In the Song Dynasty, there was no law or order.

Zhao Jun had only heard the professional course teacher talk about the Song Dynasty tea law in general before, but it was not until now that he understood the specific situation in detail.

It turned out that since the Song Dynasty, military expenditures have become increasingly huge. The problem of frontier army pay is relatively easy to solve, but the problem of food and grass is difficult. It is necessary to transport food to the border and to mobilize civilians for corvée labor, which is very costly.

In order to solve these problems, the court opened the Jiaoyin Law.

The so-called Jiaoyin Law is to let merchants help transport food to the border and then give them certain policy preferences. The current implementation is the Tea Law.

Although tea has been consumed in my country for a long time, it was originally just a pastime for nobles and landlords and was not popular among the people.

In the Tang Dynasty, tea drinking became a common social trend, and tea making and tea trade began to develop.

After the middle of the Tang Dynasty, tea was regarded as a taxable object, and the monopoly system was soon established.

Tea, salt, iron, wine, etc. became one of the important sources of income for the court's monopoly.

By the Song Dynasty, tea had become a necessity for the people, just like rice and salt, and was a necessity that people could not live without for a day.

The Song government continued the methods of the previous dynasty and implemented the official monopoly system of tea, and tea profits became the main source of income for the Song government.

Before Li Zi reformed the tea monopoly system of 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 the use of foreign troops, the northern border defense lacked food and grass, so merchants were allowed to transport food and grass to various border defense areas.

After the border received the food and grass, it was priced according to the local market price and the distance of the merchant's transportation, and with certain discounts, a kind of payment voucher was issued to the merchant, called "Jiaoyin", which was also the origin of Jiaozi.

Merchants took Jiaoyin to the capital to collect money, or after the Beijing Monopoly Office approved the note, they went to Jiezhou and Jianghuai areas to collect tea, which was Ruzhong.

Later, incense and alum were added to compensate for Ruzhong, so Ruzhong became the most common form of the Song Dynasty monopoly system, which was beneficial to the national finances of the Northern Song Dynasty.

But although this method is better, there is a problem of pricing.

The Song Dynasty court used this method to solve the cost of collecting and transporting grain and grass.

However, merchants also have to spend money to transport grain to the border. From the perspective of the government, because they are eager to collect grain and grass for the border, they must encourage merchants to enter China at a preferential price, and give merchants certain preferential policies.

For example, the cost of merchants transporting grain this time is 800,000 strings. In order to increase the enthusiasm of merchants to transport grain, the court must estimate the cost of 800,000 strings as 1.5 million strings, so that merchants can make more money.

Although it is reasonable for merchants to make money, it is still unbearable for the court to turn 800,000 strings into 1.5 million strings, which becomes 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 the actual estimate is made, 800,000 will become 1 million or 1.2 million at most.

However, as the war became more intense, there was a shortage of grain on the border, and the entry into China method was a credit purchase system with deferred payment for settlement in different places, the operation was extremely complicated.

From delivery to payment, the distance is long, the time is long, the transfer procedures of the delivery notes are complicated, and the transportation costs are high. Compared with cash transactions, the capital turnover is slow and the transaction costs are high, which leads to higher and higher prices.

Because in order to obtain enough grain and grass for entry into China, the purchasing agencies of the Song government must give more delivery notes and overestimate them.

The more delivery notes are issued, the more unable the settlement agencies are to cash them in time, which will inevitably lead to the face value of the delivery notes shrinking and returning to the actual value, and finally dampen the enthusiasm of the entry into China.

Once the entry into China is reduced and affects military needs, the purchasing agencies can only further increase the false valuation. And the unreasonable pricing leads to more tea for each market.

Most of the merchants entering China colluded with the officials in the border areas and deliberately overestimated the value of the goods entering China to profit from it.

This false valuation caused serious losses to the Song government.

Simply put, the original cost of 800,000 was actually estimated at a maximum of 1 million.

However, the merchants colluded with the border inspection officials to raise the value of the goods, raising the cost of 800,000 to 1.5 million, which greatly increased the expenditure cost of the Song Dynasty court.

Li Zi's cash-for-sale method is to transport a large amount of cash from the treasury to the border. You transport the goods on the spot, and I pay the cash on the spot, which avoids the shortcomings of slow capital turnover and high transaction costs.

However, for corrupt officials and big tea merchants, this method reduces their profit margins, so they naturally oppose it.

For high-level officials such as the Three Divisions, they do not necessarily participate in the corruption. After all, their salaries are very high, and there is no need to take such a big risk to embezzle.

It can be seen that the cash method requires a large amount of cash from the treasury to be transported to the border, which will empty the treasury in a short period of time, leaving the court with no money to use.

As a result, the tea merchants and corrupt officials below formed an opposition force, and the court ministers above formed another opposition force. Together, they attacked Li Zi's reformists, which eventually led to Li Zi's demotion and the failure of the cash-for-sale reform.

This year, seeing that Li Yuanhao's rebellion was getting stronger and stronger, and the border was going to go to war again, the treasury would consume countless amounts of money. In order to save this part of the false expenditure, Zhao Zhen wanted to open the Jiaoyin method again.

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.

However, there is still the same problem.

The cash payment method was implemented again. The big tea merchants and corrupt officials at the bottom opposed it, and the court ministers who were in charge of the purse also opposed it.

Li Zhen was also disheartened because he was demoted last time. He always wanted to resign. When he saw that Qian Fa was going to have a miscarriage before he even started, Zhao Zhen and others were worried.

If Zhao Jun has a practical way, it would be the best thing for them.

"So that's it. I didn't understand it in such detail before."

After listening to Yan Shu's detailed introduction, Zhao Jun was puzzled for a moment: "Uncle Lari, where did you know about this?"

"Forehead"

Yan Shu was speechless for a moment and said vaguely: "It's written in "History of the Song Dynasty"."

"Is it written in "History of the Song Dynasty"?"

Zhao Jun thought for a while: "Forget it, I haven't finished reading "History of the Song Dynasty" anyway. This thing makes people's blood pressure high."

Zhao Zhen clenched his fists, and Zhao Jun made his blood pressure rise every time.

"Is there any way?"

Yan Shu asked.

"Grandpa Mao once said that we should look at the essence through phenomena and analyze contradictions to grasp the key points."

Zhao Jun said: "The money-seeking method has advantages and disadvantages, but if the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, then it is a good method. So does it have more advantages than disadvantages?"

Yan Shu said: "After the implementation of the new law, the annual savings and additional fiscal revenue will reach 6.5 million yuan."

"The pros outweigh the cons."

Zhao Jun nodded: "The first thing to solve here is the problem of the empty treasury caused by the Qianqian Dharma Conference in a short period of time."

"Um."

Yan Shu glanced at Cai Qi. Zhao Zhen had arranged for Li Shen, Cai Qi, Ding Du, Cheng Lin and others to do this before, but the progress was slow and there was great resistance.

In addition to the opposition from the tea merchants and border officials below, senior officials like them also did not agree with it.

"The previous method was Yin Chi Mao Liang. Although the inflated prices caused losses to the state treasury, the tea merchants needed to travel back and forth, wait for the transfer procedures, and transfer other goods, etc., leaving the Song Dynasty a certain turnaround time."

Zhao Jun thought about it and said: "So the false estimate can be paid slowly by dragging the tea merchants, and the Song Dynasty's treasury can hold on. Now it is paid in one lump sum, which saves the tea merchants' transfer procedures and other transaction problems, but it also It gave the Song Dynasty's finances less time to circulate funds, so it was more harmful to the state treasury in a short period of time."

"right!"

Everyone looked at him with admiration. As expected of future generations, they looked at problems differently.

"This is just like doing government projects."

Zhao Jun said with a smile: "My college classmate's family is engaged in engineering, and he usually looks smart and well-dressed. But once, the local government owed his father more than 10 million yuan in unsettled project funds, which almost made his father lose his pants. If you put it this way, it stands to reason that as long as tea merchants can get money, they should be happy to accept it. "

"There are some tea merchants who are more supportive of the money-seeking method. After all, in the past, tea merchants were slower to get money, which also caused great difficulties for them to recover their funds. But they are basically small and medium-sized tea merchants. For large tea merchants, To me, this is nothing.”

Yan Shu said.

Li Shen also made some conclusions after the failure of the first reform.

At the beginning of this year, when he received the task from Zhao Zhen, he learned the lessons from the previous time and summoned the tea merchants. Not only did he state their interests and losses, but he also gave them a certain amount of "moon" at the tea farm.

Through the sticking method, they can trade directly with farmers, and all they get is new and good tea, without the loss of old tea and bad tea.

But for large tea merchants with strong financial resources, it is nothing.

Anyway, they had money and could continue to spend it with the court. At the same time, they could bribe officials and extract higher profits from the court's treasury than reselling tea.

Moreover, every time a big tea merchant transports grain, he not only has falsely estimated coins from the treasury, but also a large amount of tea leaves that can be used to sell specialized tea. Earning two copies of one errand, in exchange for several times the income, is faster than robbing money. Much more.

Some people may say that you have falsely overestimated your profits by so much. Is it okay if the court refuses to pay?

It really doesn’t work.

If the imperial court does not honor the high price they have falsely estimated, it will inevitably cause damage to credibility and make the "Method of Entering China" useless.

Merchants would no longer transport grain to the border. Without food, the army would have to rebel. Ultimately, it would be the interests of the border army and the country that would be harmed. Therefore, the Song Dynasty court only used stalks to fight wolves - fearing both sides.

Before Zhao Jun went to college, he would probably have said that the tea merchants would be confiscated and their families would be confiscated to see if they dared to become a worm in the country.

But now that he is a high-IQ history college student who loves to read, he naturally has to carefully consider the consequences of doing so.

Therefore, after hearing Yan Shu's words, Zhao Jun pondered again and again and said: "These two problems are actually easy to solve. Let's talk about the shortage of treasury that the court ministers are worried about first. There is only one answer I can give."

"What?"

"Jiaozi!"

"Jiaozi?"

"good."

Zhao Jun said: "Jiaozi is recognized as the world's first paper currency in history classes, more than 600 years earlier than Europe. I remember Li Zhen's method of seeing money was from the Renzong Dynasty, and Jiaozi appeared. In Sichuan during the Renzong Dynasty, as long as Jiaozi was properly utilized and the bank system was under control, the problem of empty treasury could be solved. "