?"
"…Your Highness has made all the arrangements, and we have no objection."
"Okay!" Cao Sanxi clapped his hands vigorously and said, "Then next, you all need to do three things."
"Please ask the general manager to give the order."
"First, when checking the household registration, each family must cooperate vigorously and set a good example. For example, the Xu family of Huating also has a large amount of land and tenants in Yingtian Prefecture. When the investigation reaches you, you must actively cooperate. Similarly, when the investigation reaches your , everyone must also actively cooperate."
"General Manager, rest assured, we will definitely cooperate with your Highness in the investigation."
"Second, pay close attention to public opinion in various places. If anyone dares to gather or form a party to resist this investigation, report it in a timely manner. If necessary, suppress it first and maintain the situation until the reinforcements sent by Nanhua Palace arrive.
Third, the entire Ming Dynasty maritime trade must be prepared to rescue the market in the next one or two months. If merchants in any place go on strike, we must intervene in time and use a large amount of goods, especially grain, to stabilize the local order.
Fourth, each family should form two or three working teams according to the working team model that His Highness has formed now. Then, in the subsequent inventory work, each family's working team must also participate! "
