Northern Dynasties Imperial Industry

"For the record, General, there are 8,635 pieces of silk in the market today..."

When he heard Pei Hong, a member of the army from Cang Cao, reporting the total amount of market taxes collected today, Li Tai couldn't help but widen his eyes and asked in shock: "How many are there?"

It's not that he has never seen money, let alone more than 8,000 pieces of silk, even more than 80,000...forget it, even one piece needs to be taken seriously, half a silk, half a strand, Heng Nian is struggling with material resources!

The commodity economy in the Southern Dynasties was developed and market transactions were frequent. Therefore, city tax was also an important part of the government's fiscal revenue. It was usually levied at 4% according to the transaction volume. That is, a transaction tax of 400 yen was charged for a transaction volume of 10,000 yen. The seller paid 300 yen. One hundred dollars, the buyer gives one hundred dollars.

In addition, there are various types of exorbitant taxes and miscellaneous taxes collected around market transactions that come and go, depending on the social development at that time, government finances, the moral bottom line of the ruler, etc., and each era is different.

Among the political powers in the Southern Dynasties, Xiao Bodhisattva's family had a relatively low moral bottom line, so the people were under heavy tax pressure. Back then, Hou Jing only used one move to exempt land rent from city tax, and he attracted a large number of people in Huainan to rebel. This shows how heavy the taxation in Nanliang was.

In the Northern Dynasties, especially the Western Wei Dynasty, the development of the commodity economy itself was very backward, so various commercial taxes were very few. It's not that Yuwentai has a high moral level, it's just that he has nothing to accept.

The Jingzhou General Administration's finances are quite independent, and there is no need to follow Chinese and foreign government laws for any income-generating methods. Because it is located at the junction of the north and the south, the commodity economy is also developing day by day, so the state government has also formulated a municipal tax quota, with a tax of one per hundred. Compared with the system of the Southern Dynasties, it is naturally not a serious exploitation.

More than 8,000 pieces of silk were collected in one day, which means that the total number of transactions in the market during the whole day reached more than 800,000 pieces of silk! If it is bulk trade, then there is no need to say much, but the shopping malls in Jingzhou City mainly retail daily necessities. It is simply unbelievable that the transaction volume can reach so much in one day.

“How much does the city tax usually collect every day?”

After Li Tai asked this question, Pei Hong was already prepared and hurriedly brought the city tax records from the past three months to the case.

Li Tai took the account book and looked through it briefly, and found that the city tax collected every day within three months ranged from a few hundred bolts of silk to two to three thousand bolts. Judging from the trend, it was gradually increasing. Especially since November, the daily data has jumped more than double, and today it has reached an unprecedented number of more than 8,000 pieces of silk.

Seeing this unusual data, Li Tai looked at the data on Jingzhou City's shopping malls.

There are more than 700 shops in the entire shopping mall, and there are more than 100 more shops than Xiangyang West Market. Although this data cannot be compared with the east and west cities of Chang'an in the heyday of the Sui and Tang Dynasties, it is already the entire Jianghan. The largest market among them.

The products sold by so many shops are naturally diverse and of various types, ranging from daily necessities to rare treasures from the north and south.

Pei Hong continued: "According to the owner of the store in the city, most of the people who come to the market to buy goods are from Jiangling. They are not even shopping, but shopping..."

Li Tai listened to Pei Hong's report and vaguely remembered something in his mind. While signaling Pei Hong to continue the report, he stood up and rummaged around in the bookcase next to the case, and finally found a letter from Li Yunxin, the governor of Yingzhou who was in charge of Shicheng. Report.

This report was sent in the middle of the year. It was a request from the Jiangling Military Mansion to the General Manager's Mansion to increase the annual mutual trade volume. Previously, Li Tai used the power of Keding Handong to ask for mutual trade with Jiangling, and purchased a large amount of raw materials from Jiangling every year.

At that time, Jiangling was still richer than Mianbei. Although the turmoil in the lower reaches became more and more serious, the middle reaches were not affected too much. Therefore, Jiangling was not very active in the trade between the two parties, and had to rely on the intimidation of Mianbei's military power to reluctantly fulfill this agreement.

However, gradually when Hou Jing's rebellious army entered the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, Jiangling's enthusiasm for trading increased. It was necessary to raise supplies and improve finances through trade to develop armaments.

By the time the Jiangling defense battle ended and Wang Sengbian and other armies began to launch counterattacks downstream, Jiangling became more dependent on trade with Miobei. Waiting until this year, they even took the initiative to propose increasing trade volume, and the trade volume nearly doubled.

This change in attitude is reflected in the fact that the industrial and agricultural production around Jiangling has also been severely damaged, resulting in a sharp decrease in the number of commodities and a large amount of dissatisfaction.

Li Tai had not noticed this before, but now he saw many people from Jiangling coming to the city to buy goods, which directly caused the transaction volume in the city's market to surge. Only then did he realize that there was a lot of room for manipulation.

Thinking of Jiangling's turbulent situation and the people in the city who were short of food and clothing, Li Tai felt that he had the responsibility to help these people's lives get back on track.

Especially the Southern Dynasty aristocrats who fled from Jiankang to Jiangling before and after Hou Jing's rebellion was put down. They can't bear a little hardship, and they can't get enough of fine food. The material comforts that Jiangling can't provide them at the moment can only be found in Mianbei. can be satisfied.

In line with the principle of happiness based on helping others, Li Tai wrote an order and sent it to Li Yunxin, the governor of Yingzhou who was in charge of the southern border, instructing him to strictly inspect the goods in transit, especially the goods transported from the territory of the General Administration to Jiangling. , as long as there are no certificates such as customs clearance or deeds, they will be seized and not released.

It’s a dream to secretly sweep cargo back to Gangneung and make huge profits! If you don’t come to Laozi Pier and make some contribution to me, I won’t let you earn a single iron jumper!

In addition to strictly checking the transportation of smuggled goods, he also drafted a rule that those who enjoy the treatment of gold medals, silver medals and other guests in Hongbin Building can carry different quantities and more types of materials in their luggage.

General Li's friendship is very valuable and can be directly measured with real money. If you don't cherish and fight for it, you are destined to be unable to get four dishes!

Those who have lived in Jiangling for generations are fine, they have strong assets to maintain their daily lives.

But the current people who migrated from Jiankang to Jiangling are a bit difficult. Whether it is social status or economic conditions, there will be a very big decline. Not to mention others, even Yu Xin, the master of the literary world, was neglected by a young boyfriend he kept in his early years.

It is difficult for these people to obtain stable and considerable assets and income in Jiangling. Even if they can get the care of Emperor Liang Xiao Yi, it is only a minority after all. Most of the others have to face the reality of a difficult life.

Today, Mianbei is rich in goods and abundant in materials, which naturally has great attraction for these people. So Li Tai took advantage of this and continued to develop spies among the people of Jiangling.

Just as Jiangling was facing internal and external troubles and Mianbei was thriving, the New Year came again. Due to the dryness of the river, Xiao Ji, who led his troops to the east and approached the gorge, did not launch a large-scale offensive, but built cities along the river and advanced step by step.

As for Wang Lin's troops in Xiangzhou, they were much more lively. After consolidating the results of the battle in Xiangzhou, they immediately marched north to besiege Baling. This city, where Wang Sengbian had previously been stationed and successfully defeated Hou Jing's rebellion, was now broken under the attack of Wang Lin's rebels, allowing the rebels to directly occupy Baling, and the road to Jiangling to the west was unobstructed.

Faced with this incident, the newly promoted Liang Emperor Xiao Yi was also shocked. On the one hand, he ordered the leader Hu Sengyou to lead his troops to resist, and on the other hand, he sent envoys to ask for help from the Western Wei, and finally made a touching request, that is, to ask the Western Wei to send troops to attack Shu.

Of course, even without Xiao Yi's request, the Western Wei would not give up this military action that had been in operation for a long time and was about to begin.

However, just before the Western Wei was about to carry out the plan to attack Shu, their prominent emperor Yuan Qin also started to make trouble, and directly ordered the removal of Yuwen Tai from the positions of prime minister and Daxingtai, only retaining the honorary title of Taishi and the commander of all military forces at home and abroad.

This was undoubtedly a great blow to the power of the hegemony. Even Li Tai, who was far away in Jingzhou, hurriedly sent envoys to Huazhou after learning about this, asking Yuwen Tai whether he needed to lead the army north to Wuguan in the current situation.